Summary: The Battle of Sunnydale was lost, The First was slowly taking over the world and the Scoobies were dead. Dawn Summers makes a wish to D'Hoffryn to go back and change how it all goes in the hopes of saving those she loves.

A/U: Starting in season 2 and onwards.

Pairings: Dawn/Faith, Buffy/OC, Giles/Jenny Calendar, Xander/Anya (trying to figure out if I should go with her canon depowering or some other way to get her paired with Xander), Willow/Tara.

Disclaimer: Disney owns Buffy

Author's Note: Just a word of warning there could be some cuss words here and there, I will try minimize that as much as I can given that I am giving this a T rating.

Prologue

June 15, 2009 - Friday

Dawn looked at the grimy, cracked porcelain of the sink and the water running from the faucet. Instinctively she looked up for a mirror over the sink but there wasn't one.

Dawn sighed as she remembered that it had been taken away the first day she had been there. She had been told it was so she didn't cut her wrists. She turned off the water with a sigh. She had been here for five years since about a year after that battle with First's Turok-Hans in the basement of Sunnydale High. She looked at her cell, bars on the two high windows barely allowed the tiniest bit of light from the outside. Ten-foot stone walls all around. A steel door with rivets driven through it and neither handle nor knob nor even keyhole on this side.

Dawn had known the day that she had been thrown in the cell that it had been built for a Slayer, whoever would have been the last remaining Slayer alive. Lucky, or unlucky, for her she had been called the day Faith had died protecting her from a vampire.

Dawn had spent the years with endless days and nights alone, with only the four walls and the way she kept her body toned and fit. The Bringers fed her, kept her alive, but nothing more. Only the toning of her body kept her sane, that focus on the day she would escape and begin her plan to call on D'Hoffryn and utilizing a wish hopefully go back in time and change it all.

And in time, even that focus blurred and there was only the routine of exercise. All she could do was pace the cell. Work her body. Train for the day the Bringers let their guard down.

Days passed. She trained and slept and washed and trained. They brought food before dawn and after dusk, always armed, always in groups of three or more. Made her stand in the far corner, afraid to have her come too close, as though she were a wild animal.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Perhaps two weeks later, they brought the girl.

It was dark when they threw her into the cell, bruised and bloody but conscious. Alive. The girl was a brunette, light skinned and with blue eyes. Tall, but young. Even through the blood, when she looked up with her defiant, crazy eyes, Dawn could see that she was just a kid. Not more than sixteen, maybe less.

Dawn could feel it within her, this girl was a Slayer. She wondered how that was possible. She was supposed to have been the last. They kept her alive so another could never be called, ever. It had to be the Powers That Be, that was the only explanation on why another Slayer had been called while she was still alive.

"Oh my God," the girl whispered, voice cracking. "You're not. . . you're not Faith Lehane."

"She died," Dawn said. "I'm Dawn."

"The other Slayer's sister," the girl said. "We thought you had died and she was in here."

"Who's we?" asked Dawn.

"Me and my Watcher," said the girl.

"And who are you?"

"I'm August," the girl said. She wiped blood from under her nose but it was still bleeding. "I'm a Slayer now."

"Faith and Buffy are dead, that's why they kept me locked up in here. I was called when Faith died. According to the First it was keeping me alive till its takeover was complete so no other Slayers could be called. Once it controlled the world then and only then would I die. So how were you called?"

"My Watcher, she harnessed old magics that had been used to call the First Slayer to call a new one."

"Willow," said Dawn as realization set in. Willow was the only person she knew powerful enough to be able to perform the spell that would call a Slayer. "She's alive?"

"She is," said August. "Have you been here all along? All this time?"

"All this time," Dawn told her. She turned her back on the girl and began to pace the room. "And now I've got company."

"But haven't you tried to —"

Dawn spun to face her, nearly growling. "Every day. What the hell do you think I am? I'm a Slayer, just like you. How much territory does the First control?"

"All of the Hellmouths and at least a thirty-mile radius around each one. So, there's no way out of here?" August asked, her voice taking on a kind of quiet desperation, as if she had surrendered a part of herself. "You've tried everything?"

"Five years is a long time," Dawn told her. "Maybe with two of us now it'd be different, but I figure the First will just send more Bringers now to bring the meals."

"Then I guess we don't have any choice," August said softly. Her eyes filled with moisture and she wiped at them bitterly. Then she took a breath and steadied herself, a grim expression on her face.

"It sucks. It truly does," Dawn said, hearing the pain in her own voice. The despair. "But until they get stupid, or let down their guard, there's nothing we can do."

