Joyce hadn't been able to stay long due to the fact that she had had to work. But she had been kind enough to give him her cell number, which once she had been out of the room he had promptly glanced at then crumbled in his fist and thrown away. He understood her need to know that Eve was well.

Truly he did.

But he knew about the fight Joyce had had with Buffy before she had left town. He knew about the horrible things that had been said and while he knew that she hadn't been able to understand her daughter and had reacted badly to learning that she was a slayer-

He didn't think Eve should be left in her presence for long since Joyce might do or say something that could be even more damaging to her heart and mind.

So if she was released from the hospital as Joyce hoped, he'd be removing her to his home. And Joyce wanted to come and visit her daughter, she could damn well do it where he could wrap his fingers around her throat if she crossed the line again. There was a knock on the door and he looked towards it as a nurse peeked in and smiled at him.

"How's everything in here?" She asked as she slipped in carrying a tray of what smelled like scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and biscuits slathered in white gravey. He gave the woman a tight lipped smile, trying to ignore the way his stomach clenched as she put the tray down on the tiny movable table then stood back for a moment.

"Everything is fine. She's resting at the moment." He finally said as the woman picked up Eve's chart and looked at it.

"Yes, I can see that. She must be really worn out not to stir at the smell of food."

Giles bit back a small laugh. Buffy had never been the type of girl easily motivated to wake when she had been resting. She tended to sleep deeper then most people he'd ever seen before. A small part of being the slayer of all things that went bump in the night, he supposed.

"Not to worry, I've seen this before. She'll wake up in a bit and eat then flop down and start snoozing again." Giles said as the woman moved a bit closer to Eve's bedside and checked her IV then did something with the plastic cording and asked.

"Has she shown any signs of being in pain?"

"No."

"Well that's good. Most people who come to us looking as if they've been at war-"

Gile's eyes widened slightly as he perked up in his seat, his mind whirling. "War? What war? What are you talking about?"

The nurse looked at him for a moment and stopped writing in the file and looked uncomfortable for a moment. "Uh...I'm taking it that no one told you."

He narrowed his eyes at her and growled in an impatient tone. "Told me what?" Again the woman looked uncomfortable. In fact she looked on the verge of bolting out the door. Not that Giles would give her the chance. Not when she obviously knew something that he didn't.

"S-Some of h-h-her in-injuries- T-T-They're con-consistant w-with t-torture..." The woman said as he slowly got to his feet. Taking the action as a threat of some kind she then hastily tried to assure him that a majority of the wounds, while several weeks fresh, were also healing up nicely.

Not that he found any solace in the fact that his slayer had been held somewhere and purposely wounded by some sadistic bastard hell bent on breaking or even killing her.

He looked at his slayer, still resting undesturbed on the room's only bed despite the fact that the nurse's voice had raised a bit in her panic and felt bile rise in his throat. Dear god- He might have never seen her again if she hadn't somehow escaped the one/ones who had been hurting her.

She could have died again. This time for good.

And he never would have known it. He never would have found her no matter how far he went or how much he looked.

The thought in itself was terrifying. So much so that he found the nearest waste basket and spent a good ten minutes emptying his stomach, giving the nurse the chance she needed to run.

(*******************************************************************************************************************************************)

Eve was having a strange dream. One where the human race still walked the streets in hordes, couples held hands and kissed, children ran and played while laughing.

There were tall buildings made of steel, glass, stone and glittering lights.

Vehicles that were called, cars, were driven over smooth stone streets with people inside. It was a fascinating sight to behold since for as long as she could remember, the human population had dwindled to practically nothing.

And by nothing she meant that in all the world, only three hundred people had continued to live in every hemisphere of the globe. That was it. No more lived. They had all been eaten or turned into demons or simply killed for fun.

No one walked the streets at night. Or even during the day since some monsters simply didn't sleep when they should.

There was little food, even less water- no room for children were allowed to be born because there was nothing that the adults could spare if they wanted to survive. And they did want to survive. They wanted to survive so desperately that they would kill eachother just to gain an extra day to live.

The only reason Eve had survived as a child among the animals that had called themselves 'human' had been because Ripper had stopped the other adults from killing her once he found out that she was the slayer.

From that point on he had trained and taught her everything from combat, to magic, to the histories of all races. And once he had finished she had ceased being a mere child or human, she had become the last fighting chance that humans had left.

A weapon to preserve what was left in the hopes that one day the earth would belong to human beings again.

She looked around a bit, exploring the depths of her dream with a child like curiosity. She didn't understand why she was here. She didn't even know where here was. And just when she was starting to wonder if she would ever figure things out, she found herself standing next to a vehicle with red flashing lights and orange colored writings on it and frowned a little bit as she walked around the side and stopped.

There was another vehicle, this one a huge white and silver and it was facing a thick wooden pole. There was a presence there. She could feel it as something tugged at her mind.

This place looked familiar. But she couldn't recall from where. Moving forward just a bit more she suddenly jumped when a man nearly bumped into her as he and another man carried what looked like a black plastic bagover to the white and orange vehicle.

Turning her head she looked towards the monster sized one and frowned again as she noticed that it was pulled back a little bit from the pole and the front was smeared with a scarlet red liquid that carried the coppery scent of blood. And standing just a few inches from the scarlet smeared metal-

Was a young woman with shoulder length honey blonde hair and sad pale green eyes. Eve stared at the young woman for a moment, not quite realizing what she was looking at until it occurred to her that she had seen this young woman before.

"So we meet at last, slayer Eve..."

Eve's eyes widened a little bit in shock as she took a shakey breath. "Y-You! You have my face!"

The blonde gave her a wry smile. "And you have mine. But's that neither here nor there. I haven't got much time left so I thought we'd spend it having a little chat. Do you mind?"

Eve was speechless for a second as the young woman moved towards her slowly, appearing to be walking despite the fact that her body was transparent from the chest down. "You're dead?" Eve finally said, though it sounded more like a question to the blonde.

"Yes.."