Standard disclaimers apply.

-Dawn-

She stared. Then she gaped. She thought about switching it up with some goggling, but decided to babble instead.

"You want to save the world? But you're vampires, and not even 'chipped and forced to get along with humans' vampires like Spike, or souled vampires like Angel! Well, unless you do have souls, is there a lot of soul having in the future?"

The dark haired Spike gave a slight sneer of disgust, while Xander responded more overtly. "Souls? Ew! Yuck, we leave that to Grandpa Brood Boy, thank you very much! It's just, you know, the world." He squared his shoulders dramatically and did a not horrible impression of The Tick. "That's where I keep all my STUFF!"

Dawn giggled, but then was filled with confusion. "I remember getting you that box set for your birthday one year, but obviously I didn't... but you still had it and my Xander still has it..." The intellectual knowledge that she wasn't real had been hard but somehow meeting people who weren't part of the spell was worse. She was surprised when a familiar, if less well muscled, arm went around her shoulder.

"Hey, Dawn-a-matrix, don't sweat it. I mean, memory and reality are pretty weird anyway - like the Matrix has come out already, hasn't it? Living in a world that wasn't real, but it was, in that everyone was still experiencing it... I didn't get that set for my birthday, so I bought it for myself with Christmas money... but your Xander has months of extra memories of watching it, and the memory of someone paying enough attention to what he wanted to get it. Ya know?"

She smiled. Older and younger at the same time, soulless and demonically possessed, her Xander was still awesome. "Yeah, I get it."

She glanced over at the two Spikes to find them deep in a whispered conversation. Or possibly argument, it was hard to say. Finally her Spike nodded sharply and turned to her. "Alright, Nibblet, obviously it's safe for you back at the Magic Box, so Xan here is gonna walk you back over while me and... er, me, go take care of our little Hellgod problem."

Before she could express her disbelief that Glory had gone from beating him practically to dust to becoming something two of him could 'take care of' Xander had launched his own objections.

"Whoa, without me? No way! If there's gonna be a god-kill, I want in on it! And she messed with my sire... I mean you... who isn't really my sire but still feels like it, and I have a really strong desire to pulp that bitch's face..."

The other Spike sighed and beckoned him over. "Xan-pet, that's why you can't come. Blondie here knows where we can find the other bloke, and if we play it smooth this can be a quick job, but it has to be clean and cold. You're too upset, and I understand why, but it has to be this way." The younger vampire gave a truly adorable pout and got a cuff to the head for his troubles. "Besides, don't forget we're on the clock here for our world too. We deal with Glory while you get Red and her human version figuring out how to bring Key energy back with us without hurting the snack pack."

"Can you really..." Dawn was embarrassed by the childlike sound of her own voice, but she had been scared for so long. "You'll be able to get rid of her?"

The blond Spike smiled at her - not a smirk or a sneer but a reassuring smile. "Seems the 'Fang-tastic Four' had some intel in the future that even the Wanker's Council isn't privy to. Glory has a... we'll call it a resting state that she's vulnerable in. There's a spell that prevents humans from learning about it or remembering it if they do, but conveniently enough, we aren't human so we can use the info."

"You'll be careful, still?"

"Always, pet, always."

The two Spikes headed down to the crypt's sewer access and Xander grinned and offered his arm. "Come on, Dawn, on the way back to the shop you can tell me all about the mess Spike and Dru would have made of their unlives without me and Wills around to keep an eye on them."

"Really? Captain Hairgel smashed the thing? What a loser!"

"Well, I dunno," Dawn licked her ice cream cone and considered. "I think sending it to him in the first place was kinda dumb. I mean, what if walking in the sun made him perfectly happy and then we've got Invulnerable Angelus on our hands."

Seeing a vampire shudder in horror was almost as odd as seeing a vampire walking in the sun eating ice cream. "Okay, point there. Very good point. Spike swears that before the curse he was, you know, a bastard but not a lunatic. It took us a few decades, but we even got Dru convinced that 'Daddy' wasn't ever coming back the way she remembered him and we were better off with Broody Smurf."

