Joyce woke slowly, to the sound of two male voices murmuring and the smell of fried bacon and melted butter. Her yawn made her jaw creak, and she quickly made her way to the bathroom to scrub the sand from her eyes. After dressing in some casual day clothes she brushed her hair in front of the vanity, completing her morning ritual.

She sat and stared at her reflection for a full minute, taking in the faint crows-feet at the corners of her eyes, and the blank grief lining her face, making her appear years older than she felt herself to be. Grimacing at what she beheld, she made a pact with herself. *Nobody but you sees this again. I will be positive, because my baby needs me to be without doubt. I have not lost you yet Buffy, darling, I WILL get you back. I refuse to believe otherwise.*

Following her nose back to the large country-style kitchen, she met the two Watchers sitting at a long, low table, set with steaming platters of what she surmised was a traditional British breakfast.

There was a plate piled high with bacon, some rather dark rounds of a salami- at least she assumed that was what it was, and thick sausages. Another dish held about a dozen fried eggs, and there was a bowl of caramelised onions and mushrooms. It all looked enough to feed a small army, and that wasn't counting the pile of toast, the large teapot and a plunger she strongly hoped held a great deal of coffee.

'Ah, good morning Mrs Summers,' the red-headed man, *Morgan?* greeted her arrival with a cheery grin. His eyes were a little red-rimmed, as though he hadn't slept that night, and he seemed a little tired. She recalled how energetic he'd been when she and Giles had arrived and it seemed to match his general demeanour this morning.

'Please, call me Joyce. Mrs Summers makes me sound like my ex mother-in-law.'

'Joyce it is then. Do sit down, I've just finished making breakfast, so it's all still hot. Help yourself to whatever you wish; the carafe does indeed have coffee. Giles mentioned your preference for it. There is cream in the jug beside it, and the sugar is that cream bowl with the spoon.'

Morgan smiled kindly at the woman. She was really quite the handsome one once she'd had some rest, and whatever was weighing down on her seemed to have been put aside for the moment. He winced suddenly, and straightened. Turning a critical eye on Giles he spoke with a slightly harder edge to his voice, 'So, now that we've gotten the pleasantries out of the way, can you tell me what happened that's triggered this business. Because I am telling you, as of two and a half weeks ago, neither Telcham's Minutes nor my collection held anything at all about the Brehines Gwen Foretelling. And yet, we now have a centuries-old prediction of world-ending proportions, and a Powers-sanctioned resurrection to plan for.'

Caught in the act of filling his plate, Giles looked non-plussed. He knew his friend acted oddly at times. Usually he was quite genial if scatter-brained, but sometimes he just seemed more there, like a concentrated version of himself. Giles pulled off his glasses and polished them absently, speaking for the benefit of Joyce as he began, 'Well, l- I suppose it started around that time anyway. As you know, I was the active Watcher for Buffy Summers, the Californian Slayer. Until last year she was the only active Slayer in the world.' Here he paused for breath, sipped at his tea and nibbled on some toast. 'When she went up against the Master it fulfilled that one prediction in the Pergamum Codex that spoke of her death. She was resuscitated by her friend and went on to defeat the Master and keep the Hellmouth closed. What we didn't realise at the time was that she was dead long enough for a new Slayer to be called, effectively splitting her from the direct line of Chosen Ones.'

'Ah-ha, so that's why that line… I'm sorry, do go on.'

'Another Slayer? There's another Slayer?' Joyce cut in harshly. 'Were you planning on tell me about this? Or were you just going to ignore it and keep sending my little girl out to die after we get her back?'

Giles opened his mouth, stricken, but nothing came out. Morgan looked a little sheepish before replying, 'We'd actually only just talked about this before you came down for breakfast, Joyce. I swear, Giles knew nothing about it until now. He had suspicions, and that's why it came up, but honestly it's not common knowledge that she exists yet. As to sending your little girl out to die, being Chosen is in the blood. We could no more hold her back or retire her than stop the sun from rising in the East. It's a calling, not a job. What we do is try to prepare them for the duty. To help keep them alive for as long as possible. It doesn't always work, and some are more successful than others, but Slayers are ultimately a Force of Nature. A physical manifestation of Light and goodness.'

'The Slayer. Is. A teenage. Girl,' Joyce spat out through clenched teeth. 'All she has is one man watching her, but not even really watching her back. It's a tragically ridiculous system that leads to little girls dying.' Her face pinched further as she accepted the weight of her child's burden. 'Little girls, Morgan, not forces of nature.' She had to stop there for a moment to hold back tears. Her baby daughter, fighting all alone. 'These Slayers should have a support system. If someone had been watching Buffy's back, maybe the monster who killed her would be dead right now, instead of her.'

