Suggested Listening: "I'm Through" – Ingrid Michaelson

Buffy fidgeted nervously with a breadstick. She felt horrible. She felt physically ill. She felt like she was cheating just being there. But she had no one else to turn to, she had reasoned to herself, no other allies in the city who might still believe and help her. Her friends, and most painfully, even Faith, had betrayed her in this. She still couldn't understand it though – after all they'd been through together, was it really so difficult to believe some evil thing had stolen her child from her uterus?

It had been nearly a week since she'd asked for some time and space from Faith. The dark-haired slayer had obeyed her request and apparently was holed up with Xander, much to his girlfriend's chagrin, she was sure. Faith was enough to make anyone jealous, male or female, straight or gay.

She and Faith had talked once on the phone since their cemetery split and had run into each other another time while on patrol. Both events had been awkward, forced, and disconcerting. Faith had been penitent and acted as though Buffy was made out of glass. Both actions had done nothing to repair what had been broken.

Since the fake research party, Buffy had stayed clear of not only her girlfriend, but also her closest friends. Just thinking about that day made her angry and not a little bit embarrassed. In the meantime she'd been busy doing research on her own. It made her head ache; she wasn't the researching type. But, she was hopeful that she'd soon stumble across something. There was no such thing as the perfect crime. She'd find out the truth eventually. Her sanity depended on it.

Buffy looked down at the tablecloth and grimaced. She'd totally destroyed the breadstick. Hunks of soft bread littered the tabletop. She hastily grabbed the complimentary breadbasket and brushed the chunks back into the basket with the other uneaten rolls.

She looked up when she felt a body looming over the small table for two.

"I always loved how you're not afraid of carbs. You're not like other women."

Preston slid into the vacant seat across from Buffy. "But I suppose that should have made me suspicious right away."

Buffy offered her ex-fiancé an uneasy smile. Preston had been an active participant throughout her pregnancy, going to doctor's appointments with her when Faith couldn't make it, helping her pick out (and pay) for supplies for the nursery. However, she didn't want to assume that in this reality, where she'd apparently had a miscarriage, that she was still close-friends with her ex. But she still had to try.

"I'm glad you could make it," she said with genuine appreciation.

Preston unrolled his silverware and placed the napkin on his lap. He'd always had perfect manners. It was one of the things Buffy had noticed about him right away on their first dates. "Well you know I love Italian food," he grinned easily. "….and you."

Buffy flushed and looked down at her lap.

"I'm sorry," Preston hastily retreated. "Sometimes I talk without thinking first. I'm not naïve enough to think that's why you called me."

Buffy looked up and shook her head. "You're right. That's not why I called."

Preston winced. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying," he chuckled. "How is Faith, by the way?"

"She's good," Buffy said curtly before grabbing her water glass and chugging down its contents. She refrained herself from telling Preston that things were tense between she and her partner. He didn't need those kind of details; it would only give him false hope.

Their waiter thankfully stopped by to take their drink order. Preston ordered a glass of merlot for himself and quirked an eyebrow when Buffy ordered an ice tea.

"No alcohol tonight?" he questioned when the waiter walked away. "You're not…you and Faith aren't…expecting, are you?"

Buffy worried her bottom lip. She'd gotten so use to not drinking alcohol during her pregnancy the order had come out without much thought. "That's kind of why I wanted to see you."

"You're pregnant? How far along are you?" Preston asked excitedly. "You're so small, I couldn't even tell. Mazel tov!"

"No, no. I'm not currently pregnant," Buffy clarified. "And that's kind of the problem."

Confusion settled over Preston's classically handsome face. "Wait. Do you want me to donate sperm or something?"

Buffy held up her hands. "Oh my God, no," she hastily negated. "That's not what this is about."

Relief passed over Preston's face. "Thank God," he breathed. He leaned back in his chair, more relaxed. "I love you and I'm happy that you're happy, even if it's not with me…but that would have been way too weird for me," he admitted with a short chuckle.

Buffy bit her lip. "Well, what I'm about to tell you may be a little weird, too," she conceded.

"Oh?"

Buffy hesitated. She looked around at the other restaurant patrons, jealous of their obliviousness. Was this really the best venue for this conversation? She mentally checked her courage. Just tell him. Find out how he's going to react.

"Preston," Buffy began slowly, "I called you to meet with me tonight because…because I need your help. I don't believe I had a miscarriage," she announced. She didn't wait for his reaction. "I think a demon stole our baby from my womb a few days ago and implanted fake memories into everyone's brains to make them believe I lost the baby when I was stabbed." She sucked in a breath. And waited.

Across the small table, Preston blinked. Twice. "Can they…" He looked around tentatively and then leaned forward conspiratorially. "Can demons do that?"

Buffy leaned back in her chair and let out a small sigh of relief. At least he hadn't immediately called her crazy and thrown his drink in her face. It was a start.

