Selene and Michael knew how to fight groups, but never with backup. Selene gave a few short signals and Michael nodded.

The demons that came pouring out of the blood-bank were much keener on going after the slayers than herself and Michael, but she simply coordinated.

Buffy looked at Selene, who was taking a defensive tack with Michael, using Buffy and the slayers as the attraction while they kept the pressure scattered and, Buffy noticed, really evenly. She'd never seen anyone fight so... clinical.

'Selene!' she shouted, and beckoned with her hand, wanting another sword, which Selene and Michael had brought lots of along the way.

Selene's eyes had gone a very pale green. Buffy caught the sword and hesitated. Selene continued her gaze; she'd noticed Buffy's surprise. Then fighting continued.

Then the last of them came out, and there was a universal horrified pause.

It was a gang of young teenagers, some looked about twelve or even younger. They lasted about a few seconds, because they'd all had to pass Michael and Selene.

Then Buffy, by some initiative, looked at the roof of the building behind them, and there sat Sophie, who disappeared a second later.

"Let her go" said Selene, who had appeared very suddenly at her shoulder (Buffy hated it when vampires could cross a space of about thirty feet in a heart-beat).

"Why?" asked Anna, frowning worriedly

"She's seen" said Selene, then walked off and crouched down beside a demon.

Michael, who had gone round collecting the borrowed swords and weapons, had arrived to Buffy's right and smiled

"She means that she's seen us fight on the same side, while her friends were the monsters"

"And," said Selene, who had come to a closer body which had been dead longer and was turning into a chalk-like substance and blowing away in the wind, "she'll know we all are, at least in part for some"

Buffy saw her eyes were brown again. She then looked at Anna and nodded

Anna took four big strides at a run and leapt onto the roof where Sophie had disappeared and took off over it.

"You shouldn't be alone through that" said Buffy, and took off after her.

The other slayers went home.

Selene and Michael turned and headed the opposite way to their apartment.

"I'd guess that's how you did it, when you were bitten?" asked Michael, Selene nodded

"Late Medieval England was that kind of place, you just dealt with it, alone if you really had troubles with it"

Michael nodded once. Emotions weren't pointy (usually) and couldn't kill Lycans.

He sensed a pang of something like remorse from Selene, and looked at her.

"You still wish you hadn't turned me" he said

Selene still kept her eyes ahead

"It led us here, I don't regret that" she said

"But?"

"We're the same as those teenagers, they had no choice what happened, and they lived however they could... they just..."

"Didn't get to keep their souls" said Michael, itching to take her hand but knew better, and knew from experience not to open the door to the building for her

There was a long silence going up the stairs.

"You think we've kept ours?" asked Selene, fishing the key out

"You don't?" demanded Michael, grabbing her arm as she tried to unlock the door, Selene looked at him and tugged her arm gently, just to tell him to let go. Michael let go and they walked inside

"We're immortal, Michael," she said as she dropped her bag by the door, "you have no idea what I've done, and you've come back to the dead on an empty tank; we are nothing near human"

She was suddenly forced against the wall with both of Michael's elbows placed against the door just above her shoulders, so his arms boxed her head. Then her heartbeat picked up about plus ten a minute and felt his do the same, and saw a mix of a grin and a glare in his face.

"You think I could come back from the dead, for you, if I had no soul?"

Selene's hands had risen magnetically up to his biceps

"I thought we'd agreed you went into some kind of stasis"

"I can sense the difference between you and those... things," said Michael, slightly more forcefully, "and the Lycans William made – William was only a little different, and that was only a spark when he saw Markus, and you honestly think you're like that?"

Selene looked down

Then they were suddenly on the bed. This was honestly a bit disorientating – she had only felt a slight breeze and the scene before had only changed a little at the edges, except now they were horizontal, and now Michael had rolled onto his side to face her.

"I think the way we changed didn't affect our minds or how they work" he said, an arm on her waist

"Michael, it affects everything, don't be naive" she murmured

"OK," he said, "I think you really understood why Sophie tried to trick us – anything to get some kind of justice for that kind of loss, right? Doesn't matter if it's revenge or taking out demons to protect the world, that doesn't matter"

Selene nodded, eyes trained on him

"That's basically some kind of proof of her soul, even if it's meant to be wrong" he said

Selene raised an eyebrow; prove your point, now.

