Author's Note: Posting early as I'll be on the road the rest of the day.
Someone brought up to me that Dawn was actually very good at languages. Which I'd forgotten. So I changed some stuff around in here, as a result. I think this works - Dawn was really upset at Buffy after learning she was the Key. This sounds like something she'd do.
Dawn isn't stupid. We're just catching her a little out of her comfort zone, right now. We'll catch her more in her comfort zone, in future stories.
Enjoy.
"It's not that big a deal, is it?" Seo asked, leaning over the table to whisper in the café. "I know lots of other languages."
No. It was just… kind of… weird.
"Why do you know how to speak Snake and Bird and about a thousand kinds of alien," said Dawn, "and you don't know how to speak French? I mean, even I know how to speak French!"
Okay, granted, Dawn's French vocabulary was basically limited to the adventures of Jean-Paul and Luc from her high school textbook, both of whom had spent their leisure time talking about how they were doing super cool things like going to 'la discothéque' and sitting around cafés ordering 'des croque monsieurs'.
"Couldn't we just go somewhere else?" Seo pleaded.
"Nope!" Dawn decided. "If you don't know French, we're staying here until you learn it."
Which, Dawn assured herself, had everything to do with her being a responsible aunt who wanted the best for her niece. And definitely had nothing to do with the fact that Dawn had always wanted to visit Paris, and couldn't wait to get out there and do some serious sight-seeing.
"When are we?" said Seo. She glanced at the streets around them. "Everyone seems a little… frantic."
Dawn shrugged. "I couldn't get a year," she admitted. "Whenever I asked, people just kept telling me it was 'Year One'. But I think it's about 200 years before I was born, or something. Like… around Jane Austin times." Her eyes drifted off into the distance. "You know. With people being all happy splendor and ballrooms and parties and dancing with Colin Firth."
"Year… One?" asked Seo, in a soft voice. She shuddered. "I've heard another time when people called it that. Year One. Day Zero. The end of the world."
But Dawn wasn't listening, anymore. Her mind had been sent into a spin of imagination, picturing dancing with Colin Firth.
Ooh…
Dreamy…
"I think we should leave," Seo whispered.
Dawn snapped out of her fantasy.
"No," she said. "We're definitely staying here in Firthland… I mean Paris. Totally."
Dawn had tried her best to stick with Seo, since she knew the language and had the superior pick-pocket skills. But the crowd was seriously worked up about something, and people were rushing around being frantic and shouting out things in French that Dawn couldn't pick up.
And no one seemed even remotely interested in helping her see all the touristy places.
She asked one guy where the Louvre was, and the guy started screaming at her, and almost attacked her. Geeze! She didn't know seeing the Mona Lisa was such a controversial topic.
"Okay," Dawn said, turning to Seo. "Maybe we shouldn't do the Louvre museum. Maybe we should just…"
But Seo was gone.
Nowhere to be seen.
Dawn dropped all tourism aspirations. Searching through the crowds, frantically. "Seo?" she called. "Seo!"
Nothing.
But the crowd had started looking at her all weirdly, with terrible expressions in their eyes. They were all whispering something about the Louvre and immigrants and things, and… Dawn was starting to get the impression that maybe touring France 200 years ago hadn't been the best idea.
Then the crowd began screaming, advancing on her in a murderous mob.
Dawn turned. And ran.
Sprinted down the streets and across the alleys, doing every evasive maneuver she'd ever learned outrunning vampires and demons. But she could hear them gaining on her, shouting things that sounded like, "émigrée!" and "monarchiste!" and "Angletere!"
What the hell?
"I'm not English! I'm—!" Dawn shouted back.
But was grabbed by the arm, and dragged out of the mob's line of sight. Was jerked away from the angry people, and dragged down a hole in the streets, tumbling down into a dark, lightless place.
"Shh…" came a soft voice, beside her.
The sounds of the mob thundering above died down, and left only silence.
Someone nearby struck a match, and Dawn gasped, as she came face-to-face with a tunnel lined with bones and skulls of the dead. And two others who were alive — a man and a woman, both dressed in clothes that looked like they'd once been fine, but were now ragged and worn and dirty.
They were talking to one another in French, which was all going by too rapidly for Dawn to process.
The woman turned to Dawn. "Êtes-vous d'Angleterre?"
Uh…
Okay, then…
Dawn scrambled to recall high school French lessons. How do you say, I've lost my niece?She couldn't remember that. High school French had been way too long ago — and Dawn had purposely flunked it, after learning she was the Key, just to spite Buffy.
So… yeah. Didn't remember how to say she'd lost her niece. But Dawn did remember how to ask for a croissant. It couldn't be that different!
"Je… voudrais… mon…" Dawn stopped. Realized she didn't remember the word for niece. "…companion."
More French talking that Dawn didn't understand. A lot of: "Elle a perdu son compagne," and "Qui est son compagne?" and stuff.
Then the woman turned to her, and, in heavily accented English, said, "We will help."
Dawn looked around herself. Shuddering, as she saw all the bones and skulls and things surrounding them. Heard the mice and rats scuttling around by their feet.
"Can you help in a place a little less creepy?" she asked.
The woman frowned, not understanding the words.
"Somewhere without the bones?" Dawn clarified, gesturing at the bones around them.
"Les catacombes," the woman understood. She shook her head, sadly. "We must hide. The people… don't like us."
More French from Dawn's new friends, but this time, when they spoke, Dawn could understand more and more. Like she was picking it up, faster than she ever had picked up any language before. Seo's influence, Dawn guessed. And then the words started morphing, interspersed with perfectly translated English phrases. A translation so perfect and unaccented that it was pretty clearly being caused by the telepathic circuits, themselves.
So… Seo was definitely alive, then.
And learning French.
But judging by the words the translation circuit was picking up — 'revolutionary', 'democracy and freedom for all', and a whole bunch of economic stuff about the price of bread — Seo's French lessons weren't starting with finding 'la discothéque'. No. Seo's French lessons seemed way more about revolutions and freedom for all citizens, and Marie Antoinette, and…
Wait a second.
"Is there a revolution going on, or something?" asked Dawn, a little nervously. "Like… a whole let-them-eat-cake style revolution?"
The man and woman she'd hidden with looked at her like she was stupid for not knowing any of that, before.
"Oh, God," Dawn breathed. "You sure can pick 'em, Dawn."