August pushed a lock of her short, black hair behind her ears. She would not turn her iron-gray eyes up to look at Dawn. "There's something I can do," she said softly.

One eyebrow raised; Dawn studied her. "What's that? What can you do?"

Finally, August met her gaze. Her soft eyes had hardened again. Crazy, defiant eyes. Eyes cold and decisive.

"I can kill you."

The stone walls of the cell echoed back the words, and then silence descended. No noise came from the corridor beyond the steel door.

Dawn tensed, taut muscles bunched, and she rose on the balls of her feet. Five years she had been in this fifteen-foot square, a chamber of rock and metal constructed with the express purpose of keeping her within. Five years she had honed her body until it was a coiled spring, a scalpel, a bullwhip ... all of that and more. When the Bringers came to bring food or clothing or bedding, they came in force, with stun guns, and they used them. In all the times she had tried to escape and failed, all the dreams she had of combat, never had she imagined that the first threat she would face as a Slayer would come from another Slayer.

August, sensed the alarm in Dawn, and her stance altered slightly, subtly.

"You're not thinking clearly," Dawn said, a rasp in her voice. She had used it so little in recent years.

August seemed to quiver, almost humming with energy like a high-tension wire. Her tongue snaked out and wetted her lips. "My thinking is perfectly clear, Summers. It's your head that's not screwed on straight here. Look around. You're a zoo animal. They've kept you like a tiger in a cage, and you've let them."

"For more than three years, I tried to escape every time the door was opened," Dawn said. "They took to stunning me on principle. After a while I decided to study them instead, try to figure out the psychology of my jailers. Within six months I knew them all, their vulnerabilities, what would work to distract them. Just from listening and watching. Two days before I planned to make my escape, they were all replaced. I believe the First guessed what I was doing."

"Exactly my point," August said grimly. She shook her hands out as she glared at Dawn. "You're a pet. Your master knows you too well."

Dawn froze. "I don't have a master."

"Look around. They might as well have one of those little hamster wheels in here. Or a Habitrail."

Dawn stepped slightly back from August and kept the girl in her peripheral vision, then did indeed look around. Though the room was cold stone, there were several throw rugs on the floor. A plastic rack upon which were piled the blue jeans, white tanks, and sweatshirts they supplied her with.

There was her metal-framed bed—all welded to keep her from using part of it as a weapon, and a steel table bolted to the floor. Nothing wood, of course, for wood could splinter, and splintered wood could kill her captors.

"I don't see what you see. They needed me alive to make sure another Slayer wasn't called," Dawn said. "Food and water, clothing."

August shook her head. "All this time, though. If you realized that you couldn't escape, you could have found a way to force them to kill you. Could have killed yourself, if that didn't work. Shatter that porcelain sink, use it to slash your wrists, bleed out here on the floor. But you didn't. Why didn't you?"

Dawn shook her head. "That's your solution? I had a plan," she admitted. "If I could get out, I would make a wish to a vengeance demon. The wish the way I worked it would send me back in time, then I would change the way it went."

August moved. With a single, fluid motion, so fast Dawn barely had time to react, she stepped into the space between them and lashed out with a savage backhand. The blow struck Dawn's cheek hard, but she rolled with it, turned in an instant and readied herself for another attack.

None came.

Instead, August only stood and stared at her, face reddened with rage. Tears began to stream down her face. "How can you be so arrogant?" she demanded. A lock of her hair had fallen across her eyes but she did not move it. "You're a Slayer, not the Slayer. You're not what's important. The only thing that matters is that there be someone out there to fight them. If I could get out, I would make a wish to a vengeance demon. The wish the way I worked it would send me back in time, then I would change the way it went. That's what you said. How do you even know there is any vengeance demons left?"

Dawn shook her head. "No. Listen. Now that we're both in here, we'll find a way. Before they figure out what it takes to contain us both."

August laughed bitterly and wiped away a tear. "You've been here five years! We can't get out, Dawn. The only way for there to be a new Slayer, out there, fighting the darkness, is for one of us to die. If you're not willing to do what has to be done... I will."

The dry shuffle of their feet upon the stone floor was an eerie whisper. The two Slayers began to circle again.

"I won't kill you, August. But I'm not going to let you kill me, either," said Dawn.

The girl's face darkened further. Fresh tears sprang to her cheeks. The teenager beneath the Slayer's facade was revealed.

"Damn you!" August cried, the words heavy with the weight of her pain and grief. "Do you think I want this? I've got people I love out there. Dying every day, trying to keep the vampires from spreading. Someone's got to protect them."

