A/N I'm going to sneak a chapter in here before heading out to enjoy Christmas Day with family and friends. I'll be back this evening.

Have a great Christmas everyone. 😃🎁

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Janus is a god of many things, beginnings and endings, opposites and duality, change and transitions. He guards gates and thresholds, which keep vampires from entering a person's home without permission. But he is also a god that sees into the past and the future.

While Willow was leading her transformed friends to the Library and Rupert Giles, Janus was taking the opportunity to correct an error that would have been made three years into the future, when frightened monks would enact a hasty ritual to transform a dimensional energy known simply as the Key into human form. They would have used the Slayer as a template to build a human and implanted memories of her existence into those they sent her to for safety. In their haste they would have placed her in danger, while simultaneously damaging the mother who's care she was given into. Seeing all this Janus decided to act, he brought Dawn into existence himself, to a certain extent at least. But instead of making the Key made flesh from the template of the Slayer, he looked to the past and found the child that would have been the natural born sister of Buffy Summers who'd been lost before being brought to term. He gently sustained the pregnancy and fused the Key energy into the baby's cells, allowing her to be born naturally and following the timeline, he reinforced and reshaped reality to accommodate her presence.

The monks would never know what became of the Key they'd guarded and the Hell goddess that would have followed one of the monks right to it, now never would. And the events that followed altered as Janus watched, satisfied with his work.

Dawn bent anxiously over her mother wondering why she'd fainted. As she tried to figure out how to help her mother, a noise from the kitchen caught her attention and she moved cautiously towards it. Someone was trying the backdoor, already on edge because of her mother fainting, a frightened Dawn armed herself as best she could and hid behind the counter as someone opened the door and eased into the kitchen. She didn't hesitate and jumped out and hit the man as hard as she could on the back with a frying pan as he moved passed the counter. He yelled and fell forward and Dawn hit him a second time with the frying pan on the back of his head. He scrambled on all fours around the counter and made it back to the backdoor and out before she could hit him a third time.

"And don't come back!" She yelled, quickly locking the door behind him. "Whoever you are!" Still holding the frying pan, she went to check on her mother and found her sitting up. "Mom! Are you-you alright?!" She asked anxiously, still scared.

"Yes, I think so. I just felt dizzy, I guess. Help me up, Dawn, please." Dawn set the frying pan down and gave her mother a hand and let her lean on her as she carefully stood up. They were moving cautiously towards the couch when they heard a scream from outside, which sent them both hurrying to the front door where they saw a girl across the street being chased by someone in a costume. She screamed again.

"Someone help me, please!"

"Someone's taking Halloween a little too seriously." Joyce muttered. "And that girl clearly doesn't want to play along." She held her front door open. "Hey you, leave her alone! She doesn't want to play your game!"

Cordelia Chase ran flat out for the woman standing in the doorway yelling at JoJo the dog faced boy, who was chasing her and darted passed her. "Close the door!" She yelled. "That idiot wasn't taking no for an answer!"

Joyce slammed the door in the creature's face and yelled though it. "Unless you want me to call the cops, go away!" Some scratching and pounding on the door followed but he gave up after a minute or so and left. Joyce turned to the irate girl. "Are you alright?" She asked.

"He tore my costume." Cordelia glared at the torn bits of cloth on her arm. "And scratched me, I should call the cops, I doubt Party Town is going to give my deposit back. Thank you." She told Joyce. "I'm Cordelia Chase, by the way."

"I'm Joyce Summers and this is my daughter, Dawn." Joyce answered. "Happy to help, would you like some hot chocolate? With marshmallows? I could use something to soothe my nerves and I don't want to drink any alcohol in front of you girls."

"Sure." Cordelia answered. "Wait, Summers. You're Buffy's Mom!"

"Yes, I am. You know my daughter?"

"We go to school and have a couple of classes together. She and Xander saved me from another situation not long ago." Cordelia shivered as she remember being kidnapped and nearly Frankencordied. "Did you hear about a fire in a chem lab at school?"

"Yes, actually I did." Joyce responded as she began heating chocolate for hot chocolate. "How did they help you?"

"I was kinda trapped, by another idiot who wanted me to be his girlfriend and didn't want to take no for an answer. The fire started when Buffy sort of pushed him away from me and he bumped something. Xander got me out, saved my life."

"Neither of them mentioned anything about it."

"That's the Doofus for you." Cordelia told her. "I was all big eyed and grateful and any other guy would have been all over it and saying he deserved a kiss for saving me, but not Xander." Cordelia looked a little put out. "He blew me off!"

Joyce chuckled softly. Sounded like Cordelia might have wanted that kiss herself. "Kids can be a bit thickheaded sometimes." She smiled at the girl.

"Tell me about it!" Cordelia found herself enjoying talking to Joyce Summers and the two continued chatting with Dawn injecting a comment once in awhile as they sipped the delicious made from scratch hot chocolate. Interestingly, Cordelia talked about Xander quite a bit.