Title:
Author: jmaria
Rating: FR-15
Claim: Dawn/Jayne/River
Crossover: BtVS/Firefly
Prompt: 010. Years
Disclaimer: Joss is god of his verses - me, not so much.
Spoilers: pre-Serenity, but eventually will contain spoilers
Summary: More lifetimes have passed over them and more gifts given than maybe they deserve.
Words: 949
A/N: Just Dawn in this one.
These Things We've Done
Jayne hadn't been the one to see her off. That pleasure had been reserved for the first mate, Zoe. Shadow and her leaving had affected more than one of the crew members. Mal, River, and Jayne had not been present at her departure in the early morning hours. She'd paid Zoe the other half of her passage payment and had left the former soldier on the far end of the landing area.
"Thank you," Dawn had murmured, her eyes really searching the woman's face. It was a familiar face, as Connor had often asked her to sketch the face of his long lost daughter. It would be too hard to make him remember that part of his life by bringing Zoe any further into her world. "You can leave now. I suspect Captain Reynolds will want to be far from here and I can't detain you any longer."
"And return passage?"
"I'll not be leaving here any time soon, Zoe," Dawn looked over her shoulder to where she could see Connor's family gathering for her.
"Right."
"Thank them for me -"
"Not necessary," Zoe cut her off. "It was a job. Nothing to really thank them for, then is there?"
There was an edge to the woman's voice that had come from years of soldiering and most likely self-preservation.
"No, you're right," Dawn didn't want to hurt them - Jayne and that poor girl - anymore than her presence had already done.
Zoe had left then, without a backward glance at her. And Dawn had done her best to just move forward. Connor's family had helped, his latest crop of children now in their twenties, moved forward to lead her into the compound. Connor had spent countless years searching the galaxies for something to destroy, and in the process had built himself up seven families. Seven wives had left him to move onto the world beyond, and only two other women had meant something to him in the five hundred years since then. Cordelia and Dawn. Cordelia had long since gone from him, and Dawn had been at his side in one form or another in their many years.
They had been friends save that one moment of pure anger, revenge and pain directed at things they couldn't control and had desperately wished they could have changed. That one day that they had brought their only child into the world. But they had never loved each other past the love of the truest friends. He had gone on to love seven times. She had loved only twice since then. She didn't hold it against him in the least.
"Liam, how is he?" Dawn asked quietly of the oldest son of Connor's last family.
"Worsening by the day, Miss Dawn," Liam Angel murmured, showing her in to his rooms. "After everything, we near reckoned Pa would actually - it never seemed possible -"
"He's got a few months left in him," Fay Angel, Connor's oldest daughter had tears in her eyes as she spoke. Dawn smiled at the young girl, who was only sixteen, and remembered herself when her mother had been so sick.
"It will be a well deserved peace, sweetling," Dawn didn't know who she was trying to comfort, the girl or herself. It was the end of an era. And here she stood, the last Scooby in time and space. "I know it's a small comfort..."
"But Mama awaits him there, little Fayfay," Connor's second born son, Charles, wrapped a protective arm around his younger sister.
Their youth struck her then, a hard and telling thing. They were all under twenty years old, and had watched their father age so quickly in such a short time. Twenty-seven years ago, Connor had been contacted by Whistler for the first time in two hundred and fifty years. The balance demon had last spoken to them when Drusilla had been changed back into a human. Spike, Angel, and Illyria had all still been with them, Lorne had only just been found again and the Core planets had been stumbling along like Earth had so long ago. The Council had long since drifted away, as had Wolfram & Hart. Both had tendrils of control in Blue Sun and the Alliance.
The demon had hoped that neither Destroyer or Key would remember the tales from the Slayer and the Souled Vampires. Unfortunately for him they had. Connor's wife Tess had died ten years prior, and he'd been telling Dawn how tired he was. The demon simply told him why he'd been tired.
The Powers no longer needed the Destroyer. Five hundred and fifty some years was enough for any the good warrior, who was always meant to be the savior of his father's and his mother's souls. All their past misdeeds had been corrected through him. He was the reason Darla, Angel, Drusilla, and Spike had all been able to become human again. He had to serve humanity by killing the darkest creatures in creation, shielding them from such creatures as his family. For as long as they had killed, he'd been meant to serve. And that punishment was coming to an end. They would give him one lifetime more, sped up just slightly.
It was ass-backwards, but then most things involving the Powers were. Dawn smiled at the children. His living legacy. Fay was a slayer, one of many who found her job obsolete on worlds full of human monsters. The strength of Connor had passed down into his oldest sons, stronger than the average man but half the strength of his vampire grandparents.
"And he'll never truly leave," Dawn murmured. "You've only to look at your family to see him there."