***************************************

They were gathered around it -- Buffy, Nikki, and Faith as the featured special guests of Slayer-Con 2003, with Dawn and Spike opposite. Willow hovered at the counter. The Potentials had been quickly hustled elsewhere; no mean feat considering their fascination with Faith's tattoos and skank-wear not to mention the once-again-apparently-sane Nikki. And Buffy suspected darkly that a few wanted to fuss over Spike's charring and injuries.

That duty had been left to Dawn, though, and the way she was currently poking at and bickering with Spike made Buffy wonder if their relationship couldn't be salvaged, after all.

"What are you doing here, Faith?" she asked bluntly.

Faith made a show of examining her ragged fingernails. "Heard you all were having a party in sleepy Sunnydale. Couldn't let a little thing like maximum security prison keep me from the fun." She smirked. "Guess you just can't keep a good Slayer down."

"Got that right," Nikki said under her breath.

"Well, thanks for thinking of us but we're really okay here. So why don't you go hang out at a truck stop or wherever? Be sure to send a postcard."

"Aw, B. Don't be sad. I'll try to hold back. Wouldn't want to show you up in front of the little girls." Her amused glance flickered to Spike. "Or your new boytoy." She leaned in close to Buffy. "Nice choice, by the way. A definite improvement over the last one. And I'd know, right?"

Buffy inhaled sharply, and Spike cocked his head. "Have we met?"

"'I could ride you at a gallop until your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne, and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more,'" Faith quoted.

All eyes turned to Spike. A grin broke over his face. "Was that you? I always wondered --" he trailed off at Buffy's frigid gaze. "Er, nothing. Bit, could you check my finger? Think I got a blister."

Dawn elbowed Spike in the ribs. "Three Slayers?" she hissed. "Geez, Spike. You're like a groupie."

"Three?" Faith's brow furrowed and now it was Buffy's turn to smile.

"Faith, meet Nikki. She's the Slayer from 1977. I guess she heard about our 'fun', too. Latest polls show that coming back from the dead totally beats breaking out of jail." So there, she finished silently.

Faith looked nonplussed for a moment, but recovered quickly. "Seventy-seven, huh?” She turned again to Buffy. “You must need all the help you can get."

There's gotta be a way I can sacrifice you to the First Evil, Buffy thought. For the greater good. Or maybe just mine.

Willow moved forward. "Faith, I can take you upstairs. You'll be sharing a room with some of the Slayers-in-Training."

Faith rose, and smirked at Willow's cold stare. "Come on, Willow. About that little knife incident...no hard feelings, right?"

Willow smiled. "Last year I flayed the skin off a guy who pissed me off. I think I can handle you."

Nodding, Faith followed her out of the room. "Lots of changes around here," she observed. "I like it."

When they were gone, Spike reached for her. "Love --?"

"I need to look more at that weapon we found last night. Dawn can fill you in. We'll have a strategy session this afternoon." She stood unsteadily and walked into the living room. After a moment, Nikki joined her.

"Another Slayer?"

"Yeah. Maybe the First put an ad on Match.com: "Immortal incorporeal evil seeks female counterpart for death, destruction, chaos and non-fat lattes. Superhuman strength and occasional psychosis preferred.'"

"You don't think she's here to help?"

"I think she's here to make me miserable. Anything else is just a bonus. Faith's been in jail for the last three years -- she'll be glad to see some action and I don't think she'll care whose side it's on. Bitch."

"Okay."

"Everything I have, she wants. My calling, my boyfriends, and -- oh, yeah -- my body. She actually stole my body. Who does that? I mean, she's clearly deranged."

"Right."

"She just shows up out of nowhere, and I'm supposed to be all, 'Gee, Faith! Thanks for helping us out with this year's apocalypse! Now I completely forgive you for trying to kill my first boyfriend and taking my mother hostage and telling Giles that I murdered the deputy mayor and sleeping with my second boyfriend and going evil senior year of high school and saying -- gah! -- stuff to my third boyfriend. Let's hug!'"

"Uh-huh."

"She knows I can't stand her. She knows. Why did she come back here, anyway?"

"Maybe she had no where else to go," Nikki suggested.

Buffy closed her eyes briefly. Opening them, she moved to a weapons chest at the far end of the room. "Wanna see this cool sword I found?"

