[fic] postcards postmarked
fic: postcards postmarked
fandom: btvs
characters: buffy; dawn; andrew; original females
word count: 1800
recipient: kikimay who wanted: Dawn, travelling around the world
summary: buffy lands in havana tired and cranky and gets a bit of a surprise
see a/n at the end for further world-building
[The flight from Rome to Havana was hellish. And she should know. “I’ve been to hell, you know.”]The flight from Rome to Havana was hellish.
And she should know.
“I’ve been to hell, you know.”
The woman standing in front of her waiting for a taxi turned around and glared, but Buffy just shrugged and smiled.
“Yes, I remember,” Andrew’s voice came through the satellite phone tinny and annoyed. Probably because it was an ungodly hour in Rome.
Well if she had to be awake hailing a cab in the middle of the night according to her internal clock, running on no food and less sleep, then so could he. At least he was in the comfort of his own apartment. Probably drinking tea and putting his toes in front of the fire.
“I hate you,” she growled, smiling and waving as she did so.
“You’re the Chosen One. I just tell you where the demons are. You could have let the local chapter handle this one.”
Buffy sank into a cab and handed the driver the hand-written instructions to her next destination with a sigh, “Yeah well… Andrew? This driver is laughing at me.”
“Yeah, it might take you a few tries to get one to take you where you need to go. I could call a car service?”
Buffy threw her duffel bag (a gift from Riley and Sam) out of the cab, snatched the slip of paper from the laughing driver, and flipped him off as she slammed the door shut, “How long would that take?”
“Hmm… let me check.” She could hear the soft sound of Andrew typing through the phone. She plopped down on her bag, eyeing the wandering vendors with their spicy-smelling food wandering through the crowd. “Yeah, the Council still has some strings in Cuba, apparently.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Buffy muttered, gesturing to a woman carrying bottles of water.
“I can get you a car in fifteen minutes. Should I have them bring food as well?”
“If you don’t I’ll personally dislocate your shoulder when I get back.”
“Love you, too Buff.”
“Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
“I always do.”
“I’ll call when the smoke is clear.”
“Nothing but the rain, General.”
The car came in exactly forty-five minutes, with a bag of hot McDonald’s goodies in the back and actual leather seats and a driver that seemed to actually speak a little bit of English.
It wasn’t that far from Havana to Mariel, just a short jaunt along the coast.
She slept through most of it.
Andrew’s contact wanted to meet at a bar on the beach, which was fine with her. The sooner this problem was solved, the sooner she could go back home. To showers and breakfast and cheese.
Buffy had priorities.
She ordered a coffee and congri with chicken. The waitress who brought it over was one Dawn Summers.
Which honestly didn’t surprise her.
Evidence either of her lack of sleep, or the slippery nature of her younger sister.
“Hey sis.”
“Hey kid. Got sick of Moscow?”
“Ah hell, I haven’t been in Russia in over six months.”
“How’d you get a job here so quickly?”
She shrugged, her shoulders freckled from sun exposure, a gleam of purple lingering in her hair, “You need a fucking shower.”
Buffy took a large bite of rice, “Mm… waiting on a guy.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, “Your informant?” She picked up Buffy’s coffee cup and slung the bag over her thin shoulder, “You’re looking at him. And I’m not telling you shit until you take a shower and have a nap.” She looked up at the sun glaring down at them, “It’s early. We have a good twelve hours of daylight left.”
Dawn lived in a tiny studio apartment a few streets down from the beach bar. It had no rooms… just a couple of mattresses strategically placed on the floor. The kitchen was also a bathroom was also a shower.
“You live here alone?” Buffy asked as Dawn arranged the shower curtain to give her some privacy, eyeing the multiple mattresses divided by blankets hung from the ceiling on hooks and the very large pair of men’s boots in the corner.
“Sometimes. Shower.”
The water was a trickle and musty smelling but Dawn always keeps good hair products around. She’s dependable like that.
