New Fic
Title: Truth & Possibilities 1/?
Author: Appomattoxco
Rating: FRT violence and some strong language
Pairings: It will be Giles/Anya with Spike and Dawn friendships.
Summary: Very AU Post the episode “The Gift” The summer after Buffy dies, Giles and Anya find out more about Dawn and the Key.
A/N: This story is dedicated to LJS and Zanthinegirl. It’s beta by the wonderful JaneDavitt and Agilebrit is, as usua,l an invaluable sounding board.
Anya had started the week pleased with the world in general. She had an engagement ring in the pocket of a very flattering 1950s-style sun dress and a very nice lunch in front of her. Things couldn’t be better. Well, Xander could be there instead of bailing out his father. The ring could be on her finger, not in her pocket, and Buffy could’ve saved the world without jumping off the tower. She always tried her best to see the possibilities, but live with what was true. It was a holdover from her past life; the dimensional travelers’ version of living in the now. So Anya was reasonably happy even when her past showed up to interrupt lunch on Sunday.
“Hallie!” Anya got up from the table to hug her old friend, but Halfrek sat before she had a chance. “What are you doing in town?” Anya asked. “You look… famous?” Anya said, because it was the only nice she could think of to say. Her normally elegant friend was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with dark glasses and a ball cap. She looked like a star trying to avoid the paparazzi and succeeding in only being obvious.
Halfrek pulled her baseball cap lower. “Not so loud, Anya. This is an unauthorized teleport, I don’t have long.”
Hallie had Anya’s attention now; breaking rules like that got people dead. Anya should’ve remembered the other axiom; the past always comes back angry. “You came here without D’Hoffryn's permission? What’s so important?” Anya asked.
“I don’t work for him anymore, but that’s not important. You do still work for the Watcher, right?” Anya nodded, and Halfrek continued, “Don’t let him leave town. If he does go, go with him. Stick close to Rupert Giles and his family; the Hellmouth gets very unpleasant without him."
“The Hellmouth is always unpleasant; don’t tell me you suddenly care about that.”
“No offence, sweetie, but I really don’t, or I wouldn’t if your fate weren’t all tangled up with mine.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation. Giles is my employer; he tells me what to do, not the other way around. Besides, he wants to go back to England and Xander and Willow want him to go back. I don’t get much of a vote. And I doubt saying that a vengeance demon told me he needed to stay would matter much.”
“Then maybe you should think about changing the relationship. Don’t look so shocked, I’ve seen lots of possibilities, and the only good ones for either of us are tied to the Watcher and you. Stick with him and his kin, and we won't end up dead. See the possibilities and live the truth,” Halfrek said, and was gone before Anya could complain that she didn’t think Giles had any family.
888
Anya came to work on Monday after a sleepless night. Her mind had been too busy turning over possibilities she could only guess at now to sleep. Xander had snored away next to her and said nothing about the circles under her eyes the next morning or asked if her arm was still hurt.
Anya studied Giles as he turned on the lights. Grief was aging him so much that she just wanted to grab hold of him and tell him to cry and water his face before it dried up completely. It made him seem like a stranger, and the shop had a foreign feel because of it. Giles worked and patrolled more like a robot than the fake Buffy, and he avoided Dawn as much as he could. Anya wasn’t sure if this was because he blamed Dawn for her sister’s death or because he blamed himself for the girl being orphaned. Anya would’ve asked him about it, but he might have given her that angry look that made her knees weak or finally given into his grief so that she would have had to comfort him. Both of those possibilities made her guilty and uncomfortable. Instead of saying anything, she played with the ring box in her pocket and looked at the clock.
“You look tired; does your arm ache?” Giles asked, and Anya quickly took her hand out of her pocket to prove it hadn't been hurt on patrol the other night. “We’re slow on Mondays; you can take the day off if you need to.”
“I couldn’t do that. I’m saving for my- I mean, a dress, and I’m not tired, just bored!” Anya lied.
Giles sighed. “Why don’t you do something useful, then. Clean up under the checkout counter.”
“Do you really mean it?” Under the counter was a huge mess and Anya had been itching to organize it forever. It seemed everything there was no place for ended up there, but Giles always insisted he had a system.
“The pit, as you call it, needs to be put in order, doesn’t it?” The way he said it diminished some of Anya’s happiness at finally cleaning up the clutter. He sounded as if he no longer cared about his system.