"So why did you really go after Markus?"

Selene's shoulders relaxed and she looked down

"Hating him for killing you does not prove my soul is there or not, or worth anything, and revenge is a famously soul-destroying quality in anyone," she sat up and hugged her knees loosely to her chest, "Viktor managed to love me like a daughter"

Michael pulled her back, so she lay on his chest. She slid onto her side and put an arm around him, listening to his heart. He sighed.

Michael knew the betrayal and loss of Victor was going to haunt them for centuries.

"I think Viktor would have killed everyone eventually," he said, "then all he'd have left would be to kill himself, some people are just made like that"

Selene didn't say anything. Michael exhaled, wrapping his arms around her, so his chin was just level with her forehead, and listened to her breathe. He still felt the thrill of her letting her guard down.

Selene lay in his arms, and thought about the slayers. She tried to wish things you were meant to wish for the love of your life; that Michael had been born at the right time and place to have met and be protected by Buffy (even if things would have been very different that way), but death had taken him briefly from her and she knew she wouldn't surrender him to anything else after that. She wanted to not feel this was all completely as it should be. It was selfish and she didn't care.

She didn't care much if she had a soul either. This was fine.

Buffy and the other slayers had stopped at the edge of the line of houses they had been running on, staring at the hole in the window about level with the roof-line and there was broken glass just below it.

Buffy took out her phone and dialled.

"What's wrong?" came Selene's voice after two rings

"What makes you think we didn't get her?" asked Buffy, frowning

That didn't even get an answer

"She's in her warehouse, it's on..." Buffy looked around for a street-sign, which was hard from her perspective

"Two minutes" said Selene, and the phone cut off

Even less, as it turned out.

"You know Lycans better not be able to move that fast" said Buffy, looking incredibly unimpressed

Selene just barely smiled "No"

"Willow's put a field-thingy around the warehouse," said Buffy, over a great booming crash from inside, 'she did another thing, it was about mood or something, she said she's a danger to everyone right now"

Selene waited

"She says two can get in, when we've got the kid we signal the girls and Willow takes it off"

"Why us?" asked Selene curiously

"Willow said until she remembered you were "a monster" she really liked you, and I'm the general"

Selene frowned, or rather her eyebows twitched downwards. She thought Michael was going to be the other one.

"Why would she forget?" she asked

"You don't selectively forget things?' asked Buffy

Selene's eyes changed to blue "Rarely"

Buffy paused a second and sighed "Must be part of vampire-with-a-soul 101 manual" she said, almost exasperated, then added "Never mind" to everyone, who were collectively confused

Selene looked at Michael, who had a smug expression on his face

"Shut up" she muttered

At that, Buffy and Selene lined up, about eight feet from the edge of the roof and gave each other a very brief look, and sprinted.

Selene took off about two strides before Buffy did, and shot through the hole as if from a bow.

Buffy ignored that and jumped cleanly through the same hole.

Selene was casually checking her weapons on the other side of the room. Buffy lightly rolled onto her feet and painfully ignored the little rip on the bottom of her jeans (from Madrid), and nodded at Selene, who just seemed to accept it and walk through the door.

"You've known other vampires with souls?" asked Selene quietly as they made their way to a lower section of the building where the bashing and crashing was coming from; down the stairs

"A few" said Buffy as she passed Selene down the hall onto the landing. They were keeping cover on each other by progressing corner-by-corner in turns.

"How did you know that they had souls?" Asked Selene as she approached the corridor's entrance, and then kept her back to the wall as she passed round the corner. She went down the first steps that led to the corner where they turned. Buffy passed her and went to the opposite side of the corner

"You just know, you know? You'd know when someone's evil"

Selene didn't answer, and crossed down the first half of the stairs

"So can your vampires stick to the ceiling?" Buffy asked, so quietly a human would have just heard a few sounds on a breath. Selene smiled very slightly

"Not often, only when they get a bad scare"

They, thought Buffy.

"You don't?" she asked, as they edged forward together to the banister to check the terrain below. There were five more storeys to go.

