Title: Confessions of a Teenage Watcher

Author: Episkopos Reverend Alixtii O'Krull V, TRL of the Church of St. Jesu the Heretic, Discordian

Timeline: Somewhere around "The Girl in Question." Spoilers for "Chosen."

Rating: PG

Summary: Dawn Summers is an American attending an Italian high school in Rome. Beatrice DeCosta is her Italian classmate. Their rôles as Watcher and Slayer will send them into a world of high intrigue as the Council tries to assert its control over the guardianship of the Cleveland Hellmouth.

Disclaimer: All original Buffy and Angel characters belong to Mutant Enemy, not me.

Dawn gets back to the apartment after taking Beatrice on patrol, about 3 a.m. Buffy is still awake.  "Where's the Immortal?" she asks.

"He just left," Buffy says with a sigh. Dawn doesn't blame her sister. The Immortal is hot.

"Andrew?"

"I'm not sure. I think he might actually be out on a date. How weird is that?"

"A sign of the apocalypse, no doubt."

"Could be."

"Is, actually. There's one going down in Cleveland. Beatrice and I are going to check up on it during term break."

"I thought you were staying here during break." Buffy's tone is mildly accusatory.

"That's what I thought, too. Apparently Beatrice was seized by the incredible urge to see Faith the Vampire Slayer in the flesh."

"No accounting for taste, apparently."

"Well, she's already met you. Unless your defintion of 'meeting' someone involves actually talking." Every time Beatrice comes in contact with Buffy, she becomes so starstruck she can barely carry out a conversation.

"This is what I don't get," says Dawn, plopping herself down on the couch. "It's not that the Council doesn't trust Faith and her Slayers to deal with the apocalypse. It's that they're afraid she'll deal with it too well."

"And decide that she doesn't need the Council again?"

"Exactly. But that's the thing: she doesn't need the Council. She knows what she is doing, can handle this herself. But Wyndham-Pryce wants me to babysit her just to make sure she toes the line. Tell me how that makes the world any safer?"

Buffy smiles. "Not exactly the biggest fan ever of the Watcher's Council here, Dawn. But infrastructure is important. You know that we can't do this on our own anymore. It's moved beyond a bunch of teenagers fighting evil on a Hellmouth. Willow's spell saw to that."

"Sometimes I just wish-" This time, she catches herself. "It just frustrates me, you know."

"And a big 'amen' to that," Buffy agrees, sitting down next to her sister. "I miss the old days, too. Hell, I even miss Sunnydale."

Dawn nods, silently. After all, so many of their memories are buried there, deep within that crater. The Bronze. The Magic Box. 1630 Rivello Drive. The Sun Cinema. The mall. So many of their loved ones, friends and alies. Miss Calendar. Amanda. Anya. Spike. Tara. Their mother.

The two sisters sit next to each other on the couch, each silently reviewing how they had gotten to this place in their lives they never would have seen coming, and where they go from here.