The pang in her heart was certainly not as strong this time around. Graham stared back at her and feigned a smile.
“What now?” she asked, trying to sound annoyed, but really looking to see where the closest door was.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Well I don’t need to talk to you,” she said brushing past him. “I’m going to be late for history.”
He grabbed her hand, and held her fast. “You don’t understand,” he said with urgency. “I need to talk to you.”
It was now that Dawn noticed that funny thing he was doing with his eyes. He was trying to warn her.
Dawn sighed and maintained eye contact with him, resisting the urge to look around her to see if they were being watched. That was a rookie mistake.
“Is this a conversation I want to have in public with my peers listening in, or is this a conversation I want to have somewhere private?”
“Definitely private,” he confirmed.
_________________________________
Buffy looked up as Molly stormed into the house, her mood clearly unchanged from an entire day at school. Around her on the coffee table, the couch, and adjacent floor sat the detailed plans of what was sure to be the grandest wedding the Council of Watchers ever attended. And yes, Buffy was sure she was going to make each and everyone of their stuffy asses attend her magical day. Spike sat facing her on the other side of the coffee table, his frown a reflection of his concentration.
“Molly?” Buffy called to the teen slayer who’d just banged open the fridge. “I know you are angry with me, but please don’t take it out on the fridge. They cost money.”
Molly appeared at the living room door, a Dr. Pepper in her hand. “I’m not so much angry with you anymore as I am with Dawn.”
“What did the Bit do?” Spike asked, his eyes never leaving the seating plan in front of him.
“She skipped all afternoon! And she didn’t even tell me that she was going to do it. I thought she was my friend.” Molly growled a little, and then headed upstairs, grabbing her backpack as she went.
“Patrol in three hours!” Buffy called up after her. “At least she’s not mad at me,” the Slayer commented to her fiancé.
“Why would Dawn skip her afternoon classes, her first day back?” Spike asked.
“Do you think something’s up?” the bride to be asked. “If something was wrong, Molly would have sensed something. And Dawn knows better than to be out of range of a door. I’m sure she’s fine.”
“You sure love?”
“Initiative part deux go boom,” the Slayer commented. “Besides I don’t want to panic just yet. Molly only just got home and there’s still plenty of time before I expect Dawn to come home. Maybe she is just skipping.”
“And maybe they’re poking tubes into her eyeballs,” came Anya’s voice from the stair case. The vengeance demon entered the living room sporting a bright red dress strapless dress. “You specifically asked for blood red didn’t you?”
Buffy beamed up at one of her bride’s maids. “You look lovely.”
Anya did a twirl. “I think the form fitting design makes me look skinnier than I actually am. Rupert would prefer to have meat on my bones.”
“Can’t blame him there,” Spike commented.
“Okay, go take off the dress,” Buffy advised, returning her attention to the chart in front of her. “There is no way that we are sitting Drusilla beside my father.”
“She’s family, pet,” Spike countered.
“Yes, true. But she’s also liable to eat my side of the family. Can’t we sit her next to Angel?”
“So we have a vampire table? Is that it? Can we have a watcher’s table too?” he said sarcastically.
“Then I’m going to cast a spell,” she threatened. “I want a guarantee that Dru isn’t going to eat my father.”
She knew he didn’t like the magic. In fact he had threatened to kidnap her and elope if she insisted on using magic to keep their assorted guests under control. However, Drusilla wasn’t the only problem. Aside from Dru and Angel, Spike wanted to invite a fair number of demons he thought of as relatives.
“And the Fyarls are sitting together too. I don’t want anyone sneezing on the humans by accident.” Buffy looked up from her charts and plans to spy Andrew’s video camera lens poking out from behind a picture frame on the bookshelf. She rolled her eyes.
“Andrew!”
Instantly the basement dweller appeared. “Yes?” he asked innocently.
“Take your video camera out of the living room. And stop filming us!” she barked.
“I am documenting a day in the life of the Slayer. Wedding planning, patrolling, the people want to know!” he explained with enthusiasm.
“The people don’t know who I am or what I do. Therefore why would they possibly want to know? And don’t you dare show any sort of retrospective at the reception. I do not want our guests to know that we argued about where to sit them!” she yelled at the nerd.
Andrew whined a little before he left the room.
Spike shot her a bit of a look. “Really think he deserved all that?” the vampire asked. “I know this wedding thing is starting to stress you out, love, but is it really worth taking it out on him? Or are you not as calm about Dawn skipping school as you let on?”
“A little of column a, a little of column b,” Buffy admitted. “If I had a map here, the locator spell would already be done, I think.”
“The Bit would be marvelled by your self restraint.”
Buffy hung her head a little. “I should wait. I should just trust that she’s alright and not jump in blindly. She’s probably fine.”
“Or she could be having sex on my bed!” came Anya’s voice as the demon, free of her bride’s maid dress, descended the stairs from the second level of the house.
“Huh?” Buffy asked.
