But a steady hand blocked his way.  Giles looked over to see Dawn shaking her head.

            "No, Giles – leave her." Her eyes took on a faraway look, "It's almost time, we're just waiting for Spike's decision, then the last Choice will be made."

            Giles found himself disagreeing in a strangled voice, he never would have guessed he'd actually miss the Vampire, "No, Spike is … is gone." He gestured to the dust littering the Initiative floor and scattered around his Slayer.

            "He's dead.  Like her." A little of the dazed look left his eyes as they took on a bit of their steel, "Adam – he killed Spike."

            Dawn smiled at him sadly, "Yes, I know."

            Just then Glory hit Adam with a resounding smack and he wheeled backwards from her backhanded blow.

            Glory pumped a fist into the air and cried triumphantly, "Yes!" and Dawn turned her eyes from Giles to watch the scene, still speaking to him but with her attention focused on the turning of the battle.

            "But it was Spike's decision to die, and my power was not meant for attack or defence.  Adam's shield has failed, and he will pay what the Powers demand of him." 

            Glory was laughing manically, with a swift kick she brought Adam to his knees, and effortlessly reached over and picked him up, hoisting him above her head like a trophy.  Calling to her minions beyond the unfinished portal, she roared, "Followers!  Your Goddess frees you, devour this stinking world!"

            And with that she threw Adam into the portal.  Giles watched with horror as his sheer bulk, threaded with the remainder of green power still circling his being, snapped the last strings that prevented her dimension from crossing the gate.  The expression on Adam's face, he remembered later, was confusion, mixed with swift regret.  Giles watched as he fell towards the hungry hoards, and heard snapping as they ripped him apart.

            No longer able to stand, Giles sank to the floor, still tearless, to lie beside the fallen body of his Slayer.  Far too often Watchers had survived where their charges had died, this time, he thought thankfully, he wouldn't have to live though that torture.

            But beside him he heard a thin whisper from Dawn's lips, and felt rather then saw her raise her arms over her head, just as Glory began to reach forward through the portal, to take the hand of the first being to cross that dimensional boundary. 

            With a confident cry, Dawn lifted her voice as she shouted across the dimensions, "The Choice has been made!  The Prophecy will continue!  Rise then, my Warriors, and take up your swords!"

            For a moment, nothing happened.

            Then Giles realized that Glory's hands had not yet moved, that a dust speck rising in front of him, glinting with the light from the portal, was stationary, and he found himself in that place between time, where movement was paced so slowly that the mind had time to wander.  He wondered if this was death was like, and if he was about to die.

            But then there was movement.  Backwards movement.  Before him, where Buffy lay in sprawl on the Initiative floor, the blood that still seeped from her grievous wound even in this timeless place, stopped.  Slowly, ever slowly, it seemed to flow backwards, gathering at her neck and not leaking out from it.

            At the same moment, the dust speck that had so caught his attention also reversed its almost invisible flow of movement.  Reeling away from him, the dust speck gathered others hanging almost motionless in the air and together they shifted silently to hover over the form of his Slayer, her life's blood now gathered entirely at her wound.

            Giles tried to blink in disbelief, but found he couldn't move.  The only movement in this place was in the form of the two being before him.  For slowly the dust from the air gathered into a vaguely humanoid form.  As the blood bubbled back into the body of his Slayer, so did the Vampire who loved her take shape above her body.  The dust coalesced into the shape of bones and skin, and a dark grey ribbon of power could be seen interweaving through his form.  Just then a bright ribbon of gold sparkles appeared around his Slayer, spreading from her midsection out, and as it wove through her body Giles knew it was enhancing it with Slayer strength and speed, just at the Vampire power ran itself through Spike, its glittering power just as powerful as hers, though somehow more subdued.

            And then Giles noticed something interesting.  Around her midsection, from which the thread of Slayer power had emanated, so to could a dark grey dim sparkle be seen.  In a tight bundle it met the sparkling golden energy of Slayer power and seemed to welcome it as a lover, twining together the grey and gold ribbons, coalescing into a tiny form.  The new colour it emitted was not merely a mix of the two energies, but an entirely new product all its own – purely silver, it sparkled with the light of a thousand suns, and Giles knew that its power would endure beyond the realm of this life.  Something powerful had been created when Slayer and Vampire combined, and if he did not know what it was, he did know that he would protect it till the end of his days.  

            Then suddenly, just as the breath of time had whispered, so too did it shout; with a snap that he felt in his bones, Giles heard Glory scream in hideous pain as the blood on her fingers boiled when she brushed it against the portal it had created.  Her arms seemed frozen in place, fingertips licking the molten surface of the rip in space, and unused to true terror, the hell god screamed again.

            But a new movement before him caught his eye.  With a might breath, Buffy Summers drew in her new life's air, and atop her the vampire known as Spike sat up and looked around.  Giles stared in wide-eyed fascination as his Slayer pushed herself up off the cold floor, and caught the eyes of the Vampire who loved her.  They're expressions softened for a moment, then nodded as both Warriors picked themselves off the tiles to stand, side-by-side, facing the being that had killed them both when it spilled the Slayer's blood.

            Behind him, Giles knew that Dawn was smiling, but he couldn't have turned his head to look at her even if he'd wanted too.  His gaze was frozen on the two figures before him, and his voice caught in his throat as Buffy spoke.

            "You know, you should really check the warranty on these inter-dimensional portals before you open them – read the fine print that says it only works when the sacrifice remains dead."

            Glory stared at her, shocked, confused, and in terrible pain.  Her hands were burnt and blackened, but still they hung, no longer under her control, in the portal they had opened.  "Please," she whispered, a word she had never uttered so in her life, "help me."

            Compassion filled Buffy's gaze for a moment, and even Spike's wavered.  Together they stepped behind the hell-god as Spike uttered his first words, "I think justice is best served by one's own people – let your minions deal with their failed god."

            In one motion they kicked the terrified woman simultaneously in the back, breaking the control of the portal and shoving her through its rough embrace.  As her hands passed its boundaries and she fell into the waiting hordes of her people, its strings leapt to find their severed ends, and the portal snapped shut before them.

            The Slayer and her Vampire watched the portal close.  With a nod of satisfaction, they turned to face the people who loved them, who had delayed so their Choices could be made.  A ringing laugh sounded from behind Giles as Dawn leapt towards her sister, all traces of the ancient being gone as she was once again a fourteen-year old girl, throwing her arms around Buffy and gathering Spike into the folds of her hug. 

            The spell on Giles was broken, with a strangled sob he fell forwards on his knees, the tears he had never spilt shuddering from him in painful relief.