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Disclaimer: Characters from Angel: the Series are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.

This story is a remix, done for Round 2 of the Circle of Friends Remix, of “Little Sister” by Evil Little Dog (with additional influences from the same author’s stories “Hear the Falling Snow” and “Living Arrangements”).

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The thing nobody ever told you about military transport planes was that they were loud. And rattle-y. And cold. In the movies, there would be some background noise to give you the sense of powerful engines, but other than that — and the olive-drab or camo décor — you might think the people were on a passenger liner.

Nuh-uh. Dawn had never before flown on any plane that made her feel more like … well, like she’d felt when she was standing at the top of Glory’s ramshackle tower in Sunnydale, wondering if the whole assemblage would fall out from under her before she had time to die of blood loss. This thing shook and rumbled and lurched (and occasionally simply dropped ten or eighty feet before catching itself), making it clear to its human cargo that the sky was allowing them transit but with poor and limited grace.

Oh, and one other thing to add to the overall pleasure of the experience: the hundred-and-some Slayers had been crammed into the C-17 Globemaster so tightly that those facing one another in the two double rows of aluminum-and-canvas seats had to interlace their knees to fit. ‘Claustrophobic’ was hardly sufficient to describe it … but there was no way, no way on this earth, that Dawn would ever admit how desperately she wanted to be out of this. Not after she’d fought so hard to convince them to include her.

“Holdin’ up okay, squirt?” Faith’s grin was as sassy and insolent as ever, and the tone of voice matched. It was her knees that bracketed Dawn’s (and vice-versa), which was closer than Dawn would have preferred, and another thing she wasn’t about to admit. Nonetheless, the question itself was an actual question, not a challenge, and Dawn quelled the reflexive bristling that had practically been a default setting for more than four years now, meaning — effectively — her entire life, which likewise meant that in a way it was based on nothing.

“I’m freezing,” she told Faith, clipped and flat but without, she hoped, any hostility. “Can’t they keep this thing warm enough to sustain human life?”

Faith waved it away. “You’ll warm up once we’re dirtside. ’Sides, before we took off I can remember you bitchin’ about how hot you were.”

“That was then,” Dawn returned. “And I was hot. And this is now, and I’m cold.”

“Yeah, sucks ta be you.” Faith leaned toward her. “Here, lemme check you over again.”

Dawn drew back in her seat, which action produced … what, four inches of extra room between them? “I’ve been right here for the last three hours,” she told the dark Slayer, holding her impatience in check. “Nothing’s changed, trust me.”

“You got up to use the bucket behind the curtain,” Faith pointed out (meaning the C-17’s minimal toilet facilities). “Somethin’ mighta shifted or dropped, and I’m not takin’ the heat B would lay on me if anything happened to you. Pipe down and it’ll be over faster.”

Dawn shut her mouth, sat still, and waited for Faith to go through the routine yet again. Like the Slayers sardine-packed around her, she was festooned with weapons. Hers, however, were mainly modern hardware: an S&W .41 Magnum revolver on either hip, a slung AA-12 automatic combat shotgun with a twenty-round drum of 12-gauge cartridges, four fragmentation grenades clipped to her web gear. Only the twin butterfly swords, in back-mounted sheaths, were evocative of the weaponry she had grown up watching her sister wield, and it had been made stringently and repeatedly clear to her that these were strictly for the direst of last resorts. Not that she needed much convincing; she’d put in her time with edged steel, but she didn’t kid herself about how she stacked up in terms of relative lethality.

Also unlike the Slayers, she was armored. Some of the girls had Kevlar vests, the lighter versions that could be worn under clothing by police officers or civilian-garbed government agents: adequate protection against blades, claws, fangs, or mandibles, they didn’t interfere with flexibility or quickness of movement. By contrast, Dawn had a full military ballistic vest, complete with inset ceramic plates and shoulder pauldrons (and only the threat of a shrieking tantrum had enabled her to veto the crotch flap), topped by a Marine LWH helmet. The entire kit dragged at her shoulders, gave her a constant low-grade headache … and, yes, until the plane had reached cruising altitude and the chill had begun to set in, had made her sweat like a Texas oil-field roustabout. Now the sweat was just making her colder.

