Title: Tuesday's Child ...
Author: Troll Princess
Rating: Mostly R, but I'll give a heads up when it gets NC-17.
Archive: Sure, just give me a heads up.
Summary: Sequel to "Ghost in the Shell." Dawn's new Slaying abilities lead to discoveries about her origins and destiny that Grace, Spike, and the rest of the Scoobies have a hard time adjusting to -- even more so when a new enemy returns behind a familiar face.
Feedback: Can be sent to trollprincess@theslayer.net.
Spoilers: Happens after the end of Buffy, Season Five. This is a sequel to my story, "Ghost in the Shell," so it helps if you read that first.
Disclaimer: Not my show, not my characters, not my idea. Story's mine, but Joss Whedon owns Buffy and the rest. (And I'll bet that thought makes him giggle like a schoolgirl.)
Author's note: It may not get out as fast as "Ghost in the Shell" did, but damn it, it'll get out. Here lies the second in what I've decided to call my "Will and Grace" Trilogy. The style's first-person present-tense, and is gratuitously ripped off from Chuck Palahniuk ... and then bastardized by me and my style. Chuck, you rock.

Chapter One: Something in the Way

This one time, a while after my mom had found out the Master had killed me and not long after I'd returned from my big scaredy summertime runaway, the two of us had gotten jumped by a vampire coming back from the movies. Stupid bloodsucker's genius idea of a snappy comeback was, "Did your mother have any children that lived?"

Mom didn't stop laughing for a good half hour.

It's the one moment that stands out in my mind as I sit on her grave, knees drawn up to my chest and arms wrapped around them tightly. Maybe if I squeeze hard enough, I'll implode and disappear like some whacked-out black hole or something.

Oh, God. I can't think straight. I'm thinking ... I don't know. At a tilt or something. Stop the world, I want to get off and beat the crap out of the carny running the ride.

Did you know gravestones glow in the moonlight?

I bury my face in the valley between my jean-covered knees, rubbing my tear-stained face across the denim. I glance up at the sky, and wonder just a little if Mom can spot Waldo in the Slayer suit propped up on her grave.

This was just not my week. I don't know who the hell this week belonged to, but they are mean and evil and must be destroyed.

Okay, still officially all sniffly and confused.

You want to know how bad my week's been? Well, it started off with me dying. Yeah, that's right. The official pulse-ending squish-o-rama. And as if that weren't enough, it got worse. Amazingly enough, there was a worse it could get.

Why? Because I died twice. Count 'em. One hop off a tower. One mental gnosh from a frothy pregnant demon. Two deaths this week.

And you're saying, "Well, gee, Gracie, how did you manage a neat little party trick like that?" I don't know. I do it all the time. Drownings, comas, squishings, mental suck-fests. You have no idea how much my insurance company hates me. "What? You died again?"

I can't resist a choked giggle at that, my throat rough from sobbing.

No, wait. Not my throat.

Okay, yeah. My throat. You'd be amazed what I can do with this throat, ba--

Would you shut up?!

God.

The tears come again, though not in the shuddering torrents they were coming in before. I get the impression this body's been dying for a good cry ever since I got in it, like it's never got a chance to really let loose on the weeping front.

My gaze fixates on the name on the gravestone. A hundred emotions wash over me. A protective, loving warmth is the only one that sticks to me in a thin film.

Okay. Nasty mental image. And a totally wrong time for nasty mental images if there ever was one.

Hey, Mrs. Summers, I croak out, then cough. Sorry, Mom, I add.

Damn, this is hard. I'd rather be taking the SATs all over again. Twice. At gunpoint. Without bathroom breaks.

You know that bad week I was talking about? When it started out, I was two entirely different people. No, seriously. Most of the brain was Buffy Summers, big old cuddly vampire Slayer and toss-off kid of the woman currently buried six feet under my feet. And most of the bod was Faith insert-last-name-here, alternate Slayer, former future prison matron, and sex addict.

Say, "Hello, Faith." I'm being all confession-y here. It's the least you can do.

