Date written: Thu 12 Sep 2013
Authors: Starway Man and Nodakskip
Emails: theop at hotkey dot net dot au, Nodakskip at aol dot com
Feedback: As they say, it's the coin of the realm. So please tell us what you thought of it.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to Francis Eugene, Greywizard and Ironbear for beta'ing this fanfic, and all the incredible input in terms of ideas and plot development. And thanks to Buffyworld, too, for the transcripts consulted in the writing of this story.
Category: AU, Action, Adventure, Angst, Romance
Disclaimer: None of the Buffy and Angel references belong to us, but rather Joss and his gang of idi...er, geniuses. And those parts of the story that are more or less taken from the TV show obviously belong to the writers in question.
Rating: Overall R, most parts PG-13
Warnings: There are some very adult concepts mentioned in this fic, including consensual and non-consensual sexual references. Not to mention bad language, violence and character death is also present. So for all the kiddies out there, better not read this story.
Summary: Xander Harris ends up with a little sister named Dawn, and is willing to do anything to keep her safe.
Title: Childhood's End
"They'll never know how tough it is, Dawnie. To be the one who isn't chosen, to live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know." – (Xander Harris, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER)
"Hi, Dawn. Yeah, it's me. Is your sister home?" – (Angelus, ANGEL)
"A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but life would have been a lot harder for poets had it been called a cabbage." – (Leslie Charteris, 1978)
Prologue: The Best Laid Plans...
Just outside the remains of Sunnydale, California
May, 20003
Faith Lehane, the Vampire Slayer, groaned. "I just want to sleep, yo, for like a week!"
"I guess we all could, if we wanted to," the young woman named Dawn Summers nodded.
"Yeah." Willow Rosenberg almost beamed. "The First is scrunched, so...what do you think we should do, Buffy?"
"Yeah, you're not the one and only chosen anymore, B," Faith told the blonde with a smirk. "Just gotta live like a person. How's that feel?"
But just as Buffy opened her mouth to reply, another voice – this one male, and rather harsh-sounding – said: "Please. Don't tell me that you people really believe this is your moment of ultimate victory?"
Everyone spun around from the crater to see who had voiced the question. Right behind them was a black man, with a van Dyke beard and a long blue-grey robe. "If so, then the situation really is worse than I thought."
"Who the hell are you?!" Faith demanded, pulling out a dagger.
"There's no need for violence. However, there is need for talk," the man said as he waved his hand and the dagger vanished. The mage, or whatever he was, looked back towards the school bus. Everyone on board – all the new Slayers, Robin Wood, and Andrew Wells – fell gently to the floor, all of them safe but out cold.
"Don't be alarmed," the black man told Buffy, who'd come up to the front after seeing what had happened to the people on the bus. "They're just sleeping."
"Who and what are you?" Giles demanded.
"My name is not important-" he started to reply.
"I think it is. Cough up!" Buffy ordered the man she'd mentally dubbed 'Robe Boy' in no uncertain terms.
"Please, Slayer, must you focus on trivialities? You've already made enough of a mess of this situation as it is."
"Mess?!" Buffy demanded, feeling shocked. She pointed back to the crater. "We just dropped the Hellmouth on top of the First Evil! How can you say that?"
Robe Boy looked to Giles and said, "You're her teacher...or at least, you were. Can you not explain to this foolish girl how a falling city would in fact do nothing to a being who is unable to physically manifest in this dimension?"
"What are you saying?" Giles asked, not knowing what the new arrival was really getting at.
"All of you were...what's the appropriate term?" He looked now to Xander Harris, and the one-eyed man stared right back at him. "The phrase is 'you got played', I believe?"
"Look. Either start making with the non-cryptic, mister, or get lost," Buffy stated coldly, just as Xander opened his mouth to reply.
"Very well. In essence, you were tricked into doing exactly what the First wished," the black man responded.
"No we weren't. We killed it!" the Slayer's little sister said, upset and thinking of her new friends that had just died.
"A pleasant fantasy, Key-child, but nothing more; for the First cannot be killed. The Watcher and the dead ex-demon told you this, months ago, after they visited the entity known as Beljoxa's Eye. Have you forgotten facts and history so completely?"
