The first thing Buffy noticed was the fog. It was thick, it was suffocating, and it was everywhere. It sort of reminded her of an ‘80s horror series, but then again what in her life didn’t? The air outside was crisp and even though she couldn’t see the ground or much of anything really, Buffy had a hunch that she was in a cemetery someplace. It was almost ironic that even in her dreams, Buffy’s subconscious had decided that the perfect venue for a mystical mind walk was a cemetery.

 How original, Buffy sighed while she stood—literally—in the middle of nowhere.

 Because of the fog, the atmosphere was charged with a crisp dampness that made the once comfortable jeans and long sleeved t-shirt she was in stick to her body in a way that made her want to crawl out of her skin to get away from the clammy feeling.

 “You are the original,” a male voice said, though Buffy couldn’t see anyone else around her. “The one who stands out among the others; the one who should be dead.”

 “Tell me something I don’t know,” Buffy grumbled, agitated that she was being stalked. “A disembodied voice in a cemetery is such a cliché. I’m really starting to think that all you villain types do when you aren’t trying to end the world is sit around and watch B horror movies.”

 Nightmares never ended well, but this one was pissing her off and quick. Buffy didn’t like cryptic bullshit. She’d had enough cryptic to last a lifetime already and she wasn’t looking for anymore, new Big Bad or not. Whatever her subconscious was trying to tell her—it was sucking at getting its point across.

 “You might as well come out and face me while you have a choice,” Buffy continued, taking in her surroundings and trying to commit the imprint of every tombstone in the fog onto her memory.

 Buffy felt rather than saw the presence of her opponent as the tall silhouette approached, materializing out of the fog ten feet or so in front of her.

 “You are connected by blood; your blood is her blood.”

 “Who’s blood?” Buffy asked, taking a cautious step forward.

 “The other. The two split from one, the half of you who wanders the world in darkness and in shame,” the man almost purred.

 Buffy wasn’t close enough to really see his face or what he was wearing, but his voice has a smoothness to it that was almost British, but somewhere in the middle instead. A Mid-Atlantic accent.

 “You will have to decide,” he went on, “what means more to you.”

 Then a slit in the thick atmosphere opened up and moonlight slanted in to reveal a young man with high cheekbones and eyes that were glowing red.

 Buffy shot up in bed, feeling her lungs burn and her heart hammer against her ribcage as she struggled to take a much needed breath on her way back to full consciousness.

 After steadying herself, she opened her eyes again and took in the familiar surroundings in her dark room. The dim silhouette of the cherry wood armoire that held a small collection of personal weapons, the Victorian dresser off to the side that had a generous amount of photographs tacked around the sides of the tall mirror. There wasn’t much else in the bedroom aside from a closet large enough to walk into, a small personal bathroom, and an oval lounger by the door where Buffy always tossed her jacket and keys after patrol. Then of course there was Satsu. Since showing up in Cleveland, the younger slayer had proven herself not only as a fighter on par with Kennedy, but she had also taken every opportunity to flirt with their closed off leader.

 Buffy had resisted her advances at first, knowing that as the head of their organization it was her job to set a good example for others, but the constant hollow ache of loneliness and the promise of understanding on a level none of her previous lovers had ever been able to provide had eventually driven Buffy into the younger girl’s arms. The fact that Satsu was a woman had surprisingly neither deterred nor encouraged Buffy’s decision to be with her. Though the blonde had never been in a romantic relationship with a woman before or even imagined it, she’d never truly been against the possibility and she didn’t know why, but even before it happened, she was more okay with the idea of it than she had ever thought she would have been.

