Dawn was alone in her room, a rare privilege when you share the house with forty-odd other people. She had ran to the other bedroom when the shotgun blast had torn several holes in the wall, shredding one of her posters, but left when she realised it was another First-attack. She was surprised it had gotten to Wesley so quickly…he seemed to be the type to stare down evil until his dying breath – at least the new Wes seemed that way. He’d changed a lot in four years.
She turned over in her bed, unable to nod off, remaining in a doze. Seeing Angel again was a bit strange, she’d spoken to him the other week but it was too short a conversation to make sense of. She wondered who else the First would try to get under the skin of. It had already tried with most of the Potentials, Buffy, Faith, Wesley…all the really important people. There had been a brief time when she thought she’d been a part of that, but it turned out that a spell Willow had used to locate Potentials didn’t indicate that she was one; it had just passed through her. But after the Bringers didn’t come for her, she’d figured out that she was still just Dawn…
She sighed in her half sleep and turned again.
“ Can’t sleep, honey?”
She jumped out of the bed by reflex, on edge from the events of the night. Her mother sat on the bed, smiling at her. “You seem jumpy.”
“ I am.”
“ Look…the last time we started to talk, I couldn’t say much to begin with and then that thing attacked me. I want to thank you for saving me then. But I don’t have much time here. I still mean what I said, Buffy won’t choose you. She’s against you, even as I’m talking to you. Look at what happened the other night, she sent you away from her. She doesn’t want the burden of you near her.”
Dawn felt tears fill her eyes. “Mom…”
Joyce stood up from the bed. “Dawnie, I love you both as much as one another, even though you weren’t mine to begin with. But the time will have to come when you will have to choose – between yourself and Buffy. You’re a smart girl, you can think of a way to settle things without resorting to any kind of bloodshed, but do you think Buffy will hesitate when the time comes? She’s the Slayer; she’s chosen to act, without thinking, for the greater good. And if the choice comes and she has to choose between you and the whole world…” She broke off, voice filling with tears. “I don’t want to see you hurt, Dawn. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. So do the smart thing and stop thinking of Buffy as your sister and see her for what she really is…someone those monks changed to become your sister when they created you. Because…Dawnie…she’s started to think that way and if you don’t then…” She started to fade away. “Dawn, my time’s up. Believe what I’ve said. I’ve become so much more than I was, I can see things…things that haven’t happened yet. Act now before it’s too late, I beg you…”
And then she was gone.
Dawn collapsed onto the bed, sobbing her heart out.
“ Mom…”

Faith sat with Willow and Fred on the couch, with a few other Potentials asleep on the floor who had just drifted off to sleep.
“ I’ve never seen him so…” said Faith, searching for the right word.
“ I know. It takes a lot for Wesley to snap, especially after what’s happened over the past few years,” said Fred. “He’s…hardened, somehow.”
“ It’s intense…” Willow said, away with her thoughts. “You think you’ll be okay, that whatever it says it won’t get to you…”
She looked up at Fred. “But it knows. It knows where to put the pressure and then it squeezes.”
Faith nodded silently and Fred was glad she probably wouldn’t be targeted by the First.
“ Who was it?” asked Fred. “I mean, if you don’t wanna talk about it that’s okay, but…”
There was silence for a few moments.
“ It was a dead girl from the high school,” said Willow in a quiet tone. “She pretended to be passing along messages from Tara, my girlfriend who…who died. She said I shouldn’t do any spells or I’d kill everyone I love. Not a single spell. And then she tried to make me kill myself so I’d be with Tara.”
Fred gasped. “That’s awful...”
Willow nodded, emotionally exhausted upon remembering the event.
Faith spoke then. “It came to me as Mayor Wilkins.” Willow looked up, shocked. Faith hadn’t even mentioned it before. “He tried to convince me that I’d always be the same…that I’d always be a killer no matter what I try to do to redeem myself.”
