Chapter 1

TWO DAYS LATER

"You know, when I got sucked into that portal, if you wanted to go through files like this you had to risk a lot of paper cuts," Fred said. "Of course when I was sucked into the portal, I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to put the governor of my state as President."

"Don't worry, a lot of still us can't believe it and we were here when it happened," Cordelia said, as she kept scanning through the files. She looked at Wesley. "I knew Faith three months longer than you did. I don't think it ever occurred to me to even ask what her last name was. What does that say about me? Of all of us?"

Cordelia had been beating herself up quite a bit as soon as they had started the record search for Faith Lehane. She had gotten more upset when they learned she'd been in the system long before she had ever gotten on the Sunnydale PD's radar – though in this case, it was for nothing she had done.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

"You can't blame yourself for this," Angel said again. "Faith hid her emotional scars better than the physical ones."

"Actually Angel, I'm exactly the person who needs to be blamed for this," Cordelia put her hands on the desk and started kneading her forehead. "Every time, I try to tell myself I'm not too self-involved, I get another big honking reminder."

Wesley looked puzzled. "What are you talking about, Cordelia?"

"I know that you never had much use for Xander on a good day," Cordelia said. "But he had a hard life long before he learned that he was growing up on a Hellmouth."

Something dawned on Angel that had never occurred to him. He had thought the only connection Faith and Xander had was that she had taken his virginity and that he was attracted to Slayers. It had never occurred to him to look deeper than that. "Are you saying-"

"I think his father could have gone to Lorne's and never have noticed the nature of his business as long as the Scotch kept flowing," Cordelia's usual tactless contained more pain than usual. "Then he would stumble home. If Xander was lucky, he'd pass out on the stoop."

"And if he wasn't?" Fred asked sadly.

"It suddenly makes a lot more sense why Xander preferred to run with the Slayers." A combination of bitterness and sympathy filled Wesley's voice. "Do you know if his father-?"

"Some of the bruises that he has he had before Buffy came to Sunnydale," Cordelia said sadly.

Angel had never thought he'd ever had anything in common with Xander besides Buffy. He wasn't happy this was one of those things.

"Well, based on what these reports say, at least it wasn't Faith's father who did the damage," Gunn said. "Though I'm never thrilled to learn that this equal opportunity."

"Please, that glass ceiling was broken long ago," Cordelia said.

From the time that she was six years old, Faith Lehane had been in and out of the Boston foster care system. There was no father listed on her birth certificate, and her mother had been arrested on half a dozen counts of drunken disorderly before Faith turned eleven. The last time, she had never come back for her. Faith had been sent to a foster mother in Dorchester who had been more interested in the monthly stipend then providing care for her child. It had been a miracle that Faith's had 'only' ended up in ERs rather than juvenile.

Wesley had said that Faith had been tapped as a potential in 1996. They had been watching her as closely as they had Buffy, but after she had been called Faith had fallen off the radar. If the Council considered actual Slayers expendable, once one had been called potentials were given almost no interest. That had changed in May of 1997 when Sam Zabuto had told them that his former charge had woken up and had broken a soda bottle when she been trying to twist the top off.

The decision to not tell Giles that there was a new Slayer had been a deliberate one. The consensus had been to keep Kendra in reserve and only reveal it to Giles when something happened to Buffy. By this point, the reports Giles had sent were already considering Buffy to wild to be handle and some were quietly whispering that it would be better for the world when she was gone.

"Never tell her that," Angel said when Wes had told them.

That had changed when the Order of Taraka had put out the hit on Buffy. Acting on his own volition, Zabuto had sent Kendra to Sunnydale with the order for here to stay under the radar. This had not gone over well with the Elders of the Council, but Zabuto had always been considered an iconoclast among the Watchers himself. There had been a deliberate decision on their part not to tell him of Kendra's murder, and when he had learned about it from Giles nearly two weeks after the fact, he had resigned.

Wesley had been in his apprenticeship back then and had heard rumors that in the weeks prior to Kendra's death, acting of his own volition he had called in Watchers who did not believe in the rigidity of the Council's position and told them to start scouting potentials that had been 'discounted' . He didn't want them to be caught flat-footed again when the inevitable happened and he knew too well the Council's methods in searching.

