DISCLAIMER: They're not mine. Not a paycheck comes to me from Buffyland. Go talk to Joss & Co.
TIMELINE: September, 2291
SPOILERS: Mmm... none that you'd really notice. The closest would probably be Surprise
SYNOPSIS: Angel has a dream that makes things come clear about Rain... Rain has dreams that are driving her insane, and send her into the Slayer Archives for answers.
DISTRIBUTION: If you already have some, you have permission! Everybody else? Please email me. I'll say yes.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Okay, I was worried that this whole PLOT nonsense was going to get in the way. But I sat down and wrote out this, AND the next part, all in one night... and it's not as convoluted as I thought it might get. Be warned, things are going to get heavy for a while (Oh, yeah, I know, BIG surprise from me, right? *grin*)
FEEDBACK: If you could find it in your heart... *glare*
RATING: R - our Rain's got a filthy mouth.
DEDICATION: To Danny, the root of it all.

Rain:

The night I tried to seduce Angel (almost giving him a heart attack, I think… I mean, if he hadn't already been dead…) wasn't the last time that I dreamed of the Spirit in the Meadow. In fact, I started hearing her in my sleep almost every night. She was always sweet and kind, if a little cryptic, full of sage, if vague, advice about my life in general, and about Angel, especially. She and I almost kind of got to be friends -- I felt like I knew her as well as I knew myself, and vice versa (even though I didn't really know much about her, at all…). I could tell her anything, and I often did -- after all, I didn't get to spend much time with my old friends anymore, and talking to Angel about Angel, well… But the Spirit always seemed to understand exactly where I was coming from, and always gave me her honest opinion on how to handle things.

Looks like I'd gained myself a fairy godmother! Of course, she would never really tell me any of her "many names", with the exception of one: I called her Kahtah, at her insistence.

Kahtah never gave me a straight answer when I asked her a question. She always made me "look inside" myself for the knowledge I sought. Talk about your big fat pain in the ass! Of course, I understood what she was trying to do (if not, exactly, why) -- she was trying to teach me to rely on my own instincts; depend on myself.

But so far, my instincts hadn't served me very well, where Angel was concerned. I found myself backing away from him more and more, emotionally. I mean, after two years of whaling your head against a brick wall, sooner or later you're bound to get a headache, right? Well, my skull had split wide open, at this point, and my brains were starting to dribble out on to the floor. I was learning my lesson about Angel, and learning it hard.

I decided once and for all to step back, and really let him fully set the pace. I knew he cared about me… I knew he wanted to be with me… and I knew that the issues that kept us apart were all his. So, I started acting like that was the case.

We didn't spend any less time together, really, or devolve in any way, except in the intimacy/mush department. We stopped holding hands while we patrolled, stopped stealing kisses at stoplights, stopped dancing to old ballads in my living room by candlelight…

In other words, we ixnayed on the omancernay ("nixed on the romance" in Pig Latin). We didn't discuss it, I just stopped wooing him. And slowly but surely, he stopped wooing (if what he had been doing could really be called "wooing" in the strictest sense of the term) me, too. If he noticed, he didn't show it. Big surprise, there. The rest of our relationship -- the fighting, the training, the casual friendship -- remained exactly the same. He might not have noticed, but *I* sure did -- and I missed what I thought had been developing between us. But I also know what we already had was important. Angel's presence was so central to my life, I couldn't imagine him just not being in it. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't giving up on my love for Angel, or the gut-wrenching desire to be with him -- not even close. I was just giving him the space I thought he needed to work things out.

That was when the other dreams began. While my romance with Angel in real life came to a screeching halt, the one in my subconscious exploded. The visions were intense, and vivid -- totally three-dimensional, in every sensory way. I could feel him; smell him; hear his beautiful voice and even taste the salty sweet cool of his skin in these dreams. I dreamed a million moments between us, taking place over who knows how many years, like I was imagining a whole life that I hadn't gotten to lead.

And what a life it was. Angel and I fought like the fierce warriors we were, both against the forces of darkness, and with each other. We laughed and we cried and we made love until our bones ached… We even left each other, a couple of times.

When I woke from those dreams, they stayed with me, like they had been part of my memory all along, and seeing them in my sleep returned them to their rightful place in my mind. I could reminisce about soft moments Angel and I shared… that Angel and I never shared. So, essentially, *I* was still having a full and passionate love affair with him in my subconscious, but he wasn't having one with me, outside of it.

