Author's Note: So, funny story! After writing Chapter Ten on this story, I thought I lost all the notes I'd made for future chapters. That was depressing, but I soldiered on and did my best to reconstruct them despite it having been months since I wrote most of them. Of course as soon as I did that, I found the original notes, leaving me with two outlines of ideas that I like but which are fundamentally incompatible. It took some time to get all the stray bits of story wedged back together coherently, but here it is, Chapter 11! Hope you enjoy, I always love getting feedback.

…...

"Order of the Hyacinth, huh? Sounds weirdly pretty for a doomsday cult." Buffy rested her chin on one fist. The conference room at the Lodge was twice the size of their meeting area at the Magic Box, nearly the size of the open area at the school library, but it was a lot more crowded these days when Giles called a Scooby meeting. The usual suspects were all present, including Dawn, but they'd added Faith to the Scooby roster, plus Vi from the Lodge and Steph from Madison as representatives of their Slayer houses, plus their watchers, plus Andrew for reasons Buffy never really had figured out.

"Yes, well," Giles stuttered a bit, organizing his papers. "The origin of the word Hyacinth is from Greek mythology. Hyacinth was a companion to the god Apollo, and when he was killed, Apollo refused to let his soul pass to the realms of the underworld. The goals of the Order-"

"To erode the barriers between life and death by not allowing the souls of the dead to move on, gotcha." Buffy nodded and flicked her fingers to show they could move on. "But they've given up on the whole Greek Life thing to terrorize Wisconsin? Why?"

"Maybe they thought the Upper Peninsula would be too cold," Willow suggested puckishly. She'd been spending a lot of late nights tracking down the coven already, and it was starting to show.

"Maybe they just like the name Sheboygan," Xander offered. "She-boy-gan. Shaboygin." Vi and Andrew seemed to feel the idea had merit, repeating the word along with Xander a few times till Giles called things back to order.

"The Order in its current incarnation is not particularly old as these things go," Giles explained, once Xander was momentarily quelled, "but it was quite large and well-organized. It was founded sometime after 1850 by a self-styled prophetess named Marian Wheelwright. Wheelwright was a fairly skilled witch, although she had only moderate power of her own. A spell to erode dimensional barriers requires a phenomenal amount of power, as well as an astrological alignment most of the time. Wheelwright believed that she could power the spell with a massive ritual to bind the spirits of the newly dead, so long as enough people died in a relatively small region on the date in question. The fortuitous date she chose was October 8, 1871."

Willow's eyes rounded. "They caused the Great Chicago Fire?" she gasped.

"Indeed," Giles nodded, "but that was a lesser conflagration, more a backup fire, if you will."

"Giles, you just agreed it was the Great Chicago Fire," Buffy pointed out. "Wouldn't that be the Lesser Chicago Fire?"

"The Great Chicago Fire destroyed 3.3 square miles of Chicago, killed three hundred people, and left a hundred thousand homeless," Giles explained. "It was utterly devastating for the city, unlike anything they'd seen before. But on the same day, several hundred miles north, a firestorm ripped through the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin and its surrounding environs. Contemporaneous accounts had the fire so fast it raced trains, and so strong that it jumped both firebreaks and actual streams. By the time it burned out, twelve communities had been completely eradicated, two thousand lives lost, and 1.2 million acres burnt over. Several additional fires the same day in Michigan killed another two hundred, but the devastation was centered in Northern Wisconsin."

"That does put things in perspective," Willow agreed, frowning. "Why didn't it work?"

"We aren't certain," Giles admitted. "It's possible that the coven may have gotten caught up in the fire they created and had to abandon the ritual before its completion. Or it may simply have been that two thousand lives was not enough of a sacrifice, despite the incredible collateral damage. The Order of the Hyacinth, and Wheelwright herself, disappeared entirely and were never heard from again. There were rumors that a coven of powerful witches had ensconced themselves somewhere in that region, protecting the Dark Heart of Glaurion until the Day of Dissolution-"

"Wasn't he that Klingon guy from Star Trek?" Dawn asked quizzically.

"That's Gowron, kiddo," Vi corrected her. "Glaurion was the first dragon on Middle Earth. He ate a bunch of elves in the Silmarillion."