“Did the hypothetical nature of the statement throw you?” Anya inquired, her face in an expression of mock concern. “Dawn is having a game of naked twister in Arashamahar. On my bed!”
“With who?” asked Buffy, at the same time that Spike stood up and growled.
“Who do you think?” Anya answered, her eyebrows wiggling up and down.
Buffy rolled her eyes. “I thought she was over him!”
“I’m going to rip his head off his worthless corpse,” Spike declared, as he started to pace.
“You are going to do no such thing,” Buffy told her fiancé. “You will act as if you had no idea this was going on.”
Spike growled again. “And just how do you expect me to do that?” he asked.
________________________________________
Dawn sat up from Anya’s bed, hooking her bra back into place as she did so.
“Well I didn’t quite expect that to happen,” she said focusing her eyes on the wall instead of to whom she was speaking.
“I might have gotten a little carried away,” Dawn’s companion answered, pulling his pants up and standing at the side of the bed. “I’m sorry.”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to apologise. If I hadn’t wanted to do…what we did, you’d have known by me pushing you off.”
“Yeah, I don’t really recall any of that,” he noted, smiling, even though Dawn couldn’t see him. His smile fell away though, when he recalled just why they had ended up in Arashmahar in the first place. “I don’t think you should stay in Sunnydale,” he said seriously.
“Yeah, I understood that,” Dawn sighed. “But where else would I go? My family is there. Buffy needs to stay there. I don’t think I’ll stay very far from Buffy for the rest of my life, I kinda need her.”
“I get that she’s your sister and all,” Graham replied, “but at some point you are going to have to move on, move out from under your sister’s wing.”
Dawn sighed again. “You don’t understand,” she said facing him. “This thing I do, the dimension hopping, it has consequences. I guess if the military ever get their hands on me they’ll find that out.”
“I won’t let them do that,” Graham declared.
“That’s a nice sentiment, Graham, but I don’t think you can really fend off an army for me,” Dawn noted with a half smile.
The idea that he would sacrifice himself for her was touching. But it had remarkably unnerving similarities between her and her sister. She just hoped that the similarities ended with his loyalty to her. She’d thought she was over him, and then, well she’d just been so recently under him that she was pretty sure that any headway she’d made in detaching her heart from his had been undone.
“I’m gonna try,” he responded.
Their eyes locked and the next few moments in silence convinced Dawn that they were far from over.
“What do we do now?” she asked. “I mean, I have to go home, and explain why I skipped my afternoon classes to Buffy. Molly’ll have told everyone by now. There may even be a search party out for me. But, god, I’m rambling, what does us having sex do to the whole me not speaking to you anymore thing? Are you leaving town? Are you going to suddenly become a Scoobie? What is going to happen now?”
“You’re going to go home and not dimension hop anymore. I’m going to go back to my room and wait for the psych guys to finish assessing me. Then, I’m probably going to be reassigned, probably back to an ordinary combat post.”
Dawn nodded sadly.
“I will be phoning you on a secure line as much as I can,” he continued. “I want to know that you are safe.”
“Thanks,” the key muttered.
“If I stayed around they’d know that you’re it, Dawn. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“Sure, you are,” she said in a huff. “You’re protecting me. I get it. I’m going to just sit and wait by the phone for you to call me. It must be nice to know that I’ll be waiting for you at home while the big man goes off to war, or whatever you are going off to.”
“I’m not going to give up my career Dawn. I want to be with you, but there are just a few things in the way of that right now.”
“You are right. Of course you are right. You’re the adult in this situation,” she said bitterly.
“It’s been a while since I thought of you as a kid, Dawn,” he admitted.
“And the fact that you just technically committed a felony?”
“I didn’t even really think I was. Aren’t you like a million years old?” he said with a smile.
Dawn stood and walked over to where he was standing. “If I find out that you are sleeping with anyone one else, you’ll find certain parts of your body detached in the middle of the night.”
“Fair enough,” he responded. “I’d threaten the same thing, but I have no way of carrying it out. Course a man has needs.”
“And a woman doesn’t?”
There in the quiet of Anya’s chambers the pair reached an understanding, unspoken, that they would seek each other out.
_________________________________
Dawn opened the door to her closet and peered into her room. Seeing no one waiting for her there, she breathed a sigh of relief and closed the closet door as silently as possible. She knew it wasn’t going to be long before they all realised she was home, after all she had a vampire living in her house.
She tossed her backpack on the bed and began getting things out of it. She probably shouldn’t have gone back to school to get her assignments, but providing an alibi for the potential Spike wrath seemed more important than portalling around town and getting the attention of the pseudo initiative, no matter what Graham told her.
She had walked over to her desk and opened her history text before Spike barged into her room, followed comically by Buffy. She suppressed a laugh at the pair of them bumping into each other.
“Yes?” the key asked.
“When did you get home?” Buffy asked, calmly.
“Just now,” Dawn said truthfully. No sense in lying to those who could detect blood pressure.
“Mini Slayer said you skipped class,” observed the vampire.
