"We're closing the blinds so that Mojadidi's display will be visible, sir," Pamela told Giles, pausing in setting up the conference room ready for the meeting to start. They were still waiting for a few stragglers anyway –Buffy, to name an important one– but most were here, including Faith for the first time, and Molly as a 'visiting expert'.

"Thank you, Pamela," Giles told her, wondering if he should be grateful or worried that it was so easy to slip back into business mode, even with all of his conflicted feelings.

"If you make it dark enough," Ethan said, from where he was perched on a side table, stubbornly refusing to sit with everyone else, "no one will be able to see that my eyes are shut." There was an audible tutting from one of the Watchers further down the conference table.

"Keeping you up, are we?" Giles asked with raised eyebrow.

Ethan just gave him an inexplicable dark-eyed look in reply, but Xander, sitting to Giles' right, chuckled. "Pity you didn't attend Sunnydale High with us, Ethan. You would've made my attention span look good."

Molly, sitting further down the table, said quietly, "I always found bribery helped..."

"Apple cordial and bendy straws?" Giles asked her with a faint smile.

"Throw in twinkies and soda and you may have the fixings of a new policy for meetings," Xander quipped.

"You should lend me that atrocious eye-patch," Ethan commented dourly to Xander. "As it seems to be my turn to be class clown. Is there some reason we're all just hanging about uselessly and not actually having the damn meeting?"

"My guess?" came from the doorway, and Giles looked up to see Buffy standing there with Dawn just behind her. "They're waiting for me. Sorry, didn't mean to be all fashionably late. We just needed to pick up something, and it took longer than Dawn told me it would."

"Yeah," Dawn said, rolling her eyes at her sister. "Make it all my fault."

As the two Summers girls sat down, Pamela lowered the lights ready for the brief presentation. She looked at Giles, obviously waiting for him to call the meeting to order. "All right," he said, raising his voice, although everyone had already fallen quiet. "Pamela, Mojadidi, would you like to share the information that you've discovered?"

Mojadidi straightened up from where he was still fiddling with the projector and pressed a key on his open laptop. The interactive whiteboard, as Pamela had informed Giles it was called, immediately displayed an aerial photograph of some buildings.

"This is where the enemy is holed up," Pamela said, her voice pitched to carry to the whole room. "It's an abandoned private airfield near Saffron Waldon. What you're looking at is the ex-office block, which is where we have observed the most activity, although they also seem to be using the old hangers – for what, we're not sure."

"Could hide a whole bulk buy of badness under those roofs," Faith commented, leaning forward as she stared at the screen. "Machines, demons, armies, portals or hocus-pocus, anything. I'll lay odds it ain't a good anything."

Pamela nodded in agreement. "Judging by the number of Slayers we have seen during training sessions out on the airstrip, we now believe Miss Travers and her associates have been gathering resources for quite some time. We need to expect the worst." She rested her hand briefly on Mojadidi's shoulder, and he pressed a couple of keys. The view changed to one further away, showing the fields around the buildings. "It is probably a good thing for the general public that there is this expanse around the building. However, we should not assume that it is empty space."

"This Vaurtain of yours," Xander started. "Much of a strategy-guy?"

Molly leant forward, and by that action alone seemed to easily collect the attention of everyone present. "That would depend, dear, on this unfortunate woman currently providing him with a home."

"And why exactly would that be?" Giles asked, looking at Molly intently.

She smiled at him, her eyes glittering in the half-light of the room. "The old bear isn't one of the shiniest coins in the bag, m'dear. Pure kraz, you see – pure Chaos. Chaos isn't clever; it can't plan or think things through. It just does whatever whim demands of it, and whim can be a wicked mistress. Oh yes."

Ethan slipped off his little table and came forward, an intense expression on his face. "What are you saying, Nana? Vaurtain needs humans to think for him?"

"Humans or other bright ones, yes, camo. Alone, he would never have broken from his prison."

"That's why you're still alive, isn't it?" Ethan's voice was grim and cold. "You've been his slave all this time, providing him with... strategy." There was a palpable tension in the room now; all eyes seemed to be on the two Raynes. Giles all but held his breath as he watched, knowing that beyond the personal ramifications, this information could prove to be of key importance.

"Someone had to watch over you," she said. "Keep him from killing you or worse. Another slave would not have cared about your fate. I knew you and your pireno would destroy him though, in the end. I saw it right back at the beginning of all this."

