Sorry for the delay. Stupid real life.
Warnings and disclaimer in chapter 1. Enjoy.
"I see your hospitality hasn't improved much Ripper," Ethan said as he slowly opened his eyes. He glanced around the bars quickly before levering himself into a sitting position.
"I don't know," Giles said evenly from his position in front of the door. "I was able to be quite civilized when my father unexpectedly dropped by for a few weeks."
"Really?" Ethan asked as he gingerly got to his feet. "Are you an orphan now?" He tenderly touched his cheek where Giles hit him.
"Not quite," Giles told him. Ethan nodded as he examined the room outside the cell.
"Impressive," he said, continuing the conversation effortlessly as he examined his surroundings. "Last time we met you could barely stand the thought of your father. Now he ranks higher than me."
"Strangely enough he didn't turn me into a demon," Giles deadpanned. Ethan grinned. "What do you want Ethan?" Ethan didn't answer.
"I see you've got some new recruits," he said, motioning to Faith and Daniel. "Who do we have here?"
"Faith," she said, sauntering up to the bars seductively.
"The Dark Slayer," he said, recognizing her name immediately. "And you are?" he asked Daniel who came up next to her.
"A son of Azeroth," he said darkly, letting his demon show through briefly. Ethan widened his eyes at that.
"Have you switched sides Ripper?" he asked cautiously, turning back to his old friend. "The Dark Slayer and the son of one of the most notorious demons ever to walk in this world."
"Why are you here Ethan?" Giles asked again, face hardening as he refused to give any information away to Ethan. Ethan sighed, leaning back against the wall.
"I was here to help save your life, but maybe that is a mistake. If you're playing for the black hats now." He stopped when Joyce entered the room. It took a minute for him to place her, his eyes widening when he finally did. "You haven't switched," he realized, staring at the Slayer's mother. "You managed to get them to switch, just like you've reclaimed me."
"What are you talking about Ethan," Giles asked wearily. Ethan smiled his roguish grin.
"Chaos isn't inherently evil you know," he started. "True chaos always employs a hint of harmless fun in the center."
"Harmless?" Joyce asked, nearing the bars. "You think turning the entire adult population into teenagers is harmless?"
"Well, yes," he smirked. "You all got to experience the joys of being carefree once again. Don't tell me you didn't enjoy yourself, or that a little part of you wants to be able to do that again."
"Your point?" Giles asked angrily.
"I worship chaos," he said evenly. "The end of the world is another matter though. Apocalypses and Hell on Earth aren't chaos. Their terror. I never found the fun in terror." Ethan actually seemed shaken at the thought before he turned to Giles. "I was approached by a strange demon a few days ago. Funny chap, wore a silly bowler hat. Kept going on about balance and choices. Said his name was,"
"Whistler," Giles finished, giving Ethan his full attention.
"Right," Ethan smirked. "He said he had some important information to give to you Ripper, but he couldn't talk to you directly and needed an intermediary."
"What information?" Giles asked. Ethan shrugged.
"He wouldn't say. He only said soon I would have to make a real choice, stop playing silly games and decide which side I'm on." Ethan began pacing. "I, of course, thought nothing of it, but then the next day your witch tried recruiting me into her coven."
"Willow would do no such thing," Giles reassured him.
"She wouldn't now," a strange voice said. They looked around the room, blinking when the demon in question suddenly appeared inside the cell. He was looking directly at Ethan and keeping his back deliberately turned to them. "But what about in a month? Or a year? What if her perfect life became less than perfect?"
"You leave Willow alone!" Joyce hissed in a way only mothers protecting their children could. Whistler held up his hand.
"Did you hear something Ethan?" he asked. "I thought we were alone."
"Oh we are," Ethan smirked, lying outright, but Whistler seemed happy. "I don't see anybody around."
"Good. It wouldn't do to have this conversation overheard, especially by the Slayer's people. They're major players in this drama and I can't directly involve any major players."
"Who can you involve?" Ethan grumbled, scowling deeply. Whistler sighed.
"We went over this before, but since you were drunk I'll repeat myself. I'm Whistler, a balance demon recruited by the Powers That Be, otherwise known as the good guys. We have a loose agreement with the bad guys. According to this agreement neither side will directly interfere in the mortal realm."
"I love how you're not interfering now," Ethan sarcastically commented. Whistler chose to ignore him.
"We can act through intermediaries to try to maintain the balance between good and evil. The white hats had a good stretch with Buffy, but she fell and the black hats had their good stretch."
