The darkness was not oppressive, it just was. Not a single gleam of grey relieved the void. It had not been disturbed for quite a while, even before the sounds of habitation from above had ceased with a mighty roar. An observer not terrified by the utter absence of sound and light might have found this place to be serene, it gave the impression of an eternity without change. A still mind dreaming of a time without humans.
A time without sodding Americans.
There was a crack of splintering wood, accompanied by the shrill scream of a girl. A slim shaft of light pierced the darkness from above, playing over a thin sheath of dust covering the contents of the room. It revealed a sneakered foot that had broken through the ceiling. The darkness returned as the girl tried to free her leg, but it was too late. She was stuck and the peace this place had enjoyed was over.
The intruder struggled against the floor's grip on her leg, using both hands and an impressive array of expletives. Some of her utterances sounded like they would be rather uncomfortable for a human throat to pronounce, not to mention the fact that they were occasionally accompanied by little flashes of light or foul smells. The glowing talisman around her neck bounced and caused the shadows in the charred underground corridor to dance as if in mockery of her. The girl only ceased her swearing when a particularly vicious sounding curse turned her red tank-top a vomit-green colour. The shaft of light below returned as she sat on the ground with a sigh and settled in to wait.
"Buffy is so going to kill me."
O-O-O-O-O
"Dawn? Dawn, where are you?"
She closed her eyes with relief. Buffy sounded annoyed. An annoyed Slayer she could handle. Scared, overprotective sister? Not so much.
"Over here!"
Dawn heard the approaching footsteps of her sister and relaxed another notch. If Buffy had thought that they were in danger then she wouldn't be giving her position away by making a noise. Or she'd be stomping like a retarded mastodon, daring the baddies to come and collect their can of whuppass. She was kind of weird that way.
It only took a couple of minutes, and two more exchanges of shouts, then the petite blonde stood before her sister, hands on her hips and somehow taking up more space than such a tiny person should be allowed to. She let her gaze linger on the spot where Dawn's leg disappeared into the floor. Then she started talking in a tone of fake curiosity:
"So, in what weird demon-language does 'Wait for Xander to give the all clear.' translate into 'Go and play in the unstable ruins?' I'm guessing it's one of the extinct ones."
Dawn rolled her eyes and stood up. Buffy towering over her was just too alternate dimension-y.
"Less with the snarky, more with the save-y, please. And how should I know that the Council would use such lousy workmanship? The explosion barely reached here, after all."
Buffy let her flashlight play over the soot-blackened walls.
"Uh-huh. Crispy instead of extra super crispy. I can see why you'd think this would be the perfect place to put down roots."
Dawn crossed her arms and glared at her sister.
"Ha. Ha. Get me out already."
The blonde made a show of examining the floor and then put on an expression of mock regret.
"I'm sorry, Dawn. I'm afraid I can't do that. What if your foot is all that is keeping this place from collapsing? The whatchamaycallit, structured intelligence of this place doesn't look too good."
Dawn narrowed her eyes.
"Structural integrity. And I'm so telling Giles."
It was Buffy's turn to roll her eyes. But she did go to her knees next to her captive sister and took a closer look at her leg and the hole it vanished into. After a minute she shrugged.
"Brute force it is."
She handed her flashlight to her sister and squeezed her fingers into the hole next to Dawn's leg. Then, without even taking a deep breath, she punched a hole into the most sturdy looking part of the the hardwood floor within her reach. Finally she gripped the floorboard, now held in place only by the pressure from its neighbours, and ripped it out. Dawn gave a sigh of relief and twisted her foot out of the enlarged hole.
"Thanks, Sis."
"What are super-powered siblings for?"
The slender brunette gingerly put her foot down. She grimaced, more in annoyance than pain. Then she pointed the flashlight into the darkness below. The light revealed what appeared to be row upon row of large wooden storage crates, stacked one atop another to precarious heights. And still the highest towers were so far below them that Dawn did not seriously consider jumping down, even if they didn't look particularly unstable. And the hole would have been a bit of a tight fit, anyway.
She looked at her sister with a triumphant expression.
"Looks like I found the mother-lode."
Buffy snorted.
