3. Nightmares & Dreamscapes

If your memories do stray
Then they betray all that's past
And all that's been between
Is it gone tell me what went wrong - Walking Wounded/The Tea Party


Anya hated being kept awake.

Of the two of them, it was usually Xander who was the heavy sleeper. Through rain, sleet, or snow, he could slumber - if it was hitting him, never mind just rattling the windows. Thunder and lightning failed to phase him - nary a grunt or groan or snore was emitted in acknowledgement of that particular duo. If he rolled over even once during the course of a night, it was an ominous sign. The boy, quite frankly, slept like the dead. She would know, having had some experience in that department.

It was because of this that the mumbling, moaning, and groaning Xander was currently partaking in - not to mention the sheets soaked with sweat - had her extremely worried. Her, Anya, once wife to be of said Xander Harris, and former vengeance demon reinstated Anyanka. Living on a Hellmouth, surpassing a thousand years in age - you'd think she would be a little less of a worry wart. It didn't seem to make much difference though - the more time she spent as a human being, the more overwhelmed she became by the temporality of it all. Mortal beings were, well... mortal. They lived and died in the blink of an eye, cosmically speaking. Thus Anya wanted as much time with Xander as she could get, runaway Groom or not - though that did not include being kept awake in the middle of the night by him. Besides, the moans and groans weren't the good kind, the kind the two of them enjoyed on a near nightly basis, even years after their initial, frantic, and awkward (for him at least) coupling. These noises instead spoke of pain and loss. It sounded, in fact, as if he were whispering an apology, although for what she couldn't ascertain. She hoped, however, that it might be for leaving her at the altar on the most important day of her mortal life.

After what seemed like the twelfth (or was it thirteenth?) excruciatingly pain-filled gasp, she finally decided to wake him. She knew it was a bad idea to tear him out of such a fervent dream - or, more likely, nightmare - but there was only so much a girl could take. She shook him, gently at first, then a little harder, taking care to ensure that her smiling face was the first thing he would see upon waking.

"I'm sorry, Anya" he whispered, and she thought he'd awoken - but no, he was still half asleep. The nightmare appeared to have ceased at long last, however, and she decided to let him be. Morning's light would come soon enough, and both of them had to work - Xander at a new site, as assistant foreman on a rather large project constructing a shopping complex. If he impressed, it could mean a secure position with the firm in charge, rife with potential for raises and advancement. Which was, well, good. Plus, it seemed the dream had been about her. And he should be sorry. Darned tootin'. Being left at the altar had been the most embarrassing experience of her mortal life - and of her immortal life. If he landed a job with the firm, he'd better lavish her with gifts. L-A-V-I-S-H!

It was with visions of new clothes and earrings dancing about in her mind that Anya finally slipped into slumber herself.

~~~

Maybe the strangest thing about the nightmare Xander had experienced the previous evening was that he remembered it at all.

He rarely dreamed, or at least very rarely remembered his dreams. He supposed he actually had to dream fairly frequently; he was pretty sure he'd read somewhere that a lack of dreams often lead to an unhealthy mental state - read: insanity. Still, since he usually didn't remember them, it didn't seem as if he dreamt very often at all. And he certainly didn't remember ever having had a nightmare quite like that one.

He must have kept Anya awake, although she hadn't mentioned it earlier in the morning when they'd shared a breakfast of bagels and cream cheese together (plain cheese for him, strawberry flavored for her, and well... he couldn't help thinking, Eww... Strawberry cheese just wasn't natural). And she hadn't tried to wake him, not that he recalled, during the night, as she sometimes would. Usually, when she couldn't sleep for whatever reason, she'd badger him, poking at him until he awoke, then draw him into some absurd guessing word game involving what she labeled "accurate but misleading clues". Mostly they were just misleading.

The intensity of the previous night's unrest brought him out of his lighter thoughts once more. He'd been in some sort of cave. The walls were brown, or perhaps a dark red (and hey, how come he could remember the color anyway, weren't dreams in black and white?), and had jagged, protruding edges jutting out at all angles. The floor was dirt and gravel of the same color, and in the center of the cave - which was about half the size of a basketball court - was a shimmering pool of blue liquid. Perfectly circular, the edges of it raised up from the ground just slightly. The liquid - what might have been water, only it was too bright, too blue - reflected back perfectly, only in blacks and grays. He knew, because he was staring into it, and what was staring back and him was his reflection - entirely in black and gray, like something out of an old movie on the Late Night Revue. Only, there wasn't even any white. Just jet black and smoke gray.

More troublesome than this, however - and it was troublesome, despite his mind telling him that his own reflection couldn't possibly hurt him - were the shadows. Not shadows he or anything solid was casting, but shadows floating around him in the cave, as if they were alive, creatures of free reign who could take on any shape. He couldn't tell how many there were, for at times they seemed to meld into one another, but they encircled him, and here and there he could see what seemed like eyes - only they were in the form of tears, holes which you could see straight through, and thus whatever was in the background - usually the brown (or was it dark red) walls of the cave - provided their coloring.

The circle drew closer and closer around him, and he was forced towards the pool in the center. And it was then that he thought of Anya, and knew for some reason he was failing her, although he didn't for the life of him know how. He could feel her, as if she was near, but he couldn't see her. Swirling, the mass of shadows advanced closer, forcing him to the very edge of the pool, but before he took the plunge - which he knew would be his final act on this plane of reality - he called out to her.

"I'm sorry, Anya." The words came out as a whisper.

Then the dream faded. It seemed as if it should have gone on - he never reached the point of falling in, the point in most dreams where you're, say, falling from the sky and about to hit the ground only you wake up just in time. In his dream, his nightmare, he knew he was about the fall, only he never even got started. Everything just... faded, and he assumed that's when he finally reached a peaceful state of sleep.