"Which you knew about and did nothing to help her," Giles realized, his hand clenching into a fist.
"It is the natural order of things," Whistler said sadly. "The rise and fall of good and evil. Both are natural. Both are prevalent." He paused for a moment before continuing. "The Powers on each side generally let nature take its course, but every so often an event happens that so vastly affect the balance that both sides try to tip the scales in their favor, or in extreme cases they work together to keep the event from happening."
"A prophecy," Giles sighed.
"Sometimes it's a prophecy," Whistler told Ethan. "Sometimes it's just ordinary events having extraordinary results."
"Like a powerful witch changing the world," Ethan prompted.
"Or destroying it." Whistler frowned. "Do you know what prophecy is?" he asked. "True prophecy, not that fortune telling crap frauds pawn of on tourists."
"The foretelling of certain events," Ethan said tiredly. Whistler shook his head.
"Not foretelling," he corrected. "Telling. They know exactly what the future will bring."
"How can they know exactly?" Giles asked. "A single decision can have hundreds of different effects and lead to a thousand different futures."
"And a true seer can see all thousand," Whistler said, before adding, "Did you hear that wind gust? It almost sounded like words." Ethan scowled.
"If they truly know everything, why are prophecies so vague?" he asked. Whistler shrugged.
"Seers have their own agendas just like everybody else," he said, moving from the corner over to the cot, still keeping his back to everybody except Ethan. "And there's this pesky little problem of human free will. They have spent a millennia setting up a perfect prophesy just for it to be ruined by a single mortal." Whistler frowned at the thought.
"As fascinating as this lesson is, what does it have to do with me?"
"Well, first I can use you to get a message to your buddy Giles. The Slayer and her people have become major players. They can significantly alter the balance between good and evil if they choose to, especially if they were warned that something bad was coming that only they could stop. If I tried to tell them that it would violate the agreement my bosses have with their counterpoints and I would be in some serious trouble. But I can tell you."
"I'll see if I can get them a message," Ethan snarked. "The other reason?" Whistler stared at him critically.
"You're an anomaly," he said honestly. "If I can see a hundred futures and in ninety-nine of them you do one thing then when the time comes you do something completely different, you become an anomaly."
"You mean like if a witch offered me great power to join her coven and I turned it down unexpectedly?" Ethan asked.
"Anomaly." Whistler nodded. "Also a paradox, since ninety-nine other times you said yes." With that the demon vanished.
"Okay did anybody get any of that?" Faith asked, giving up her intimidating persona. Giles and Ethan just stared at one another.
"What exactly did he say the other day?" Giles asked carefully.
"Your life would depend on a choice that I made." Ethan looked carefully at Giles. "I know we haven't always seen eye to eye, but you are my oldest friend and I would never do anything that would endanger your life."
"But you would play with it from time to time," Giles demanded. Ethan shrugged.
"What's the use of having friends if you don't play with them every so often?" Giles turned his back on the cell, but Ethan wasn't through yet. "There's one more thing he told me," he called out. Giles turned back to him. "Your girl. She's not having nightmares. She's having dreams." They stared at him in silence, which was eventually broken by the sound of the lift lowering. Unlike the other two floors, there was no shaft surrounding the lift in the basement, other than a chain link safety cage, and the sound could easily be heard everywhere in the basement.
"Buffy?" Giles asked when the girl in question wheeled herself out of the lift. "What are you doing here?" She pointed over to the mats with a shaking hand. Giles cursed as he checked the time. "Your nightly exercises. I almost forgot." She shrugged as she wheeled herself over, mindlessly following the routine they established months ago. She pulled some mats from the stack, laying them out as best she could when Xander burst through the basement door.
"Sorry," he said, almost out of breath.
"Isn't she supposed to be sleeping?" Joyce asked. Xander nodded his head.
"She did. She had a nightmare. I was able to wake her up before it got bad, but she refused to go back to sleep. We ended up watching some TV. I asked her if she wanted a snack. She said yes so I left to make one. I was only gone five minutes, just long enough to pop some popcorn, but when I got back she was gone."
"A nightmare?" Ethan asked, raising his eyebrows suggestively. Giles rolled his eyes and turned back to Buffy, but she wasn't watching them. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Ethan.