Willow reached forward suddenly and grabbed Faith’s hand. “You aren’t. I’ll be damned before that thing tries to tell you you’re a killer. You’ve changed, Faith. You’re so much more than you were. Don’t ever think otherwise or it’ll have won, and I think I know you well enough to know that you’d die before you even thought about letting it win.”
Fred hadn’t seen this side of Willow before. There was an icy determination in her eyes and her jaw was set, staring intently at Faith. Faith looked at Willow for a moment, and then put her hand on Willow’s, smiling gently.
Willow returned the smile and they sat there for a few moments, true friends for the first time.

Giles sat staring into space; the file he’d been given by Angel lay by his side on a small table after he’d reviewed its contents. After a few moments he took in a breath.
“ Do you want to talk?”
Wesley took a step into the room. “If you’re not busy.”
Giles turned to face the younger man and smiled. “Of course not.”
Wesley came into the room and stood awkwardly for a moment. “Find anything we’d missed?” he asked, gesturing towards the file.
“ A little, although I’m afraid it won’t be much use. It’s mostly information we’d figured out by trial and error, or from other sources.”
“ Oh.” Wesley sat down on the side of the bed.
“ Has it…spoken to you?”
“ No,” said Giles. Then he snorted in amusement. “Although they thought that I was the First for a brief time, just after I got back from England.”
Wesley raised his eyebrows. “They thought you were dead?”
Giles nodded. Wesley smirked. “You don’t look that bad…”
Giles smiled and nodded. “Very good.”
Wesley let the smile drop slowly from his face. “I didn’t expect it to be so…”
“… Vivid?” Wesley nodded.
“ I guess you really can’t know what it’s like until you experience it.” He looked over at Giles. “Not to take anything away from you, of course.”
“ Of course.”
The two men sat in silence for a long moment.
“ I imagine it’s not what the First said to you, it was how you reacted to it that’s unnerving you?” ventured Giles.
Wesley nodded slowly. “I thought I’d be the last one to succumb, to be honest. I don’t know…I feel like sometimes that…”
“… You’re the one holding things together?” Giles finished again. Wesley looked over at him.
“ But this proves that I’m still only human.”
“ Isn’t that a good thing?” Wesley stared at Giles for a moment, and then he continued. “It proves that you’re only human…despite all that you’ve been through. I’d like to think that that’s a good thing, to show that you’ve survived, intact, that if nothing else then you’re still capable of, like you said, succumbing to your emotions under duress.”
Wesley thought about this for a moment. “I suppose so…” he said.
Giles leaned over and put a hand on Wesley’s shoulder. “We’ve all had moments of pressure, and it’s how we deal with them that shows us what type of person you are. In your case…it shows that you’re still a person, because you’re still capable of losing control. From what you’re saying, it seems that you think that you’d never lose your cool, and if that were true…then you wouldn’t have any sort of feelings. And then what type of a person would you be?”
Wesley stared in thought, then eventually blinked and looked at Giles.
“ Thanks. I think I needed that.”
“ I think so too. Now go and get some sleep, we’ve got a busy couple of days ahead of us.”
Wesley got up and walked to the door, then looked back.
“ You’re welcome,” said Giles, just as Wesley drew in breath. He smiled and walked away.

Gunn sat with Andrew in the kitchen. Gunn had two fingers placed on the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed.
“… I mean I didn’t know you’d even heard of Star Wars, you don’t look like the type of guy, all muscle and macho -”
“ - Look,” said Gunn. “All I wanted was a drink, and I get attacked and pinned in place by you. I don’t got anything against you but you’re going a bit too heavy on me, okay?”
Andrew sat with hunched shoulders and his hands between his knees. “Oh. Okay.”
Angel wandered in, and gave Andrew a funny look. “Who’s he?” he asked, looking at Gunn.
“ He’s Andrew,” was the reply. Andrew waved at Angel.
