Lemming vs. The Hellmouth
Summary: Here is the Winchester/Scooby interaction story everyone has been asking me for
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you recognize it, it ain't mine
Warnings: Mangled timelines, mention of same sex couples and situations (no smut ever I promise), possible May/December type romance, swearing and some violence
John peered down the dark street at the houses lining it. Dawn was asleep next to him and would not be able to tell him which house was hers. It was about 4 am in the morning on the same night Glory had died. If Dawn was correct, Buffy should be getting home soon. Either the Scoobies (and who came up with that name anyway?) were still out partying, or Buffy would be making 1 last sweep of the town's graveyards before catching a few hours of sleep. John intended to meet her at her house before having to deal with anyone else. He really didn't know what he was going to say to her. What did you say to the mother of your child when the 2 of you had never met before? Add to that Dawn's and everyone else's faked memories where Dawn was Buffy's SISTER, not her daughter and the entire situation got more and more complicated. Every time John thought about it, he got more and more nervous. He really had to deal with this before he saw the boys. Sam in particular was going to tease him unmercifully about finding himself stuck in this situation, and if things were really bad, he had talked Dean into helping him. Sam could talk Dean into anything.
There was the Impala. It was parked in front of a simple 2 story house with a tree in the yard and a swing on the porch. This must be the place. John parked and shook Dawn awake. It wasn't that difficult, Dawn had trouble sleeping in the truck. She stretched and got out. John followed and walked around the truck to her side. Dawn smiled, put her finger to her lips and pulled John around the house to the kitchen door. Slipping inside Dawn turned on the light over the sink and pushed John onto a stool at the breakfast bar. Still trying to be quiet, Dawn started making a large breakfast to John's surprise. Within 5 minutes an older woman was hurrying into the kitchen. "Buffy, honey?" she whispered as she entered. "Dawn!" Quickly grabbing and hugging Dawn as hard as she could, it took a few minutes for her to see John was there. "Who?"
"I'm John Winchester, Dean and Sam's father. Dawn's too. You must be Joyce." John held out his hand and wondered how Joyce was going to react to him. He'd already had 1 man gapping at him like an idiot, and 1 vampire wanting to rip him to pieces. He hoped this would go better.
Joyce took his hand and simply said, "Thank you for everything." Dawn was smiling as she ushered Joyce onto another bar stool and continued cooking breakfast. "Dawn you do know that if you don't let me take over, you'll be roped into making breakfast for 8, right? And Buffy's been out slaying for hours. You know how she eats after an all night patrol and a big fight." She was shaking her head and smiling. Dawn was home, safe and sound. Nothing else really mattered at this point.
"Yeah, I know Mom, I mean Grandma. A locust in a wheat field is a good description. But how else am I going to thank everybody? And why 8 though? Shouldn't there be more if everyone is coming over?" Dawn put a cup of coffee in front of John and a cup of tea in front of Joyce.
"Sam, Dean, Tara and Willow have been staying here for the past 2 weeks. The minute they smell food, they'll be storming the kitchen." Joyce drank her tea. Dawn had made it just the way she liked it. And if Dawn was going to cook for Buffy, she was headed back to bed. Last night had been an eye opener (she hadn't ever really seen anything like it) and nightmare inducing. But it had been worth it! Buffy was alive. Dawn was alive. All was right with her world. Getting up, she told Dawn she was going back to bed and to wake her if she needed anything. Another hug to reassure herself that Dawn was really home, and off she went, waving to John as she did so.
At sunrise, Buffy walked in the kitchen door. She was dressed in black sweats, but John couldn't tell due to the extreme amount of blue and green and purple fluids covering her from head to toe. She looked exhausted. Dawn, about to hand her a cup of orange juice froze. "Buffy, I love you. You're my mom and all, but if you hug me before you've had a shower I'm telling Dad everything you wrote in your diary about Angel." Buffy just stared. Dawn was here.
John, who was about to take a drink from his cup of coffee when he heard Dawn's pronouncement, turned to Buffy and said, "Please do as she says. She will carry out her threat and I really don't want to hear it. Angel is a good man, but I don't want to know about his personal life."
"You know Angel?" Buffy asked, quickly cataloging the man seated at the breakfast bar. Human, large, in shape for his age, good looking, and a fighter.
John nodded. "We've spent the last few days in LA with him. I'm John Winchester. Can I ask what you were hunting?"
"Oh, I found a few of Glory's left over minions, and a couple of very big, very ugly demons who exploded when I staked them. They were fighting over a basket of kittens and while I would have let them go over just that, they had overturned a police car and come close to killing the cop inside." Distracted by his question, Buffy missed his name.
"Kittens?" John looked confused. Why were demons fighting each other over kittens?
"Kitten poker is big among the demons around here. From what I could tell they were arguing over a gambling debt. I told their friends where the 2 bozos had crossed the line and that I was taking the kittens as payment for my ruined clothes. No body protested." she smirked. The demons had fallen all over themselves to agree with her that their friends had brought their deaths upon themselves. After all it was well known all over town that Buffy was more than willing to live and let live up to a point. After that she would tear you to pieces. The smart demons went out of their way not to piss her off. "I'll hug you after I get cleaned up, Dawn. I don't want to ruin your clothes either. The kittens are on the porch. I'm sure Spike or Clem will want them." Buffy took the glass of orange juice carefully. "You will be telling me everything. Nothing left out. At all. I've been up for the last 48 hours and I've barely had catnaps since Willow sent you to him." she pointed at John. "I'm exhausted. It was a good thing I didn't have to go hand to hand with Glory. I'll have lost before I threw the first punch." Buffy yawned. "Don't think I'm not excited to see you Dawn. I just don't have the energy to do anything more than stand under the shower right now."
