Giles entered, bringing with him an air of calm control that immediately put Sam at ease. His instincts told him that this was a man he could trust. Why he was so certain of it he couldn't say, but he'd learned to have faith in his instincts.

"Xander told me what happened," said Giles. "How're you feeling?"

"I've been better," said Sam, but he was smiling. Xander—now he finally knew the young man's name! He secretly thanked Giles for filling in the gap.

"Mind if I take a look?" asked Giles, taking a tentative step forward. Sam nodded and took a seat at the end of Buffy's bed. Giles crouched down next to him and began a gentle inspection of the scrape on his forehead. For a moment their eyes met, and Sam experienced firsthand the look he'd seen in the photograph. Giles' eyes belied a maelstrom of emotion covering everything from pride to worry. And somewhere, deep down in the mix, Sam was sure he saw…

Sam's breath caught in his throat as his pulse raced—something of Buffy must have stayed behind when he leaped into her, because the feelings he was having now were definitely not his own.

"And—and your knee?" asked Giles with a slight clearing of his throat.

Sam rolled up the pyjamas so that his injured knee was exposed. Giles studied it with a deep frown, and then gently prodded it, making Sam wince.

"Sorry," said Giles. "Can you bend it?"

"A bit," said Sam, and he demonstrated for him.

"Hmm."

"I, uh, I think I might have a concussion, too," said Sam, licking his suddenly dry lips. "I've got a pretty big lump on the back of my head."

"Where?" asked Giles.

Sam directed Giles' hand to the spot where his head had hit the brick wall. The movement brought them face to face again, and once again Sam felt things he shouldn't be feeling.

"And all this happened an hour ago?" asked Giles.

"Give or take."

"Have you noticed any improvement at all?"

"Improvement? It's only been an hour—if anything I feel worse now than I did before. It was a long walk home, you know, and that guy in the alley really did a number on me. And I know this might sound a little strange, but there was something weird about him. He was fast—abnormally fast—and I swear he threw me more than ten feet into that dumpster."

"That man in the alley?" asked Giles, though why he found that part most interesting was a mystery to Sam. "I think I'd better keep an eye on you tonight."

"Then you think I might have concussion?" asked Sam.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, the concussion," said Giles distractedly. "Would it be alright if I slept on the couch?"

"Do you really need to ask?" said Sam brazenly, and now he knew for certain that something of Buffy had rubbed off on him.

That got Giles' attention, and he smiled warmly at Sam. "Try and get some rest, Buffy. I'll be up in a while to check on you." He gave Sam one last emotionally packed glance and then he was gone.

Sam let out a sigh—as if this leap wasn't strange enough, he now had to deal with Buffy's infatuation with her doctor. What he wouldn't give to have some answers, he thought. And as if in answer to his thoughts, Sam heard the imaging chamber door open and Al stepped into the room through the bright rectangle of light. He looked frazzled.

"Al! Where have you been?" asked Sam in a hushed but urgent voice.

"Huh? Oh—I've been with our guest in the waiting room. She's really something else, let me tell you."

"Al, this is a seriously messed up leap! The minute I got here I was attacked by some freakishly strong guy in an alley…"

"Yeah, well I'm afraid that's gonna be par for the course while you're here, Sam. This girl you leaped into…"

"Buffy."

"Buffy Summers—I meant it when I said she's really something else," said Al. "You have no idea just how something else she is."

"Not you, too," said Sam. "Al, the people here talk in riddles. I was hoping to get some straight answers from you, at least."

"Oh, I've got answers," said Al. "But every single one of them is as crooked as they come."

"Al…" Sam warned. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, fighting off a brand new headache.

"Okay, but this one's a doozy, so bear with me," said Al, and he took a deep breath in preparation. "This Buffy girl showed up in the Waiting Room, but she wasn't scared or confused like our guests usually are; she just seemed pissed off. Then she asked to see whoever was in charge, so I went in and gave her the usual spiel about time travel and showed her a mirror. Didn't even faze her."

Sam raised his eyebrows. This girl must be made of some pretty tough stuff to shrug off something as huge as time travelling into the future.

