Buffy lay on the ground blinking her eyes rapidly. Everything felt out of focus. Raising a hand to her face, she wriggled her fingers and squinted. Yeah, even her hand was blurry.

"Have I been drugged or something?" she asked. "Or, maybe, thrown into a lake?"

No one answered her and, since she seemed to be breathing normally, it was safe to say she hadn't been thrown into a pond. Which was good, since drowning in a pond hadn't been that much fun last time she'd done it.

So where was she? She sat up, inhaled deeply to center herself in the Force (as Obi-Wan would say) and gagged.

"Phew, something around here stinks."

Her eyes began to refocus and she blinked rapidly hoping to help it along. That smell, it reminded her of graveyards. No, not just graveyards. Graves. Old graves. She'd smelled it before in tombs and other long-forgotten places. What else smelled of old grave dust? The skeleton armies of the undead? Zombies?

"Has something died near here?" She didn't expect a reply. Her senses weren't registering anything.

"You're dreaming, Fool!" a hoarse voice rasped next to her ear.

All the tiny hairs on the back of Buffy's neck stood up. Rolling to her feet (and almost tripping over the Jedi robe she was wearing), Buffy dropped into a fighting crouch, scanning the immediate area. Her hand automatically moving to her utility belt, searching for a stake and frustratingly coming away empty. Where were her weapons?
As she asked herself that question, the hilt of Mr Smoky, appeared in her hand. Its dark smokey blade with the blood-red pulse springing to life with a soft and menacing hiss.

"Whoa, that's handy," said Buffy brightly, waving the hand holding the darksaber in the air. "Get it? Hand-y?"

The creepy voice didn't reply and Buffy noticed the bad smell had faded.

"Oh come on, Stinky. It deserved a quick har, har," she quipped. "And if you think that's bad, you should hear Obi-Wan's one-liners."

She was alone in a dark wood. A thin mist hung in the air, adding to the general spooky atmosphere. Somewhere out of sight she could hear the sound of water dropping from a great height. A waterfall. There were lots of waterfalls on Naboo. Did she know this place? Where was this? All Buffy could see was mist and trees...

A small noise came from behind her. Buffy tensed. That sounded like the rattle of skeletons! Her heart hammering in her chest, Buffy span back into that direction. Mr Smokey raised and at the ready, senses straining, scanning for skeletons marching towards her.

Only to see nothing but trees and mist.

"Is that you, Stinky?" The wind blew away her words, locks of blonde hair blew into her face and eyes. As she raised her hand and pushed it behind her ear, she heard the rattling again, this time from closer by. She turned, this time looking down, to see dry leaves rolling towards her, their sides rattling on the ground.

"Leaves! God, I'm so mentally challenged." She switched off the darksaber.

"Dreaming," Buffy muttered in her sleep. The creepy voice was right, this was a dream. "Need to notice stuff," she whispered into her pillow. Giles taught her to notice details in Slayer dreams and Buffy was aware enough to remember his advice.

Dream Buffy cocked her head, hearing the sound of children playing and crossed the woodland to look.

Pulling down a branch, she gazed out at a playground scene. Bright sunlight shone onto the area, waves of heat in the air creating a shimmering effect. Small groups of parents chatted, others pushed their children's swings, more sat on benches holding babies on knees. A sandy-haired boy ran across her line of vision. His small legs pumping, heading for a man stood with his back towards her. The boy grabbed the man's legs and the man scooped him into his arms. On the other side of the park, a slightly older dark-haired boy and a red-haired girl argued over a book. Closer by, a group of teenagers rushed past, passing a ball between them and shouting happily to one another. It all seemed so normal.

"Girls and boys come out to play
The moon doth shine as bright as day
Leave your supper, and leave your sleep
And join your playfellows in the street."

"Drusilla," murmured Buffy, her hands balling into fists. She'd recognize the crazy vampire's singsong voice anywhere.

Dream Buffy's attention shot to the trees to her left. The crazy vampire must be hiding in the darkest part of the thicket, watching the kids playing. Careful to avoid being seen, Dream Buffy began to creep towards the singer.

"Come with a whoop, and come with a call,
You may be Jedi but you'll still fall,"

The vampire laughed manically. That laughter sounded close by. Buffy increased her pace, determined to confront her. She'd almost reached the spot when the singing started up again in a new direction.

"Escape down the ladder and crawl up the wall,"

The Slayer took off, intent on catching her.

"The tomb of the Sith will be the end for you all."

Buffy frowned, turning on her pillow. The tune was familiar but not the words. Drusilla had altered them. Was she threatening the children she'd seen playing? Or the Jedi? Who was going to end up in a Sith tomb?

