Disclaimer: Of course, I own nothing. Which is a shame because I'm usually much nicer to the characters than Joss was.

Out of the Ashes

Chapter Three

Buffy woke up to the sounds of Dawn noisily making breakfast in the next room, she had never quite realized just how much noise Dawn made pouring a bowl of cereal until they moved into a tiny apartment with a kitchen directly adjacent to Buffy's bedroom.

She hadn't slept well anyway. She had tried going back to sleep after waking up heinously early from the nightmare, but it was not meant to be. The little extra sleep she had gotten was restless and filled with shadowy figures watching her from just out of her line of sight.

Buffy sighed and heaved her legs out of bed, sitting up and brushing her long hair out of her face. She padded barefoot out of her bedroom and plastered a smile on her face.

"Morning!" she said cheerily. Dawn jumped, and smiled back at Buffy guiltily, as if she'd been caught doing something she shouldn't.

"Morning!" she chirped back.

"What's up with you?" Buffy asked taking a step forward. "You seem squirrely- eugh! Dawn what are you eating?"

Dawn's cereal bowl was full of what looked like soggy brown sewage. Dawn shrugged and said "Weetabix with chocolate milk."

Buffy stared at her "Why in the world would you want to do that? It sounds disgusting." Dawn grabbed a spoon and fidgeted with it

"Well they don't have cocoa puffs in England, and hey don't knock it yet, it could be awesome!" To demonstrate her point, Dawn put a large spoonful in her mouth. Immediately a disgusted look came over face and she rushed over the sink and spat into it. She turned around wiping her mouth and looked sheepishly at Buffy. "OK, maybe not so awesome. Knock it, definitely knock it."

She looked at Buffy and frowned a little. "Are you OK?" Buffy pulled a ponytail holder off her wrist and tied her hair back, trying her best to appear nonchalant. "Of course, why wouldn't I be?"

"Well you have bags under your eyes, did you have nightmares again last night?"

Damn. Buffy was usually so careful about making sure to put on extra concealer under her eyes on the mornings after nights like that. She didn't want her sister to have to share the burden of the dreams that had been haunting her.

"No, not at all." she lied "I just didn't sleep well, I think I ate something funky that didn't agree with me." Dawn pursed her lips in disbelief but said "Alright, but you'd tell me if you were dreaming again right?"

"Absolutely." Buffy lied through her teeth. She hadn't wanted Dawn to find out about her dreams in the first place, but they would wake her up all hours of the night and her previous coping method was to pace their apartment, and that tended to wake Dawn up. Buffy had never told Dawn exactly what the dreams were about, but she knew Dawn suspected.

It was time to change the subject. And quickly.

"So" she said mock casually "Scooby meeting in an hour. And the best part? I heard Willow was back, so we should be seeing her today."

Dawn straightened up excitedly "Willow's back from Scotland? When did she get back?"

Buffy was relieved that this had successfully diverted Dawn's attention. Gratefully she answered "Just yesterday, she had Xander pick her up from the airport pretty late last night. I'll tell you though, I missed her bunches, but I'm really glad she went. She needed a vacation after everything."

Dawn hmphed loudly and her body language instantly changed from laid back to that of an angry cat. "Yeah I'm glad she went too." Dawn replied waspishly. "She deserved a looong break after what she did to her."

Buffy didn't say anything, but she knew where Dawn was coming from with this attitude. She felt the same way. The "she" that Dawn was referring to was of course Kennedy. None of the group were left with very warm feelings for her after the way her and Willow's relationship went up in flames.

After the big showdown on the Hellmouth there had been a lot to get done to rebuild the Slayer organization. Willow logically become a big part of this, her special ability to feel out the Slayers' energy was incredibly important to locating them and informing them of what had happened to them.

Surprise surprise, Kennedy didn't like it when attention was diverted from herself. Over the course of the following months she became increasingly cold to Willow who she felt was ignoring her. Things became strained between them and escalated to the point where Willow went home one night after a Scooby meeting that had run particularly late, only to catch Kennedy in bed with another woman. The bed that she and Willow shared, no less.

The worst part of this situation was that Willow catching them had been no accident, Kennedy planned the maneuver as one final play to hurt Willow. To show her that if she had been around more, this would not have happened.

After the break up, Kennedy quickly relocated back to the U.S. But the encounter had left Willow pretty torn up. To give herself time to recover she had left to stay with and observe the Scotland branch of the Slayers for two months.

Everybody had missed her of course, but they wanted Willow to take the proper amount of time to get over this, so they managed without her.

Dawn picked her cereal bowl up and aggressively scraped the mushy contents into the sink. She then straightened up and said to Buffy with clearly forced cheer. "So I guess we should get ready, can't have them scoobying without us." "Right!" Buffy responded. "Well, the meeting's in an hour. So if you start getting dressed now, we'll only be three hours late." Dawn shot her a dirty look and swung her hair over her shoulder and strode out of the room. Buffy smiled to herself. Dawn was seventeen now and she sure knew how to act like it. If not for their flat having two bathrooms, Buffy wouldn't have been able to shower for weeks.

After they'd finished getting ready forty-five minutes later, and already running late, the girls boarded the underground and were on their way. The building that currently housed the heart of the Slayer operation didn't look like anything special. It was an unimpressive two story concrete building, the first two levels of which had offices in them, and the third that they resided on. It hardly looked like the kind of place where anything mystical would happen, or be researched. But Giles had made it clear that his flat would not be available as Scooby Central again.