“Well, stop cleaning the already spotless jars of toad tongue and help me decide what to throw away.”
“You don’t need my help for that. You're perfectly capable of deciding what to toss in the bin.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to do all the work myself,” she said, but started tossing catalogs. Beneath a free calendar and some flyers from the chamber of commerce there was a heavy, padded envelope dated a month ago that had never been opened. It was addressed to Giles and marked 'Private' with a red stamp. It had an English postmark so it was probably a gift from some relative that Giles had chosen to ignore. Xander always said it was best to ignore your relatives, but it had her curious. It could be something important that had been pushed aside in the aftermath of death and then swallowed by junk mail. “See! I do need your help. I can’t even open this to decide what to do with it.”
“Just toss it,” Giles said.
“But you haven’t even opened it yet! How do you know you don’t need whatever it is?”
“I know what it is, Anya; it’s too little and too late.”
“Oh… It's information on Glory,” It wasn’t a question; Anya could tell by the flat look on Giles’ face she was right.
“Hobson had information on the Key, but it’s of no importance now.”
“Maybe it is. I mean, just because there’s no lock anymore doesn’t mean that it’s not important to know. Dawn might have questions.” Anya thought that this could be the way to get Giles to face Dawn. Even with the others always fawning over her Anya had caught a look of pain on Dawn’s face when Giles avoided her.
“What good would knowing how Dawn was made do? It’s better just to let it lie, to believe the fiction now that the danger’s over.”
“It’s your job to know the truth.”
Giles tossed the dust rag aside. His eyes didn’t look flat or distant anymore and the skin on Anya’s arms took on the texture of orange peel. “I quit. If you want to open the damn thing go ahead,” he said.
“I can’t; it’s addressed to you. It would be a federal offence.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Giles said, snatching it from her hand. When he took the envelope and removed the leather bound book inside, years of training took over, though, and he opened the book carefully. He settled at the research table and Anya went to make him tea, even though it wasn’t her job. When she returned to the task of cleaning she felt a little more at home.
Anya had finished cleaning and was reminding a costumer to return soon with more money when Giles stood up. He looked very pale and when he took off his glasses he dropped them without noticing that they slid off the table to the floor. This seemed worse to her than the ‘Dear Lord!' of impending doom. She hurried over to him, stepping on his glasses in the process.
“Darn, I’m sorry! Are you all right, Giles? What’s happened?”
“You’ve smashed my glasses.”
“I know that, Giles. Sit down, I think you might be in some kind of shock. What in the world was in that book?”
“Buffy was convinced Dawn was made of her, but the first Slayer was created using the Key. It was the mystical similarities between them that closed the rift when Buffy… jumped.”
“That makes sense; Dawn looks much more like a half-sister than a clone.”
“Perceptive, as usual,” Giles muttered.
“I don’t get it, why would you be so upset over this? The monks didn’t screw up and use Graclore DNA did they? I always thought Dawn’s screech was inhuman- Oh, God, now we have to incinerate her, after all this trouble we went to keeping her alive! I think she actually likes me, Giles, I don’t think I can do it,” Anya said, close to tears.
“Dawn isn’t a Graclore, and she’s no danger to anyone. I was right; it's best if we leave this be. It’s better for everyone to go on as if the monks’ fiction were true. It’s close enough to it.”
“No, Giles, tell me who I am,” Dawn said. She was standing by the back door of the shop looking like her sister did before a battle.
Giles slowly walked over to Dawn. “You’re Buffy’s sister, and Joyce’s daughter, as well as the Key: the source of the Slayer,” he answered, in a low gentle voice that attempted to soothe. When he took hold of her hands Dawn folded them across her chest defiantly.
“That’s where I came in. Tell me the punch line to the cosmic joke that’s my life. What got you so afraid?”
Giles said gravely, “Dawn, I am your father.”
Anya and Dawn burst out laughing. “Giles, I don’t think Dawn really wanted you to tell a joke,” Anya said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“He doesn’t look like he’s joking, Anya.” Dawn said.
Anya said, “Well, he’s English, they never do.”
“I know this is a lot to take in, and I suppose we can do a blood test to be sure. It took years to construct the spell and all those false memories. The monks needed actual- They took a fetus from your mother in 1998. It was shortly after...”
“After you had ‘chocolate’ with mom? I’m going to need therapy! I came downstairs that night and saw you guys on the sofa --”
“You saw us kissing and ran back upstairs," Giles said dryly. "I hardly think you’re scarred for life.”
