A/N: Whoops! Here I am a day late...probably need to work on my time management skills a little. Anyway, better late than never, right?

Thirty-two. That was the official death toll from the otherwise alternative Valentine's Day. Thirty-two. And that didn't even include those who were in the hospital for injuries, some likely to never fully heal from their encounters. Thirty-two. Some say it could have been worse; Beth didn't really see how it could have. It was already too many people and there hadn't been a damn thing any of them could do about it. And really, what was the point of being a slayer if you couldn't save people? Her dad said she couldn't save them all, but it said it with such a lack of conviction she knew he felt it too; and her mom…well, her mom was feeling too righteous to feel this sort of hurt.

Maybe she wasn't meant to take it so personally. But she had a hard time doing otherwise. Something in her gut twisted when she thought about it; like maybe if she had been faster, or smarter, or more in-tune, she would have figured this all out by now.

God, she hated being a slayer sometimes.

Huffing, Beth leaned against the window pane, her breath leaving smudges of condensation on it. She watched cars passing by, her eyes trailing after them.

From the doorway, Buffy watched with barely concealed concern. "She's been like this for weeks now," she murmured, looking over her shoulder at Spike, who was watching TV in the living room. For being the concerned parent all the goddamn time, he was really unaffected by all the moping. Buffy'd played the moody teenager quite effectively in her own adolescence and she knew what it looked like. And boy, what this not it.

"You still standin; there?" he asked, not even taking his eyes off the screen.

Grumbling, she strode across the hallway and toward the couch, snatching the remote off the coffee table and turning the TV off.

"Hey!" he whined petulantly, sitting up. "I was watchin' that!"

"Are you not at all concerned about your own daughter?" she asked, thrusting her hand at the picture of sulking that was currently occupying their lounge.

He looked around Buffy to get a look. He sighed, leaning back into the couch and running a hand over his face. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"Anything!" she requested, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

"Buffy," he began quietly, "do you remember the first time you failed to save someone?"

Stiffening, her eyes zeroed in on the lamp off to her right.

Recognizing what she was doing, he continued, "She feels like she's failed. An' sure, I could smother her an' tell her that it's not her fault, but she wouldn't listen an' it wouldn't help. We need to leave her be an' be there when she wants to talk to us."

She seemed to contemplate this for a moment before letting out a deep sigh, her shoulders dropping. "I just don't like seeing her like this," she admitted softly. "I don't want her to feel like she's not doing as much as she should." With a tired sigh, she threw her hands up into the air, sinking down onto the couch beside Spike. "All of these events are really taking a toll on us already, especially Beth. She's still trying to learn the ropes and failure this early is going to hurt a lot."

"Love, all you need to do is take her out for patrol one night, let her stake a few vamps, an' then she'll feel like her old self again," he assured. Seeing his wife's attention still firmly located on their daughter, he made a grab for the remote, switching the TV back on so he wouldn't miss more of his soaps. Of course, it was almost pointless, considering that Natasha was now throwing something at Michael, all while screaming about Hannah and he didn't have a clue as to why.

Buffy scoffed when she heard the TV turn back on, rolling her eyes as she got back up. And usually he was the first to kiss away Beth's boo-boos. She took one last look at her daughter, feeling no less helpless, before heading up the stairs.

-.-

Sitting in the passenger's side of the car, Beth was noticeably distracted—worried too, as her leg was jumping up and down erratically. Nadja, driving, frowned when she noticed it. She scoffed, glancing up into the rearview mirror to see the mysterious and utterly bored-looking Maea leaning against the back seat, her eyes carelessly peering out the window. She supposed someone who'd seen most of the progression of humanity would be bored of suburbia.

"Stop worrying," Nadja sighed.

Beth's head snapped over to shoot Nadja a scowl. "Easy to say, much harder to do. I'm about to bring some immortal superhero to my parents to introduce them. How can I not worry?"

"Do you suppose I plan to brutally murder them?" Maea asked casually, one eyebrow raised.

"Maybe if you could be concerned about this too, I'd be carrying less of the worrying," Beth snidely retorted.

"I'm not entirely sure why you consider this necessary," she admitted. "I didn't need to know your parents before."

"Look, they're my parents. I tell them things," Beth explained.

"And the last time Beth had an informant, he ended up nearly getting her killed," Nadja added. "Meeting the 'rents is like added security. I'd also say her dad could smell a bad guy a mile out, but we both know that's not true." She gave Beth a knowing glance.

"That was one time and I didn't even really like him all that much!"

"Your parents deal with the supernatural all the time, I don't see how I would be an oddity," Maea stated.

"You're not," Beth assured. "It's just that—well, my parents haven't ever had the best experiences with gods. They tend to, well, kill people."

Maea blinked. "People kill people and yet your parents get along fine with those."

