Title: Gift of a Future
Author: Gileswench

(notes & disclaimer with part one)

The Winnebego lumbered down the streets. Inside, the inhabitants sat in various states of boredom and distress. Willow studied the book before her, occasionally looking nervously over her shoulder where Worf burped uncomfortably. It seemed the Klingon was inclined to motion sickness. Spike had given up the wheel to Giles and sat sprawled on the floor near Dawn. Dawn peered over Willow's shoulder to try to get a hint of what she was reading. Picard and Riker seemed to be discussing something off to one side, and Deanna surveyed the crew with mounting anxiety. Buffy remained in the bedroom. Nobody dared approach her after her last outburst. Anya looked around at all the clenched jaws and tightened shoulders. It made her uncomfortable.

"Shouldn't somebody be asking 'are we there yet'?" She asked in hopes of breaking the tension. Everyone looked icily at her. Worf belched. "Isn't that what small, entertaining children do?"

"That kinda only works if you know where you're going," Dawn explained.

"Do we know where we're going yet?" Anya called to Giles.

"We'd already be somewhere if Captain Slowpoke would give up the wheel," Spike grumbled, carefully modulating his voice so Giles would be sure to just hear him. When Giles shot an annoyed look back into the vehicle, Spike loosed the next weapon in his arsenal. "Hey! Gramps! Bloody step on it!"

"Step on what?" Giles snapped back. "I've driven tricycles with more power."

"Knew I shoulda nicked that Porsche I had my eye on," Spike sighed dramatically to Dawn. "There was just enough room for me, you and Big Sis."

Willow rolled her eyes and moved to the front beside Giles.

"Do we hafta have Spike along along? He's bloodsucking the last nerve right out of me."

"Well, Buffy does have a point," Giles allowed despite his inner agreement with his Wiccan friend. "In a confrontation, he may prove...useful."

"I don't think Buffy's thinking very clearly right now, Giles. On that or anything else," Willow insisted. "I've never seen her so...so. Y'know?"

"She's been through more than her fair share of late," Giles said. "She just needs a chance to breathe, regroup. She'll be all right."

"Then why does it sound like you're the one you're trying to convince?"

"Willow..." Giles warned.

"Okay, okay, none of my business. But maybe you should talk to her, Giles. When she gets like this, you're pretty much the only one she listens to."

The girl stood and returned to her seat and her book.

"Not this time," Giles muttered under his breath. "She won't listen to me at all."

Xander and his crew piled into Joyce Summers' Jeep Cherokee in an exhibition of mock stealth that would have done the Three Stooges proud. Still, it was enough to convince the concealed spies that the sight was authentic. Grumio and Brutus headed back to camp with the news that the Slayer had just left and headed North.

The key would soon be destroyed and the Evil One's plans confounded.

Dawn peered at the book Willow bent over. At last, she couldn't help asking.

"Any luck?"

"If you define luck as the absence of success, plenty," the witch grumbled. 'There's a couple barrier spells, but they only work on a fixed locus. Haven't found anything that'll work while we're still moving."

Dawn nodded sadly and slumped back in her seat. The silence stretched out until it was too depressing to be borne any longer. She tried again.

"Anyone hungry?" she asked.

"Ooh, snacks," Anya bubbled perkily. "The key to any successful migration." The girl delved into her backpack and pulled out a frying pan and a can of Spam. "Who's up for some tasty fried meat products?"

Nobody looked interested, not even Dawn.

Worf turned slightly greener than he already was and belched precariously.

At last Anya gave up and put the can away.

"I thought someone would want food," she muttered. "Guess I was wrong. I hate humans. They never know what they want."

Despite his gastric discomfort, Worf heard Anya's words and began to consider romantic metaphors to work into his poem. Truly, this woman was worthy of greatness.

Deanna joined Captain Picard and Riker at the rear of the cabin.

"Things are bad," she whispered. "I've never seen a group of people so on edge, and Buffy's the worst of all. I can feel her anger and fear and despair no matter where I go."

"I know," Riker agreed. "*I* can feel her out here and I'm no empath."

"Someone should probably talk to her," Picard suggested mildly. "See if she can be calmed down."

Deanna found herself regarded by two intense gazes, one green, one blue. She rolled her brown eyes and caved.

"All right. I'll do it. If I don't pass out."

"Thank you for volunteering, Counsellor," Picard said heartily.

"I knew we could count on you," Riker added.

Deanna glared at them both.

"You have no idea how much chocolate you owe me."

She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and stalked to the bedroom door.

"I thought I told you to program this thing to drive!" Xander yelped as the SUV careened madly through the streets with the Buffybot behind the wheel.

"Hey, I don't know much about cars," Geordie reminded him. "Now if this was a starship, I could have done it right. I was working blind, here. "

"Can you please get her to slow down?" Beverly begged as Wesley giggled and tried to put his head out the window.