"Never tried," answered Selene, as they went abreast to go across the landing, "I always jump and have a weapon on me"

Buffy nodded, much like her own tactics. She'd found that the heavier silver and cast-iron stakes were better for throwing at things attacking her; she'd once thrown her cast-iron stake so hard it went through two demon's necks and stuck three-quarters of the way in another demon's temple, just as Kennedy had kicked him in the stomach. Kennedy hadn't appreciated it.

Then the floor swung downwards.

Buffy had a very strange sensation, she had reached to grab something to hold on to, but had found her arms pinned to her side, much like a dream when you try to run but can't and you only just realised. Then there was a thump.

Selene let go of Buffy on the first roll and allowed her to come to a stop on her own. This was when she hit the wall. Selene got up, and checked she still had her weapons. Buffy got up and they just shared a look to check they were OK, and Selene looked around

"We need to be somewhere else right now"

Oddly, the sounds hadn't ceased, the vibrations of whatever she was doing (which sounded like frantic bashing of something heavy in the foundations of the building), but she now knew where they were.

Selene looked down, and then beckoned Buffy over.

When they landed, Buffy let go of her grip around Selene's stomach and breathed deeply

"You've never jumped like that before?" asked Selene, amused

"I survived a few falls," said Buffy, glaring, "just not five storeys up with the ground rushing..."

Selene smiled and looked around her. Something odd had been catching her attention since she had got here, and it was just starting to make sense.

"Have you noticed something about the sounds?"

"What?"

'It's three sounds, repeated, listen'

To Buffy, it was just a noise, and then it started to become clear. It was three sounds, one big 'thunk' that happened once every so often, a regular smaller smash, and an intermittent metallic kind of bang.

They moved forward one step, on their way to opposite corners of the room, and then floor fell through.

Teenagers, the clinically insane, and people who really need help all have a strange kind of talent of pushing away those who could really help them. All you can do, most of the time, is be there for them to know that you're there to lean on. Psychologists call it 'Indirect Supportive Atmosphere'.

Sophie had seen as much pain as both Selene and Buffy, and had watched her friends disappear (and unfortunately, reappear, briefly) and had lived deep in her rage and terror for months, with an equally destructive adopted family, and then had received the Slayer visions (which didn't give her the same happy certainty the kid holding a baseball bat had experienced) with its torrent of slayer memories; their violent deaths, a mass of hard-boiled knowledge about killing demons and a very real need to kill them, and then came the strength and skill to do so. Add that to a genius mind that was particularly talented at traps, weapons and pain.

Buffy and Selene had both put her nervous energy and rather frightening enthusiasm for killing down to young-and-a-slayer kind of thing. They hadn't stood much chance in her funhouse of scares; Sophie had over-compensated her traps, determined that they should kill any demons (or preferably lots of them) as dead as they could go... in fairness, before the jump Buffy had been four steps up from a much worse than the one they were in now.

For now, though, they were trapped in a hole filled with water. It had lots of crosses on the sides and some rosaries on the bottom.

They had sunk about twenty feet before finding the bottom and kicking back up again. While Buffy struggled to get her breath back, Selene investigated. She wished Sophie wasn't quite so good; she had found the underwater stream that came from the nearby mountains, on which the warehouse used to run on, which now doubled as a storm drain.

Buffy, more practically, was figuring out that they couldn't escape. The walls were roughly round, wider then an arm-span, and laid in (worryingly neatly) was a thick layer of some very hard metal alloy.

Buffy had tried using her cast-iron spike, jamming it hard into the metal, but it was too brittle for such abuse and shattered. Unhelpfully, if Selene or Buffy tried to grip it hard enough to make some kind of escape by catapaulting off each other or similar, it would cut their hand in half.

There were a few minutes while they thought about what to do. And then the building collapsed.

Detritus, like pieces of glass, brick and wood, along with an amazing amount of dust.

"She took too much from the foundations" said Selene

There was a tense silence

"So, how did you and Michael meet?"

Selene wondered, much later, why she had answered.