"But this is more personal!" she explained. "A god killed my mother! That's not something so easily forgiven."

This nugget of information seemed to take Maea aback. "Your mother has died?"

"Yup," Nadja confirmed. "Like buried with a funeral dead."

"It's a long story," Beth explained when Maea shot her a questioning look. "What matters is that that is a bad encounter with a god. It's soured both my parents toward the heavenly immortals. They probably won't react well to the news."

"I can take care of myself," Maea told her.

"I know and that's what I'm worried about."

"I'm just glad you decided to tell someone about her," Nadja jumped in. "It went south with the vampire so maybe this will go better. Plus, I don't think she'd sell you out to be some moldy old vamp's demented bride."

"Good to see I've inspired confidence in you," Maea deadpanned.

"Hey! As Beth's oldest friend, I have great concern in her well-being," Nadja explained. "And seeing as I hardly even know you, I have reason to be concerned. But so far, you've done good."

"I could easily crush you."

"And yet," Nadja sighed.

"Could my new best friend and my oldest best friend not fight?" Beth asked. "Also, Jackie is technically my oldest best friend. You're my most oldest best friend that's a girl."

"That's very binary of you."

Nadja eventually pulled up in front of Beth's house, who looked at the building with some apprehension.

"Hey, don't worry, you parents have great homeowner's insurance," Nadja soothed, making Beth scowl at her.

"I'm not afraid someone's going to throw someone else through a wall," she growled, throwing open the car door and stepping out.

"Sure you're not," Nadja mumbled, following Beth's lead and getting out of the car. "You were not concerned about that at all throughout the entire car ride. Not even a little."

"I want you to know that your sarcasm is not appreciated," Beth told her.

"Can we please not draw this out?" Maea asked, eyes hard. "I hardly think it is necessary at all, but seeing as you insisted upon dragging me all the way over here, I'd like it if we could end it now. You say I'll be an asset and I'd like to be that. Besides, it's not as if you are the only thing I have going on in my life."

"Wait, are you saying you have things to do today?" Beth inquired.

"And does it involve providing pertinent information to morally ambivalent demons?" Nadja added and Beth elbowed her in the ribs. "Ow, not so hard slayer-girl."

"Who's binary now?"

"Just go inside," Maea interrupted, pushing Beth toward the front door.

While she resented being manhandled (or would it be womanhandled? Godhandled?), she did as Maea asked and led them both toward her house. Inside, her mother was sitting on the couch, flipping through a magazine and looking bored. She looked up when she heard the front door, smiling as she noticed her daughter coming in.

"Hey Beth, I thought you said you were going to be out all day with Nadja," Buffy greeted, her eyes lingering on Nadja before they moved onto Maea, where they stayed.

"Uh, change of plans," Beth told her. "Where's dad?"

"Shopping," her mother explained briefly. "We needed eggs."

"Right," she breathed, looking over at Nadja who urged her on with some hand-motions, none of which Buffy missed. "I have something I need to tell you."

"Uh-oh," her mother said, putting down the magazine and standing up. "This sounds serious. What did you do?"

"Why do you automatically assume I did something?" she asked, immediately going on defense. "When have I ever done anything bad?"

"Because I'm your mother and you're my teenage daughter," Buffy explained. "That's how these things work!"

"Nobody did anything," Nadja interrupted.

"May I speak?" Maea asked.

"No, I've got this," Beth responded. "Mum, look, I've got something I need to tell you. Something I probably should have told you a long time ago, but didn't—but it's not bad! At least, I don't think it's bad. Your opinion may differ, but who's to say? Anyway, I hope you'll react well…"

"Beth, you're stalling," Nadja said under her breath, leaning in closer for her to hear.

"Oh my god, you're gay," her mother blurted out, eyes wide. "Is that what this is?"

"What?" Beth asked, suddenly thrown off by her mother's guess. "Wait, what? I mean—what?"

"That's what this is, right?" Buffy asked. "You're coming out. It's why you were never interested in boys—oh, why didn't you say so sooner, Bethie? I mean, Willow—did you not think we would understand? I know I talk about grandkids—"

"Mum, I'm not gay," Beth interrupted loudly. "I kissed James and that was pretty alright."

"Ew, details," Nadja muttered.

"Wait, so this isn't your girlfriend?" she asked, gesturing toward Maea who had thankfully kept quiet throughout the outburst.

"No, this is Maea, my friend," Beth said slowly. "She's what I wanted to talk about. After Charlie left, I've been using Maea here as my informant to get information and she's who's been helping me with the magical surges. I wanted to introduce her because I thought she might be more help this way."

"And also she's a god," Nadja added.

"Nadja!" Beth shrieked, turning on her friend.

"What?" Buffy asked, her voice growing dangerously serious.

"You do not just drop that information like that! Handle it carefully!" Beth hissed.