I was ready to check myself into the loony bin, after a while. Sometimes I would just sit and stare at Angel while he was doing something perfectly ordinary, and be thinking about some argument we'd never had… or some particularly romantic moment we'd never shared.

But wait, it only gets weirder. I started practicing my lucid dreaming techniques, trying to note even more fine details about my increasingly vivid dreams. I would wake up and just immediately write down everything I could remember from the night before. It was when I started doing that when I realized how fucked up I really was. In my dreams, I was Buffy -- the other Slayer. Angel's wife. I knew this because he said my name (it was my name; it was me, in the Dream world. Sometimes I could see myself clear as day… maybe with a little different hair, or maybe a little thinner, but still absolutely me.) all the time, like a favorite prayer. "Buffy…" he said it with a particular inflection… a whisper with a question at the end.

I was freaking right out, all set to finally have a breakdown, once and for all. Was I so repressed and pathetic from all the wild shit that had been happening the past few years that I had to pretend, at least in my dreams, to be her? Did I feel so inadequate and lonely that I had to cast myself in the role of the only woman Angel had ever loved?

My buddy Kahtah wasn't very helpful in this matter. She kept saying, "I can't answer that. You must find the wisdom inside yourself." She didn't seem to want to hear that this was coming from "inside myself"… how could I find the answers in the same quicksand pit of dysfunction?

So, I started drinking bucketloads of coffee so that by the time I came down from the caffeine rush enough to fall asleep, I passed out. Dreamlessly. No weird identity switching dreams, no cryptic fairy godmothers in sunlit meadows, nothing -- just good old crazy Rain and her shiny new path to total madness.

That, Angel noticed (although I suspect he probably noticed the romance stuff, too.). And he didn't waste any time calling me on it. He would casually mention how slow my reaction time was getting… how I looked worn out. He always asked if I was okay, and offered to take patrol alone so I could have a night off. Eventually, he started encouraging me to see a nutritionist… or a doctor.

I laughed at that last one. The only doctor I really needed was a shrink.

"It's no big," I told him, "I swear. It's just… I haven't been sleeping well."

His brown eyes narrowed a little, which made me wonder -- was I the only one having freaky dreams?

I didn't ask him, and he didn't say. He just continued to tell me to take better care of myself.

Yeah, right. I was totally coming unraveled, and I didn't think that there was anything anybody could do about it. So I just dealt. Sort of.

One night, I sat in Roger Lowenthal's office in the library, long after he had gone home, reading about dream theories and alternately staring into space. My pen died (not that I had done anything really constructive but doodle on the pad beside me anyway...), so I got up and went around to the other side of his desk, shuffling through the big side drawers for another one.

Man, for a such a sanctimonious prig, Roger Lowenthal sure was a pack rat -- he had one of everything in those drawers: paperclips, pens, pencils, postcards, rubber-bands, old stamps, packs of gum, old Rolaids wrappers… and keys. TONS of keys on one of those old-fashioned janitor-style keyrings. Hundreds and hundreds of keys that probably opened every door in this old building -- and possibly every room in every other public library from here to Chicago.

But one bunch stood out form the rest… mostly because they were brand new padlock keys, tagged with little orange strips of paper marked "WC ARCHIVES".

"Watchers' Council Archives." Those dark, dank, dusty old closets in the lowest sub-basement, where I was expressly forbidden to go. The histories and artifacts of every Slayer that had lived in the US for some five centuries were locked away down there…things so valuable, Roger Lowenthal said he would never so much as let me take a breath inside those chambers. Any time we needed something historical form the archives, Roger Lowenthal would crawl down there all by his little self to haul up whatever it was. In fact, he'd usually have already procured the book or whatever before I even showed up. I had never once set foot in the Slayer Archives.

I stared at that set of keys for a very long time, enraptured, as though I was one of Arthur's Knights, and I'd just stumbled on the Holy Grail while out for my morning constitutional. All that history… all those fallen Slayers, my sisters… I could find out more than I ever wanted to know about my Calling.

I could find out more than I ever wanted to know about Buffy Summers…

I snatched the ten pound ring of keys and made a crazed beeline to the service stairs. It was roughly seven hours until dawn, when Roger Lowenthal always came back on duty after his requisite seven-hours-of-rest-except-in-emergencies.