"Buffy?" Giles called out, but she ignored him. It wasn't until he moved to stand directly in front of her that she looked at him. She looked at him fearfully. He smiled. "Let's do your exercises, shall we?" She smiled up at him again, now all traces of fear gone. He quickly arranged the mats then gently lifted her from the chair. He laid her on her stomach and he began a quick massage of her lower back before flipping her and continuing with her lower torso followed by her legs. Once finished he grabbed her left leg, moving the limb and working the muscles in a perfected manner. "Buffy," he called, immediately getting her attention. He would often tell her stories during their workout, which made it one of her favorite times of the day. "I need to ask you a question and I need you to be completely honest with me. Even if the answer scares you or makes me mad. Can you do that for me?"
They could tell she was starting to get uncomfortable when she looked away. Giles simply continued his routine until she nodded grudgingly.
"These nightmares that you've been having recently. Are they different from your usual dreams?" Buffy looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. When she finally looked up she shrugged. Giles sighed. She lived in a nightmare for so long she could no longer distinguish the usual ones from the abnormal ones. "Do they involve your Masters or what they did to you?" he asked calmly as he lowered her left leg and switched to the right. She lowered her gaze again, this time not looking back up, but shook her head. "Do they involve Azeroth?" he asked gently. Again she shook her head, but she couldn't hide her fear as her upper body began to shake. "I'm not mad," he told her again as he lowered her right leg, "and I won't let anything hurt you again." He rolled her onto her side and began massaging her lower rib cage, reassured by the steady rise and fall of her chest, before moving her legs again. Joyce went over and took her daughter's hand.
"Do you know where you are in these nightmares?" she asked. Buffy refused to look at her, but by the white knuckle grip on her hand she knew her daughter was very uncomfortable with the questions. The minutes passed but Buffy still refused to answer or simply didn't know how. Joyce shared a glance with Giles as he rolled her onto her other side and completed their exercises.
"Do these nightmares scare you?" Giles asked as he rolled her onto her back. She again refused to answer, but her reactions told them all they needed to know. Her shaking reached a near violent level, the shudders carrying through all the way to her feet, while a thin sheet of sweat covered her face and arms.
"It's okay," Joyce said as she gathered her up in her arms, rocking her gently. Buffy didn't return the embrace, even her hand gripping her mother's so tightly had gone limp, but Joyce could feel her heartbeat racing faster and faster in her daughter's chest, her lungs struggling to take in air as Buffy slowly began to hyperventilate.
"Xander. Go get the sedatives," Giles ordered. He nodded and raced up the stairs, returning seconds later with a syringe and a vial of medicine. Giles measured out a dose and administered it to the stricken woman. A few minutes later Buffy started to calm down.
"Want me to put her to bed?" Xander asked. Buffy's heart sped up again at his words. Joyce frowned.
"No. I think I'll give her a bath. See if I can calm her down some more." Xander nodded, lifting the cataleptic girl into his arms and heading up the stairs, Joyce quickly following him. Giles turned to see Ethan looking pale and shaky.
"That is not chaos," he said. "That was terror. And that was not fun."
"If you had anything to do with this," Giles threatened, pulling Ethan into the bars.
"I didn't. I swear by the Janus, the God of Chaos."
"Giles?" Dawn asked carefully as she entered the room. Giles took a calming breath, releasing Ethan.
"Your sister will be fine," he said automatically, knowing what her first fear was. "Your mother is looking after her."
"I know," she admitted, "but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. After his little display in The Magic Box I went up and checked the book."
"And?" he asked. Checking their demonic prophecy book was going to be the next thing he had Dawn do.
"No new prophecies," she said. He closed his eyes in acceptance. "But a new line did translate in the Third Age Prophecy."
"What?" he asked. They figured out that the words translated into English whenever that part of the prophecy had been or was being fulfilled.
"The lost Slayer shall be found," Dawn said quietly. Giles turned to the cell.
"Tell me everything you know," Giles demanded.
"I already have," Ethan told him, crossing over to the bars and letting his arms hang down. "A few days ago I was approached by that demon. I thought nothing of it until I was asked to join a coven by your witch."
"But I didn't," Willow said, coming out from the shadows. Tara was by her side, looking concerned. Ethan stared at them intensely for a few minutes.
"Yesterday," he prompted, "in L.A." She shook her head. "You promised me power beyond my imagination if I joined. And I would have been tempted, if I didn't get that warning from the demon."
"But I didn't," Willow protested. "Yes I was in L.A., but most of that time was spent with Cordelia. Plus, we've never needed a coven before." She took Tara's hand and held on tightly.
"That's true," Giles said softly, never taking his eyes off Ethan. "What do you know about her nightmares?"
"Just what the bloke told me," he answered. "They aren't nightmares. They're dreams. Slayer dreams." Everyone was silent.