Hesitation

After waking up around noon, Dawn didn't leave her room at the Watchers Council headquarters for a day following her confrontation with Lucifer. Although they had met in her dreams, she knew better than to just wish that it all had been a dream – that she hadn't irrevocably damaged her relationship with her husband and now he probably included her on his Apocalypse Hit List.

The worst part was that Dawn felt like she was reeling from the world's worst break-up rather than being afraid of Lucifer destroying the world. Yeah, her priorities were probably off at the moment but dammit, she just wanted to wallow in her own misery for a while.

The others had tried to get her to come out but she just lied and said she was experiencing the bad after-effects of having her ancient memory merged with her present one. No way could she voice her true concerns at the moment. Heck, most of them probably wouldn't get it. After all, who in their right mind would be sad that their husband, aka the most evil man in the world, was mad at them?

Well, okay, probably most people. Generally speaking, it is never good to have someone evil and powerful angry with you.

Although even as she thought that, Dawn felt guilty. She knew that Lucifer didn't believe he was evil (apparently rose-tinted glasses were plentiful in Hell – and she would know), but he thought he was honestly doing right. Still, that didn't change anything – he was still wrong.

Dawn sighed as she clutched Mr. Gordito – the stuffed baby piglet her mom had given her after her five-year old self had gotten jealous of Buffy's Mr. Gordo. She was lying in bed and staring, without really seeing, at the ceiling. Her stomach growled but she ignored it. Again, Dawn didn't really want to see anyone right now, even if maybe it would be better than just replaying the moment Lucifer's eyes flashed in hurt and anger at her.

A knock sounded at the door a while later. "Great Mother, the behemoth-sized one wishes to speak to you."

Dawn grinned. The whole 'Great Mother' thing freaked her out – especially considering the fact of how it reminded her of past sins – but she was amused that Illyria had taken the post of Dawn's bodyguard and had been outside her door since their arrival from Disney World.

"Tell Sam I'm tired," Dawn called weakly. Seeing Lucifer's intended vessel would certainly not help at the moment.

"Dawn, I've got anchovy pizza," he called sweetly through the door.

Scowling, she sat up and glared at the door suspiciously. Sam Winchester was good. Sure, girls thought Dean was the smooth one of the two but that was only when he was trying to get laid. Sam was the true manipulator.

Regret pulsed through her – chalk up yet another similarity to her Lucifer.

Her hunger abated by that thought, Dawn shook her head (even though he couldn't see her through the door). "Uh, I'm not hungry."

"Come on, Dawn. I'm sure you're still reeling from everything but just let me in to talk," he whined in his patented 'Bitch-voice', as Dean would say.

"The Great Mother wishes not to be disturbed. Leave now with your smelly fish," Illyria commanded sharply.

"Illyria, he can come in," Dawn sighed. She couldn't be a hermit forever, she supposed.

Illyria opened the door to allow Sam in, all the while shooting him dark looks. She shut the door behind her and Sam gave Dawn a shy grin. "Hey. I like your hair."

Eyes widening in horror, Dawn patted her head. Oops. She kind of forgot the human hygiene thing after the convo from hell (and wasn't thata bit literal?). "Shut up," Dawn grumbled as she began yanking a brush through her long locks. She leaned against the adjacent wall and pulled down her pajama shorts so they weren't so revealing. Her white tank wasn't exactly nun-worthy either, but Dawn didn't care terribly at the moment.

"How you feeling?" he asked kindly as his eye raked over her appearance.

"Hungie," she stated childishly as she held out her arms for the pizza. "Gimme."

Sam chortled and handed her the box; Dawn was very pleased to see it was from her favorite local pizza place. Greedily, she dug into the pizza; the scent of food made her feel practically ravenous.

"You're such a lady," Sam teased as cheese dripped down her chin.

Mildly embarrassed, she rolled her eyes. "Like you're one to talk," she snorted. "Half the time you and Dean stop by on a hunt you two smell like demon guts and moldy motel rooms."

