Disclaimer: see Prologue

CHAPTER FOUR

13:03 AUGUST 8

The computer screens arrayed in the back of the dark blue surveillance van showed live feed from seven different cameras simultaneously. Two of them displayed the view from the exterior of the van itself, directed across the large parking lot towards the two main entrances of the multiplex. Three were showing CTV footage from within the building, and the last two were picking up images from a pair of Airmen with hidden cameras weaving their way through the crowds of Saturday shoppers.

The Airmen were under instructions to point their cameras at as many of the young blonde women as they could find. Jack, watching patiently in the back of the van for a glimpse of face he recognised, thought that the men might be enjoying their assignment a little too much. He was, of course, waiting for Buffy Summers. They knew she was there because according to her credit card she'd recently brought lunch in a small bistro on the second floor. Also, her car was parked about twenty spaces away, neatly tagged with a tracking device.

An olive hat pulled down over his forehead, disguising his unusual tattoo, Teal'c leant across in front of Carter with a thin cardboard box in his outstretched hand and offered Jack another doughnut. Jack declined with a slight shake of his head, his eyes never leaving the screens, shifting constantly from one to another, quickly dismissing candidate after candidate until finally he saw a possible positive ID.

"Alpha two," he said clearly into the headset, "this is control. Target at eleven o'clock, accompanied by the taller brunette: see if you can get a closer visual."

He really hoped they'd finally located Summers. After the events of the day before Jack knew the SGC was yet again in a sticky situation and could do with all the help it could get, especially from someone who evidently knew what they were dealing with…

"Since when did we put corpses in restraints?"

"Watch," Doctor Fraiser replied, her eyes fixed firmly on the hive of activity below.

Jack's exclamation of 'Geez' had been overlaid with Carter's 'Holy Hannah!" along with a collection of sharp hissing intakes of breath as, almost before Fraiser had finished speaking, the body moved of its own accord. Jack's mouth hung open unashamedly. More than moved in fact, it lunged at a nearby nurse, who, regardless of the thick, sturdy straps holding him in place, darted timidly away.

"Three Airmen discovered him trying to break his way out of the morgue. They managed to… subdue him and raise the alert," Fraiser informed them.

"Interesting definition of subdue," Daniel muttered from behind Jack's right shoulder.

"What in God's name are we looking at?" said General Hammond, leaning forward to view the scene with greater scrutiny. The body, after lying still again for a few moments strained against the leather fettering it to the bed, back and head arching back until Jack got a clear look at the upside down face; extended teeth bared in a wordless snarl.

Jack's jaw clenched as his heart missed a beat, his hands bunching into fists where they were hidden beneath the cloth of his pants pockets. He didn't need to get any closer; he could see all he wanted to from where he was. The body on the bed was that of the second pathologist murdered by the escaping SG-14 the previous night. Eyes that had been lifeless as they stared up at Jack only hours before were now yellow and full of rage. Jack's stomach twisted disconcertingly. The face looked like that of Captain Samuels.

"I couldn't even guess, General," said Fraiser shaking her head, her lips pursed in frustration. "What I can tell you is that he has no discernable pulse and doesn't need to breathe. I won't know much more until I've had time to run further tests but we're measuring extraordinary levels of brain activity, and he's still alert and aggressive despite being pumped with enough sedative to take out an entire SG team."

"What's with the face lift?" Jack asked.

"He's been like that ever since they found him," replied Fraiser. "The amazing thing is that there has actually been a physical change to the bone structure."

"Sweet." Jack made a face.

"How does this compare to SG-14?" said General Hammond.

"The nature of his wounds were identical to that of Brooks, Samuels and Parker, and with respect to the video footage that's been analysed I'd say that his condition is highly congruent with theirs."

If Jack closed his eyes, he could almost feel the Captain's hand pushing his neck against the pillar, the deformed head sinking down closer and closer – could image those ugly, pointed teeth piercing the tender flesh of his throat above the rushing river of life blood that flowed through his jugular.

Looking down at the scene before him and reliving the vivid memories of his confrontation with the homicidal Captain, the pieces started falling neatly into place in his mind; an unfamiliar and strange experience for Jack. He had completely misinterpreted the situation in that dark, treacherous basement: Samuels hadn't been trying to kill him, not ultimately anyway – he'd been trying to spread whatever it was that had been brought back through the gate.

"Um, where's the other one?" queried Daniel, his tone thoughtful and worried.

"The other pathologist? He's dead… at least, we're fairly certain he's dead," Fraiser added in response to the multitude of dubious looks her statement received.

"What's the status of Sergeant Hayward?" asked Carter, her arms wrapped with reassuring tightness around her ribs.

"He's still in shock," answered Fraiser. "Doctor McKenzie hasn't managed to get through to him about precisely what happened to them off world yet. We've got him under close supervision though, and so far he doesn't appear to be suffering from any strange side effects."

"Makes sense…" Daniel said softly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Mark not being like the rest of them," added Daniel, pushing his glasses further up his nose with his index finger. "Think about it," he explained to the blank faces pointed his way, "what's the one thing he," Daniel nodded at the 'deceased' pathologist, "and the other three members of SG-14 have… had, in common?"

"They all pushed up the daises on a considerably less permanent nature than normal?" Jack facetiously offered.

"Correct…"

"I am?"

"… there are examples of myths throughout many cultures that tell of creatures in human form capable of rising from the dead that aren't necessarily attributable to the Goa'uld," Daniel said, his expression growing more intense by the second.

"Do you refer to the Tauri's legends of Vampyr, Daniel Jackson?" asked Teal'c.

"That's one possible interpretation, yes."

"Oh come on!" drawled Jack, wondering who the hell supplied Teal'c with his reading material.

"You have to admit that with the fangs and the whole ne–"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Let's go the whole hog then shall we? How about a day out down-town to buy crosses and garlic for all the pretty nurses?"

"I believe holy water is reputed to be extremely effective," Teal'c said helpfully.

"Okay then," said Daniel, looking a little annoyed, "what's your theory, Jack?"

"SG-14 just got back from an 'alien' planet, halfway across the galaxy where, if I might remind you, they'd been missing for over a month. God only knows what could have happened to them!"

"And whatever that was, it's obviously contagious," said Carter.

"General, I counted nearly twenty bullet holes in that man's chest, and he still kept moving – the wounds are regenerating even now…" Fraiser's perplexed voice faded away as something struck a chord in Jack's memory: something about guns and petite women.

A disdainful expression accompanied by a pointing finger towards his berretta and the words 'they don't work…' Jack also recalled his pint-sized rescuer saying 'that's the problem with you guys…' What had becoming worryingly apparent as he played over what had occurred between her and his assailant, was that Buffy Summers, whoever she was and whomever she'd been working for – Jack was betting heavily on the NID – she'd known far too much about what Captain Samuels was… had become.

"… we have no idea what we're dealing with, or how to stop this spreading."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Doc," Jack said nonchalantly.

"How w-what do you mean?"

"More of a whom," he replied cryptically to the small woman staring up at him with bewildered brown eyes, "and I'll need Carter to help me track her down…"

Buffy Anne Summers. Former resident of Sunnydale, California.

American citizen.

Or was she?

If she had been involved with the NID and their brief escapades with the second Earth Stargate then possibilities were practically endless, thought Jack. Why else would the President find it necessary to stress that she was an American citizen? She wasn't Goa'uld for certain, but 'alien' couldn't quite be ruled out…

Jack found that he was holding his breath as he watched the picture on the far right hand screen float jerkily towards the young woman and her companion. The Airman approached them from the opposite direction so that the camera got a clear view of both females in passing as they strolled idly along the outermost edge of the wide mall. The first thing that struck Jack was that the blonde was smiling and laughing with the dark-haired girl at her side. Her happy, relaxed demeanour, coupled with the bustle of shoppers around her created a sight that couldn't have been more different from the intense, focussed and morose woman he'd encountered only ten hours ago. But Jack knew, without a doubt, that this woman was one and the same.

"Yeah, right there," he told the three expectant faces watching him, tapping the hard surface of the screen on top of the blonde's face, frozen in time under his index finger. "Alpha two, this is control. Stay with her; I'm coming in."

Jack turned to Carter, who handed him a small flesh coloured earpiece – identical to those worn by the airmen – without a word. Jack eased it into his ear, jiggling it until he was sure it was securely in place.

"One Goa'uld, two Goa'uld, three Goa'uld…"

"You're good to go, Sir," said Carter, after deftly adjusting the sensitivity range on the receiver on the equipment panel in front of her.

Jack retrieved his sunglasses from the top pocket of his leather jacket, then squeezed his way to the back of the van and opened the doors, letting daylight flood into the back of the small enclosure.

"See you later, kids," he said jovially as he dropped carefully out onto the sun-warmed asphalt.

"Um, Jack…"

"Yeah, I know: no harassment," Jack said, shrugging off Daniel's concern and flashing them all a 'no worries' grin as he closed the van doors. "I'll just have to be very persuasive…" he muttered, slipping on the sunglasses against the glare and striding purposefully towards the mall.

In the gloom of the van, Daniel turned to Carter.

"Why do I have the feeling this is a bad idea?"

13:15 AUGUST 8

Buffy, unlike Jack O'Neill, hadn't been musing constantly on the previous nights events for the last ten hours. After a short list of sharply spoken expletives she'd put the whole incident out of her mind as she'd jogged back to the motel. It had been almost four in the morning by the time she'd returned to bed, sliding washed skin between now refreshingly cool sheets and snuggling down into a newly puffed pillow to sleep, confident that the 'dream window' of three thirty-seven had been avoided.

Guns. They were the one weapon Buffy was not comfortable with. Rocket launchers and bombs of the home-made variety weren't a problem, but guns were something she stayed clear of wherever possible. Aside from being useless on the un-dead, they belonged to the real world. The reality without demons and other nasty creatures that did more than just go 'bump' in the night. They belonged to the daytime where humans murdered humans, where in one split second your best friend loses her lover and you take a bullet in the chest. Which was why, when confronted with a stranger waving a handgun around, Buffy had been less than inclined to dive into the ensuing fight.

The fact that her delay in intervening had almost cost the man his life had irritated Buffy, and she'd come away from the fight feeling unsettled and off-balance. The man, despite the grey in his hair, was obviously military – Buffy had been able to tell that before the vampire had addressed him as 'Colonel', but even so, he had been completely unable to defend himself against the unexpectedly swift attack.

After the fight, Buffy had checked that the man wasn't too badly injured and made her escape as soon as she'd heard help arriving in the form of the site watchman. She hadn't been able to get away fast enough, swearing as she'd run east, working the intense feeling of uncertainty out of her system until she'd forgotten all but the exhilaration of the fight, the sound of her heart pounding relentlessly in her chest and the perfect clarity of the moment when she knew she'd won.

No, the man she'd saved from having his body drained of blood had occupied precisely none of her thoughts.

Until now…

"So, I've been thinking," said Dawn as she happily ambled along beside Buffy.

"Dare I ask what about?" Buffy asked with mock caution as her younger sister took a noisy slurp from her carton of cola through a white and yellow striped straw.

The man that had sauntered past them a few moments ago had now changed direction, and was now walking with them on the far side of the mall. This, in itself, was not highly suspicious behaviour to Buffy, after all, shoppers regularly chose to walk in more than one direction in a mall, but there was something not quite right about 'this' shopper; something not quite right about the way he kept pace with them even when it mean he was going against the flow of people around him. Overriding the voice inside that said she was being paranoid, Buffy let her senses rule her judgement and surreptitiously guided Dawn towards the exit.

"What you can do now you're not the 'one and only' anymore."

"Oh?"

"You could write a Slayer handbook."

Buffy frowned at her sister. "According to Giles there's one already – not that he ever showed it to 'me'," she added cantankerously.

"No, I mean 'for Slayers, by the Slayer'," explained Dawn. "You could write guides on how to maintain a manicure while carving your own stakes, and give tips on removing demon slime from everyday materials." Dawn grinned mischievously and slipped her arm through Buffy's. "Top ten dos and don'ts when boinking the un-dead…"

"Dawn…" Buffy gasped, reprimanding her with a shocked, but also privately amused look. There's no way she'd been this uncouth as a teenager, had she?

"It could be like your memoirs!"

"Hey, I haven't finished living yet…" Buffy retorted distractedly.

Across the crowd of shoppers she had been watching the man watching them, or rather, pretending 'not' to watch them. Noting with growing unease the way he turned his whole body and not just his head towards them, angling the bag he carried unmistakably in their direction, the way his haircut was just a little too short; too regimental; too military.

It wasn't really much of a surprise when, not a minute later, she spotted the slightly limping gait of a tall, grey-haired man entering through the very automatic doors she'd been aiming for. He pulled off his sunglasses, leaving them swinging from a strap around his neck while he quickly scanned the crowds, stopping dark brown eyes on none other than her…

Buffy's stomach tightened as she realised he was going to try and talk to her. It was the last thing she wanted, especially with Dawn as an audience. Taking full advantage of Dawn's arm looped through hers, Buffy sped up the pace and swept past the open mouthed Colonel, hissing the words 'not here' at him before he had a chance to form a single word.

They stepped out into the summer sun, too hot and humid after the air conditioned mall, and headed down the long lines of Minivans and SUVs. Buffy heard hurried footfalls behind them and glanced over her shoulder to see the Colonel grimacing as he jogged to catch up, falling in beside her with an amiable smile.

"So, where is it?" he asked, squinting down at her.

"Where's what?" Buffy replied innocently, not returning his gaze. She kept walking fast towards their rental car, dragging a confused Dawn in her wake.

"The weapon you used last night," the man helpfully clarified.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Buffy, who is this?"

"Jack O'Neill, two l's," the man introduced himself, holding a hand out to Dawn. She didn't take it.

Buffy glared at 'Jack O'Neill' and smartly veered down a narrow gap between two SUV's, shepherding Dawn before her and ignoring her sister's quizzical looks.

"You're not from around here, are you?" the man over the canvas top of a convertible.

Buffy stopped dead in her tracks. "What's that got to do with it?" she asked warily.

"What about you, miss?" he said, turning his attention once again to Dawn.

"Hey, you keep her out of this," Buffy growled.

"Buffy?"

"Dawn, get in the car," Buffy ordered, digging in her shoulder bag and passing Dawn the keys.

"Why aren't–"

"I'll explain later, just do as I say," Buffy said in a firm voice, her eyes not leaving the dark brown ones fixed on her over someone's mid-life crisis of a car.

Buffy heaved a sigh of relief when Dawn nodded, leaving reluctantly and threading her way between the remaining vehicles between them and their car. As the car door slammed meaningfully, effectively isolating Dawn from their conversation, Buffy crossed her arms and raised a challenging eyebrow at the man.

"I want some answers."

"You won't like them," Buffy replied, "so I suggest you–"

"That man was–"

"No longer a 'man', Colonel whoever-you-are," she snapped, cutting off his outburst, "and I saved your ass last night, so back the hell off!"

The man's eyes narrowed. "You used what I suspect was a highly illegal weapon in front of me, and you think I'm just going to let it go!"

Buffy snorted; he could suspect what he liked as far as she was concerned. "Yes."

"Exactly… WHAT?"

Good, Buffy smiled. He was getting flustered.

"Look," she said with icy calmness, "I didn't know you were going to turn up, but the least you could do is show me some gratitude – if not, leave me alone, I haven't got time for this."

"I'll admit you might have–"

"Oh please," Buffy rolled her eyes at his grudging tone and turned to leave.

"Miss–"

"What the hell do you want from me?" Buffy spun round to face him, her temper finally breaking.

The man took a step back, surprised at her ferocity. "Your help."

"Sure," Buffy snapped, her voice oozing with dangerous sarcasm. "I know, you could do some experiments on me, and then perhaps round off the whole thrilling experience by trying to kill me and all my friends. When can we get started, I can't wait?"

"Oh for crying out loud, what is your problem?"

"I don't play well with the military," Buffy growled.

"Well, ma'am," replied the man, matching her sarcasm drip for drip. "Maybe it's about time you learnt!"

Anger surged through Buffy and she snarled back at the man. "This stops now. You come near me or my sister I'll make you wish I hadn't been there last night." And with that, she shot him one last dagger infused glare and turned her back on him.

"There are more like him," he called after her.

"You think I don't know that!" Buffy laughed incredulously at his statement.

To her relief he didn't follow this time; just stood staring after her with a mystified expression. A relief which lasted a full ten seconds until Buffy realised that there was no way in the world that Dawn was going to let what had just happened drop.

"You've been slaying?"

Why did that question make her feel like a naughty child, caught with her hand in the cookie jar?

Buffy glanced over at Dawn sitting beside her in the passenger seat, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, her eyes staring blankly out of the windscreen. It was the first time Dawn had spoken in nearly twenty minutes and Buffy had been more than willing to let her silence ride between them.

"Yes." Pretending otherwise would have been pointless given what had happened back in the parking lot, let alone a grave insult to Dawn's intelligence.

She signalled in preparation for their exit, her eyes flickering back and forth between the rear view mirror and the road being swiftly sucked under the bonnet in front. This was neither the time nor the place for this conversation, but, her hand having been forced by the Colonel's persistence and horrendous bad timing, Buffy had given Dawn the highlights of the previous night's slayings, and her encounter with the pushy Colonel and his former subordinate on the building site.

Dawn did not look happy. At all…

"When?"

"At night?"

"No. How long?" Dawn impatiently rephrased the question.

"Not long, I swear."

"You didn't say anything… You didn't think I'd want to help? God, Buffy, we talked about this?"

Buffy's fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel in response to the anger in Dawn's words. She'd known it would be like this: Dawn seeing her secrecy as a direct affront, a judgement of her abilities, a betrayal of the recently found equality between them. There hadn't been a conscious decision to break the unspoken agreement between them – by the time Buffy had made her choice it'd already been too late and she hadn't known how to broach the subject after that. No, that was a lie. She'd been scared. Scared to reveal the extent of what she'd been keeping from Dawn; her nightmares, the truth behind their ending up in Colorado Springs of all places, and what the Powers wanted from her… again.

'Just you and me,' she'd told Dawn, squeezing her sister's hand tightly as the plane had banked in it's effortless climb away from Los Angeles, rising up from the haze of pollution and sweltering heat that encased the city in the height of summer, 'just two normal sisters, taking a normal vacation.'

"Road trip!' Dawn had squealed excitedly, earning winces from the passengers nearest them.

It had been an understanding between them that this was indeed a 'vacation', not just from California, but from their lives and the turmoil of the past months that had threatened to destroy the bond between them. Decisions would be made together, as a family – albeit a small one. The decision to rejoin Giles and the others in Ohio, or alternatively to leave their old life permanently behind them and start anew, would be one agreed by both.

"Do you have that little faith in me?" Dawn continued, twisting her hands in her lap angrily. "I know I'm not one of your Potentials and will never be a Slayer, but that doesn't mean you can cut me out. I can hold my own; I thought I'd proved that?"

"I… Dawnie…" Buffy floundered for the right words, barely able to concentrate on driving. She could feel Dawn's glaring eyes boring a hole through her skull. "I was just trying to–"

"Protect me?" Dawn spat the word disdainfully, not waiting for Buffy to finish her sentence. "What happened to 'I don't want to protect you from the world, I want to show it to you'? You can't just turn me on and off when it's convenient for you!"

Away from the benevolent guidance of her Watcher for the past two years, coupled with being the only active Slayer, Buffy had gotten so used to pulling all the shots that she barely noticed when she was pushing others away anymore. It was a mechanism she'd perfected in her late teens: protecting those around her in a warped way by excluding their participation in the struggle she saw as ultimately hers and hers alone.

"I don't want to risk you, Dawn." Hypocrite, a small voice jeered at her from within.

"Oh, but it's fine when the world's hanging in the balance?" Dawn challenged in an icy tone.

"That's different," argued Buffy, pulling off the main road onto the motel forecourt and nudging the car into a parking space.

"Not it's not! You risked Willow and Xander all the time."

"Yes, I did," Buffy snapped back, "but for one they are not my kid sister, and second, look what it cost them!"

"And look what it cost you!" Dawn retorted.

"Your point?"

"You just dived straight back in – you of all people. You have a chance to walk away forever, live the life you've always wanted where you don't have to risk your life every night for a calling you never chose."

"You're right," Buffy said gently, turning off the engine, "I didn't choose it."

"Then stop!" Dawn burst in. Buffy laid a hand across Dawn's tangled fingers to silence her.

"I didn't choose it, it chose me. I figured something out Dawn: just because there are others like me now doesn't mean I stop being 'me'. I want to stop being the Slayer – nothing would make me happier than to live a normal life – but having seen what I've seen and having the power to do something I can't just sit back and do nothing."

"You can change – lots of people change, they do it all the time."

"Not me Dawn," Buffy said in a low voice, her words barely audible over the roar of traffic from the highway behind them. She rested her hands on the wheel and stared out of the windscreen at the drab façade of the motel.

"Then let me help."

"I can't." Buffy turned her head to look at Dawn, noting the way her shoulders were tensed tightly, the way her hands were clenched together, fingers interlaced, that her knuckles showed white. "If you got hurt it would be my fault – I couldn't live with myself if that happened."