“Okay, all good,” Faith announced, and likewise sat back. “You know the plan: stick by me when we hit the ground, do what I say, keep an eye on what’s happenin’ around us but always watch me and don’t let anything get between us.” She nodded toward Dawn’s weaponry. “That heavy metal you’re cartin’ —”

“Strictly self-defense,” Dawn filled in. “I’m not part of the attack team, I understand that. Slayers do the fighting, I’m just along for the ride.” She hefted the shotgun. “This, and you, are so Buffy will let me be there. Trust me, I understand the program.”

“Good on ya,” Faith said. She adjusted her own armament (more grenades, stakes in an actual bandolier slanting across her chest, an enormous claymore, and — if Dawn correctly remembered the ordnance lectures — an AT-4 rocket launcher) and resettled herself in her seat. “You did your deal in the ’Dale, you got experience in holdin’ up your end when things get hairy. Stay with that, we’re solid.”

That could almost have been taken as approval, and only past experience with Faith made Dawn question the impression. “Sorry you got stuck with me,” she offered.

Faith’s face shifted to the masklike absence of expression that usually meant there was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about. The dark Slayer glanced around, checking the nearest of their seatmates. Some were actually asleep, three wore earbuds for iPods or MP3 players (and one was listening with her eyes closed, so she might be sleeping as well), and one was engrossed in some game on her PSP. So far the two of them had been speaking in a near-murmur just loud enough to carry above the plane’s background noise … but they both knew that, surrounded by individuals with Slayer hearing, there wasn’t really any such thing as a private conversation. Faith seemed to reach a decision. “Red said these things’d be good for about half a day,” she said, reaching for a flap pocket on her tac vest. “I was gonna wait till just before we jumped, but —” She tore open the Velcro flap, dipped in a couple of fingers, and came out with a pair of rings in some blue metal or mineral: lapis lazuli, Dawn realized as the other girl passed over one of them. “Try that on,” Faith ordered briskly.

Dawn checked the ring. The surface was polished smooth, as much by age as by design, and by the C-17’s interior lighting she could barely see the outlines of characters in pre-Islamic “Khat-e-Mikhi” Persian. The ring seemed a bit large for her, so she tried it on the middle finger of her left hand. That fit well enough. “What are these for?” she asked.

“Personal commo,” Faith replied … except her lips hadn’t moved, and there was a peculiar, unreal clarity to the ‘voice’ Dawn was hearing. “Extra little trick, ’case anything separates us or we need to plan something without tippin’ anybody off.” She studied the ring on her own finger, nodded toward Dawn. “Check yours. Don’t try to … um, to project your thoughts, this ain’t telepathy: use your throat ’n’ tongue just like you were talkin’, but keep the words inside your mouth.”

Dawn thought about it. Like this?, she asked, and heard it come out in the same not-quite-right sound she’d heard from Faith.

“Comin’ through five by five,” the other girl returned. “Okay, now that we ain’t broadcastin’ to the sisterhood here, let’s be straight: I’m not stuck with you. I didn’t ask for this, ’cause I didn’t know about it till B offered it to me, but I was fine with it.” Faith shrugged. “She’s trustin’ me, and I ain’t about to turn my back on that. So you can rest easy, I’m where I wanna be.”

That raised one of Dawn’s eyebrows. “Joined at the hip with me, instead of in the bloodiest middle of the biggest fight in sight, ripping ogres apart bare-handed?”

Faith grinned at her. “C’mon, you’re gonna make me all nostalgic.” She shook her head. “There’ll be plenty of gore ta go around, guarantee it. An’ we’re not hangin’ back, too many of the Slayer visions said you had ta be close at hand when we hit the, what they call it, epicenter? We just won’t be drivin’ in on the cuttin’ edge. Six, ten feet behind that, maybe. I like bein’ spearhead, don’t get me wrong, but I ain’t a one-trick pony, either. We’ll follow close, mix it up with everything that comes in reach … you won’t be bored, an’ neither will I.”

