The lobby of the Hyperion was not the best place for one of Giles' patented exposition speeches. There weren't enough places to sit, for one thing, other than the stairs and the floor. Spike hadn't moved from his place on the stairs, and neither Angel nor Illyria looked inclined to sit down, but Dawn, Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Kennedy all wanted to sit down on the pouf, and it obviously wasn't going to work. What shocked Dawn was that it was Kennedy who ended up sitting on the floor, leaning against Willow's leg. She'd thought it would be Xander, but he was squished in between Dawn and Buffy, and looked quite happy about it.

There also weren't any multi-media devices in the lobby, or even a whiteboard. Dawn had missed Giles' strangely macabre drawings, and had hoped to see some now, but he was reduced to standing next to the reception desk and just talking to them. He started by bringing Angel, Spike, and Illyria up to speed on what they'd already known.

"When the Sunnydale Hellmouth was closed," he began, "we knew that the mystical energy that had been centered there would eventually erupt somewhere else. The most likely place was Cleveland."

"Why?" Spike said, looking interested for the first time since he'd sat on the stairs. "Cleveland's not a thrilling place, but it's not half bad."

"That's a fair description," Giles said, looking surprised. "Cleveland was the site of a smaller mystical convergence...a smaller Hellmouth, if you will. Much smaller, but since it was closest mystical convergence to the now closed Hellmouth, we suspected that would be where we'd all need to go. We were wrong."

Dawn sighed, remembering those days. Giles had pushed them mercilessly, so insistent on reaching Cleveland that they arrived still in the school bus, with very little more than the clothes on their backs. And then they found that, instead of converging on a newly virulent Hellmouth, most of the vampires and demons had left town. Willow had quickly realized that there was no mystical convergence anywhere near Cleveland, though there had been in the very recent past. Something had blocked it, preventing the city from becoming the new Hellmouth. The problem was that they hadn't know what had done it, or why.

That uncertainty had been their undoing. As long as there was a crisis - as long as they'd thought there was a crisis - the Scoobies had rallied 'round, ready to do anything to meet it. But once they realized that not only was there no crisis, it seemed like there wouldn't be one, they'd fallen apart. Literally. Giles had flown back to England to try to pull together the remnants of the Watcher's Council - including the bank accounts. He'd left Buffy nominally in charge, but she'd yo-yo'd back and forth between giddy and catatonic so often - sometimes several times on the same day - that everyone except Giles had known that wouldn't work. They'd floundered around for a few weeks, everyone doing what they'd wanted, until Xander had suddenly woken up from the fog he'd been in and took control. Dawn didn't know why it had happened - he'd been leaning towards the catatonic side of Buffy's seesaw ever since he'd come down from the crazy joking at the edge of the Sunnydale crater - but was she ever glad it did. He'd organized patrols, set up training schedules for the new Slayers who'd stuck around, and whenever they didn't hear anything from Giles for a few days, he was the one who called him. He was also the one who'd yelled at Giles when he dithered over where they should go - Dawn was priveledged to hear Xander's side of the conversation, and she'd never forget it. She strongly suspected that Buffy had overheard it as well, though Dawn hadn't seen her nearby, because it was after that phone call that Buffy had started clinging to Xander. Which, in turn, had led to another phone call, which Dawn hadn't overheard, but everyone knew had happened.

The upshot of that "discussion" was that they'd all split up - each going their own way to the ends of the earth, to sit and watch another one of those mystical convergences that could turn into a full-blown Hellmouth. Dawn had had to watch as Xander slipped away to Africa - he'd been the first one to go, and though he'd hugged her tightly at the airport and promised he'd be back, she'd been scared that he never would. She'd stayed scared until about six months later, when he'd finally started answering her emails - not often, of course, but whenever he was somewhere he could. They weren't happy emails, but they were from Xander, and that was all she needed.

Actually, she'd had to watch as everyone left her back then. Willow and Kennedy went to Rio, Willow bouncing off the walls with excitement. Once Robin was healing nicely, he took Faith to Vancouver, along with several of the young Slayers. They'd set up a training center there, Faith seemingly enjoying being the primary Slayer attached to a mystical convergence, Robin obviously getting off on teaching Slayers all about the mission. Dawn wasn't surprised at all that he'd decided that was more important than helping Angel and his crew defeat an army of demons. He'd always, in her opinion, missed the point of demon fighting just a bit.