But anyway, we went through some major mojo, and here we are. Sharing space in the black Corvette of Slayer bodies, as long as we both shall live, amen and oh, jeez, how'd we stumble into that mess?

I hear my tear-roughened voice in the night air. God, I wish you were still here, Mom.

Huh. I wonder how you'd handle this, Joyce, I really do.

God.

How would Mom handle this? Her little girl goes sky-diving, parachute-optional, and ... oh, wait, there she is. Stuffed into living quarters with the same Slayer who tried to poison my boyfriend and staked one of the un-undead, a decided no-no in the Slayer handbook. And I haven't even seen the Slayer handbook. But I mean, killing humans? Gotta be in the common sense chapter of the handbook.

But my identity crisis? As in, my Gee-look-at-all-the-identities-I-have crisis? So not top priority right now.

So now you're asking what is.

And now I'm saying nothing.

Why? Because I've got a bottle of beer in one hand and another two bottles worth in my stomach and as if I weren't already certifiable, I've resorted to solving my current problem with alcoholism. That's why.

Making no sense? Yeah, well, not particularly caring right now.

Jesus ... I really should be looking for my sister. Who I misplaced. You haven't seen a teenage girl lying around, have you?

No? Damn.

I ease myself to my feet, still managing to trip and stumble with the effort. What's left of the beer in the bottle splashes out from the motion and gets onto my jeans. Oh, goodie. Eau de brewery.

I'm feeling Slayery. I need to kill things.

I continue to clutch the bottle in one hand -- hey, you never know when jagged glass'll come in handy -- but reach for the stake I've got stashed away as I head out of the graveyard. I've got two settings for stressful situations, mope and poke vampires with sticks. Right now, making leeches dusty sounds like a good time had by me.

My Slayer sense is on high as I wind my way towards a section of the graveyard I tend to find a lot of vamps in, a corner with a handful of family crypts scattered around. It's like first-come, first-serve housing for the undead.

Of course, there's no one there now. But hell, like Fate'd play along with my literary tendencies.

I glance around, anxiously twirling the stake over my fingers. Aw, come on. There's got to be something I can kill around here. An evil soulless vampire ... a slimy man-eating demon ...

My baby sister.

So I hear this yelp, like a puppy getting kicked, and then out of nowhere, someone throws my sister at me. Gee, thanks.

You want elaboration? All right, let's try this. Me standing in clearing surrounded by trees and crypts. Rustling in the trees and whiny puppy sound. Dawn tossed through big patch of oak trees and into my arms.

Good? Good.

Oh, I'm so buzzed.

Dawn's slim body slams into me, and the two of us tumble back into the wall of a crypt, with matching girly screams, no less. We hit the solid stone wall and slide to the ground, both stunned stupid. My bottle of beer flies from my grasp on impact and smashes against the crypt's door, the neck and its jagged edge falling not that far away from the both of us.

I don't think I have to say this is not how I'd wanted to find my lost sister.

I'm too busy being bad drunk Slayer to notice that Dawn's doing a lot of not noticing in my direction. Not that I blame her, what with the huge, purple, one-eyed demon that's come hustling through the trees toward us.

Let me guess. He's got one horn, he's wild, and he eats people. Not that that's a new thing in Sunnydale. Come to think of it, I think there's support groups for all of those at the Sunnydale Y.

Oh, yeah. Definitely buzzed.

I'm rubbing at my sore, ringing head as Dawn reaches out and snatches the bottle neck off the ground, not taking her eyes off the demon. "Oh, you are so going down," she mutters as she springs to the attack.

'You are so going down?' Aw, come on, she's got to be able to quip better than that.

I don't catch the whole fight. Not that I don't see it, I'm just fixated on Dawn. Little cuddly Dawn, whom I got to hold the very first day Mom brought her home.

The chick who's slamming home the jagged edge of the bottle neck into the eye of the demon, jamming it in with the heel of her hand.

Cutesy blue-eyed Dawn who'd been even better as a dress-up plaything than a Barbie doll.