“ Are you Angel? I heard about you, seeking redemption for your past actions. I think we have a lot in common. I used to be evil too; we did some pretty terrible stuff back in the day…” He sighed nostalgically. “But that’s all behind me now. Now I fight for Buffy and the powers aligned with all that’s good and pure and with every good deed I do I bring myself that much closer to redemption. Once every so often, though, I find myself strangely drawn to commit heinous acts, unspeakable in normal tongue – well, I used to be, but then Buffy made me confront some things about my past and I guess you could say I had an epiphany, I just switched really quickly from evil to good. They even stopped tying me to chairs and taping oven mitts to my hands, and now I have free reign of the house. I was making a documentary about the Slayer and the battle against the First but then my epiphany happened after Buffy made me see a few things and now I just sort of left it. It occurred to me that there are more important things in the world than making documentaries with an old video camera. Don’t you think so?”
Angel was staring blankly at Andrew. Gunn had returned to his previous two-fingers-on-the-bridge-of-his-nose posture.
“ Yeah, I guess so.”
“ Me too. Do you like Star Wars Angel?”

Buffy wandered down to the basement where Spike was waiting for her.
“ What was all that commotion about before?”
“ The First came to Wes, he decided to take it out on the wall.”
“ Can’t blame the man, seein’ whatever the First came to him as, took it right out of me.”
“ With a shotgun.”
Spike’s eyes widened in appreciation. “That’s some top notch venting Percy’s got a hold of there.”
“ Don’t call him that,” said Buffy, walking towards him.
“ Sorry.”
Buffy smiled. Even though he’d nearly gone insane, Spike was still pretty much exactly the same through all of the things that had happened to them over the past few months.
“ Heard Angel talkin’ before – now before you go jumpin’ to conclusions I only heard him talkin’ after you’d gone – and I think the First’s been payin’ more than Wesley a visit on the sly.”
“ It spoke to Angel?”
“ Well, I heard him talkin’ to someone called Connor, and if I’m not mistaken, he was callin’ Angel ‘Dad’.”
“ That’s impossible,” said Buffy, shaking her head.
“ Well, that’s what he was sayin’, and correct me if I’m wrong there’s no Connor in this here house.”
Buffy nodded. “I guess so. Well, I’ll talk to him tomorrow, but now…I’m wiped. I’m gonna crash for the night.” She turned to walk away.
“ Well…” said Spike. “You could always…” Buffy turned back around with a half-smile on her face.
“ I was hoping you’d say that. Faith’s still got my room.”
Later, Spike was asleep, arm around Buffy while she lay awake on her side, stroking his hand. He turned in his sleep, and Buffy walked to the window, gazing up at the night sky.
“ It’s beautiful, ain’t it?” Caleb’s voice said.
Buffy didn’t turn around. “You’re not him.”
He came and stood next to her. “No. Terrible shame. This man was my right arm.”
They turned to face each other. “Don’t need an arm, though. Got an army.”
“ You know,” said Buffy. “You should really think about your name. Doesn’t strike as much fear into my heart as I’d first expect. Maybe…’The Taunter’ -?”
The First morphed into the shape of Buffy herself. “Silly girl. You don’t have any idea that could begin to comprehend how far over your head you are. Do you think the Turok-Han are tough? They’re just the grunts. Remember the demon which occasionally tries to break through the Hellmouth…? Now that’s getting more like it, and that isn’t even one of the big boys.”
“ So open the Hellmouth already. Let the Elder Demons spill out onto the Earth.” Buffy stopped. “Oh wait, I forgot. You can’t. You need some monkey boys to do the job for you.”
The First smiled. “Just you wait and see, Slayer. You’re going to die, in worse pain than you can imagine and all alone, because that’s all you’ll ever be – alone. How does it go again?” It rolled its eyes and reeled off, parrot-fashion, “Into every generation a Slayer is born. She alone will -” It stopped and nodded. “See? Didn’t take long to get to the alone part of the job description now, did it?”
There was a pause between the two women. “Well?” asked the First. “Where’s your snippy comeback?”
Buffy paused, thinking. “There isn’t one. You’re right.”
“ Not your best,” sneered the First.
