Hey. Thank you so much for the positive reviews for chapter ten. i thought it would be good, but i just prayed it would be for you guys. looks like it was. not sure if this'll be able to match it, but i'll give it a go. i had to change the rating cos of this chapter. only four more chapters till the new story. i can't wait. that WILL be good. i have no doubts. as always i welcome reviews. i need to know what i'm doing right and wrong. and hopefully there aren't any spelling mistakes. but there probably are. lol. enjoy. peace out.

Chapter Eleven: Repercussions

L.A., United States

Angel looked around at his new surroundings.

He was disorientated.

Moments before he had seen one of his friends, who he had thought was dead, send a wave of white light at him.

Now he was standing in what appeared to be the Hyperion's lobby.

Only not how they had left it.

Buffy looked at her girls, sprawled on the floor, blood over them. She rushed to the nearest, checking she was still alive.

"She o.k.?" Connor asked looking over her shoulder.

"Does she look o.k.?" Buffy replied sternly as she tried to check the rest of the slayers.

Giles was already kneeling over Xander, checking his vitals.

Angel looked up at the ceiling, and the new hole it had through it.

Then he caught it in the air.

A smell.

Illyria.

"Oh god," Angel muttered as he sprinted to the old office.

Connor followed his father into the office. "What is it?" he asked.

Then he saw. "Oh god..."

Illyria lay on the floor, arms broken backwards, over the joints. Blood poured from her face.

Giles had moved Xander so he was upright against the desk.

"Xander, are you ok?" the ex-librarian asked. "Can you hear me?"

Xander's eyes fluttered. "...Faith..." He muttered.

"What about her?" Giles asked.

"...u..up..there..." And Xander fainted.

Giles looked up to the ceiling and saw the hole.

"My lord..."

Buffy looked up. "Giles can you deal with this while I check on her?"

Giles continued to stare at the chaos and death around him, ignoring the slayer.

"Giles!" Buffy snapped, trying to get his attention.

"What?" the English man replied. "Oh, yes... go."

Buffy took up the stairs.

The halls were a mess, with rubbish everywhere.

Slayers lay on the floor, unconscious for the most part, some however were just bleeding all over the place.

Buffy couldn't stop for them now. She wanted to stop and cradle them, but she couldn't.

Spike had told her once there are always casualties in war.

This was one of the times she wished he was wrong.

As she turned the corner of the hall she could see into the room where Faith was. There was blood over all the walls, well all the walls she could see from this distance.

As she got closer she hoped this wasn't real.

A dream.

A nightmare.

Anything other than reality.

Buffy increased pace into a sprint as she approached the room.

She tried to open the door more, so she could get through, but it was stuck.

Buffy punched the door, breaking it clean off its hinges.

She wanted to be sick.

Faith lay on the floor barely able to move, sobbing.

Blood was all over her, as if she had been bathed in it.

Buffy was in shock.

She had never seen Faith cry.

Never seen her weak.

She looked over to where Faith was staring.

The bathroom.

Buffy walked past the slayer, and towards the bathroom.

As she pushed the door open it was too much.

She was sick.

As she fell to her knees, she tried to steady herself.

She looked up and couldn't believe what she was looking at.

Robin Wood.

Pinned to the wall.

Crucified.

Rome, Italy.

Willow lowered herself from the sky.

She was exausted.

She had never fought a dragon before.

And she prayed she wouldn't have to again.

She lowered herself into the apartment, through the hole the dragon had made when it released its fire at her.

She walked over to Wilkins, who was now awake.

"Wilkins," Willow wanted his attention. "Where is Kennedy? The other slayers, Dawn?!"

Wilkins looked up at her. "I'm all that's left. He took the kid."

"What do you mean 'all that's left'?" Willow asked, with a stern tone, "There were the slayers we left behind, plus all your men. They can't all be dead?"

Wilkins nodded. "They are..." he started to go wide eyed, sobbing.

"Snap out of it!" Willow ordered. The man looked up. "What attacked you?"

"An army," Wilkins started to laugh. "A army of demons..."

Willow slapped the man across the face. "But you're in a army. How can they have taken all of you out? And if they did, why are you still here?"

Wilkins had stopped laughing. "I was bate,"

Willows eyes widened. "For who?"

"You," Wilkins answered. "I didn't hear much, but they thought you were a threat to their plans..."

"Who's they?" Willow asked. "And how do you even know who I am? I never told you,"

"With power like that, you have to be the witch. I don't know who they were. They wanted the girl, and then they wanted you out of the picture."

"Dawnie..." Willow muttered.

She went silent as she thought to her self. Willow wondered why they would want the sister of the slayer. She was just a kid, just a girl.

"This doesn't make any sense?" Willow suddenly burst into life. "We defeated the army in L.A. relatively easily, so why couldn't you have at least held this one at bay..."

It suddenly dawned on Willow why.

"Unless our fight was a distraction..." As Willow muttered these words, a cloaked figure, holding a scyth walked up behind her, as silent as death...

L.A., United States.

"What do you want with me?" Dawn asked her captor.

Draven looked back at his prisoner. "You're the key to my plan, if you'll excuse the pun..." Draven smiled at his own joke.

"But I don't work any more." Dawn tried to explain.

Draven laughed at this remark. "You don't work anymore?" Dawn nodded. "You are incredibly ignorant of what you are aren't you?"

Dawn just stared at Draven.

"You are a key which unlocks dimensional walls. You tear down the barriers of every world. Do you really think that power just disappeared along with Glory?" Draven asked her.

Dawn looked at the demon. "You know about Glory?"