 Buffy tried to tell herself that what she had with Satsu was temporary and casual, but every time she looked into Satsu’s adoring dark eyes, she knew she was lying to herself. They weren’t in love or at least Buffy wasn’t. Satsu was head over heels for her though and Buffy couldn’t really tell how much of it was hero worship and how much of it was actual love, but it didn’t seem to matter on those nights when she would come home from patrol and find Satsu already snuggled up in her bed waiting for her. She knew from being a love struck teenager herself that Satsu most likely felt very seriously for Buffy and was maybe even entertaining ideas of a long term relationship between the two of them. Buffy didn’t want to lead her on, but—she realized sadly—was exactly what she was doing. It wasn’t like I made promises I couldn’t keep, she defended herself against her own mental accusations. But at the same time, Buffy knew that not telling Satsu that she was just sleeping with her because she actually made the blonde feel wanted and that the sex was amazing wouldn’t go over very well. So like the coward that she was, Buffy just allowed it to happen, snuggling into Satsu’s arms night after night after being fucked and fucking until both slayers were exhausted.

 Tonight the younger girl was laying on her stomach fast asleep, with one arm thrown possessively across Buffy’s naked hips. Buffy looked sideways at her, trying not to feel like she was being held in a position that she didn’t want. She’d always been relationship girl, but lately with Satsu Buffy had wished for once in her life to have Faith’s ‘get some, get gone’ attitude. It would make what they were doing so much easier, at least for the blonde. Buffy quietly disentangled herself from her lover, got dressed, and moved out into the hallway; slowly closing the door behind her.

 Barefoot, she padded her way through the mansion until she reached the kitchen. She was surprised to see the overhead light on from the hall and crept forward cautiously, not wanting to draw the unwanted attention of who or what might be lurking ahead just in case it was something she might have to slay. Buffy relaxed though when she rounded the corner and recognized the familiar redhead leaning over the breakfast counter preparing notes for one of her classes.

 She walked up to the other side of the counter, stifling a yawn as Willow noticed her and smiled.

 “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Buffy said.

 “Couldn’t sleep again?” Willow smiled sympathetically.

 Buffy shrugged, leaning heavily against her elbows on the counter in a mirror image of her best friend. “Pretty much. That’s what I get for thinking I could finally have a quiet night and sleep in in the morning.”

 “Way to temp fate,” Willow quipped before raising her ‘Kiss the Witch’ mug to her lips and taking a long sip of her coffee. “I would’ve thought Satsu would have tired you out enough to at least get a couple hours of sleep?”

 Willow wiggled her eyebrows and a slight blush rose to Buffy’s cheeks even though she too was smiling at the insinuation. Her relationship with the younger slayer was new and…not like other relationships that Buffy had had in the past. Sometimes she had a hard time justifying having a relationship with a student in her head. Sometimes just thinking about it all gave her a headache or made her slightly sick to her stomach, but whenever they were together, Buffy could temporarily forget that she was breaking a taboo she herself had always looked down upon others for breaking.

 “Oh, she does, but it seems my subconscious doesn’t agree with what my body needs,” Buffy quipped. “I could say the same thing about you and Ken, Will. What are you doing up with the birds when you have to keep up with a slayer’s urges day in and day out?”

 Willow didn’t blush like the school girl of so long ago, just yet another sign that things had changed since way back in the day. Instead, she sipped at her coffee and continued to smile.

 “A very powerful witch has ways of more than satisfying a slayer, I’ll have you know.” Willow winked.

 This peaked Buffy’s interest, “oh really? Care to share?”

 Willow shrugged her shoulders absently, “sorry, can’t. Trade secrets, you know.”

 “I’ll bet,” Buffy snorted in amusement.

 They had a few more hours before the day was due to start in its entirety and Buffy wanted nothing more than to rush back up to bed and sleep, but she knew the probability of that actually happening was slim to none. Instead, she opted for the age old option of beating a punching bag until either it or your fists cried for mercy.

 “I’m going down to the training room for a bit. Might as well get a work out in before I have to sit in an office all day filing forms.”

 000000000000

 The place they’d chosen for the slayer central was in Cleveland. With the largest active hellmouth in North America, it seemed like the natural choice for a slayer army in training. The “Scooby school” as it was affectionately called had been open for almost a year and already Willow had managed to locate a couple hundred new slayers from Canada, the U.S., and South America and more were being brought in every day. Instructors from local covens and compatible backgrounds had been hired to teach the basic school subjects such as history, math, and biology.