Okay, that was reassuring, in its own scary, foreboding way, and Faith’s ‘tone’ through the magical closed-circuit communication was convincingly matter-of-fact. Dawn hadn’t expected anything like privacy in the middle of a transport plane, but she had some experience in adjusting to abruptly changed circumstances. Falling in with the moment, she said to Faith, “I never got to tell you how sorry I was about Robin.”

Faith drew a breath, but her expression didn’t change. “Yeah, well. He was committed ta the mission, and all of us knew the odds against ever drawin’ an old-age pension.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if he’d’a wanted to live, anyway, tore up like he was. Kinda glad I didn’t have ta make the call on that.” She looked to Dawn. “Don’t even know if it really woulda worked out between us; we were still feelin’ our way through that part, and there were plenty’a fights along the way. Gotta give him credit for one thing, though: he’s the only guy could ever stand ta hang around with me for more’n a month or two.”

“Maybe he was the only one with enough stamina,” Dawn answered, and was pleased to see the quick, daredevil grin of old before Faith’s expression returned to its earlier self-control. “Anyway …” She shrugged, trailed off. Which felt a little weird, without any actual voice being involved, but weird was nothing new in her life.

In the new ‘silence’ between them, Dawn found herself thinking about the rings. Faith had mentioned what sounded like a time limit; was that hard-and-fast, like a countdown, or a general average, with the limit extended if there were long periods of lesser communication? It probably didn’t matter, it was deeply unlikely that they would need more than half a day, but it was her nature to wonder about such things. As combat to Faith, so curiosity to Dawn: part of the structure that made her who she was.

“Far as sorry goes,” Faith said (and, yes, it was still through their private channel), “I never really got around to apologizin’ to you.”

Dawn regarded her with steady eyes. There might be a number of different answers, but only one question. “Yeah? For what, exactly?”

“Take your pick.” Faith made a ‘whatever’ shrug. “I guess it’d start with darin’ you to shoplift that lipstick for me … what was it, ‘Harlot’?”

“That … that was kind of cool, actually,” Dawn said. “It was like, this was something we shared, you know?”

“Yeah.” Faith’s face was bleak. “And that’s why. Not settin’ a bad example, but actin’ like I cared about you when I was already workin’ myself into not caring. ’Cause I’d started in with Hizzoner by then, and I could see how things were shapin’. Knew that, even if we didn’t wind up killin’ you, we’d pretty much have to kill Buffy before it was all over.”

“Oh.” Dawn thought about it. “Huh. I never thought about it like that. But, you know what? Back then, between people always telling me they cared, but acting like I was this huge pain, and somebody who didn’t care but made me think she did? The second one hurt a lot less.”

“Shit.” Faith looked disturbed rather than angry. “Apology don’t work so well when you won’t take it serious.”

Dawn’s legs felt like they were getting ready to cramp, sandwiched as they were with Faith’s and the girl sitting next to her (Karinna? that sounded right), but there was nothing to be done about that, so she just tried to push it to the back of her mind. “Look, I know how bad things were for you, okay? And I know how bad were the things you did. But I was twelve, my priorities were all over the place. I can remember being more mad at Buffy for, well, everything, than I was about anything you did. Not saying it was right — crazy self-centered, that’s pretty obvious now — but it kept me protected as far as feelings went.”

Faith looked away. “And when I came back, eight months later? cold-cocked Joyce, tied you and her up together, threatened to slice up the both’a you, an’ tried to kill Buffy all over again? Nothin’ about that bothered you?”

“Yeah, actually.” Dawn kept her eyes on the Slayer’s face until finally Faith looked directly at her again. “I could see how much you hated yourself. Like you’d set fire to the whole world just to make sure you burned, too. That freaked me out pretty bad.”

(Which was true, but not the whole truth. The knife at Joyce Summers’ throat had appeared in Dawn’s nightmares for years afterward, and the grudge that went with that memory was long from fading. Faith had worked hard for her redemption, though, and Dawn wasn’t about to dismiss or diminish that for the sake of something so far in the past that … well.)