~~~

By midday, the nightmare was all but forgotten. Tito the Amazing, plumber extraordinaire, had been somewhat less than amazing on this day. He had, in fact, blown a valve while testing out the new piping in the subbasement of the new shopping complex's main building. The resulting flood hadn't done much permanent damage - nothing a quick mop job and some "decorative" plaster couldn't take care of - but it had left a couple longtime employees of the construction company slightly soggy. Soggy in this case being completely soaked. As it was Xander who had recommended Tito for the job - his sometimes drinking buddy was looking to move out of the realm of full copper re-pipes for residential homes and into something bigger - he was more than a tad worried that he'd be the scapegoat or sacrificial lamb. However, the Head Foreman didn't seem interested in such an animal. The Foreman, whose name was Joe Something or Other, had taken it all in stride, and noted that he'd yet to be on a job site where everything went perfect. Xander breathed a small sigh of relief upon hearing this comment, and vowed to say a brief prayer to whatever deity looked over the apparently godforsaken burg known as Sunnydale - just as soon as he figured out who such deity was. And gave him or her a piece of his mortal mind for allowing such a hellhole to exist in the first place.

Well, maybe he wouldn't go to that extreme. The last person he knew who had insulted a God and lived had been Spike, and he'd come out of the experience looking very much worse for the wear. Well, technically he hadn't lived, being a vampire and thus already dead, but he had walked... stumbled... away. And looked as if he'd been hit by a train. Still, living in Sunnydale was a love and hate relationship, emphasis on the hate. Still more emphasis on the hate of Spike.

With thoughts of Godly vampiric torture on his mind, the remainder of the day seemed to fly by. When he wasn't forced to actually mull over some blue prints or sign off on a fresh order of cement for building three (otherwise known as the hole in the ground where building three would be erected), he passed the time with fun-filled games of Remember When. Remember when Spike tried to kill us all? Remember when Angelus tortured Giles? Remember Ms. French, the insect lady? Not a happy round of reminiscence, but oddly comforting in its own way. He'd overcome a hell of a lot, given that, starting out in Sunnydale High, he'd lacked even the most basic of survival skills. Then, in the course of a few weeks, he'd learnt that his new best friend was a Vampire Slayer, the school librarian was her Watcher, his hometown rested on the mouth of hell (with Sunnydale High conveniently located directly above it), and that a centuries old vampire was trying to bring about an apocalypse. And not only had he managed to accept it, he'd survived, and helped prevent one hell of a lot of badness.