One of his Watchers had found Faith living on the streets of South Boston roughly a month before the unearthing of Acathla. She had appalled at the condition of this girl, basically in rags, malnourished and dehydrated. Serena had reported that she didn't know what had sickened her more: Faith's condition upon seeing her or that when she had taken her in, the first words out of her mouth had been: "I won't do that. I'm not that bad off."

Serena had clearly been the closest thing to a parental figure that Faith had in her life. She had spent the better part of two days trying to first convince her to trust her, buying her meals, getting first aids and being a good person. It was not until the third day when she thought Faith trusted her enough that she had finally told her the real reason she had sought her out.

Serena hadn't been sure whether Faith's acceptance had been borne out of desperation, cynicism, or whether or not being homeless had convinced her that evil was out there. Whatever the reason she had not argued as to the existence of the supernatural. She had been more reluctant to accept even the idea that she was even a potential fighter against the forces of darkness. Serena had expected as much; most Potential lived their entire lives either unaware of their abilities or certain they would never be chosen.

Zabuto had never called to tell her of Kendra's death, and it would have been moot anyway. Faith and Serena had been in the midst of training and Faith had missed the target as she had so many times before. This time, her fist put a hole in the wall.

According to Serena's notes, Faith had taken it better than her. "For the record, I thought you were shitting me before," she said. Serena's reaction had been quicker and honestly more compassionate than another Watcher would have been. She knew that she had to get Faith to Sunnydale as soon as possible. She also knew her charge well enough by now to know that the last thing the Council needed to know was that this was their new Slayer. She had the same doubts about the council Zabuto had, and she knew very well the last thing Faith needed was one of those rule following upstarts.

"Clearly Sam Zabuto understood the Council better than I ever did," Wesley had said at this point. No one disagreed.

She had told Faith that they would be traveling to Sunnydale that week. Unfortunately, two days before they were scheduled to leave they had encountered Kakistos. They knew the rest.

"I assume that before you were sent out to Sunnydale, the Elders did not tell you any of this," Cordelia asked rhetorically.

"Are you kidding? If I had known that I might have been inclined to treat her with slightly more sympathy and understanding, and as we are all painfully aware empathy has never been one of the Council's virtues," Wesley said with sarcasm that indicated he'd been hanging around Cordelia too long. "I would have asked why a potential Slayer was being treated worse than a Dickensian orphan."

"Based on what I know about the Watchers, I'm pretty sure that they would consider Dickens too hip for them," Angel said bitterly. "I don't know if they read anything from this millennium."

"Recreationally yes," Wesley said.

Cordelia shook her head. "What a difference three years makes."

"The Council is basically a fundamentalist cult," Wesley told them bluntly. "Entirely dominated by the patriarchy, refusal to treat their charges as any better than unskilled labor, devoted to the idea of indoctrination. I'm not surprised Giles revolted against his charge when he was a teenager. By that point the iron grip that they'd had for centuries was starting to slip."

"Giles was still fighting against it when I first met him," Cordelia reminded him. "He wouldn't go near a computer and he still believed in those musty old books."

"He'd been fighting against it for a while," Angel said. "I don't think any of the old guard would have accepted help from a vampire, let alone one with my reputation."

"He kept you off the books," Wesley said. "When you – turned – there was fallout for his keeping you relatively secret. There was a movement to have him recalled but after that came Acathla and then Buffy disappeared and everybody went into a panic. When Faith came to Sunnydale, everyone was in a holding pattern because no one wanted to do anything to handle the one link to two slayers."

"But the knives were out," Gunn guessed.

Wesley nodded. "The Cruciamanteum was the nail in the coffin, metaphorically speaking."

Neither Angel nor Cordelia wanted to know if the Council had been hoping that Buffy would fail the test as well.

Wesley himself had been kept out of the loop until one of his 'colleagues' who had been sacked after the failed attempt at killing Faith had given him her file as one last middle finger to the Watchers. Understandably Wesley had been simmering over this for the past year but had never been able to find a good time to share during everything that happened involving Darla. Now had been as good as a time as any.

"We have to assume Wolfram and Hart have most of this on file," Fred said.

"Everything except what the Watchers have, and we can't even take that for granted," Wesley acknowledged. He paused. "Which begs the question why they haven't made a move of their own."

"I'm assuming they spent most of last year on Darla," Angel said bluntly. "Now that they've moved on, they're going to get to this eventually."

"Which means we have to get to her first," Fred said. "And I think I know exactly how. According to this Faith confessed to her murders on May 1, 2000. She waived her Miranda rights and she was not represented by council. You know, the legal kind."

