"Honestly, I must admit, this is all well over my head." Giles peeled page after page of a book on dimensional portals, but his eyes locked on the girlish brunette with the demon tucked inside her. "How did this happen?"

"In our time, magic, the war between good and evil, it was like a bottleneck." Illyria as Winnifred began to explain, as best, she believed, he'd understand. "After so long, I believe the stress and pressure stretched across time and space itself. I could feel it, like a rubber band inside of me being pulled in all different directions just waiting to snap."

Her accent was southern, completely separate from the being that emerged before him just an hour ago. It was all too much for the Watcher.

"And you are, uh, good, I presume? A good demon?" He pondered.

"I am Illyria the Merciless. I was once a god, a ruler of this dimension and many others and will one day again." She stopped, Winnifred frowned and looked at her hands that curled around a great ancient tome of dusty pages and old peeled leather. "I am trapped, stuck inside this mortal body. This shell holds me in, and-"

"The Merciless?" It dawned on him. How could he have forgotten?

Back in his office, upstairs where he kept his more dangerous volumes, he searched a moment for a big black book that had been thickened with the knowledge of the Old Ones. The true demons that had walked the Earth eons before man had even been a flea on the flesh of their world.

"Is this you?" He found what he believed to be her. The mention of Illyria the Merciless. Took him a moment to search, and he trembled at the very thought that the creature pictured on the pages stood before him.

Winnifred leaned over the counter as he came out, the book faced toward her for the identity of the picture to be confirmed. She made a face, like she smelled a foul rot in the air and glared into his eyes with disgust.

"That is not me! I looked nothing like that." Illyria's tone and voice broke through Winnifred's veil.

"Oh, uh, well perhaps there's another Illyria?" He was certain this was it the more he read and the more he did the further horrified he became.

He stepped back from her, even with the counter between them.

"I'm sure it's just a bad representation. Old book and all."

With horror in his heart, Buffy relieved him only slightly as she passed through the doors, and then confused him again as Xander and Willow joined him.

"Buffy! Welcome to the library." He put a show for the two behind her.

"Giles this is Xander and Willow. Xander, Willow this is–"

"Hello!" Xander noticed the beautiful girl before him. Suddenly Buffy was an afterthought, if only for a moment as his eyes caught that of this unknown girl.

"I'm Winnifred!" She smiled and chuckled in such a sweet southern dialect that caught Xander in his throat as he giggled and tried to introduce himself.

"Miss Summers, may I have a moment with you in private?"

In his office, Giles wiped his forehead which seemed big to him, like a balloon of hot air that dripped with sweat and expanded with each moment a new horror was dropped in his lap.

"Don't worry, they–"

The door closed behind them, he felt free to pull from the confusion and engage into Watcher mode. Unable to hold back, he let it out as best he could.

How to say it? How to deal with it? All of this?

He admitted, "I admit, I came here to train you, to be your watcher, but all of this is rather over my head."

"I know, I don't under–"

"Just a moment, I am your watcher and you will listen. You say you come from a different dimension, but you are the Slayer. That comes with responsibilities. I would hope you're not telling people about your situation just because you knew them in your time?"

"I didn't–"

"-You will let me finish." He scolded. "Buffy, this isn't a game, or something you can toy with. Time and dimensions are not to be trifled with. We must figure out what's going on and how to get you back to your world, but you must be careful not to upset the balance of–"

"Gee, sure missed this when you were alive."

"Alive? Buffy, you're not listening. You mustn't change events just because you've lived through it all. If you make one mistake that could throw all of this out of balance. A demon you slayed, some mystical energy to stopped that you don't in this because of–"

"I get it." She interrupted for the last time. She could hear his tongue cluck in mouth as he looked equally as flustered as her. Part of her loved this, to be able to argue with him again, and just to hear his voice, but he was right.

"Buffy, no matter who you are or where you're from, I am your watcher and I am here to help you." He spoke after a pause. She looked at him like she knew him for years, like he were her father. He couldn't help but sink into those eyes even as he had only just met them.