"Hey, that's all Dean. He's the one who only showers if he thinks he's going to find a girl," Sam joked.

Dawn laughed. "Then I guess he's showering all the time since he's staying here and so is Faith.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, they're, uh, pretty intense. I'm just glad this place has enough rooms so we're not sharing like normal."

Dawn nodded in sympathy. She remembered the days of Buffy-Riley boinkage.

"So, uh, any news from our version of Team America?" she asked as she finished up and licked her lips.

"Doesn't Team America usually screw up everything they try to fix?" Sam asked in confusion at her pop culture reference.

Dawn gave him a pointed look. "How many times, for both of our groups, does it seem like we try to fix something only to screw it up even more – before inevitably fixing it, of course," she grinned.

Laughing, Sam nodded. "True. Well, basically we've just been hitting the books. Gabriel and Cas have taken off somewhere though, but no one knows." Then Sam suddenly started to laugh.

"What?" Dawn asked curiously.

"Well, before Gabriel left – when you were sleeping – he magically glued some Mickey Mouse ears on Dean and now no one can get them off, not even Willow."

Dawn burst into laughter and slid further down onto her bed. "I can't believe he did that!"

"Well," Sam smirked, "Dean lamented when Gabriel got back how he didn't get any mouse ears."

Still laughing, Dawn nodded. "Serves him right!"

They laughed a while longer and chatted until Sam gave her a serious look. "So Dawn, um, I have to ask. Do you know how we can stop Lucifer?"

Dawn, now lying on her stomach while Sam lay on his back, pulled her head up to look at Sam. This was a question she had been pondering since waking up. "The first time Lucifer was stopped it was because Michael defeated him in battle and locked him in a cage in hell. I have no idea how he was able to lock him up, considering I wasn't working for the home team at the time," she smiled grimly. "Otherwise, the only other option is to…" Dawn looked away.

"To what?"

"To kill him," she answered reluctantly.

"How?"

Chewing on her lip, Dawn fought within herself to speak the truth. Even after deciding that she was on the side of humanity and not her husband's, she still didn't know if she could help devise a plan to kill him. However, there may not be another choice…

"He's an angel, Sam. How do you kill an angel?" she asked resolutely.

Sam's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "With an angel sword?" he answered.

Dawn nodded – and was dismayed to see Sam's eyes light up, pleased that there was finally a suggestion on how to kill Lucifer. "However, only Michael had been able to defeat him before. Until Dean says yes, I don't think any of us have a shot. And of course, if Dean did say yes, well then hello apocalyptic battle." She frowned at the thought.

"Yeah, but what about Gabriel?" Sam suggested. "He's an archangel – why not him?"

Gabriel. Oh, her darling boy. She knew how much he hated the fighting as it was. "I don't think he could strike down Lucifer. Perhaps if he was pushed to do so, but he loves him regardless of his sins." Dawn sighed. "And to be honest, Gabriel is strong but he was not a match for Lucifer, even at the time of the Fall. After sullying himself by mixing with the pagans? Even less so."

"Can't…um…what about you, Dawn? You're technically just as old."

Dawn sat up and glared at him. "No, Sam. I-I can't believe you just suggested that Ibe the one to kill him!"

Frowning severely, Sam sat up as well. "You just said so yourself that there's no other option. What else do you expect us to do?" he asked logically.

Jumping out of bed, Dawn thrust her hands on her hips and gave him a deadly look. "You already know that I'm only a shell of my former power – by whatever energy it took to put me into this human body I am now restricted from accessing my true powers. So I'm not as powerful as him, okay?"

Sam's eyes widened and Dawn contemplated if maybe she had overreacted. Perhaps – in his eyes – but she had just recently made the decision to fight against Lucifer, that didn't mean she was willing to go all the way and kill him as well.

"Okay," he held up his hands in surrender. "Forget I said anything."

But Dawn couldn't forget. Because a part of her knew he was right.