"Know about her?" Draven exclaimed. "Of course I know about her, I know about everything that has gone on concerning you my dear."

"Why?"

"Because you are the key!" Snapped Draven. "Kids today really have no attention spans. In my day a child listened to their demon masters, and if they didn't I ate them," Draven smiled wickedly as he said the last part.

Dawn just looked on.

"Fine, you are the key, a energy device which unlocks dimensional walls. This you know." Draven stated. "However you only do that when someone unskilled, such as Glory uses you. When you're creator uses you that's a different matter."

Dawn went wide eyed.

Draven smiled. "Hello my daughter!" He opened his arms in a welcoming fashion. "But enough with the humour, I made you. You are my creation. And I must say the monks made you into a pretty little girl. I swear, if it weren't for the dire need of the apocalypse, I could rape and devour you." Draven smiled as he said the last part.

As if it was affectionate.

Dawn's look turned to horror.

She wanted Buffy to come swinging in to the rescue.

She wanted to scream.

Blood was everywhere.

It ran all the way from the bathroom to Faith.

Buffy didn't know what had happened but she knew she wouldn't get any answers from her fellow Slayer.

Some thing had happened to her.

Something horrific.

"ANGEL!" Buffy yelled.

Downstairs, visible through the hole, the vampire looked up. "What is it Buffy?" he yelled back.

"Get up here!" Buffy called down. "NOW!"

"We're a little busy down here Buffy, I gotta help everyone else..."

"NOW" Buffy repeated her self.

Angel saw Faith and ran to her.

He cradled her.

It was instinctive.

Not sexual, fatherly.

Angel held her, as a father would a child.

He didn't know what had happened, he hadn't even seen Wood's body, but he saw Faith.

And he saw her pain.

And he held her while Buffy came out of the bathroom.

"What happened?" Angel asked Buffy as he brushed Faith's blood drenched hair out of her eyes.

Buffy was silent. "Something killed Wood." She murmered.

Angel stared at her. "Not something Buffy. Someone."

Buffy looked up at Angel.

"The Immortal." He told her coldly.

"We don't know it was..." Buffy tried to defend.

"Don't you dare Buffy!" Angel stopped her. "I know you don't know what to think. I know you loved him, or near as damn felt for him. But look at Faith. And go look at Wood's body. No one good could do that."

"You have." Buffy replied coldly.

"I'll forget you said that. I'll let it slide. You're hurt. You're scarred." Angel said through gritted teeth. "Take Faith downstairs. Clean her up."

Buffy carefully took Faith's arm and helped her downstairs.

Angel walked into the bathroom and starred hard at Wood's corpse.

It was sick.

It was wrong.

And it disgusted Angel.

He slowly unpinned the limbs of Robin Wood. As he did so he remembered what it was like to do this to someone.

France.

Paris.

He had killed a prostitute like this.

Angel sighed.

He had done things like this.

Even if he couldn't admit it.

Xander was in agony.

It was worse than when he had his eye punctured out by a psychotic preacher.

He didn't think that was possible.

But it was.

He couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his entire body.

It hurt to talk, and when he did he could barely make any of the words sound right.

Giles knew what was wrong but wouldn't tell him.

Probably thought it would upset him.

It probably would, but it was worse not knowing.

Angel and Connor had moved Illyria up stairs.

Angel was dealing with what ever Buffy had asked him to, while Connor looked after the demon queen.

The young man dabbed her brow. He wasn't sure if it would help or not.

The body was someone he remembered, in a hazy dream sort of way, and it was dead.

He wasn't sure if Illyria herself would feel pain.

She only inhabited the body. It wasn't actually hers.

He hated that part of his life. He was relatively new to the strange world of demons and things.

Well, he was if you didn't count his previous life.

Things were amazingly confused in the world.

Far too condensed for Connor's liking.

But then again that was life.

And the kid shrugged and went back to bathing her wounds.

Faith stared at Buffy as the slayer bathed the blood off of her with a warm towel.

"I'm sorry," Faith whispered.

Buffy looked up. "What?"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't protect them..." Faith felt her eyes start to well up. "I'm sorry I let him die..."

She began to sob.

Buffy held Faith's hand. "This isn't your fault. It's mine."

"But I should have protected them, I was the leader and I failed. And the one thing I had in my life that was real got ripped from me. Torn out." Faith told Buffy through sobs.

Buffy looked at Faith and winced.

She was what Buffy could be have been without the training, the friends.

She was her equal and opposite.

And she was the strongest person she had ever known.

Yet she was crying.

And it was because of her.

It was because she allowed a murderer to become her lover for the third time in recent years.

Buffy pulled Faith close to her and held her as she cried.

She would stop this.

Riley was outside the hotel.

He had finally found it.

His guts were near falling out, but he had found it.

He crawled to the door, and pushed it open.

He fell through the archway, and down the stairs landing next to a slayer.

As he looked around he realised that this place wasn't in much better shape than he was.

He looked at the girl next to him and didn't recognise her.

He fainted soon after.

The Deeper Well, England

Wesley stood over his hole. His new responsibility.

"I need you to do me a favour..." He muttered to himself.

"I need you to release him. To free him," His voice was strained.

"You'll do it. For what we had, or for the sake of the world. Or just to proove you're not as dead as you appear to be." Wesley adressed the shadows.

A figure stepped out. "O.k. lover. I'll do it for us. But you owe me. And you know what I want." The women told him.

"Fine Lilah." Wesley adressed the ghost of his ex-lover. "We have a deal."

Another reflective chapter. hope you enjoyed it. Please review :)