The redhead winced, but rallied. 'Would that we could support her as she needs, but you must understand, were it up to me or Giles, or any of us who've actively mentored a slayer, these girls would be full-grown before they ever saw combat. Unfortunately the Powers see fit to Call them young, and we must train them as best as we can. Keeping in mind that they are so much stronger and faster than their teachers.' Morgan's voice sharpened again, 'There is no way of keeping them safe until they have the requisite knowledge either, as their very presence acts like a magnet to draw the demons and predators like moths to a flame. There have been attempts in the past to aid them with teams of trained fighters, but because of the very nature of the Chosen One, and the supernatural origin of all they fight against, this has only led to disaster. The supported Slayer spends more time protecting her team than herself and ultimately every life lost in her care adds yet more to burden her soul. Those Slayers either burnt out quickly and broke, or died well before they might have.'

Morgan looked sorrowful, 'We do try to support them when we can with the aid of a coven, but unless that coven has an active seer, it's almost impossible to predict when the best time to step in is. And given the inevitable politicking of any significantly sized organisation, the Watcher is usually assigned by seniority, or proximity, and seniority often means they are past their physical prime. I hate to promulgate this rhetoric but the Slayer really does work best alone. The only other way to help would be with the aid of an equal partner, and thus far, there never has been one of those. Perhaps now that there is another Slayer, they might support one another and thus increase their survival odds.'

Joyce sighed, her entire body seemed to collapse in on itself, and her defiant mood deflated. She just wanted Buffy back, and for her to have a normal life without the possibility of dying again. Which wasn't realistic at all. Even if Buffy somehow came back without her power, there was no guarantee of her living a long, normal life. There were all sorts of dangers anywhere you went, she might have a fatal car accident, or fall from a ladder and break her neck. There was even the possibility she could get beaned in the head by a frozen turkey dropped from a supply plane and drop dead. That was just the way life worked.

In a subdued voice Giles spoke into the silence, 'What did you mean, this prophecy didn't exist two weeks ago? It's documented as being over six hundred years old. It was recorded in the 11th century by the ecclesiast Father Abram Johannes, and by all reliable accounts was uttered in full by the last known seer working under the aegis of Bran the Blessed.'

The welsh Watcher smirked at Giles, sarcasm coating his voice as he stated, 'Time is not linear, old boy, any Dr. Who fan could tell you that. What I am saying is that my memories of two weeks ago do not include this prophecy in any capacity. Just because the veracity of its age is not in question does not mean it isn't in fact a newborn anomaly within this dimension.'

'What on earth are you getting at Mr-?' Joyce was at a loss. She knew his first name, but her inner self rebelled at applying first names where she was not invited to do so.

'Please, call me Morgan, Joyce, my family name is Crewe, but only telemarketers call me that.'

The mother of the Slayer chuckled self-consciously as she gave in to the tacit demand. 'Now what do you mean by that, Morgan? I simply don't understand.'

'When you've lived with the paranormal all your life, it becomes fairly obvious that we exist in a multiverse rather than a singular, or universal, time-ordained river. What I have chosen, simply by telling you what I know, has branched us off from a place where I held this information close to my chest and deflected you with platitudes.'

Joyce's eyes narrowed at Morgan's slightly pompous tone. 'Why do I get the feeling you would have been perfectly happy to row a canoe down either of those little streams?'

'Probably because I have already, There is a Morgan Crewe who felt it better to keep this to himself rather than share with you, and a Joyce too traumatised by the loss of her only daughter to call him on it.' He smiled in a manner designed to deflect ire, and spoke honestly. 'If it helps at all, you only need concern yourself with what I've actually said here. If we were overly bothered with possible repercussions I don't think this dimension would survive its first major upheaval.'

'Oh, good. I'd hate to have to concern myself with the Joyce Summers who got annoyed at people over talking about superfluous things when her little girl is dead. That might lead to my new shoes being lodged somewhere uncomfortable, and we don't want to go there.'

Giles coughed into the awkward silence. He'd used the interim to finish his breakfast and now appeared to be stuck on the research that had brought him and the Slayers' mother to the UK in the first instance. 'Joyce, perhaps it would be better to focus on the positives of our situation.

I'm sure nobody could possibly supercede your desire to regain your daughter.'

Morgan suppressed a grin. These two were surprisingly malleable, given a solid goal. All it had taken was a little misdirection to alter their focus. *Nearly time, old friend. We'll be ready on our end, now it's your turn.*

'Twice-born, the Sorceress' son. He comes, he comes! Wandering the riverbank and dipping his hand to split the flow. This fishy doesn't swim, no. He works slyly against the current and stands beside himself. Silver bonds him to the magic and he speaks with gilded tongue. Ben Beirdd is he. The Pinnacle of Albion. All hail, all hail!' Dru spoke reverently, her hands sinuously painting abstract shapes in the air above her head, which was thrown back in ecstatic fervour.