Sometimes, a bit of pride was a good thing. When he left the site that evening, the aforementioned pride had managed to bring his mood a complete one-eighty from where it had been that morning. He was working things out with Anya, had some pretty damn cool friends, and had saved the world at least six times, not that he counted. Life was looking pretty up.

~~~

Dawn was pretty sure that she remembered having other dreams, once. Of boys and puppies and being a movie star and a lot of other cool stuff. Dreams that were different than the one she now had night after night, for so long that she couldn't seem to remember ever having dreamt anything else. Ones not laced with strange innuendo. She was pretty sure, but not completely sure. After all, she'd only existed for a little over two years. And, who was to say she'd ever experienced a dream before then? Having been created and just given memories of a past that never happened... it was hard. Not knowing where the humbug ended and the reality began, that was even worse. Too much for a girl who was sixteen going on eternal. It made you question reality and your own existence. If you can't tell where the fake memories end and the real ones begin, then do you even exist in the present? Did you ever exist? Are you simply a reflection of others? I think, therefore I am. I think, therefore I am not. She'd picked up some of the ideas surrounding Cartesian Theory between her English and Philosophy classes, where she was, if not excelling, getting passably by. I think, therefore I am not. I am not Buffy, I am not Willow. I think, therefore I'm not them. I'm not a reflection of them. I'm me.

She could grasp that, but not math. Go figure. Probably because she was, well, a key. The Key. One mystical blob of energy, whose purpose was to open the portals between dimensions - break down the walls between realities - spirited off by some monks sworn to keep it from the hands of evil, bundled up and molded into the form of a girl. A teenage girl. Dawn Summers. Name and identity so chosen because Buffy Summers, an only child for her entire life until reality went for a little side trip, was the Slayer - a powerful warrior, who could protect such a precious yet dangerous item. Who could be expected to love and protect her sister, even if the sister in question wasn't really her sister.

She - Buffy that was - could also be a Grade A Bitch at times. Dawn loved her anyway, and knew Buffy felt the same. The monks had chosen well. Still, she felt ignored and isolated, especially in recent months. Everyone around her was grown, they were so far away. Even when in the same room. The only ones she could even get semi-close with were Spike and Xander. Xander, because, well, he still liked a lot of "kid-stuff". Not that she was a kid - she might still feel like one at times but would never admit to it - but... cartoons. Sugary cereal. Video games. Laughing at immature noises and fart jokes. Those were things you shouldn't have to give up just because you hit a certain age. Xander got that, and still liked such absurdities, so they could relate. And Spike - he was the only one who didn't treat her like a total kid. He didn't speak down to her - he spoke to her.

Then there was Tara. They had something different... maybe an older sister thing, but of course Dawn already had an older sister, and wouldn't having another one who wasn't a blood sister be like cheating on her or something? Maybe it was a mother/daughter thing... only a really young mother who could still relate to and have fun with her daughter. Whatever, it was cool. Only Tara was out of the picture for now, stolen from her.

Because of that, she had no one to talk to about the dreams. Buffy was busy with Slayer stuff, and they'd never had the gossip-about-sex type of close relationship some sisters did. And she certainly couldn't talk to Spike or Xander about these dreams. Not yet. It was just too uncomfortable. She'd rather have a blatant sex talk with either of them than go over the dreams with that pair. Actually, a sex talk with Xander and Spike... alright, don't go there. Point being, these dreams were strange and embarrassing and the only candidate she would have felt comfortable talking to about them was the one who wasn't an option - Tara. So she'd have to settle with figuring them out for herself. Struggle with the meaning of it all... but hopefully learn something.

~~~

In her dream she's naked. That isn't the problem. She's pretty comfortable with her body. Sure, she's a bit tall for her age, but long legs - so not a curse. The problem is the setting. Broad daylight. Her own living room. Filled with her friends. Not friends from school, or Janice - if that were the case, the dream could probably be summed up as the usual teenage anxiety. No, not school friends. The Scoobies. Willow, Xander, Anya, Buffy. Spike. She stands naked before them, unable to move, despite the intense desire to run. Flee. Get the hell outta Dodge, or at least get your naked ass out of the living room! After a moment, though, the reason why she's unable to flee - can't move much at all, actually - becomes clear. Her hands are bound with leather restraints, raised above her head. Feet bound together with a cord, just barely touching the floor. Funny how she never noticed that at first. It's like a cheap porno movie (at sixteen, she's well versed in those, unbeknownst to Buffy), only there's nothing sexual about it - other than the whole nakedness bit. It's sterile, and she feels like she's at a doctor's office. The Scoobies play the role of the doctor, or well, doctors. They're examining her. Buffy acts more like an overseer, and Spike simply watches, perhaps a little... chagrinned? The others look her up and down, nodding at some things, frowning at others, but she has no idea what is bringing out these reactions.

Suddenly she's out of the room, clothed now in blue silk - pretty sweet, actually, except she's never worn anything like it in her life. It's nearly transparent, and it clings to her as she walks. Oh yeah, she's free now, walking. To where, she doesn't know, but at least she's free of the meat market. There's mist swirling around her legs, and it dawns on her that she's outside - and barefoot. Moist blades of grass press up between her toes. She must be in a park. Wait, no - tombstone. Cemetery. Figures. Welcome to Sunnydale.