Buffy dressed in sweats that were - mostly - clean and walked out to find Dawn cross-legged on the floor surrounded by books and manuscripts. The kind of ancient-looking, dangerous, potentially-flammable books that gave Giles and Andrew weird geek hard-ons.
“Don’t you need gloves to handle books like that?”
Dawn nodded to the mattress behind her. “Sleep. I have to go back to work. Jaidyn’s daughter has another ear infection and I promised I’d cover her today.”
And then she was gone.
The mattress was thin and it was hot despite the thick hangings over the small windows and the fan in the corner, but Buffy still slept.
She dreamt she was eating Red Hots and was living inside a Red Hot and the whole world was red.
She woke up to Dawn laughing and talking quietly in what was either Spanish, Portuguese, or hell… it could have been Italian. Buffy didn’t really take to languages the way her younger sister did. There was another girl in the apartment, a small, dark, owlish thing that peeked up at Buffy with curiosity.
“This is Maria. She’s the leader of the Slayers here. She’s already lost three girls trying to fight this asshole. She doesn’t want anyone else to die.”
Buffy nodded to the girl and tried to assess what time it was, “What’s our timetable?”
“You have thirty minutes to eat and get caught up and then you go. Should give you plenty of time to get to the docks before he starts feeling rage-y.”
“What is it?”
“Lilliad Demon.”
“How many?”
“One.”
“One?!”
Dawn punched Buffy in the shoulder harshly, “Look. Kids are going missing. Babies. One Lilliad demon can cause enough damage on its own.”
Buffy eyed Maria suspiciously, “She’s a Slayer. You said there’s more. They should have been able to take care of this.”
“So the big bad General only cares about the big stuff? You only come crawling out of Rome for apocalypse-worthy fights?”
“Dawn. You know enough about Lilliad demons… you could have handled this without me. So could Maria. That’s what being a Slayer is.”
Dawn shook her head, “Maria is fourteen, Buffy.”
Maria smiled at Buffy and handed her a cup of coffee.
“Fourteen?”
“The two girls that died? They were fifteen, maybe sixteen, I don’t know. I didn’t know what was happening until it was over. There’s a larger group up in Havana - in the larger cities - but Mariel? Here there’s just Maria and a couple of other kids with no training and no support. I called you because they needed help. They’ve been flying blind down here. They don’t need a Watcher -” she gestured at herself “- they needed a sister. Another Slayer to show them how to train, how to … not die.”
Buffy looked from Dawn to Maria and back again. “So a Lilliad demon.”
“Yeah.”
Buffy looked at Maria and smiled, “Let’s kick its ass.”
It was an easy enough Slay. Buffy let Maria take the lead, showing her how to track, how to assess attack patterns. She hadn’t been in the field with someone so untrained in a long time. Turns out teaching is kinda like riding a bike - you don’t forget how to do it.
Maria jumped and squealed and laughed when the damn thing finally turned into goo.
They were covered in it and gross and laughing.
And Buffy understood why Dawn had called her.
Watchers can only give so much instruction, sometimes a Slayer really needs to see another Slayer at work in order to know what to do, how to be, how not to lose themselves in the action. Guess they could finally do that now. She mentally prepared a list of available senior Slayers to come down to Mariel to lend a hand for the next few months. Until Maria was ready to lead on her own.
She was nearly there.
Before they left, Buffy grabbed Dawn’s arm, “Why didn’t you call me directly? All this shadow-work through Andrew is silly.”
Dawn blinked, “I did.”
Afterwards, Buffy had a quick shower in the drizzle that was Dawn’s bathroom and crashed immediately on the thin mattress in the corner.
The next day she found Maria and two other young girls and they trained on the docks, running on the beach, and generally just goofing off. Her three years of high school Spanish were nearly gone, but they managed okay. She had dinner at Dawn’s bar - but was served by a young woman with an eyebrow piercing. Figuring she had just missed Dawn’s shift, Buffy went back to the apartment with every intention of suggesting that Dawn return home with her to Rome in a few days. She could afford some time off to play sister on the beach for a while in the meantime.
