{{The piles of books were stacked to the ceiling, and dust glittered in the air, alighting on cobwebs and coating the floor in gray powder. "It's here, I know it must be here", Giles muttered angrily, searching page after page of useless, childish scribblings, trying to ignore the insistent thudding on the doors of the library, the plaster raining down from the ceiling as HE tried to get in...

Always trying to get in...

"Come and play, Rupert!" , called the harsh and too-familiar sound of his own voice through the door.

"It must be here", Giles said insistently, trying with all his might to find the answers he sought, but distracted by the mantra that he couldn't stop repeating...

[I am NOT the Ripper, I am NOT the Ripper...]

"Daddy, up!"

Giles started at the voice, and turned away from the dust and books to squint in the bright sunlight. Shaking the spots out of his eyes, he marveled at the verdantly green hillside, the wildflowers so brilliant that they seemed as rainbow confetti strewn by revelers in some animated Bacchanal...

"Up, up, up!" , sang a sandy-haired toddler, dancing around in vibrantly red overalls.

For a moment, Giles was at a loss...

...and then he smiled, and answered, "If you insist", as he lifted his two-year-old son high over his head, smiling indulgently at the comforting weight of the boy's solid, warm body.

“Daddy, I a birdie!” , crowed the child, kicking his feet against the bright blue summer sky.

Giles chuckled as the warm breeze stirred his hair, relishing the feelings of love and pride that washed over him every time he saw his son. His son!

He had only cared so much for one other person…

Had?

“Wait”, Giles gasped, turning around slowly as the toddler evaporated between his fingers, “Where is Buffy?” There was a low rumble as the sky darkened and the wind turned cold. The years flew by, melting like cobwebs in the sun, and the child materialized again, older by nearly a decade.

It was late autumn, and dead leaves skittered on stone as they blew about headstones and the feet of the graveyard’s two lonely occupants.

“Father?”, asked the boy, edging closer to Giles, “What’s happening? I’m scared…”

Giles said nothing as he stared in disbelieving horror at the grave of his Slayer…}}

The shrill ring of the telephone acted as a bucket of ice-cold water, instantly rousing Giles from the disturbing dream. Still disoriented, he groped vainly for a moment before he found the handset on his bedside table and lifted it to his ear. “Hello? Wh-who is—?”

“Giles, this is Oz. Sorry to wake you up, but it’s Buffy. She collapsed, and we thought…”

“I’ll be there shortly”, Giles interrupted, already halfway into the trousers that he’d laid out for the next day. “Is she conscious?”

“A little. She was kind of attached to Xander.”

“Did she say anything? Did she appear injured in any way?”, Giles rapped out in a clipped voice, the phone clamped between his ear and his shoulder as he reached for his vest.

“Not that I noticed. Do you want me to check?”

“No, thank you, Oz. As I said, I will arrive in a few minutes.” Standing, Giles hung up and was on his way in minutes…

{{The lemons were growing nicely, Joyce thought, plucking an especially golden one from one of the kitchen table’s many branches. Deftly, she cracked the ripe fruit on the edge of the pitcher and spilled the condensed liquid content onto the waiting ice.

Joyce hummed to herself as she stirred the pitcher of lemonade, intent on the way the light shone through the liquid and sparkled off the ice cubes bobbing amidst lemon wedges and sunlit waves. An ocean of lemonade, stretching off into infinity…

“Grandma? Can we have some lemonade?”

Joyce smiled radiantly at the young boy who stood at her side as she filled two tall glasses to the brim. “Of course, honey. Be careful carrying these into the backyard.”

“Okay, Grandma, thanks”, the boy replied, suffering quietly as Joyce ruffled his short dark hair. Then he was slipping away into the sunlight streaming through the open door.

“I’m too young to be a Grandmother”, Joyce whispered, still smiling, though now it held a bittersweet sadness. “My little girl is just a baby…”

Then the ground began to shake.}}

"Mrs. Summers, wake up! It's Buffy!" , Willow cried, pounding frantically on the door of Joyce's bedroom.

Joyce only had time for an instant of disorientation, and then she was flinging off the covers and shrugging into a robe to follow Willow downstairs.

"What happened?", she asked the teenager as they thundered down to the first floor.

"She just fell and it was like she couldn't see us at all", Willow gasped back, rounding the corner and running into the living room, where Xander stood with a pale Buffy breathing shallowly in his arms. "She passed out", he told them tensely.

