Disclaimer: Only the story is mine – I'm sure Joss doesn't want it anyway - and of course Buffy and the gang belong to Joss and the WB.

Rating: R, I'm guessing, for bad language and adult themes.

Dedication: To the reviewers – thanks for sticking with me this far, and I hope some of you are interested enough to come back to the tale!

Author's Note: Chapter 7. All of this is strictly A/U, of course, as Better Angels was A/U to begin with.

There is Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.

Dawn and Joyce both stared at Faith, equally confused. After a long moment of silence, Faith repeated herself. "She's supposed to be your daughter."

Dawn stared angrily at her sister. "What the hell is wrong with you? What do you mean, I was supposed to be her daughter?"

Joyce looked at Dawn, then back at Faith. "I have to second her question. What is wrong with you?"

"Joyce-Mrs. Summers – just listen to me. I know it's not easy to hear or accept, but I can explain if you'll let me. If we can just come in for a second-"

"No, I don't think so. I think you should get off my porch before I call the police."

"Okay, fine. We'll discuss it out here, then. You had a daughter named Buffy, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And at her fourth birthday party, she tripped on a loose piece of carpet and fell down the stairs. You took her to the emergency room, and while they were examining her a tired intern came out of another exam room and mistook you for another family. He told you she was dead."

Dawn and Joyce stared at Faith in amazement. "Yes," said Joyce, the confusion apparent in her voice. "That's right, but how did you know that?"

"Because I remember you telling the story." Faith held up her hand to forestall Joyce's objections. "I know exactly what this sounds like – bullshit – but I'm telling you the truth. If you'll let us inside, I can explain everything to you…well, almost everything."

Frowning, Joyce thought for a long moment before stepping back and allowing the two girls in.

"Alright," said Faith as she flopped down on Joyce's couch. "Here's the deal, beginning to end, so no interruptions." She looked over at Dawn, who was still standing at the entrance to the living room. "Dawnie, you might as well come in too – you're not going to want to hear some of this, but you need to. I would have told you everything earlier, but there was no time, and I only wanted to tell this story once. So here goes:

Dawn is not my sister. Dawn's not actually anyone's sister. About a month ago, I was fighting this demon – big and red, I don't know what it was called – and it hit me. Cut me open, as a matter of fact. I really didn't think much of it – been cut before, after all – but it turned out this wasn't garden variety. The claw it cut me with carried some kind of hallucinogen, and it messed me up pretty bad for a while. I killed the thing, and Dawn got me back to the hotel, but for the rest of the day I just laid in bed, with the shakes and shivers and all that crap. Most interesting side effect, though, was that there was times Dawn just wasn't there. I could hear her talking to me, but I couldn't see a thing.

Even after I recovered, the feeling never went away. I'd look at the few pictures of me and her we kept with us, and she'd fade in an out of them like a cheap TV signal. I thought maybe I was going crazy, so I went to see a seer – normally I don't have a lot of patience for the sideshow garbage these guys do, but the demons in town seemed kind of in awe of the guy, so I figured what the hell, seems like a good idea now. So I went and saw him. He took one look at me and invited me in – no appointment or nothing and there was a dozen other things waiting to see him, but none of them complained. They looked afraid of me, actually. And given that I was the slayer, I didn't think any more of that.

He takes me in, and at first I figured it was the bunch of crap I'd been expecting – there was a crappy lookin' crystal ball, the bead curtain, all that junk. But as I went to sit down he shakes his head at me. "Not here," he says. "Not for you." And he leads me into this back room, full of weird junk – jars with heads in 'em, all kinds of stuff – and tells me to sit down at this little kitchen table. I did, and he sat down across from me and took my hand. I damn near hit him, but he just smiled at me and I stopped – no look on anyone's face ever made me stop like that. He looked me up and down and said "it's unfortunate, my darling child."

"I'm not your child," I said.

He just smiled again, and again I stopped. "You know she's not your sister," he says. I nodded. "It was not supposed to be this way," he says, his eyes gettin' sad. "This burden was not meant to be yours."

"What burden?"

"The girl – Dawn – was meant to be entrusted to another. The other Slayer."

"What is she?"

"The key."

"The key to what?"

"The future. There is a creature – you know him, he is tattooed and walks like a man – and he will bring about the future's end if he is not stopped. The slayer – the other – was supposed to do so."

"If the slayer was supposed to stop it, then what does Dawn have to do with anything?"

"She is the only person on Earth immune to its effects. The slayer's job was to protect the key until it could defeat the creature."

"Okay…I think I'm following you. But what's the deal with my remembering her – her being my sister? And why could I suddenly see through the whole thing?"

"The key was energy – it needed to be hidden, disguised – so it was forged into a person. And the slayer needed a reason to protect it. So a spell was cast to reform the memories of the slayer's life to include the key. But there was a complication no-one could have foreseen."

"The slayer died."

"Yes."

"Was it this creature?"

"We do not know. But it required sudden adjustment of the spell to fit your memories instead."

"That's why it's goin' screwy."

"Yes. The implantation was not perfect, and still contained memories created for the original target."

"And why could I see through it all of a sudden?"

"The demon you fought – the drug its' claw contained was the carrier of a powerful mystical agent. It altered your consciousness enough that you could see through the spell surrounding the key. Even once its effects wore off, your mind couldn't go back to believing the spell once you'd seen through it."

So then I asked him what I could do. He looked at me and shook his head. "Protect her," he says. "The creature will raise an army to kill her, for he cannot do so himself. It falls to you, I'm sorry to say, to shield her from his armies until she can destroy the creature itself."

"So on a scale of one to 'oh, shit,' how bad is the army he's raising?"

"The worst of the worst. Creatures not seen on Earth since the beginning of days."

"So, 'oh, shit' then. Is there someplace I can hide Dawn? Someplace she'll be safe?"

The seer thought for a while – long enough I thought maybe he'd fallen asleep on me, actually – and then gave me an address. This address. He said there was still a part of your daughter in Dawn and that you might be able to offer her safe haven if I could get you here undetected. And that's why we're here.

Joyce thought for a long moment before she shook her head. "No."

"No? What the hell do you mean, no?"

"I'm sorry, young lady, but I simply can't accept that story. And even if I could, I still couldn't take her in. You're saying that there's an army of…things after her, and some thing so dangerous only this teenage girl can stop her. And you would ask me to protect her from an army, and to accept her as my own daughter? I'm sorry – I've lost my only daughter, and I wasn't looking to adopt another one."

"Fine," Faith snarled, grabbing Dawn – still in shock from her revelations – and heading for the front door. She turned the knob, and they'd made it a few steps before the Turok Han that had been waiting outside jumped her. It knocked her flat and turned toward Dawn. "Joyce!" Faith screamed. "Keep her out of the way – please!" She rose and jumped on the Turok Han's back, holding it firmly around the neck as Joyce pulled Dawn behind her, with her back to the house's outside wall.

Faith continued to grapple the vampire as a taxi pulled up on the street behind her. She didn't notice the two people running toward her – but she did notice the man, faster than any human she'd ever seen, running from around the far side of the house. He threw himself into the fray, raining blows down on the Turok Han as the two people from the taxi dove into the uber-vampire low, chopping it down hard at the knees.

Author's Note: The next update won't take nearly as long as this one. Promise!