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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry if the Italians a little off, I used a translator.
The simplest things can blow your whole world apart.

One single moment can change your whole future.

One seemingly unimportant choice can change everything.


A little over a week had passed since Spike and Angel had been in Rome, when it happened. Buffy was stood before the sink in her apartment, making her way through the large stacks of washing up that had been piling up due to neglect. It was a little past one o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and Buffy submersed herself in the mundane task, struggling to keep her mind occupied, so that there would be no place for any thoughts linking back to a certain blonde vampire. She sighed as the blue and white checkered wash cloth passed over the pattern on her new china plate.The soapy water had become tepid, so as she placed the now clean plate onto the draining board, she tipped a the tepid water out, before refilling it with hot. She then began wiping out a large mug.

Then the phone rang.

Something so decivingly innocent, a phone ringing. Yet it would be this phone call that started off a chain of events that could always be traced back to this moment. This simple concept that would blow the world apart. Blow Buffy's world apart.

This is the moment where everything changed.

Buffy threw off her lemon-yellow washing up gloves, and wiped her moist hands on her jeans, before reaching over to the cordless phone that was left on her kitchen counter.

"Hello?"


And so it began.





Buffy's car screeched out the apartment complex's carpark with hell on it's heels. Which wasn't unaccurate. The blonde woman drove haphazardly, while frantically making phone calls the entire way. As she pulled into a large white building's car park, she slammed the phone down (or she would have if the button hadn't been so damn small), and raced up to the entrace.

Five minutes later and she was screaming at the receptionist in Ospedale Generale S. Carlo, cursing both herself and the receptionist for their lack of understandig for eithers language. Finally, with the help of some illustrations and a kindly gentleman who happened to speak a little English, she found herself in an elevator travelling to the fifth floor.

As she travelled up, the stench of disinfectant only fueled her fear and the pit of dread in her stomach, terrified of what she might find on the other side of the large steel door. The elevator stopped at the fourth, and she smiled kindly, if a little shakily, to the old woman in a wheelchair who wheeled herself in.

Her hands shaking, she closed the door, and when it opened again she found herself on the fifth floor. She raced down the hallway until she was stoopd in front of room 118. She peered inside and saw a young boy with sandy hair, cleaving to a pretty girl with blonde hair, while a woman with dark hair and olive skin stood by the door. As she entered the room, she saw another boy with dark wiry hair and glasses, holding onto the hand of a brunette girl who was lieing motionless on the bed.

"Dawn." Buffy whispered, and it was only with the utterance of her name that everyone became aware of her presence. The boy at her bedside shot up immediately, and left the seat vacant for the American woman to sit in.

Buffy took the opportunityto sit down, and she clung onto the hand of the sister she had been gifted with just a few short years ago.

"What...what happened?" she asked, finally finding her voice.

"We do not know." said the dark haired woman, who Buffy recognised as Dawn's principal. Her voice was steady, but her hands were shaking. "This afternoon...they are playing the sports on the field. Then Dawn, she starts...grabbing at her head, and screaming. She fell onto the ground, and....there was much pain and noise. And she talks about....about demons and a spike and an angel. When it did not pass, we call for ambulanza, and the medici, they...calm her with medicine. She sleeps now." the woman tried to explain.

Buffy nodded, her eyes never moving from her sisters still form, and she vaguely registered a tear falling down her face.

"What did the doctors....uh, medici, say?" she asked, brushing a lock of heair from her sisters face.

"They wish to do scans on her head." the principal told her. "I am spaicente that I could not do more. You will have to excuse me, I am needed at the school. You will telephone me should anything change?"

"Yes." Buffy said. "Grazie for your help."

"Luca, Alessandra, Marco, siete liberi rimanere oggi con voi l'amico, ma a meno che qualche cosa cambi la speranza di I vederli indietro al tommorow della scuola." the principal addressed the three children in the room, before saying her farewells and departing.

Buffy's mind wandered to what the woman had said, about demons and a spike and an angel. Obviously she was talking about her demon ex-lovers, but why she had started shouting about them she had no idea, as well as the demons she was talking about.
The scene described to her was giving Buffy unwelcome flashbacks to the months before her mother died.

She remembered Dawn telling her about how her mother had collapsed, but it sounded a lot less violent than would had occured at her sister's school today. Praying desperately to many different gods, godesses and deities she hardly ever called upon, as well as sending an inward scowl to the Powers That Be, she asked not to be put through the pain she had dealt with when her mother got sick and eventually died.

Although Buffy was well aware that her sister probably didn't have a tumor or anything of the like, and what was happening to her was less than natural. It had been described to her in the past that Doyle and Cordelia's vision were often of a violent nature, and knew that perhaps that the burden may have been placed on the small, seemingly fragile shoulders of her sister. Inside she was screaming at the Powers for burdening another of the Summers women with something other than normal. Something that could prevent Dawn having the kind of life she might want, and swore that if Dawn had been given the sight, she would be having words next time she died.

