Mourning:
Vibrant green foliage surrounds Dawn in the misty forest. Vines and moss encase branches and tree trunks twisting around them in a spiral pattern. Dawn walks slowly breaking twigs and crunching plants as she moves through the pathless woods. Sunlight shines through the trees making lines in the mist and Dawn looks around for some direction as to where she should go. Then through the thick low lying fog there is a light that shines from up ahead. Dawn follows her instincts which lead her into the light, there she sees a clearing in the wood, a clearing that forms a perfectly round circle surrounded by trees. Sitting in the center of the circle are two women facing each other. Dawn recognizes them both immediately.
“Buffy,” Dawn calls out as Tara flips over a card for the slayer who sits across her. Dawn rushes to them and sits down. Once she’s on the ground she sees that the two deceased women have a tarot spread between them. They acknowledge her presence but continue with their cards silently. Tara flips over the last card as Dawn looks down to read them. All three cards are laid out face up before Buffy. The first card is Death, the second is the Four of Swords and the last is The World.
“Fate is written in the cards,” Tara says turning to face Dawn. She pulls the deck into her hand and unfolds three cards before Dawn. The first is the Three of Swords, the second is The Five of Cups and the third is The Star.
“I don’t understand,” Dawn says.
“Dawnie… you have to go now… you have to wake up,” Buffy says.
Before Dawn can say another word the mist invades the clearing and soon engulfs Dawn, within seconds both Tara and Buffy have disappeared from her sight. “You have to wake up,” Buffy’s words travel through the wind. It gets brighter, whiter.
--
“It’s time to wake up,” a voice sounds. Groggily Dawn opens her eyes to see Spike’s face before her. No longer is she in the woods, she’s back in her own house, in Buffy’s room - in the death room. She had fallen asleep on his shoulder the night before and he stayed there in the death room with her all through the night. Now he shakes her softly dragging her out of her dreamscape. It takes Dawn a moment to realize where she is and what’s going on but eventually she remembers and sits up straight.
“Its morning pet,” Spike says as Dawn stands up. She walks to the side of Buffy’s bed and stares down at her sister’s lifeless body. Then in a whirl she turns back to look at Spike who is now standing behind her.
“Fate is written in the cards,” Dawn says softly and to no one in particular as she rushes out of the room.
Spike is left standing there for a moment with a confused look across his face. Then he decides to follow her. Spike walks out into the hallway and follows Dawn into her room. He watches as she shuffles through papers on her desk and looks among the books on her bookshelf then she opens one of her drawers and digs through it.
“What are you looking for?” Spike asks.
“Tara said that Fate is written in the cards… I have to see what cards she pulled,” Dawn explains not caring that her words aren’t making any sense to Spike.
“You saw Glinda?”
“Yeah, she was in my dream with Buffy… uh, where are they?” Dawn says partially to herself as she continues to shuffle through her drawer. Then she stops. Her fingers grace the cover of a blue box and she pulls it out. As Dawn turns back to face Spike she holds a deck of tarot cards in her hands. Dawn then rushes out of her room and flies down the stairs with Spike following behind her.
--
“We’re all gonna die,” Vi says lying on the floor of the living room. They’ve been hauled up in the house all day with no slayer to protect or train them, boredom now consumes them all.
“We’re not all gonna die,” Kennedy says, drawing out the word all with the implication that some might.
“No? The slayer… the person who brought us here to protect us, she’s a vampire, I agree with Vi on this, we’re dead,” Rona says.
“I don’t know… I mean she did that to be stronger right, things might be alright,” Molly chimes in.
“In my opinion vampires are bad, no exceptions… her being stronger just means that she’ll kill us faster.”
“Well, what about Spike, he’s a vampire and he’s not bad,” Molly says.
“Spike has a soul… or so he says at least,” Kennedy says.
“Yeah, and he’s still a badass,” Andrew says a little too dreamily. Vi gives him a look. “I mean, you know, cause of how he always gets the girls.” The potentials ignore him.
“Yeah, and Buffy’s supposed to keep her soul too.”
“Right, and when that goes wrong we’re all dead,” Rona says.