A giggle of insane laughter came from just ahead and Dream Buffy surged forward.

Only to find herself standing in a moonlit graveyard in front of a very familiar tomb.

"Spike?" Dream Buffy wrinkled her nose, examining the door of the vine-shrouded tomb. She raised her hand, intending to give the old door a push, only to realize that hand held Mr Sparkly. The crimson red blade sprang to life, lighting up the area around her. She smiled. That was going to surprise the smug British vampire. Holding the blade down and to one side, she gave the door a push with her free hand. It swung open with a long, ominous creak and Buffy stepped forward into the tomb's darkness.

Only she wasn't in Spike's tomb, but a dark corridor. Buffy held up the red blade looking to the front and to the rear. The hellish flickering light only partially lit the corridor. She'd the impression the corridor was deep underground. Earth pressed down on her from all sides and she had the urge to claw and kick her way out, as she'd done on waking in her grave.

Holding the red blade of Mr Sparkly vertically, she moved silently down the rocky passageway. Every so often she'd come across the entrance to another corridor but she continued walking down the wider one, only stopping when her way was blocked by a set of doors.

Turning the handle, Buffy entered to find the dream setting had changed once again. This was the mansion where she used to meet Angel. Everything was still here just as she remembered it. Except... one thing was different. Over the fireplace hung a painting she'd never seen before. It was a landscape of Coruscant, the senate building looming in the foreground.

Coruscant? Why would she find a painting of Coruscant in Angel's old home? Buffy tensed in her bed. Sensing the dream was about to become darker.

"There's someone behind me, isn't there?" Dream Buffy said, spinning and holding Mr Sparkly defensively in front of her.

Stood across from her was a figure wearing a long, black hooded robe.

Buffy cocked her head. "Is that you, Sid?"

"I'm hurt," Angel's voice came from under the dark hood. "I thought our love was eternal, yet you mistake me for another."

Buffy tensed, her eyes darting around the room before looking to Angel once again. This was Angelus, not Angel.

"What's wrong, Slayer? Nothing else to say to the man you swore you'd always love?" Angelus sneered, "All alone now? No friends coming to your aid? No hope, no weapons-?"

"Ugh, are you blind?" Buffy swished Mr Sparkly from one side to the other with a dramatic flourish. She walked towards the figure preparing to fight, if need be.

Buffy moaned softly in her sleep. Did dream Angelus have a message for her? Or was it part of her messed up unconscious forcing her to repeat that horrendous moment in her life?

Without warning, the cloaked vampire flung himself at Dream Buffy, his claw-like hands outstretched to grab her by the throat. Below the hood she glimpsed yellow eyes, a distorted ridged face and, instinctively, she thrust the red blade forwards to impale the vampire.

He hung, hoisted in the air by Slayer strength, the Sith blade embedded through his stomach. Buffy gritted her teeth and yanked back her arm, withdrawing the blade and letting the vampire fall onto his knees in front of her. Angelus tilted his head back to look at her, the dark hood falling from his face...

It revealed, not the face of her old love, but Obi-Wan's. The Jedi's wide eyes stared at her, shock and confusion at how she'd betrayed him. Just like Angel's had been when she'd done the same to him.

"B- Buffy?" he groaned. Obi-Wan's eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped forward, disappearing into a heap of empty robes.

"NOOOOOOOOO!"

In her bed, Buffy woke. Panting hard, she sat upright in the darkness a hand pressing against her forehead as the echoes of her dream died away. There was a metallic taste in her mouth making her feel like gagging. Next to her Obi-Wan slept on oblivious with his back turned towards her. Buffy leaned over, to check on him. Her senses assuring her he was uninjured, her heart too traumatized to believe it.

Watching him die had felt so real.

She ran her fingers lightly across his cheek. Taking comfort in the warmth of his skin, the way his short beard prickled her fingers and watching how his lips curl upwards at her touch. He was alive. Obi-Wan was alive. It had only been a dream.

Part of her wanted to stay there, stroking the Jedi's face until he woke, but the inner Slayer was fidgety. Needing something to slay or at least something to do. Leaving Obi-Wan to his rest, Buffy picked up her datapad and went out onto the balcony. A gentle breeze blew from the lake and the first streaks of light heralding dawn were emerging on the horizon. Buffy ignored the view, pulling out a chair from under the table and sliding into it.

She began to type everything she could remember from the dream. There'd been the drugged underwater feeling, followed by the creepy, insulting voice. The kids playing in the park. Drusilla's song. She wrote all the words as she remembered them as they felt important. Finding Spike's tomb, the corridor under the earth, the mansion, the senate painting, the hooded figure that she'd thought at first was Sid. Angelus's words to her and finally she wrote about impaling Obi-Wan on the red Sith blade. That was the most difficult section to write. His look of betrayal had been the same as Angel's when she'd thrust a sword into him and sent him to a hell dimension.