“Huh.” Faith’s eyes didn’t waver again, but the gaze behind them was somewhere else. “Didn’t know it showed. Hell, back then I didn’t know it yet myself. Few days after that, I took a hard try at suicide-by-Angel, so I guess it wasn’t that far under the surface. Right then, though, I thought everything was goin’ according to plan.”

Dawn raised an eyebrow at that. “I didn’t know you did plans.”

Faith’s mouth twitched in what might have turned into a smile if she had allowed it. “Didn’t say I was the one came up with it.”

“Right.” The sling of the combat shotgun had somehow begun to rub against her neck; Dawn adjusted it to ride outside the raised collar of her body armor. “But, now we’re on the subject? I never could work out how the fiendish plan-that-wasn’t-yours involved taking me out for spicy wings at the Bronze, while you were in Buffy’s body.”

The reckless grin was back, though Faith’s eyes still held a veiled subcurrent of caution. “So they told you about the body-switch, huh? I always figured they’d keep that one to themselves.”

“Please,” Dawn scoffed. “I was the one who told them. And probably would have taken twice as long to convince them, if not for Tara.”

Faith regarded her with long, considered appraisal. “Smart kid. Smart enough I didn’t even catch on that you knew, and I was mondo paranoid back then.” She shrugged. “So how’d you work it out? You acted like you were havin’ a good time.”

“I was,” Dawn agreed. “That was part of it: Buffy never took me to the Bronze, and hardly ever was that nice to me. I thought it was just post-traumatic stress relief, her being all extra-affectionate because some crazy woman with a knife had threatened to kill me. But then you called me ‘squirt’.” Faith’s eyes narrowed, and Dawn nodded. “Nobody else ever did that, and I couldn’t see Buffy trying to imitate you on that one, especially not after what had just happened. Once I started paying attention … well, you strut. Buffy doesn’t.”

Faith sighed. “An’ I was tryin’ so hard to tone that down.” She shook her head slowly. “Musta done okay, ’cause nobody else caught on. But you did. All these years, I never knew it was you saw through me. How ’bout that.”

“Trust me, I’m used to being underestimated.” Dawn allowed a smirk to show. “I take advantage of it, just like Buffy always did when she had to throw down with some big oogly demon.”

Faith nodded. “Yeah, well. I know you been shown’ serious chops lately, but I guess you were always pretty sharp.” She eyed Dawn thoughtfully. “Did I hear right that it was you kicked off this whole show?”

Dawn considered the question. “Sort of yes, and sort of not exactly.” Subvocalizing to ‘talk’ through the rings had become so natural that by now she was barely giving any attention to the process. “I was about to fly out — Buffy had said she’d take me shopping at that ginormous Mall of America in Minnesota — and I stopped by Giles’ office to leave him my itinerary. He was on the phone with Angel, I know because he called Angel by name, and he cut the call short when he saw me but I really think he was just using me as an excuse …” She bit her lip, drew a breath. “He was lying, Faith. Saying Willow was on some astral plane and Buffy was holding radio silence while she closed in on this temple in Sumatra … Angel had called to give him a heads-up or maybe to ask for help, and Giles was lying to him. And I know about the whole deal with Wolfram & Hart, and I know the report Andrew made when he brought Dana back and, okay, the business with the Circle of the Black Thorn doesn’t sound good at all …”

She gestured helplessly. “I know Giles has reasons for everything he does. And he always puts our best interests ahead of everything else. We trust him with our lives all the time, and we’ve never been wrong. But it … it bothered me. So when Buffy picked me up at the airport in Cleveland, I asked her if she’d heard anything about that, and she’d had a Slayer dream about bad stuff in Los Angeles just that morning, and by the time we got to Slayer Central she was getting dream reports from other girls, and five hours later we’re in the air.” She looked to Faith. “So no, I wouldn’t exactly say I started all this, but maybe I got things in motion a little faster than they’d have happened without me.”

Faith sat silent, weighing Dawn’s words. “I never was big on the dreams myself,” she said at last. “Some when I was in stir, some while they had me parked on the coma ward at Sunnydale General, an’ those maybe weren’t really Slayer dreams. The girls that have ’em, though, I’ve learned to pay attention.” She quirked an eyebrow at Dawn. “B seems ta feel the same way, which is good for you — ’least, for you gettin’ ta ride along — ’cause otherwise you’d be workin’ commo back at the main house.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dawn agreed.