The apartment was empty. Buffy shrugged to herself and fell back on her mattress.
Maybe she had a date?
The next morning Buffy was woken by someone poking her in the shoulder with the hard handle of a broom, “Hey! Hey you! What are you doing in my house!?”
Buffy blinked and tried to clear the cobwebs from her mind with a shake of her head, “Wha?”
“Oh,” a dark woman with a pleasantly round face and lots of hair came into focus. “You’re Dawn’s sister, right? She told me you’d be gone by now.”
Buffy scrambled, “Where is Dawn?”
The woman shrugged, “Left town a couple of days ago. Paid for your rent through yesterday but…” she peered down at Buffy, “I can get you a ride back to the airport if you need it.”
Buffy nodded, “Yeah. I guess I do.”
She checked in with the bar - no sign of Dawn - and said goodbye to Maria and her Slayerettes and was on a plane by the end of the day.
It took a while to get home home. There was an emergency that needed her attention the minute she touched down in Rome. A couple of times over the next few days she thought to ask Andrew to track down her sister so she could scream at her, but there was no time and anyway she figured Andrew knew exactly where Dawn was.
A week after landing in Havana, Buffy finally crash-banged her way into her apartment and sank down on the couch she didn’t even know she loved so much until that moment, and noticed a stack of mail in front of the door.
On top was a postcard from Dawn, postmarked Senegal: “Hope you and Maria had a great time! Thanks for helping out. Love you lots, D”
Beneath several bills and ads there was another postcard, dated three weeks before: “The Slayerettes could really use a hand in Mariel, Cuba. Figure a beach trip? I’ll be waiting, D.”
Buffy leaned back into the couch, “Well, fuck.”
a/n: my headcanon for dawn in this piece is that she's conducting some sort of research for her phd/masters and had to move quickly to get in contact with a source further headcanon is that her research is on demon folklore - specifically dealing with the Slayer; aka: what fairy tales do demons tell their children about the Slayer?
fandom: btvs
characters: buffy; dawn; andrew; original females
word count: 1800
recipient: kikimay who wanted: Dawn, travelling around the world
summary: buffy lands in havana tired and cranky and gets a bit of a surprise
see a/n at the end for further world-building
[The flight from Rome to Havana was hellish. And she should know. “I’ve been to hell, you know.”]The flight from Rome to Havana was hellish.
And she should know.
“I’ve been to hell, you know.”
The woman standing in front of her waiting for a taxi turned around and glared, but Buffy just shrugged and smiled.
“Yes, I remember,” Andrew’s voice came through the satellite phone tinny and annoyed. Probably because it was an ungodly hour in Rome.
Well if she had to be awake hailing a cab in the middle of the night according to her internal clock, running on no food and less sleep, then so could he. At least he was in the comfort of his own apartment. Probably drinking tea and putting his toes in front of the fire.
“I hate you,” she growled, smiling and waving as she did so.
“You’re the Chosen One. I just tell you where the demons are. You could have let the local chapter handle this one.”
Buffy sank into a cab and handed the driver the hand-written instructions to her next destination with a sigh, “Yeah well… Andrew? This driver is laughing at me.”
“Yeah, it might take you a few tries to get one to take you where you need to go. I could call a car service?”
Buffy threw her duffel bag (a gift from Riley and Sam) out of the cab, snatched the slip of paper from the laughing driver, and flipped him off as she slammed the door shut, “How long would that take?”
“Hmm… let me check.” She could hear the soft sound of Andrew typing through the phone. She plopped down on her bag, eyeing the wandering vendors with their spicy-smelling food wandering through the crowd. “Yeah, the Council still has some strings in Cuba, apparently.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Buffy muttered, gesturing to a woman carrying bottles of water.
“I can get you a car in fifteen minutes. Should I have them bring food as well?”
“If you don’t I’ll personally dislocate your shoulder when I get back.”
“Love you, too Buff.”
“Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
“I always do.”
“I’ll call when the smoke is clear.”
“Nothing but the rain, General.”
The car came in exactly forty-five minutes, with a bag of hot McDonald’s goodies in the back and actual leather seats and a driver that seemed to actually speak a little bit of English.
It wasn’t that far from Havana to Mariel, just a short jaunt along the coast.
She slept through most of it.
Andrew’s contact wanted to meet at a bar on the beach, which was fine with her. The sooner this problem was solved, the sooner she could go back home. To showers and breakfast and cheese.
Buffy had priorities.
She ordered a coffee and congri with chicken. The waitress who brought it over was one Dawn Summers.
Which honestly didn’t surprise her.
Evidence either of her lack of sleep, or the slippery nature of her younger sister.
“Hey sis.”
“Hey kid. Got sick of Moscow?”
“Ah hell, I haven’t been in Russia in over six months.”
“How’d you get a job here so quickly?”
She shrugged, her shoulders freckled from sun exposure, a gleam of purple lingering in her hair, “You need a fucking shower.”
Buffy took a large bite of rice, “Mm… waiting on a guy.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, “Your informant?” She picked up Buffy’s coffee cup and slung the bag over her thin shoulder, “You’re looking at him. And I’m not telling you shit until you take a shower and have a nap.” She looked up at the sun glaring down at them, “It’s early. We have a good twelve hours of daylight left.”
Dawn lived in a tiny studio apartment a few streets down from the beach bar. It had no rooms… just a couple of mattresses strategically placed on the floor. The kitchen was also a bathroom was also a shower.
“You live here alone?” Buffy asked as Dawn arranged the shower curtain to give her some privacy, eyeing the multiple mattresses divided by blankets hung from the ceiling on hooks and the very large pair of men’s boots in the corner.
“Sometimes. Shower.”
The water was a trickle and musty smelling but Dawn always keeps good hair products around. She’s dependable like that.
Buffy dressed in sweats that were - mostly - clean and walked out to find Dawn cross-legged on the floor surrounded by books and manuscripts. The kind of ancient-looking, dangerous, potentially-flammable books that gave Giles and Andrew weird geek hard-ons.
“Don’t you need gloves to handle books like that?”
Dawn nodded to the mattress behind her. “Sleep. I have to go back to work. Jaidyn’s daughter has another ear infection and I promised I’d cover her today.”
And then she was gone.
The mattress was thin and it was hot despite the thick hangings over the small windows and the fan in the corner, but Buffy still slept.
She dreamt she was eating Red Hots and was living inside a Red Hot and the whole world was red.
She woke up to Dawn laughing and talking quietly in what was either Spanish, Portuguese, or hell… it could have been Italian. Buffy didn’t really take to languages the way her younger sister did. There was another girl in the apartment, a small, dark, owlish thing that peeked up at Buffy with curiosity.
“This is Maria. She’s the leader of the Slayers here. She’s already lost three girls trying to fight this asshole. She doesn’t want anyone else to die.”
Buffy nodded to the girl and tried to assess what time it was, “What’s our timetable?”
“You have thirty minutes to eat and get caught up and then you go. Should give you plenty of time to get to the docks before he starts feeling rage-y.”
“What is it?”
“Lilliad Demon.”
“How many?”
“One.”
“One?!”
Dawn punched Buffy in the shoulder harshly, “Look. Kids are going missing. Babies. One Lilliad demon can cause enough damage on its own.”
Buffy eyed Maria suspiciously, “She’s a Slayer. You said there’s more. They should have been able to take care of this.”
“So the big bad General only cares about the big stuff? You only come crawling out of Rome for apocalypse-worthy fights?”
“Dawn. You know enough about Lilliad demons… you could have handled this without me. So could Maria. That’s what being a Slayer is.”
Dawn shook her head, “Maria is fourteen, Buffy.”
Maria smiled at Buffy and handed her a cup of coffee.
“Fourteen?”