"Oh, crap!" She'd realized something else. Something Buffy knew she'd never type in case Obi-Wan read it.

She'd never been into Star Wars movies, but Buffy knew how Darth Vader killed Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Had the PTB sent her to this dimension to follow the same path as Vader? She chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes gazing blindly at the growing streaks of grey light across the lake. Then her face hardened. No, she wasn't going to follow that course. It wasn't her fault she'd accidentally become Lord Vader and Palpatine had fallen in lust with her. She was no naive Anakin, to be lured with promises of power over life and death. She knew exactly what Sid was and all about his bad skin condition.

What if Obi-Wan went dark and not her? Her mind obligingly throwing up the memory of their fight in his apartment. He'd admitted he'd nearly fallen to the Dark Side. What if he went dark again? Was that why the figure of Angel/Angelus had appeared in the dream. Did it represent Obi-Wan's light and dark side? Was it a clue to his downfall?
Yet even at his darkest, Buffy had sensed more confusion than evil inside the Jedi. She'd been able to see beyond the darkness to the man struggling to make sense of himself and his emotions. Emotions the Jedi Order taught their members to avoid rather than understand. Obi-Wan had battled the Dark Side as well as her that day and assured her that he'd never go dark again. She didn't think he would.

But her dream had shown him dying and it had been her blade that had killed him.

"What are you doing?"

Buffy looked up to see Obi-Wan in the bedroom doorway. The Jedi looking half-asleep as he yawned and dragged a hand through sleep tousled hair. She wasn't sure whether to burst out crying because he was going to die or fling herself into his arms and smother him with kisses because he was alive.

She settled on doing neither. "I had a dream," Buffy replied, slamming a lid on her emotions.

"And was it so bad that you needed to write it down, instantly, in order to remember it?" Obi-Wan was fast at seeing the truth in any situation, sleepy or not.

"Uh-huh," she replied, "It was a bad, bad dream. A Slayer dream."

He padded across to her, his toes curling on the smooth stonework, his tunic looking rumpled. A few errant chest hairs showed over the neckline of his loose pajama top. Fine threads of red gold catching the dawn light. So vibrant and yet so fragile. Just. Like. Him.

"Is this a Slayer dream as in prophetic?" he asked. "Or a Slayer dream where you kill demons in a gory way that the Jedi Order would never approve of?" There was a sly smile on his lips and a mischievous sparkle in his eyes.

"I killed you!" she blurted. The memory of him dying caused another wave of nausea and she swallowed hard.

He stopped at the other side of the small table from her. His fingers tracing the edge, his blue eyes burning down into her. "How?"

The lump in her throat made it difficult to get the words out. "Impaled upon Mr Sparkly."

"Oh." Obi-Wan looked away, staring across at the sun rising beyond the lake. Jewel bright colors playing across the mountains and lake and the promise of a beautiful day ahead.

Buffy chewed on her bottom lip, watching him. Knowing his quick mind was running through what she'd told him. What would he make of it? How was he going to react? She couldn't sense anything via their bond as she' was too scared to open it. To let her know the depth of her fear over this.

"Is this because of the shoes?" he asked.

Buffy stared at him in silence, not knowing how to take it. The Jedi suddenly grinned at her and she rolled her eyes, frustrated he wasn't taking her seriously. "Har har, you got me there Kenobi. Are you not the slightest bit concerned about this?"

"You told me once Slayer dreams are often warnings rather than a clear vision of events as they will unfold."

"That's true, but this dream-"

"It was a dream. Buffy, dreams fade," he gently chastised. He thought of his own bad dream that plagued him for years. The dream padawan who brought a deep sadness into his life. It had worried him for so long and now it didn't. Hadn't that dream passed? So would Buffy's. He continued, "This dream upset you deeply, but I guarantee the feeling it left behind will-."

"I killed you, Obi-Wan! I was talking to Angelus. He attacked me, I stabbed him and the hood fell back to reveal your face." A shiver ran through her as she remembered. "You fell to the ground and disappeared into a heap of empty Jedi robes."

"Now that, sounds like a very dramatic death exit," Obi-Wan replied. He perched on the table looking down at her and stroking his chin, tracing the beard. "Disappearing into empty robes. I quite like that visu-.

" Don't say it!" Buffy managed to choke out. Her throat felt constricted, it was hard to get the words past the lump in her throat.