 The more necessary, but equally unusual subjects such as demonology, runology. Alchemy, history of ancient weapons, and introduction to vampires & paranormal creatures were taught by the Scoobies themselves. Though Dawn was only nineteen, she helped Xander, Andrew, and Willow in their classes, sometimes taking over as a substitute when something came up which helped solidify her authority as a junior watcher. Buffy held the position of principal and school counselor. It allowed her the freedom to keep up personally with the girls on their own level and the power to protect them should any suspicion come down on the school surrounding its actual purpose.

 Willow and Xander were right at home as teachers and counselors. Andrew enjoyed the unofficial capacity as Activities Coordinator (which usually meant trying to organize official visits to museums and zoos without becoming target practice for the girls in the meantime) and the official school liaison to the outside world. Kennedy behaved like she had been born to be the school’s undisputed Weaponsmaster and official (for the public record) Physical Education Coordinator. The only members of the original Scooby crew that remained absent were Giles—who was busy rebuilding the Watchers Council in Britain—and Faith who was his right hand recruiting girls to be trained in Europe. To be perfectly honest, Buffy missed them both. She would never admit to anyone not even Willow that she missed having Faith around, but the hard truth of the matter was that she did. Since leaving Los Angeles after the fall of Sunnydale and arriving here, things had been different for Buffy.

  It was nice not having to worry about an impending apocalypse every six months—finally—but aside from that, everything was chaos. She’d spent months shepherding a bunch of homeless teenage girls with super powers around the country and if anything, the added responsibility had made her grow harder around the edges. The Scoobies had decided to stick together until they found a place they could call home, but Faith—the uncommon, unpredictable denominator in their equation—had high tailed it almost as soon as they’d arrived in Los Angeles without so much as a word or a note of warning to anybody but Angel and it had been the final straw in Buffy’s haystack. Aside from all of the weird mixed signals Faith always seemed to be directing her way, Buffy had thought the two of them had final settled their differences and become friends. However, Faith had blown that friendship idea full of holes when she had just up and left them all like they didn’t mean anything to her.

 “Soooo, running an undercover school for kids with super powers turns out isn’t as easy as the X-men make it look,” Xander commented absently, resting his chin on his folded arms across the conference table from his friends.

 The old gang usually got together at one of their houses to discuss work problems, but Buffy had made the call today to have an emergency meeting while school was in session. Unfortunately, the only time when no one was needed was needed to supervise the girls was lunchtime. Tired-and-hungry-Xander was almost as bad as No-coffee-Xander and out of their small group, it looked like Dawn and Kennedy were right there with him. Buffy hadn’t arrived yet. Andrew seemed to be zoning out and Willow was ruminating silently over a very large, steaming mocha.

 “I think it would be easier if we had a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird that rose out from beneath the basketball court or stylish leather outfits. That would be fun,” Andrew beamed excitedly from his place beside Willow.

 Andrew was obviously the only morning/early afternoon person in the room. His hopeful expression was met by a disbelieving look from Xander, a snore from Dawn, and an annoyed glare from Kennedy.

 “Yeah, cause those things are easily affordable on a secret hush-hush stipend from the Watcher’s council,” Xander deadpanned. “How much coffee have you had this morning, Andy?”

 “Oh, you know, about…” Andrew looked up at the ceiling as he tried to think, his knee bouncing up and down involuntarily beneath the table. “Four cups, but I don’t drink coffee for the caffeine. I just like the taste.”

 “Obviously,” Kennedy smirked.

 Dawn, Xander, and Kennedy sat on one side of the long wooden table while Willow, Andrew, and Buffy’s empty chair occupied the other. Everyone was more or less awake except for Dawn who was dozing against the tabletop. As a junior watcher and a college student, Dawn seemed to be having the most trouble out of all of them getting enough sleep to function. She usually napped before their meetings, but she’d been up all night studying for her proficiency test in archaic demon languages and had barely remembered that Buffy had called a meeting in the first place. The Scoobies were being pretty understanding letting Dawn sleep, but as soon as Buffy arrived, they knew she’d give her younger sister hell for dozing on the job.