She was still giggling at that image when they walked into the Magic Box, to find the rest of the Scoobies in full research mode.

"...where they're wearing them, but is there some kind of spell that will just pull all gems to you?"

"Oooh, that's a good one!" Xander left her side to hop up on the counter beside Buffy's book and look at it. "The evil lawyer guys tried something similar to that once, only it was basically a nudity spell." He grinned at the Slayer's discomfort and Dawn couldn't help but giggle. "I so wanted Wills to learn it, but Spike and Deadboy were all 'rush rush, find the conduit, stop the apocalypse' and we didn't have time to keep some of them alive to ask about it."

"Whoa, time out!" The human Xander looked at his double with great suspicion. "Why would you guys be working with Captain Forehead and stopping the end of the world?"

"Wait, I know this one..." Buffy glared at the vampire beside her and not so subtly moved between him and her sister, causing rolled eyes from the latter. "You like dog racing and Manchester United too?"

"They actually outlawed dog racing a few decades back, and I'm more of a Lakers fan, but yeah, what can I say?" He grinned and began to sing happily, "We love the whole world, and all the people in it, boom de yada, boom de... and that commercial hasn't come out yet, has it?" At the various confused head shakes he flopped backwards onto the counter. "Man, I'm so used to my references being too old, and I go back in time to find they're too new."

Dawn patted his shoulder sympathetically, causing Buffy to physically move her back away from the vamp. "Little late for worrying, I just walked across town with the guy... Anyway, he and the other Spike need some of my Key power to save the world in their time, and you're supposed to help figure out how."

Willow promptly launched into some wicca-babble and was soon joined by a holographic techno-wicca counterpoint. Giles merely looked suspiciously at the vampire. "I see. And as for Glory and the threat to our world now?"

"Ben's Glory!" Everyone turned to the human Xander with varying expressions of confusion and dawning understanding. "Ben is Glory and Glory is Ben. That's what vamp me and his Creepy Wrong Touch Sire were trying to tell us!"

Dawn missed the ensuing discussion, only catching, "It's totally a right touch!" as the memory of talking to Ben in the hospital then being threatened by Glory suddenly clicked together. He'd seemed so nice and he had been Glory's secret identity all along?

And now, it seemed, he was dead, and Glory with him. Should she celebrate or mourn? She felt Tara's arm slip around her shoulders and let the gentle witch support her as she broke down in tears of combined relief, sorrow and anger.

It was two more hours before the future Spike sauntered back into the Magic Box looking insufferably smug. Two hours of esoteric magic talk and the vampy Willow replacing her hologram with a 3-D chart of some kind that Willow, Tara and Giles poked at and discussed while vampy Xander looked bored, Buffy paced and human Xander tried to keep Anya from suggesting sex things.

At one point she had lost track of 'Xanpet' only to have him return from the back room of the shop and skirt the bright patch from the windows to stand beside her. "Listen, I, um, I need you to do me a favor," he'd said quietly, and pressed a small object into her hand. It was one of the jewelry type boxes Giles kept for customers who were buying gifts, and had what might have been links from the punching bag chain twisted tightly around it to prevent any casual snooping - not that Dawn was a snoop!

"Once me and Spike are gone, could you give this to, well, your Spike? It's... I just want him to have it. To, you know, remember me by."

"You really love your Spike, don't you?" She tucked it in her pocket after a quick look around to make sure Buffy wasn't observing them.

A familiar grin, with only a hint of evil. "My Spike, your Spike... I think if I went back in time far enough to meet William before he was turned I would love him too. He's just all, you know, loveable."

Dawn laughed, and would have agreed, but Buffy had finally noticed them and come over to protect her virtue or whatever.