In front of her, standing in the darkness, arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture - as if to say, come to me - is an unmistakably male figure. Great. Dawn suddenly wishes she had more clothes on, something other than this translucent garb. She considers running, only to find that she's drawn to the figure. To his outstretched arms. She can't turn away, what's more, she doesn't want to. This despite the fact that his face is hidden by shadow.

As she heads into his arms, the dream ends - with her never having seen his face.

~~~

With telling the Scoobies far from being a viable option at this point, the best thing to do was the traditional Scooby fallback plan for when all things unexplained arose - research. For Dawn, there was one place and one place only in which research took place. Having missed the high school years where Scooby Central was the Sunnydale High Library, under the reign of Giles - she was too young, and hadn't actually existed - this place was the Magic Box. And that was where she headed directly after school on what was to be another typical day in Sunnydale - typically strange.

~~~

It was half-past three when Anya herded what had to be the most stubborn customer in the history of retail sales out the door of the Magic Box. At the very least, the most annoying customer in the history of sales of magical paraphernalia. The Magic Box was Sunnydale's lone magic shop, though surprisingly profitable - a benefit of the town having been built upon a Hellmouth. As its proprietress, and half owner - the other half being Rupert Giles, of course, who would hopefully remain overseas for some time with her in total control - Anya was used to dealing with some colorful and often times downright strange characters. Strange even by her thousand-year-old ex-demon standards. But this one... she'd been unable to sell him on the Essence of Slug candles, which were now marked down to seventy-five percent off. He'd spilt the entire bowl of Chicken's Feet which lay next to the counter. Then he spent a good five minutes ogling the statue of Raush, the Fertility God of an ancient sect of witches - a statue that resembled, of course, a phallus, as nearly all fertility statues did. Except this customer... seemed to want to make a little comparison. Approaching her at the counter with the statue and nothing else in his hands, it took her a full minute for the implication of his question to sink in.

"Do you have any fitting rooms available", he inquired, and most of her puzzlement came from the fact that they didn't sell any form of clothing.

"Fitting rooms?" came her puzzled reply. Looking from the statue to the slightly rose colored cheeks of the customer, however, it hit her. Ick. The thought of someone doing that... in her store... well maybe, but no. He simply wasn't her type. There was something very not Xander about him.