Joyce sucked in a startled breath as she touched her daughter's throat--the skin was firm but icy, and the pulse there erratic.

"She's cold...", Joyce said fretfully, "we need to call 911 right now."

"We can't", Willow said, "we should wait for Giles--'cause what if it's a Slayer thing, and the hospital people only make it worse?"

"Will", Xander ventured, "I think she's in shock. We need an ambulance and an emergency room with lots of doctors to make her okay. I'm pretty sure Giles will agree."

Oz trotted in then. "Faith and Giles are coming as fast as they can. How's Buffy?"

Willow turned and wrapped her arms around him as she began to shake uncontrollably. At Oz's worried look, Xander shook his head and glanced at Mrs. Summers, who appeared to have made up her mind.

"I'm calling for an ambulance."

Giles slammed the door of his car and ran to the door of Buffy's home, seeming not to notice the medical technicians running to and fro.

"Giles!" , called a voice from the street, "Wait up! What's going on?" It was Cordelia, standing near her car in the middle of the road.

"I'm sorry, Cordelia", Giles stuttered, already edging toward the house, "Faith can fill you in", he concluded as he saw the other Slayer approaching. Turning, he fled into the house, where the first sight to greet his eyes was a pale and unconscious Buffy being strapped to a collapsible gurney by 2 white-clad EMTs.

"Oh, dear God", Giles whispered, his stomach twisting painfully as he fell against the door...

Giles paced the waiting room nervously, his bloodshot eyes continuously scanning the area for a doctor or nurse to pounce on and demand information from. He was unaware of the compassionate glances of passersby, too concentrated on his pain to notice or care. The Slayerettes watched the Watcher with increasing anxiety as they sat grouped in the corner, taking some comfort in each other.

Joyce was terrified for her daughter, but a small part of her was content as, as she watched Giles, that there was someone who cared just as much about Buffy as Joyce herself did.

Briefly, Joyce allowed herself a moment of bitterness toward Buffy's father, who'd been too busy to bother with their little girl when she was so sick, when she was so close to--

"Mrs. Summers?" , queried a young man in white who suddenly appeared before her. "I'm Dr. Mackey. You can see your daughter now."

{{"Now, now boys", Mr. Trick cautioned, "let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Sorry, kinda got carried away in the moment", drawled a vampire in a cowboy hat, walking to Mr. Trick's side, dropping a stubbed-out cigarette as he went.

"No harm done", Trick said smoothly, giving Buffy another infuriatingly smug smile, "Slayer--you remember the recently widowed Mr. Gorch, don't you?"

"Like I could ever forget someone who smells that bad", Buffy muttered, straining against the ropes that bound her wrists.

"No need to be rude, Slayer", Trick smirked. "We're all friends here, after all." Laying the inert baby carefully into a somewhat-bloodstained bassinet, he rolled his head on his shoulders as if to loosen up and smirked. “Let’s start getting better acquainted.”}}

Joyce tried not to break down as she looked down at Buffy--so pale, so quiet--the only sign of life was the shallow rise and fall of her chest and the flickering of her eyelids...she was dreaming.

"We're not absolutely certain of the diagnosis yet, Mrs. Summers", Dr. Mackey told her, folding his hands around a metal clipboard. "But we've ruled out a lot of things. The only definite news I can give you is that it doesn't appear to be drug-related, and there isn't any sign of head trauma. She is a little anemic and so far we haven't been able to wake her..." As he spoke, Dr. Mackey moved the covers aside to show Joyce the thick straps that pinned her daughter's arms to the bed-frame. "We've had to restrain her to keep her from injuring herself and others. She's almost unbelievably strong--there's so much adrenalin pumping through her veins that I wouldn't be surprised if she could bench-press the orderlies."

"Yes", Joyce murmured, feeling that she should say something, as she cupped Buffy's cheek lightly. "She's still cold."

"Well, her temperature is abnormally low--steady at 90 degrees Fahrenheit. That's very low for a human being, but we haven't been able to bring it up. I won't tell you not to worry, Mrs. Summers, but Buffy is in the best of hands. We'll do everything we can to bring her out of this safely."

Rupert fairly pounced on Joyce as she re-entered the waiting room, her expression distracted.

"Well? What did the, um, doctor say?", he asked, trying not to give in to the ticklish urge to grab her and shake her until she told him everything. [I am NOT the Ripper, I am NOT the Ripper,...]

Joyce looked startled as she glanced up at him, softening slightly as she looked over his shoulder to where the Slayerettes sat with curious and hopeful expressions.