Springing to her feet, she covered his mouth with her fingers. Eyes burning with unshed tears. Imploring him to take this seriously, to take her seriously. This wasn't the time for sardonic humor. She couldn't lose him. Didn't he realize that? How could she remain in this dimension without him by her side? There'd only be emptiness. No family, no friends (Andrew didn't count - he only added to her anxiety levels), Angelus was more right than he'd ever been.

Anakin. The threat of losing Padmé in childbirth had been the final straw for him. Buffy knew she'd do everything in her power to stop the dream and make sure Obi-Wan lived. Apart from choking him to death, killing Jedi kids, and becoming Palpatine's apprentice. Because, as far as she was concerned, to do all that you had to be some kind of psycholoony to start off with.

"I swear, I'm not going to kill you, Obi-Wan," she promised him. "I'll fight all in my path to keep you safe." Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. Buffy brushed them angrily away, only for more to appear. She was like that statue, the one in the square in Berenko. Except, where water flowed from his mouth, hers flowed from her eyes. She'd gone from resolute Buffy to waterfall Buffy in seconds.

Obi-Wan dragged her into his arms and squashed her nose against his chest. She wriggled, to get breathing room and tried not to look at the damp stains her tears had already made on his top. Instead, she dragged in deep breaths of Obi-Wan's sharp clean scent.

"Shhh," he rocked her, sending waves of reassurance and pink sparkles to her through the Force. "I don't believe this means you're going to kill me. It most likely symbolizes something else. We just need to determine what that is." He pulled them both down onto the chair she'd vacated, with Buffy sitting on his knee. "Have you written the dream down fully? Left nothing out?" he asked, going into all-business Jedi mode.

She nodded. Knowing the cool tone he used with her was a cover. He was only one step away from panicking, not by the dream, but her tears. The sneaky Jedi was trying to distract her.

"It's all... there," she hiccuped and pointed to the datapad lying open on the table. "Giles... he made me keep a detailed diary of Slayer dreams. So we could... make sense of it... later."

Obi-Wan gave her a speculative look. "Ah, so now you are telling me Slayer dreams are not visions of the future but merely symbolic?"

She knew what he was really telling her to think about. "Yeah, they can be symbolic..." she said slowly, thinking back to past dreams. Maybe he was right and his death symbolized something else. "They usually foretell the future though or something that's happening right now that will cause problems in the future." Her brow furrowed, as she tried explaining how Slayer dreams worked. "The clues are either visual or spoken. It's recognizing what's the what, that's the hardest part. Over the years Giles and the Scoobies became good finding and interpreting them."

"Hmm," Obi-Wan replied, his eyes on her datapad now, although he still kept one arm around her waist. He read out loud, "Smell of death. Creepzoid, a raspy voice comes from nowhere. 'You're dreaming, fool.' It gave me the wiggins." He regarded her thoughtfully. "Was this voice male or female? What species? Human or not?"

"I've no idea. It was all low, raspy, and sounded Sithy. It wasn't Sid. This was an even creepier voice than his."

"Sithy?" asked Obi-Wan, his voice sharp. "This Sith-like voice came from nowhere, told you that you were dreaming but didn't speak to you further?" continued Obi-Wan. "Was it part of your dream or something from the Force, invading it?"

"Like a Force ghost?" At Obi-Wan's nod, Buffy shuddered. "Eww, do you really think my dream was invaded by a Sith Force ghost?" She didn't appreciate a voyeur peeking into her dreams and making inappropriate comments.

"I'm not certain," Obi-Wan replied, as he went back to reading the dream report. "However, we know Jar Jar raised a Force ghost and the way you attract Dark Side creatures. We can't rule out that it hasn't latched onto you."

Buffy looked around her, half expecting to see a ghost standing in the shadows staring at her with glowy eyes. "Another Sith stalker. That doesn't make me happy. I vote for Andrew setting the Death Star on it."

The Jedi shot her a confused look. "The Death Star? Don't you mean the Dark Reaper? I think the Death Star is from the Star Trek dimension."

Buffy nodded quickly.

Obi-Wan considered everything he'd heard of the Sith super-weapon, the Dark Reaper, before shaking his head. "No, Master Yoda is right. The Force Harvester is far too dangerous to uncover and I certainly wouldn't want to use one of Andrew's Force sucker-outer inventions. If it is around, we need to find another way to deal with this Force ghost."

He pointed his finger at the screen, bringing her attention back to her dream entry. Her tears had dried and, although he was loathed to return to the subject that created them, he knew it needed addressing. "Now, I want to ask more questions about this dream report. I'm sure if we put our heads together, we can figure out all the clues it's trying to tell us."

A/N; no beta. He appears to have gotten lost. If you spot a mistake please let me know in the comments section so that I can fix it.

Okay, lots of clues and red herrings in there. Also, some leads for Buffy to go on.

Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter.