Rating

PG – 13, might change

Pairing

Buffy and Spike

Disclaimer

Only the idea for the story is mine.

Prologue

More than two years had passed since Sunnydale had become just another hole in the ground. A magnificent, town sized hole in the ground but the Grand Canyon was still grander. You could not ride a donkey to the floor or the Sunnydale crater. Buffy along with her loyal group of friends had left the sight for greener pastures almost immediately.

Buffy and Dawn found a home in Rome with Andrew, the last surviving member of the nerd trio. Giles along with Willow and the remaining potentials, minus Kennedy who had stayed in the states (Willow wasn't terribly heart broken), had traveled to England to sort out what remained of the Watcher's council. It wasn't much. Faith joined Wood in a whirlwind tour of Asia, in hopes of discovering local girls with "unusual powers". And lastly, Xander, he had gone to New York City in hopes of finding himself after losing Anya so permanently.

This didn't last though. Once a Scooby always a Scooby and they just couldn't bear to be apart for such long stretches of time. When one has survived so many catastrophic, world-ending experiences, one knows how short life can be. It wasn't long before Giles, under the urging of Buffy and Willow, had extended an invite to each of them to venture to England and assist him. And thus we enter the newest era of the Watcher's council; in a time with many slayers and very few watchers, in a time of chaos and pain, and in a time that the Scooby's would grow and change more than they thought possible after their first seven years together.

No one had objected to coming to England, to joining up as a team once again. Willow, Buffy, and Xander could finally rekindle their deep friendship, Dawn found the sister and the mother in Buffy that she had so yearned for in the past, and Faith found acceptance. Andrew was just pleased to be invited. It was a harrowing time; rebuilding the council. Heads butted and people argued; Dawn thought all of the new living quarters should be painted cream while Giles liked the hunter green.

It had taken them over a year but the council stood as a force to be reckoned with once again. Their library was grand and their vaults still filled with gold and jewels, they had even found some surviving demon artifacts. Dawn had won the vote on wall color and so each Scooby soon found themselves in their very own cream study with adjoining bed and bath. There were still new Watcher's codes to be written and slayers to be found, there was never a dull moment. Buffy patrolled, Dawn tagged along, and Faith trained with the new girls.

By this time the Watcher's council was more like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with a pretty healthy focus on the so-called "x-files". When the Wolfram and Hart offices in Los Angeles were destroyed the entire corporation seemed to crumble. Their global satellite offices began to slowly disappear off the radar and soon most were abandoned buildings. They were facing some rather stiff competition though, so no one could blame them for folding. The council had pushed its way into everybody's business, now wielding power in the demon and human world alike.

Angel and Illyria, the only known survivors of the "L.A. Apocalypse," as Dawn had called it in her report, arrived in England that second year. They brought with them a weighty secret, which they had sworn to never divulge. Spike was alive, he however, wanted to stay out of the Slayer's business and let her be who ever it was that she was going to be. So they never whispered a word; that matter was closed, old business by now.

Angel was not the only once-Scooby to return, Xander, now an impressive Demonologist had been visiting Mexico and returned with a werewolf in tow. In the years since he had last seen his friends Oz had become something of a recluse and a shut-in. The werewolf was a local legend; it had not taken Xander long to track him down and offer a standing invitation to join the Watchers. Oz was now living peacefully within the walls of the Watcher's council, happy to be reunited with lost friends. He had Willow again, and while she continued to remind him that she liked girls now, he was content with just being around her. But, then again, they had history, what else would you expect?

Dawn had finally graduated high school, which had been harder than expected due to the constant moving around. In the end she had opted to finish out her studies with home schooling. Between Willow and Giles, who needed high school teachers? Now all of her time was invested in her training, Dawn was a W.I.T. or Watcher in Training. Giles had come up with the W.I.T. euphemism and he thought it was terribly clever, barely containing a grin whenever the term was mentioned in conversation. Buffy was ready to smack the grin off his face by now but that was Giles for you; clever, clever, Watcher man.

Dawn was officially assigned to Giles, who would be her mentor through the W.I.T. process; something Giles felt would take at least a couple years. Really she only agreed because he was still technically Buffy's watcher and that meant that she could hang around her sister more often, and get credit for it. Dawn had an interesting style of "watching"; it had something to do with kicking demons in the groin and yelling, "fuck" frequently. When he ventured out with the two girls, or women actually, on a mission he spent more time cleaning his glasses than he did advising Dawn.

After only a matter a months Giles had decided that Dawn would benefit more from independent study. She hand delivers a typed, ten-page report to him every two weeks detailing her progress and Giles smiles and slips it into a desk drawer. Never to be seen again. Dawn will be a full Watcher this fall, quite ahead of schedule.

Buffy was told by Willow, the second in command as far as Watchers go, that as soon as she was ready to put down her stake there would be a Watcher post ready and waiting for her. For the time being she preferred to be the slayer or a slayer. One day though she knew she would get older and this wouldn't be the safest line of work for her to be in. And she had Dawn and her friends to think about. She was ranked a Class-A Vampire Slayer, the highest rank possible. She shared this title with only one other, Faith. No one else had survived this long (almost continuously) or seen as many apocalypses.

Unsurprisingly Giles had been researching with out pause to better their organization, to make the council more efficient, more structured, more prepared. He was stealing titles and strategy from the military; he was looking to councils of bygone eras. In other words, he was obsessing over his promise that this Watcher's council would not be like that run by Quentin Travers.

Of course not everything was sunshine and roses when it came to the new council, while many of the earlier kinks had been worked out, new problems continued to present themselves. The largest problem at the moment was the sudden and severe drop off in potentials, future slayers. Each month the teams turned up less and less of them; reminding Giles of the ongoing oil shortage, which Xander continues to believe must be demon related. Perhaps they had exhausted their resources.

Willow had devoted herself wholly to this problem as of late, blaming herself and believing it must have been her spell. She wondered if all the slayers that were ever going to be called had now been called; into each generation, how many generations would have been left? One hundred, two hundred, and how many potentials had been found? How many were already dead? If her theory was correct, they were screwed and probably so was the world. So much for puppies and Christmas.