I had an awful lot of reading to do, before then.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Angel:

It hurt to see Rain fading away the way she was. It had never been my intention to cause her so much pain because of my reluctance and continued uncertainty about the way our relationship should go. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. Part of why I was so hesitant was because I didn't want to hurt her. The night when she had tried to draw me out, bring me closer to her -- closer, apparently, than I was ready to be -- I reacted poorly, to say the least. Rain let it go, of course… she is, if nothing else, the Queen of Smiling at Really Unpleasant Things. In the few years (?) we had known each other, she had never been anything less than completely supportive and understanding of all my little faults.

I tried to heal some of the damage I had caused… I tried to reassure her that I wanted her… that I valued her… that I needed her in my life. But I obviously hadn't done enough. I could see in her eyes that I had wounded her deeply. She backed away from me perceptibly, and for the first time, I felt her closing herself off from me, instead of vice versa. She was casual and light about it, covering her pain with jokes and snide remarks, and getting out her frustrations by thoroughly kicking my ass every chance she got. But I knew what was going on with her. I could feel it in my bones.

I had now done exactly what I swore from the first moment I met her I would never do: I had cut her soul wide open and left it to bleed.

At first, I tried to pursue her myself… tried to bring her back out of the shell I could feel her crawling into. But she would have none of it. She would physically move away from me, and quickly change the subject when I tried to demonstrate my affections.

It had been hard when she clearly shared her feelings for me. Having her suddenly cease to do so was harder. She was slipping away from me, and it hurt like Hell.

But in time, I began to think maybe this distance was exactly what we needed. So Rain could concentrate on her training, and I could concentrate on finding out just who the Hell I was supposed to be in the Big Slayer Picture -- and subsequently, in Rain's life.

But I got increasingly worried about her well-being. Despite her trademark rapier wit, and her perfect cheerleader grin, it was hard to miss that she was losing weight… getting pale, weak, and very obviously tired. Rain suddenly looked ill most of the time… with a sickness that went far beyond the mild confusion and frustration that had marked so much of our relationship.

I suddenly felt like I was not only hurting her with my distance -- I was killing her. Watching her beautiful spirit fading before my eyes was a crushing pain in my soul.

And while all of this was going on between the two of us personally, I was also busy translating the D'Archit. The volume was predictably vague and cryptic once I managed to break through the language difficulties, but there were some facts that were immediately shown to be true.

Lowenthal was right about Rain not being just any Slayer. Nor had Buffy been. And the Whistler was also right about Buffy being reborn in Rain. But the D'Archit took those not-so-simple facts and compounded them into something straight out of old Pagan legend.

Kahtah was more than just a title -- more than just the name of a particular soul or bloodline of Slayers -- it was the name of an entire being in its own right. Literally, "The Three That Are One". Three human lifetimes of strength, experience, and wisdom, prophesied to ultimately combine into the warrior that would save the world. The book called Kahtah "The Sword of Light" -- the combined essence of every Slayer that had ever lived, manifested in an immortal soul that was first born in Buffy, and now was born a second time in Rain. A third in the line was supposed to rise in the Final Days, a woman who would be both of them, and yet again, someone completely new. Her power was said to be that which finally closed the gates of Hell forever.

Kahtah was one soul with many essences, reborn into a new vessel each time the last died. She was a Slayer within a Slayer. A goddess, come to earth in a series of mortal bodies.

And my role… Roger Lowenthal had told me I was part of these prophecies too - the Bo'Ten, Guardian of Kahtah. It was my sacred duty to defend each mortal vessel that housed the eternal spirit. My job to die in her name, if need be. The text was clear -- I would remain immortal until the last work of the Third was done… until Hell was defeated, once and for all.

The vows I had taken to bind myself to Buffy's soul had done far more than make me her husband -- they had tied me to the ultimate fate of the world. We were bound by the Anam Cara -- the Soul Vow -- so long as the Kahtah soul remained on this plane with mine, it was my duty to stand as her champion in all things. To love her and tend to her until her work was done.

For hundreds of years, my true purpose was hidden from me. I had learned, before Buffy and I were even reunited, that I would eventually earn my redemption and become human again. We had always hoped it would be while she lived, but…

And now, for the first time, I knew exactly what that meant, and how it was supposed to happen. To live for Buffy's soul -- to love her in every possible way, in every one of her incarnations, until darkness was banished from this dimension forever -- was my ultimate Destiny.

I was my duty to love Rain.

As that single fact came clear, it clashed painfully with my very human doubts. I believed one thing to be true above all else from my life as a human being -- wedding vows to a woman meant loyalty, to that one woman, until the day I ceased to exist. Some part of me still understood and recognized Rain as another woman, and refused to pledge love and fealty to that other in the same manner as I had the first. Rain was her own person -- didn't she have the right to her own life's love? Didn't I owe Buffy at least eternity?