"Wouldn't you have kept Ethan alive anyway, even if you hadn't seen some of the Prophecy?" Dawn asked a little breathlessly, but Molly just smiled at her, gently and enigmatically.

"Unfortunately, I don't think Francesca will be as considerate of our continued existence," Giles observed. "Although the fact that her feelings and thoughts may influence Vaurtain could indeed prove useful."

"Yes," Ethan said, a hard edge still audible in his voice, although he was no longer so intense. "It means it will be Watcher versus Watcher, as well as Slayer versus Slayer. War Games, in her mind, at least. She'll be looking forward to this." That was exactly the thing that Giles had feared the most; he should have known it was therefore inevitable.

"Yeah, she'll be wanting to prove that the Travers' way is the best way, just like Daddy Dearest," Buffy said, her distaste for the entire family evident in her voice.

"How much control will this Chaos beast have over Francesca Travers' actions?" asked a male voice from further down the table. Ah yes, Higgins.

Molly answered. "It doesn't work like that. Not that the Devil ever tried this trick with me more than once. I gave him indigestion, he claimed." Ethan laughed and so did Faith, funnily enough. Molly winked at her across the table. "It's more a... partnership. The woman will provide the intelligence and personality, and the Bear provides the will, the desires and the power."

"Oh," Dawn exclaimed. "Like vampires!" Molly nodded.

"What would happen," Giles began slowly as he tested the idea before he spoke, "if they were split?"

"Vaurtain is pure Chaos," Molly replied. "He couldn't co-exist with Order, the way things in this world do. Not without a home, a shell to hide in. That's why he was trying to infect London with the stuff of his realm."

"So if we hand the creep his eviction papers, he's just going to gatecrash into some other poor slob?" Faith shook her head. "Fuck that." Someone tutted further down the table.

"Not if we can get him to go somewhere else," Dawn said, wearing a little smirk that looked disturbingly like Ethan at his smuggest. "Somewhere we choose."

"What are you thinking of, sweetheart?" Ethan asked, smiling a very similar smile, perhaps in appreciation of hers.

"Would it be possible to herd this thing?" Higgins asked before Dawn could answer.

"On a very limited level," Giles said, remembering how it shrank from his Ordered magic but also how it had been threatening to overwhelm Ethan and him anyway.

"We can lure it," Dawn put in. "Like calls to like, especially with something like Chaos."

"That's true..." Ethan came forward, leaning over an empty chair to put his hands on the table. "Dawn, confess!"

Dawn gave that little smile again. "What you told me about your fight with Vaurtain, about him being stuck in a portal between here and a realm of raw Chaos, it got me thinking. He doesn't belong here; that's why there are locks on the portals and only one Key. So what we need to do is banish him back to his own soil, but the portal in the maze no longer exists. So where is the one other doorway to Chaos that we know of?"

"The Hellmouth in Cleveland?" Xander asked, sounding puzzled. "But that's not Chaos, is it? I mean it's chaos, yeah, but not Chaos, right?" He looked around the gathered experts. "Right?"

"Right," Ethan agreed, but his tone was distracted. "Been taking a little trip underground, sweetheart?" he asked Dawn.

Dawn dug into the knapsack she'd been carrying and pulled out, oh. The Mallon chest which contained the Chaos pouch. "I thought we might need this so I went and got it," she said, looking at Giles and shrugging apologetically. "Hope you don't mind."

Feeling bemused more than anything, Giles sat back in his seat. "I suppose I shouldn't have made such a production of showing you the code to get in if I wanted to keep you out." It did make him shudder a little, however, seeing the chest here. It was as if Dawn had suddenly pulled out a huge grenade.

But Ethan was nodding slowly, his eyes still on Dawn and the Mallon chest. "Rupert, what happened to the Bachian matrix after I, um, emptied it?"

"I kept it; it's back at the house." He glanced at Ethan sharply. "You have a plan?"

"Oh, I wouldn't go that far... but if the bear of absolutely no brain is attracted to the Bag o'Chaos, the matrix, being the bag's opposite, could be a" –he straightened and shrugged, looking at Giles now– "a herding device? I'm not sure. I just feel strongly that if we use the one, we should have the other."

"Chaos and Order in balance," Giles murmured. "That does seem to be the overwhelming theme in all of this."

Ethan nodded and looked back at Dawn. "You're the only person who can handle that bag safely. I know Buffy is watching over you, but I think, so as not to give the enemy a double reason to aim all they have at you, that the chest should be put somewhere extraordinarily safe until just before the battle."