Dawn grinned. Buffy in this state of exhaustion was often fun. She'd agree to anything that allowed her to sleep. However, John clearing his throat reminded her that if she said what she wanted to say, he'd be the one handing out the punishments, not Buffy. And they had just saved her life. "Go shower, Mom. I'll be up to tuck you in later."
Buffy turned to John and said, "I don't know what you did, but thank you. Last month she would have had me promising the moon just so I could go to bed." With that, she turned and headed for the shower in the basement. If she didn't get these clothes to soaking, they'd never recover.
John turned a stern gaze on Dawn. "Hey! I was supposed to be her pesky little sister, remember?"
He sighed. "Don't do it anymore. This job is hard enough without family making it worse." Dawn nodded, remembering Buffy's almost 5 months absence after her mom had found out about the slaying. She served up the food she had fixed and went out onto the porch to retrieve the kittens.
As she knelt down to put the basket down in a corner of the kitchen, Dean stumbled in, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. John got up and shoved a cup of coffee into his hands. The only thing that could wake Dean up all at once was danger. The rest of the time he needed coffee. Sitting down at the breakfast bar Dean swallowed half the coffee at once. John just leaned next to him patiently waiting. "Dad?" Dean asked after a minute.
John chuckled. Mary had said that a sleepy Dean was the sweetest thing she'd ever seen. In John's silent opinion, he had never grown out of it. "Hey, Deano." A moment later his eldest son was in his arms, and he simply held him for the longest time. A quick check showed him that Dean had no serious injuries. Dean stood still for the inspection, a habit trained into him for all of his 27 years, not just the 22 and change that their family had been hunting. Dawn leaned on the counter and watched with interest. Dad had done this with her after the hellhounds, even though she had protested she was fine. If he did this with Sam too, maybe she should ease up on him for it. Dawn was still debating this when Dean turned around and lifting his coffee cup, spotted her for the first time.
Dean was barely awake when he saw the girl. He had seen her before. He racked his brain. Oh yeah. She was the kid no one would talk about. He'd seen her pictures around the house, and the looks on Joyce's and the others faces when they'd looked at them had convinced him that the girl was recently dead. He mentally shrugged and did something that was normally very stupid. He went over and poked her in the shoulder. If Dawn had been a vengeful spirit, she would have done a lot more damage. As it was she'd shoved him on his butt. That woke him up. She was standing over him, hands on her hips, and he could hear his dad laughing behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw that John had his hand over his eyes and was shaking his head. Ok, he'd missed something. "Uh, hi?"
"Was there some reason you decided to poke me? Or are you just one of those jerks that has to do everything they can to annoy other people? That was not cool or the reception I was expecting!" Dawn huffed and crossed her arms. "Really!"
Dean just shrugged. "I wanted to see if you were corporeal. Most non vengeful type spirits don't know that they're dead, so it doesn't work to ask." He got up as Dawn stared at him. "No body around here talks about you. When they look at your pictures, I got the feeling that something bad had happened to you."
"I was sent to stay with Dad. The only bad thing would have been if Glory hadn't been taken care of. Wait a minute. If no one talked about me, you don't know who I am do you?" Dean just shook his head. Dawn grinned. This was going to be sooo good. "I'm Dawn." The shocked look that covered Dean's face as he made the connections was worth the aggravation he had caused.
"YOUR DAWN! But, Dad said you were 6 months old!" Dean shouted at the top of his lungs.
"I am." Dawn said simply as Sam, Tara and Willow charged into the kitchen wielding a variety of weapons.
"Dawn!" Tara and Willow cried and mobbed her, forgetting to put down their weapons. John snagged them as the girls ran past him. Willow was babbling at top speed and Tara had simply wrapped herself around Dawn. Sam sat down next to his dad and simply looked at him. He wasn't sure it was even worth the trouble of asking.
John put the crossbow and the stake down on the counter and went over to hug Sam. He caught Sam's look and after giving him the hug, tugged Dean over to sit beside his brother. It seemed he'd have to face the boys before he and Buffy had settled anything. "Dawn's what she calls a magical test tube kid. That Key that Glory was looking for?" they nodded, both in states of shock. "Some monks had it. They took some blood from me and some from Buffy and used the blood to create Dawn. Then they put the Key in her. They created a fake past for her and aged her up to 14." John nodded over to the girls. "She has 14 years of faked memories telling her she's Joyce's daughter and Buffy's sister. They only found out differently about 2 weeks ago and most of that time has been spent with me. Go easy on her boys. She is your sister and none of this has been easy on her.
"Yes sir." Dean and Sam said quietly. They just sat there absorbing the different shocks. Dean was glad to know he hadn't misjudged his dad, but was still blown away by the fact that his little sister wasn't as little as he had thought. Sam didn't want to believe that Buffy, a girl younger than he was, was Dawn's mother. A test tube kid made to hide a magical key; ok, that was believable. But Buffy? And his dad had admitted it? Out loud? That was going to take some time to recover from.