"Like I told you, he's the human descendant of Michael Corvinus, and the Lycans were after him. I met him by coincidence on a hunting mission of two Lycans, who were there to get Michael. They opened fire on us in the middle of an underground station, in a full crowd. I caught up with Michael afterwards to interrogate him about why Lycans wanted him"

"And what did they want, with him I mean?" asked Buffy, who wondered if all English people left out the bits that made conversations make sense

Selene wondered if Buffy had attention-span problems

"He was the only one who could be made a hybrid; Lucian intended to make him a weapon, an ally" she added, with a deep, unreadable expression

Buffy felt the numbness starting to creep in and did the thing she knew English people didn't like; she pressed

"So… the Lycans were after him, but they didn't get him?"

"Lucian did, I was there a second too late, but he didn't become a hybrid until I knew what he was, and it was all I could do to save him at the time – Kraven, a traitor of the Covens, shot him full of silver, I think out of jealousy as much as orders"

"You were ordered to kill him, by who?"

Selene was quiet for a while. She contemplated not answering, until she heard Buffy's heart begin to work harder under the threat of pneumonia.

"Viktor... he was the biggest traitor of us all, the war started between him and Lucian, he thought he could finish it that night, but I killed him for lying to me and trying to kill Michael"

"I know what that's like," said Buffy, "I had a boyfriend that wasn't allowed, he's a vampire, but he has a soul…"

It had tortured her, changed her and hardened her. Selene saw it. She was impressed.

"I forgot I had one for a long time before Michael," said Selene, nearly sighing but controlling herself, "I looked at him once for a moment, when I first met him in the underground, but…"

"You changed" finished Buffy, Selene made eye contact and frowned a little

"You must have been very young"

"Sixteen," shrugged Buffy, "Juliette was younger"

"And those were different times," said Selene, musing, "I was twelve when my older sister was married, my father couldn't bear losing us, he insisted she stayed close, and when her husband died he immediately took her and her daughters back home. I had always looked after them both, and then I looked after them all… when Viktor killed them and took me, I didn't even think of myself as me, because I was them... and they were dead"

Buffy nodded.

"My mom died on the couch, ten minutes before I came home… I had to go tell my sister, Dawn, she couldn't stand, she was screaming and holding on to me so hard, I didn't know how there was anything there for her to hold, I co-uldnnn't fffeell…"

The two of them regarded each other for a moment, Selene's mask having melted and Buffy's defiance having cracked. Selene then pushed herself over to be behind her and wrapped both arms around her.

"Just hold on to your stake. My body temperature is a couple of degrees higher than a human's, which should at least keep pneumonia away for a bit longer"

"Hhhow long do you think tthey'll be?"

"We're underneath a collapsed, burning building,...the water will prevent Michael from sensing our heat, even with their combined strength it would take a long time for them to reach us, and then we'd have to attract their attention"

"Your typical day at the office," laughed Buffy, "llastt time I was in wwwater I died"

"You…?"

"Onnly for a minute," she said, grinning, "that was the first time,"

In the end Buffy had her head on Selene's shoulder, Selene used one arm to keep them both up feeling Buffy's heat-starved body suck the heat from her, it was an almost mortal feeling, she didn't enjoy it much and yet… she would gladly do it again.

She knew, however, that if someone, something, didn't arrive quick with some blood she was going to be shortening Buffy's odds. She'd tried for hours to keep her awake, and in a few moments when Selene was wondering if she should start asking her stupid questions like 'If you could have your life again, what would you have been?', and Buffy had fallen unconscious.

After a while, she tried shaking her again.

"Buffy, listen to me, focus, wake UP"

There was some reaction, but it was about as weak as her heart was becoming

"Tell me your mother's name"

"…?" you can't really describe a sound that isn't really a sound but still a question

"What is your mother's name?"

It took a few attempts, but it finally came out

"Joyce"

"Joyce who? Joyce who, stay with it!'

"…Summers'

"What's your sister's name?"

"… … Dawn... Summers"

"Right, who is your best friend?"

There was a long pause

"Buffy,' Selene demanded anxiously, "who is your best friend?"

"Willow"

"Willow who?"

But after that there were no more answers

Her heart was going dangerously slowly, and Selene was getting desperately thirsty

"How old were you when you became a Slayer?"

"The" said Buffy

"Hmm?"

"The Slayer… only one then…"

"You're going to have to explain that one, especially if it's a long story" she added

For people who have never come round from unconsciousness, it's like being half-awake, only most of your mind thinks it's still asleep. Noises, colours and shapes lose all meaning and yet your brain's being assaulted by them until certain neurons kick together and start making some sense out of them. I'd imagine it's like being born.