"Like an underground, warded vault perhaps?" Giles said pointedly.

"Better where we can keep an eye on it, surely," Xander remarked. "Or even two, if you've got them."

"I figured we might want to have it handy," Dawn defended. "In case we need to do something fast."

Attention moved away from her as the display on the huge screen changed, Pamela having obviously decided it was time to move on. "These are the blueprints of the main offices. You'll find copies of them in your hand-outs. The two main entrances are here" –she touched the laptop screen, and a red circle appeared on the big display– "and here. We don't know what rooms are being used for what purposes, of course, and we also have reason to believe the structure extends underground."

Giles became silent and watched as the others began hammering out an assault plan. Slayers attacking Slayers. The thought made his stomach tighten painfully. Responsibility for the Slayer had been bred into him, blood and bone. Just because there was more than one now didn't lessen that. He knew rationally that, with so many now existing, it would be impossible to keep them all safe, or even to keep them all alive, but this... Slayer against Slayer.

Even if they win, they lose.

'You can't look after them all.' Ethan's words slid so softly into Giles' mind that, for the first moment or so, he thought they were his own thoughts. 'You need to let them fly now, Watchers and Slayers both. You and I need to be each other's concern when we go against Vaurtain again.'

Giles looked up, searching for and then holding Ethan's gaze. 'You're always my concern,' he sent back.

Ethan smiled softly at him, but then turned to interrupt the discussions. "Your top priority must be to clear an area around Vaurtain, Frannie T., and keep everyone out of it bar Rupert and I... and Dawn, I suppose." He didn't look happy about that and neither did Buffy. "This area will have to be warded, to keep Vaurtain within it. The most powerful circle of Order you can manage, I would suggest."

Several Watchers just looked at him, either having no idea what he was talking about or refusing to acknowledge his authority. Ethan sighed, but Mojadidi nodded slowly. "We could do that," he said in his heavily accented voice. "If we prepare the sigils in advance. I can't guarantee that it will be strong enough; we have no accurate way to ascertain the Chaos creature's strength while within Ms Travers..." He frowned, obviously thinking it through.

"We've got some heavy duty strength in the magic department ourselves," Xander put in. "Willow's flying in tomorrow." He paused. "On a plane. Just to be clear."

"Willow will certainly be a great help with any magical attacks and defences," Giles agreed. It seemed that all of the old Scoobies were going to end up hip-deep in this. "Mojadidi, you'll want to coordinate any possible wardings with her."

"Good, good," he muttered, typing quickly into the laptop. The screen started to change pictures rapidly, and Pamela frowned and pressed a switch on its side, turning it off.

"Right then," Ethan said brightly. "Are we finished?"

"For now," Giles said. "Work up attack plans, and we'll set an actual time to carry it out once we've got everything arranged. Work fast though. This has to happen tomorrow, no later."

"There was more to the presentation," Pamela said, only a little archly, "but it's all in your dossiers."

"Faith and I will talk to the other Slayers," Buffy said firmly.

"Yeah, Megan and Kat too," Faith agreed. "Seeing as we're the ones to have gone Slayer vee Slayer before and all that. Nothing smarts quite like a chosen one's fist, eh, B?" Buffy visibly winced, and Giles barely kept from wincing himself. He really didn't need the reminder of what just two Slayers fighting could entail, not when they were facing a great deal more than that right now.

Ethan was giving Faith a sharp look, "Hmm, perhaps you and I –Faith, is it?– could have a little chat before you go off to teach the derring do?"

Trust Ethan to have the priorities of a very different drummer, Giles thought with fond exasperation. He considered intervening, but it would probably be best to let Ethan get it out of his system now. And he was quite confident in Faith's ability to make a good impression; she had changed greatly from the troubled girl she'd been when he had first met her.

"Right," Faith said slowly, looking at Ethan dubiously. "And this 'chat' has to be now? World to save mean anything to ya?"

"He probably just wants to give you 'The Talk', Faith," Xander said, clearly amused as he stood and collected the dossier of papers together.

"Talk? Chat? Yeah, got that," Faith said exasperatedly, obviously not 'getting it' at all. "But what's with the being called to the Principal's office crap?"

"Principal's office may not be quite the right metaphor," Giles put in mildly.

Faith looked back and forth between Giles and Ethan. "What? Did I spit in the holy Watcher font or something?"