"I know. I was there when she walked in," Angel said. "How does that help us?"

"Because apparently the stupidity that has been around the LAPD for since, well, let's be generous and say before the Erik and Lyle decided their parents didn't love them, is just as obvious then as it is now," Fred said slowly.

"Much as I respect anyone hating on the cops, could you explain why?" Gunn asked.

"Apparently when they were checking to see about the crimes she was accused of committing, they didn't do a preliminary background check. Which would have led them to the fact that Faith was already in the system. And by default, would have led them this." Fred typed in a few keys.

Those of them who had known Faith before blinked a couple of times before the meaning of what they were seeing dawned on them.

"How the hell did I miss this?" Angel asked.

"Faith herself," Cordelia admitted. "Given her public persona – which had to have amplified a lot based on the life she led well before she knew she was a Slayer – I always assumed she was at least nineteen at least."

There it was in black and white – or in the digital format. Faith had been born on November 9, 1982. Which meant that at the time of her confession, she was seventeen and still a minor.

Even people who were not regularly in conflict with an evil law firm would have known that under California law, a minor had no authorization to give consent on a binding legal document without counsel present. This would have been caught had this case gone to trial but it was a clear that in an election year the DA wanted to get in the win column the sentencing of a woman wanted for a series of attacks in Los Angeles and to avoid a jurisdiction fight with a town no ADA wanted to go near. The Sunnydale Police, as the late, unlamented Principal Snyder had once said, were monumentally stupid, and after everything that had happened with the 'gas explosion' that had killed the long time Mayor, whatever was left in City Hall clearly wanted anything that might shine any attention on their down shut down as quickly as possible. The fact that Faith had no ties to anyone meant there would be no public outcry about her civil rights being violated. Angel had to wonder if the Senior Partners had made sure it was kept quiet as well; this wouldn't have made Wolfram and Hart looked – well, they didn't want to be looked at all.

And the thing was, Faith had no reason to go through with the fight. Given everything she had already lived through and would no doubt have faced as a Slayer, spending twenty-five years in prison was a cakewalk. Hell, by the time she came up for parole, her usefulness as a Slayer would be past and she could live what might actually pass for a normal life.

But of course the Hellmouth got in the way, even after you left it.

"We're going to have pay a visit to our least favorite law firm anyway," Angel said.

Wesley nodded. "They wouldn't have missed this. Given the file they have on us, they probably already have a brief filed, waiting for the right moment to use it."

"Which could be any minute," Cordelia said. "Fred, print this -"

She never finished the sentence. The scream of agony that followed the visions that Cordelia had been having for the last year and a half had just come from her lips.

However, there was something slightly different. Usually she immediately toppled over from the aftereffect of the migraines that came. This time she was perfectly upright. And she seemed to recover slightly quicker than usual – indeed, the fact that it they'd been becoming longer and more agonizing had been something that Angel knew he was going to have discuss with her very soon.

This, however, clearly wasn't the time for the lead-in. "What did you see?" Wesley was asking.

"A much bigger problem than usual." Cordelia's voice seemed steadier than normal. "They've taken Dawn."

Angel felt like he was gutted all over again. "You get any more than that?" he managed to ask.

"She's alive, she's bound and gagged, and she's in the trunk of a car," Cordelia said simply.

"I hope like hell it's only demons that have taken her," Gunn said with a growl that reminded everyone about his own sister,

"They must still be in a panic in Sunnydale," Fred was relatively cool-headed. "Obviously that's why they haven't called for help yet."

Angel could think of many reasons why they would be the last people on the phone-a-friend list, but this was not the time to tell them. "Call them," he said to Wesley. "Without Buffy, this is the last thing they need."

"That's not the only thing I saw," Cordelia said. Now she sounded shaky. "Wes, do you still have that Scotch in your desk?"

"I don't think that's going to help with the headache," Gunn said.

"It's not for me." She looked at Angel. "I don't have any idea how this is possible and the only explanations going through my head are not good ones but Buffy already knows that Dawn is missing."

Angel blinked. "Are you saying…?"

"She's alive."

They all took this in. "I'm going to need a glass myself," Wesley said finally.

"Bring some for all of us," Gunn added.

SUNNYDALE

THE MAGIC SHOP

"Ahhhh!" Willow threw the scryer across the room.