Andrew looked appalled. "That was Glaurung!" he insisted. "Also known as the Dagor Bragollach, he broke the Siege of Angband with a mighty army of orcs and Balrogs!"

"This doesn't have anything to do with Glory, right?" Buffy asked, rather concerned. She was losing track of all these names.

"No it does not," Giles assured her, "nor has it anything to do with fictional aliens or dragons!" He raised his voice just a bit to make the point. "The Dark Heart of Glaurion is a powerful artifact with various dimension-spanning properties that I will discuss at much greater length with Willow and anyone else who cares to delve into them. For the rest of you, suffice it to say that without the artifact, the sacrifice of souls, and an especially fortuitous alignment of the stars, the ritual has no real chance of being successful. The rumors remained unsubstantiated and the coven undisturbed in their rest... until recently."

"That sounds ominous," Buffy decided. "Who do we have to spank?"

"I'm always up for a little spanking," Faith joked from her spot in the corner.

Giles attempted valiantly to continue speaking over the laughter. "Most of you will probably recall the trouble we had last year with Richard Lancaster, the Watcher from Madison-"

"You're going to go spank Dick Lancaster?" Steph asked Faith, ill-concealed glee on her face. "I'd pay to see that. Well, not pay, and not real spanking, that would be gross..." She subsided with a glance towards her father, her face reddening.

"Yep, looks like Faith's up for spanking duty," Xander teased. "No take-backsies, either."

Faith glowered at him, but whatever reply she'd have made was cut off by Giles shouting "Enough! Every single one of you complains about the length of these Council meetings, and yet you cannot bring yourselves to avoid extending them with endless chatter! If you could all bring yourselves to pay attention for five more minutes, perhaps I could convey some actual information to you."

"Sorry Giles," Buffy replied meekly, trying her best to look contrite. "We'll be good." The rest of the Scoobies played along as best they could, zipping lips and straightening in chairs, looking attentive or at least looking in his direction. Inwardly, though, Buffy could barely suppress a grin. It was rare to have all her oldest friends in one place anymore and even more rare for them all to be joking and laughing, even if it was at another potential apocalypse.

Giles gave them all a look that said he doubted that very much, but kept going. "Last year, Mr. Lancaster convinced one of the Senior Slayers from the Madison house to join him on an unauthorized mission to locate the coven and recover the Dark Heart of Glaurion. His disregard for protocol involving magical antagonists led to them waking the coven from a state of suspended animation and nearly getting killed for their troubles. By the time a Council team managed to reach the scene of the incident the coven was gone, as was the artifact. That was the end of Richard Lancaster's relationship with the New Council but I have reason to believe he and the Slayer have continued their pursuit of the artifact until recently.

"Is this another Glove of Myhnegon situation?" Willow asked, this time sounding a bit more subdued.

"I don't believe so." Giles shot Faith a look that was almost apologetic. "The Dark Heart of Glaurion has no known properties that would grant power to its bearer. It is the focus for a small number of dimensional magic and dimensional travel rituals, but if that is where his interest lay, given his position on the New Council he'd have been better served to simply kidnap Dawn."

"Hey!" Dawn squawked. "Does it always have to be kidnapping? I'm old enough now, can't they try seducing me to the side of evil at least once or twice?" Buffy gave her a quelling glare.

"Be that as it may," Giles continued, clearing his throat, "as far as we know, Lancaster's pursuit of the artifact has been for the sake of rubbing our noses in it, as it were. A sort of professional redemption. I would personally be inclined to let him continue scouring the outer reaches of the Upper Midwest for it indefinitely, but our friends in Devon have informed me that there is a conjunction of stars coming up on the first of April that may suffice for a reenactment of the Order of the Hyacinth's signature ritual. I need not tell you that another set of fires of that magnitude in this day and age would kill far more than two thousand people."

There was a moment's silence around the table. Buffy was the first to break it. "So, I'm guessing we go rough up Ex-Watcher Guy till he tells us what he knows, find out where this Mary Wheelbarrow is hiding out, then get our slay on, all before April Fool's Day?"