“So tell me again about the gal with the blue hair,” Faith prompted. “The dreams say she’ll be fightin’ alongside Angel, but we still hafta be ready to unload on her if things go twisty?”

“Nobody knows for sure,” Dawn told her. “And remember, all this was happening at once: gathering intel, rounding up and picking out the right weapons, pulling together transport, and trying to consolidate and interpret the dreams. Willow says she thinks this is an Old One, and maybe me being there at the right moment will let her take control of the bad guys’ portals and shut down any reinforcements they’d be getting. That’s one theory, anyhow. You don’t want to be taking chances with an Old One, though — ‘Their ways are not our ways’ — so Buffy wanted to be sure we could switch tactics fast if we had to.”

Faith was nodding. “Which’ll be why B got herself zapped ahead to scope the situation an’ mark an LZ for us, and why Red’s hangin’ back doin’ psychic overwatch, ready to teleport in an’ go all vein-y on Big Blue if everything goes to crap.”

Dawn smiled at that. “You can say ‘shit’ in front of me.”

“Can,” Faith agreed. “Doesn’t mean I gotta.” She regarded Dawn with a faint frown, more speculative than disapproving. “She’s puttin’ a lotta trust in you. Me, too, I guess. Buffy.”

Dawn shrugged. “Slayer dreams are low-grade prophecy. You don’t mess with those. If they say I need to be there, that’s where I have to be.”

“B nut-kicks prophecies alla time,” Faith scoffed. “Gotta be more to it than that. Even if it’s ta save a city, she’s sendin’ you into a beachhead situation. That ain’t small beer.”

“Some things …” Dawn groped for words, again an odd feeling when she wasn’t actually using her voice. “You just know they have to be a certain way, okay? Three years ago I watched Buffy dive into a portal I was supposed to close. Watched her die for me, die in my place. Now we’re seeing more portals, and again it looks like I can be the … can be what shuts them off.” Her mouth tightened in determination. “Nobody’s going to die this time because I wasn’t there to do my part.”

The tiny frown was back. “Portals, right,” Faith mused. “So is this about you an’ the whole Key biz?”

Dawn stared, then recovered. “And that,” she said, “is something I didn’t know you knew.”

Faith grinned at her. “An’ I won’t be tellin’ you how I found out, either. Let’s just say, pillow talk from somebody who shoulda known better.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down very much,” Dawn complained.

“Ooo, snap,” Faith laughed. “Which, knowin’ me, you can’t even narrow down to gender.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll be leaving that conversation for another day.” Or never. “But if you know about the Key thing, know what’s bound up in that, you can see why me being on the scene might be a game-changer.”

“Makes sense,” Faith agreed.

Another silence fell … relatively speaking. The plane still bucked and creaked. A steady boop-boop-beep emanated from the gamer-girl’s PSP. Up and down the length of the double-seating row Dawn occupied, she could see different Slayers beginning to stir, shift, gradually transition from one state to another. They must be getting close, and combat instincts were unhurriedly coming into focus. Though never with so many at once, Dawn had witnessed the phenomenon before, and understood what it meant. Battle was near, maybe half an hour away, maybe less.

Still using the subvocalization that let her speak through the rings, Dawn asked Faith, “Why did you take me to the Bronze?” At Faith’s sharp upward glance, she went on. “I’ve wondered about that for years. You’d switched bodies with Buffy, knocked her out, turned her over to the police — and that should have tipped me off right there, Buffy would know cops could never hold a Slayer — you’d scored solid, you could have done anything you wanted. So why waste time on me?”

Faith’s expression started to drift back toward the old sullenness. “Just figured I’d show the kid a good time,” she mumbled. (Yes, through mystical communication that skipped past the use of lips, she mumbled.) “What’s the big deal?”