Time moved at a Giles-slow pace the next few days as everyone continued into research mode. Dawn had left her bedroom and more-or-less was interacting with everyone, but she wasn't stupid – there were plenty of mistrustful and/or thoughtful looks directed her way. Dean, thanks to his issues with Sam and Ruby, was still suspicious of her. That hurt the most. While Dawn was closer to Sam thanks to their geeky book-bondage (er, as in bondingover books and not any, you know, rope and chains), she still considered Dean a friend. Then there was Ellen who had problems trusting formerly-evil types. Jo seemed to accept her and so did Bobby, but she could tell the two hunters (regardless of their friendship) were wary and almost waiting for her to do something wrong.

Then there was everyone else. Illyria worshipped her while Xander, Spike, Faith, and Gunn treated her like normal, while sometimes Dawn caught the others staring at her. She knew that Willow, Giles, Andrew, and Wesley wanted to study her and ask a million questions, although thus far they had refrained. However, even though they wanted to treat her like a research project she also got the feeling that Wesley and Giles were cautious about what she may be/become and Andrew was plain scared of her; Willow, thankfully, treated her normally.

Sam treated her almost like normal as well, but sometimes he'd get this sad puppy-dog eyed look when he looked at her, like he couldn't believe she used to be so evil. The looks that Angel gave her were thoughtful and every now and then he would grimace in pain; Dawn wondered if he thought about his own experience in hell now that he knew who had helped to build it. Then of course there was her sister. While Buffy accepted Dawn and her new identity, she could still see the worry in her sister's eyes – although the monks had sent the Key to the slayer to keep it safe from Glory, it was apparent that aspect of the spell was still in effect, only now Buffy worried about Lucifer hurting her.

Therefore, it was a welcome distraction when Clem showed up on the Council's doorstep looking for Spike and babbling about some demon war.

Willow, who had opened the door, ushered Clem into the library, which was a cozy area with dozens of bookshelves. Most people were MIA at the moment but Spike, Willow, Dawn, Illyria, Buffy, and Bobby joined the loose-skinned demon at a large round table near the window.

"You, uh, got anything to munch on Spike? My nerves are frayed more than a Golosh demon after a ritualistic flaying," Clem asked as his hands rubbed nervously together.

"I just brought home some take-out from Jed's last night, you know those little onion blossom things?" the black duster-wearing vampire stated

Clem nodded. "That'll work…unless you got some kittens?"

"Nokittens," Buffy demanded with crossed arms and a look of disgust.

Bobby, who had been warned in advance what Clem was and that he wasn't an evil demon, shot Dawn a confused look. "Kittens?" he whispered.

Dawn pouted a little as she thought of tiny tabbies being deemed tasty. "Don't ask."

Once Spike had brought back some snacks for his stressed friend, the questioning began.

"Now what's this 'bout a demon war, mate?" Spike asked.

Clem shook his head as if he were trying to clear away bad thoughts. "Didn't you guys hearabout Wind Point?"

They all exchanged grim looks. "Some of us were there," Buffy reported. "Apparently it was Luci's big coming out party."

Dawn shifted uncomfortably – more like it was her coming out party.

Clem nodded. "The black-eyed demons have been capturing many of us – even took one of my poker buddies. They were all sacrificed at Wind Point but they're still hunting my kind. Apparently they want us to work for them or die, and preferably die since they hate our kind. It's uh, getting pretty scary out there and I thought that if I was going to be safe anywhere it would be here."

"No problem. You're presence will help to even out all the estrogen permeating this building," Spike grinned as he patted his friend on the back. "'Sides, I haven't had a game of kitten poker in forever."

"No kittens!" Buffy, Willow, and Dawn shouted.

"Aw, come on. You birds aren't any fun," Spike scoffed in annoyance. "Whatever. Come with me mate and I'll set you up in one of the spare rooms." He spared a glare at Bobby. "And you tell your hunter friends not to slice and dice our friend here, got it?" Spike hated hunters – apparently he's had a few run-ins with them over the years and didn't care much for the ones staying with them on principle.