"Maybe we shouldn't rough him up right off the bat," Willow chimed in. "Guys like that want to show off. He'll probably tell us more if we let him think he's getting one over on us because we're coming to him for help." She threw up her hands at the looks of distaste around the table. "Yeah, I know it stinks, but time is of the essence, right?"

"We should also talk to Donna," suggested Dan Gault, the Watcher from Madison. "She was with Rick for the awakening and for nearly a year while they were searching for it. She's got a highly detail-focused and analytical mind, there may be things she can tell us about what they were doing that he won't disclose. Her familiarity with the region will also be useful on the hunt."

"I'm not sure about that," Xander suggested uncomfortably. "Donna's on reserve status now, she's got a job and a life outside. Just because she got her head turned by an asshole doesn't mean she's not entitled to say when she wants to be done with Slaying."

Buffy was torn. She wanted to agree with Xander, who had become a reliable voice on behalf of the Slayers as young women instead of fighting machines. The right of a Slayer to say no, to take a sabbatical or just retire, was a right Buffy believed in utterly, one she'd wished desperately for herself when she was younger. And maybe she was too old and too broken by violence and death to take advantage of that option herself anymore, but that was only more reason to extend it to others. But at the same time, if the fate of the world was at stake...

Giles broke in before Buffy was done wrestling with herself. "Reserve status does not mean retired," he pointed out to Xander. "I spoke with Donna before she left, and she specifically indicated her readiness to be recalled in the event of apocalypse. I, too, would much rather leave her to enjoy her new venture in life, but needs must as the devil drives. There are very few Slayers who would not turn up to prevent the end of the world, especially one that they themselves caused, however inadvertently."

Xander nodded reluctantly. "Does anybody know where the campaign is right now? She keeps sending postcards from cheesy tourist attractions, but I can't keep up."

"They're actually coming to Columbus day after tomorrow," Steph piped up, sounding almost reluctant. "Donna was planning on trying to drive up here for the night if there was enough of a break in the schedule." She smiled halfheartedly. "I told her she wasn't allowed to brainwash the minis into campaign volunteers. I guess maybe we can catch her then?"

"No," Buffy decided, resting her fingertips against the table. "I'll go up and get her, at least give her a chance to say goodbye."

Dawn had appointed herself chauffeur for the trip, loudly reminding anyone in earshot of how Buffy and driving were decidedly unmixy things. Buffy rolled her eyes, but wasn't going to complain too loudly about not having to fight Columbus traffic. As she stared out the window and tried to ignore Dawn's annoying music choices, she found her thoughts drifting back almost fifteen years to her arrival in Sunnydale. She'd been in the passenger seat and staring out the window then, too, (with a dubbed-in memory of Dawn sulking in the backseat for good measure). Angry about the unfairness of her expulsion from Hemery, but at the same time hoping that leaving Los Angeles would let her outrun the grim fate Merrick had painted for her.

Sunnydale had seemed the perfect place to live a normal life, but nobody could outrun their destiny. She couldn't, and neither, it seemed, could Donna. Sometimes Buffy wondered why the other Slayers, the Sunnydale girls in particular, didn't hate her for what she'd done to them in the name of saving the world.

The convention hall where Governor Bartlet was going to speak was crowded and noisy, full of excited people who were either jockeying for positions closer to the stage or running around with no discernible purpose at all. Buffy didn't follow politics even a little, but having a Slayer out on the campaign trail had drawn some interest around the Lodge. Well, mostly it had interested Andrew, who inflicted his interests on everyone else, so she knew enough to know that the Bartlet campaign was starting to pick up a little steam after the first couple primaries. Buffy and Dawn edged their way around the crowd towards the backstage area where the staff seemed to be clustering. Raised voices caught Buffy's attention, drawing her eye to an argument between an angry, balding, bearded man and-

"Wow," Buffy murmured out loud without realizing it.

Dawn followed her gaze. "Dibs," she said instantly. "Double-dibs."

Buffy slanted a glare in her direction, then looked back at the tall, blue-eyed piece of salty goodness trying in vain to argue with the bald man."You can't call dibs on somebody you don't even know, no matter how hot he is. Besides, there's no possible way he's straight."