 “Wonder where Buffy is?” Willow said, taking a deep sip of her mocha and closing her eyes as the chocolately goodness overwhelmed her senses. “She said to meet right at noon, but it’s almost twenty minutes after and she’s still not here.”

 “Maybe she was attacked by a demon in her office or maybe the new Latin teacher is evil and he kidnapped her so he can use Buffy’s blood for some creepy culty ritual,” Andrew supplied, gathering odd looks from the others. “What? It could so happen. Especially to us.”

 “Speaking of the general…” Xander perked up as the door to the room opened.

 Almost on cue, Buff walked in. Kennedy elbowed Dawn in the side, causing the younger Summers girl to groan lightly and sit up, her disheveled hair sticking to one side of her face. Xander leaned back comfortably in her chair as Willow opened up her white binder and a while assortment of color coded pens. Buffy sat down not noticing how Andrew was smiling at her like he was grateful that she was still alive and Kennedy was glaring at her like she wished the evil Latin teacher really had gotten Buffy.

 “Hey guys. Sorry I’m late, but I was putting together the patrol schedules for the week and I lost track of time.”

 “No problem, Buffster. Not like there’s an apocalypse to prepare for. Just normal everyday boring school stuff,” Xander commented stretching.

 “And you don’t know how grateful for that I am,” Buffy chuckled, relieving some of the tension in the room because of her late arrival.

 They were quiet for a minute as Buffy rifled through the folders in her arms and started handing them out. Xander’s stomach growled loudly attracting the attention of the entire room.

 “What?” He defended, “It’s lunchtime. It’s not my stomach’s fault it’s angry because there’s nothing in it.”

 “We’ll have to start having pizza at these meetings,” Buffy looked up at him sympathetically once all the manila folders were handed out.

 “I second that motion,” Willow agreed.

 “So what are we dealing with?” Andrew asked, opening up his folder and wrinkling up his nose at the sheets of paper inside.

 “Nothing out of the ordinary,” Buffy lamented. “A couple of new arrivals that we’ll need to prepare for; one from Chile, the other from Vancouver. New patrol schedules for the week will be posted by this afternoon. A new shipment of practice weapons is supposed to arrive by 3, so Kennedy—”

 “Make sure every weapon is numbered, catalogued, and stored properly.” The brunette interrupted confidently, “Got it.”

 “—oh and we have a school inspection coming up.”

“Another one?” Dawn groaned.

 “Yay, who wants to play dodge the bureaucrat all day. Again.” Willow cheered with false enthusiasm.

 “We need to make sure that this one goes smoother than the last one, guys.” Buffy folded her hands in front of her, all business mode now. “Apparently, the report the last inspector did on us pulled up some red flags at the Board of Education and so we’ve got to get better at hiding things unless we want the state poking their noses into what really goes on around here.”

 “Well, just throwing this out there, but it’s a little hard to make a class on demon classification look like anything other than what it is while it’s in session, you know?” Xander pointed out, “I mean, I wonder what gave it away first, the fact that there’s a poster illustrating demon evolution at the back of the class or that The Lesser Key of Solomon is on the required reading list?”

 “How screwed are we if they find out about us, I mean, Mr. Giles and the council can protect us right? They can’t just shut us down can they?” Andrew asked.

 “I don’t know,” Buffy shrugged. “The people in the government who need to know are already aware of what we do, but if someone were to leak the fact that we are a training base for teenage girls to learn how to go out at night and kill evil things with pointy objects to the world press, I can’t see anyone being willing or able to protect us then.”

 “Do we know when the inspection is going to be so we can prepare?” Willow asked.

 “No, unfortunately. It’ll be at random just like the last one.”