Anya said, “You had me scared when you found out, Giles; you’ve looked less traumatized over the end of the world.” There was a voice in Anya’s head that sounded a lot like Xander, or possibly Willow, telling her that was the wrong thing to say. She always wondered why those damn voices always waited until afterwards to speak up.
“It’s all right, the guy with a head full of stuff like teaching me to ride a bike doesn’t call or leave a note with the child support, and I’m okay. We can just forget it, I mean it -- I know you think it’s my fault, what happened, and it was. So just do what you want; get rid of the book.”
The brittle sound of Dawn’s voice made the hair on the back of Anya’s neck prickle. If she were still in the business her veins would be humming. Dawn was rejected and heartbroken. Hopefully Halfrek wasn’t still lurking around.
Giles reached up for his glasses, before recalling that they were broken, then tried to comfort Dawn. “Your sister’s death was inevitable; I don’t blame you for it.”
“Then why were you so un-thrilled that you just wanted to forget about me?”
“I know that your sister and the others have seen me as a parental figure of sorts, but I’m not fit for it. I never believed I was meant to have family. You have someone you remember as your father, and my first thought was that it was better to leave it that way.”
“What was your second thought?” Dawn asked hoarsely.
Anya said, “His second thought was, ‘Wow! I have an intelligent and beautiful daughter and I never once had to change a diaper.’ Isn’t that right, Giles?”
“That’s very close to what I’m thinking right now,” he said, almost to himself, studying Dawn’s face. “I can see Joyce in your eyes, and my mother’s cheekbones.”
The way Giles said this made the back of Anya’s eyes prickle; like watching a Lifetime movie at that time of the month. Dawn must’ve heard it, too, because she made a little sobbing sound and threw herself into Giles’ arms.
888
Two Weeks Later
Giles was over an hour late for movie night. He’d had an overseas call with a contact that might be able to solve the problem of gaining guardianship of Dawn. The blood tests proved he was her father but if he were to petition the court based on that it would appear that Joyce had been unfaithful. The idea didn’t sit well with him. So he was trying use old council contacts to falsify adoption papers. Smith had taken forever to get back to him tonight. Then, the pizza place didn’t have the pies ready, and he had to wait for them. The plan was for Spike and the ‘bot to do a quick sweep after sundown, and for everyone else to take a much needed night off. Tara and Willow were going out to see a movie, and he was supposed to supply the pizza and videos for everyone else.
Oddly enough, it was Anya who insisted that she and Xander join the party. It made Giles wonder if there was trouble between the couple. Anya wasn’t as vocal about wanting ‘alone time’ with Xander as she once was. She also seemed to have a proprietary interest in his new relationship with Dawn. It made an Anya sort of sense to him. She had been the first to know, and her support made him feel more confident about the whole thing. She and Dawn were the only ones besides himself who seemed to think the new information important at all. Willow and Xander had made a fuss at first but then accepted it in the same way they accepted Dawn’s mystical origin. He thought that it might be a lingering part of the monks' spell as they all, including him, seemed to be taking the news remarkably calmly even though part of him knew that the revelation called for a less restrained reaction.
Of course, it could just be that Xander and Willow were steadfastly avoiding thinking about Joyce and him -- yes, well..
He knew when he stepped out of the car that something was wrong. Something in the air was making him tense. Xander met Giles at the door, for once completely ignoring the pizza he was ccarrying. “It’s about time you got here. We have trouble upstairs.”
“Dawn!” It wasn’t a question, and some detached part of his brain noted that although the trouble could be anyone or anything, somehow he had begun to think like a parent.
Xander nodded and said, “Anya says it’s magic but I don’t think so. Dawn was hearing voices and the phone ringing. Willow said that Dawn was having nightmares. Now she’s up in her room crying. Asking for her mom and dad --I’m not sure if she’s even asking for Hank or you. I think this might be some sort of breakdown.”
There was a crackle of magic in the air around the door to Dawn’s room. It wasn’t anything that Xander would recognize, but Anya was right; this was mystical. Dawn was sitting on the edge of her bed hugging the plush hedgehog he’d given her just yesterday. He’d gotten the ridiculous thing as a joke; he’d thought her too old for that sort of thing. She looked like a child right now, though, a very ill child. She was trembling and her face looked flushed with fever. Spike and Anya were both sitting with her, looking like worried bookends, not comfortable getting too near the energies around her, but wanting to protect her.
