Buffy closed the door behind her quietly, and headed up the stairs, hoping that her friends would still be awake. She glanced at her watch with a little grimace; as late as it was, that was surely a futile hope. But she had a lot of questions that could not wait until morning …so her unfortunate friends were just going to have to deal.

She paused for a moment outside the closed door to the room that used to be hers, but had become Willow’s in her absence. If she had decided to take it back, no one would have thought anything of it, but somehow, she felt bad about asking Willow to move out of it, so she had been sleeping in Dawn’s room with her since her return.

Buffy thought about waking Willow…very briefly…and then decided against it. She still seemed none too pleased with her over her decision to work with Spike to defeat Faith. Although she was obviously trying hard to act as if everything was normal between them again, the chill that Buffy felt around her all the time now told her that Willow saw it as a betrayal – and Buffy simply did not feel like dealing with it right then.

She went on to the room that had been her mother’s, where Xander now slept. He had made a suggestion the day before, about Buffy and Dawn moving into the much larger master bedroom that had belonged to their mother, and his taking Dawn’s smaller room, and Buffy appreciated the gesture, thinking that it was probably a good idea.

Leave it to Xander to think of the comfort of others first, she thought with a warm fondness toward her friend, as she silently opened the bedroom door and looked inside, to see her friend sleeping soundly on his back, his head turned away from her.

Xander’s forgiveness, his gentle acceptance of her return with sincere joy, had helped to make this painful transition much more comfortable for her.

It was a very comforting feeling, in the midst of so much confusion and turmoil, to *know* beyond all doubt that he really and truly would be there for her, no matter what happened – no matter what she did.

He had just proven it.

“Xander,” she whispered, as she sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned down to shake his shoulder gently. “Xander, wake up! I need to talk to you!”

A tousled dark head rose from the pillow slowly, and sleepy brown eyes struggled to focus on her. “Buffy,” he mumbled. “What…” Suddenly, he sat up in the bed, a startled look of alarm on his face. “What is it? What’s happened?” he asked quickly.

“Nothing,” she assured him immediately. “I’m sorry, Xan, I didn’t mean to scare you. Everything’s okay. I just need to talk to you.”

He looked at her for a moment, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, trying to read what little he could make out of her expression. “Okay,” he said, his voice even and supportive. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I just – I was wondering…” She found herself hesitating, now, realizing all at once, only *after* she had awakened him, how non-urgent her questions might seem to him – certainly nothing, in his eyes, to merit waking him up in the middle of the night. Still, she pressed on.

“I mean – no one said anything – what – what happened to Giles?”

Xander stared at her blankly for a moment. “You couldn’t have thought about that another time? One that’s like, *not* two o’clock in the morning?” he grumbled good-naturedly, leaning his head back on the pillow and then glancing back up at her.

He suddenly grew quiet, his teasing smile fading when he saw the fearful expression in her eyes.

*Of course,* he realized, kicking himself mentally for not having realized sooner why the question was so important to her. *In this nightmare world that she’s just come home to, anything could have happened. She probably thinks he’s dead.*

“He’s okay, Buffy,” he hurried to reassure her, sitting up again and reaching out a gentle hand to rest on her trembling arm. “I mean – I guess he is,” he amended with a shrug. “We haven’t heard from him in a while. The Watcher’s Council made him go back to England. They said he was becoming too personally involved with things here in Sunnydale.” He paused, then met her eyes as he went on. “That’s what he told us they *said*…I think what they really meant was…”

“*People* here in Sunnydale,” Buffy finished for him, her disgust for the Council and their cold, compassionless way of viewing things obvious in her voice. “Namely you guys. Right?”

“Right,” he confirmed. “He said that with you gone, they thought there was no need for him to be here anymore. That his emotions were getting too involved with people that he shouldn’t really have had anything to do with in the first place. So they had him deported.”

Buffy’s eyes widened in horror and dismay. “Deported? You mean, as in, *can’t* come back deported?”

Xander nodded, his dark eyes sad and serious. “He can’t legally come back in this country.”

Buffy looked down at the bedspread, her eyes wide and solemn, hardly able to believe it. “Just when I needed him most,” she said softly, and her voice trembled a little.

“Tell me about it.” The quiet, bitter sorrow she heard in her friend’s voice gave her pause, and she glanced back at Xander with concern in her eyes.

In her own shock and pain at the thought of losing Giles, she had given no thought to how his leaving might have affected her friends, who had looked to her Watcher for guidance as much, if not more than she had. Xander, especially, trapped in an unhealthy, abusive home life, had looked to Giles as a father figure, to show him the love and concern that his own father had so cruelly withheld.

Buffy looked down at the bedspread again, her mood darkening once more at the thought of all that they had lost – and all that they would not have lost is she had only stayed in Sunnydale after her fight with Angelus.

Suddenly, a new thought occurred to her, and she looked back up at Xander, her expression hopeful. “You said *legally*, right? He can’t *legally* come back?”

Xander gave her a dubious look, alarm clear in his eyes at the path her thoughts seemed to be taking. “Buffy,” he began warningly

She sighed, her lips forming a little pout. Without his even speaking, she knew that he was right. “I know,” she admitted. “But – I mean – how am I supposed to do any of this without Giles? Sure, I’m all down with the super powers and the violence – got that much covered. But he’s research guy…”

“Buffy…I want Giles back here as much as you do,” Xander said, his words slow, patient. “But Faith’s more of an action kind of girl, I think. I think the violence is probably a better bet against her than research would be. I mean, what’s to research? She’s a psychotic, mental slut with a bad attitude. Something tells me that’s not exactly Giles’ field of expertise.”

“Okay, so maybe we don’t need research guy,” Buffy admitted, her voice grower small and a little scared as she went on, “But he’s also voice of reason guy…and…and security guy…and I – I *do* need him.”

“I know,” Xander conceded quietly, looking away. “We all do. There’s just nothing that we can do about it.”

Buffy’s expression hardened with determination, and she raised her eyebrows speculatively. “Maybe there is,” she said slowly. “Did he leave a phone number where you guys could reach him?”

“Just at the Council – and they deny ever hearing from him, that he’s even in England. They even deny calling him back to England at all.” Xander paused. “Which was exactly what he said they would do.”

Buffy frowned, thinking hard for a moment. Then she looked at her friend, a look of determination in her emerald eyes, dark and gleaming in the moonlight from the window.

“I need that number,” she told him. “I’m gonna give the Council a call in the morning. It was all well and good for them to call him back to England when I wasn’t here…”

“No it wasn’t,” Xander corrected her with a resentful note in his voice.

“No, it wasn’t,” Buffy agreed. “But either way…I’m back now. And I’m still the rightful Slayer in this town. And I don’t care what those stuffed shirt, pompous idiots think about it – they’re going to send my Watcher home!”


Hours after she had closed the door behind them, Spike woke up suddenly from a sleep he had not realized that he had fallen into, alone in Faith’s bed. He sat up slowly, blinking the sleep from his eyes as he glanced around. The Slayer herself was nowhere to be seen.

He frowned, his mind troubled by the events of the past few hours. It was not so much the thought of what he had done – sleeping with a woman he knew wanted him dead, a woman he hated with every fiber of his being – as it was the knowledge of what it had taken to make him able to do it.

By this point, the images that had originally fueled his passion, arousing him enough to allow him to satisfy Faith’s desires – the images of her bloody, violent death at his hands – had been completely and utterly replaced. And that would not have been so bad, either, he thought, in and of itself.

Nothing wrong with a little variety in the mix; there were only so many ways he could kill Faith, and he had to admit that particular fantasy got a little old at times. There had been plenty of times that he had instead called memories of Dru to mind during these times with Faith.

But it was not the memory of his Dark Princess that had flooded his mind this particular time – and every time before it for weeks now…ever since the other Slayer’s return.

It was sick, and twisted, and wrong…in so many ways. There was no way that he should have been attracted to his mortal enemy, the one person – well, one of two – in all the world designed perfectly to destroy him. Yet there it was, a disturbing fact that he could not escape, no matter how hard he tried.