"Exactly," said Al, as if reading his mind. "Next thing, she asks me if we were part of the Initiative. I said I'd never heard of it, and she said she didn't believe me. So I had Ziggy run a check on this Initiative, and the next thing I know we've got the DOD and the NSA breathing down our necks with a cease and desist. Wait, it gets better," said Al, warming up to the role of storyteller. "While we were tied up with the suits from Washington, Buffy gets it in her head to try and escape."

"But there's no way," said Sam. "The Waiting Room door is reinforced steel…"

"…and bolted from the outside, I know," Al finished with a devilish grin. "But Buffy was able to break down that door with a single kick, and then she managed to knock out half the security guards in the building before I could get to her and talk her down."

"Why do I get the feeling there's more?" asked Sam reluctantly.

"Because there is. A lot more. It took a lot of talking and a tour of the facility before I could convince her what I'd told her was the truth. And then I told her that if she wanted to get back home, she'd better start helping us instead of fighting us…" Al paused for dramatic effect.

"Well?" Sam prompted.

"So here's the real kick in the butt, Sam; you've leaped into The Chosen One: the one girl in all the world with the power to fight vampires and demons and the forces of darkness." Al waggled his eyebrows at Sam and waited for the inevitable reaction.

Sam chuckled. "C'mon, Al! She's having you on! You know there's no such thing as vampires and demons."

"Yeah—and until recently you believed there was no such thing as the Devil," said Al, rocking up on his toes in triumph. "She's the Slayer…"

"The Slayer—that's what the guy in the alley called me," said Sam, getting pulled in despite himself.

"That's 'cause you are—or she is. And a guy by the name of Rupert Giles is her watcher."

"Watcher's pet…" Sam muttered as another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

"He's kind of like me, in a way," said Al. "He guides Buffy—helping with her training and researching whatever new evil they come up against."

There was a tapping at the door. "Buffy? Are you decent?" It was Xander, come to bring him his hot chocolate.

"Yeah. C'mon in," said Sam.

The door opened and Xander entered looking slightly nervous and holding out the mug of chocolate like a peace offering.

"Giles said you were…a little less than full strength," said Xander. "Sorry if I was, you know, less than totally sympathetic earlier."

"That's Alexander Harris," said Al, poking at his multi-coloured hand link. "Xander to his friends. He's one of the Scoobies—one of the few people who knows Buffy's the Slayer."

"Thanks," said Sam.

"You're welcome," Xander and Al said in unison. Sam glared at Al, who shrugged and pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it.

"Hey—remember that man in the alley?" asked Xander in a falsely cheery voice.

"Careful, Sam, he's testing you—I think they might be on to you," said Al.

"You mean the vampire?" asked Sam, hoping he wasn't making a complete fool of himself.

Xander relaxed visibly. "Thank God! Giles said that whatever happened to you tonight might have knocked out some of your memory. I so didn't want to explain the whole Hellmouth thing to you."

"Hellmouth?" Sam exclaimed, realizing his slip too late.

Xander sagged. "Great. Then I guess it's a crash course in Slaying for you. Where do I begin?"

"Oh, this is good, Sam," said Al. "Play along and he'll tell you everything you need to know."

"That's okay, Xander," said Sam. "Giles can fill me in later—he is my watcher, after all. Right?"

"Good point," said Xander with a relieved smile. "Listen, I'd love to stick around, but Anya's waiting up for me. See ya tomorrow, okay?"

"'Kay. 'Night, Xander," said Sam.

As soon as Xander was out the door, Al practically burst. "What'd you do that for, Sam? He was gonna spell it all out for you, and you send him away?"

"I'd rather hear it from Giles, okay?" said Sam irritably.

"What difference does it make?"

Sam opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He didn't have an answer…at least not one that Al would approve of. Al might be a liberal, open-minded man—about most things—but somehow Sam didn't think he'd condone the kinds of feelings he was harbouring for Giles, even if they were Buffy's feelings and not his own.

Sam decided it was time to change the subject. "So why am I here, Al?"

"Ziggy doesn't know yet," said Al, giving the hand link a whack for good measure, making it squeal in protest. "Hey, do you realize this is the first time you've leaped past…"

"…past the date of my first leap?" finished Sam.

