Author's Note: Looks like this is taking an entire year to write! Sorry for the delay, to those reviewers who forgive me and come back to this fic. To anyone else, welcome aboard!

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It was three in the morning and Ethan was still standing outside, leaning against the steel railings of someone else's house across the street and smoking like a chimney. The old couple that lived in the house he was currently guarding had given him strange looks. But when he cheerfully replied with a two-fingered salute, they said nothing and hurried inside.

Leaving him on the wrong side of the door on a cold autumn's night.

And he was still standing there.

Kicking absently at a used cigarette butt, Ethan puffed contentedly on the one in his mouth and examined his hands. Youth spells like this were not his style. He'd simply never have done something like this on his own- one, because chaos would not have allowed it, and two, because he did have certain scruples about certain things. And psychotic scientists hadn't given him much of a love for playing around with his own state of being.

Two days later he was back, still smoking like a chimney and still unable to knock at that door. But his clothes were different. No more sensible shirts and trousers. Now he wore jeans. And for the first time in many years, they looked good on him! He'd always thought he'd been born to wear jeans but once he'd grown up, he'd found he worked much better without them hindering his dashing run away from all things Eyghon related.

He coughed slightly with the smoke and the cold, adjusting the collar of his heavy overcoat to wrap more securely around his neck. The dark hair was pulled back behind his ears, still curly and still long. But he planned to get it trimmed at any rate.

And there she was.

Walking briskly out of her house with a large bag in her little hand and a blankly pleasant look on her face. He knew that look. So it was back to slaying then, was it?

He chucked the cigarette and watched her with hooded dark eyes, hiding the glitter of the chaos ritual he'd just completed by flicking his eyelids down when she looked at him. He had no illusions that she would recognize him. People like Buffy didn't work like that. She had tunnel vision; he'd deplored it before, he deplored it now. It meant that he would no more hold her eye as a young man than he could hold her heart as an old one.

He followed her.

Buffy, for her part, was unaware of the slight presence following her down the street. She had seen him, naturally- a slayer didn't get to live to her age without learning a few protective habits- but he was a thin young man who couldn't possibly say boo to a goose. So she wiped him from her mind and focused on other things.

Things, she'd be the first to admit, that she didn't really relish.

"It's nice to have you back," Giles had said. That had been comforting. The first time back into the business and it was nice to be with her Watcher again.

She'd tossed him a quick smile, reassuring him without words that she enjoyed it just as much. Well, maybe a little less. After all, she'd learned that demons never really disappeared no matter how much she wanted to take a holiday. So the best thing was get on with it and shove the issues in a locked box.

She had looked up only to note a small, amused little smile playing around Giles' mouth, the kind of smile that made her blush and stammer that she really wasn't doing anything, honest!

And then had come the million dollar question- "So how's Ethan?"

How was Ethan... "Oh, Ethan? He's okay, I guess. Why?"

"I just wondered."

Buffy's eyes had narrowed. She knew for a fact that Giles never 'just wondered'; he always had an agenda. But the conversation had ended when the others returned to the room, talking and laughing as if they had been planning a picnic and not a showdown with an apocalypse-obsessed demon warrior princess.

It had been nice- being with her family again- and she had happily pushed away the surprise at how callous they had all become. People were no doubt going to die, and yet they cracked jokes as if there was nothing more important to do than go out for a drink and a quick shag?

Now, standing outside Elena' safehouse, she mentally banged herself over the head for using such words- 'quick shag' indeed! Ethan had rubbed off more than she liked to think! Well, rubbed off, rubbed in... rubbed, in a general term, and very definitely not always the right way.

She refrained from kicking moodily at a can and wished she'd had that talk with Giles after all. How was Ethan? Giles obviously knew something she didn't. Was he okay? Was he still mad? Did he still have that stupid way of smirking at people? Made her want to scream, it did. That wide mouth was so- so... her brain supplied pretty, but she personally preferred irritating.

"Hey, B, you ready?"

Faith's voice. And that was the great thing about this assignment. The Council was seething because Elena had gone off and had her demon guys kill six young slayers in cold blood. The youngest had been tortured first. So top priority for the fledgling council was to kill the evil bitch and have done with it. So she was fighting with Faith, Willow and Kennedy again.

"Yeah." Hey, now seemed as good a time as any!

Willow nodded at Faith's signal and stepped out of the cover. Kennedy kissed her girlfriend swiftly and hard and then the witch threw up a shield of light around the both of them as Kennedy kicked the door down.

The fight was on.

It was bloody, brutal and one of the younger Slayers fell with an arrow to the throat as she blocked it on its way to Willow. The witch was casting protection spells as best she could while Kennedy played protector.

Faith and Buffy took opposite sides of the room but seemed to fight in tandem, long-forgotten habits from Sunnydale resurfacing in the most surprising way.

And then Elena launched herself at Faith and kept her busy while Buffy desperately tried to take on the rest of the warrior leader's bodyguard. Ducking, weaving and slashing like a frenzy; the demons so uncannily like human men and women fell either dead or maimed in her corner.