Anya said, “Look, Dawn, Giles is here. He’ll figure it out.” Giles rushed to her bedside when Dawn tried to get up and couldn’t. He didn’t even bother to kick things aside. If the CD were that important to Dawn it wouldn’t be on the floor.
When Dawn looked at him her tear-filled eyes had a ring of glowing green light around the irises. “My head hurts really bad. I’m not going to die like Mom did, am I?”
“No, Dawn, it isn’t like that. This is something I can fix. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”
“I feel kind of sick, too. Maybe it’s something simple. Can tea go bad? Willow fixed me some and it tasted awful but she said it would help me sleep, and I wanted to practice.”
“I should’ve bloody guessed,” Spike said, echoing Giles’ own thoughts.
“It’s not like that!” Xander said. “Willow told me about it when I tried to drink the stuff the other night. Dawn has been having nightmares. She just made a potion to get rid of them.”
“Xander, go downstairs and call Willow. Find out exactly what was in that tea,” Giles ordered, trying to keep the fear and anger out of his voice. “How long has this been going on, Dawn?”
“About a week? No, two? The first time was way before…. I’m sorry, Willow didn’t tell me it was magic. I just thought it was herb tea.” Dawn’s eyes were glowing even brighter now, and she sounded weak and confused, “I just wanted to practice.”
Giles said, “It probably was herbs, they are used in magic. Don’t worry, we’ll find a counteragent, and when you’ve had a night or two of natural sleep you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think so,” she whispered. "Hold on to me, I think I’m flying apart.” The room was suddenly engulfed in a green light and they were sucked through a vortex. When Xander returned, Dawn’s bed was gone and the room was empty. If it weren’t for the perfect circle scorched into the carpet, the four missing Scoobies might’ve enchanted the bed and taken off for a happy reenactment of a Disney movie.
888
Anya, Dawn, Spike, and Giles came to on the edge of a ravine. They had parted ways with the bed somewhere along the line. There were cactus-like plants growing up in the sandy earth between the rocks where they landed so everyone was scraped and bruised. Even the sky looked abused by the ground. It had that red color that anyone who’d ever seen an episode of the original Star Trek would have recognized.
“Is everyone all right? What happened?” Dawn asked.
“It looks like you got your Key on and beamed us to another dimension, Bit,” Spike said. “But at least the red sky doesn’t seem to burn yours truly and your eyes aren’t glowing anymore.”
“Do you feel any better?” Giles asked.
Dawn said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“That might not be such a good thing,” Anya pointed out. “Glowing eyes got us here; we might need them to go home.”
“Just great! I don’t care if it is my cultural heritage, once we get home I’m never drinking tea again,” Dawn said.
“Is that what you meant when you said you wanted to practice? You drank the yucky tea Willow gave you to be like Giles?” Anya asked.
”Yeah,” Dawn said kicking a stone. “That, and I wanted to stop waking up screaming.”
“You could’ve just took up football,” Spike said, and looked to the hills, then ran off saying, “I can hear someone crying.”
They caught up with Spike and found what was left of Dawn’s bed at the base of a tall rock formation. When it fell from the sky it had apparently knocked two climbers off the rock to land on the desert floor. A middle-aged human man with his neck broken and a boy about three or four years old.
“Hey now,” Spike said to the boy in the sort of voice he might’ve once used to calm Drusilla or catch prey. “Are you hurt? Can you tell me where your mum is?”
“Nothing can hurt me,” he said, as if stating the sky was blue, or in this case, red. “Father told me mother is in hell where monsters and whores belong.”
Giles wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by the matter-of-fact statement or by Spike’s plainly horrified expression.
“Oh, God, Oh, God!” Dawn sobbed. She was focused on the body of the man and hadn’t noticed the boy at all. The air around them went from red to a green color that was in no way festive. “I’ve killed somebody.”
“Dawn, listen to me,” Giles said. “This was not your fault; if anyone is responsible it’s Willow. Or, if you like, you can blame me for trusting someone so irresponsible with your care, but right now you need to calm down.” It was a futile attempt and Giles knew it. Telling somebody to calm down never worked, and often had the opposite effect, but what else could he do. At least Dawn’s upset meant that they were again huddled around her when the vortex appeared.