As always, there were facts, and then there was how I felt. It didn't seem to matter to the Powers That Be that I felt this mortal confusion and Catholic guilt over my immortal love. If I was to fulfill my Destiny, I would, as Buffy would have said, just have to deal.

Ironically, in the end, it was Buffy herself that gave me the answer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rain:

When I thought of archives, I thought of little closet-like rooms with neat shelves full of nicely ordered file boxes. I most decidedly did not think of what I found.

The sub-basement of the public library was an entire building in itself. Ten cavernous rooms with twelve foot ceilings, each wall to wall, and floor to roof with shelves and cabinets. Each one was piled high and packed full with boxes and books, bags and trunks… hundreds of receptacles for hundreds of year worth of history. And none of it seemed to have any order I could figure out at all.

No wonder Roger Lowenthal didn't want me in there.

That first night, I wandered aimlessly from room to room, rifling through cabinets of weapons and boxes full of papers and photographs…

Seven hours wasn't going to give me enough time to find what I needed. But at least I could take the time to figure out where to find stuff, and work from there. Sooner or later, I would find what I was really looking for.

By dawn, I was thoroughly exhausted, almost asleep on my feet. Creepy dreams or no, I was going to have to get some sleep. I tried to put everything back exactly the way I had originally found it, including Roger Lowenthal's precious key collection, then dragged my pathetic ass toward home. Sometimes it really sucks to have a job that doesn't actually pay any money -- I didn't even have the cash for a cab.

What I had found so far (I'd explored seven out of the ten rooms) wasn't even exciting enough to write home to mom about. Not that I really wrote to my mom… It was a lot of crap -- books about demons, some weapons manuals, dry histories of Slaying and various other glorified accounts of the battle against evil. This stuff didn't even seem worth locking up, if you asked me. (I did have to laugh at the little sign, "Don't speak Latin in front of the books" that hung on one shelf, though…)

There were, however, some interesting containers filled with Slayers' personal effects: clothes and mementos and stuff, but nothing really personal. No letters, no journals. I hadn't found hide nor hair of the famed Watcher Diaries, and I hadn't seen even a hint of anything with Buffy's name on it.

Damn it. I was bound and determined to find out just what the Hell it was that tied me to this Slayer -- and by consequence, to Angel. My choices seemed to be limited: further research, or rubber room. And I was gonna avoid the latter if I possibly could.

On the long walk home, I found myself wandering past the neighborhood where I knew he lived. Can you believe I'd never been to his home? He'd never invited me, and frankly, I'd never thought about asking. But I'm a pretty smart woman -- I knew exactly where it was. I just never had the nerve to stop by. I mean, really, who knows what a vampire with a soul does during the day?

I stopped at the corner of his block and looked down, as if I expected to see him watching me. Duh… it was just past dawn. Angel was probably just settling in to bed.

I had an almost irresistible urge to go and talk to him. To really lay all of the things that were eating me up inside out on the line -- about the dreams, the mystery spirit woman, my feelings for him, all of it. To unburden myself to the only person in the world who might possibly understand, and who cared, sounded like a sweeter possibility to me than I had ever dreamed of, before. It felt like comfort and respite and peace lay waiting for me just up the block.

I stood there for a long time, imagining… thinking… remembering… about a morning just like this one, when I had wakened from horrible nightmares about his death. I saw him open his front door, shirtless, and look down at me with unbearable tenderness and desire, and not a little bit of surprise. In a moment, all my fear was washed away by want as I looked at him, and when I told him about the nightmare… about my terror of losing him… he reassured me that we could handle it. He took me in his arms and kissed me until my knees were weak, and I never, never wanted to let him go…

The vision faded, and I trembled violently. Now it was happening when I was wide awake, too. I did an about face and practically ran the rest of the way home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Angel:

There's a place I used to go when I was a boy… one of those fairytale places with a glade and a bubbling brook, where the sun shone warm and bright all day long. Like a little Eden, just two miles from my less than idyllic home. I used to spend a lot of time there, swimming or thinking when I was young, and… other things, as I got older.

I go there in my dreams, still. For many years, I brought Buffy there with me. We would swim and talk and make love in the plush carpet of sweetgrass under the shade of a hundred blossoming cherry trees. It became her place, as much as mine.