His mind was simply filled with the pretty, powerful blonde Slayer.

During the entire time he had spent with Faith, his memory had played over images of their last few encounters…the feel of her body on his as they had fought on her front lawn…the blazing fire in her eyes as she had stood over him in her living room, in all the ancient glory of all her predecessors…the Slayer, in all her power.

She was bloody amazing.

*Bloody hell!* he thought, his eyes widening as he realized suddenly that he was doing it again. *Got to get that little bint out of my head!* he told himself.

This went beyond foolish…it was utter madness for him to allow these strange feelings, for the girl who had tried to kill him every single time he had seen her in the last few weeks, to grow in his mind.

Insanity.

Nothing less than suicidal.

*What a mess you’ve gotten yourself into this time, mate,* he thought with a weary sigh, as he sat up on the side of the bed and rested his aching head in his hands. *Sleeping with one Slayer who’s plotting your death, for the sole purpose of plotting *her* death, to avenge the death of the girl you *really* love…all the while dreaming of *another* Slayer who’d as soon stake you as look at you!*

*I’m a bloody idiot.*

He glanced idly around the room, trying to think about something, *anything* besides Buffy. He wondered where Faith had gone, and how long ago. If she was going to be gone for a while longer, he realized suddenly, now might be the perfect time to do a little investigating in her room.

He stood up, his eyes scanning the room for anything out of the ordinary, anything unusual, as he pulled his jeans back on. Everything seemed to be as it usually was in this room.

Utter chaos.

Faith’s bedroom was a disaster area. Clothes, dishes, weapons, all strewn about with no reason or order at all, left wherever she had happened to lay them when she had finished with them. Spike really found it utterly disgusting. His own room was almost always spotless, kept in perfect order.

He might be evil, but that did not mean he had to live like an animal.

Suddenly, his eyes fell on an item, in a corner half hidden beneath a pile of clothes – an item that seemed out of place in the room of a girl like Faith.

It was a thick, old book, with a leather bound cover, and though he could not see the title from where he stood, he felt a tingling sensation of anticipation as he crossed the room to it.

*Ancient ritual, anyone?*

He threw aside the dirty clothes lying around it and picked up the book, glancing over his shoulder toward the door. No sign of Faith yet. As he leafed hurriedly through the book, he found that it was an old text on Slayer lore. Most of it was just history, stories of Slayers past, their techniques, their feats of glory…

And then he found what he had been looking for.

Quickly he scanned the pages, wanting to be finished before Faith returned to the room. His eyes widened in wonder as he read the words printed there in disbelief, and it began to sink in for him just exactly what the Slayer was planning to do. It was reckless, insane really, terribly dangerous even for Faith herself…

But infinitely more so for everyone around her, if she should succeed.

*Buffy’s gotta see this,* he thought, and made a quick decision, as he slowly tore the pages along the edge, removing the four or five sheets that were relevant and folding them carefully, putting them in his pocket as he stood up.

And was immediately sent flying across the room, into the far wall, by a powerful blow to his back from behind. His breath stolen from the pain and the force of the impact, he struggled to pull himself back up, but found that his body would not cooperate. He only managed to get to his knees at first, as he looked up to face what he already knew he would see.

Faith.

She was standing there over the damaged book, lying on top of the pile of dirty laundry at her feet. One hand on her shapely hip, one sharp toed boot – probably the one that had slammed into his spine, he thought dully – pointed slightly forward as she faced him, her eyebrows raised in a challenging expression of disbelief – as if she simply could not believe what she was seeing.

As he watched, helplessly, struggling to recover from the paralyzing blow to his back, she suddenly swept across the room, with a fluid, deadly grace, gripping his throat and yanking him to his feet with ease, shoving him back against the wall, hard. She raised her other hand, which held her stake, and rested it against the wall beside his head, a cruel smile coming across her face as she leaned in close to him to speak softly.

“You know…I really hate it when people touch my stuff.”