Faith was finding it a little hard to keep up the furious pace set by her opponent. Which was only to be expected. This particular breed were faster even than Slayers, with much the same level of strength and instinct. It didn't make Elena the better swordsperson; it just gave her a kick-ass advantage. The dark Slayer saw an opening and went for it, her axe no more than a blur rushing towards Elena's right shoulder. The warrior's face contorted as she threw herself to the side, escaping with no more than a nick on the arm.

But the fighting axe was lodged in a table and Faith lost her footing, sending her off-balance and to the floor. Instinct drove her rolling out of distance but she was unarmed. Buffy's heart stopped and then Willow came through, the bright bluelight enveloping the fallen Slayer before Elena could touch her.

Yet, Elena only glanced down at Faith before turning to Buffy with a smile. Giles had already wared her that the breed usually communicated telepathically, and as the others were dead or injured, the room was eerily silent. None of the Slayers dared make a sound for fear of the neighbours on either side.

Buffy gulped. Perhaps she should have done some training before this; she hadn't done any fighting for a while now. And she really should have had that conversation.

"B, watch out!"

Her sword flashed up in reflex and deflected the blow tossed by the warrior leader. The two sized each other up again and then Buffy moved, throwing swings and thrusts that at least put her opponent on the defensive even if they didn't touch her.

Willow watched with bated breath. She was tired, over-extended and not too certain that she could maintain a defence shield for a mouse for too long, let alone a girl. The witch dredged up more energy and took inner stock. She'd protect her friend if it killed her!

Only Faith noticed the arrival of the figure that slipped unannounced into the front door. Even with the youthful face and the strange but trendy ensemble of clothes, she knew what the guy spelled. Her magical senses were astonishingly better tuned that Buffy, due to her very brief stint with Wolfram and Hart. Her jaw tightened and while she might have been ready to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, the amount of power he was giving off wasn't healthy. And then she watched the way he was standing.

Ethan seemed to be slouching indifferently, but that was only for those who didn't know the way he moved. The flash of power drove his eyes to the right for a moment and he nodded at Willow, both acknowledging lethal power in the other.

Buffy was suddenly aware of a familiar presence at the back. She ducked under a loping swing that threatened to give her a rather severe haircut but managed not to, and glanced swiftly over Elena's left shoulder before refocusing. She knew better than to wonder at that odd appearance, but the momentary burst of shock was enough.

Elena saw her chance and took it, the sloppily executed defensive sending Buffy's sword clattering under a piece of smashed furniture. Both Kennedy and Faith moved forward.

Ethan's hand was up instantly, fingers loosely flicking towards Elena. His lips moved noiselessly and then the sword began to fight its wielder!

"Holy shit," Faith gasped, not sure whether to laugh or stare. She settled for both.

Buffy stopped and stared as the demon tried to keep a hold of the hilt and stay out of the way of the blade. The besieged warrior princess jumped over the blade, snapping her arm as her body tried to move two conflicting ways.

Only two people heard the telepathic scream. Willow flinched and Ethan smiled coldly. Then the sword buried itself in Elena's heart and she melted, dying just like all the rest of her warriors.

Buffy opened her mouth, still staring at Ethan. At a young Ethan! She didn't need to be told that this was Ethan. She might not have recognized him across the street, but standing in front of her with power crackling from his fingertips and his eyes sparking with wild delight... there could not be any other person.

"Er," she said, "Thanks?"

Only Ethan! Who else would have thought of such a sweetly imaginative and chaotic way to kill someone?

Faith stepped up, standing by Buffy's left shoulder. "You'd be that Ethan Rayne, right?" she prodded.

Ethan gave a graceful mock bow, extravagantly fluttering his slender hands as glimmering dark eyes laughed silently. The witch was staring at him, he knew that; probably keeping an eye out for any patented Ethan/ chaos tricks. Well, she never needed to worry. He had worked out his debt. He was ready to leave now.

"Rude much?" Kennedy snapped, "At least give us a name."

Ethan favoured her with an insolent once-over and a summary dismissal. "If you don't know, you haven't played my league before. Now, if you could do me the honour of not dying after everything I've worked so hard to do, a team of Florence Nightingales should arrive any minute."

Kennedy snorted. "Excuse me, we did all the work," she corrected, "You just happened to help."

Ethan raised an eyebrow- "Grateful little brat, aren't you?"- before turning to Buffy and ignoring the rest. "Ripper and the rest will be here in a minute, Slayer. I trust you can wait here that long."

"You're young," she blurted out.

A small half-smile as he nodded. "For the moment. By this time in four days, I might not be."

She put out a hand to touch and he took a step back, almost shying away like a nervous colt, like a stallion not quite broken in yet. Buffy dropped her hand, disgusted at herself for her reactions. So what if the man standing before her was young and pretty? She didn't like pretty boys. Hell, Angel and Spike were proof enough, they were not... she decided to kill herself as she remembered how 'pretty' both had been when she'd fallen for them.

Ethan seemed to realize that look in her eyes because he left, ignoring Faith's position behind him. He headed out in the night, the sound of cars and a medical ambulance grating through his sensitive hearing.

Like a cat he slunk away into the shadows.

"November," he muttered to the guy behind the bar, watching the rain cascade down from his seat beside a pint of bitter, "No bloody wonder Guns n' Roses wrote 'Cold November Rain'. It's sodding freezing where I am."