Now she looked up at the dramatic entrance. "Where's Spike? Um, I mean our Spike." The sun was low enough that he could have made it in under the shadows of surrounding buildings. Glory hadn't hurt him again, had she?

"He's fine, Snackpack, that sodding chip gave him a good hit when he went for the human version of the bint, so we looked around the storage rooms for something to help him feel better and he went home to sleep it off."

Buffy got her typical superior disgusted look. "Were you stealing blood, drugs or both?"

"Right, guess we should have gone around to Emergency for a transfusion and a script instead, except that, oh no, we've got no heartbeats, to say nothing of insurance." Overtly turning his back on her, he embraced his Xander and allowed a thorough injury check. "Went like clockwork, luv, the chip blast was the most either of us got hurt." Sniffing the air, he gave an indulgent smile. "Can tell me what you've been up to and take your punishment when we get home, yeah?"

Snuggling under the duster, which should have been impossible at their relative sizes, the other vamp snickered. "What, that ice cream place I remember from High School is still around, like I could have resisted!"

Buffy stalked up behind them, holding Mr Pointy in an ironically pointless way. "You shouldn't turn your back on me, fangface."

Xanpet looked up long enough to roll his eyes. "Why, is it dangerous?"

"No," his human counterpart responded in his best Giles imitation, "It's just tacky! ...um, right, time stream split before that bit. There was a six inch tall fear demon, it was a thing."

While the Xanders grinned at each other, Buffy all but stomped her foot. "It is tacky! I've come close to dusting you and you were never able to kill me, so just because I can't hurt you now is no reason to disrespect me!"

Dawn drew a breath but her Xander cut her off. "Let's just put that in the 'too easy to be worth it' category, Dawnster, and see if we're ready to send our room temperature pals home, okay?"

Willow and, surprisingly, the other Willow were quick to jump on the suggestion, and in no time to speak of she was pressing a bandage to the small cut where a specially rigged 'life matrix crystal' (whatever that was) had been pushed into her flesh to draw some of her blood. Apparently, it was always the blood.

"Okay, you two kids drive safe and don't ever come back, huh?" Xander held her back from the edge of the circle where the two vampires had originally appeared and now waited to return. Vamp Xander was grinning and bouncing.

"Bye Buffster, G-man, it was great to see you again! Bye me and Wills, hope that humanity thing keeps working out for you! Thanks for the memories, Dawn-a-matrix! Bye Tara, be good to Wills! Have fun Orgasm Chick, talk Xan into that threesome - it will loosen him up! Bye-"

Spike clamped a hand firmly over his childe's mouth and nodded to the room. "Right then, thanks for the crystal, hope to never do it again. Oh and Slutty?" He grinned wolfishly as light began to swirl around them. "I could kill you as it turns out, before the Gem. Without Red and my boy, you were just another piece of Council cannon fodder. Think about it."

Xander left her side to put an arm around the Slayer. "Don't think about it, Buff. The council pretty much works for you now, and you'll never be what the other slayers were to them." Willow nodded her agreement as she joined them.

Dawn was still a little cranky about the chaperone act but gave a quick hug of her own before she walked over to Anya and let the core Scoobies do their post-apocalypse-prevention bonding. "You know, those versions of Xander and Spike were really cute together."

"Don't you think? I wish Xander would listen to my ideas about... well, I'm not supposed to about this with you, am I?"

Dawn grinned evilly. "Maybe not the specifics, but I actually had a plan to get him listening if you were interested?"

The ex-demoness' smile turned calculating. "Are you going to want pictures?"

"Only of the PG stuff."

"Oh, Giles! Why don't you go with the others back to Buffy's house and Dawn will help me lock up..."

A/N : If you don't recognize the song Vamp!Xander breaks into, google or youtube "Boom de yada Discovery Channel". I'm 95% sure on it making you smile.

A/N2 : The Hubby has a friend named Dawn who uses Dawnamatrix as a screen name and I stole it as a Xanderish pet name with a naughtier than usual twist.