"Any more finding like that and you'll have to ask Willow for that flying spell of ooh shiny!"
The flashlight had just revealed a crate that had cracked open on the ground, spilling what looked like gold and silver jewellery over a ridiculously wide area. The two sisters faced each other and broke into broad grins, their movements perfectly synchronous.
"Dibs!"
O-O-O-O-O
To Dawn's great frustration it took another week before Xander declared the building ready to be explored by sane people. The former construction foreman had taken the loss of his eye as encouragement to be twice as meticulous in all his endeavours. And the recent death of his ex-fiancé Anya did not exactly make safety a negligible concern in his mind. So now the roof and windows were covered with watertight foil, unstable parts of the building were shored up and a hundred different things that Dawn had no interest in were taken care of. The Expedition into the depths of the Watcher's Council was ready to roll.
It had been decided that this would be a Scoobies only undertaking, for old times sake. After all, if everything went according to plan then they would soon be scattering to the winds. So they would share this mostly safe semi-adventure before they went where they were needed. And before Dawn was sent to Berkeley.
Xander and Giles were the only ones that had spent any length of time in the building before. Xander when he was making sure it was safe and Giles when he had been working for the Council. So the two of them took it upon themselves to give the girls a tour of the place, Giles telling them the history and stories of the place and Xander pointing out the damage and what he had done to make it safe.
It was incredibly boring.
But, finally, they arrived at the place where the ground had tried the swallowing thing. And Dawn noticed something.
"Hey! The hole is bigger!"
Buffy frowned.
"And suspiciously head-shaped. Xander?"
The man raised his hands defensively.
"Hey, I had to see whether we're in danger of getting sucked into a giant sinkhole. Again.
No sneaking a peek before everyone else involved, I swear!"
Willow patted his back.
"That was very responsible of you. Not sneaky and underhanded at all."
Giles pushed up his glasses and cleared his throat.
"And what have you determined?"
Xander shrugged.
"Beats me. This place should have done a Sunnydale ages ago. Personally, I'm suspecting the mojo."
Willow sighed theatrically.
"Poor mojo, how quick they are to accuse you."
Giles ignored the witch and frowned at the younger man. Before he could say anything further, though, Dawn broke in.
"Can we please stop with the talking and get with the exploring? Xander made the building safe and Willow will make sure the cave is. Won't you?"
Everyone looked at the red-headed wiccan, who shrugged.
"I'm sure I can reinforce the previous enchantments that provided stability, or even whip up some temporary ones of my own. Probably."
"Great!" Dawn clapped her hands. "So let's look for the entrance to the cave of wonders. If you find it give us a shout, don't go in alone and under no circumstances touch my jewellery! We meet back here in 2 hours. Hop to it!"
There was a moment of silence. Then Xander timidly raised his hand.
Dawn sighed.
"Yes?"
"Not to doubt your infinite wisdom, your supreme bossyness, but why don't we just use the entrance we already have? You know, what with me having brought ropes and us having a flying witch and all."
O-O-O-O-O
In the end, the ropes proved to be unnecessary. Willow just lifted them all down telekinetically after flying down herself. The part of the endeavour that consumed most of the time was widening the hole and Buffy made short work of that. Once they were all gathered on the ground of the huge storage space, Giles took charge.
"Now, remember, we are looking for the documentation that tells us what is actually stored in this place. Do not simply open crates at random, we have no idea what any of them contain. Their contents may be fragile, dangerous or just terribly scarring for a young mind. Yes, Xander, even yours. Willow has been so kind as to illuminate our entry point for us, so we will meet back here in a couple of hours. Willow will let you know when you are running late. Good hunting."
And with that he turned around and hurried off into the darkness.
"Well" Dawn gazed after the rapidly vanishing Watcher for a moment., "I guess we're in Gile's kind of Heaven." She looked around. "Where's Buffy?"
A squeal of glee told her that the Slayer had found the jewellery.
"Hey!" the girl shouted and vanished into the darkness as well.