Ethan chuckled. "Oh, that's surely more my sin than yours. I want to speak to you about my Slayer, that's all." He held out a hand towards the door. "Shall we?" Faith still didn't look very happy, but a glance towards Buffy won her only a confused shrug in return, and so she followed Ethan out of the conference room with obvious reluctance.

"He's interfering, isn't he?" Molly asked, still sitting at her place at the table. She shook her head slightly. "It's in his blood, I'm afraid. We don't always respect boundaries."

Giles chuckled. "I'm not sure I've discovered the boundary he does respect. It's one of his charms."

"What's going on?" Buffy sounded confused.

Dawn took her by the arm. "I'll explain outside," she told her sister in a loud whisper.

The rest of the meeting broke up fairly quickly then, with people leaving to deal with their assignments or other duties. Giles took his time gathering up his own papers and things so was one of the last to leave the room, but not the last. Molly was still sitting in her place, quietly attentive.

"Is there something you need, Molly?" he asked her.

"Oh no, dear. My needs are very small." She smiled placidly at him.

That smile worried Giles. "When Ethan smiles at me like that, it invariably means trouble."

"What could you possibly have to fear from me?" The twinkle in the eyes was familiar too. "I'm just a little old gypsy woman, Rupert Giles, out of her proper time and place."

Giles chuckled. "I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking you were 'just' anything."

She chuckled. "Strange, isn't it, mi chinga-guero, how similar he is to me despite my long absence from his life. You look after him, don't you?"

"Yes." But honesty forced him to add, "Now. There were far too many years where we... lost each other."

She nodded. "I watched him, when I could. Your anger and then your ignorance saved you both by allowing me to persuade the Bear that you were a broken pair. So I can forgive, gorgio, for your sins of the past. Let him suffer like that again, however..." She moved her hands in a brisk 'no more' gesture. "I know you won't, so it does not need to be said."

"Ah, the shovel speech," Giles murmured with a faint smile, feeling strangely pleased that someone was giving it to him on Ethan's behalf. Aloud he said, "The way things stand now, his suffering is mine, and I am neither masochist nor sadist enough to invite it again."

Again, she nodded. "When this is over, I shall need a favour from you, Rupert Giles. You are, through marriage, sufficiently of the people now that I may ask it."

"Of course," Giles said, stifling his curiosity as to what the favour was.

"He'll find it hard to understand and feel guilty for his relief. You'll need to help him through that. That is your favour to me." She stood slowly up. "My favour to you will be to leave, to travel again after so long trapped and stationary. We shall be even, no debts owed."

"I would never begrudge Ethan time or proximity to others who care for him," Giles protested, although there was that tiny shameful part of him that liked being Ethan's sole emotional support.

"I confuse him. He isn't quite sure who he is around me." She walked over and reached up, touching Giles' earring. "You should be both the definer and part of the definition. We all shall be rewarded for our service, and my reward is to know the road again. Yours is not for me to tell, but..." She chuckled. "Take your time and enjoy it."

Giles already knew that Ethan was his reward. He thought back to the holiday plans he and Ethan were making for when this was over, and he smiled. "I intend to."

***

Ethan opened the door to the training hall in the basement and slipped inside. The area was brimful of teenage girls, gesturing belligerently and getting sweaty. For a few moments, he took the time to try and appreciate the sight as it would appear to a straight man, but he couldn't, not really. He wouldn't want to either, seeing as both Megan and Kat were included in their number.

It was Megan he was seeking out, wanting to get to her before Faith did, and he edged around the walls of the makeshift gym towards her.

Typical of his Slayer, she spotted him before he reached her and broke off her workout to come meet him. "Ethan," she said happily, hugging him unselfconsciously.

He promised himself that when this was all over he would take her out somewhere special, just the two of them. They hadn't seemed to have any casual time together for months. "Hello, sweetheart. How are things going in here? Can you afford a short break?"

"I can for my Watcher," she said grinning and hooking her arm with his.

"Come and walk with me a while then," he said, leading her towards the door. "What's the mood like with the girls?"

"There's some nerves, but generally everyone's got their head in the right space."

"Hmm." Ethan waited until they were almost at the door; then he spoke quietly enough that only Megan would be able to hear him over the background of Slayer aerobics. "Remember, no one else will tell you this, but your first priority is to stay alive."

She smiled at him. "Could say the same to you."

