Chapter 1: The Bombs Shall Fall

April 2063

Dawn sat at the table she shared with Zefram and Buffy. It had been almost sixty years since Fate had come and told her that she was the Spirit of the Millennium. Fate had been right about the events in the world taking their toll on Dawn's emotions. During the Third World War, she had not been in the best of places, and Buffy had to carefully tiptoe around her sister during that time. But the war had been over about ten years and Dawn had finally found the anger she had felt dissipate when peace had settled across the world from what governments were left.

Buffy watched and Dawn watched Zefram and sighed. The man had ten shots and had begun to slur his speech. The man was a genius, having built a vessel that could travel to the stars. But he rarely ever seemed to stay sober, despite their attempts to keep him that way long enough to finish the Phoenix.

They pulled him off his barstool and out of the tattered olive-drab tent, that was the Crash and Burn, tent into the freezing night. They paused at the door and took in a breath of fresh air.

"Lily, Willow c'mon," Zefram pleaded.

With the fact neither sister aged, they had changed their names just before the war so as not to draw suspicion to themselves. Both of the sisters had watched over the last sixty years the friends die. First Giles, simply old age, then Xander during the war and finally Willow from a disease that had been curable before the war and afterwards was deadly because of the lack of medical supplies.

"We're celebrating, remember?" he asked.

"We can celebrate when it's over," Buffy said curtly as she and Dawn made their way cautiously around the larger mud puddles, which were capped by a layer of frosted ice. Zefram followed alongside, arms out, pleading.

"Lily ... Willow …"

"You're going to regret this," Dawn said neither she nor Buffy stopped as they walked faster.

Zefram tried to keep up with them, but between the booze and the icy patches, he caught the edge of a mud puddle with his heel and almost slipped.

Buffy and Dawn glanced at each other as they slowed and grabbed him around the waist.

He grinned. "If there's one thing you two should've learned about me by now, it's that I have no regrets."

Dawn rolled her eyes as she glanced at her sister.

Zefram stopped suddenly and gave them both a conspiratorial wink. "Come on, Lily, Willow. One more round." He moved to turn back, but Buffy and Dawn forged straight ahead, jaw set.

"You've had enough," Dawn told him. "I'm not riding in the Phoenix tomorrow with a drunken pilot." Her gaze grew unfocused—but not enough to miss a fantastically swift-moving disc of light amid the stars, one that seemed to grow nearer as she watched.

"Buffy," she whispered low enough so Zefram would not hear, but loud enough that Buffy could pick up her sister's voice with her Slayer hearing. Buffy followed her gaze. "What is that?"

Zaefram noticed Buffy and Dawn were looking upwards and he too glanced up, squinting hard to keep from seeing double. "That, my dears, is the Constellation Leo."

"No, that," Dawn insisted, pointing. She tried to calm herself,

Then Zefram lifted his face toward the sky and finally saw it. His faint, inebriated grin vanished; his face hardened, then slackened into a disbelieving, stunned expression. The sight had instantly sobered him, and as Buffy and Dawn glanced at whatever it was, they saw saw two bright streaks emerge from the shining disc—and a half-second later, heard the distant thunder.

Buffy and Dawn reacted instinctively and pulling Zefram they dove out of the way toward a small berm at the path's edge as the beams hit the ground leaving behing a great smoking crater—all that remained of several nearby Quonset huts and tents. They stayed where they were as more streaks of light rained down from the heavens.

In a fleeting millisecond of quiet, Zefram sighed beside the sisters. "After all these years . . ." He rolled his eyes skyward.

"You think it's the ECON?" Dawn asked.

"They couldn"t have waited another day. . . ?" Zefram said, his expression one of irony and defeat.

Abruptly, he jerked to his feet and pulled Buffy and Dawn with him, then ran, dragging them into the exposed street.

Toward the Crash & Burn.

Dawn and Buffy pulled free. "We've gotta get to the Phoenix!" Dawn said. The missile silo would offer some protection down away from the surface levels. But they would have to worry about radiation. While radiation could not kill them, they could still wind up sick for a while. But it would be better to be sick than to be obliterated. They did not want to risk that one of those beams could erase all traces of them, especially after the fact that the several Quonset hut and tents that had been in that crater, had been wiped off the face of the earth along with their occupants.

Dawn and Buffy ran toward the silo at top speed, without a glance back at him.

The blasts had stopped by the time they made it to the stairs leading down to the silo. The entire area surrounding it was gouged with smoking craters that smelled of ozone.

They walked through the slowly opening door, and at the sight of what lay within the outer control room and sighed. "Oh, goddess," Dawn whispered. They made their way through the control room and Buffy held whispering comforting words.

In the sixty years Buffy had come to realize feelings for Dawn. Feelings she could trace back to one moment, the moment she told Dawn that she had wanted to watch Dawn grow up into the beautiful woman she would become. And Dawn had done just that. And they had grown closer because of it, because of what Fate had done to her, to keep her by Dawn's side. She thought back on what Fate had told her privately.

"You will be there for Dawn in ways that neither of you had ever believed. What society has taught you as wrong. Know this everything will lead up to what you and Dawn will become. You are the only person now able to give to her."

"What?" Buffy had wanted to know.

"Love."

Had fate been right back then, Buffy wondered. Had been only a matter of time before she would fall in love with her own sister?

They passed the dead by, they would grieve later for these three as like with Willow, Xander and Giles they had gotten to know. They continued out into the corridor that led toward the missile chamber itself was less damaged and thus more easily navigable. Dawn was first to the lead blast door, which was still sealed. Dawn looked to her sister who nodded and stepped forward. And as Buffy pulled; the great leaden door rumbled as it slid slowly over the smooth concrete floor.

When it was open they stepped over the threshold onto the highest catwalk, the one that led to the ship's cockpit in the vast chamber's heart. Beneath, two more floors of metal scaffolding led to the engineering and reactor levels on the Phoenix. The ground level was scattered with Zefram's tools and equipment, partially buried beneath chunks of fallen ceiling; all, including the catwalks, were sprinkled with rubble and the same pulverized concrete dust that had coated the control room.

"Well it looks like we may have some work ahead of us," Buffy said as she looked at the damage the attack had done. "First we really need to make sure there is no radiation, while we can't die, I certainly don't want to be six for the next several weeks either while our bodies recuperate."

"Agreed," Dawn said as she smiled at Buffy. She remembered when her sister had never been much of a science person. But over the sixty years since Fate had come to tell them she herself was a Millennial. Buffy had gotten her degree and then shortly before the war had gotten a second. Sure Buffy was not a science whiz, but she knew her way around the Phoenix.

They heard boots ringing against metal grating. If this had been the old Dawn and Buffy, Buffy would have made Dawn hide while she took care of what was coming. Dawn placed a hand on the side of the Phoenix and siphoned some of its electrical energy and channeled it into her body. And they waited.

They watched as the blast door rumbled open. They spotted a bald older man and a pale, jaundiced looking man .

"Stop where you are," Dawn said as the two men looked at her and Buffy as if they might be crazy.

"Greetings," the pale man said. He began to walk toward them.

Dawn prepared to fire off a blast of electrical energy when she felt suddenly dizzy. The silo dimmed abruptly, and she tripped, then fell forward into the pale man's arms. As she lost consciousness she noticed that Buffy was held in the bald man's arms.