"I've experienced something like it before," she confirmed. "My sister…" Buffy hesitated. Should she, could she, tell this man her secrets when just months before she'd been prepared to marry him without even telling him she was a slayer?

"My sister isn't really my sister," Buffy began with some trepidation. "A few years ago some monks came to me. They turned a key into a person – well, not a physical key, like one you'd put in a door lock. Well, I take that back. The Key did open a door, but it was actually a portal to another dimension – a Hell-like dimension that, if opened, would have spilled into our world and destroyed it. The monks had the key – it was this green orb of energy at first and then they turned it into my sister to protect it. Only, I'm an only child," she said, gulping down a long breath, "so they changed everyone's memories so they would remember Dawn always being my sister when really she's only existed for a few years."

Preston opened his mouth to respond, but Buffy kept going. It was verbal vomit at its finest. Once she'd shared Dawn's secret, they were all spilling out

"Oh, and then these three nerds, who called themselves the Trio, which, side-note is like the lamest evil name ever, conjured a demon to poison me and make me thinking I'd been committed to an insane asylum. Only, it was really confusing for me because I really had been hospitalized, but that had been years ago when I'd first been Called as a Slayer and my parents were scared of me. But I got out after I pretended that vampires and demons didn't exist, but this demon's venom made me believe I'd never gotten out of that asylum and I was still there, living out Sunnydale as a fantasy world in my head. But then I hate the demon's heart and I got better."

The awe and wonder that had so recently occupied Preston's face clouded over. "So your sister is a green ball of energy and your parents had you committed?"

Buffy nodded. "That's the shorthand version of it, yes. But I wasn't committed because of the Dawn thing. This was years earlier when I'd burned down my high school gym."

Preston visibly paled. "You burned down the Sunnydale gymnasium?"

"Oh, no. That was at my old school in LA," Buffy said flippantly. "Actually, I blew up the entire school in Sunnydale on the day of my high school graduation. The Mayor had turned into a giant snake."

Preston pulled his napkin from his lap and gently laid it on the table. "I don't believe you," he said quietly.

"Which part?"

"Any of it!" Preston suddenly exploded. "If all of these things were true, wouldn't the rest of the world know about it?"

"It's hiding in plane sight." Buffy frowned. "But people blindly ignore what's right in front of their face."

"How can you expect me to sit here and swallow your lies, Buffy? Is this all a game to you?" He swung his head around as if on a swivel. "Are your friends hiding behind plants again, waiting to rub in my face what a fool I've been again?"

"Preston, no! I—"

"Don't. Just stop, Buffy," Preston sourly clipped. He carefully stood to his full height. Buffy could see how his body shook with quiet rage. "Don't think for a minute that my world wasn't completely crushed when you lost the baby. I can't believe you could be this cruel."

Large, salty tears ran down Buffy's cheeks. "I'm not lying to you, I promise," she croaked. "I know I hid the fact that I'm a slayer from you, but I'm not lying about this! Someone stole our baby," she insisted with quiet emotion, "and I'm going to get it back."

"No, Buffy. Our baby died months ago." Preston pushed his chair under the table and its legs scraped noisily against the tiled floor. His fingers clenched and unclenched against the top of his chair. "You need help. You need to move on. And ironically," he noted with a strange smile on his lips, "thanks to this meeting, I can finally move on, too."

Buffy watched as the man who would have been her husband slowly stalked away. He paused at the front door momentarily before pushing it open and walking out into the Cleveland night.

Buffy brought her napkin to her lips and choked back a sob. Preston had been her last gasping attempt to convince someone that she wasn't crazy.

Their waiter ambled up next to her. "Uh, ma'am?" he questioned awkwardly. Buffy was sure he had witnessed at least part of the emotional blow out. "Can I get you anything else?"

Buffy steeled herself. She'd been through worse, she told herself. Hell, she'd died twice. She could hand this, too. "No, thank you," she said in a calm voice foreign to her ears. "Just the check.

Buffy turned off the bathtub faucet, stripped out of her bathrobe, and sank her weary body into the steaming bath. She gave a small, tired sigh as the warm water swallowed her whole. Tiny waves lapped at the edges of the porcelain tub as she settled in.

She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. With her ears submerged, all she could hear was the rhythmic pumping of her heart and the tiny echo of water dripping from the stopped faucet. Her hands instinctively went to her flat abdomen, which just barely poked out of the shallow bathwater.

She ran the tips of her fingers across the raised, angry, red scar – her parting gift for saving the Cleveland Mall from a demon invasion many months ago. She had once pointed out to Faith that they now had something else in common besides slaying – matching abdominal wounds. It often amazed her, and she had to admit she was more than a little proud, that after more than a decade of slaying, her body was relatively unmaimed.