Nikki shrugged. "Sure."

***************************************

"Ugh, Spike. You didn't have sex with Faith, did you? Because that would be so incredibly gross."

"Ow!" Spike winced as Dawn wrapped his twice-stabbed shoulder. "I’m not talking about sex with you."

Dawn gasped. "You did sleep with her!"

"Did not!"

Dawn narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you swear? Do you pinky-swear?"

Spike sighed, and extended his finger as he'd done countless times with her before. Not lately, though. So he couldn't suppress the little bit of glee that went through him at her expectant gaze. "Fine. Pinky-swear. Now can you please never, ever say the word 'sex' in my presence again?" He considered. "Or anyone else's, for that matter. In fact, put the subject out of your mind entirely. For the next ten, fifteen years or so."

"Spiiiiiike..."

Ah, and he remembered that as well, how she could plead and cajole and bargain with the best of them. God, he'd missed her.

Her hands had stilled over the bandage. He watched her little eyebrows knit together, a sure sign that she was stewing over something.

"What is it, sweet one?"

"Guess we're fighting the big-time evil now, huh?"

He shifted beneath her attention, and attentions. "Looks that way."

"But we're going to make it, right? Buffy, and the Scoobies, and..." She lifted her eyes up to his, finally. "Everybody?"

He bent close and she didn't cringe away from him. Softly, softly, he pressed his forehead to her own. "It's all going to be fine, Dawn." He sat back and tried to coax a smile. "Gonna have my eye on you the whole time, whether you like it or not."

Her lashes glistened with tears. "Same goes."

"Well, then. Between the two of us, should be no problem saving the world." He reclined in the kitchen chair as Dawn scooted forward. "You know, we've always been the brains of this operation."

**********************************************************

Giles cleared his throat. "So, there you have it," he concluded. "A trinity of Slayers, wielding --" he returned to his notes briefly -- "'that which was forged by the first.'"

"Wow," commented Faith. "You guys have a prophecy for every occasion."

Willow chewed on her bottom lip. "The first, or...the First?" She sat on the couch, sandwiched between a handful of Potentials.

Something that could have been a laugh, but probably wasn't, emerged from Giles. "Yes, well. That...remains to be clarified."

"Of course," Kennedy said snidely. Nikki pursed her lips but said nothing. The girl really did inspire violence.

Anya folded her arms. "I, for one, think it's a fantastically bad idea to start playing around with some magical weapon when we don't know where it came from. Much less taking it into battle with the First. For all we know this is it what it wants!"

Xander placed a restraining hand on her arm but she shook him off. "Rupert, you know I'm right. For heaven's sake, don't you recall what happened when we got that misrouted shipment of Egyptian scrying bowls?"

Giles shuddered visibly.

Anya addressed the rest of the room. "We did a standard cleansing spell and ended up summoning the goddess Hathor." She sniffed. "You try talking the Vengeful Eye of Ra out of slaying all mankind. Eventually we had to put her in an empty djinni bottle just like in that television show which I found funny but let me assure you she was far less content with the situation than Barbara Eden although Xander would make a good Darren, don't you think?"

Silence reigned, until Giles spoke again, his voice strained. "Perhaps we should return to the topic at hand. The instrument that Buffy discovered in the winery."

"It does sound a little convenient," Dawn said. "A whole bunch of Bringers and ubervamps around, and this...thing is just sitting there? Waiting to be claimed?"

"I don't think they knew it was there," Buffy said.

Giles frowned. "How so?"

"It was weird," Buffy responded. "I mean, at the beginning the fight was everywhere, right? A total free-for-all. But as I got closer to the stairs, it was like everyone just...drifted away. Even you guys." She looked around. "The path was being cleared, but we didn't know it. And then when I found the cellar? That place hadn't been touched in years. No footprints, no sign of life or unlife or guys with their eyes sewn shut."

"Sounds even more like a setup to me," Xander retorted.

"I must admit that I'm of the same opinion, Buffy. It appears to me that the First orchestrated the melee to ensure that you took possession of what could be, at best, a red herring. At worst...well, I don't think I need to elaborate."

Buffy blew out a frustrated breath. "Okay, guys -- instincts? As in, I have some? I'm telling you, it was meant for me."

When Xander spoke next, he wasn't looking at her. "Yeah, well, Buffy...your judgment has left a lot to be desired lately."