“Because I never could understand it.” Dawn fixed the other girl with the imploring gaze that, when she was thirteen or fourteen, had worked so well on those closest to her. “Spending time with me, there was nothing in it for you. It didn’t make any sense, and it still doesn’t. Like I said, you could have done anything you wanted. Instead —”

“That was what I wanted.” Faith leaned toward her. “Look, squirt, I was kinda crazy then, but not so crazy I’d try ta kill you one second ’n’ then go all chummy with you as soon as you didn’t know it was Bad Faith you were talkin’ to.” She shook her head. “Breakin’ in, threatenin’ you and your mom, that was strategy. Hit B where she lived, rattle her, throw her off stride so I could use Hizzonner’s doohickey to make the body-swap.

“I didn’t just want outta my life,” she went on, more slowly. “I wanted Buffy’s. Her friends, her Watcher … her family.”

“Oh,” Dawn said. “I … I didn’t know it mattered to you. I mean, I always thought you were just the coolest thing ever — you and Spike could have been so totally bad-ass as a team, except he wasn’t around back then — you’d call me ‘squirt’ or ‘brat’ and laugh at me over boy-bands, and the shopping trip where you got me to hook the lipstick for you was, like, the highlight of my month. But you were always so casual, I never realized you cared about any of that.”

“Somebody knows you want somethin’?” Faith pointed out. “That’s somethin’ they can take away from you. Gospel accordin’ to Faith. I was never gonna show I cared, not to anybody. But it mattered. It did.” Her eyes flicked to Dawn’s. “You remember Christmas?”

“When we got snowfall out of nowhere?” Dawn nodded. “Yes, I remember.”

“B had invited me over,” Faith said. “I knew good ’n’ well Joyce had pushed her inta that, but I dropped by anyhow. Then some deal spun up with Angel and she had ta take off — she never did come clean on what that was all about — an’ I was s’posed to stay in case he came back …” She stopped, shaking her head impatiently. “Anyways, I stayed. An’ Joyce gave me nog, an’ you were goin’ on about your new friend Janice … B hadn’t come home, we knew somethin’ was goin’ on, but we all sat around actin’ like everything was Christmassy. You fell asleep on the couch, me ’n’ Joyce kept sluggin’ down coffee and pretending we weren’t worried. An’ then it was time for the sun to come up … ’cept it didn’t.”

“Because of the snow,” Dawn supplied.

“Uh-huh. So I went out on the porch to make sure those weren’t hellflakes fallin’ — I mean, Christ, we were in Sunnydale, you never know — an’ Joyce came out to stand next to me, like … like …” She shrugged. “She said we should go back in, it was kinda cold, but I told her I’d stay out there for awhile. Truth is, livin’ in the land’a fruits ’n’ nuts, I hadn’t noticed how much I’d got to missin’ sharp weather.” She looked to Dawn. “You remember what happened then?”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “She woke me up, and had me put on a jacket — she’d got a shawl for herself — and we took one of Buffy’s sweaters out to you.”

“It looked like cotton candy,” Faith said. “Pink and light and … fine … I was scared ta touch it, ’fraid it’d shred on my skin or somethin’. But you gave it to me, and Joyce was watchin’ with one of those Don’t you dare say no looks …” Her eyes locked with Dawn’s. “And then she hugged me, and whispered, ‘Merry Christmas’, and we stood out on that stupid porch watching that stupid snow come driftin’ down —”

The memory was as sharp and painful as a spear thrust, and Dawn felt tears threaten to overflow. “Yeah,” she said. “Mom was like that.”

“And that’s why I treated you to spicy wings,” Faith finished. “ ’Cause, no matter how pathetic it makes me out ta be, that was one’a the happiest moments of my life, and you’d been part of it.”

The stirring readiness had been growing, spreading, filtering back to where the two of them sat. Some of the Slayers had already unlocked their seat belts, while others rested their hands on the buckles, ready to move at a second’s notice. Not long now. “The thing about that Christmas,” Dawn said to Faith, “the thing about that memory … well …”

And the other girl’s eyes were suddenly fierce. “You about to pull some of that Key crap on me?” she demanded. “Tell me how none’a that happened, it wasn’t real, you weren’t real till, what, three-four years ago? ’Cause if that’s what you’re about ta say, you can cram it straight back into No Fuckin’ Way.”