"And you don't think I feel the same way?" Dawn snapped. With a sudden movement, she twisted in her seat to face Buffy, gazing at her with intense, tear-filled eyes that seemed to hold hers in a desperate grip so that she couldn't have looked away even if she'd wanted to. "Buffy," she said with a tremble in her voice, "please don't do this. Can't we keep things as they are… were. Can't we live in a world where I'm not the key and you're my normal, regular big sister? I don't want to wonder if you're coming back each night…"

"Of course I'll come back," Buffy said reflexively, knowing the lie shone clearly on her face.

Dawn's eyes flashed with anger. "I'm not a kid anymore – I know how this works."

"I… I'm sorry."

"I can't watch you fight and not do something. Either let me help, or stay with me." Dawn's voice choked with uncontained emotion. "I've lost you before and I don't think I can do it again…"

Buffy reached over and brushed the tears away from Dawn's right cheek, her eyes filling of their own accord until her sister's image blurred behind a wall of fluid.

"I can't…"

With a loud sob, Dawn jerked herself away from Buffy's caress and grabbed the bag off the back seat. From it she retrieved the motel key card with shaking fingers before yanking the car door open and plunging out into the afternoon heat. Buffy watched her go, feeling her throat tighten with emotion and the warmth of a trickle of salt water as it crawled slowly over her skin towards her jaw. Laying her head back against the seat rest, Buffy stared hazily up at the car roof and clenched her hands into tight balls.

"Haven't you taken enough from me?"

She spoke aloud, knowing the Powers weren't listening; knowing that they never listened.

"Haven't I lost enough?"

Buffy had thought so, before the Powers had called upon her once again.

Now she knew; it would never be enough.

She'd lost her childhood and innocence long ago, but she didn't mourn their passing as much as the people she'd lost over the years. Her first love had been taken from her not once, but twice. First when she'd been forced to send him to hell to prevent the awakening of the demon Acathla, second when he'd left, knowing he was a liability to her duty as the Slayer. In one year alone she'd lost not only Riley and her mother, but her life. After she'd been torn out of heaven she'd fought to regain and hold onto her sanity through the madness that followed, and had found solace and comfort in Spike, only to lose him in the battle against the First Evil.

In fact, the only thing her duty as the Slayer had ever given her was Dawn.

Dawn: sent to her for protection, to be kept safe. It seemed a cruel irony that through trying to do just that, she'd lose her for good.

It seemed to Buffy that within all the stories she'd ever heard the ultimate reward for one's deeds was that the baddies got their comeuppance, and the long suffering 'cinderella' got the 'lived happily ever after' scenario. After having already experimented, albeit briefly, with option one, dying to save everything and everyone she loved, couldn't she at least try the second, much more preferable, option? Could she and Dawn ever live 'happily ever after', or was that really just in fairytales and not for Slayers at all?

Would the last 'one and only' Slayer be allowed a happy ending, and if it wasn't given to her, did she have the right to 'take' it?

Dawn was the most important thing in Buffy's life; that was the one thing she was totally sure of. Time and again she had proved she would do anything to protect her, indeed, Dawn had been given to Buffy 'to' protect. Even though Glory was dead and the key supposedly inactive, didn't she still have the right to 'live' for her, rather than die?

"Death is your gift," Buffy whispered the words of the first Slayer to the empty car and closed her eyes tight, hot tears squeezed from under her lids.

Not any more, the thought came to her suddenly. Death is 'our' gift. Maybe that was the reward she'd received after all these years; the burden once shouldered by one, now shared by many? Was it selfish to wonder if that having carried it alone for eight years she had the right to pass responsibility to another? A Slayer had a duty to the Powers, battling the forces of darkness until death released her. Did the fact that she'd died twice already present a loophole to be exploited? Could she give up everything that she was for Dawn's happiness?

Buffy sniffed and wiped the moisture from her face. She leaned across the passenger seat and pulled the open door shut before collecting her bag and following in her sister's footsteps.

She found the door to the motel room ajar and let herself in quietly, setting her bag down softly on the dresser. Dawn was laying in a ball in the middle of her bed, facing the wall, her body shaking with silent tears. Buffy's heart broke, unable to hold herself apart any longer. She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed behind Dawn. She stroked her sister's hair gently, following its path as it flowed across her shoulders; millions of brown, long, slender strands.

"Dawn?"

"What?" Dawn hunched away from Buffy's touch, her voice angry with tears.

"How would you like to become the first official sponsor for Slayer Anonymous?"