"Maybe I can change," Dawn sighed dreamily. "I think Willow still knows that spell..."

That called for a swift whack upside the head, a big sister's most sacred duty. "Pull yourself together, Dawnie. We're looking for Donna, remember?"

"He's wearing a campaign badge," Dawn pointed out brightly. "I bet he could help us!" Unfortunately for Dawn's libido, the argument seemed to end at that moment, both men retreating behind the stage with packets of paper in hand. "Dammit."

A red-haired woman approached them from the side of the stage, wearing a campaign badge and carrying an outsized vase of red, white and blue chrysanthemums. Buffy felt a little tingle along her spine, and in her sinuses as well. She sneezed.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked briskly. "I"m afraid this is a staff-only area. Governor Bartlet will be shaking hands-"

"Actually we're looking for a staff member," Buffy cut in, wearing her best ingratiating grin. "Do you know if Donna Moss is around? We're old friends from home."

The woman did a slight double take at that, for no reason Buffy could figure out. "Um, sure, I think she's right around here somewhere." The woman pursed her lips and looked around, then pointed to the other side of the stage. "Over there." Sure enough, Buffy caught just a glimpse of Donna, furiously taking notes as she trailed a wildly gesticulating man through the crowd.

Buffy turned to thank the woman but she was already gone, giant flowers and all. With a sigh, Buffy grabbed hold of Dawn's arm and hauled her all the way back through the crush of people to the far side of the stage. About halfway there Buffy caught the telltale resonance that said Slayer, making it easier to home in on her target. The same resonance had Donna looking in their direction when they were still a dozen yards away, notebook forgotten for a moment. Buffy could tell the moment she caught sight of them, the momentary happiness at seeing a familiar face immediately chased off by worry about why the Head Slayer was intruding on her normal mundane life.

Donna rested her hand on the shoulder of the man she was with and murmured something in his ear, then hurried over to meet the pair with a smile that only seemed a little strained. "Hey Buffy, hey Dawn! I wasn't expecting to see anybody from Cleveland down here for the rally, I was going to drive in tonight to say hi. I know it's only been a month since I left but it seems like forever and it'll be nice to get a chance to see everyone and tell them about what I'm doing. Did you come to see the rally? It's going to start any minute and it's going to be pretty great..." Her babbling, Buffy noted, was almost at Willowian levels of putting-off-the-inevitable, but trailed off eventually. "Something's wrong, isn't it," she guessed.

"Yeah, that word lesson you gave me about eclipses looks like it's going to come in handy this year," Buffy told her with a rueful half-smile. "And it's only March! Is there a place we can talk?"

"Um, sure..." Donna looked around, clutching her notebook to her chest. Buffy noted that even in her new civilian life Donna wasn't going entirely unarmed: her wispy blond hair was held up in its bun with two slender wooden hairsticks that Buffy knew from experience were a lot stronger than they looked. They'd been a huge fad in the Slayer houses two years ago, she had a pair or two knocking around in a drawer herself. "I can't talk long though, or Josh will come looking for me. He needs some hand-holding on polling days."

Dawn arched an eyebrow at that as Donna led them down the side aisle towards the service corridor. "So is Josh the curly-haired guy you were with? What about the gorgeous one who was arguing with the bald guy?"

"That's Sam," Donna told her, sounding a little distracted. "He's one of the speechwriters, he and Toby spend most of their time arguing. Josh is the guy I work for, he's the chief campaign strategist. Here we go." She pushed open a door and led them into a bare little room occupied by a single forlorn chair dolly. "What's going on?"

Buffy opened her mouth to frame the situation as best she could in the time allowed, but Dawn jumped in first. "Those witches you and Rick woke up last year are going to cause an apocalypse on April Fool's Day and you have to come help us stop them."

Donna's face didn't have a lot of color to begin with, but she lost what there was of it. "What?" she asked, her voice a dismayed whisper.

Buffy glared at Dawn. "Nice, very diplomatic." Dawn had the grace to look a little sheepish. Buffy then gave Donna a thumbnail sketch of what Giles had told them about the Order of the Hyacinth and their Dark Heart of Gilgamesh, or whatever it was called.