 “At least it’s only an inspection. It’s not like it’s the end of the world or anything,” Andrew tried to be reassuring.

 “Which—really—is too bad because we’re definitely prepared for that,” Dawn quipped, perking up a little.

 “That’s our Dawnie, always finding the silver linings in every world-ending situation,” Willow said, winking across the table at the girl as Andrew crossed his arms over his chest in an indignant huff.

 Buffy had to agree with that. Point for point, their Scooby school was better stocked and organized than most right-wing paramilitary organizations. If anyone was prepared for the literal ending of days, it was them and they needed to be. The safety and future of the world itself depended on them. Try explaining that to the FBI though. It wasn’t something Buffy or any of them wanted to have to do, but if too much attention was drawn to them by a wayward inspector or board member it would be inevitable. Police would be called. Then the feds and parents would be notified that their daughters were living less than acceptable lives at the hands of “occultist lunatics” and after the whole fiasco turned into a media carnival, no one; watcher, politician, or even the Buddha would stand up and defend their rights to defend innocent people from the unbelievable things that no one knew actually went bump in the night. Better they just avoided that situation altogether, Buffy thought.

 “Soooo, pizza?” Xander chimed in hopefully, drawing Buffy out of her personal musings.

 Buffy rubbed at her eyes tiredly and smiled, “Sure. You order it and get what you want.”

 “Great! I know exactly what I’m going to get,” Xander said, standing up as it was clear their little meeting was over, at least for the time being.

 “No mushrooms,” Kennedy declared with a glare.

 “Or anchovies,” Dawn made a disgusted face.

 “Or pepperoni,” Andrew added.

 “Guys,” Xander interjected, raising his hands to draw everyone’s attention to his complete misery at being shot down at every turn. “You’re seriously sucking the fun out of having pizza for me right now!”

 “You’ll live,” Willow said, patting his shoulder sympathetically as their small party moved out into the hallway.

00000000000000

 20 Rue du Four

Paris, France

 Faith exhaled a swathe of smoke, enjoying the way it curled and twisted before dispersing completely into the atmosphere. She’d never fancied herself a woman of the world, but the fact that she basically squatted from hotel to hotel, city to city, continent to continent on Council funds while she collected new slayers sort of disrupted Faith’s view of herself as this simple laid back bad ass with a blue collar education and a ‘fuck you’ mentality. Then there was those pesky random apocalypses she’d averted at the request of the Powers That Be on the hellmouths in Jordan, China, and Chechnya. That sort of shit made her look like a hero when she really, really wasn’t one. People looked at her and saw what she’d accomplished in the past two years, but that was only on the surface of a very complicated life.

 The slayers Faith brought in often looked at her through rose colored lenses. Nearly all of them worshipped her like some sort of wicked cool action hero and more than a fair share of them developed starry eyed crushes on her after she’d put them in their places and Faith was just coward enough not to admit to them that she wasn’t who they thought she was. Not really

 Faith knew that part of her redemption spiel was to own up to what she’d done and do right where she could and she had done so, but at the same time, Faith knew that if these girls were going to come into the fold and follow her as far as London or Cleveland or wherever Giles sent them; they could never see the real woman inside. The criminal who’d caused so much pain and ruined so many lives and who deserved the recrimination of Buffy and her gang. But no matter what she allowed anyone to see—Faith knew what she really was. She was bad, like Angelus had said, like she’d always been told by foster parents and school teachers, she knew it was the truth. She felt it every time the darkness inside of her bubbled to the surface and tried to take her over again.

 That won’t happen again because I won’t let it, Faith thought as she leaned over the metal railing just outside of her living room window and watched as a young student bobbed and weaved through the people already on the sidewalk.

 Despite Faith’s preference to not really have a place to hang her hat, Giles had insisted that the Council paid for a sparsely furnished apartment for her in the 6th arrondissement of Paris that acted as a safe house and halfway stop between missions for her and the slayers she “saved”. The apartment was situated above a boot shop on a narrow side street that always had a steady line of cars passing through and a latticework of pedestrian bicycles chained up in front of the storefronts where locals and foreigners alike meandered from business to business.