The girl who's in the middle of knocking the demon to his quivering, pain-wracked knees.

Sweet skinny Dawn, who has always had much better hair than me, damn it.

The teenager who just hacked the horn off the purple demon with the knife I gave her for protection before she left the house.

The haze over my brain clears a little at that, one part of me wondering why I did that. Not a lot of big sisters going, "Here, have a sharp pointy object with you on your walk. You know, in case of hulking people-eaters." Especially in this town. Normally, when it comes to Dawn, it's a strictly "stay home or get eaten" policy in the Summers house.

God, why didn't I just lock her in the basement like a normal sort-of legal guardian?

Because it was the know-it-all, get everything out in open Fait part of me that let her go, that's why.

She quits whacking on the demon as soon as it hits the ground and stops its wiggling, wiping the knife off on the arm of her shirt as she bends over and inspects the thing for deadness. I bite back the part of me that wants to say, "Is that shirt dry-clean?"

Instead, I say, You drop your shoulder.

Another yelp. Dawn whirls around, the knife falling from her hand, and her wide-open blue eyes practically glow in the dark. "Faith," she says, then claps her hand over her mouth. Nope, can't take that back now, can you?

I hear myself saying, When you backhand with that one punch. You drop your shoulder. You didn't watch the tape enough.

She did watch it, though. I can see it in the way she moves.

Me. I can see me in her moves.

Her cheeks flame up, and she looks away. I'm not sure what I expect her to say.

I said I died twice this week. I said I was two people. What I casually forgot to mention was that when the body half of me died, it jump-started another two-Slayers-for-the-price-of-one special in Sunnydale. And who gets the short straw, but just forgets to tell the rest of us? You know, so that I have to find out from the videotape that ... oh, wait. I'm still holding it the remnants of in my hand.

My sister the Slayer, everybody. Go on, Dawnie, take a bow.

She toes the ground nervously with one scuffed sneaker, looking totally the shy teenage princess she was for a while. "Sorry, Buffy," she says, almost too quiet for me to hear.

My name is Grace, I say softly.

And then I just walk away.

Grace Anne Ellington, at your service. Gracie to my friends. You know, when they remember that's my name now.

Okay, I'm still waiting on the paperwork, which Giles has got on rush delivery from the Watchers. I'm still wondering how he weaseled that one of them, but they probably think I'll make a great guinea pig. Let's just forget I'm a little too tall and hairless for that job.

Grace Anne. Gracie. Grace the Vampire Slayer.

It's all I can think about as I walk away.

"Gracie, wait!"

And that's why.

My fists pump back and forth through the air as my arms swing at my sides. No idea where I'm going, no game plan on the destination. All I know is that if I spend any more time anywhere near Dawn, I may literally explode. You never know on the Hellmouth.

"Oh, come on ..."

I know Dawn's catching up to me, but I can't let her. If she catches up to me, and I'll start yelling. And, oh, look ... recriminations and accusations and total loss of any telephone or television or email privileges ever again. She'll rather she'd have been raised Amish when I get done with her.

Why? Because she lied. Dawnie lied to me.

Okay, not a lie. More like a skirting around the facts. A big, Gone-with-the-Wind-sized skirt, but there you go. A Slayer dies, another is chosen. What Dawn skirted around was winning the Slayer lottery.

It would have been nice to know the shortened Slayer lifespan was a Summers tradition, you know. How rude.

"Grace, I'm sorry!"

Oh, that does it.

I immediately stop and whirl around, and I can't believe how close she got to me. We're nearly face to face when I turn to face her, and I'm pretty sure I've got Slayer game face on. Dawn's seen the look before, and even now, she flinches at it.

I tell her to go home. I don't think I've ever sounded so much like I was possessed, even when I was.

She freezes. Pales. Gulps. Then turns around and heads towards home.

Usually, I'd be telling her she needed an escort. But, hell, what's the point now?

Jeez.

