This was just another night in the life of the Slayer. There was a demon, chained and gagged, lying unconscious in her living room. Her vampire fiancé was tapping out a song by the Clash on the coffee table, bored but gratified that he was annoying the principal and son of the Slayer he killed in 1977.
The two watchers stood holding books and candles while Tara, Willow, and Amy set up an attempt to retrieve the other slayer in the house, from wherever it was that she jumped into.
“You sure I can do this?” Willow asked nervously.
“Of course you can Willow, you did it last time, and now you have help,” Buffy explained.
“What does the book say?” Amy asked the watchers, hoping for some clue as to where to start.
“Not much,” Nate admitted. “There is a cryptic passage about going back to the beginning.”
“Care to fill in the missing details, Buffy?” Giles asked.
“Just pretend I’m not here. I wasn’t here last time.” Buffy sat down next to Spike on the couch and grabbed his hands ending the fidgety tap tap tap that he was performing on the table in front of him.
“That’s helpful,” noted Xander under his breath.
“Just means we have to use our own brains,” Tara said with a smile, looking at Willow. “Back to basics.”
Willow nodded. “Physics.”
“Conservation of energies,” Amy added. “You can’t create or destroy, only transfer.”
“We need a conduit though,” Tara advised. “Like a Krakken’s tooth.”
“Or ground up Baltic stones,” offered Amy.
“Or skin of Draconis,” finished Willow with a smile.
“And we have the exchange all here and ready,” Dawn noted, kicking the demon in the corner. “This was why I had to be chained to a chair?”
Buffy nodded with a smile.
“You probably enjoyed tying me up far too much,” Dawn griped to her sister.
“Probably,” Buffy concurred with a smile.
It wasn’t until later, while Amy poured green sand on the living room floor that Buffy even regretted this course of action. She was going to have to vacuum now, and the demon was starting to smell. Also, Robin Wood was having a hard time keeping his eyes off Spike, and not in a ‘I like your coat’ kind of way.
“What’s with the sand?” Robin asked, breaking the silence that had lasted at least ten minutes as the trio of witches prepared.
“The sand forms a circle,” Tara explained calmly. “The circle acts as a barrier. And the barrier contains the portal.”
“Now what? We hold hands and chant kumbaya or something?” the principal asked.
“Maybe,” Willow responded as Amy handed the bag of sand to Xander. “‘Til we get the magicks up and running, I'm kinda working on my best guess here.”
“We should get started,” Tara noted quietly. “We don’t know how long Molly needs to stay there.”
“I think I’m going to pee my pants,” Willow whispered, so that only the witches, vampire, and slayer could hear her.”
“You can do it,” Buffy urged her friend on. “The magicks, not the pants thing.”
Willow nodded and sat herself down in the middle of the circle, joining Amy and Tara.
“Okay,” Willow said, preparing herself. With a deep breath she began. “ Via temporis,
iam clamo ad te, via spatii te jubeo aperire. Aperi!”
The entire congregation in the living room looked about expecting to see something happen, but there was no change.
“Dawnie, you'd better put on some coffee. This could take awhile,” Tara started, before she was cut off by a flash of light and Willow screaming.
“Oh this is not good,” Xander commented, stepping back from the trio.
“Willow?” Amy asked in a shaky voice. “Willow, your eyes are black.”
Willow ignored the former rat. “Via, concursus, tempus, spatium, audi me ut imperio. Screw it! Mighty forces, I suck at Latin, okay? But that's not the issue. I'm the one in charge, and I'm telling you open up, portal, now!”
“It's not happening, Will,” Xander urged, looking worried for his friend.
Buffy looked from Xander to Willow and then to the two witches that sat with Willow. Willow of the black eyes was never good, but now, with Tara and Amy to ground her, Buffy knew instinctively that everything would be all right.
“Give her time. She's getting it, give her time, Xander,” Buffy chided.