Andrew, Vi, and Rona had flown off to England to join Giles in creating the new Watcher's Council. Dawn had been surprised that Rona had wanted to go - she'd liked Rona, but had pegged her as someone who would head for the hills as soon as she could - but both she and Vi had seemed serious about making sure that no other Slayer would ever have to endure what Buffy and Faith had been through. Especially the Cruciamentum - Dawn had told them about that one night, and it wasn't long after that they'd announced their decision to head to England. Andrew had tagged along - neither Vi nor Rona seemed to encourage him, but they weren't as outright cruel as the rest of the Scoobies - except Xander - so Dawn wasn't surprised. Buffy certainly hadn't shown any desire for him to stay, and she and Dawn were practically the only ones left.

Buffy had a few choices. She could have stayed in Cleveland - just because that mystical convergence had been blocked, there was no guarantee that it would stay that way. She could have gone to England and helped Giles. He'd asked her - formally, as the Senior Slayer - to do so. But she'd asked for other options, and he'd given them to her. Other places around the world where a Slayer would be helpful, other mystical convergences: China, New Zealand, and Rome.

Dawn hadn't had a choice, of course. When Buffy decided on Rome, Dawn didn't complain, although she'd been lobbying for New Zealand, so she could see where they'd filmed The Lord of the Rings movies. She'd been so happy to get out of Cleveland, where there were so few vampires that Buffy had nothing to expend her energy against, that she wouldn't have cared if they'd been headed to the wilds of Transylvania. If there were any wilds in Transylvania anymore. As long as there were vampires.

And to begin with, Rome had been fun. Buffy had fulfilled her duties as the Slayer, but the vamps of Rome weren't like the vamps of Sunnydale, even though there was a mystical convergence for them to feed off of right under the Vatican. They'd been almost civilized, and as soon as they knew a Slayer was in town, most of them cleared out. After all, nowhere in Europe was hard to get to, and Buffy couldn't be everywhere, nor live forever. They were prepared to wait her out.

Which turned out to be the problem. A few months after they moved to Rome, the fun of living in a new city with a sister who actually paid attention to her died out, when Buffy grew moody and withdrawn again. There weren't enough vampires to hold her attention, and the mystical convergence just seemed to sit there, certainly not becoming a new Hellmouth. None of the others showed any signs of erupting, either, which at first made Buffy happy, because it meant Spike's sacrifice had meant something. But then Giles had paid them a visit to explain that the Devon coven could feel that the Hellmouth would come back up - and come back up soon - and Buffy had spiralled into depression. Nothing Dawn could do perked her up, not even when she stayed out too late and didn't call to tell her sister where she'd be. Buffy had barely bothered to yell at her.

And then, she'd met the Immortal. It happened so quickly; one day, Buffy was sparkling again, blushing and shy, and the next, he'd moved in. Dawn had been happy at first - Buffy was happy, so she was happy - but it wasn't long before she'd suspected something was wrong. Buffy was happy, yes, but she reminded Dawn too much of her mother when she was dating Ted the Robot for her to feel comfortable. She'd emailed Willow and called Giles, but by the time they believed her and got worried for Buffy, it was too late. Buffy was way too Stepford, and whatever hold the Immortal Dweeb had on her couldn't be broken from Rio or London. Willow had been planning on visiting sometime during the summer to see what she could do, but the Powers That Be intervened, and now Buffy had thrown off her thrall herself. Dawn wondered if guilt was why Willow was pressed so tightly to Buffy's side, or if she was just trying to withdraw from Kennedy a little.

All through Giles' tale, Angel looked interested but impatient, but Spike looked more and more incredulous as he went on. Finally, he couldn't seem to stand it anymore.

"You split up?" he said, standing up and glaring at all of them. "Did you learn nothin' from your time in Sunnyhell? Buffy's the longest living Slayer in history, and, much as I hate to admit it, you lot are part of the reason why. How could you take that away from her? Hell, if I'd known you'd done that, I'd -"

"You'd what, Spike?" Xander said, and Dawn could feel him tighten his arm around Buffy. "What would you have done? Emailed her? Actually picked up the phone and called her? Oh, wait, you could have done that, anyway, but you didn't. So don't go off on us. We did the best we could."