Selene first recognised something. It was just a blank her brain found because it was there, it made itself known. Then,

MICHAEL

There was a pause as she considered it longer

MICHAEL ALIVE

And then nuerons started kicking off

MICHAEL'S BREATHING

"Selene?"

That was odd

"Selene, c'mon, wake up, you don't want to miss this"

Selene opened her eyes and focused on his eyes. Michael helped her up and Selene's memories just didn't stretch much further than Buffy's voice

"Did I...?" she demanded in panic, grabbing his arms

"Only enough enough to survive"

"I didn't...!"

"Hey, hey, it's alright, you just sucked the wound on her shoulder, no teeth"

Selene sighed and relaxed, and then looked up again "Miss what?"

They walked across a corridor. Selene would have to ask later whose house this was. It was big and grand, and then the door at the end opened.

Sophie was on a table, a make-shift hospital bed. She was covered in bits of gauze, two different IV feeds, and Willow was on the other side of the table, eyes closed and muttering while holding Sophie's hand and Kennedy's in the other. Michael muttered something about giving her strength to speak.

Selene absently pulled a chair across with her and sat beside her. Sophie looked at her. It was an unreadable, ancient expression. Selene just answered it with one of her own.

"I understand what you did" she whispered

Sophie looked at her

"I understand how it feels, and the pain, all of it, I spent six hundred years doing what you did, I was just pointed at Lycans first, and had people around who taught me to care about rules"

"I've done so many bad things" whispered Sophie, so softly it was just a little breath of pain

"It's OK," she said, leaning closer, to whipser more quietly, even though no one in the room understood German, "do you think there's a God?"

Sophie's eyes flickered; Selene was astounded; there was still a tiny spark of hope still left

"Ja" But then there were barely perceptible tears in her eyes, they just reflected the light just slightly more, "but He won't want me"

"You think He wouldn't understand?"

Sophie didn't answer; she didn't know. More like, why should He?

"Well I know a prayer, if you said it I think it would help"

It took an hour for Sophie to learn the words. When Buffy came up the stairs, she leaned against the door and watched Sophie and Selene recite

"Engel Gottes, Beschützer mein,
lass mich dir empfohlen sein.
Tag und Nacht, ich bitte dich:
beschütz´, regier´ und leite mich.
Hilf mir leben, gut und fromm,
dass ich in den Himmel komm"

At that, there were small things said, and Sophie went.

Selene had got up and left without another word. Michael murmured to Buffy that she simply liked to be outside when she was upset. Buffy knew she would find her on the roof.

Michael came back an hour later, and was drinking from his coffee container.

"Is she okay?" asked Buffy, walking in

Michael finished his sip carefully and sighed

"She hasn't said anything, I'm not sure what's going on in her head"

"What d'you think's really getting her?" asked Buffy, sitting down, clutching a mug of tea.

"I think she just wanted to help her, but she already knew it was too late"

Buffy didn't answer. There were a lot of times she had thought it was too late for many of her friends. Repeatedly.

"You know, when I was first changed, into what I am,'"said Michael, "I thought I'd gone crazy, really crazy. There was... so much rage, I thought I'd kill myself by accident just trying to make sense of it, and then when I saw Viktor I just about remembered I had to kill him, and the whole thing got so quiet, so easy to focus. Then when Selene killed him, the first thing I remember feeling was the rage not going away, it just became different..."

"Well, that's just it, exactly," said Buffy, "when Mom was alive, and Dawn wasn't so mixed up in it, I just came home, and it was alright. I really thought I could just go home... later on, when the apocalypse was really bad, all my friends and Dawn told me to go, I saw they were scared and I was making it worse... I had a friend, Spike, he just wouldn't leave, and I swear to God, I could only think about how he loved me. Love saved us so many times; she just didn't have a chance..."

There was a long silence.

"I think the Lycans think it's the end of the world," said Michael, "they've been so hunted, and now a vampire's been made a hybrid, and I'm on her side, what are they supposed to think? I'm not even sure that kid believed us, I don't think they'll ever believe us"

Buffy looked at him, smiling a little

"You'd be surprised," she said warmly, "you two are the strongest people I've ever seen, you don't know what we've done with half the strength you have, and we did it just by doing it together... and you know, we have a lot of experience in that. Now we're doing this... truce thing, we can show you.'