Author: Appomattoxco
Rating: FRT violence and some strong language
Pairings: It will be Giles/Anya with Spike and Dawn friendships.
Summary: Very AU Post the episode “The Gift” The summer after Buffy dies, Giles and Anya find out more about Dawn and the Key.
A/N: This story is dedicated to LJS and Zanthinegirl. It’s beta by the wonderful JaneDavitt and Agilebrit is, as usua,l an invaluable sounding board.
Anya had started the week pleased with the world in general. She had an engagement ring in the pocket of a very flattering 1950s-style sun dress and a very nice lunch in front of her. Things couldn’t be better. Well, Xander could be there instead of bailing out his father. The ring could be on her finger, not in her pocket, and Buffy could’ve saved the world without jumping off the tower. She always tried her best to see the possibilities, but live with what was true. It was a holdover from her past life; the dimensional travelers’ version of living in the now. So Anya was reasonably happy even when her past showed up to interrupt lunch on Sunday.
“Hallie!” Anya got up from the table to hug her old friend, but Halfrek sat before she had a chance. “What are you doing in town?” Anya asked. “You look… famous?” Anya said, because it was the only nice she could think of to say. Her normally elegant friend was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with dark glasses and a ball cap. She looked like a star trying to avoid the paparazzi and succeeding in only being obvious.
Halfrek pulled her baseball cap lower. “Not so loud, Anya. This is an unauthorized teleport, I don’t have long.”
Hallie had Anya’s attention now; breaking rules like that got people dead. Anya should’ve remembered the other axiom; the past always comes back angry. “You came here without D’Hoffryn's permission? What’s so important?” Anya asked.
“I don’t work for him anymore, but that’s not important. You do still work for the Watcher, right?” Anya nodded, and Halfrek continued, “Don’t let him leave town. If he does go, go with him. Stick close to Rupert Giles and his family; the Hellmouth gets very unpleasant without him."
“The Hellmouth is always unpleasant; don’t tell me you suddenly care about that.”
“No offence, sweetie, but I really don’t, or I wouldn’t if your fate weren’t all tangled up with mine.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation. Giles is my employer; he tells me what to do, not the other way around. Besides, he wants to go back to England and Xander and Willow want him to go back. I don’t get much of a vote. And I doubt saying that a vengeance demon told me he needed to stay would matter much.”
“Then maybe you should think about changing the relationship. Don’t look so shocked, I’ve seen lots of possibilities, and the only good ones for either of us are tied to the Watcher and you. Stick with him and his kin, and we won't end up dead. See the possibilities and live the truth,” Halfrek said, and was gone before Anya could complain that she didn’t think Giles had any family.
888
Anya came to work on Monday after a sleepless night. Her mind had been too busy turning over possibilities she could only guess at now to sleep. Xander had snored away next to her and said nothing about the circles under her eyes the next morning or asked if her arm was still hurt.
Anya studied Giles as he turned on the lights. Grief was aging him so much that she just wanted to grab hold of him and tell him to cry and water his face before it dried up completely. It made him seem like a stranger, and the shop had a foreign feel because of it. Giles worked and patrolled more like a robot than the fake Buffy, and he avoided Dawn as much as he could. Anya wasn’t sure if this was because he blamed Dawn for her sister’s death or because he blamed himself for the girl being orphaned. Anya would’ve asked him about it, but he might have given her that angry look that made her knees weak or finally given into his grief so that she would have had to comfort him. Both of those possibilities made her guilty and uncomfortable. Instead of saying anything, she played with the ring box in her pocket and looked at the clock.
“You look tired; does your arm ache?” Giles asked, and Anya quickly took her hand out of her pocket to prove it hadn't been hurt on patrol the other night. “We’re slow on Mondays; you can take the day off if you need to.”
“I couldn’t do that. I’m saving for my- I mean, a dress, and I’m not tired, just bored!” Anya lied.
Giles sighed. “Why don’t you do something useful, then. Clean up under the checkout counter.”
“Do you really mean it?” Under the counter was a huge mess and Anya had been itching to organize it forever. It seemed everything there was no place for ended up there, but Giles always insisted he had a system.
“The pit, as you call it, needs to be put in order, doesn’t it?” The way he said it diminished some of Anya’s happiness at finally cleaning up the clutter. He sounded as if he no longer cared about his system.
“Well, stop cleaning the already spotless jars of toad tongue and help me decide what to throw away.”