Dalton looked on in a little awe. 'And she's always like this?' he questioned as an aside. His companion turned to him, bleached hair almost glowing in the shadows, and grinned. 'She's in a bleedin' trance mate. Goes sack of hammers and won't come down for ages. Need you to do somethin' for me though. Know a bloke around here has a dusty collection of old paper wot I'll need help with translating. Need a text to save a lady.'

'Is she ill then?' Dalton was a little worried by that thought, the blond vampire he was standing beside had a barely leashed feel about him when he spoke of his 'lady'. The balding, tweedy little minion just knew that if anything happened to her, the young Master would see the world burn in retaliation. And he quite liked this corner of existence, thank you very much. It had everything he could ever want: a high school library with a huge selection of unprotected occult and demonic knowledge just waiting to be devoured, a hospital with the state's largest supply of donated blood, and no-one to care if the expired stuff was actually destroyed or merely vanished; a sewer network that Paris would be proud of and the blindest population of a Hellmouth town he'd ever seen. It was paradise, even for so pathetically non-violent a demon as Dalton knew himself to be.

Spike grimaced, his face blanking into something cold and inhuman. Eyes like glittering chips of ice, he spoke softly. 'We were in Prague. She wandered off in one of her fits. When I found her she was barely clingin' to her unlife. Mob'd chanced on her in the middle of a meal an started a round of Beat the Dru. Poisoned her with some crap to keep her down and were havin' some right nasty fun with it. Angelus'd be proud. They were lucky she needed help more than I needed revenge, coz what they did… Mate, there ain't enough centuries in eternity to make 'em suffer.'

The minion shivered. For a vampire, Spike had seemed surprisingly alive until just now. He looked like a marble statue of himself as he spoke almost dispassionately about what'd he'd have liked to do given the chance. Dalton found himself feeling strangely relieved that Spike hadn't been able to follow through on his musings.

Speaking up almost hesitantly, he interrupted the vicious monologue. 'I.. erm, that is to say… I may have a book that'll help. I was a bit of a cryptographer when I still had a pulse, and I sort of try to keep in practice when I can. Came across an interesting read down at the high-school if you'd believe, and if I can crack it, it may have what you need. The title's in proper Latin, Ritualia Lamia Daemones. There'd almost have to be some sort of healing spell in there.'

The Master-vampire's eyes pierced him with a gimlet stare. 'You'd wanna be sure about that mate. Right bloody sure of yourself, yeah? You fuck up some wonky hocus-pocus and hurt my Dru and I'll cut you. I'll take you apart slow so's I can finally get back to Angelus on exactly how much you need to remove to dust a vamp. Savvy?'

Sucking in an unnecessary breath the demon in the balding corpse nodded as he shrunk away from the malice he felt rolling off Spike in waves.

'I need you to focus properly. There are three non-human energies in this room. One is peaceable, one is neutral, and one is inimical to positive life-forces. Some would probably say evil, but it's only acting within its nature.'

Her voice was starting to fall on the whiney side of the scale again. 'Why can't I say evil then? If it's jonesing to kill the Chosen One isn't that pretty near the top of the list of Deeds That Make You Evil?'

'Well aren't you just the cutest little Council yes-man.' Taliesin practically sneered his challenge at her stubborn vacuity. He'd been working on these narrow-minded impulses of hers for four months now and had thought he'd made decent progress. Yet every so often she seemed to retreat into this comfortable black and white view of life, and it galled him.

The problem was that she was still so very young, and clinging to her childish notions was a comfortable stance for her when life got confusing. Unfortunately, this way she had of packing everything into neat little boxes- Good, Evil, Human, Demon, Person, Not-person. It was going to get her killed again, and soon. She'd already encountered some of the benign non-humans that made up her fellow students, and there were one or two of the teachers who weren't entirely human either. It had shaken her Council-approved notions of good and evil quite nicely. Now he was trying to break down the rest of the narrow-minded indoctrination that was stifling her natural discernment.

If he succeeded, she'd not only be a lot closer to the original Slayers in terms of perception and attitude to the non-humans, it'd also be a lot easier to continue working with her when it came time for him to join her support network in California. He only had a little under eight months left of strenuous, uninterrupted access to her brain in order redirect her misguided prejudices. After that he would have to work through the bias of others and hopefully re-educate at least two of the people closest to her.