Tara was not exactly in the best mood towards her girlfriend these days, but she still tried to comfort her. "Look, it's OK," she started.

"No, it's not OK!"

Tara flinched. Willow had got angry at times – she'd seen an ugly side of her girlfriend right before Tara had drained her mind – but she had rarely seen her direct her rage at herself.

"I lost her!" The tears were falling down Willow's face. "I was supposed to take care of Dawnie. I've messed everything else up, but I was taking care of her! And now, I can't…"

As much as Tara didn't want to say, part of her was actually glad to see Willow in such a case of outright despair. Ever since Buffy's death, Willow had essentially become the de facto leader of the Scoobies and it had been clear for a while that her obsession with magical power, which Tara had been frightened about before, was becoming overpowering.

Tara was certain that if Giles hadn't flown off to London several weeks ago, Willow would never gone through with her plan to resurrect Buffy. Tara had known from the start it was a dangerous idea – had argued against it when Dawn had tried to bring Joyce back after she had passed – but Willow had made the argument that they had to do it for Buffy, that she had be trapped in a hell dimension.

Everyone else had been overwhelmed by their grief to put up a fight. Spike would clearly have advocated against it had he been part of the group – he had been nearly as horrified as Giles to see Buffy back – but he'd been going through his own anguish and no one would have asked him anyway.

So they had brought Buffy back. Only they had never assumed that she might wake up in her own grave. She'd clawed her way out of it, and the first thing she had done was make right through the tower she'd jumped off months before.

And so they'd tried to get on with life in Sunnydale. Giles had come back and things were normal. Except they weren't, not even by the curve of Sunnydale.

Giles and Willow, who'd been close since he had come to Sunnydale, were barely speaking. He was glad to see his charge back but he was coldly furious as to the fact that Willow had done so against his advice. Tara wasn't much happier with it nor the fact that Willow seemed more obsessed with magical power than before.

Buffy herself was off. She was still going out patrolling every night but she was going out on her own more and more often. Giles was still coming with her; certain she was keeping something from all of them.

Xander and Anya had announced their engagement a week ago, but there had not been much happiness there either, and not just because of the weekly abduction of Dawn. Xander and Anya were clearly not as comfortable around each other as they appeared, but they weren't confiding in anyone.

Dawn had sensed the distance between Buffy and the rest of them, and she had been acting out. It didn't help matters that they were still dealing with the fallout from Joyce's death. Buffy had to be appointed the legal guardian of Dawn which had been delayed because of, well, everything. Hank Summers had not shown up at the funeral, which added to Dawn's isolation and more importantly, was causing financial fallout for everybody. She had been spending more time at Spike's crypt and none of the Scoobies were prepared to object.

Things had gotten so bad emotionally between the Scoobies that some of them had almost started hoping for an apocalypse or at the very least, the rise of some kind of Big Bad that would give them something – anything – to focus their hostility on. But while the demon world had managed to run rampant when no Slayer was present, they seemed to be perfectly quiet with even an emotionally damaged one. There had been nothing beyond the usual vamp's nest the last few weeks.

And then yesterday Dawn hadn't come home. Everyone had focused on this though no one could help notice how manic and single-minded Buffy had become now that her sister had been taken again. Her energy had been restored but there was a mania to it that none of them had been used too.

She had gone to Willy's first, of course. But rather than her usual approach of threatening to destroy the place if she didn't get any information, she hadn't said a word. Instead she had beaten up every demon in the bar – and not like a Slayer would.

She had slammed demons into walls and snapped bones. Demons who tried to fight got their bones broken. Demons who tried to run got their legs broken. Even when it was clear they knew nothing, she had stomped on rib cages and shattered jaws. There were none of the quips that she gave when she slaying; in fact, she hadn't said a single word the whole time.

When she was finished – and she had carried out her violence for a long time – she spoke in a tone that had no emotion at all. "My sister is gone. She comes back to my house. If so much as one hair on her head is out of place, this will have been a mercy compared to what I do next. You have eight hours. Don't make me come back here."

Then she had looked up at Willy. "You don't repair a thing until this is over."

And she had walked out without looking back.

The next eight hours would go to in history among the underworld of Sunnydale. Several demons had gotten out of town immediately after hearing about this and never returned. They would be the fortunate ones.