“Those memories,” Dawn insisted, “they were created, manufactured —”

“And they’re mine,” Faith broke in. “Mine. Nobody takes that away from me. Not any asshole monks, not the Powers That Be, and not you. You try it again, we got problems, capisce?”

Dawn stared at her. “God,” she said, “you are so butch.”

“Better believe it,” Faith told her. “I stick with what I’m good at.”

Toward the tail of the plane, someone called happily, “Party time, bitches!”, and everyone tried to stand up at once. Burdened as she was, it took Dawn longer, accelerated when Faith grabbed the front of her vest and hoisted her upright with negligent ease. “Joyce was good people,” she was saying to Dawn. “The way we remember her is all we got now, so I don’t want anybody messin’ with that.”

“Okay, okay,” Dawn said. “I get the message.” Slayers were shifting toward the rear of the C-17, and Dawn and Faith climbed up on the seats to let them pass.

“I laid awake at Stockton, rememberin’ that Christmas,” Faith went on. “What I’d had, an’ what I threw away. Didn’t want to forget, wanted ta make sure I never did that to myself again. That’s one’a the things I hold onto. I had something then, the closest I’d ever got to a family —”

“And now you have a bigger one.” Dawn put her hand on Faith’s shoulder. “And I’m still part of it.”

The dark Slayer’s face worked with visible emotion, but she forced it into control. “If you say so, I won’t argue,” she said … which, for Faith, was practically gooey. “C’mon, time to strap up.”

There was a rumbling from the rear of the plane, and a shriek of rushing air rose to compete with the noise of the engines. “What the hell is that?” Dawn screamed over the unexpected new sound, the mystical private channel with Faith forgotten.

“They’re lowerin’ the loading ramp,” Faith called back. “We’ll go out that way, get us all into the air faster.” She hefted a massive parachute pack with one hand, spun Dawn around with the other. “Buckle in, squirt.”

Obediently Dawn reached back, found the straps, locked the chute to the harness she was already wearing. “Out the back?” she protested. “Jesus, I thought only Delta Force did that!”

Faith grinned. “Delta Force are Cub Scouts. We’re the major leagues!”

Together they moved toward the rear of the plane. Yes, the loading ramp was down, and Dawn could see the diamond cobweb of L.A.’s lights filling part of the gap. Nearly half the Slayers were already gone, and others went out as she watched: some intent, silent, focused, some charging down the ramp to leap out with howling war cries. “Hold up,” Faith said. “I got this big, lumpy backpack I gotta put on.”

There was never any way Buffy would have allowed her sister to drop unattended through hostile airspace, so it was a tandem chute Dawn was wearing. Those were designed so that the two people sharing it (usually a skydiving student and instructor) would go down facing the same way, one looking over the other’s shoulder. This one, however, had been modified so the two of them would fall back-to-back, ready to engage any enemies in a full 360-degree field of view. Dawn stopped, leaning back slightly, and felt Faith slide into her own straps, buckle and tighten them … and then straighten, shouldering the chute, Dawn and all, like a single enormous rucksack.

She had laid the AT-4 on the seats while she was donning her ‘gear’, and now in the corner of her eye Dawn saw her reach out to pick it up. “Ready to catch some air, squirt?” Faith called back to her.

“All set,” Dawn wheezed, feet dangling. “But you’d better stow the rocket launcher till we reach the ground. We don’t know it’ll work against an Old One, but —”

“Ah, this ain’t for Smurfette,” Faith laughed. “Didn’t ya hear? Some’a the dreams showed a dragon, an’ I’m all set ta toast me some Smaug-crispies!”

They were moving suddenly, Dawn’s stomach lurching in protest against the abrupt, disorienting vertigo. “Dragons?” she shrieked. “Nobody mentioned dragaa-a-aah—!”

Then Faith had sprinted down the ramp and launched the two of them out the back of the C-17 with an ear-splitting whoop of exultation, and together they fell to join their sisters in the night sky.

– end –

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