AN: I'm ridiculously sorry this chapter is so late in coming. Life hasn't been the best at staying uncomplicated lately. Hopefully this will put to rest everyone's fears that the last chapter was the final one - I mean good lord people, do you really think I'd be that cruel? :P

Things were not well in Sunnydale.

It had been two months. Two months since Glory had tried to rip her way back home. Two months since Dawn had given her life to save the world. Two months since the slayer had broken.

Buffy herself had survived the death of her sister. Her will had not.

Slowly but surely Sunnydale was falling into chaos. With no slayer to stand guard the demons were becoming ever more bold. The last attack had happened in broad daylight at the university – practically Buffy's back yard. Giles, Willow, Xander – even Anya had tried everything to reach Buffy – to snap her back to reality. But nothing worked and things were growing desperate.

That's where the idea had come from really – desperation. Buffy was lost without Dawn and so logic dictated she would be well again if her sister returned. It had led Willow to investigating just what had happened to the Key.

There had been no body – Dawn had simply...disappeared. Giles had speculated, well out of Buffy's earshot of course, that the energy from the portals had simply vaporised the girl. But Willow had had other theories. And from those theories she had devised a plan.

“Osiris hear me!”

The wind whipped through the junkyard, swaying the tower above them dangerously. Anya, Xander and Tara looked on.

And Willow fought.

She fought the forces pulling at her – trying to exert control back over reality. She fought for her friends – she fought for Buffy but ultimately...ultimately she fought for Dawn.

“Osiris let her through!” she screamed, feeling the blood from the cuts on her arms ebb and flow. “Let her through!”

Very suddenly the world was filled with white and the air around their group became hot and caustic.

“Dawn! No!”

The voice echoed from near and far all at the same time and Willow struggled to remain standing as the wind whipped around her. Then – as suddenly as it had built, everything stopped. Willow fell to her knees as the energy left her – her magic fleeing and taking her strength with it. She knew though, before she hit the ground that she'd done it.

“Dawn!” Xander's voice cut into her lethargy and Willow looked up as Tara's arms came around her, supporting her. She almost cried with relief for the sight of Dawn in Xander's arms. She'd done it. She'd done it.

“Is she alive?” Anya asked with her customary bluntness and Willow found herself holding her breath for the split second it took Xander to answer.

“Yes, she's breathing,” he said, standing up – Dawn held safely in his arms. “We have to get her home.”

The group agreed wordlessly and Anya began packing up the remainders of the spell. Tara settled Willow on a crate before joining her to help.

From her perch Willow watched her friends work and caught her breath. It was a heady feeling – knowing what she'd just done. Through her will alone she had dragged Dawn back from another world. She had done what even Glory had struggled with and she felt...powerful.

It was with these thoughts in her head that she looked down and spied something glinting in the dirt at her feet. Something glinting gold. Leaning down she unearthed the object.

“Ready?” Xander asked, startling her out of her thoughts and Willow looked up and nodded as her friends gathered.

“Yep – let's go,” she said – leaning on Tara as she got to her feet, slipping the ring discreetly into her pocket as she went.

Dawn awoke steadily, her senses wobbling about drunkenly for a moment before falling into some semblance of order. The first thing she registered was the softness of a mattress beneath her – a sensation that jarred her at first. God, when exactly had she got used to sleeping on the hard ground? The second thing was the pain. Everything ached. She felt as though she'd been run over by something particularly large and vengeful.

She shifted experimentally only to immediately regret it as her muscles protested.

“Ow,” she ground out through clenched teeth only to freeze when something shifted suddenly in the dark beside her.

“Dawn?”

For a moment Dawn could only lay there. She must have hit her head harder than she thought. She must have because that couldn't be...it just couldn't...

“B-buffy?”

Very suddenly Dawn found her arms full of sobbing sister which didn't really help her aching body. Not that she could bring herself to care because this was Buffy. Buffy who protected her, Buffy who loved her. Buffy who she thought she'd never see again. In that moment Dawn felt everything come to a head. Being ripped from her family, the days and months of fighting, discovering old lives and yes, new ones as well. Suddenly everything felt so heavy in her chest and a very real sob escaped her before she even realised it was building.

It was just the beginning.

She didn't know when she went from holding Buffy to Buffy holding her – all she could remember was clutching so hard to her sister it must have hurt, slayer strength or no. And she remembered the reassurances – broken words Buffy whispered into her hair as she rocked her.

“It's okay. Everything's going to be okay – you're home now...you're home now...” Buffy soothed, her voice soft.

For some reason, it only made Dawn cry harder.

When she next awoke it was to an empty bed. Sunlight streamed through the window, casting an almost surreal glow over the familiar room – her room. Dawn could only sit for a moment, registering the cascade of nick-knacks around her – bits and pieces collected over the years. Six months ago this had been her sanctuary but something had obviously changed in her time away. Dawn no longer felt comfortable here, just vaguely nostalgic.