Midway through, Donna turned to a clean page in her notebook and began taking rapid notes. "April first, that isn't a lot of time," she mused. "But what do you need me for?"

"You and that Watcher tracked these guys for like a year," Dawn reminded her. "You know a lot more than we do about places they might be likely to go. We're getting him in on this too, but you'll be able to tell us if he's bullshitting us with the info he gives. But hey," she added, seeing Donna's growing dismay, "maybe once we get done with the slaying and the partying, you can come back here and get back to the-" She waved a hand. "Politics stuff."

Donna shook her head, a pained little smile on her face. "I don't think so," she told Dawn. "If I take off now, it's probably for good. I got my one chance." She looked at Buffy. "Do we have to go right now, or can it wait till after the rally? I want to talk to him, I mean, I should tell people I'm leaving, and it's just so busy right now."

Sitting through a political rally was not high on Buffy's list of ways to spend a rare non-slaying afternoon away from Cleveland, but she couldn't ignore the pleading look on Donna's face. "Sure, we'll hang out," she agreed. "But we need to be back at the Lodge before dark. I've got patrols tonight."

"Okay, I can do that," Donna assured her hastily, wiping at her eyes. "Wait for me after the speeches, I'll find you and we'll go. And help yourself to some food, the chicken is awful but there's some kind of potato and cheese thing that's pretty good." With that she was gone, clicking gracefully away on her sensible heels as she raced back for one last campaign hurrah.

The potato stuff was indeed good, especially when one had the sort of metabolism that didn't worry about counting carbs or fat grams. While Dawn walked around in search of the elusive speechwriter from earlier, Buffy found a seat at the back of the hall and hung out. Places like this were weird, she decided. Spending most of her time at the Lodge made her feel ancient most of the time, especially when she was teaching. Her twenty-seven years made her an icon of longevity among Slayers despite the occasional deaths along the way, and most of them seemed to see her as some kind of wise ancestor-type. It was probably good she had Dawn visiting from school on the regular, stealing her stuff, making fun of her and otherwise reminding her that she was almost a normal human. Out here in this world, though, Buffy was one of the younger people in a room full of middle-aged and older politicians and political junkies. All the other people her age were running around doing errands for older, more experienced folks. There were lines of work out there where twenty-seven still counted as just getting started.

The speeches were not as tedious as she'd feared. Governor Bartlet was actually a pretty good speaker, despite the occasional tendency to ramble, and there were a few genuinely funny lines sprinkled in among the usual promises of prosperity, freedom and potted chickens. During the question and answer session, Dawn distracted her by whispering potential questions like "Do you believe vampires deserve the right to vote?" and "What's your stance on being able to claim slime-ruined clothing as business expenses on tax returns?" Buffy was half-tempted to ask that one; he'd have earned her vote for sure.

Once the speechifying was done, the Governor walked down into the audience to talk with people face-to-face. Buffy almost laughed aloud when she realized the guy was nearly as short as she was. Maybe she really would vote for him, assuming he managed to make it that far. The crowd began to thin out eventually, volunteers moving through to pack up food and stack chairs while the campaign staff continued doing whatever it was that they did near the front. Dawn caught sight of Salty Goodness Sam again and nearly darted away like a puppy into traffic, only to be literally collared by Buffy grabbing the back of her coat. "Even if he is straight, he's like fifteen years older than you," she reminded Dawn, "and you're never going to see him again. Appreciate him from afar, like beautiful art."

Dawn stuck out her tongue at Buffy, then both of them schooled themselves to more sober expressions as Donna rejoined them. She was toting a suitcase this time and looked like she was trying very hard not to cry. This close, Buffy could feel the sadness and disappointment rolling off her in waves. On the other side of the room, she got a glimpse of curly-haired Josh, his face stormy, trying to watch them without looking like he was watching them. She put a hand on Donna's shoulder as they headed for the door. "What did you tell him?"

Donna swallowed as they dodged around a few knots of people still talking politics in front of the building. "I told him I had left things unfinished with my boyfriend," she managed quietly, "and it was time for me to go home where I belonged." They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence, the faint political conversations carrying behind them on the wind.