"And I wanted some time away," Buffy said. Dawn looked over at her to see her looking seriously at Spike. "I needed some time away. Me, Spike. My choice. It might not have worked out quite how I wanted, but I made the decision. Don't try to take that away from me. Oh, and guess what? I'm still here."

"And we're all here," Willow said. "When an apocolypse was at hand, we came a-running. That's what we do."

"An apocolypse that you couldn't have won on your own, may I remind you," Giles said.

Angel said, "Hey," but Spike had the grace to look abashed.

"Sorry," he said. "I jus'..." But he didn't say anything else; instead, he waved at Giles to continue with his story.

"So, we've been in a holding pattern for awhile now," Giles said. "I thought that maybe the Hellmouth would reemerge here when all of the Slayers in the world had the same dream about your fight with Wolfram and Hart."

"All of them?" Angel said. He looked about as nonplussed as Dawn had ever seem him.

"All of the ones we've located," Giles said. "I suspect the rest had it, too, and I can't imagine what they thought of it."

Dawn took a deep breath. "Me, too," she said.

"Me, three," Xander said. "My Slayers at least had someone they could ask. The ones who didn't must have thought -"

"No," Dawn said, needing to get it out now that she'd started. "I mean, I had the dream, too."

"What?" Buffy said. Dawn winced, and she lowered her voice. "Why did you have a Slayer dream?"

"I don't think I did," Dawn said. "I think it was a vision. It came complete with the head-splitty pain. At the time, I thought that was because I'm not a Slayer, but now..."

"Why would Dawn get a vision of the same thing as a Slayer dream?" Xander asked.

"Well, they're both sent by the Powers," Giles said. "Ultimately, anyway; we've never been completely certain how the Slayers get the dreams, but it makes the most sense that they're from the Powers. Maybe it was a reduncancy."
"Belt and suspenders?" Spike said. "The Powers aren't really like that. They tend to tell you something once and then rely on you to get it right."

"Spike's right," Angel said, looking pained.

"It wasn't a normal Slayer dream," Kennedy said. "I mean, I've never had one quite that detailed and non-psychodelic."

"I -" Buffy said, but then stopped. "Huh. It's been so long since I had one that I'd kinda forgotten, but Kennedy's right - it was unusual."

"Then what?" Dawn said. "It was all just my vision, and I somehow relayed it to all of the Slayers in the world?"
"You are the Key," Illyria said, making everyone else in the room swing around to look at her.

"Uh, yeah," Dawn said. "Or I was."

"You were, are, and ever will be," Illyria said. She tilted her head to one side. "You do not understand your powers. That is interesting."

Feeling helpless, Dawn looked back at Giles. He was polishing his glasses.

"Well, it's certainly possible that your Key powers were somehow activated by your first vision," he said, putting them back on and studying her. "I'll have to do some research when I go back to England to pack my things for the move to Bethlehem."

"But the Council didn't know about the Key," Buffy said. "And most of the books got blown up, anyway. What can you look up if there's no information?"

"I'll manage," Giles said, giving her a look. Buffy subsided and reached across Xander to squeeze Dawn's hand.

"So, about Bethlehem," Kennedy said. "I've been there; it's a tourist trap at Christmas, and other than that, it's a nice little town. Why would the Hellmouth come up there?"

"I don't know," Giles said. "Nothing in the area was intrinsically mystical prior to the eruption, so this really makes very little sense. And when members of the Devon coven tried to scry the town afterwards, they could sense nothing and were left unconscious for hours."

Angel drew in a deep breath, which Dawn always thought silly, because he didn't need to breathe. "You're thinking it was deliberate?" he said.

"That's exactly what I'm thinking," Giles said, and they were all quiet for a moment, pondering that.

"We need to get there pronto," Xander said.

"I concur," Giles said. "I'll begin looking into the housing situation immediately. In the meantime, think about what all of you want to do. We could use all of you there, of course, but I'd understand it if you didn't feel like you wanted to leave where you are now."

Everyone began speaking at once, except for Dawn. She slumped back onto the poof, feeling extremely weird. Most of the important people in her life would be going to fight evil on the Hellmouth, and she'd be staying in L.A. to help Angel be a champion. Once again, she had no choice.