Shaking off the disconcerting feeling, she threw back the flowery bed-spread and rolled her feet out of bed. The oversized yummy sushi pyjamas were hardly surprising given that Buffy had probably been the one to dress her last night after...whatever had happened to bring her back. Even so, the novelty pattern seemed to be having the same effect as the rest of her room and so Dawn changed quickly, finding a plain cargo-pants and camisole top combo that felt a little less weird on her.

Stepping out onto the landing was like stepping into a dream. Everything was familiar and yet alien. Even the smells set her off balance. Cooking oil and flowers and dust... Dawn found herself automatically missing the smell of campfire smoke, leather and horses. The wood beneath her hand on the banister was too smooth and the carpet below her too soft. The whole world seemed built to make her head spin with the familiarity and yet discomfort. Dawn was almost happy to hear the voices coming from the lounge room – anything to distract. Then she heard what they were discussing.

“We don't know where she was,” Giles' voice floated up the stairs to her, the watcher sounding irate. “And we won't know until she wakes up again.”

“Is that such a good idea though?” Xander broke in. “Asking her I mean? Buffy said she was pretty shaken up-”

“She was torn back from another world using a resurrection spell,” Giles said roughly. “We're lucky that's all she is.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Willow's voice suddenly broke in angrily and Dawn took the opportunity to round the doorway into the lounge before the argument could start for real. Her appearance had the desired effect.

“Dawn!” Buffy said loudly, leaping to her feet. Thus began the all too familiar fuss-over-Dawn's-safety routine. Dawn was ushered into a seat on the couch, her claims that she was fine falling on deaf ears as Buffy re-arranged pillows and moved the coffee table to give her more leg room. Finally, once her sister was satisfied with her comfort Giles was given an opening to lean forward.

“How do you feel Dawn?” he asked, concern wrinkling his brow.

“I'm fine,” Dawn said, feeling like a looping record. “Really – the whole dimension hopping thing just took a bit out of me is all.”

The faces around her looked sceptical. All six of them. It seemed everyone had come out to see Dawn up and about. She was almost surprised Spike wasn't there.

Dawn swallowed.

"How long was I away?" she asked, directing her question at Buffy. It was the dreaded question of course. Dawn hadn't kept very good track of her time in Middle Earth but she knew approximates.

"Almost three months," her sister said, and it was very apparent just how hard those three months had been on the slayer.

Dawns brow furrowed.

"I was gone for longer than that," she said simply, regretting it a moment later when her sister's face seemed to grow even more concerned – quite a feat given the lines that were already grooving her forehead.

"How long?" Buffy asked.

"Well I'm pretty sure you guys owe me birthday presents," Dawn smiled wryly, trying to make light of the situation and failing abysmally.

Buffy's eyes widened as she did the math.

"Six months? You were gone over six months?" she said incredulously. Dawn nodded as Giles leaned forward.

"Time difference is not uncommon in dimensional travel," he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "We're lucky it wasn't any longer."

Dawn looked down at her hands, remembering the sensation of falling through heat. Giles didn't know how right he was.

"Dawn if you can try to remember exactly how long you were away it may give us an idea as to which dimension you were in,” Giles said with the air of someone seeing books in his future. “That is if it's documented of course."

Dawn opened her mouth to reply but Buffy beat her to it.

"What does it matter where she was," she said snappily. "She's home now - that's all that matters."

Dawn watched as Giles' lips thinned in a very familiar way. Here we go again, she thought.

"It matters because we don't know what sort of world Dawn was exposed to - what sort of environment we've now exposed our own world to," Giles said exasperatedly. "Dimensional magic is difficult for a reason, two worlds are never meant to meet -"

"You're saying I shouldn't have brought Dawn back?" Willow suddenly joined the fray and Dawn couldn't help but balk a little at the look Giles then turned on the witch.

"I'm saying you should have done your research,” he growled. “Not rushed into this like a rank amateur with a point to prove."

The room exploded with voices then and Dawn was treated to a first row seat to the argument that had been building as she'd first come down the stairs. Damn it all.

"Stop!" she yelled, leaping to her feet. "Just stop!"

Her yell had the effect of a whip crack. Very quickly Dawn had every pair of eyes in the room on her, except Willow who continued to glare at Giles.

“I did not survive everything I have just to come back here to you all fighting,” Dawn said angrily. Turning to Willow, she finally gained the witch's full attention as she spoke. “Willow, thank you for bringing me back. I know with every certainty I would have died if you hadn't.”

Ignoring Buffy's sharp intake of breath she continued.