"You're right." She leaned against the desk, door still closed and behind the blinds they could see Willow and Xander's interaction with the entity known as Illyria. "If anyone can help us understand where to go from here, it's her."

"Did you tell them?" He gestured toward the two students that looked years younger than Buffy despite her makeup to hide it.

"Not yet."

"How do they find out?"

She explained. From Xander's moment outside the Bronze to the story about the Harvest. Willow's attack in the crypt with Darla and her encounter with Angel. The best she could do was bring him up to speed with at least the events that would unfold today and tonight.

She remembered Giles had met her in the Bronze to talk shop, and it was there Willow had been taken by a vampire. It was why she suggested the library instead of the Bronze. Here, she could keep them save and study rather than allow the avalanche that killed their friend Jesse, that gave Darla, the vampire known as the Vessel, and the Master from having the blood they needed to free him from the church.

Each memory burned her just as all this confusion must have for him. She'd have to relive her battle with The Master, the contest with Darla, everything.

There was no other Buffy.

Wait a minute.

"What happened to the other Buffy?" She pondered.

The office door opened wide, Buffy pulled from the cavern of Gile's domain to meet with Willow and Xander at the table. Willow and what appeared to be Winnifred already tired of Xander's flirting, but the front was held like an army in position.

"Willow, I'm sorry, I can't study now, but do you think you could meet me at my house tonight?"

"What about the Bronze? Jesse and I had plans." He added, "you ladies should come, you know get down and boogie woogie." He sank back, and eyed his long time friend, "remind me to never say that again."

"Check, no boogie boogie." She turned to Buffy, "yeah, just give me your address and we'll have a study night."

"Sounds great." Buffy seemed to snicker over the words, an awkward chuckle that glossed over Xander's head as he admired her, but Willow, though flat with an awkward smile of her own could still read the expression.

"You should all get to class." Giles asserted.

Book in hand he looked over toward the young, scrawny figure of Winnifred, "well, except for you."

The students pulled away from the chairs. Those familiar positions, it was almost like they had been there so many times just as Buffy remembered. Perhaps it was just who they were and how their bodies moved. Down to the motion as Willow looked like she had forgotten an important detail and grabbed onto Buffy like they were old friends.

"Oh, I'm supposed to help Xander with math tonight."

"At the Bronze?" Buffy fell back into the old habit of conversation with her friends. "You can come too. I'd rather you be safe than vamp food. I mean, tramp food. You know how the Bronze is."

"Are you sure you're new here?" Xander pondered.

"I've heard things." She saved, stretched her lips and bit her tongue.

Another secret in another life. She wanted badly to tell them, and yet to make good with Giles until they could understand if there was anything that could be done, but to unveil the darkest secret to them just yet? She knew why they were here in this dimension, or timeline, or whatever it could be called, and knew there was no going back.

The truth would be revealed, but how it would affect her, them, this entire world, none of them could have known. So Buffy played Buffy, the sixteen year old girl with a secret even from her friends.

As she traveled with them to class even these two that she felt at home with, all she could think of now was of Dawn.

Dawn.

Spike.

Angel.

It was a strange sight to see her room as it was when she was sixteen. At this moment she tried to remember what she did. Her mother downstairs cooked a meal fit for a family as Willow and Xander were expected over rather than the Bronze where–

"Angel."

Suddenly it came back. She'd meet Angel outside the Bronze. There the vampires collected offerings to The Master. When had he risen? Had he already?

Perhaps as this new and yet old life surrounded her with bittersweet memories and new ones to forge, she'd simply have to settle into the routine that the young Buffy desperately tried to avoid.

It may have been a good thing to visit the Bronze, if at least to find–

Ding!

Downstairs Joyce was already at the door. She introduced herself to Willow, Xander, and of course Buffy had forgotten, their friend Jesse.

"New girl!" He exclaimed.