"Then where is it now?" Buffy demanded, as Xander strove to calm himself down at the casual mention of Anya's demise like that. "I don't see the First around anywhere, gloating-"
"Because its job here is done, Slayer," Robe Boy interrupted. "Its goal accomplished, the First now has other business to attend to."
Robe Boy could tell that no one present believed him. And so he unleashed a vision of the future upon his companions. It was a dark and hellish glimpse of the shape of things to come, the result of a chain-reaction of events starting this very day.
In about a year, thanks in part to what had transpired today – the vampire known as Angel killed all the members of the Circle of the Black Thorn, the direct instruments of the Wolf, Ram and Hart in this world. The Senior Partners in their anger then released thousands of hell-demons upon the Earth. A Slayer army went in to fight the demon army...and everyone on both sides died.
After that battle, the world eventually became nothing but a wasteland. No new Slayers were Called to continue the fight, because with all the Potentials now empowered at once, there was no one left to be activated after their passing.
Thus, after the balance was tilted enough for it to physically manifest on the earthly plane, the First Evil was free to rule the devastated ruins of the planet, forever after.
Everyone screamed or yelled in horror as they snapped out of their shared nightmare vision.
"Gaaah!" Xander shouted. "What the-" He was instantly reminded of what Stewart Burns had done to him last year, but the former carpenter suspected that this time it wasn't all a lie. Anya was gone now, and he rather doubted this guy was a victim of Anyanka anyway.
"That was...what the hell was that?" Buffy demanded. Her question was instantly echoed by Faith, Willow, Giles and Dawn.
"That was the consequences resulting from your pride and hubris, Slayer, the result of your 'bloody brilliant plan'," the black man said scornfully, the last three words a perfect imitation of Giles' voice.
"No way!" Faith snarled.
"You can believe it or not. It makes no difference to me, Slayer, or to the upcoming future," Robe Boy replied. Which, oddly enough, was enough to make the Summers woman believe him.
"Okay, okay, okay," Buffy said, still looking freaked but thinking quickly. "Look, we can still make this work. We just need to make sure Angel doesn't kill those Thorn guys, right? No thorn guy death, so no demon armies-"
"Too late. The wheels are already in motion," Robe Boy told her. "The demon with a soul has traded away his former purpose, to try to save his son and his seer."
"Something's wrong with Cordy?" Xander immediately asked upon hearing of his old high school girlfriend, Cordelia Chase.
"She will be dead soon enough, the damage done by that perverse abomination of a birth too severe for her to ever recover from," the black man said with distaste. Xander's eye went wide. "And she will be led by the Powers That Be to keep the vampire on this path...no matter what any of you say or do to try to stop it."
"So, what are you saying?" Harris demanded. "We just sit around and wait for all that to happen, and then go off to die like good soldiers?"
Staring right back at him, the black man replied, "Not necessarily. There is another way."
"What? Just kill Deadboy now, and be done with it?" Xander asked, looking perfectly serious.
"Xander!" both Willow and Buffy exclaimed angrily, as Faith gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs.
"No. Something else. It is not something to be undertaken lightly, though," Robe Boy said solemnly. "I can undo the circumstances which allowed the First to manifest itself in this world-"
"When my friends brought me back to life," Buffy interrupted him, shocked. "You want to kill me?"
"No," Robe Boy responded with a shrug. "Bringing you back to life had nothing to do with the First's actions over the last two years, Slayer."
"What? But that's not..." Giles trailed off, confused. In his mind, this went against everything that Beljoxa's Eye had told him; even if the demon had never actually said that Buffy's resurrection had enabled the First to go on the warpath, just that "the Slayer caused it". ( Then again, why should I have accepted everything that bloody demon told us as gospel? ) "No, never mind. Uh, assuming that's true...then, then what did cause the First to be able to go on the offensive?"
Instead of answering Giles, the mage just looked past him to one of their group.
"Me?" Dawn squeaked out, surprised.