Michael smiled. It was nice to have some optimism spoken out loud occasionally.

'I think Selene could do with some of that, why don't you go talk to her?'

When Buffy sat next to Selene on the turret of the castle-style house they were in, the mountains appeared to somehow be even higher.

"Michael's worried" she said

"I'm worried" said Selene

"You're not fighting alone anymore" said Buffy

"I honestly don't know how we're meant to make peace with two races that hate us for being what we are, and hate each other inconsolably. That boy is going to go around and either batter other leaders into submission, making Michael and I look like another Viktor, or he won't get them to listen... Sophie at least managed to think about something else than killing when she died... that's all Corvinus wanted, he just wanted us to stop fighting. I saw in his memories all the fights he'd been in and had to clean up after, centuries of it... he asked me to stop it"

"I saw that prayer you did with her"

"I know"

Buffy then nudged her with an elbow

"Well this was meant to be the point, wasn't it?" said Buffy, "You get allies, enough to make them listen, and they'll see you have Lycans on your truce, it's not all falling buildings"

"I'm sorry i took some of your blood"

'I think we're even"

There was a pause

"You know being in Sophie's Warehouse felt like being in one of those psycho-thriller movies"

"I think if Sophie had made everything she had in her head we'd have never got out alive, even with an army of slayers and Michael"

Came pretty close, thought Buffy

"How can you think you have no soul?" she demanded. Selene looked sharply at her.

"I knew why you were asking me about it in Sophie's Warehouse," said Buffy, meeting her gaze head-on "and I saw how Michael looked at you before we went in. You know what people are like when they don't have one, or at least one that works? They kill because they can, they hate things like hope, Christmas, Mom's apple pie, they feel bad to other people, your Viktor sounds like he was exactly like it – oh, they always have a reason, they always wanna look like they're right, and maybe sometimes they have a point, but God, you've had a soul for centuries, and it's still working... how it's doing that after all that can happen in one day makes me feel better. Angel only had one for a third of the time he was a vampire, and he can never be really happy, just for a minute. And you, you just refuse it, because you think if you enjoy being strong, being more than human, and loving someone, it makes you evil!"

Selene just exhaled out of her nose and looked away

"Well stop it now," said Buffy, "because you can't win if you don't deserve it, Michael already thinks you'll never get there, I can guess being with you for three years while you set yourself up for failure would do that to him, and he's like a demi-god! I faced gods, I killed one, and he's just a strong as them, and you are just weighing you both down!'

There was a silence, and Buffy walked back inside. She wondered if there was ever going to be a day when she didn't have to 'speechify' someone.

Buffy saw Michael and Selene jump down from the tower and land a good fifty feet away, and head off into the mountains, most likely for one of those talks.

Two hours later, which had been enough to catch up properly with Willow (and holding her hand to give her some strength back) after burying Sophie, and when they came back, Willow smiled.

"She's taken your point," she said, "she's got that look on her face"

Buffy sighed, "why is it always me who has to do the changing-perspective-speeching, why can't anyone do that themselves?"

"I guess you're fighting the forces of Darkness,'"smiled Willow, "even in super-hybrid hero types"

"Nnrr," groaned Buffy, "I hate being the Slayer"

"We're going to make a base in Germany, England and Italy," said Selene, "we're going to find Daniel, see how he's doing"

"Keep up the optimism," said Buffy, looking at Michael, "we'll call you if we need you"

'Keep safe' said Selene, and they left.

Giles walked in a few minutes later.

'Am I to understand that you managed to change the psychological profile of two demi-gods?'

Buffy rolled her eyes "It seems to be a growing part of my job – Giles, is there somewhere filled with demons? Lots of bust-em-dust-ems?"

"Umm, yes, plenty, Buffy, the supple is supposed to be fairly inexhaustable, why?"

Buffy held up her silver stake "I don't feel I've got to know this one well enough yet, and God I need it!"

Kennedy sat down on Willow's lap and whispered "If Selene stays any longer next time, we might have to put a calming spell on her"

"I did," said Willow, "the whole time"