“But Giles is right. It was a huge risk you took reaching into that world. There are things there that wouldn't do well to cross into ours.”

She didn't mention that she was probably one of them.

“We got lucky,” she continued, thinking of the ring. She hadn't felt it since she'd awoken and so assumed it had continued it's fall into Mount Doom in her absence. At least she hoped it had. Lord only knew what havoc it would wreak on a world not prepared for it. She looked to Giles. “I'll go through the research thing with you tomorrow,” she said. “For now, I'm going back to bed.”

She left a stunned silence in her wake until Xander finally spoke up.

“When did Dawn get all...” he struggled.

“Well spoken?” Giles offered.

“Well I was going to say British but that works too.”

The next day was spent with Giles at the magic shop, answering a seemingly never ending series of questions about what she was coming to label in her head the Middle Earth dimension.

Geography, species, history, culture – Giles noted every answer down with unerring attention to detail. Even if it wasn't a documented dimension, he'd enthused, it would be when they were finished. Dawn answered all his questions to the best of her ability, trying and failing to muster excitement at the task. After all, when all was said and done – for Giles this was a big new shiny discovery. For her it was simply a painful reminder of what she'd lost.

And she had lost.

With every new detail Giles dragged out of her, she found herself growing more and more despondent. At some point in her time away she'd grown used to the idea that she wouldn't be returning to Sunnydale. She'd accepted Middle Earth as her dimension of residence. It had become home. It had probably helped that with the addition of her old memories the place actually was.

She missed things in a way that was more than mere nostalgia. She missed the landscape and the breeze. The way the moon rose bigger and brighter than anything she'd ever seen and the fact she could see every star in the sky. And she missed her friends.

Aragorn, Gimli, Merry, Pippin...in such a short amount of time they had become so desperately irreplaceable in her heart. She missed Elrohir's jokes and Haldir's almost-smile he did when he was trying not to find something amusing. She missed Eowyn's voice and George's raspy laugh. And Legolas...oh god Legolas...

Dawn swallowed hard and dropped her gaze, focusing very attentively on the book open before her. So far she'd done well not to think about the elf. The memory of their first and only kiss was scorched into her mind with a painful clarity. There was little doubt in her that she had loved him...that she still did. It still hadn't sunk in that she would never see him again – it was the only thing that had kept her from breaking down.

“Dawn?” Gile's voice interrupted her thoughts and Dawn looked up with a slightly startled 'hmm?'.

“Rohan,” Giles repeated. “It was a human kingdom?”

Dawn nodded.

“Along with Gondor and the White Mountains when they still survived yes,” she said quietly. She watched as Giles nodded and adjusted his notes accordingly before leaning back in his chair and casting an eye over the sheet in front of him.

“Well this aught to be plenty to start with,” he said happily, flipping through his scrawled pages. His many, many scrawled pages. Dawn realised her mistake a split second before the puzzled frown took up on Giles' face.

“You were there approximately six months you say?” he enquired.

“Mmhmm,” Dawn said, trying and failing for an innocent tone.

“But this,” Giles looked up at her, tapping the papers before him. “This must be almost a lifetime of knowledge.”

“Ah...” Dawn stalled. “I'm a really quick learner?”

“Dawn-” Giles started but Dawn never let him finish, leaping up to grab her bag as she spoke loudly over him.

“Gosh darn is that the time?” she exclaimed. “Have to go! Sister thank-god-you're-not-dead bonding this afternoon!”

She practically left a cloud of dust in her wake.

That night saw Dawn tossing in bed, sleep not just eluding her but making 'nyah nyah' faces as it did. Three hours after turning out the lights her restlessness got the better of her and, throwing back her covers, she attacked her wardrobe. A pair of worn jeans, tank-top and doc-martins later she was digging around beneath her bed, coming up with a short dagger and a stake. The dagger slid into her boot while the stake found it's place in her waist band. A quick check in the mirror ensured that, with jacket, the weapon barely showed.

She didn't bother checking on Buffy – she'd been hearing her sister's snores all night. When Buffy slept she slept hard.

The latch on her window took a bit of jiggling to open but it slid out soundlessly when it finally did. Checking once more the coast was clear she slid out and into the night.

Spike was not having a good night.

He'd lost three rounds of poker forcing him to scrounge the butchers for his nightly meal. Pig's blood was all well and good but it'd really help if he had a microwave back at the crypt. He was halfway tempted to crash the slayer's residence and use hers – he might have if only the group weren't still all up in their Dawn's-back euphoria. He hadn't actually seen the nibblet himself yet. He told himself repeatedly it was because he didn't want to crash the party – big-bad's weren't brilliantly welcome at a white-hat celebration after all no matter how helpful they'd been at keeping the demon population down while the slayer was on hiatus in her own head. Truth be told though, his avoidance had less to do with any form of social niceties and more to do with the matter of the nibblet's last look at him – struggling atop the tower with Doc – struggling and failing.