Buffy blushed in shame. She'd been doing that a lot lately. Every time she dug her heels in and tried to ignore all the exceptions to the rules she'd been taught ever since she was Called, her annoying mentor-guy would immediately pick up on it and make her feel like she was a six-year-old whining about not having ice cream. And the more she did it, the nastier he got about it. Not having her two best friends around to support her made it even harder to ignore how child-like these claims really were. 'Ok, so how is it inimi-whatsit to "positive life"?'

Her teacher sighed. 'Inimical to positive life. Things that breathe, have a heartbeat or some form of circulation, have a living aura, reproduce living babies. Negative life is… Well the easiest way to describe is using a vampire as the subject. Animate, sentient, technically "alive" but lacking respiratory function or pulse. They reproduce asexually, giving rise to fully adult versions of their species by reducing a "live" host to its "dead" state, and introducing the impetus within the "corpse" by which it then operates indefinitely. Unless it meets with something fatal to it.'

'That'd be me.'

'Also any type of wood, fire, the sunlight of most dimensions and any object that's been charged with the positive life energy of extra-planar beings. You'd call them "Gods".'

'Wow, they really don't have a lot going for their whole immortal schtick, do they?' Buffy smirked a little. She hadn't stopped to think just how easy it was to dust vampires, but just about anything would do it; even a match could kill one if you managed to set them ablaze before they saw you. They went up like they'd been soaked in gasoline too.

'So, how exactly did you come here? Remind me again? Just because they have a plethora of weaknesses doesn't mean they are beneath your notice, or respect. In fact, most Slayers fall to a vampire in the final accounting. Maybe not so much in recent years, because the Council has essentially re-educated you girls to all-purpose removal of the non-human element on your world. But over-all.'

Buffy deflated a little. There was that. The tiny, little detail of how she'd come here in the first place. 'But… He was actually a really good fighter! Almost as strong as me, and super-skilled too. He took out at least two Slayers before me.' Rubbing her wrist in memory, she muttered, 'Knew nearly everything about me too. Like he'd studied for it.'

'He probably did. Was he a notorious vampire then?'

'Yeah, Giles' books said his name was something like William the Bloody. After he killed Nikki Wood he became the Slayer of Slayers. It was weird, the books say he usually goes after us when we're older. There were a few other fights recorded of him and Slayers, but they weren't to the death I guess.'

'They're always to the death. Vampires have a habit of consuming what impassions them, and if this one is going after the Slayer line like this I'd say there is something that draws him to it. Not all of their appetite is strictly for blood. I suspect it's your Calling that pulls him in more than anything and I'm willing to bet he's fought at least one of those girls without draining her afterwards.'

Unsure of how much he actually knew, she stayed quiet. Taliesin had an annoying habit of making statements and asking leading questions, withholding information he already knew as a way to test her. She had read a little about this Slayer of Slayers after Giles had found the entries in the Watcher Diaries. It had been noted that his second confirmed Slayer died from a broken neck, no fang-marks in sight. Buffy didn't know what to think of it. On the one hand, she'd been taught that vamps were all grr! about the blood, and most seemed to act like it was the only reason for their existence, which, ew. On the other… on the other was a seriously wiggy thought she didn't want to explore. It seemed like Taliesin was suggesting that vampires were capable of at least some kind of emotion. Or, dare she consider, even… honour? But, if that was true, wouldn't that mean Angel - soulful honest Angel - had been, well... lying?

Great. This was just… fantastic. He'd checked his sources, crossed his references, and barring some really unreliable theories, everything confirmed the same thing. He was fucked. Completely, totally, unequivocally screwed.

The man in question removed his crumpled hat and ran his hands through his sweaty hair. He didn't need to excrete waste products through his skin or otherwise, but it was a holdover reflex from his mortal days. Especially when he was stressed this badly. Whistlers' jaw clenched, and his weary eyes screwed shut in a quiet moment of despair, which was all he allowed himself before replacing his hat and shutting the book. *Not if I can help it, toots. I'm nobody's pushover.* Straightening his coat, he quietly left the library, almost bumping into someone striding in the opposite direction. He flinched back and hunched his shoulders as he walked out, turning into a nearby alley before disappearing entirely.

The man he'd nearly mowed down paused around the corner from the entrance, and smirked. That had been… interesting. Continuing on he wandered over to the prophecy section. He grabbed a slim volume and then, stopping here and there as he passed back through the room (which was of an oddly indeterminate size, shrinking in some areas to a few shelves, yet stretching off into the misty distance when he turned around) filling his arms with various tomes. Just before he was ready to leave, however, he saw something that made him drop everything, books scattering and scrolls unrolling every which way. *Oh… That can't be good. Not good at all.*