The meeting degenerated after that. Shouting, accusations, and Faith -- from what Nikki could see -- making passes at four people in the room. She wasn't used to this...this slaying by consensus. She thought, as she had often lately, of her own Watcher. What would Gregory make of this? He'd been unorthodox in his own way; his indulgence of first her wild years and then her determination to have a husband and child despite the oppressive certainty of the Council that this would end badly.

She looked around the room, at the angry faces and bitter words and thought, Do you know what she's given up already?

A knock at the door, and she was relieved at the opportunity to leave and answer it. She'd gotten like the rest of them, treating the Summers home as her own.

It was Robin. He stood in the doorway and stared at her, as if they'd been separated for another twenty-five years. She could still hear the raised, angry voices from the living room, could see beyond her son to the overgrown weeds of abandoned lawns across the way.

She could still conjure the look on his face last night, his horror and disgust.

"I would have gotten here sooner," he said. "I was out. Looking for you." Abruptly he held up a slightly mangled object. "Cell phones don't work anymore, though tossing it out the window probably didn't help much."

He kept talking but his eyes, those were enough; they drank her up and it was not hard to recognize the pain in them. Blood will out. She had a choice now, she knew. Coldness rose up in her, the desire to reject him they way he'd rejected her. She could do it. She'd protect him until the very last, but never look him in the eye again if she had to see that revulsion.

The thought passed as quickly as it had arrived. There was no time left, for this petty bullshit. Not when she'd already forgiven Spike, which was like laying brickwork to heaven as far as Nikki was concerned. She couldn't fault Robin for his reaction, and a remote part of her could be proud even that he'd faced her down. He would always be her dear boy.

"I love you," he said brokenly. "Whatever you do, whatever..."

She allowed herself to be pulled toward him, to be cradled in his arms, to rest her head against his broad chest. His strong hands against her back, sheltering her because for now, he needed to do that. Needed to be that.

Later she led him to the living room. The debate had died down, and Buffy stood alone, apart from the others. Holding the scythe. Wordlessly, Nikki went to her side.

For what had to be the dozenth time that night, Giles tore off his glasses. "I hardly think that Nikki is an ideal ally. The First has demonstrated the ease with which he can manipulate her."

"Forget the First," Anya chimed in sourly. "Show her recent pictures of Michael Jackson and she'll freak."

From her perch on the much-repaired coffee table, Faith spoke. “So the crazy militant disco Slayer, and Blondie?” Ignoring both Buffy and Nikki’s narrowed gazes, she hopped up. “I’m in.”

For the first time that evening Spike’s voice was heard. “You have to stand behind them.” He didn’t look at anyone in particular but it was clear he addressed them all. He pushed off from the wall he’d been leaning against.

“Are you aware of what’s at stake here, Spike?” Giles rose as well, standing toe to toe with the vampire. Funny, how Spike was a small man but never seemed that way.

“I’m not the one who matters, am I? It’s her you’re worried about. Fucking hell, man! You force her –"

“I didn’t –"

“To fight for you, to fight for the world but now you won’t let her lead? Doesn’t work like that, mate.”

“Look around this room, Spike. You’re proposing we put every person here at risk due to a – a hunch of Buffy’s.”

“They’re at risk already. Sticking with the Slayer’s the best chance they’ve got.” Spike did look around now.

“You will follow her into battle,” he bit out. “She’s earned that.”

“Even at the expense of the rest of us?”

“Yes,” Spike snarled. “Even then.”

“Stop.”

Buffy’s face was set and harsh and fearless.

“This is not going to be a massacre, and I’m not doing this out of pride or stubbornness. The plan is what it is. I’m going into the Hellmouth, with them –" she nodded to Nikki and Faith – “and this.” She rested her hands on the handle of the blade. “You can join me, or you can stay here. And wait.”

Minutes passed. Then Willow got up, gave Buffy a tentative half-hug. Xander was behind her. He carefully fingered the scythe. “Shiny!” he said brightly. And then one by one, they were all gathered around her. Suspicious wetness shone in her eyes, building when Giles placed his hands on her shoulders. Spike was last, waiting until everyone else had risen.

“So…when are we going to do this?” Nikki asked. Robin’s arms tightened around her.

Buffy shrugged. “I was thinking now.”

Next: Down Town

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