“You don’t need my help for that. You're perfectly capable of deciding what to toss in the bin.”
“That doesn’t mean I want to do all the work myself,” she said, but started tossing catalogs. Beneath a free calendar and some flyers from the chamber of commerce there was a heavy, padded envelope dated a month ago that had never been opened. It was addressed to Giles and marked 'Private' with a red stamp. It had an English postmark so it was probably a gift from some relative that Giles had chosen to ignore. Xander always said it was best to ignore your relatives, but it had her curious. It could be something important that had been pushed aside in the aftermath of death and then swallowed by junk mail. “See! I do need your help. I can’t even open this to decide what to do with it.”
“Just toss it,” Giles said.
“But you haven’t even opened it yet! How do you know you don’t need whatever it is?”
“I know what it is, Anya; it’s too little and too late.”
“Oh… It's information on Glory,” It wasn’t a question; Anya could tell by the flat look on Giles’ face she was right.
“Hobson had information on the Key, but it’s of no importance now.”
“Maybe it is. I mean, just because there’s no lock anymore doesn’t mean that it’s not important to know. Dawn might have questions.” Anya thought that this could be the way to get Giles to face Dawn. Even with the others always fawning over her Anya had caught a look of pain on Dawn’s face when Giles avoided her.
“What good would knowing how Dawn was made do? It’s better just to let it lie, to believe the fiction now that the danger’s over.”
“It’s your job to know the truth.”
Giles tossed the dust rag aside. His eyes didn’t look flat or distant anymore and the skin on Anya’s arms took on the texture of orange peel. “I quit. If you want to open the damn thing go ahead,” he said.
“I can’t; it’s addressed to you. It would be a federal offence.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Giles said, snatching it from her hand. When he took the envelope and removed the leather bound book inside, years of training took over, though, and he opened the book carefully. He settled at the research table and Anya went to make him tea, even though it wasn’t her job. When she returned to the task of cleaning she felt a little more at home.
Anya had finished cleaning and was reminding a costumer to return soon with more money when Giles stood up. He looked very pale and when he took off his glasses he dropped them without noticing that they slid off the table to the floor. This seemed worse to her than the ‘Dear Lord!' of impending doom. She hurried over to him, stepping on his glasses in the process.
“Darn, I’m sorry! Are you all right, Giles? What’s happened?”
“You’ve smashed my glasses.”
“I know that, Giles. Sit down, I think you might be in some kind of shock. What in the world was in that book?”
“Buffy was convinced Dawn was made of her, but the first Slayer was created using the Key. It was the mystical similarities between them that closed the rift when Buffy… jumped.”
“That makes sense; Dawn looks much more like a half-sister than a clone.”
“Perceptive, as usual,” Giles muttered.
“I don’t get it, why would you be so upset over this? The monks didn’t screw up and use Graclore DNA did they? I always thought Dawn’s screech was inhuman- Oh, God, now we have to incinerate her, after all this trouble we went to keeping her alive! I think she actually likes me, Giles, I don’t think I can do it,” Anya said, close to tears.
“Dawn isn’t a Graclore, and she’s no danger to anyone. I was right; it's best if we leave this be. It’s better for everyone to go on as if the monks’ fiction were true. It’s close enough to it.”
“No, Giles, tell me who I am,” Dawn said. She was standing by the back door of the shop looking like her sister did before a battle.
Giles slowly walked over to Dawn. “You’re Buffy’s sister, and Joyce’s daughter, as well as the Key: the source of the Slayer,” he answered, in a low gentle voice that attempted to soothe. When he took hold of her hands Dawn folded them across her chest defiantly.
“That’s where I came in. Tell me the punch line to the cosmic joke that’s my life. What got you so afraid?”
Giles said gravely, “Dawn, I am your father.”
Anya and Dawn burst out laughing. “Giles, I don’t think Dawn really wanted you to tell a joke,” Anya said, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“He doesn’t look like he’s joking, Anya.” Dawn said.
Anya said, “Well, he’s English, they never do.”
“I know this is a lot to take in, and I suppose we can do a blood test to be sure. It took years to construct the spell and all those false memories. The monks needed actual- They took a fetus from your mother in 1998. It was shortly after...”
“After you had ‘chocolate’ with mom? I’m going to need therapy! I came downstairs that night and saw you guys on the sofa --”
“You saw us kissing and ran back upstairs," Giles said dryly. "I hardly think you’re scarred for life.”
