Heh. Faith SO needs a vacation! You cover a large swathe of terriotory in thise few words, Ms. Grabien!

Heh. Well, it's like I said elsewhere: I can see her out under the moon, you know? Eating raccoon stew with whole peppers in it and drinking barrel wine, chilling with the back road boys, and the moss hanging down, and something rustling in the bushes...

Another on the "journeys" challenge theme.

Trip no further, pretty sweeting... (warning: unapologetic B/A schmoop)

The message had been simple, short, to the point: Tralee, western Ireland, Saturday, churchyard. Come.

She had gone, of course; from London to Ireland is no great time or effort. She had three days. She took the train to Liverpool, with Giles showing her the old Cavern Club - something about the Beatles, he said. She left him there, took the ferry, got another train, bucketing through rain like soft kisses and hills almost too green.

Saturday, sunset. She heard the clipclop of horse's hooves, turned, and there he was, smiling, leather coat billowing, home. Journeys end in lovers meeting.

Part Twenty-Two: Long journey home

Dawn felt the familiar pull of the world spinning around here, her stomach sinking churning as the planet spun around her in flashes. One moment, she was in her apartment in Italy, and now … Giles, Willow … they stood beside the demon Doc, near-radiating evil. She tried not to look at them, instead daring to look at the world spinning around her. There was a scene playing out, as though the sky were a movie. Angel was standing in an alley, Spike beside him. Other people she didn’t know. There is an army closing in on them, a dragon circling above. At Angel’s command the four launch into battle against the seemingly endless armada before them.

Dawn tried to call out to Spike, but she knows he can’t hear her. The world stops spinning, and suddenly, they’re somewhere else—a city made of stone, stretching for as far as the eye can see. Enough light tinges the sky to see by, but no more.

“What was that,” asks Dawn, her voice barely a whisper. “Where are we?”

“That?” said Doc. “That was pretty nifty, wasn’t it? Heroes locked in eternal battle. It’s all very Valhalla. But I guess you’re too young for Wagner. Pity.”

“And where is this?” she asked, rage starting to steady her voice.

“Oh,” said Doc. “This is the Ragnarok. This is where gods come to die.”

“Dawn,” said a weak voice. Dawn turned her head to look, and saw Willow’s old boyfriend, Oz, chained to a pole. Beside him was Amy Madison, whom she recognized from Sunnydale. She didn’t know who the other woman was, or the boy chained to the stone slab. Then she realized there was a second set of shackles attched to the slab, and she began to struggle.

Giles—Ripper, whatever his name was—held her in place, preventing her from running.

“Hold still,” he said, “this is gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Xander and Faith approached, seemingly from nowhere.

“The invisible chick took off in the confusion,” said Xander, not even looking at her. “Her trail’s long dead.”

Dawn couldn’t believe how young Xander looked. It was like when they first met. And Faith looked …

“What did you do them?” asked Dawn, now livid with rage. “What did you do. Oz was watching intently. He clearly wanted to know the answer to that question, himself.

“Funny story, that” said Doc. “You see, when your sister defeated the Beast, I was pretty much at loose ends. Not much call for an aging acolyte, after all. The gods always want young converts these days. And frankly, I was rather attached to Glorificus."

Doc sat on a stone, and cupped his chin in his hand.

“But you don’t wanna know this story, do ya?”

“I do,” said Dawn.

“OK,” said Doc. “You see, Glorificus was dead, but gods don’t really die that easy. Way I figured it, if I thought long and hard about it, I’d find a way to bring her back.”

Dawn’s stomach knotted at the thought of Glory returning, her body reflexively recalling the terror of the time she held her prisoner.

“So,” continued Doc, “after a long journey across dimensions and across the Earth, I ended up making a deal with the Wolf, Ram and Hart, and they gave me access to this place.”

Doc threw his arms open wide, as though he were revealing a grand present.

“Isn’t it nice?”

“It’s lovely.”