"You are not touching my sister!" Buffy snarled, as she stormed up to Robe Boy and looked ready to kill.
"Indeed, for that would be a pointless mistake. It was the Powers That Be who made the true error, though," the black guy said calmly, unaffected by the threat of death.
Off their looks, he explained, "When they let those monks retroactively put the Key into your lives, it should have caused major ripples in the timeline as a consequence. And yet, one of the Powers held them back – because they would have interfered with many of its plans. It is because history was not allowed to make room for Dawn Summers properly which led to the disruption in the mystical forces protecting the Slayer lineage. And that is what allowed the First to attack the way it did."
"Good Lord!" Giles would have started polishing his glasses, if he'd still had a pair that remained intact.
"Wait, wait a minute. What do you mean by 'ripples'? 'Cause I didn't just pop into existence just like that! Well, except for the part where I apparently did, but..." Dawn trailed off, looking frustrated.
"She's right, this doesn't make sense. I mean, not only were all of our memories altered, but that spell those monks did, it altered records all over the place – it had to have done! Birth records, school, doctors, hospital, banking, IRS, Social Security, census data, insurance, yadda yadda yadda," Willow said. "So how can you possibly say that history wasn't altered?"
"You focus on semi-trivialities," Robe Boy told her expressionlessly. "What I speak of is more subtle in nature. Consider the events of October 12th, 1998."
"Huh?" Faith demanded.
"The clothes fluke! That's the night Xander and I..." Willow trailed off, looking embarrassed.
"Precisely, witch. Had the ripples from Dawn Summers being present in your bedroom that night been allowed to occur, events would have taken place very differently compared to what you remember." Robe Boy glanced over at Xander. "And you would never even have been present in Sunnydale, for the past four years."
"So what can we do now?" Dawn asked, her eyes wide. "Other than killing me, I mean?"
"I can alter the circumstances under which you came to exist as a human being; undo the damage done, as it were. That will result in an unknown and unknowable new timeline, where anything can and might conceivably happen. Almost certainly, the plans of the Powers That Be in dealing with all of you will be ruined. But nothing is ever completely certain. And given the present option of this world being abandoned to the forces of evil..." The mage shrugged.
"So why the hell didn't you just do that in the first place?" Willow demanded. "Why bother telling us all this!?"
Robe Boy just pointed upwards. "The one to whom I owe my fealty is very big on free will. If you wish to try to keep humanity alive after the battle to come...then that is your choice."
Everyone started to babble when Xander suddenly shouted, "EVERYBODY, QUIET!" He then turned to the robed man, "This new timeline dealie you mentioned. What's that mean for Anya? Does, does she live?"
"Possibly, in a manner of speaking." The black man gave another of his indifferent shrugs, something all the gang found very irritating.
"So what's that supposed to mean?" Buffy demanded.
"Anyanka will be present as a vengeance demon, her humanity abandoned and forgotten over a thousand years previously. But the one you call Anya...might never come to exist." In response to the Slayer's look, Robe Boy added, "Actions have consequences, and you of all people should know that."
Again, there was a babble of voices, but that of Xander Harris was not amongst them. He was thinking this opportunity, at least after a fashion, was maybe his only chance to save the woman he'd loved, the same woman he'd left at the altar and hurt so badly. ( I know it's risky and probably completely stupid, but when the hell did that ever stop me before? Especially both times I brought Buffy back to life. )
So Xander's voice – filled with the pain of lost love – was heard to yell out, "DO IT!"
Unknown place, unknown time
The fact was that altering history in this manner wasn't the same thing as just rebooting your desktop computer when the system is about to crash. And the higher power whom Robe Boy served wasn't omnipotent or omniscient either. The Key was properly integrated into the timeline, as promised. However, something went wrong with the original plan.
Maybe the monks were a little off in their aim of making sure the Key fell under the blonde Slayer's protection. Or maybe when Glory came barging into the monastery that day, the abbot changed his mind on the most suitable choice of guardian. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Whatever the reason, Dawn Summers was never born.
Instead, Dawn Harris was born to Anthony and Jessica Harris two years after her big brother showed up on the scene...
TBC...