Demons and vampires had feared the Slayer before, but only at night. The daylight hours had been one of carnage and violence so loud that even the docile Sunnydale residents who locked their doors at night and pretended that their loved ones were just 'missing' flooded the Sunnydale PD with complaints for several hours.

The late, unlamented Principal Snyder had once called the Sunnydale Police 'monumentally stupid.' He wasn't being honest. They knew exactly what was going on Sunnydale and they had wanted to survive. Until Mayor Wilkins had perished, they had been following his orders. Ever since they had been rudderless. Most of those cops had gotten out of town. The ones that remained knew exactly how out of their league they were and had basically let the Slayer handled the problem.

They knew very well what was causing the ruckus after the second call. They were just as unresponsive this time for the same reason. They were terrified. They knew what Buffy Summers was capable of. They knew a full tactical team from the Rampart Division couldn't handle her, much less that of an underfunded small-town PD. And that was assuming she was forgiving of the two occasions she had been falsely considered for murder charges. Quite a few beat cops went out on their patrol and never came back, some of them even took their cars with them to parts unknown.

None of the Scoobies had ever seen Buffy like this – not after the first time she'd come back from the dead, not in the aftermath of the death of Deputy Mayor, not after all the times Dawn had been taken, whether they'd actually happened or not. It was as if all the five years of being the Slayer had finally exploded on her and she was taking out all of her aggression on Sunnydale. Giles had spent much of the last hours trying to find her and calm her down but he knew better than anyone that if a Slayer didn't want to be found, you couldn't find her.

Everyone knew the only thing that was going to restore order to this town was to find Dawn. Which is why the rest of the Scoobies were increasingly becoming alarm when even after all this carnage was unfolding, there was still no news from anyone in the underworld as to where Dawn might be. It was increasingly beginning to look that whoever had taken Dawn Summers was no longer in Sunnydale any more – which in the short term, was clearly the best move for their survival, but had far more troubling implications.

Anya had finally put into words what none of them had been willing to think – that Dawn might have been taken for reasons that had nothing to do with her being the sister of the Slayer. Glory and her minions were all dead, the Knights of Byzantium were a mass of corpses and the Order of Dagon had been wiped out. But as they were all painfully aware, Glorificus had her followers other than the Beast, and just because her timetable was up did not mean that there might not be uses for the Key beyond the one Glory had.

This meant that they had to find Dawn by other means. Willow and Tara had decided that their best option was to scry for Dawn and see if they could find her. This presented many problems. For one, she'd been gone for six hours and if she'd been taken outside of Sunnydale that expanded the parameters widely. Could she have been taken via car? Boat? Plane? All of them were equally likely.

Then there was the problem that they'd never tried this method before on Dawn, and apparently trying to find the location of someone who is made up partly of Buffy Summers blood and the energy of a hell-dimension can lead down more than a few false paths. Half the time they had kept finding places Buffy had been, the other half they seemed to be leading into the Pacific Ocean. But when the most recent scry had put them right on top of the Magic Shop Willow, who'd been doing the best job of the group at holding it together, finally cracked.

Tara hugged Willow tightly. She knew there was more coming. And it did.

"I should have listened to you," Willow was sobbing. "I shouldn't have brought Buffy back like that."

This was as close as Willow had come to admitting to anyone that she'd made a mistake of this. Tara decided to give her a little slack. "You didn't want Buffy to spend the rest of eternity in hell…"

"It wasn't just about her," Willow said tearfully. "I couldn't live without my best friend!"

She'd finally gotten there. She'd finally admitted the truth.

"I don't know…why I did it," Willow said. "I don't know how to fix this."

"We'll figure it out, baby," Tara said with more hope than she'd felt in a long time.

With the timing that was impeccable in Sunnydale Xander and Willow had just showed up from the top of the stairs.

"Oh," Anya said. "It's another one of those emotionally awkward moments I have no idea how to deal with. Should we just walk back upstairs and pretend we didn't see this nervous breakdown?"

Tara had never been more grateful for Anya's ability to say everything she was thinking. "No, it's okay," she told them. "As you probably figured, it's not going well."

"The scream of rage was something of a giveaway," Anya gingerly walked over to Willow. "It's all right. I'm dealing with this as badly as everybody else is right now."

In her own way Anya had stumbled on the exact right thing to say. Willow did her best to regain her self-control. "I think we're going to have to try something else," she said sadly.

"I was afraid of that," Xander said.