“You know, I think the girl that’s been saving your butts up to this point deserves a little more respect then that,” Xander says leaning against the open French doors to the living room, all faces turn to him. He’s still very much not okay with the current situation, but Buffy deserves more respect then that. “Buffy has risked her life for all of us, she is the only one who can do what needs to be done to keep us safe… she makes hard decisions every day because she’s the one who does what needs to be done… what she did last night, she did it to protect you all. She gave her life for you, just remember that.”
Xander turns and leaves them all with that thought as he walks toward the kitchen. Their gossiping stops completely and for a while they all just sit in silence thinking over what Xander has said. After a moment Kennedy disappears up the stairs.
--
Dawn storms down the stairs with Spike following close behind her. She makes her way to the dining room table and takes the tarot cards out of their box. They’re laid across the table in what appears to be the tarot form of 52 card pick up, although with far more cards. She flips them up so she can see the pictures and spreads them across the table searching for the cards she saw in her dream. Spike walks up behind her with his brows drawn together and watches as she frantically searches through the cards. Willow walks in from the kitchen then and see’s Dawn looking through the tarot cards, she walks up to the dining room table to see what she’s doing.
“What’s going on?” Willow asks looking over the scene before her with curious eyes.
“Dunno… she just started shuffling around with those cards, said something bout a dream,” Spike replies.
“Tara and Buffy were in my dream… they had tarot cards… I need to find out what they meant,” Dawn says without taking her eyes off of the cards before her.
“Tara?” Willow asks with a wince of pain.
“There, this is it… these are the cards she showed to Buffy and these… these are the ones she pulled for me… what do these mean?” Dawn says as she finishes putting the cards in their rightful order. Willow steps up to the table and curiously looks over the two spreads that Dawn has laid out.
“Death, The Four of Swords, The World… Well death obviously would be Buffy dying.”
“Yeah I got that, but I don’t remember the other ones,” Dawn says.
“Well actually there’s more to it then that, death doesn’t just mean an end to something, but the start of something new… The Four of Swords symbolizes a period of rest and it’s in the present position in the spread so that makes sense with Buffy’s current condition.”
“What about the last one Red?” Spike asks.
“The World in the future spot… it stands for completion, the world is the whole.”
“Like when she wakes up she will be whole?” Dawn questions not quite grasping the concept. She wonders how Buffy could be whole by being a vampire.
“It’s hard to say exactly… tarot cards… they can be a little wonky, it all depends on how you interpret them,” Willow explains.
“What about the other three?” Spike asks.
“These are the ones she pulled for me, The Three of Swords, The Five of Cups and the Star,” Dawn says as Willow thinks of their meanings.
“Um… The Three of Swords is Sadness usually because of an argument, The Five of Cups is disappointment… see how in the picture three of the cups are knocked over but two still stand, it’s a symbol that not all is lost, and the Star stands for hope,” Willow says and she thinks over how the cards relate to their situation.
“We’re supposed to keep hope,” Dawn says mostly to herself.
“I think it’s safe to say these three are about all of us,” Spike says.
“So what do we do now?” Dawn asks wanting to take action.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do,” Willow says. “You dreamed about these cards, but that doesn’t mean that it was…”
“It was Buffy and Tara, I didn’t just dream it up, they were really there,” Dawn says cutting off Willow’s sentence.
“Even if that’s true Dawnie, the cards… they don’t tell us what to do next. They can only offer some insight into the situation. There’s nothing we can do but wait,” Willow says.
Dawn’s shoulders slump. She had wanted to have something to do, but instead she’s only reminded that there’s nothing she can do, nothing but wait. In that moment Dawn feels entirely helpless, and the thought that this situation is completely out of her control frustrates her more then anything.
--
Upstairs Kennedy peers into Buffy’s room. It’s empty for the first time since she and Spike went up the day before. Buffy’s body is still and cold and white as the sheets that she lies upon. Kennedy’s arms are crossed and she leans in the door frame. Her attention is so focused on the dead slayer before her that she fails to notice the appearance of a man at her side. He has salt and pepper hair, wears a tweed jacket and has steely gray eyes.
“This is exactly what I wanted, you know,” the man says in a thick British accent. Kennedy turns to him, her face is shocked at first but then she becomes angered.
“I know you’re not him… I watched him die… you might as well leave now.” The First transforms from the image of Kennedy’s former watcher to that of Buffy. She is as white as the corpse on the bed and the twin holes in her neck are dripping with blood.
“You’re all going to die,” The First says in Buffy’s voice then vanishes.
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