She sat up and reached outside of the tub to dry off her hands on a nearby towel. She gingerly picked up her phone, which she had placed nearby, careful not to get it damp, and called the only number she knew by heart. She didn't expect Faith to pick up – she was probably on patrol – but it would be nice just to hear the other slayer's recorded voice on her voicemail message.

"Hey, B."

Buffy nearly dropped her phone in the tub when Faith answered.

Across town, Faith sat on Xander's pull-out futon. After an uneventful evening of patrol, she'd called it an early night. A cold shower and half a large pizza later, she felt anything but settled. When her phone had rung and she saw Buffy's goofy face light up her phone, she tried to remain calm. It did nobody any good, she reasoned, to come off as too eager or concerned by the unexpected phone call.

"Oh, uh, hi," Buffy stammered. She had been mentally prepared to hang up after listening to Faith's voicemail, not actually to talk. "What-what are you doing?"

"Reading a book."

"But you hate books," Buffy pointed out. It was one thing they could agree on. Books were evil.

"You know me, B. I'm a masochist." Buffy could practically hear the shrug over the phone. "So what's up? To what do I owe this unexpected, but totally appreciated call?"

Buffy inspected her fingers, which had begun to prune. "I'm taking a bath."

"Uh oh. That's never a good sign." Faith quipped. Experience told her Buffy only took baths when she was feeling sorry for herself. "What's wrong?"

"Besides the obvious?" Buffy said without heat.

"Yeah." Faith rubbed at her face. "Besides the obvious."

"I had dinner with Preston tonight," Buffy revealed. "Well actually, there wasn't a lot of dinner involved. More like I shredded a breadstick and he stormed out on me and left me with the bill for his wine."

"So it wasn't a good date," Faith deadpanned.

"It wasn't a date, Fai," Buffy grunted, reflexively returning to the shortened name.

"Uh huh," Faith said, slightly bristled. Her brain told her she had no reason to be jealous of Buffy meeting up with Preston, but she couldn't help how she felt. She was a naturally jealous and possessive being. "So why'd you meet up with him?" she pressed, hoping Buffy couldn't actually hear her jealousy.

Buffy frowned. "I thought maybe he'd believe me about the baby."

"I'm guessing it didn't go well."

Buffy breathed in sharply. "No. It didn't." She cleared her throat, the words getting caught in her windpipe. "He didn't believe me."

"Did you think he really would?" Faith asked gently.

"I don't know what I thought would happen," Buffy admitted. "But I needed to try, I guess."

"Are you okay?"

"He said I was a liar," Buffy said. Tears sprung to the corners of her eyes and she felt her resolve start to crumble. "Baby," she sobbed, "he called me crazy." She was no longer in control of her emotions. "He said I needed help."

Faith sucked in a deep breath. It killed her to hear the woman she loved so distraught, knowing there was little she could do. She hated the general feeling of helplessness and uselessness, but it was especially poignant when it came to Buffy. She gripped her phone and listened to Buffy try, unsuccessfully, to swallow back her sobs. "Do you want me to come over?"

"Yes."

The brunette's stomach fluttered. "Even though I messed up, and I know you're still upset with me?"

"I'm just being stubborn and punishing myself," Buffy said wetly. "I never should have made you leave. I need you."

"Give me 15 minutes and I'll be there."

Buffy sighed and sank a little deeper into the tub. "I love you."

A small, hopeful smile tugged at Faith's generous mouth. Maybe she hadn't messed things up entirely. "I love you, too."

When she heard the crisp knock at her front door, Buffy, dressed in an oversized t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, padded down the long hallway. Without bothering to look through the front window to see who was at the door, she unlocked the deadbolt and flung the door open. She quirked an eyebrow at the woman standing on her front porch.

"Is there something wrong with your key?"

"No." Faith uneasily shifted her weight from one foot to the next. "But I felt funny using it."

Buffy frowned. "You still live here, Fai. This is your house just as much as it is mine."

Faith nodded. "Okay." She stepped through the front threshold and was greeted by the familiar smells and warmth of Buffy's ranch-style suburban home. She sucked in a sharp breath, not taking anything for granted.

Faith took a moment while she shrugged out of her jacket to regard her girlfriend. The blonde's damp hair looked freshly brushed, the lines from her wide-toothed comb still visible. Her hair slightly curled up at the ends where it was beginning to air dry. Her pajamas looked too big for her small frame, as if she'd shrunk several sizes since they'd last seen each other.

"Can we go to bed?" Buffy whimpered as Faith hung up her jacket. "I'm exhausted."

Faith choked back an emotion that felt a lot like guilt. "Lead the way," she said.

Buffy laced her fingers in Faith's and led her down the hallway in the direction of her bedroom. Faith looked down at their enjoined fingers. Buffy's hand seemed so small and fragile in her own. Everything about the Chosen One currently felt vulnerable, like she was a delicate porcelain doll just waiting to shatter.

She could only hope that when that moment happened, she'd be able to piece together her girlfriend again.

TBC