It was a dark and stormy night...

Well, not really. It should have been a dark and stormy night; he'd have had some warning. If it was dark and stormy night instead of a nice sunny day in mid April, he'd never have answered the door for the tiny girl with the long blonde hair.

He and Lisa had just moved to this nice quiet town, with their four-month-old daughter Melody. They'd wanted to get out of the city, go somewhere safer for their little girl to grow up.

She'd seemed... nice. The blonde girl. Someone from the community association or something, a `welcome to the neighbourhood' kind of girl. He'd flung the door open wide. "Hi there!" he'd said with a grin. "I'm Jack Gallagher! It's great to meet you." A little overenthusiastic, maybe, but he'd just been so excited. Their first house, and now their first neighbour.

She'd smiled sadly then, and he knows now she knew in about half an hour he'd hate her. "My name is Buffy Summers," she'd said softly. "May I come in?"

Well, they'd been safe in suburbia, a hundred neighbours within a few feet, solid people who'd come by if they heard screaming, and really, what could one little blonde girl do? "Of course. Come on in." He'd glanced behind her, seen someone sitting in a car with fully tinted windows. "Does your, uh, friend want to come in, too?"

"No, he's not a people person." She'd stepped through the entryway "Are your wife and your daughter home?"

And maybe he should have sensed something, figured out that this girl was a little off, but even if he had, he wouldn't have given it a second thought. Safe in the suburbs. Far from the madding crowd. All those things the realtor had told them as they'd looked through the house.

"Sure, I'll just go get them, I think Melody woke up from her nap." He'd rushed up the stairs, told his wife about the nice new neighbour, and they both came down the stairs. He'd cradled Melody against his chest, giving in to that old protective instinct that Lisa had always been too independent to tolerate.

They`d settled in the living room, Lisa had grabbed drinks, and over big glasses of ice tea, Buffy Summers had ended their world.

"I'm sorry... what?" Lisa had been the first to recover. He'd still been sitting there, idly rubbing his hand up and down Melody's back as he tried to understand what he'd just heard.

"A Slayer," the woman had said simply. "There used to be only one, well, two, but now... now there's lots. It's a long story."

"You're wrong," He'd said woodenly. "You're wrong, and beyond that, you're crazy." He'd looked up at her, hated the sympathetic expression on her face, the way he knew she wanted to reach over and pat his arm. Comfort him, as if she could. "There's no such thing as vampires. There's no such thing as little girls who kill vampires, and I want you to get the hell out of my house."

"Listen, Mr. Gallagher," and at least she'd had the sense not to use his first name. He might have tried to kill had she presumed. "I know you don't want to hear this. Melody's one of the few we discovered before she started showing really obvious signs. But there's some. She's four months old, right?"

"Yes," Lisa said softly. "Four months yesterday."

"I bet she's way beyond the learning curve for a four month old infant, isn't she?" she'd asked. "Incredible reflexes, she was focusing by the time you left the hospital, she can already pull herself up and stand, and you think she'll be walking by the end of the week."

"Every parent thinks that," he'd growled.

"Yeah, but you guys are right. Melody is ahead of the growth curve. When it comes to physical stuff, she always will be. It's part of the deal. Better reflexes, faster reaction time. And she's strong." The woman attempted a smile. "Just watch the first time she wants out of her crib and you say no. She'll break the bars."

"Because she's some little girl warrior chosen to fight the things that go bump in the night," Lisa had said grimly. "I just don't understand."

"It's not easy," the woman had said softly, and this time she did reach out and pat Lisa's arm. "It's hard to deal with. My mother... I don't think she ever quite accepted it all."

Silence, as they tried to imagine being the parents of a girl who killed things at night. It wasn't a happy thought.

Miss Summers had broken the silence. "Look. We have this rule."

"We?" He'd asked. "Who the hell is `we'?"

"The Council of Watchers. We, uh, train the Slayers, and really I'm doing this wrong, so please just let me finish and I'll leave you a number where you can reach me, okay?"

"Fine." He'd stopped the urge to slap her, the urge to hurt her, but not snapping at her was beyond him.

"We leave all the girls to be raise by their parents until they're six. After that, we have a program to help them deal with the life they're going to be living."

"You're going to take her away from us?" Lisa had said, and he'd clutched Melody even harder, waking her up and making her cry.

"No, never." The woman looked nervous as the little girl started crying. "Look, I'll give you a night to, um, absorb this as much as you can. I'll be back tomorrow evening, and I'll show you that vampires exist. I'll try to do a better job of explaining it then."

He'd had the presence of mind to hand Melody over to Lisa and walk Miss Summers to the door. He'd pulled it open, waited for her to step outside.

He and Lisa had been up all night, and they figured that maybe Miss Summers wasn't insane, and maybe Melody was special. And it sounded like there might be something in it for Melody in the end. So as long as the woman didn't suggest taking Melody from them or just killing her, they were willing to listen.

In the morning they called her, and she came by in the evening. The guy got out of the car, flashed his fangs at them. A vampire. With a soul. Named Angel.

After the little demo, she'd come inside. Explained that Melody would be all theirs until she was six, then The Council would pay for them to come to England for a month every summer so she could be trained.

She had to be trained, because the girls who weren't trained were found by the bad guys. They were made into weapons, or foot soldiers, bodyguards to the demons they were supposed to fight. And eventually, other Slayers would end up having to kill them.