Anya said, “You had me scared when you found out, Giles; you’ve looked less traumatized over the end of the world.” There was a voice in Anya’s head that sounded a lot like Xander, or possibly Willow, telling her that was the wrong thing to say. She always wondered why those damn voices always waited until afterwards to speak up.
“It’s all right, the guy with a head full of stuff like teaching me to ride a bike doesn’t call or leave a note with the child support, and I’m okay. We can just forget it, I mean it -- I know you think it’s my fault, what happened, and it was. So just do what you want; get rid of the book.”
The brittle sound of Dawn’s voice made the hair on the back of Anya’s neck prickle. If she were still in the business her veins would be humming. Dawn was rejected and heartbroken. Hopefully Halfrek wasn’t still lurking around.
Giles reached up for his glasses, before recalling that they were broken, then tried to comfort Dawn. “Your sister’s death was inevitable; I don’t blame you for it.”
“Then why were you so un-thrilled that you just wanted to forget about me?”
“I know that your sister and the others have seen me as a parental figure of sorts, but I’m not fit for it. I never believed I was meant to have family. You have someone you remember as your father, and my first thought was that it was better to leave it that way.”
“What was your second thought?” Dawn asked hoarsely.
Anya said, “His second thought was, ‘Wow! I have an intelligent and beautiful daughter and I never once had to change a diaper.’ Isn’t that right, Giles?”
“That’s very close to what I’m thinking right now,” he said, almost to himself, studying Dawn’s face. “I can see Joyce in your eyes, and my mother’s cheekbones.”
The way Giles said this made the back of Anya’s eyes prickle; like watching a Lifetime movie at that time of the month. Dawn must’ve heard it, too, because she made a little sobbing sound and threw herself into Giles’ arms.
888
Two Weeks Later
Giles was over an hour late for movie night. He’d had an overseas call with a contact that might be able to solve the problem of gaining guardianship of Dawn. The blood tests proved he was her father but if he were to petition the court based on that it would appear that Joyce had been unfaithful. The idea didn’t sit well with him. So he was trying use old council contacts to falsify adoption papers. Smith had taken forever to get back to him tonight. Then, the pizza place didn’t have the pies ready, and he had to wait for them. The plan was for Spike and the ‘bot to do a quick sweep after sundown, and for everyone else to take a much needed night off. Tara and Willow were going out to see a movie, and he was supposed to supply the pizza and videos for everyone else.
Oddly enough, it was Anya who insisted that she and Xander join the party. It made Giles wonder if there was trouble between the couple. Anya wasn’t as vocal about wanting ‘alone time’ with Xander as she once was. She also seemed to have a proprietary interest in his new relationship with Dawn. It made an Anya sort of sense to him. She had been the first to know, and her support made him feel more confident about the whole thing. She and Dawn were the only ones besides himself who seemed to think the new information important at all. Willow and Xander had made a fuss at first but then accepted it in the same way they accepted Dawn’s mystical origin. He thought that it might be a lingering part of the monks' spell as they all, including him, seemed to be taking the news remarkably calmly even though part of him knew that the revelation called for a less restrained reaction.
Of course, it could just be that Xander and Willow were steadfastly avoiding thinking about Joyce and him -- yes, well..
He knew when he stepped out of the car that something was wrong. Something in the air was making him tense. Xander met Giles at the door, for once completely ignoring the pizza he was ccarrying. “It’s about time you got here. We have trouble upstairs.”
“Dawn!” It wasn’t a question, and some detached part of his brain noted that although the trouble could be anyone or anything, somehow he had begun to think like a parent.
Xander nodded and said, “Anya says it’s magic but I don’t think so. Dawn was hearing voices and the phone ringing. Willow said that Dawn was having nightmares. Now she’s up in her room crying. Asking for her mom and dad --I’m not sure if she’s even asking for Hank or you. I think this might be some sort of breakdown.”
There was a crackle of magic in the air around the door to Dawn’s room. It wasn’t anything that Xander would recognize, but Anya was right; this was mystical. Dawn was sitting on the edge of her bed hugging the plush hedgehog he’d given her just yesterday. He’d gotten the ridiculous thing as a joke; he’d thought her too old for that sort of thing. She looked like a child right now, though, a very ill child. She was trembling and her face looked flushed with fever. Spike and Anya were both sitting with her, looking like worried bookends, not comfortable getting too near the energies around her, but wanting to protect her.
