Buffy slept.

It was impossible, but her brain shut down and she slept.

Spike stood under her window, working his way through another pack of cigarettes. An hour before dawn, he was on his last one.

Inside on the couch, Giles tossed and turned, first wrestling with guilt, then irritation that his Slayer was so willful. Which, of course, triggered more guilt that he sounded like a Council prat even after he’d thought that he’d broken ties definitively.

An hour before sun-up, Giles found himself walking on to the front porch, somehow knowing that he’d have company.

“Tell me you’re not mooning under the Slayer’s window?”

“What’s it to you, Watcher?” He raised an eyebrow. “And what’re you doin’ here? Thought you’d given up the good fight.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“Slayer is my concern, Rupert. Has been for some time. Point of fact, I’m not sure if she and the bit are twigging anyone else’s radar these days.”

“What are you implying?”

“Not implying anything. Telling you straight that the girl’s a wreck. If she could crawl back into the Earth, she just might.”

“I hardly think-”

“- that an evil, soulless vampire is the right judge of the noble Slayer’s state of mind? Oh, right. Silly me. Course, we’d be overlooking the tiny fact that she spends most of her time with me these days, yeah?”

Giles opened his mouth to reply, but his brain was too busy putting the pieces together.

“She’s a mess, Rupert. If you love her, you’ll watch over her.” With a whirl of black leather, Spike disappeared into what little night remained.

***

Quentin Travers leaned back in his Aeron desk chair. Piles of folders spilled off his normally immaculate desk. A file box from the archives perched on each of his prized pair of Barcelona chairs.

It was all for show. In his gut, he knew the problem was simple, and insolvable.

It was the problem of all time. Or, at the very least, since man had stood upright and taken on the demon hordes that hunted their kin.

He sighed. Actually, make that since young woman had stood upright.

This would all be simpler, he mused, if those early fathers had simply chosen a warrior youth to do their sacred work. Or arrived at a spell that delivered the essence of the demon to a hand-picked champion.

Then again, certainly those few dozen desperate creatures could scarcely imagine this world of six billion souls.

They’d sliced off a bit of the most powerful female deity, and left it free to infect whichever worthy creature it wished.

Eve tempted Adam, indeed.

Reaching out for yet another carefully prepared report, this one on the history of the goddess monster herself. She was, the report explained, the reason Mary’s face was black in Casala Monferrato, in Einseideln, in Czestochowa. Proserpexa shining through. Claiming the hearts of the faithful, even when they scarcely understood the power to which they paid homage.

“Isis, Freya, Morrigan, Athena, Astarte, Kali, Ishtar, Marinette, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Inanna. The goddess, in all her glory,” Travers recited, reading off a list of other female deities thought to represent some aspect of Proserpexa. “And some blonde chippy in California called Buffy,” he finished with a huff.

When an especially stroppy Slayer was called, the younger watchers would comment, innocently, about the poor choices of fate and the impossibility of harnessing the power of calling.

Officially, the Council was against any such efforts.

Another file caught his eye, this one stamped with grave warnings about security clearances required. It was the thick file of attempts to control the line. To determine the succession, to their – the world’s – advantage.

It had involved, unfortunately, the killing of nearly three dozen young women in the 1930s.

Most recently.

But that was the game, wasn’t it? Control the girl, channel the power. Travers had maneuvered and machinated his way to the top in order to play.

Right now, it looked like he was about to lose.

Of course, he consoled himself, if that were the case, the very world would end, leaving him little time for self recrimination.

***

Buffy hit snooze on her alarm – twice – and ended up racing out the front door with barely a word to anyone. The Fitness Factory might be a huge step up from fast food hell, she thought, but making it there for a 6 a.m. start? Really not compatible with her sacred duty.

Or the rest of her messed-up life.

She made it to the double glass doors just as Jay was opening for the morning. “Hey.”

“Good morning, Buffy.”

“Yeah. Morning.”

He propped open the door for her. “You’re not used to this time of day, are you?” He smiled, a closed mouth smirk that still managed to seem kind and light-hearted.

“Not exactly.”

“Go ahead and log in. I’ll be up to help you with the morning rush.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Jay disappeared to the back, leaving Buffy to charm the computers to life. Somehow she got them turned on. She was just typing “Summers” and “MrGordo” in the user name and password fields when the first customer walked in.