"We have to get away from Glory," The bot said with grim determination. "Going fast is the only way to do it. Right, Data, sweetie?"

"Perhaps, though, you might wish to slow down," the android replied calmly. At the looks the others gave him, he added the first endearment that came to the fore of his processors. "Honeybunch."

Everyone braced themselves as the car skidded to a sudden stop. The bot beamed at Data, then put the car back into gear and began to move at a much slower pace.

"Dark, all dark," Wesley muttered.

"No, it's not dark," Tara comforted the boy. "See, your wig just fell over your eyes." She straightened the fake hair. "See? All better now."

Wesley continued to rock back and forth, muttering.

"Dark, all dark."

The Psych ward of Sunnydale Hospital was rarely a quiet place. Still, the sound emanating from it was disturbing and uncanny. All the patients mumbled the same words over and over and over again.

"Dark, all dark."

Until one voice changed.

"Soon, soon, soon," became his mantra.

"Soon, soon, soon," the others agreed.

Two scabby, bumpy minions huddled in the near dark of a closed room. Candles flickered where they burned in a circle of blood red earth. Gronk threw the Runestones and read their message. She smiled at Murk.

It's coming," she told him. "The signs are in alignment and soon victory will be in our grasp."

The smile they shared would have pleased only their mistress.

Deanna knocked on the bedroom door. She took the muffled sound she heard from inside as her cue to enter.

"Buffy?" she said as she poked her head into the small room. "Are you all right?"

Buffy shrugged.

"I guess that depends on your definition of all right," she quipped half-heartedly. "I'm alive. I guess that beats what's in second place."

"You're doing the right thing," Deanna told her bluntly.

"Yeah. Running like a...scared thing. Brave, huh?"

The counsellor sat on the bed.

"Is that what you think? That running makes you a coward?"

"Well it sure doesn't make me much of a hero, does it?" Buffy snapped. She began to pace the small room. "She's supposed to be running from me, not the other way around. I just...it's too much. And Giles..."

Buffy shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest.

"What about Giles?" Deanna asked.

"Doesn't matter. It was a mistake."

"Was it?"

"Don't Freud me, Deanna," Buffy snapped. "I'm so not in the mood."

"Your mood is the problem. Buffy, you're not thinking straight. You're allowing your fear and your anger to make all your decisions right now. Maybe they're the right decisions, maybe not, but you're not reaching them rationally. You're panicking and that could get everyone here killed."

"You think I don't know that?" Buffy exploded. "You think I don't live with that every day of my life? If I miss a night of patrol, everyone who contributes to the vampire blood bank is on my hands! If I don't get the signs right, the world gets sucked into Hell and it's my fault! And if I don't find a way to stop Glory, she takes my little sister and does something demonic with her and I don't even know what that is, but that'll be my fault, too. You try coping with that for five years, and see if you don't start getting kinda pissed off and freaked, 'cause I'm here to tell you, it's not the joyride people think it is."

By the time she finished her tirade, Buffy was doing her best to blink back tears, even as she trembled with rage.

"I don't know how much more I can take," she whispered. "It never stops. Riley, my mom, Glory, now Giles is getting all...I don't know. And I don't have time to even tell him no."

"No to what?"

"Don't you see? I'll lose him, just like the others. So I can't even...I have to concentrate on Glory now. I can't even think about that."

"Buffy...I know something happened between you and Giles. Are you..."

"Don't." Buffy ordered. "It's not something I can think about now. I have a deity to run away from, remember?"

"The deity's one thing, Buffy," Deanna told her, "but running away from yourself is a bad idea."

"And not very high on the list of the practical?" Buffy asked wryly. "That's never stopped me trying."

Deanna moved closer to the Slayer's side.

"Q said something before he sent us here; something about - "

Dawn poked her head into the bedroom.

"Hey Buffy, Deanna," she chirped, "Anya's gonna try to cook. Wanna come see the tears and recriminations?"

Buffy stiffened.

"Maybe later," Deanna said. "I don't think we're finished yet."

"Okay," Dawn said uncertainly. She continued to stand awkwardly in the doorway until Buffy looked up at her. "I just...I wanted to say...thanks."

"For what?" Buffy blurted in surprise.

"Pretty much everything," her sister shrugged. "This. It's about the most amazing thing anyone's done for me. You sorta rock, y'know?"

Buffy began to pace again.

'No, I don't. This doesn't. I just couldn't handle it all, and it won't stop coming."

"But I know there's a bright side," Dawn said.

"There is?"

"Yeah. At least things can't get any crazier."

The words were barely out of Dawn's mouth when an arrow shattered a window and flew across the room to pierce the opposite wall, mere inches from Buffy's head. The Slayer sent her sister a bemused look.

"You know this is your fault for saying that."