“Aw, you’re just being nice. But anyway, this place used to belong to an elder being named Illyria, who, for various reasons, wasn’t using it anymore. And there’s a temple here where small slivers of the essence of fallen gods are retained.”

“And you can bring her back, just like that?

“Well, no actually. There’s a few things in the way of that. You might have noticed this, but there’s a few rules to bringing back the dead. It’s tricky. And dead gods? They’re the trickiest.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, I'm not a proud man, so I asked around for help.”

“And who did you ask for help?”

“ That would be me,” said a new voice, and Dawn’s blood froze at the sound of it.

There beside her, her arms folded, stood Buffy, a thin, wicked grin plastered across her face.

First Evil.

Must be.

Where is Illyria in this?

First Evil.

Hmmm. You think?

Where is Illyria in this?

Oh, she's around. According to Doc and Ethan, she, Angel, Spike and Gunn are trapped in a self-perpetuating time loop, fighting the same battle over and over.

Any more than that I'm not saying.

Part Twenty-Three: Hide in plain sight

Marcie had a Blackberry, and a private e-mail address, the only messages on which she received were instructions. Of course, those were the only e-mails she got, period. She had a cell phone number which no one called. Her supervisors preferred to communicate by e-mail. She rarely ever spoke.

So perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her that Riley didn’t recognize her voice. He’d known she was there, of course. He and Oz—she was their “secret weapon,” the one who would take out Justine or Amy or Ethan if they fell out of line. The one who’d not hesitate to put a bullet in the back of their heads.

It was a living.

The funny thing was, she’d kind of liked them, kind of felt like she was part of the team. She’d gone to high school with Oz and Amy after all, even if she didn’t really know them. And Oz was kind. He couldn’t let on that he knew she was there, but sometimes he’d sit quietly with her, while he read in the break room or listened to music. He always knew where she was, of course. It was his job to kill her if she fell out of line. She didn’t think he saw that as a living. She was pretty sure he was hoping to avoid that decision. That didn’t bug her.

But that scene behind her? That had been messed up.

Riley told her not to rendezvous at the headquarters, which was good because, far. She was supposed to meet up with a field team at an abandoned hotel called the Hyperion. Evidently, Ethan had been able to pinpoint the exact location Angel and the others had disappeared. She remembered Angel from Sunnydale. He was handsome.

She walked past the soldiers securing the location. They never knew she was there. No one ever did. Riley was talking to Ethan by what must have been the old check-in desk. There was a thin man talking to them. Glasses, dark hair. A neatly pressed shirt and slacks. No tie. “Not a company man then,” she thought.

She leaned into Riley’s ear, and whispered, “Special Agent Marcie Ross, reporting for duty sir.” Riley jumped but, to his credit, didn’t scream. She giggled, and that seemed to disturb him more. No one seemed to like her laugh.

“Marcie, I’m glad you could join us,” said the thin man. She stood silently. He didn’t seem shocked that she was there and, well, invisible.

“Who the bloody hell are you talking to?” said Ethan, who looked very, very tired.

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” said Riley, hesitantly. “Ethan Rayne, meet Marcie Ross. Marcie’s a government-trained invisible assassin, who’s been assigned to your team since the start.”

“Charmed,” said Ethan, incredulously. “Really.”

“Ms. Ross, you’ll not be surprised to find, attended Sunnydale High School, before her unique condition set in,” said the thin man who, like Ethan, had an English accent.

“Well that figures,” said Ethan. “Is there anyone in that town you didn’t hire?”

“Marcie,” said Riley, “this is our mysterious superior, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce.”

“Hee,” giggled Marcie. “I’ve read your file. You’re supposed to be a dead man.”

“I’m afraid I am,” said Wesley. “Stabbed in the gut by an old demon sorcerer. But then, I had a feeling something like that might happen, so I made … arrangements.”

“What sort of arrangements?” asked Marcie.

“A truly staggering web of legal red-tape and bureaucracy,” said the voice of a woman whom Marcie hadn’t notice before. The soldiers evidently hadn’t noticed her either, as they were startled and drawing beads.