It was Whitney, one of the girls she’d saved in high school countless times. Now she had a Prada bag and a pair of killer boots so cool that Buffy couldn’t even peg the designer.

Things being what they were, Whitney didn’t acknowledge Buffy as she traded her ID card for a locker key and towel. A new last name, a name Buffy couldn’t place from high school, but which graced the local BMW dealership’s marquee. Married, too, then. How come all the awful girls, the mean girls, always seemed to find guys super quick?

The morning dragged. Scan the membership card, hand over the towel and, if they ask, a gym lock, but only if they ask because the club has just exactly two dozen loaner locks.

Buffy couldn’t stop thinking about Britta’s words, or Giles’ confirmation. So the Slayer was an aberration. Well, she already knew she was an aberration in the strictest sense of the word, but this was different. Buffy had been made, which meant she could have not been made, which would have made it just a question of figuring out how to deal with things that go bump in the night sans Slayer.

Could it really be that hard? Cavemen had figured out how to take down wooly mammoths and brontosauruses and whatever else Fred and Wilma faced back in the day.

Shouldn’t they have figured out how to face down vampires and demons and such without making a monster out of an ordinary girl?

***

Physically, Willow Rosenberg was sitting in a lecture hall at UC Sunnydale.

Mentally, she was miles and miles away. And in more than one place at once, actually.

Part of her was walking down a path between the academic buildings at Berkeley. Willow had options, oodles of options, and the transfer counselor seemed sympathetic to her explanations about not being ready to leave home at 18, and turning down all those Ivy League offers from two years ago.

As choices went, she couldn’t see herself making the same decision again.

Another part of her was turning over the origins of the Slayer, fascinated by the incredible story. Willow wasn’t troubled by the knowledge – after all, the powers and forces that she tapped into could be used for good or evil. Why worry if the Slayer’s DNA wasn’t pure as snow? She knew that spellcasting was inherently neutral, that the intent of her actions mattered most.

And Willow’s intentions were something that she could always defend.

***

Her lips were slicked with shiny pink gloss and wrapped around his hard-on, sucking. If that wasn’t enough to send him into oblivion, her eyes were locked with his, a mischievious glint in the green.

“That’s it, Buffy. Just like that, love.”

He reached his hands down to tangle in her hair, not forcing, just following. The gold slipped through his fingers.

And then he was awake, clutching the tassels on a throw pillow.

While his body might miss the BuffyBot – her pretty lipstick, her ready smile, the certainty that she’d suck him off on demand - now that he’d had occasional moments of the real Buffy’s attention, her real, full human attention, the Bot’s shortcomings seemed obvious. Spike loved women, loved their complexity, their drama, their capacity for deception. And as he tried to drift back to sleep, he realized that no one who built girlbots could really understand what it was to love a woman.

So what did it say about him that he’d commissioned one?

With a sigh, he flopped onto his stomach and willed himself back to sleep.

***

“Giles? Whatcha doin’ here?” Dawn snapped her bubblegum, waved good-bye to Janice and hopped in the passenger side of the dark blue rental car. She never got a ride home from school unless there was grave danger, but Giles’ expression didn’t look like bad news.

“Hello, Dawn. I found myself at loose ends this afternoon and thought I’d see if I could interest you in a shopping trip.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Giles?”

“Now, Dawn …”

“No, Giles, seriously. Do you even know where the Sunnydale Mall is?”

“Yes. I’ve been to the Borders.”

Dawn stared at him, unconvinced.

Giles had decided he’d have to admit his talk with Spike, when a familiar – and very out of place figure crossed in front of the car. “Good Lord! It can’t be - ”

“The librarian? She’s new. Miss Chalmers. Laura or Linda – ”

“Lydia Chalmers.”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Without another word, Giles stepped on the gas and followed Lydia’s car out of the parking lot.

Now Giles’ face looked like bad news. Dawn sat quietly, and decided to ask him about the Father/Daughter Dinner Dance later.

***

Author's Note: I know. It's been an ice age since I updated. This is what happens when your nice little porny romp grows a big, fat alternative mythology that you have to thoroughly figure out to advance your plot. Here's hoping it hangs together ... and that you're still with me!