Spike shook his head at the invading thoughts as he rounded the gates to his cemetery, plastic bag of goodies hefted in one hand while the other fished a cigarette from his coat pocket.

It wasn't his fault. T'was just the way things went. He'd taken a tumble and...well so had little sis. Three years ago it wouldn't have bloody mattered. Hell, he'd have probably celebrated in the slayer's pain. He couldn't rightly say what had changed though he knew the talk of others. He'd been slayer-whipped it was said. Gone soft for little blonde Buffy. Hell, maybe he had a bit. Lord knew his hate of her had turned into something else. But it wasn't the all of it.

Pain, suffering – he'd always delighted in the causing but he was a creature of habit – he got attached to people. Good people, evil people – apparently it didn't matter to his screwed up mind. He'd spent most of his formative vamp years attached at the hip to Angelus and Dru and now he'd gone and continued the tradition with the white-hats. In many ways it was bloody pathetic. In other's it had been a bit of a learning experience.

The slayer and her crew had always seemed squeaky clean to him. When one looked closer though, all sorts of nasty little human failings came to the fore. Jealousy, envy, addiction... Spike found it rather funny – that the fate of the human world was so often entrusted to a group barely able to deal with the issues inherent in their own little social circle. He had no doubt the Witch bringing little sis back had stirred up trouble aplenty. She'd been showing signs for a while now that her use of magic was becoming a little too easy for her. Spike knew Giles had noticed – poncy watcher missed very little and that was going to be bad news for Red because Spike had little doubt Giles would know exactly what the signs pointed to.

Magic addiction. Nasty bloody business.

Spike paused a moment at the door of his crypt as he struck a match and lit the fag dangling from his lips. It was in the moment of silence as he inhaled that he heard it.

Fists hitting flesh and a distant grunt of pain. Someone was having a throwdown – and in his cemetery no less. How bloody rude.

Pushing the door to his crypt in, Spike tossed his blood and extra ciggies onto the couch before turning towards the direction of the fighting, pulling the door shut behind him. It didn't take long to find the source of the noises. He'd worked out once the sound of the fight became clearer that it wasn't the slayer – it lacked the distinctive crashes of bodies flying into gravestones to be anyone particularly super-strong. His next thought was the whelp and his ex-demon. The more human members of the Slayer circle had taken to patrolling a bit when Buffy had taken a hiatus in her own head just after Dawn had taken the dive. What he found upon rounding the last mausoleum however had him choking on a cigarette for the first time in forty years.

It was Dawn. At least, the girl looked like Dawn. The fact she was wailing rather effectively on a six foot vampire made Spike double check despite himself. He watched as the girl ducked a blow by the growling vampire before her, using the opening to extend up and catch the creature a solid blow under his ribcage.

It wasn't a hard hit – without the impact of super-strength behind it the vampire recovered quickly but not quickly enough to stop the stake from thumping home. Spike watched the customary bafflement spread across the poor idiot's face before he burst into a shower of dust leaving just the girl. Dawn – and there could be no doubt it was her now – brushed down her jacket and pocketed her stake. Spike took the opportunity to step out from the shadows.

“Well nibblet,” he said casually, meandering toward her. “Learned a few new tricks I see.”

She jumped upon hearing him, swearing rather colourfully and Spike sniggered.

“God! Wear a bell!” she scolded.

In a way it was comforting to see her off balance – like the Dawn of old. Because it took only a look at the way the girl held herself to know her fighting skills weren't the only change to be had. This Dawn had a hardness to her, a sadness that spoke of more than just a few months fending for herself. Her innocence wasn't completely gone but it had taken a beating.

Spike inhaled the last of his cigarette before flicking it to the ground and toeing it into the earth with his boot before looking up and catching her eye.

“So,” he said. “Fancy a beer?”

Tara awoke to darkness and had to pause a moment to wonder what had disturbed her. The sound of rustling pages at the foot of the bed gave her the answer. Sitting up, she squinted at the meagre light filtering through the bedroom window from the street outside.

“Willow?” she said groggily and the pages stopped suddenly.

“Yeah?” Willow whispered haltingly a moment later.

“What're you doing?” Tara asked.

“Nothing,” Willow said in the dark. “Just some research. Go back to sleep, I'll come back to bed shortly.”

Tara nodded, almost back to sleep despite herself.

“Don't be long,” she said sleepily before falling back onto the pillows.

At the bottom of the bed, eyes spelled to see in the dark, Willow watched as her girlfriend's breathing evened out once more.

“I won't,” she said quietly, turning back to the text before her. “I won't. Almost there.”

The ring seemed to pulse in her hand.