Bobby eyed the two demons warily. "As long as you don't bite me or hug me, we're fine," he said gruffly.

Clem gave Bobby a friendly smile but his vampire friend dragged him off before he could speak further.

"Great. A demon war. More madness, just what we need," Buffy commented bitterly.

"Or, you know, this could be a good thing," Willow stated with a sunny smile. "If Lucifer's demons are too busy fighting the Hellmouth-y demons, then maybe that gives us more time."

"Or it'll mean that horned and pitchfork get some more players on their team. If both kinds of demons came together we're screwed like ice cream in a dessert," Bobby pointed out.

"Dawn?" Her sister's voice jarred her and Dawn looked up to see Buffy and the others looking at her. "What do you think?" she asked almost shyly. "I mean, you're kind of an expert, I guess."

"Um." Dawn shrugged. It felt very, very strange to have her sisterasking her for demon advice. "Honestly, I don't really know. When God captured me after Lucifer was placed in the cave there weren't that many black-eyed demons just yet. Instead, the ones I pulled through the hellmouths from other dimensions did Lucifer's fighting for him, along with the angels he had recruited."

Buffy, trying her best not to freak out at the reminder that her little sister was once a Big Bad, nodded. "Okay, so do you think Lucifer will be able to bring the demons to his side then?"

Dawn started to shrug – because she honestly did not know – but Illyria interrupted her. "We god kings of old and our people were brought into this world by the Great Mother and it was only unto her that we listened. Lucifer has no power over our kind. We fought on his behalf only because the Great Mother commanded it."

Regardless of the weirdness in that statement, it did give Dawn a bit of the warm fuzzies at the same time it gave her the creepy crawlies. She gave Illyria a soft smile all the same.

"So, you don't think your fellow demons will go 'I Love Luci' or anything?" Buffy inquired skeptically.

Illyria shrugged, a rather graceful movement that appeared less instinctive and more so something she learned since her resurrection. "Few demons on this earth understand their heritage and how they came to be in this world." Her lips curled into a sneer. "Most of them are weak compared to those who walked with me."

"So you're saying that since these demons don't know any better, they might run off to Daddy Dearest?" Willow asked.

"Lucifer can be very persuasive but at the same time most demon clans don't jump at the chance to work with other demons," Dawn opined. Funny how her Lailah memories and her Dawn-learned nuggets of knowledge were combining at the moment.

"So…maybe you should talk to them first," Buffy said with a hesitant smile.

Dawn's jaw almost dropped the floor. "Are you insane?"

Buffy gave her a mock-serious look. "I've been the slayer for about twelve years. That doesn't really incline my mind towards sanity."

"That's a bad idea," Dawn grimaced.

"Why? You help us out and talk to some of the non-killy-human types, and we can build up reinforcements. Already the devil is massacring humans. Maybe we don't know how to stop him yet but at least we can stop his demons," Buffy pushed.

"The whiny-voiced one is correct, Great Mother. You have the opportunity to build your army again." Illyria's eyes glinted at the memory of battles past and she smiled in anticipation of the future.

"Yeah, what she said!" Buffy said. Then she frowned as her mind caught up fully with her ears. "Hey! I'm not whiny!" she huffed.

Dawn snickered and even Bobby smiled. Willow just looked away innocently; but Dawn caught the small smile playing upon her lips.

But then Dawn stopped laughing and her expressions sobered. "I already spoke to Lucifer and told him I support the humans and not him," she confessed.

"When?" Buffy asked in concern.

"Is he here?" Bobby asked in alarm.

"Are you okay?" Willow asked.

Dawn waved their words away. "He entered my dreams," she told them, as each of them gave her shocked looks. "Needless to say he's not happy. And Lucifer when he's not happy, well…"

"Post-happiness Angel, but with even more evil and aquarium fish killing?" Buffy prompted in a light-hearted voice, the kind she used only when things of the bad were going down.