“The two girls that died? They were fifteen, maybe sixteen, I don’t know. I didn’t know what was happening until it was over. There’s a larger group up in Havana - in the larger cities - but Mariel? Here there’s just Maria and a couple of other kids with no training and no support. I called you because they needed help. They’ve been flying blind down here. They don’t need a Watcher -” she gestured at herself “- they needed a sister. Another Slayer to show them how to train, how to … not die.”
Buffy looked from Dawn to Maria and back again. “So a Lilliad demon.”
“Yeah.”
Buffy looked at Maria and smiled, “Let’s kick its ass.”
It was an easy enough Slay. Buffy let Maria take the lead, showing her how to track, how to assess attack patterns. She hadn’t been in the field with someone so untrained in a long time. Turns out teaching is kinda like riding a bike - you don’t forget how to do it.
Maria jumped and squealed and laughed when the damn thing finally turned into goo.
They were covered in it and gross and laughing.
And Buffy understood why Dawn had called her.
Watchers can only give so much instruction, sometimes a Slayer really needs to see another Slayer at work in order to know what to do, how to be, how not to lose themselves in the action. Guess they could finally do that now. She mentally prepared a list of available senior Slayers to come down to Mariel to lend a hand for the next few months. Until Maria was ready to lead on her own.
She was nearly there.
Before they left, Buffy grabbed Dawn’s arm, “Why didn’t you call me directly? All this shadow-work through Andrew is silly.”
Dawn blinked, “I did.”
Afterwards, Buffy had a quick shower in the drizzle that was Dawn’s bathroom and crashed immediately on the thin mattress in the corner.
The next day she found Maria and two other young girls and they trained on the docks, running on the beach, and generally just goofing off. Her three years of high school Spanish were nearly gone, but they managed okay. She had dinner at Dawn’s bar - but was served by a young woman with an eyebrow piercing. Figuring she had just missed Dawn’s shift, Buffy went back to the apartment with every intention of suggesting that Dawn return home with her to Rome in a few days. She could afford some time off to play sister on the beach for a while in the meantime.
The apartment was empty. Buffy shrugged to herself and fell back on her mattress.
Maybe she had a date?
The next morning Buffy was woken by someone poking her in the shoulder with the hard handle of a broom, “Hey! Hey you! What are you doing in my house!?”
Buffy blinked and tried to clear the cobwebs from her mind with a shake of her head, “Wha?”
“Oh,” a dark woman with a pleasantly round face and lots of hair came into focus. “You’re Dawn’s sister, right? She told me you’d be gone by now.”
Buffy scrambled, “Where is Dawn?”
The woman shrugged, “Left town a couple of days ago. Paid for your rent through yesterday but…” she peered down at Buffy, “I can get you a ride back to the airport if you need it.”
Buffy nodded, “Yeah. I guess I do.”
She checked in with the bar - no sign of Dawn - and said goodbye to Maria and her Slayerettes and was on a plane by the end of the day.
It took a while to get home home. There was an emergency that needed her attention the minute she touched down in Rome. A couple of times over the next few days she thought to ask Andrew to track down her sister so she could scream at her, but there was no time and anyway she figured Andrew knew exactly where Dawn was.
A week after landing in Havana, Buffy finally crash-banged her way into her apartment and sank down on the couch she didn’t even know she loved so much until that moment, and noticed a stack of mail in front of the door.
On top was a postcard from Dawn, postmarked Senegal: “Hope you and Maria had a great time! Thanks for helping out. Love you lots, D”
Beneath several bills and ads there was another postcard, dated three weeks before: “The Slayerettes could really use a hand in Mariel, Cuba. Figure a beach trip? I’ll be waiting, D.”
Buffy leaned back into the couch, “Well, fuck.”
a/n: my headcanon for dawn in this piece is that she's conducting some sort of research for her phd/masters and had to move quickly to get in contact with a source further headcanon is that her research is on demon folklore - specifically dealing with the Slayer; aka: what fairy tales do demons tell their children about the Slayer?