"Do we have any idea where Buffy is right now?" Tara asked the question they were afraid of.

"Giles said he thought he knew where she was," Xander said. "I'm really hoping he does because I don't think any of us know how to get Buffy into a position where she'll listen to anyone else."

"Even when she gets back, we're still dealing with the fact that we have no idea where Dawn is," Anya said. "I'm beginning to think if we don't find Dawnie soon, we won't need the next apocalypse to destroy this town. She'll have done it for us."

Willow looked at Anya. "Anya, do you have any connect from your days as a vengeance demon that might help us?" she asked.

"You really are desperate if you want to explode that bomb," Anya said. "Don't get me wrong I'll do it if you really want me to; I'm just telling you these are creatures you don't want to owe favors too."

"I know, I met your old boss, remember?" Willow shuddered at the memory. "But we've gone through the good ideas; we're just about done with the bad ones, bearing some revelation from the powers, I don't think we have any real choices left."

Just then, the phone rang. "That must be Giles," Xander said. "I'll take it."

He went over to the phone.

"There's a couple of friends from back then who'll still talk to me," Anya said. "One of them does specify in granted wishes for children. It's probably our best bet."

"You know how to summon her?" Tara asked.

Anya shook her head. "She has a standing appointment at the local coffee shop. Apparently they're the only place in this dimension that can make the kind of soy latte she likes."

"Wesley, I swear if this…"

Everyone jerked their heads at that name. Willow was about to ask what Buffy's former watcher wanted when Xander's tone changed.

"How do you…" Pause. "Yes." Pause. "Well, we thought…" Pause. "Well, we didn't think…" Pause. "Hey, it's not your…" A much longer pause. "There were…." A very long pause and everybody could see Xander visibly wilt. "No, I realize that we really should have considered that."

Willow knew that Xander had never respected Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, that he basically considered him a wimp and something of a poor man's Giles. Apparently the man had grown immensely in the last two years because whatever Wesley was saying, Xander desperately looked like he wanted to hang up the phone.

"No, I don't want to…" There was another pause. "Cordelia, fancy…" Xander really looked like he wished a demon attack would commence to spare him another lecture from his ex-girlfriend.

"I understand." Xander now sounded like he was trying to defuse a bomb with his voice. "Yes. Yes, of course. Yes, of course. Absolutely. As soon as we can find her we'll be right there. Certainly."

Xander dropped the receiver and just stared at it as if it were a snake…or the Mayor.

"Um, apparently, Cordelia just had one of her visions," Xander said very calmly. He looked at Willow. "I think you should know she's holding me personally responsible."

Anya seemed baffled. "For what?"

"Resurrecting Buffy without her permission, not telling Angel that Buffy was alive, the situation in the Middle East, you know, usual Cordelia stuff," Xander noticed the receiver was off the hook and gingerly put it back as if there was Cordelia venom waiting to bite him if he touched it again.

Anya turned to Willow. "You never got around to it?"

Now Willow was starting to look sheepish. "We've had a lot to deal with…"

"I realize this is the hellmouth and standard social graces may not apply, but his soulmate got resurrected and you don't think that's at least worth a phone call?" Anya threw up her hands. "I've turned men into sloths for less!"

"Oh boy," Xander now looked terrified. "He's gonna kill me. He never liked me before and now he's got a reason to skin me alive."

"Wait a minute," Tara said slowly. "Is that the only reason he called?"

"No, it was to tell us that he knew Dawn had been taken," Xander said cannily. "First he's going to help us find Dawn, then he's going to skin me alive. Priorities."

"So they know that Dawn is missing?" Tara was still held up on this.

"Obviously," Xander said. "Cordelia got a vision on her personal line to the powers-that-be, and among the details were that Buffy was alive and that Dawn had been taken and is apparently en route to Los Angeles as we speak." He paused. "Or maybe she's already there; I still don't know how these things work."

Willow, who had gotten a little bit more detail on Cordelia's visions than the rest of them, decided to focus on the current crisis. "Her vision give her any insight who might have taken her?"

"No, but I might."

Everybody looked up. "Just when I didn't think this could get any worse," Xander said, putting his head in his hands.

"I know you don't exactly hold me in esteem, Harris," Spike said calmly, "but respectfully, I don't give a rat's arse. Niblet means as much to me as she does to you."

None of them could argue this point. During the last few months Dawn had been relying more on Spike then the rest of them, and none of them were in a position to complain.