Since I met Rain, Buffy's come less often to the dream glade. I'm not certain why… whether it was my feelings for Rain, or my confusion about those feelings (Do I love Rain because she is Rain, or because she is Buffy?), I don't know. But more often than not, I was alone in the glade, now.

A few weeks after Rain's downward spiral had begun, I went and sat in the magic glade in my dreams, to calm my fears and gather my thoughts.

"I miss coming here," Buffy's voice said from behind me.

I turned to look at her, shading my eyes from the bright afternoon sun that surrounded her with a golden glow. The figure could have been either Buffy or Rain, at first glance. But my soul knew which this truly was. I had not yet seen Rain in the glade.

"You should come more often," I told her. I missed her company, too, especially those times we would sit in companionable silence until the sun set and the frogs began to chirp like a little orchestra of joy…

She sat down beside me, all dreamlike in a pale chiffon sundress and tucked her knees up against her chest, cradled in her arms. Buffy rest her pretty chin on her knees and stared sadly out at the water.

"You never invite me anymore," she said, "And I can't enter unless I'm welcome. Or needed."

Not moving toward her, and barely able to look at her at all, I said, "You're always welcome here, Buffy. Always. You should know that."

"Seeing me makes you sad," she observed, "It never did before."

I sighed. "I miss you more, now."

"Because Rain reminds you of me."

I nodded.

"Okay… I can understand that, I guess."

We sat in silence that wasn't quite awkward, but wasn't entirely pleasant, either, and watched the dragonflies dance ripples across the smooth surface of the pond.

"After we first met, how many years did it take us to really get together?" she asked after a while.

"Nine years," I replied, "Six months, twenty-four days, thirteen hours, thirty seven minutes and twelve seconds."

Buffy gave me a funny look, but smiled. "Figures you would know that. I bet if I asked you how long we were married…"

"Eighty-one years, five months…"

She laughed, and held her little hand up. "Okay, okay, I got it. You've got a pretty good handle on the time thing. But, Angel… what about all those years we didn't get to spend together? Almost ten years…"

"Yeah," was my only reply. I'd spent entire months thinking about that right after Buffy died. I calculated all of the things we could have done and seen and said in all those millions of seconds we had kept ourselves separated.

"Do you regret them? The years we weren't together, I mean…" she asked softly.

I looked into her eyes. Buffy's were a beautiful misty hazel… sometimes green, and sometimes deep russet, where Rain's were almost always a perfect emerald. But they held an identical fire, and it was that which beckoned me to both.

"I don't know that I regret them," I told her honestly, "They were important growing years, for both of us. But I don't know if I would sacrifice that time with you again, if I had the chance to choose."

Buffy nodded sagely and stretched out on her back in the grass, sucking on a dandelion root, looking up at the perfect blue sky.

"Then I've got to wonder, why do you keep running away?" she asked, almost off-handedly, as if she wasn't speaking directly to me at all.

I sat where I was, looking down at her. "What do you mean?" I asked, afraid I might already know where she was going with this.

"Rain. Why do you keep pushing her away?"

The question cut me like a stake through the heart.

"I don't… I don't know," I mumbled, looking away, "I just… can't."

She chuckled.

"What's so funny?" I asked, both buoyed by the tinkle of her laughter, and hurt that she would laugh at my discomfort.

"You. Five hundred years, and you haven't changed a bit. You still just can't let yourself be happy. You can't just let love come to you. You have to make everything so complicated and melodramatic…"

I stared down at her, saying nothing. What could I say? She was right.

Buffy leaned up on one perfect elbow and considered me carefully. "You know, Angel, you might live forever, but she won't. So I have to wonder, what are you waiting for? Why won't you be with her?"

I looked at her for a moment, golden and shining in the afternoon light, and felt my heart split wide open once more for missing her.

"I feel guilty."

She sat the rest of the way up, and tucked her little finger under my chin, raising my eyes to hers.

"Guilty? Why, Angel?"

Why? How could she ask me that?

"Because… I love her," I replied in a whisper, still unable to meet her gaze.

She moved her head to chase my line of sight, and when she caught it, cocked a wry eyebrow at me. "Oh, that. Wow, yeah, no wonder you feel guilty. You horrible, horrible creature. You love someone. Definitely your worst crime yet."

I was instantly furious at her sarcastic mocking.

"She's not you, Buffy! I took vows to be faithful to you until the end of time! Loving someone else is an INSULT to that!" I cried.

Buffy's eyes welled up with tears, and she scooted closer, so we were face to face, and she looked deep into my eyes with all the pain and longing, all the love, I felt in my heart for her in that moment.