Dawn nodded. “I talked to Graham this afternoon. It upset me. I couldn’t go back to class. I did get my homework though. My history teacher was very sympathetic.”
“He upset you?” Buffy asked quizzically.
“Of course. I didn’t want to see him and he just showed up at school. Again.”
“And where were you while you were not in class?” Spike asked, his arms crossed in front of him.
“Arashmahar. Call it Dawn’s happy place.”
“I’ll bet it was happy,” Buffy mumbled.
“Huh?” Dawn asked.
“I’m just glad you are at home. I have your maid of honour dress for you to try on, it’s in your closet. I’m sure you noticed it when you came home,” the master slayer continued. “Let me know if it fits or not.”
“Sure.”
Buffy and Spike exited the room and closed the door behind them, allowing Dawn to breath an internal sigh of relief.
_________________________________________
Hours later, when Molly, Spike, and Buffy were out on patrol, Dawn suddenly felt the urge to get out of the house. It was that creepy antsy feeling that she so rarely got, but this time she had to act on it. She done the homework, rethought the day’s events, and not even gone down for dinner. She looked longingly out her window and the view down Revello Drive.
To leave the house, unescorted was a bad idea. She grabbed her phone and debated on who to call. Who was safe to go outside with? With a growl of frustration, Dawn threw her phone on the bed and stomped a few times on the floor. No one except Buffy, Molly, and Spike really came to mind. The witches were still busy fearing for their own lives, Xander was not exactly helpful, Andrew even less than Xander and Giles and Nate would just be disapproving. Dawn returned to her window and hung her head and torso out of it as far as she could safely. She breathed the night air deeply, annoyed with her lot in life.
Movement caught her eye on the road just out of her eye sight. There were two people talking in front of her house. Abandoning her room, she ran into Molly’s to get a better view of the road.
On the pavement, Nate and Principal Wood stood, their voices hushed. Dawn really wished she could hear them. In fact she might have actually said that out loud.
“Why didn’t you just ask?” came Anya’s voice came from beside the teen suddenly, scaring the crap out of her. With a snap of Anya’s fingers, Dawn could hear exactly what the two men where talking about.
“It doesn’t bother you that a slayer is about to marry a vampire?” Robin Wood hissed.
“It may bother me, but it isn’t my business. I’m not Buffy’s watcher. She won’t listen to me, and Mr. Giles seems to be unconcerned with it, it may have to do with the fact that he seems to be having his own demon affair.”
“You have your own Slayer though, Molly,” Robin pressed. “Molly would listen to her watcher, wouldn’t she?”
“I don't think you have much of an idea of the Watcher-Slayer dynamic,” Nate noted.
“As a matter of fact, I was raised by a Watcher.”
“You were?”
“Bernard Crowley. Took me in when I was a young kid, trained me.”
“Crowley. I remember the name. New York based watcher. Resigned shortly after his slayer was …” Nate looked at Robin carefully for a moment. “You're Nikki Wood's son.”
“Yes,” Robin replied, nodding.
“Spike killed your mother.”
“Yes,” Robin stared down the principal.
“Does Buffy know this?” Nate asked. “Of course she knows,” Nate answered for himself. “Does Molly know though?”
“I don’t know, you’re the watcher.“
Nate nodded. “Molly has been told of the history of certain pivotal slayers, Nikki Wood though, I don’t think she was touched on.“ Nate paused. “Why are you coming to me with this? You want me to get my slayer to exact your vengeance?”
“I’m not talking vengeance,” Robin retorted. “I’m talking about what’s right and what’s wrong. Do you think that the Council will just sit by and let Buffy marry Spike? He’s an instrument of evil. He's gonna prove to be our undoing, Buffy's undoing, and she will never…never see it coming. Now, I'm talking about what needs to be done... for the greater good, Mr. Bradford. And you know I'm right.”
Nate sighed into the night. He had always felt that Buffy’s intimacy with Spike was wrong, but at the same time right. And there was the fact that he knew the pair of supernatural beings were mated. Killing Spike would kill Buffy. He looked back at Robin with discerning eyes. This was a man that had waited his whole life to exact vengeance, he was not going to be easily deterred by one refusal.
“What exactly do you propose?” Nate asked.
“I just need you to keep Buffy and Molly away for a few hours.”
Nate nodded.
“Tomorrow night, during patrol, I’ll ask Mr Giles to set something up for the two slayers.”
Dawn looked back at Anya with wide eyes.
“I knew I didn’t like him!” Anya hissed in a whisper. “Wish he was a toad. A car will run him over. He’ll go splat. It’ll be fun.”
Dawn shook her head. “No, we have to tell Spike, and Buffy.”
“And Giles,” Anya continued. “We have to tell Giles.”
________________________
Tbc…
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Some dialogue taken from Lies my Parents Told Me. Thanks to the wonderful Bloodytearsoflife for the beta.
Disclaimer: Joss owns ‘em, I just play.
Disclaimer: Joss owns ‘em, I just play.