"Then help me," said Dawn. "If we can find a way, I can make my wish—"

But the conversation was over. August glared at her coldly, now, and wiped the last tear from her red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were pressed together in anguish, and she shuddered once, then was still. The girl dropped into a battle stance.

"August—"

"Quiet," the girl snapped.

August leaped at her in a spinning kick aimed directly at her head. Dawn, utilizing the Key, opened a portal behind her. She couldn't portal out of the cell, the First had been smart and had the Bringers erect some kind of shield to block her use of the Key. She stepped through the portal to the other side of the chamber.

August not expecting the portal had hit the wall at full force. As Dawn moved in on her, the girl rolled, swung her foot out and swept Dawn's legs out from under her.

Even as she fell, Dawn opened another portal below her and fell into it. She reappeared several feet away on the other side of the room., then leaped to her feet only inches shy of her bed.

August was already there. As Dawn came up, the younger Slayer snapped a side kick at her chest. Dawn could not avoid it. Something in her chest cracked and all the breath went from her lungs. She crashed into the plastic shelving holding her clothes and it splintered and broke apart beneath her.

Her rib cage grated painfully as she moved, but Dawn rolled up against the wall, amidst the wreckage of the shelves. A shard of plastic pierced her side, but she ignored the lancing pain, so superficial compared to the burning in her chest when she breathed.

Mouth still set in that grim line, eyes red with tears fallen and unfallen, August went for a simple kick.

Dawn had counted on her believing that her chest injury had caused her to cower against the wall to make herself less vulnerable. August was young. She bought it. With an open hand, she stopped the kick mid-swing and shoved August backward. Braced against the wall, Dawn had enough support to knock her off her feet. With the enhanced strength of the Slayer, she pushed the younger Slayer with such force that August flailed at the air, unable to spin out of the fall.

"You can't beat me," said Dawn. "We're evenly matched as Slayers. While I can't use the Key to escape the room, I can use it to continuously avoid you. We could be at this for the rest of our lives." She watched August warily, her eyes wide, imploring. "It shouldn't be like this."

August shook off the blow to her head from the fall. She would not raise her eyes to look at Dawn, only crouched there for a moment on hands and knees. "No. It shouldn't," she agreed. "But it is."

August shot up from the floor, Dawn opened a portal beneath the younger Slayer who fell into it. Dawn had created the portal to be a loop so that August continuously fell. "Stop this. If I have to, I'll leave you free falling forever, but I don't want to have to do that."

"I won't stop," August vowed. "One of us is going to die." Despite Dawn's attempt to set up the continuous free fall. She had made one mistake. August grabbed the nearby table and stopped herself from falling. She rushed at Dawn, who dove into the air, executed a somersault over the girl's head and landed on both feet. In one fluid motion, she shot a hard kick up at the younger Slayer's head. August tried to dodge. She was a scant heartbeat too slow.

There was no time for Dawn to even try to abort the attack. The kick caught the other girl in the side of the neck, just where her jaw met her neck. With a wet snap, her spinal column broke right at the top, and her corpse tumbled backward with the force of the kick and rolled in a heap across the stone floor.

August did not move, not even a twitch, Dawn knew she was dead. "No," she said. Hot tears came into her eyes, but her grief was quickly overcome by anger. "Dammit, no!" she shouted. "I'm sorry, Buffy."

New hatred welled up within her, bearing a razor edge sharper than anything she had felt in years.

The Bringers and Turok-Han had taken those she had cared about the most from her. They had imprisoned her. But they had never been able to take even a sliver of her hope and her faith.

Until now.

Teeth gritted together, a violent surge of adrenaline making Dawn bounce slightly on her feet. She dragged August around near the front of the cell, only inches from the door. It would hit her when it opened.

Where August's corpse had lain, she knelt, took a breath, and whacked her nose with an open hand. She let the cry of pain, and sagged a bit. Then she bent over and let blood flow onto the floor. After a couple of minutes, she rolled up the back of her shirt and felt for the puncture wound left in her side by the broken plastic that had impaled her. The wound had already begun to heal.

Dawn used her fingernail to dig it open.

Again, she bled.

But the loss of blood did not weaken her. For it was not her own lifeblood that drove her now, but the desire to change not only her family and friend's fates but August's as well.

She dropped the plastic dagger to the floor a foot away, then lay down on her side, right cheek already sticky where it touched the edge of the puddle of her blood.

Outside in the corridor stood five Bringers. They could smell the blood inside the room, the scent seeping beneath the steel door.