Tara, who had never loathed Spike with the intensity the rest of them did, walked over to him. "What have you learned?"

"Honestly didn't think I'd learn anything considering the reign of terror Buffy's been putting the world of the undead through the last few hours," Spike admitted. "Put me in the unenviable position of having to play the good cop for the first time. And while I was, I may have learned why none of Buffy's methods have worked."

Now even Xander was curious. "They didn't take Dawn because of who she was to Buffy."

"That's only half the story. Clem told me that a few days ago that there was a major move the last few days about a group trolling the underworld to get anything they could on Dawn Summers, not Buffy."

"What kind of demons were they?" Willow asked.

"That's just it. They were ordinary people. I take that back. They clearly knew enough about what goes on at night so that they weren't fazed by the local wildlife. And they were also smart enough to stop after just a few hours and then apparently just go to the school board."

It took a moment for this to register. "You're telling us some citizens started tracking down Dawn?"

"I know enough about the way the world works that some of the biggest monsters wear suits and ties and call themselves friends to adolescent girls," Spike said bluntly. "But I think all of us are too smart to know that if this was –" The vampire knew the term but didn't want to use it in regard to Dawn – "those kinds of demons, they'd go out of their way to avoid this particular town and this particular girl."

"Someone's been planning this for a while," Willow was focused now that she had a clear goal ahead of her. "Someone who knew enough that if Dawn went missing, we'd all be looking in the wrong direction for hours."

"I'm guessing whoever did this used some third party," Spike said. "Someone disposable who didn't know the full details about who they were taking. And since they didn't want to set your blinkers off, I'm thinking some kind of human mercenary."

"It's not like there weren't enough people willing to do this for non-supernatural cases," Anya said sadly. "You give someone enough money they'll know better than to ask questions."

Spike looked at Xander. "You said that call was from Peaches. According to him, they're headed his way. You know about the evil law firm who seems to have a division dealing just with him?"

Willow nodded. "You think this has something to do with Angel?"

Spike gave the matter some thought, then shook his head. "When Dru tried to get back together with me earlier this year, she told me this firm had its hands in everything evil all over this world and half the others. "

"No offense, but your ex isn't the most reliable source," Xander couldn't resist a dig.

Spike didn't take the bait. "Not saying you're wrong, Harris, but remember; they just have part of one office dealing with Angel. You think it's possible that their might rack up some billable hours dealing with clients just like Glory, only more insane?"

None of them could deny that wasn't possible. "Cordelia was sure that they whoever took Dawnie was headed for LA," Tara finally said. "And if that's where they're going we have to get there ASAP.

"Just when you thought this couldn't get any worse," Xander said. "An evil force arranges a Sunnydale High Class Reunion."

"Someone has to call Buffy off her rampage," Anya said.

"I'll do it," Spike said.

No one could say that he wasn't going to see Buffy for any less than pure reasons…in this case.

Still Xander couldn't help put poke the blonde bear. "Giles went out to find her hours ago and he still isn't back yet," he said. "What makes you think you know better than him?"

"Because I know where she'd go at a time like this," Spike said. "The last place she felt whole."

AUTHOR'S NOTES

It's an alternate Season 6, but not an alternate universe. W's President in this one too.

The fact that Faith came from an abusive home is pretty much canon in the Buffy universe and by the time of Xander's wedding, we all know what the show's been hinting at about the Harris family all this time. Throw in everything we know about Angel and his father and we can see why both of them, for different reasons, felt they had a connection with Faith (beyond the ones we saw.)

The Watcher's Civil War is slightly off-brand but I've speculated that Giles relationship with his Slayer might not have been a one-off among the Watchers. I also very believable that the Watchers might be a misogynist culture that might very well have created the Cruciamanteum to eliminate Slayers around the time they become to independent (I think the fact the test came on the eighteenth birthday isn't a coincidence). Buffy would have been the kind of Slayer that Travers might want to get rid of. I also think that's the real reason they wanted Faith dead in Season 4.

I think Faith might very well be younger than she might be and than she appeared on the series.

Alternate Season 6. This season Willow realizes about her problem with magic on her own accord and accepts responsibility. For obvious reasons she will not be turning dark. Don't you like this story already? Buffy's going to work through her issues too, but it's not going to be easy either. Though destroying Sunnydale this way is better therapy than how she worked it out last time.

That's all for now. Read and review.