 It was also sort of a plus to be able to say that she had a place in Paris, France of all places.

Impressed the newbies she brought in for starters and one night stands she brought back for another. Sometimes they were the same thing. Sometimes the newbie slayers she brought in formed an instant attraction to her and far be it from Faith to get in the way of love—or more precisely lust. Giles had been less than pleased when he’d heard of the first occurrence between her and what was her name—Janie? Jocelyn? Jenny?—Faith honestly couldn’t remember. What he’d been even less pleased about was the fallout after Joan or whatever her name was realized that Faith was a one night kind of gal. Giles had tried to dissuade her from any such continued behavior from then on, but like always his tirades against her many vices fell on deaf ears.

 Faith reached for the open bottle of cognac on the end table beside the window. Brandy had never been her thing and she was sure she’d had enough of it in her lifetime to know that for sure, but apparently tastes change with age. As a baby, Faith’s mother used to force feed her spoonful’s of brandy to shut up her crying. Most moms actually feed their children proper meals and changed their diapers with some regularity whereas Faith’s had only done so when the bones of her daughter’s ribcage became too pronounced or the smell of shit reeking up from her diaper became too much to stand. It had been a miracle she had survived, really. If there was something to be said for neglect it was that there was no method to its madness. That was too much effort, but whatever—that was all behind her now.

 Cognac was different though. Cognac was way above that party store shit Faith’s mom used to keep on the bottom right shelf beneath the sink. Cognac was classy. Faith used to think it was just some expensive highfalutin shit that rich bastards liked to drink just because they could, but after deciding to at least give the alcoholic part of European culture the green light, she had to say that the overpriced amber liquid wasn’t actually half bad.

 Faith flicked her withering cigarette off the balcony and watched it fall down towards the street. In a few hours she would have to check in with Giles. In a few hours she would have her next assignment handed to her. In a few hours, her life would begin again and Faith wasn’t quite ready for that to happen yet, but what was it French people said? C’est la Vie? Or some shit.

 For right now, Faith mused. That would just have to be enough

 000000000000

 Everyone had moved to the teacher’s lounge where they were waiting on the pizza to arrive and bickering with Xander over his choices of toppings, but Buffy had decided to come back to her office and see if she could work a little bit more time in the patrol schedule for some of the younger girls. When she arrived, Buffy was surprised to find a student waiting for her. A girl she didn’t recognize. A brunette in a leather jacket, who was wearing way too much eyeliner, that she didn’t recognize.

 No one could get into the school without the proper clearance so the options for who this girl might be were or should have been limited. Buffy walked up to her confidently in her white pantsuit. Very few people could pull off a completely white outfit, but Buffy could, probably because of her inner hero.

 “May I help you?” She asked, as the girl noticed her approaching.

 “You got a smoke I could bum off ya?” The girl asked, eyeing Buffy appreciatively up and down.

 “No.”

 “Then I don’t think ya can.”

 Buffy’s eyebrows rose into her hairline. Who the hell did this girl think she was? Furthermore, who looks their principal (who just happens to be a hot chick with super powers) up and down hungrily without even trying to hide it. Buffy blushed slightly, regained her composure, and moved forward slowly, advancing until she and the new girl were face to face. Intimidation wasn’t something that had ever come naturally to Buffy, but as the Slayer it had been a skill she’d had to acquire over the years and in instances like this it definitely came in handy.

 “I’m only going to ask you once. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

 The girl looked startled for a minute, as if she didn’t actually believe this small blonde woman who couldn’t even look tall in 5” heels would be able to hurt her until now. Finally, she crossed her arms over her chest defensively and hunched over them, regarding Buffy with resentful doe eyes and a cocky attitude to match.

 “Name’s Marti.” The girl admitted, smirking slightly as Buffy’s expression changed. “Marti Lehane.”