O-O-O-O-O
A little while and a lot of bickering later a rather gaudy looking Dawn managed to pry herself from the crate of treasures and started to explore in earnest. Completely ignoring Giles admonishments she looked into crates at random At least those that she could open without a crowbar. Most of what she found turned out to be boring, just pile after pile of old weapons in all shapes and sizes. One crate was filled with what looked like rabbits' feet, another apparently contained one gigantic rug, folded countless times so that it would fit into a crate that was taller than Dawn. And another one had a small book in it. Floating in the middle of the crate. Bound to the sides and bottom by a ridiculous number of chains. The brunette considered taking a closer look at it, but she changed her mind when the thing growled at her. After hurriedly replacing the lid she used a felt pen to mark that crate with a little drawing of a book with fangs. Willow or Giles would know what to do. Hopefully.
Dawn walked on and after a while she found herself in what reminded her of a clearing in this forest of crates. In the middle of it stood, to her complete lack of surprise, another crate. It was one of the biggest ones she had seen yet, its square front easily five times her height, though only a couple of feet deep.
It was surrounded by a sort of Stonehenge of smaller crates and all of that was contained within a gargantuan pentacle engraved in the stone floor. There were some kind of markings at its edge in a language that Dawn wasn't familiar with. She had a sense that they were not meant as an invitation, though.
Dawn rubbed one of the stone beads on her bracelet until it grew warm, then brought it up to her lips.
"Guys? I think I've found something."
O-O-O-O-O
Buffy was with her within minutes and Giles arrived about a quarter of an hour later, both guided to her by the witchlight Dawn had summoned with considerable effort to mark her location. Willow and Xander were taking their sweet time, though.
Dawn brought her bracelet to her lips again.
"Xander? Willow? Where the hell are you?"
"Language, Missy!" she heard the witches voice in her head. Then Xander started talking between Dawn's ears.
"We're on our way to you now. We think. We've been trying to find the walls so that Will could do her stabilizing witchery but no luck so far. And according to my map we were actually flying through the Themse at one point. I'm thinking this is L-space. Or rather S-space, come to think of it."
Dawn saw a frowning Giles lift his arm to his own lips and then the Watcher's voice joined the others inside her head.
"Xander, what are you talking about?"
"Hey, you're the Librarian! You should know about L-Space!"
The englishman made an exasperated noise and Willow took pity on him.
"I think this storage space is a kind of pocket dimension. If we went far enough it would probably do the loopy thing. Or maybe it really does go on forever. Or maybe we would meet ourselves coming the other way. That would be handy, I could tell myself whether this dress looks good on me. I'm convinced my mirror is colour-blind. And you really should read the Discworld novels. Ooh, I see Dawny's light."
The witch appeared over the rows of crates, surrounded by a golden nimbus of light and towing a tousled looking Xander behind her. They flew in a big circle around the pentacle on the floor and then landed lightly next to their friends.
Buffy threw her friend an amused look.
"What's with the fireworks?"
Willow grinned back.
"Well, holding a torch while being all Supergirl-y would be silly, don't ya think?"
"But why make it so bright behind you?" Xander complained. "I almost lost what was left of my sight in the glare."
The red-head shook her finger at him.
"You wouldn't even have noticed that if you hadn't tried to sneak a peek under my dress! Toadyfication is an option, you know."
Giles took off his glasses and started cleaning them.
"If we could move on to Dawn's discovery? You know, the one with potentially world-ending significance?"
"Hey!" Buffy protested in alarm, "Where did the sudden talk of world-endage come from?"
Giles used his glasses to point at the huge pentacle next to them.
"Pardon my assumption, but I hardly think that this is a ward to prevent stains."
Buffy's eyes grew even wider.
"You can do that? How come no one's ever told me you can do that? Dawn!"
"What? How is this my fault? Willow is the uber-witch, remember?"
"So, apocalypse you say?" Willow sounded slightly desperate as she turned to Giles. "I guess that means instant and intensive research into non-laundry-related matters, right?"
At long last Giles returned his glasses to their place on his nose.
"Indeed. Though I don't think that this is a matter of great urgency. I have a feeling that this place has been undisturbed for a very long time, even if it is remarkably free of dust. The odds of anything happening in the near future are so slim as to be negligible."
The ground chose that moment to start trembling.