At the mention of her long lost fish, Willow cradled her jaw in her hands and frowned unhappily.

"Yeah," Dawn snorted. "Pretty much. Anyways, I'm not sure how I feel about actively working against him." What she meant was that she still loved him and felt guilty with each act of betrayal.

Buffy took her hand. "I know." Off Dawn's skeptical look she smiled bashfully. "Okay, so I don't know-know, but I get it. But Dawnie," she said seriously. "You're our only hope."

"Okay, Obi-wan," Dawn sighed reluctantly. "I'll think about it."

The next day Dawn had practically locked herself in the library, sprawled on her stomach between two rows of bookshelves in the back of the room. The carpet wasn't very soft, although made of beautiful ornate oriental design, but here she could be sufficiently alone. From Giles' private collection she had taken several tomes on ancient magic and now, in between sneezing from the mass quantities of dust, was reading on how to access great powers.

Most earth witches – not the kind who gained their powers from demon alliances – had the ability within them to tap into magic hidden in the earth. That ability could be grown by understanding the proper mental techniques to stretch one's mind to reach deep within the soil and root up magic of a greater power. Dawn, shortly after Sunnydale, had been taken as one of Willow's apprentices at the new Watchers Council and studied magic with several students. However, all attempts had felt off to her – the feeling she got trying to use earth magic was different from the other aspiring witches. Each time she could almost hearthe earth rejecting her and none of her spells went the way they were supposed to. Sometimes they did work, but the effect was too great; i.e. a spell to light a vampire on fire resulted in an explosion that burned everyone within a twenty-food radius.

But now Dawn thought she knew why her magic had never worked – because the earth still belonged to her brother, its Creator, and rejected her due to her sins of unleashing evil monsters into this world. The times when her spells had worked was likely an inkling of her true inherent power leaking out. Now, Dawn was trying to determine how to tap into that power again.

She and Gabriel had come to the conclusion that her human form served as a cage for her true form, and thus cut her off from utilizing her true powers. However, there were instances when she was able to tap into it and now she needed it, or else she wouldn't be able to protect her family as well against Lucifer – because with him it was not about ifhe would attack, but when.

As Lailah, she remembered life after the Fall. After Lucifer had twisted Lilith into being his new pet he coerced a third of the Heavenly Host to join his ranks. Some of them openly joined him while others were spies that he used to recruit more angels – and kill the ones who refused. Her love took rejection personally and she knew that thousands of years in the Cage had unraveled his mind. Neverbefore had she seen him treat her like that, even when she disagreed (before he ultimately convinced her to his side) with his tactics after the Fall. It worried her on two accounts: One, it hurt her to be treated in that way by one she loved and two, Lucifer was more unpredictable now.

Hence, here she was with the book learn-age. Except, instead of trying to learn how to access greater earth magic she was trying to use the listed techniques to access her internal magic.

"Oi there, Niblet. Why're you hanging out back here?" Spike's voice called softly. There were others in the library – Andrew and Wesley – and she was pleased he wasn't outing her location behind the stacks.

She looked up and him and smiled. "Just trying to get some reading done without people looking at me like I have horns growing out of my head," she commented wryly.

Spike chuckled and leaned against the nearest bookcase. "Don't take it personally, Niblet. Hero-types are just jumpy around former-evil types – trust me, I know," he smirked.

Dawn laughed and sat up, pressing her knees to her chest. "Speaking of evil, did Willow complete those ward enhancement spells?"

"Er, yeah, she did," Spike grimaced. "Just like you said so that way we can keep out nasty devils. However, my nose led me to something outside just now and I thought you'd want to know."

"What?" Dawn asked guardedly.

"Now, Buffy didn't want you to see it…but you should probably follow me," he said gently as he turned away

Dawn grabbed his arm roughly. "Spike, I don't like surprises. What is it?" she asked sharply.

Her former babysitter winced. "Lucifer left you a present."