"I always thought you were so wise…" she said gently, "Haven't you gotten it yet?"

I felt my own tears begin to spill, warm and salty, on my cheeks. In my dreams, I am always alive… "Gotten what?"

"Angel…" she sighed, "Beautiful Angel… so good… so giving… so unselfish. Don't you know? Rain is me. I am her. We're the same, body, heart and soul. You took vows to love me, to bind our essences, to death and beyond, forever. Don't you see? This body… the life it lived with you, is gone. But all those moments we shared? They live on, in here," she lay her hand on her heart, "The essence of everything that we are is reborn, in her. It's time again, my love… time for us to be together, like we were meant to be. Please… don't waste that time pretending the vessel stands in the way…"

I looked at her in wonder, hearing her words wash over me like a healing balm, and a deep, resounding feeling of resolution began to flow in my veins.

"You love her for who she is, too," Buffy went on, "You know that this is right. You've felt it since the first moment you saw her. Don't rob her of her one chance to love you… don't rob me of another lifetime by your side."

"It's so hard, Buffy! So hard…" I said, barely able to make sounds through my tears. She wrapped her arms around me and held my head to her breast while I wept, swearing my undying love for her again and again, "I love you so much!"

"Then don't waste this, Angel… My Sweet Love… please don't waste all this time, when you can be with me now…"

I woke alone in my bed, my pillows soaked through with tears. I could almost smell her warm, sweet scent lingering in the air as I watched the shadows of late afternoon drifting over the staircase to the garden patio, filled with a new resolution -- with a certainty like none I'd ever had before -- in my heart.

I wiped my eyes, and reached over to grab the phone. I wasn't wasting any more time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rain:

Perfect. I went to meet with Roger Lowenthal the following evening, and he told me he had a meeting to attend, and then he would be out of town for the weekend on personal business. He said he would leave me to my own devices while he was gone. Whether he liked Angel or not, he said, he trusted the vampire to keep an eye on me, at least.

I'd managed to get some sleep, that day, and I was feeling decidedly sharper than I had in weeks. I didn't remember a single dream or ghostly visit. Maybe just knowing that I was so close to the answers I needed was enough to calm my nerves for a while.

And now my Watcher was practically handing me my opportunity on a silver platter.

"Okay," I told him offhandedly, "Maybe I'll catch up on some reading."

"Fine, fine," he said, clearly distracted, "And do address that nest on Third Street while I'm gone, won't you? Take Angel along."

I frowned a little at the mention of his name, but agreed anyway.

Once Roger left, I waited a full hour and a half before taking the keys and heading back into the pits of the library again. I wanted to give him enough time to come back for all of the things I know he'd think he'd forgotten. I was going straight for the last door, tonight -- no more screwing around. I knew what I was looking for, and I knew that was where I was going to find it.

This door seemed more carefully built than the others, and when I opened it and snapped on the light, I found the room neatly organized and clean -- meticulously well-kept, as opposed to the dusty chaos of the rest of the collection I'd seen.

I approached the shelves slowly, almost afraid. The first cabinet by the door contained a number of beautiful custom-made 20th century weapons -- a couple of small crossbows, a few knives, and a spectacular broadsword. I took the long blade out and held it, surprised to find that the heft was perfect, as if it were my sword. I looked carefully at the engravings on the blade, recognizing some Latin words for pride, honor, victory, duty, and love… and one phrase in English that dominated the entire length of the blade:

By Blood, Heart and Soul Are We Bound.

I blinked at it. Something about the breathtaking weapon was so familiar… the fine engravings, the ornate grip, the feeling of its weight in my hands… I gave it a tentative swing, almost cleaving the cabinet in half. Breathing heavily, nervous now, I put the sword back and moved on to the first of the sealed bookshelves.

Hundreds of leather-bound volumes lined the shelves, each marked with two names -- ostensibly that of the Watcher and Slayer whose adventures were contained within -- and a set of dates. The Slayer's reign, maybe? They were too incredibly short to be lifetimes. Vowing to come right back to the Watcher Diaries, I moved on to the next shelves. They were covered with airtight containers… almost fifty of them that I could see, arranged in neat rows, each bearing a clean, typed label.

This entire section… all the containers from the point where I stood to the far wall, said the same thing on the tag:

Buffy Anne Summers
1996 - 2090

I pulled the first one down and thanked the Powers That Be for whatever it was that had drawn Roger Lowenthal out of town for the weekend.

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