I run my fingers anxiously through my hair, still a little stunned to feel the hair stop at shoulder-length, to sense the heavy darkness of it running through my hands. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to the permanent midnight feeling of being totally and irrevocably brunette. Kinda wondering why it's on my mind right now, but I'm guessing I need a focal point, and my hairstyle's working like a charm.

Breathe, Gracie. Inhale. Exhale. You know the drill.

It's only when I'm in the middle of the Lamaze breathing I've got going on that I notice where I ended up.

Ha, ha. Very funny, Fate. A laugh a minute, aren't you?

I'm heading into the apartment complex before I know it, avoiding the staircase I'm used to using and hitching a ride on the elevator instead. Used to be Xander's apartment was an easy stroll up the front stairs to the first door on the left. Of course, then I had to go and die, and then Dawn had to go and be all unattended, and Anya had to go and be all maternal, and you know, I can do this all day long.

But Reader's Digest version is, Xander and Anya get offered to pick up a newly empty apartment in the same building that's got two bedrooms, and what with after-death guilt being what it is in these parts, they got themselves a roommate.

My new boyfriend. Spike.

Hmm. That sounds nice.

Not nice enough to make me forget the severe mental trauma and anguish I'm in the middle of, damn it. But still, nice.

So I'm out of the elevator. I'm on the third floor, I'm heading up to the very fancy door to the apartment, I'm ... I'm still drunk enough to trip and hit the door.

Smooth, Grace. Really smooth.

I can practically hear the Buffy and Faith halves of me arguing over which side attributed the klutz factor to the new and improved me as I slowly get myself back into a slightly less uneven tilt. As I do, there's rustling on the other side of the door, and before long, the door opens and there he is.

A whiff of cigarette smoke and coppery blood drifts past me, all Spikey-scented goodness, and that bleached-blond vampire buddy I'm so hooked on stands in the doorway. Not for long, though. It only takes him a second to perk up and say hello with his lips.

Well, you know. First, there's a real, "Hello, love." And there's the lips hello. Both of which are mmm, mmm, good.

But kissing Spike? That's not why I'm here.

Why am I here?

Because I have to tell someone. I can't sit on this information. Dawn is the Slayer, for crying out loud. Knowing something like that will rot my brain if I can't share it with anyone. Anya and Tara are too new to the Scooby gig. Willow will cry. Xander will punch a wall. And Giles isn't all that far removed from, "Oh, let's toss Dawn into the big nasty interdimensional doohickie."

The process of elimination leaves Spike. Or Mr. Gordo, who gives horrible advice. Or Mr. Pointy, who's wood.

I shiver, and for once in the past few days, I'm not sure if it's because of his gentle touch.

Spike pulls away, stares me down with the sexy smirk of his on his face. "Hey, Slayer. Midnight stroll?" he asks. Midnight stroll. Oh, Sunnydale's warped version of humor. Cute.

I ask where Xander and Anya are.

"Shagging all over her flat tonight," he says with a roll of his eyes. Then he takes in my complete and total state of "wha-huh?" and a cloud of worry floats over him. "Why? What's wrong, love?" He latches onto my hand and leads me into the apartment, closing the door behind us. The big concerned vampire hovering over his girlfriend.

I glance around the apartment distractedly, then open my mouth. Slam it shut again after a long moment. It's like I lost the entirety of the English language. Whoosh, there it goes.

I lift my hand, tendrils of videotape still dangling from it. Spike glances at my hand as if I'm holding a dead octopus from it.

Oh, yeah, Gracie. That explains it.

Finally, I hear myself say it out loud for the first time. Dawn's the next Slayer, I say, in this stunned tone of voice.

There's this split second where Spike freezes, and suddenly, it's the Many Expressions of Spike show. First, there's shock. Then disbelief. Then more shock. Ooo, and then his confused face. Oh, and now we're onto the highly offended face.

His eyes shifting from ice blue to churning midnight in a second, he stares me down fiercely. "You take that back!" he yells at me.

I blink. It's my only defense.

And I thought I was being immature.

Chapter Two