“ I’m drowning in footwear!” cried Spike from the cot, sitting up. When Buffy looked back, the First had vanished.
He rubbed his eyes. “Weird dream.” He looked up and saw the strange expression on Buffy’s face. “What’s wrong?”
Buffy looked at Spike. “Nothing. I’ve just thought of something, something which has never really occurred to me before. We’re going to win,” she said with utter conviction.
“ Right on,” grinned Spike.

Angel woke up in a tangle of arms, legs and torsos on the kitchen floor. They had raided the vehicle they’d brought from L.A., and while the soldiers slept there, they’d taken all the blankets from the supplies and made a big nest out of the floor. Except obviously they’d all rolled over in their sleep.
He tried to extract his arm from the mass when he saw Fred had made a pillow out of Wesley’s chest, and that the Englishman was smiling in his sleep. Gunn was curled up in a ball on Angel’s other side and Andrew – who’d decided to join them for the night – had somehow ended up draped across Angel’s legs.
Suddenly he felt a stabbing pain in his other arm and looked across to see sunlight bathing the floor through the window. He let out a yelp of pain but couldn’t move his arm – Lorne must be lying on it – and tried to shake it loose.
Everyone woke up at the same time, Gunn uncurling and smacking his head on Lorne’s shoe and Fred rolling over, pinning Angel even more. This made Angel struggle more frantically to escape and the others more anxious as to what was going on. Andrew woke up and started yelling because of the writhing shins beneath his body and reflexively started to slap Angel’s feet to try and subdue them. Angel joined in the yelling because his arm was now starting to smoke and Wesley sat up too quickly, banging his head on the stool which he’d been lying under.
Angel managed to pull his arm from underneath Fred and shoved Lorne off his other arm, making the demon shout out in protest. He pulled his arm out of the light and sighed in relief, just as Buffy, Spike and Faith burst in through separate entrances to the kitchen with various sharp objects.
“ What’s going on?” shouted Faith.
“ Uhm…” said Angel, embarrassed. “We kind of got a bit tangled up and my arm sort of…” He held up his arm which was still smouldering slightly from the daylight.
Spike chuckled. “I probably should’ve warned you about that window…”
“ Yeah, well, it might have helped,” said Angel sarcastically.
Buffy then looked down at Angel’s feet where Andrew lay draped, looking slightly dazed.
“ Something going on which we should be aware of?” she asked suggestively. Angel looked open mouthed at Andrew and then tried to say something which would explain it. “I…He…”
Faith smiled. “Kinky. Didn’t know you were a feet guy, Andy.” She turned around and started speaking, most likely to the Potentials who were no doubt gathering outside the kitchen to either find out what was going on or to get some breakfast. “Give them a couple of minutes to clear up, huh?”
Andrew looked up at Angel. “Feet?”
Angel glanced at Andrew, then reached down and pushed him off. “Get off of me…”
Buffy laughed under her breath and walked out of the kitchen. Spike smirked and followed her.
Wesley rubbed his head. “Ow.”
Gunn glanced over at Wesley, hand in a similar position. “Right there with you.”
Xander ran in with an axe. “What’d I miss?”

******
It’s late, I’m stopping. Thanks to everyone who’s reviewed, it’s just so I know what I’m typing is getting read. Oh, and david5000_d, the reason Buffy didn’t mention Andrew is because she doesn’t consider him important enough to be helping – she makes that very clear in a couple of S7 eps, lol. As you can see, he’s still alive, well and annoying the Fang Gang as well as the Scoobies in this AU of mine. Oh, and if anyone’s confused about why he’s talking to Gunn about Star Wars a quote of his during Angel S4 has stuck in my mind since reading it; something about having Darth Vampire in the basement of the hotel (he’s talking about Angelus). Hopefully I’m getting it right, again if you see something that looks wrong feel free to email me and ill either explain or fix it. Damn, I said I wasn’t going to write a summary of each chapter…oh well. I’ll update soon! Review please!