Inside, she cursed herself for having forgotten him, both then and now, but at least he was here.

How could she forget the sewers? Xander's freak out in the library and the encounter with his dead friend.

At least something good came out of this.

With the weight of the world on her shoulders again, she could shrug this one off for now.

"I hope you don't mind, I kind of invited him." Xander entered.

"The more the merrier." Joyce chimed in before Buffy and escorted them to the kitchen just in the next room where the smell of food lured the boys straight to the table. "Please help yourselves."

Night fall and the school was closed to the public. Illyria, the leather worn, adorned in red, black, and blue cursed Giles' presence as she walked from stack to stack and remarked of each book with a name she recognized, or how impotent his collection was. That was wasn't a man she named, "Wesley."

The book he had of the Old Ones, the demons that time forgot, creased his brow deeper and deeper as he read more and more about her. At the end of her chapter, he remembered the small detail that a seventeen year old boy was murdered by a vampire the night before.

He was here to meet Buffy and as such, a great evil, some mystical energy had brewed the last few days. Even with his stiff upper lip he could feel it. The tension in the air lifted high on King Man's bluff and looked down over the city.

Though she may not be the Buffy of this dimension, she was still the Slayer.

"Illyria." He peeled her from the stacks with his voice as he met her at the table, a tea in hand and his glasses fogged from the soothing heat of it. "What do you know of this timeline? Tonight that is."

"Nothing. I am after your time, and cities removed." She continued, "when I awoke in this shell, I had been drawn from my sarcophagus and infected the being known as Winnifred Burkle. From there Wesley cared for me and only after some years did I meet your Slayer."

No use.

"I suppose in some way we should focus on the now, rather than what happened." He thought. Despite their circumstance, and as important as it was to understand the details of his sudden jump, such as the whereabouts of his original Slayer, the events of this timeline must still happen.

He'd have to call Buffy, and with that thought, he turned from Illyria back to the office, only for her deadpan voice to grasp his throat and turn him round.

As if with the foresight of his thoughts, Illyria stabbed through his heart with what he hoped wasn't true.

"Your slayer is gone." She explained, "I have traveled many dimensions and lived seven lives. One of which in a world with no shrimp."

This perplexed him, but she continued.

"The magicks involved folded the very fabric of time and space itself. Only fate still remains intact."

"Fate?"

"In every dimension all things must come to pass as it does in any other dimension, like the web of the Wyrd."

This reference lured him in. Suddenly he could converse with the Old One.

"Web of the Wyrd? You're referring to the old Norse myth about the woman that weave time and space itself?"

"Time will always have a beginning and an end, this cannot change, but what we do and how find ourselves at each end is up to us."

"Then how do you know the other Buffy is gone?"

The dark secret slowly edged from her lips like a smog that filled the room.

Illyria knew. She knew more than Buffy, hell, she dragged Buffy into this now altered reality.

Buffy knew the stakes, but not the outcome.

"In all of the dimensions I've ruled, the worlds I've destroyed, and the eons spent, never once have I reached the end of that web." She admitted, "we sought to put a stop to fate itself. The end of the existence as we know it. Your Slayer. Angel, the witch, all of them."

"Angel?"

A name new to him. He'd have to research it. Bloody hell, he thought, I'm going to need a notebook to write all of this down. Definitely some coffee.

"What are you telling me?"

"This is not a different dimension, not a new or altered reality. This is our timeline." She added, "the moment we passed through, it was like slipping down the web and buying us time, just enough to trick the fates."

He wasn't sure what to think of this. At this moment, his mind instead went back to the young boy. Now more than ever he'd have to be a watcher, just as intended.

"I admit, again, this is all over my head. However," he continued as he returned to the counter, "Buffy must stop what ever is killing these students. Sunnydale needs the Slayer."

"That does not concern me."

With that he watched her return to the stacks and his eyes rolled.

Of all the people that could have travelled with her, why couldn't it have been someone more helpful?