The Bringer at the door took a few seconds to unlock the door, then disengage the three main bolts. He slammed back the bolts on the top and bottom of the door, sliding them abruptly out of their metal casings. He shoved the door open with his shoulder, tensed for an attack. The steel door swung eight or nine inches, then hit an obstruction with a dull thump.

The Bringer took a half-step back and prepared to defend himself. Nothing happened, and after a moment, he pushed at the door again, put his weight behind it, and it opened slowly as the obstruction slid out of the way. He looked down to the still form of the teenaged Slayer on the floor, then back at the room. The door was still only partially open, and he could not see Dawn anywhere. He extended his arm through the open door, stun-prod in hand.

The Bringer tagged the downed Slayer with the prod. Electricity sizzled through her with a crackle and the smell of sizzling hair. The girl did not so much as twitch. There were none of the muscle spasms that electrocution brought.

The girl looked badly beaten. There had been a knock-down, drag-out brawl inside that cell. One Slayer was dead. But what of the other one?

The Bringers pushed the door with all the strength they could muster. Something broke in the corpse on the floor when the door collided with it, but it slid open another half-foot.

Just enough for the Bringer at the door to see Dawn lying in a pool of her own blood, bruised and beaten, throat slit, eyes wide and cold and staring right at him. He studied Dawn's eyes, the haunting eyes that had promised him death so many times. There was nothing there now. Like tarnished marbles, they were.

The Bringer who had been at the door swung his leg to kick Dawn. His boot thunked into her flesh... moving flesh.

Dawn closed herself around his leg, crawling halfway up it, and snapped it at the knee. As the Bringer went down, he felt the prod tugged from his grasp, and then Dawn, stood over him.

Dawn turned at the others and smiled. With the speed she had gained as a Slayer she attacked. One was electrocuted and then decapitated. The other two were disarmed before she broke them.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Exhilaration shot through Dawn as she rushed down the corridor toward a red, glowing exit sign. The sign itself—an indication that this place had originally been used by humans—made the whole scene almost surreal, and she felt giddy with her freedom. She shoved through the door at the end of the hall. It swung too wide, and would have clanged off the wall if she had not caught it quickly enough.

A momentary pause to be certain no one was near, and then she started up a set of stairs in front of her. A long oak railing was bolted to the wall. Dawn stopped halfway up and lashed out with a snap kick that cracked the railing in two. The halves dangled down, tearing at their moorings. Another kick, aimed at one of the sagging halves, and a fifteen-inch length of splintered oak clattered to the stairs. She snatched it; it should be good incase she came upon any Turok-Han. She continued upward.

There was a door at the top of the stairs. As she raced toward it, the door began to open. A Bringer stepped into the stairwell. Dawn pivoted and kicked at the Bringer knocking him backwards through the door into the corridor. She hauled the door open and pursued him.

Expressionless, Dawn backhanded him. He tried to block the blow, but she was too fast for him. Dawn saw the Bringer's knife and took it out of his belt and stabbed him with it. He crumpled to the floor.

From around a corner off to her left came the sound of feet. Dawn took off down the corridor, away from her pursuers. The structure she was in appeared to have once housed offices, for there were doors and glass windows looking inward all along the hall. Each office was dark and lifeless inside. The hallway itself had no external windows, however. At least not here.

Up ahead, the hall turned right. Dawn rounded the corner just as she heard shouts behind her. The Bringers had seen her. That was all right, though. She could practically smell the outdoors now. Nothing was going to stand in her way.

Even as that thought skittered across her brain, she looked up. At the end of the hall in front of her, the structure opened up into a wide lobby area. The door was all glass. The walls on either side of the door were glass. All of it was painted black.

A pair of Turok-Han stood blocking the door. "You can get away from the door, or you can be the door," she told them grimly.

In unison, they prepared to fight her. Behind her, Dawn heard shouts as her pursuers caught sight of her again. Ahead, the door sentries stood firm.

Dawn rushed headlong at them without breaking stride. She was three feet away when they lunged for her. Dawn opened a portal and the Turok-Han fell through it and onto the Bringers behind her knocking them to the floor.

Dawn stepped calmly out into the sunshine, sneakers crunching shattered glass.

It was a beautiful Southern California day, the kind of glorious day she had always taken for granted growing up. This was, after all, what California was all about. Today, however, she reveled in it. Birds sang. A sparrow glided across the street in front of her. The breeze carried sweet smells to her, like springtime, though she was not sure of the season.

Free.

Dawn opened a portal straight to Willow. She explained what had happened and told Willow her plan. They got to work on the wording of the wish and when that was done, they called upon D'Hoffryn to grant it.