"She's still unconscious, and her temperature is abnormally low", Joyce admitted, "but they've ruled out head injuries, and she's not comatose..."

"She's dreaming again", Faith interpreted correctly, crossing her arms as she slouched in her seat. "I hope they've got her strapped down nice and tight."

"Strapped down?", Xander asked, his eyebrows shooting upwards as his eyes widened dramatically. "Woah, did I miss something? Why are we talking bondage?"

"Er, yes, well--Buffy becomes a bit violent in some of these dreams--", Giles stuttered.

"Yeah", Faith added, "where do you think her mom got that nice shiner?"

As all eyes turned to Buffy's mother, who flushed a bit at the scrutiny and turned the bruised eye away from them, Giles stepped in to change the subject.

"Were there...any other symptoms, Mrs., ah, Summers?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes", Joyce said, glad to have the attention drawn from her injury. "Dr. Mackey mentioned that Buffy was a bit anemic."

"Anemic?", repeated Willow nervously as Giles paled and the other Slayerettes stirred restlessly, "like blood loss? As in vampires?"

"Oh my Lord", Joyce whispered, one hand flying to her mouth, "I didn't even think..."

{{Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to show any sign of how much they were hurting her, but try as she might, she couldn't hold back a tiny whimper of pain and fear as a blond vampire sank his fangs into her throat.

She struggled against the ropes that bound her arms to the hook over her head, wincing as her wrists began to bleed again.

"I've got to give you credit, Slayer", Mr. Trick purred as he drew the knife across Buffy's exposed abdomen, trailing a thin line of blood just below her navel. "You take pain well for a little girl." He licked the blade clean, humming in satisfaction as he watched her shudder helplessly. Suddenly, he frowned and cuffed the feeding vampire sharply, snarling, "that's more than enough, Marcus." Trick turned his sneering grin on Buffy again as the blond fell back licking his lips and leaving a slowly bleeding wound on the Slayer's neck. "You'll end it too quickly. It isn't often that we get to play with a Slayer."

Buffy closed her eyes and let her head fall to her chest, trying to shut out the image of his face and the sure knowledge that she was at the end of her short life.

[Buffy, you must not give up], hissed Giles' voice in her ear, [you are the Chosen One...the one girl in all the world--]

"I c-can't", Buffy sobbed in a broken whisper, "I'm s-so s-sorry, Giles...I can't..."}}

The nurse tried not to look too closely at the teenager who lay limp in the hospital bed as she checked the girl’s vitals. There were a lot of anemic cases in the Sunnydale ER. A hell of a lot. Most of them recovered quickly as long as they made it to the hospital breathing. The ones who didn’t…

...well, you quickly learned why they went into the incinerator instead of the morgue.

But the mystery cases, like this girl, the ones that resisted diagnosis, there were a lot of those, too.

And they almost always left with a sheet over their faces.

The nursing staff said it was easier if you didn’t see the faces beforehand…

The girl whimpered then, her head lashing to the side as she strained against the straps holding her down, an expression of pure terror flitting across her face. She jerked once and lay shuddering and helpless against the white sheets. The nurse felt an unwanted spark of compassion flare in her heart…

And then a man burst through the door with a resolved expression, marching to the child’s bedside and pausing there, his hands clenched into fists as his fierce demeanor melted into tenderness.

Taking a deep breath, the man let his hand move to the girl’s throat, and he checked first one side and then the other as he searched the unmarred flesh for wounds that would lay the blame on a familiar foe. The skin was unmarked, though, except for a small, bluish-gray symbol that appeared to be drawn just below her left ear.

“Buffy”, the man breathed. “You must not give up…”

At the sound of his voice, the girl went limp, sobbed once, and whispered, “I c-can’t…I’m s-so s-sorry, Giles…I can’t…” Whimpering, she twisted against the sheets once more and drifted away again.

“No, Buffy”, the man said urgently, “you can, you must! Buffy? Buffy?!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Giles”, Dr. Mackey interrupted, standing in the doorway flanked by a pair of orderlies. “Only family is allowed in here. You’ll have to leave.”

Mr. Giles straightened slowly, and for an instant, the nurse saw something dark lurking in the man’s eyes, leaving her cold and inexplicably afraid, and she instinctively took a step away from him as if…as if…

“Alright”, the tweed-clad Englishman said softly, gently squeezing the child’s shoulder one last time before he allowed himself to be led away from his Slayer.