When Buffy and Dawn finally arrived at the building, a feeling of nervous excitemtnt had formed in Buffy's stomach. It had been a long time since she had seen her best friend and she was more than a little anxious for the reunion. They took the elevator up to the third floor and headed in through the unmarked door at the end of the hallway there. They had been inside the room exactly three seconds before they heard a squeal of "Buffy! Dawn!" and were met with the sight of the red headed witch, grinning ear to ear. With a large smile on her face Buffy ran over and hugged Willow tight. "Will! We missed you so much! You're not ever allowed to go away for so long again!" and she pulled away and fixed Willow with the most Giles-y face she could manage. Willow rolled her eyes and sighed "Oh yeah, I'm sure you guys were just falling to pieces without me." "We were!" Dawn assured her earnestly. "Xander tried his best, but he makes a sucky witch." Xander sat up in the seat at the long table he had been lounging in. "I'll have you know I'd make a great witch, erm- warlock, wizard? Magic type person anyway. All you have to do is light a few candles, speak some latin from some old books, and BOOM magic!" Dawn smirked at him "But with you there may be an actual boom, and thats usually not good." Xander shrugged "That's fair. But disregarding my mad skills, or lack of when it comes to the magic department, we're all glad that Will's back."

"Indeed" Giles agreed from his seat at the head of the table. "But I'm afraid we have little time for catching up, there's work to be done."

Buffy heaved a heavy sigh and sat down in the chair next to Xander. "Come on Giles, Willow just got home, we can't take ONE day off?"

By the stern look Giles fixed her with she assumed the answer was no.

"As much as I know we'd all like to take a day, theres something we need to look into. Vi had a slayer dream last night. Go on Vi."

Buffy turned and looked at the thin redhead who had been sitting silently at the table, and gave a little jump when Giles said her name. She was the only potential, turned slayer besides Kennedy who had stayed with the rest of the group while the others were going their separate ways all over the globe. Most of the other potentials had been placed in leadership positions in some of the busier places with demonic activity. Their experience training with both their previous watchers and with Buffy and Faith made them ideal for passing along that knowledge to other new slayers.

However Vi had opted to stay with them rather than taking over a group of her own slayers. While by no means the same shy potential they had met almost two years before, she was still somewhat unsure of herself when it came to directing others.

Still, the gang didn't mind having her around, while shy and a bit awkward, she was nice enough and what she lacked in interpersonal skills she more than made up for in her fighting ability. She had been training with Buffy for some time, and while not as good as Buffy, she could still hold her own.

Also as everybody except Vi had noticed, Andrew seemed to have taken quite a liking to her. Nerds of a feather and all that.

Andrew however was not there. A few months previously there had been some concern over how widely Buffy had become known, not just to the new slayers, but demons as well. So a few slayers who had advanced the quickest, were in key spots in the world impersonating Buffy herself.

This was useful because it kept the demons on their toes, never knowing exactly which one was her or where she was, this kept them from focusing too closely on Buffy, and also instilling fear in the demons, it gave the illusion that THE Slayer could be anywhere in the world, and kept them looking over their shoulders.

Andrew was currently the watcher over Jennifer, the slayer who was impersonating Buffy in Rome. Each impersonator was closely monitored for their safety, pretending to be Buffy Summers put a considerable price tag on their head. Andrew was with Jennifer to ensure that nobody tried to cash it in.

He stayed in touch with Vi though, who was currently looking very nervous now that she had the eyes of the room on her.

"Well," she started, sitting up in her chair "It was really weird, I've never had a dream like it before, but I- I think it was a message from the powers that be."

This caught Buffy's attention, Vi had never experienced a Slayer dream before, or if she had she never told anyone. She looked positively unnerved now, which Buffy could understand. There's nothing like getting a message from the PTB beamed directly into your head to wig anyone out.

"Why do you think it was a message and not just a regular dream?" Dawn asked as she pulled a chair up to the table and sat down with Willow. Vi opened her mouth to answer and then closed it again, looking puzzled. "Well I- I mean it was-" she looked sheepishly down at her clasped hands on the table. "I don't really know how to describe it." she finally said.

Buffy could understand that, it was difficult for the others to understand, but she knew that when you have a Slayer dream you just know.

"It's ok." she jumped in "You don't have to explain, but what message?"

Vi looked at her gratefully. "Well that's just it really. I always thought that Slayer dreams were supposed to be enlightening you know? Point you in the way of what you're supposed to do. But-" she faltered looking at Buffy apprehensively.

"What? Buffy asked impatiently, why was Vi looking at her that way?

"Well it was just really vague, he only said one thing "Get ready." She looked around at everyone. "I mean I know it sounds lame, but I just got this feeling that this was really important, But I don't know what it means."

"But get ready for what?" Willow asked sounding puzzled.

"I have no idea." Vi said "He just said 'Get ready.' And then, 'We'll be in touch.'"

Nobody said anything for a moment, they all looked as confused as Buffy was more annoyed than confused, it was typical of the powers to give a cryptic information-less message like this. But one thing Vi said caught her attention.

"Vi," she said "You said that 'He" told you in the dream. Who was 'He'?"

Vi looked even more uncomfortable and met Buffy's eyes slowly and slightly guiltily. Looking into her eyes Buffy knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth.

"Well, it was Spike."

Author's note: Well there we are guys! Finally a new chapter is up only after, erm, two years. Depending on whether anybody actually goes back to reading this, I'm going to try to start getting a new chapter up every week. Reviews would be VERY much appreciated. Until next time reader, Grr! Argh!