Dawn's friends shifted uncomfortably, until Luca, the bespectacled boy with wiry hair offered to get her a coffee in fluent English. She looked up at him in surprise, unaware until then that she wasn't the only English-speaking person in the room. Ignoring the first question, Buffy instead asked what the principal had said to them before she left.

"She said that she understands if we do not return to school this afternoon, but hopes to see us tomorrow." he explained. "Would you like a coffee?" he repeated the question.

"Please." she nodded, and noticed that the young couple also left with him. A moment later she heard a tiny whimper coming from her sister.

"Dawn?" she asked. The young girl shifted her head, and her eyes fluttered open.

"Buffy?" she asked weakley.
"I'll call the doctor." she said, pressing the call button.

"What happened?" Dawn asked.

"You don't remember?" Dawn shook her head. "You collapsed at school. Started taking about Spike and Angel, and screaming. You don't remember?" Dans brow furrowed as she began to remember, before her eyes widened. She sat up in bed suddenly, and grabbed onto her sister's arm.

"Oh God! Buffy, they're in trouble. There was this huge battle, and it was just four of them against thusands, Buffy you have to help them! Go to L.A., please!" she begged.

"Not until you're well. Do you know when it happened, or when it's happening?" she asked.

"Soon. Buffy, you have to go, there's not much...." she was cut off as the doctor entered the room, and began asking questions about what Dawn remembered. Wisely, the young girl kept any talk of demons out of her conversation, and just described a very sudden, painful headache that the doctor signed off as a violent migraine, checked for a concussion of any kind from her fall, before subscibing her medication and expressing his wishes to keep her over night for observation, and taking a few scans of her head. Dawn relayed the information to her sister, who had become fluent in Italian during their short months spent in the country.

Buffy accepted everything that was being said. The doctor left the room, and Dawn requested some time alone with her sister. As the door closed, Dawn turned her eyes to her sister.

"Buffy, you have to go to them. If not for them, then for me. Please?" she asked. Buffy shook her head.

"Look, I know you're concerned, but this may amount to nothing. You've just been thinking a lot about them lately, what with the impromptu visit."

"No! It's not! Buffy, I saw them, and they're going to die! We have to help them!" she exclaimed.

"Okay, okay. I'll call Giles, see if he can get in contact with Wesley or someone, find out what's happening. But....." she began but was cut off by her younger sibling.

"Too late. It'll be too late. Buffy, you have to call the other Slayers, we need to move now. Before it's too late." Noticing the undecisive look on her sisters face, she made one last desperate attempt. "Spike would've done it. Spike would've believed me." she sulked.

Buffy's eyes narrowed at her younger sister.

"That was below the belt." she said.

"Please. Just go. Mount up. I'll be fine. Andrew'll look after me, or Dante....."

"Dante's in New York. For another week. This won't take that long."

"So you're going then?" Dawn asked, and Buffy realised her slip.

"No...."

"But you just said...." Buffy took in her sisters wide eyes, glistening with tears. "Please." she whispered. "I never got a chance to say I'm sorry. And if you don't go...." Buffy felt her resolve crumble, and nodded.

"Okay. We'll go. Mount up, the works. I just...." she was cut off by the appearance of Andrew, who came in lugging a bunch of flowers, a balloon, grapes and a deck of cards.

"Hi! You're okay!" he exclaimed, and gave her a hug, after thrusting his purchases onto Buffy. "I brought my Yu-Gi-Oh cards, I thought we could play, if you're feeling better. And look, flowers, 'cause they smell nice, and hospitals don't, and grapes, 'cause Mr. Giles says you should always give sick people...."

"Andrew!" Buffy cut him off, before dropping the assortment of presents on the bed. "I'm going to have to take off for a few days. Something's come up in L.A.Can you look after her Dawn?" At Dawn's disgruntles snort, Buffy quickly changed her wording before Dawn could complain. "I mean, uh, keep an eye on her."

"This is so not fair, you get to guy and kick bad guy ass, and I get stuck with Andrew. I'm the one who had the god damn vision!" she pouted, ans Buffy kissed her forehead.

"Don't worry. If he gets too annoying you can gag him again. Or kill him, whatever." she said, sharing a private smile at Andrew's strangled gasp. "I'll be back soo, okay?" Dawn nodded. "I love you."

"I love you too." The last thing Buffy heard before leaving the room and high tailing it to the airport was Andrew's excited screch.

"You got a vision! That is so cool!"

Yes, everything had changed since that one phone call this morning.



spaicente means sorry, ambluanza means ambulance, and medici means doctors. Hope you enjoyed, please review!





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