"Your friend is a god?" her mother asked.

"Yes, I am," Maea answered. "I have been told you've had some bad experiences with gods. Death, I think, was mentioned?"

"Bad is putting it lightly," Buffy said through clenched teeth before turning to face her daughter. "Beth, do you even know how dangerous this is? She could kill you! Easily! You may be a slayer, but that doesn't mean she can't throw you across the continent!"

"Mum, she's not like that," Beth tried to explain. "She's been helping us this whole time and while maybe she hasn't always been a saint—"

"You're really selling this here, Elizabeth Joyce," Buffy said, sarcasm lacing her voice.

"Look, I promise she won't be a problem," Beth assured.

"Like you promised about Charlie?"

"Okay, so sue me! I made one bad personality judgement! Are you going to hold that over me forever?"

"Yes! I'm your mother and it's my right!"

"May I say something?" Maea interrupted none-too-gently.

"Please do," Nadja mumbled. "I can't see you making this worse."

"Your daughter is hardly the first slayer I've encountered Buffy Summers," Maea began. "And this wouldn't be the first battle I've fought in either. Once I was like you, a righteous soldier, fighting for good and mankind and what have you. I enjoyed the cause and reveled in it. I know the rush of winning and doing good. I might have lost myself there for a while, but Beth has helped me regain much of what I forgot. I've felt for mankind, Buffy Summers, and before it did not make me unkind."

Silence carried through the house, with Buffy eyeing Maea suspiciously and Beth eyeing her mother warily and Nadja eyeing the door once in a while, thinking of escape.

"You want me to just take your word?" Buffy finally asked, her voice hard.

"I ask that you give me a chance, like others have before you," Maea said. "Your Council knows of me and while they may fear me, they know that I can do good. If you cannot trust me, I ask that you trust them."

Buffy snorted. "You don't know the Council like I do if you think I'm going to trust them full-heartedly."

"I know more of what they've done then you do," Maea assured. "After all, I've been around almost as long as they have, if not longer."

"How am I supposed to know that you're not the one opening up the portals?" Buffy questioned. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"No, I am not one of the Old Ones," Maea stated carefully.

"So, you could possibly be opening up a portal to go home," Buffy theorized.

"I have no desire to return home," she said.

"But I don't know that. You could be doing it, like Glory was."

"Glory?" Maea repeated with a sneer. "You compare me to that scaly-hell beast woman? She is no more than cankerous, molten dirt spewed out of her own hell dimension. I am nothing like her!"

"Cankerous, molten dirt," Nadja repeated softly. "I'm going to remember that one."

"Maea here is a god of war," Beth told her mother. "She's all about that, uh—what'd you call it? 'Righteous fight?' Anyway, she's not Glory."

"I take great offense to that comparison," Maea intoned.

"Oh, well then, I'm deeply sorry, your godliness," Buffy replied, a little too chipper to be sincere.

Maea's eyes narrowed and she took a small step forward, prepared to fight back. Despite the magic that kept Maea's true powers under lock and key, the god was still one helluva fighter and Beth did not need that today. She needed to diffuse the situation—and fast.

"Listen," Beth said, stepping between the two. "Mum, look, I know I made a bad call with Charlie. You don't need to tell me that. But I never fully trusted him to begin with. I do trust Maea though and I know that despite what you may think, we do need her. She can help us. A lot. I feel it deep inside me. That slayer's intuition."

Buffy seemed to relax out of her fighter's stance, but she still didn't look convinced. Instead, she was standing taller with her arms crossed, that patent "I don't believe you" parent look on her face.

"Did I mention she was in my slayer dream?" Beth added.

"You're going to meet with her despite what I say, aren't you?" Buffy asked.

"Well, duh. Who do you take me for?"

Sighing, Buffy's arms fell to her side. "Then fine, she's on the team. But if you so much as pinch my daughter, I swear I will bury you in the Earth's core."

"I understand and acknowledge your threat," Maea responded, mostly to be polite. It was obvious that nobody could put Maea in the earth's core without her full consent and compliancy.

"Well, I'm glad to see everyone's getting along so well," Beth said weakly. Now to tell her dad.

-.-

Beth stopped atop the roof's ledge, standing beside Maea who was watching over the street below. After she'd fed her father the same information (who was much more accepting of the whole situation than her mother had been, mostly because he said he "liked this one better"—whatever that meant), Nadja had driven both Maea and Beth back to Maea's place for patrol, leaving the two women out on their own. Not like that was a problem; With Beth's super fly skills and Maea's inability to die, they made a right pair. Nearly invincible, Beth thought. In fact, it felt reminiscent of her parent's, both of whom had a hard time accepting the cold, lifeless hands of death and were nearly unstoppable when together. Also, it felt right.

"See anything dangerous?" Beth asked, sitting down beside Maea.