“Stand down, men,” said Wesley. “Lilah. How good to see you, again.”

“Wesley,” said Lilah, “Do you have any idea how upset the senior partners are with you. The abuse of company resources alone…”

“Was all on the up and up, Lilah. I cashed in every debt owed to me—including, you’ll check the fine print on the contracts I signed—my company stock options and any claim to an afterlife—to see to it that the government had no choice but to carry through a reclamation effort.”

Wesley softened somewhat, as the two of them locked stares.

“It’s (continued...)

( continues...) basically the same deal you signed, accept that I’m not bound to servitude.”

“And what happens to you when you’re done here, Wesley? Are you going to be just another ghost, haunting the world?”

“Lilah, that’s all I ever was when I was alive.”

The sadness between the two of them was palpable, thought Marcie—two dead souls, locked into roles they’d long cast themselves into. And she could certainly relate to haunting the world. That’s all she’d ever done, after all, and she was very much alive.

“So what, exactly, are we doing here?” asked Marcie, eager to get back to work.

“Yes, I rather wonder about that myself,” said Ethan.

“Yes,” said Wesley, as Lilah glared at him. “You see, it all started when the old one Illyria—you’ll remember her from your briefing—was released from the Deeper Well, and consumed the form of Winifred Burkle, not only killing her, but rending her soul into pieces.”

“Right,” said Ethan. “I remember that bit from the files. Even the same magic that binds Angelus’s soul to his vampyric body can’t be used to put Humpty Dumpty together again.”

Wesley shot him a cool look, and then rubbed his forehead.

“More or less,” said Wesley, but something happened that … complicated matters. Shortly after Fred’s death, we used a device to shed some of Illyria’s extra power. It allowed her to walk this world more or less safely, preventing her from destroying her current form and, consequently, a goodly portion of the western seaboard.”

Wesley laughed a little bit at that, and Marcie suddenly understood why people found her laugh unsettling.

“Illyria’s powers center strongly on the manipulation of time and space. What we didn’t know is that, as her essence was bound to Fred’s form, her excess power acted as a magnet to Fred’s soul, drawing the disparate pieces back together again.”

“So her soul can be saved?” asked Riley.

“Well,” said Wesley, “it’s hard to say. What happened, then, was that it became a sort of null point in space and time—an endless loop containing nothing save a vague sentience and near-limitless power. Quite possibly, it would have simply recycled itself throughout creation forever.”

“Until Illyria died,” said Ethan, catching on.

“Yes,” said Wesley, his voice so cold now that Marcie truly believed he was dead. “But Illyria is, for all intents and purposes, a god, and gods don’t die easily. The four of them, and the armies of the Wolf, Ram and hart, were sucked into the null point at the moment of her death, where they would relive that battle endlessly, if something weren’t siphoning some of Illyria’s power.”

“Xander and Willow,” said Marcie. “They looked younger—like back when we were in school.”

“Yes,” said Wesley. “Someone is stealing bits of Illyria’s power, and seems to be using it to manipulate the slayer's friends. And that someone is a client of Wolfram & Hart.”

All eyes turned toward Lilah.

“Any deals with said client have to remain confidential,” said Lilah, obviously annoyed, “and were made before we knew the extent of his plans. And yours. That being said, we’d be willing to withdraw our support.”

“But at a price,” said Wesley.

“Yes,” said Lilah. “There’s always a price.”

She handed Wesley a file, which he read intently. Wordlessly, he pulled a pen from his pocket, and signed the document.

“These terms are acceptable to me,” he said, handing the file back to her.

“Good,” said Lilah, turning toward the door.

“Make this one count, Wes,” she said, the sadness in her voice reverberating. “You’ve no idea what you’ve unleashed here.”

Without another word, she left. Wesley stared at the door several moments after she’d disappeared.

“I rather think I do,” he said.

Wesley!!! Lilah!!! The eternal star-crossed lovers, sigh. Fred was make-do.