"I don't need the telling," he said, drawing her outside. "Fancy the roof, or too cold?"

"Roof's fine," Megan said as they started in that direction. "And considering who it was that almost died last time, I think you need the telling at least as much as I do. Maybe more."

Ethan took a deep breath. "Right. So we're even. I helped save your life, and you helped save mine. Now neither of us needs to start up the debt once more, agreed?"

"Way to take the wind out of my 'don't ever scare me like that again' speech," Megan observed with a wry smile.

Ethan laughed as they entered the stairwell. "I can assure you that I have no intention of ever doing anything like that again."

"Better not. I'll kick your butt if you do, and you know I can."

"Only if I don't see you coming," Ethan answered quite truthfully, confident in his power. "You Slayers, all such bullies," he teased.

"Yes, we're all adept at stealing lunch money and keeping our Watchers in one piece in spite of themselves." Megan stuck her tongue out at him and giggled.

They carried on, climbing the stairs to the top where Ethan typed his number into the keypad and let them both out onto the roof. It was a cold, clear day, and the view of London was friendly somehow, even with new monstrosities like the Gerkin altering the familiar skyline.

"So I hear," he started saying, as they walked to a chimneystack to sit down upon, "that you've been trying out a different kind of Slayer on Slayer."

Megan blushed.

Ethan chuckled. "Ah, it's so quiet up here, almost cathedral like." He poked her arm. "Talk to your Watcher."

"Faith and I may have... talked some," she allowed finally, still blushing.

"Really? Faith and I 'talked some' earlier, but somehow, I don't think we mean the same things."

"You talked to Faith?" Megan's voice had risen to an outraged squeak.

"I thought it was time I got to know her a little." It was always best, Ethan thought, to act as if there were nothing in his behaviour to which anyone could possibly object.

Megan covered her face with her hands. "Oh God..."

"Oh come. Whatever you're imagining, it's hardly as bad as that. She was a bit taken aback, I'll admit, but adjusted quickly. Far more reasonable than Rupert remembers her." Hopefully he wouldn't have to explain that last statement.

"I'm trying not to imagine anything at all actually."

Ethan tutted, feeling a little exasperated, and also, if he were being honest with himself, a little out of his depth. "I had to assess her, Megan. Her reputation is, well, almost as bad as mine."

Megan finally looked at him. "And what were you planning to do if she hadn't passed your 'assessment'?"

"Improvise."

She crossed her arms and pinned him with her gaze, and Ethan suddenly wished for a moment ago when she was just embarrassed. She said, "It really isn't your decision, you know, who I see or 'talk' to."

He'd been prepared for this one. "No, it isn't," he agreed. "I'm not making your decision for you."

"No?"

"No," he said firmly.

"Then what was with all the assessing and planning to improvise?" she asked, beginning to look confused.

"Back up."

Megan frowned. "Back up?"

"Yup." Ethan nodded. "Support services."

"So you weren't planning on zapping Faith somehow if she didn't live up to... whatever it was you were looking for?"

"Give me credit for learning something from the Jade farrago." Ethan wasn't actually sure what he would had done had Faith not impressed him with what seemed to lie under the short-temper and bluster, but he was relatively certain zapping wouldn't have come into it.

That made Megan look abashed. "Sorry. I just..."

"So tell me about her," Ethan interrupted. "Tell me your impressions. What you like, what you really like, and what you're not sure about."

"Beyond her being really, really hot you mean?" Megan asked with a tiny smile, appearing to be relaxing a little over the subject with him now.

"Even I could see she had a certain something." Ethan laughed. "And just your physical type too."

Megan blushed again, but the smile didn't disappear. "Well..."

"So it's purely physical? Not that there's anything wrong with that." He winked at her.

She shook her head. "It's not just physical. Faith... she gets the whole Slayer thing because it's her thing too. More than that, she knows herself, knows what she's capable of if she gives in to the dark, and she chooses not to. It makes her... centred in a way not many people are." She smiled at him. "Though I can think of at least one other I know."

He snorted and smiled, pulling her into a hug. "My young Athena. Truly, I only wanted to make sure Faith was not another Jade, but whatever she's been in the past, you're right, she has something that seemed a lot like integrity to me now. She may be your special one; she may not. That's for you to find out." He chuckled softly. "And as your Watcher, I order you to have fun doing so."

Megan grinned wickedly at him. "You've met Faith. Fun's kinda an understatement."