“Or something's getting her. Will, think you better back up a little,” the carpenter urged.
“No!” Willow cried, her hands reaching in front of her as magic coursed through her body. Tara and Amy grabbed her hands and reached out for each other’s hands. The trio of witches closed the circle and held on.
The whole house smelled like magic, power coursed through not only Amy, Willow, and Tara, but Buffy could also feel it in the walls. Slowly, delicately, in contrast to how it was created, the portal opened in the middle of the circle the three witches created.
Willow opened her eyes and smiled. “Oh, go me,” she responded weakly before lying down where she sat, exhausted.
“Don’t get up Wills,” Buffy grunted as she lifted the chained up demon from the floor.
With a nod, Spike picked up the feet and the two of them hefted the demon into the portal. In an instant, the portal and the demon was gone, and in its place stood Molly, looking a little more than queasy.
“Hey Molly,” Buffy said trying to be all cool.
The queasy look on the junior slayer’s face left as anger overcame her. With quick feet, Molly stepped over the now sleeping Willow and slugged Buffy in the mouth, catching the Master Slayer off guard.
Buffy tumbled to the floor as Nate yelled at his slayer, who stomped upstairs to her room in a huff.
“Why’d she do that?” Dawn asked, looking down at her sister. “What did you do?”
Buffy put her hand to her mouth and realised she was bleeding. She tugged on Spike’s jeans drawing his attention. He was down to her level at once, his ability to read Buffy’s mind uncanny, as he helped Buffy check to see if any of her teeth were loose.
The sound of a slamming door echoed upstairs, just as the front door opened. In walked Andrew, frown on his face.
“No one was available to pick me up from the bus depot? I could have been eaten!” he whined.
_______________________________
Andrew installed himself back into his basement dwelling, unaware that anything had been moved or disturbed. It was probably better that way. It was doubtful that he knew what had been going on. In a way, Dawn felt bad for him. It seemed no one wanted him around, and really, she’d been one of those people too.
It wasn’t really fair that she’d suddenly turned against him. He was sweet, in a nerdy kind of way.
Dawn slurped her glass of milk at the breakfast table and contemplated Andrew and his position in her life the morning after he came home from LA. Molly sat directly across from her, not speaking to anyone. Dawn had thought that the junior slayer would have talked to her about what had pissed her off so much in the slayer ritual thingy, but no, Molly was being tight-lipped.
Molly avoided her gaze and ate her own cereal.
Today, she’d have to go back to school, after all it was hard to pretend that you were sick when the principal was at your house the night before and heard you complain about being tied to a chair.
Yeah, it probably would be a good idea to not greet principal Wood.
Dawn looked over at her friend, the Slayer, once more, only to be distracted by Andrew entering the dining room. He was holding a video camera, and he was pointing it at her.
“This gorgeous and alluring young woman is Dawn Summers, Key to Dimensions. Once a glowy green cloud of energy, the Key’s energy was harnessed by monks in order to protect her from the monster Glorificus. Today, the Key attends Sunnydale High School, a junior who enjoys language classes and loathes history and home economics,” Andrew narrated.
“Andrew, what are you doing?” Dawn asked.
He moved the video camera away from his eye and smiled at the Key. “I’m filming a documentary about us, the Scoobies.”
“Andrew…” Dawn started, wondering just how to put what she wanted to say. Fortunately, Molly said it first.
“You aren’t a Scooby, Andrew,” Molly barked, getting up from her chair and taking her empty cereal bowl with her to the kitchen.
“What died in her cheerios?” Andrew asked watching the junior Slayer leave the room.
“Something that happened last night,” Dawn explained. “She won’t talk about it.”
“Perhaps I can get her to disclose to the camera,” Andrew noted with a smile.
“Sure, Andrew,” Dawn grinned, “Just remember that she knows thirty ways to kill with her thumb.”
“Thirty six, she told me three weeks ago.”