"I saw a man who looked vaguely like a pedophile," she started. "They traditionally have those glasses and the mustache, correct?"

"Yeah," she agreed slowly, "except even if he is a creepy pedo, I can't do anything. Well, I could call the cops, but—I meant like demon-y dangerous."

"No, it's quiet tonight on that front," Maea told her. There was a long, quiet pause, only punctuated by the distant and sometimes not-so-distant sound of cars, as they looked out at the skyline.

"You know, now that you're an official second-generation Scooby," Beth began, "you're gonna meet the whole gang. Zach's probably gonna flip, but that's normal. And I think Andrew will like you. He can get a bit creepy though, but it's all unintentional."

Maea smiled crookedly, letting out a breathy laugh. "Once it was unusual for slayers to have teams of people. They were mostly solitary fighters."

"I know, I've read the history book," Beth replied. "My mum is the one who changed all that. She was the first slayer to have a team."

"Actually, I consider that to be inaccurate," Maea admitted, earning herself a sharp look from Beth.

"How so?" she asked, skeptical. Rightly so too, seeing as no one ever stopped talking about her mother so she'd heard about all the different versions there were out there and not a single one of them didn't include Buffy being the first to have a support group.

"You're not the first slayer I worked with," Maea said.

Taken aback by the confession, she didn't immediately say anything, mostly because this was messing with her world view. She blinked a couple of times before reeling herself back into the conversation.

"You're shitting me," she said, then winced. Not the most eloquent of phrases, but she was pretty sure she got all her disbelief across in one fell swoop.

"Not," Maea assured, taking the crassness in stride. "It was a long time ago though. And she wasn't at all like you."

"Thanks," Beth muttered, thought there was no conviction behind her sarcasm. Maea didn't talk much about herself and even when she did, it was guarded. That one phrase though, said a lot more than she'd probably ever heard out of the god's mouth. "How'd you end up together?"

Maea shrugged. "Accident mostly. We both ended up fighting the same group of demons, trying to find a whole ring of them. She asked me to join her for the time being, to help kill all the demons, despite her Watcher's discontent. But after we took out the ring, I just…stuck around, as they say."

"And you were with her for a long time?"

Maea scoffed. "Mortals, if they live a full life, pass me by in a blink of an eye. And a slayer never lives to that. While slayers might now live seventy to eighty years, that's not always been true. In fact, it's a rather recent change."

"I know," Beth muttered. "I'm not stupid. I just meant it more in the like 'short-term' long time. As in, people who date for two years might be seen as 'long time.'"

"That hardly makes any sense," Maea pointed out.

"Okay, but that's not my point. How long were you two together?"

"Not long enough," Maea responded. "It never is, truly, even for humans I suppose. We all want another minute, another hour, another lifetime. It's a pity we never get it. She died tragically, though I suppose all slayers do really. I think the biggest tragedy was that no one remembered her."

"That's not true," Beth told her softly. "You do. And the Council keeps all sorts of records."

Maea smiled grimly, shaking her head. "Your Council is not the Council I saw. The way she had died, it was unforgivable. So they forgot her, erased her from their past."

"Can I ask how she died?"

Maea frowned. "I'd rather not talk about it."

She nodded. Before she could change her mind, she reached out and placed a comforting arm around Maea. She might have been an all-powerful god, but even gods needed to be hugged sometime.

"You loved her, didn't you?" Beth asked in a voice barely above a whisper. "You still do."

Maea nodded. "I have the unfortunate talent of being able to feel so fiercely. Once I saw it as a benefit, but now it's been nothing more than a hindrance. You all live for so little time. It's why I eventually shut myself off from this world. I was tired of mourning."

"But that's not the point, is it?" she asked. "The pain afterward. The point is that they were there when you were there and you got to know them, even if for a little while. That's what my friend Jackie says. He lost his mum when he was a little kid and while he misses her a lot, he says he lives for her now, her and her memory. And that's what you do. You love them and cherish them for what they got to be to you."

"That's a very sentimental way to look at it," Maea murmured.

"Maybe," she agreed, "but I also think it's the nice way to look at it. You've cared deeply for a lot of people here, haven't you? Even loved."

"Just a few," Maea admitted. "Love—true love—is not something one comes upon a thousand times in a thousand years. There was another, even longer ago, back in Pompeii."

Wide eyed, Beth pulled back to look at Maea's face. "Oh my god," she said.

Maea laughed. "No, he wasn't there when it happened. As far as I know, he lived a full life. But he was one of the few I ever felt so deeply for. You Beth, you make me want to feel again."

"Okay," she said, resting her head on Maea's shoulder. "As long as it's the emotional feel, and not like the physical feel."

Maea let out a bark of laughter, making Beth smile. They both continued to sit on the ledge, watching as the night passed by before them.