After taking the statue from him, he went from the slightly sheepish nature he'd had about him while asking for the fitting room to an irritated, irate customer, droning on about an order of Newt's Eyes he claimed to have picked up the previous week. He'd asked for organic Eye of Newt and had received synthetic ones, which had buggered up his spell rather badly. Without of a receipt, however, Anya was unwilling to deal with him. No receipt, no return or exchange. It was the Capitalist way. And she was proud to be a hard-working member of the capitalist system. After a few more minutes of bickering, however, she caved. Anything to get him out of the store.

~~~

Dawn took no notice of the irate brown-haired man as she passed on her way into the Magic Box. She certainly didn't notice that his fly was down. Not that it mattered, if she had, she was slightly too shy to have said anything anyway.

She did, however, notice Anya, who had a strange expression of relief on her face. Which frightened Dawn in an "Oh, Yuck" sort of way. What if Xander had got off work early and had stopped in and they'd used the training room to...

The teenager soon realized that this wasn't the case however. There'd been no afternoon quickie. For one thing, Anya was impeccably dressed, in a light blouse that really accented her golden locks, and a dark skirt that hung to the floor. There were none of the tell-tale signs of having hastily dressed that usually signified an afternoon tryst for the ex-demon and her former fiancée. Dawn was able to pick up on those easily, because she had caught the pair of them post-passion at the shop on at least three occasions in the past month. They didn't know - probably thought they were doing a great job of covering up the evidence - but she could tell. Whose sexual radar was more attuned than a teenaged girl's?

Plus there was the fact that on this afternoon, Xander was nowhere to be found.

That was a bonus, actually, because it would be easier to get what she wanted if she dealt with Anya alone. Anya was, well, Anya... still working at being a human. She was straightforward to the point of being inappropriately blunt, and had an unhealthy fascination with commerce and all things involving money. She always seemed to be in a bit of a rush, with no time for small talk - likely due to her newfound mortality - and it was this last trait that Dawn hoped would make things easy for her this afternoon. Besides, it wasn't as if she was doing anything wrong.

"Anya, Hi!" she called out, all smiles and cheerfulness. Only to be shot down by the former vengeance demons gruff reply. "Dawn. Punitive Damages. Ring a bell? When are you going to work off your debt to me?"

Oh. Right. There had been that little incident... well string of incidents if she was going to be honest about it. It, or they, had involved her stealing this and that from the Magic Box. At the time, it had felt cool - dangerous, something she shouldn't be doing, oh what if I got caught. Then she had been caught, and it hadn't been very cool at all. Anya was her friend. Well Buffy's friend, or Buffy's friend's ex-fiancée now back to girlfriend, but whatever the relation, she was nice to her most of the time. In the end, Dawn had felt pretty shitty about the whole thing, and even she had recognized it as a cry for attention. Not that she didn't deserve a little attention - months later and she still couldn't help feeling ignored by the older Scoobies - but it was a rotten thing to do.

"When school's out for the Christmas season, remember? Then I'm counter girl." Working in the magic shop was not something she was exactly looking forward to, but it was something she had to do. She was well aware of that, even without the endless parade of lectures from Buffy, and Anya, and even Spike, of all people. Spike, who stole essentially everything he owned! Still, she understood, and did plan to pitch in. But right now, she needed a favor from Anya, and obtaining it wasn't going as easy as she had hoped.

"But in the meantime, you know, I'm still in School and stuff... and I sorta needed some help, with that" she continued, struggling to come up with a good excuse as to why she needed... what she needed.

"You mean with Math? Because if it's math, you really should ask Willow. She's the math brain. Unless it's Economics. I can help you with that. Or Business. Is it Business? I know all about business. I'm very business savvy." Conversations with Anya were often like conversations with a hypertension sufferer - or someone with hypertension who also happened to be on a great dosage of Speed.

"No, it's umm... Dream Interpretation. It's for an English class. We're doing some book where... the protagonist dreams and stuff. And I don't need help so much as I need books. Plus, Willow's in England still. Detox."

Anya looked unimpressed. "So you don't want my help, just more of my things? I'm not a library. Why can't you use a library?"

"There wasn't anything good there... the selection is a little slim" she explained. "They inherited most of the books that survived the fire at Sunnydale High... but that wasn't much. Giles was a lot more into demonology than the interpretation of dreams... or any other books for that matter." Despite a solid personal collection of classical English fiction and poetry, the Watcher had allowed the catalog of the school library to slip some. "And since he rescued all the demon books that were left over for his own collection, we have next to nothing other than some old English texts from the 70s, a couple Time-Life series, and a bunch of copies of Emily Dickinson - she must have been way popular at the old high school."

"Shouldn't the new librarian have ordered new books for the umm... new library?" Anya asked, possibly setting a land-speed record of repetitiveness.

"That's mostly Harry Potter books and after school special material" Dawn replied. It was the truth - her school library was a dumping zone for whatever other schools cast off, with a few trendy best sellers tossed into the mix to hide how dilapidated the collection really was.

"Well, I don't see why you'd expect to find anything useful here" said Anya.

Dawn seized the opportunity this response opened, trying to keep the story short and simple.

"Remember when we were cataloging the rare books? There was one about dreams, and when I was researching sources on the net, I recognized the title. It might be helpful, and I promise to keep it in good shape. Won't put a mark on it. Please? Buffy'll kill me if I don't pull my grades up."

Anya caved. "Fine - but you have to promise me you won't try any spells with it or anything. It's not a spell book, is it?" she asked.

"I think it's just writings on the dream world and stuff. Nothing scary. And I so promise to be careful." Which, again, was true. She'd be very careful when she went about preparing the spell that would - if it worked right - reveal the messages and hidden truths behind the dreams to her.

This seemed to be enough for Anya, who motioned for the younger girl to follow her over to the rare book stacks. These were located on the upper level of the store, where potentially dangerous texts were also stored. The shelves were low but wide, and each was covered in a thin film of dust. Apparently Anya was more concerned about making sales than keeping tidy. Although, Dawn surmised, a layer of dust might be some sort of prerequisite for old books. Just like yellow, crumbling pages and that musty smell only books written at the turn of the century or earlier possessed.

As Anya looked on, she pulled out the text she wanted. Dreams & The Shadow World. Presenting it to the shopkeeper, she mentally crossed her fingers, hoping that the woman who had lived a millennia would be unfamiliar with it. That seemed to be the case.

"Never heard of it. Just don't try and read any lines in Latin out loud - you should never speak Latin in front of magical texts" was Anya's lone warning.

"I'm pretty sure there's nothing magical in it. But I'll be careful" she assured. Conquest had, she made her exit, promising once more before she left to be careful and to return the text in immaculate condition - or at least as well as she had found it.