“Dawn!” Buffy voice called from the kitchen. “I’m not driving you to school. If you want to get there on time, leave now.”
Dawn rolled her eyes before heading to the kitchen to drop off her bowl and say good bye to her sister. Buffy didn’t look like the happy camper she usually was. No doubt the thing between Molly and her was making her feel bad. Molly was already a block and a half ahead of her by the time the Key grabbed her bag and was out the door. Dawn debated running to catch up with her friend but decided against it, being that she didn’t want to be all sweaty at her first day back to school in a week.
It took until lunch before Dawn finally got any time with Molly and it was time to finally confront her friend about the whole ‘not speaking’ thing.
Dawn set down her lunch tray in front of Molly and stared menacingly at her friend.
“Okay, we aren’t at home, there is no ‘evil’ sister, no annoying nerd and no vampire that hears everything. You are going to tell me why you hit Buffy and why you aren’t talking to anyone,” Dawn declared.
“No.”
Molly moved to take her tray away from the table and eat somewhere else, but Dawn grabbed her hand.
“Yes, I know you could crush my hand, and I’m probably risking severe trauma by continuing this line of questioning, but you are going to spill, even if I have to resort to hair pulling and sharp elbows.”
Molly sighed, as if defeated. Or maybe it was that she didn’t like being so mad at everyone. Dawn never thought she was the kind to hold grudges.
“I saw how the first slayer was made. It was…it was terrible. And Buffy knew. Buffy knew what the men in there were going to do to me,” Molly explained in whispers.
Dawn nodded. “What did they do?”
“They tried to put a demon in me!” Molly hissed.
“And Buffy knew,” Dawn echoed. “I can see why you’d be pissed off then. I would have liked some warning.”
“Warning? She shouldn’t have forced me into this.”
“Whoa,” Dawn started, pushing her chair back from the table. “Buffy didn’t force you into this. I know she said it was important, but she gave you a choice. You could have backed out.”
“I didn’t have all the information.”
“And you think that she had had all the information when she went through it?” Dawn said, defending her sister. “Do you think that slayers through the ages knew what they were getting into?”
“I suppose not,” Molly said, softly.
Dawn looked her friend in the eye and smiled. “Look I know it sucks. And I know you didn’t need this to happen to you, but deal with it. At least you aren’t alone here.”
Molly nodded.
“Oh, and beware, I think Andrew wants to interview you for his…whatever it is that he’s video taping stuff for.”
“It’s right annoying, is what it is,” Molly noted.
“He doesn’t mean any harm,” Dawn said, defending Andrew.
“Maybe not, but what do you think would happen if that video ever got out? What if the general public knew the things we knew?”
“They’d freak,” Dawn answered, nodding her head in agreement to what her friend implied.
“Exactly. And they’d want protection from the police, who clearly, have no bloody idea what’s out there.”
Dawn nodded again. When the bell rang, indicating that that lunch hour was over, Dawn was happy that Molly was talking to her again. Dawn couldn’t afford to lose the friends she had. It wasn’t like she had a lot of friends her own age. Dawn watched Molly walk off towards her algebra class before she gathered up her own text books and took her trash to the garbage can on the other side of the cafeteria. Dawn was not looking forward to her history class, she’d missed a lot while she was away and she was pretty sure that the history teacher didn’t like her.
Which was fair, ‘cause Dawn didn’t like her either. Spike always said that she didn’t have to like her teachers but she did have to respect them. Fair enough. Respect though didn’t mean that she rushed to class when the warning bell rang.
It was these thoughts which occupied her mind as she walked towards history, only to turn a corner and be faced with someone she didn’t want to see.
“Graham.”
__________________________________
Tbc…
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Author's Chapter Notes:
some dialogue taken from ‘Get it Done’ Thanks to the great BTL for the betaing.
Disclaimer: Joss owns ‘em, I just play.
Disclaimer: Joss owns ‘em, I just play.