"Okay, so you figured that out," said Al, a little crestfallen at having his thunder stolen. "Well Ziggy says that it's impossible. Apparently you designed the accelerator with fail-safes to prevent you from travelling into your own future."

"But I haven't travelled into the future—if I had, you would never have been able to find me."

"You haven't travelled into my future, true, but you have travelled into your own. Technically, you ceased to exist in our timeline when you stepped into the quantum accelerator."

"That makes no sense," Sam argued.

"Hey! Don't look at me, kid. You're the one who designed the damn thing. The point is, Ziggy had a real tough time locating you. She keeps going on about a convergence of conflicting timelines over Sunnydale in October, 2001."

"And what exactly does that mean?" asked Sam.

"Hell if I know," answered Al. "But it's got Ziggy's virtual panties in a twist."

"Well tell Ziggy to untwist them," said Sam, losing his patience. "We need answers here—if you haven't noticed, this leap is beyond weird, Al."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do," said Al. "In the meantime, try and squeeze as much as you can out of this Giles guy. What? What are you smiling about?"

"Nothing," said Sam, quickly wiping the grin off his face. "Just…tell Ziggy to hurry, okay?"

With a brief nod of acknowledgement, Al jabbed a finger at the hand link and the imaging chamber door appeared. Al stepped into the light and was gone.

Sam was having a nightmare—the most realistic and horrifying nightmare of his life. He was standing in a field of corpses, bodies strewn over every inch of ground, countless pairs of sightless eyes staring up at him, revealing their last moments of terror.

Sam wasn't alone. Facing him across the field was a slim, blond man in a long leather duster. But not a man…a vampire like the one he'd encountered in the alley. The vampire's yellow eyes were fixed on him as his blood-caked lips parted to speak…

"Buffy."

Sam tried to run, but his feet wouldn't obey him. The vampire leered at him, then suddenly, he looked human—smooth features, normal teeth, cold, blue eyes.

"Buffy?"

The voice hadn't come from the vampire, Sam realized. In fact, the voice wasn't part of the dream at all. Someone was trying to wake him up, but he couldn't open his eyes. He struggled to get out of the nightmare, wading through dead bodies, the vampire at his heels.

"Buffy! Buffy, wake up!"

Sam felt a gentle tapping on his cheek and his eyes flew open at last, banishing the dark images of his nightmare to whatever crevice of his mind they had crawled out of.

"Giles!" said Sam. He tried to sit up in bed, but he was overcome with dizziness and he fell back against his pillow again.

"Shhh…take it easy," said Giles soothingly.

"I was having a nightmare," Sam explained, and rubbed his temples to stave off the pounding in his head. "But it was more than a nightmare…it was like it was really happening. And I couldn't wake up."

"One of your prophetic dreams?" asked Giles. Sam must not have been able to mask his confusion, because Giles immediately guessed the truth. "You have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" he asked, but he was more concerned than angry.

Sam was about to bluff his way out of it, and then he remembered he didn't have to. He had an easy out—Giles had already suggested the possibility of amnesia. So instead, Sam nodded apologetically.

"What, exactly, do you remember?" asked Giles.

Sam decided the best tactic was to stick to the truth as much as possible. "I know I'm the slayer, and you're my watcher. And I figured out that it was a vampire that attacked me, but I'm a little fuzzy on the rest."

Giles got up and started pacing. And when that didn't do the trick, he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave his glasses a thorough cleaning.

"So you've lost the part of your memory that deals with slaying, and judging by how slowly you're healing, we can assume that you've lost your powers as well. But we won't know to what extent until we run some tests."

Sam didn't like the sound of that, but he smiled weakly and nodded anyways.

"Tomorrow morning, when you're feeling up to it, come by the Magic Box, alright?" asked Giles.

Great, Sam thought. Not only were there vampires and super powers, there was magic, too? But again, Sam simply smiled as best he could and nodded.

"Good," said Giles. "Then tomorrow we'll start from the beginning." Giles smiled reassuringly at him, and Sam immediately felt more at ease.

"Okay. Goodnight, Giles," he said.

"Goodnight, Buffy," Giles replied, and he clicked off the light on his way out.