A Watcher would move to wherever they chose to live when Melody was twelve. After that, no more summers in England. The Watcher, who would be a retired Slayer, nine times out of ten, would take over all the training.

More stuff, like safe houses, should the bad guys ever discover Melody was a Slayer and come to kill her. A safe place. And he'd laughed so hard when she'd said that, laughed until he realized he wasn't laughing anymore but sobbing and Lisa was wrapping long arms around him, holding him tightly as Buffy Summers stood, dropped a book on the table.

"Everything you'll need to know is in there. A little history if you want to explain the situation to her, some safety tips, and numbers where you can reach The Council."

They'd had to use a safe house. Once.

They'd lived in the house Buffy Summers had found them in for eight years. Eight years, two summers of training, three thousand days of unreality as Melody grew up, got faster, got stronger, had to be told not to hit kids because she'd break their bones.

And he'd hoped that maybe they could keep this house forever. None of the supposed bad guys had shown up at their door, and while they didn't hang a flag from the roof that said "young Slayer in residence here", they'd decided not to hide the truth from Melody.

So they weren't being stealthy, and maybe they had gotten too comfortable, leaving Melody's weapon chest in the living room, not hiding the fencing classes and self defense classes, the kick boxing and the Tai Chi.

Which was probably why, one night, and again, not a dark and stormy night, a perfectly calm night in October, some demon had ripped down their front door and gone on a hunt for Melody.

Lisa had tried to stop him, shrieking a battle scream as she rushed the demon, wielding Melody's katana, but she was clumsy and slow, and the demon was made of something akin to concrete.

He'd grabbed her and torn her head off. In front of him, searching the weapon chest in the living room, in front of Melody, cowering at the top of the stairs.

Lisa hadn't screamed, hadn't made a sound since the battle cry. He'd screamed, of course, screamed and roared and pounded on the demon thing with Melody's softball bat.

But Melody had killed it. She'd grabbed the katana from Lisa's hand, wrapped both hands around the handle, screamed something like "Hai!" and slashed through the demon's midsection.

It fell, and dissolved. Melody stared at the spot where it had stood, stared at her mother's body, and he'd been unable to move, unable to think. Sensory overload, or something.

Then she'd crumbled, fell down and sobbed. "Mommy," she'd wailed. "Mommy, mommy, mommy," like when she'd been three and skinned her knee, when she'd cry even as they'd stared, fascinated, as it healed.

And he'd raced over to her, cradled her like he had the night Buffy Summers had warned them about the life in store for them, held her so tightly that had she been like any other little girl, he would have hurt her. Tried to protect her from the bad guys, but it was too late. The bad guys had gotten them.

He'd walked up the stairs, dialed the safe house numbers that had sat in their bedside table, forgotten for years.

Trotting Melody off to grief counseling, and training, and a school nearby with a bunch of understanding teachers who had apparently handled several little girls whose parents had died in mysterious circumstances or just left.

And another fucking vampire with a soul. Really, you'd think they grew on trees, the way they kept popping up.

This one was nothing like Angel, though, not that he remembered much of Angel. This one cursed, and watched soccer, and smoked more than any one person needed to smoke.

Melody loved him. She loved him from the second he'd shown up with a crew to take Lisa's body away from the house, loved him from the first time he'd told her she'd been damned brave, killing the demon, loved him so much that Melody, never an affectionate child, had placed her hand in his and allowed herself to be led to a car.

Spike ordered him to pack up anything he wanted to save and get the hell in the car as well. Then he'd taken them to a hotel, where they waited three days until Lisa's funeral, eventually having to hold it at night because Melody wouldn't be separated from Spike.

Oh, he had some moments of jealousy. Lots actually. Moments when he wanted to tell Spike to stay the hell away from his daughter.

But he knew that Spike was better at this job than him. Something about Spike, about the way he handled the girls that drifted in and out of the house over that year, told him that Spike was pretty good at fixing something broken.

Buffy had been around a lot, that year. Angel, too. He was fascinated by the relationship between her and Spike, between her and Angel, between the three of them. They'd carved something freakish out of the freak world they lived in, and it made them happy. Like Lisa made him happy. Once.

He finally started calling Buffy by her first name the day they'd both ended up outside the counselor's office. She was waiting for Spike, and he was waiting for Melody.

"He's good at this," she said casually. He glanced over at her. "At taking care of people. Spike's a nurturer, I guess. Funny, considering the name, but he is."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Melody adores him."

She chuckled. "They all do. Spike's good at saving people, y'know? Angel's good at saving the world, so am I, but Spike's the only one who's any good at picking up the pieces." She glanced over at him. "I'm sorry about your wife. She was very sweet. Uh, the one time I met her, anyway."

"You said it might happen," he replied, tried to shrug it off, tried not to hear Lisa's battle cry, Melody's screams for her mother.

"It's tough. Melody is the first girl we've had here who actually saw one of her parents die. Like that, I mean. Lots of girls whose parents let in a stranger, lots more whose parents just dropped them by the house and said they were tired of the phone calls and the traveling, and they have four other kids to deal with." She looked at him askance. "Melody's the only one who seems to have come from a really happy home."

"Well, she did," he said. "Now she comes from a very fucked up home," and it's all your fault, but for some reason, he was too tired to force the accusation to the front of his mind and out of his mouth.

"Listen, Mr. Gallagher... if taking care of Melody ever gets to be too much..."

"I'm not handing her over to you," he said shortly. "So don't say anything else."

"Okay," she'd acquiesced.