Anya said, “Look, Dawn, Giles is here. He’ll figure it out.” Giles rushed to her bedside when Dawn tried to get up and couldn’t. He didn’t even bother to kick things aside. If the CD were that important to Dawn it wouldn’t be on the floor.
When Dawn looked at him her tear-filled eyes had a ring of glowing green light around the irises. “My head hurts really bad. I’m not going to die like Mom did, am I?”
“No, Dawn, it isn’t like that. This is something I can fix. We’ll figure it out, I promise.”
“I feel kind of sick, too. Maybe it’s something simple. Can tea go bad? Willow fixed me some and it tasted awful but she said it would help me sleep, and I wanted to practice.”
“I should’ve bloody guessed,” Spike said, echoing Giles’ own thoughts.
“It’s not like that!” Xander said. “Willow told me about it when I tried to drink the stuff the other night. Dawn has been having nightmares. She just made a potion to get rid of them.”
“Xander, go downstairs and call Willow. Find out exactly what was in that tea,” Giles ordered, trying to keep the fear and anger out of his voice. “How long has this been going on, Dawn?”
“About a week? No, two? The first time was way before…. I’m sorry, Willow didn’t tell me it was magic. I just thought it was herb tea.” Dawn’s eyes were glowing even brighter now, and she sounded weak and confused, “I just wanted to practice.”
Giles said, “It probably was herbs, they are used in magic. Don’t worry, we’ll find a counteragent, and when you’ve had a night or two of natural sleep you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think so,” she whispered. "Hold on to me, I think I’m flying apart.” The room was suddenly engulfed in a green light and they were sucked through a vortex. When Xander returned, Dawn’s bed was gone and the room was empty. If it weren’t for the perfect circle scorched into the carpet, the four missing Scoobies might’ve enchanted the bed and taken off for a happy reenactment of a Disney movie.
888
Anya, Dawn, Spike, and Giles came to on the edge of a ravine. They had parted ways with the bed somewhere along the line. There were cactus-like plants growing up in the sandy earth between the rocks where they landed so everyone was scraped and bruised. Even the sky looked abused by the ground. It had that red color that anyone who’d ever seen an episode of the original Star Trek would have recognized.
“Is everyone all right? What happened?” Dawn asked.
“It looks like you got your Key on and beamed us to another dimension, Bit,” Spike said. “But at least the red sky doesn’t seem to burn yours truly and your eyes aren’t glowing anymore.”
“Do you feel any better?” Giles asked.
Dawn said, “Yeah, I think so.”
“That might not be such a good thing,” Anya pointed out. “Glowing eyes got us here; we might need them to go home.”
“Just great! I don’t care if it is my cultural heritage, once we get home I’m never drinking tea again,” Dawn said.
“Is that what you meant when you said you wanted to practice? You drank the yucky tea Willow gave you to be like Giles?” Anya asked.
”Yeah,” Dawn said kicking a stone. “That, and I wanted to stop waking up screaming.”
“You could’ve just took up football,” Spike said, and looked to the hills, then ran off saying, “I can hear someone crying.”
They caught up with Spike and found what was left of Dawn’s bed at the base of a tall rock formation. When it fell from the sky it had apparently knocked two climbers off the rock to land on the desert floor. A middle-aged human man with his neck broken and a boy about three or four years old.
“Hey now,” Spike said to the boy in the sort of voice he might’ve once used to calm Drusilla or catch prey. “Are you hurt? Can you tell me where your mum is?”
“Nothing can hurt me,” he said, as if stating the sky was blue, or in this case, red. “Father told me mother is in hell where monsters and whores belong.”
Giles wasn’t sure if he was more shocked by the matter-of-fact statement or by Spike’s plainly horrified expression.
“Oh, God, Oh, God!” Dawn sobbed. She was focused on the body of the man and hadn’t noticed the boy at all. The air around them went from red to a green color that was in no way festive. “I’ve killed somebody.”
“Dawn, listen to me,” Giles said. “This was not your fault; if anyone is responsible it’s Willow. Or, if you like, you can blame me for trusting someone so irresponsible with your care, but right now you need to calm down.” It was a futile attempt and Giles knew it. Telling somebody to calm down never worked, and often had the opposite effect, but what else could he do. At least Dawn’s upset meant that they were again huddled around her when the vortex appeared.