Standing on the Edge of Tomorrow
Previously:
"Come to the Magic Box around six tonight. We'll have a Scooby meeting, talk about everything," Buffy said as she and Faith left.
The door slammed shut and Callum and Kara were left sitting in the living room. Silence hung over them for several minutes until Callum finally spoke. "Did you dump all my whiskey?"
Note: Yes, S/D means Spike/Dawn, not Spike/Dru. Eventually, I will get to that in the story, might take a while though. Thanks for the reviews. Much appreciated.
Chapter Seven:
She saw him across the room; he was this tiny, parentless boy, maybe eight years old. He had a mop of blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Those eyes shifted around the shelter, falling on each person, until they landed on Kara. She smiled at him slightly, too tired from running to put up much of an effort, yet, she didn't want to turn him away. The boy smiled back and crawled in between and over top of people on the crowded floor. He settled in her lap and threw his arms around her neck, burying his face in her shoulder.
She hadn't been expecting that reaction and, hesitantly, she hugged the boy back. "Who's the tike?" Spike asked, appearing beside her and sitting down with his back against the wall. "I couldn't get any food," he said apologetically and Kara shrugged. She imagined if there were any, Spike would be smoking a cigarette.
"Don't know," Kara answered. "Just came over here." Looking down at the boy, she whispered, "What's your name?"
He looked up at her, his shining blue eyes still wet with innocence. "Mason," he said slowly, almost as if trying to remember something he had heard a long time ago.
"I'm Kara," Kara responded and pointed over to Spike. "And that's Spike."
"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Spike said somewhat jokingly, though the boy didn't understand and simply nodded.
Kara was about to speak when the siren went off in the house. Suddenly, all of the people jumped to their feet, all massing toward the door. "We're never gonna get out of here at this bloody rate," Spike growled and looked around. A little ways down the wall was a boarded up window. "Come on," he said grabbing Kara by the hand. Kara clung to Mason as she stood and followed Spike.
Spike grabbed the planks of wood covering the window and pulled. One finally gave way and when the window was cleared, he wrapped his hand in his t-shirt and punched through the glass. He crawled out first and grabbed the boy as Kara handed him through the window. When her feet touched the dirt outside, they started running through the night, away from the house being attacked by demons, and all of the people dying inside.
The light filtered in through the blinds, a soft yellow that transformed everything into a paler version of itself. Kara slowly opened her eyes, adjusting to the light. She was lying on the couch with a blanket thrown on top of her. She couldn't quite remember how she had gotten there. Looking over, she saw Callum asleep on the floor, propped up against the wall. She smiled, rightly accrediting her position, and the blanket, to him.
Groaning, she sat up and rubbed her hand over her face, working away all remnants of sleep. The clock was chiming twelve times for noon. Kara hoped Faith was faring well with Buffy's mom and sister. She felt a bit sorry for her mother, but knew that facing each Scooby was a necessary part of her recovery. Kara was about to pull herself to her feet when she stopped dead. She had never paid much attention to her 'spider senses,' as Faith called them, simply because in her timeline, there were more demons than humans by far. Chances were, any moving object was a demon.
But as she sat on the couch, a tingling sensation ran up her spine. She instinctively knew that the feeling wasn't from a vampire or demon – it was from a human. The window beside her suddenly blew inward in a hail of bullets and Kara dove to the ground. Pain shot through her shoulder and touching the wound, she growled as her fingers came back sticky with blood. "Bastards," she mumbled to herself.
"What the hell is going on?" Callum harshly whispered from his now prostrate position on the floor. Kara crawled over to him and pointed to the back of the house.
"Back door now! Ask questions later," she said. They half crawled, half ran into the kitchen just as their attackers were stepping into the house through the front window. Pulling open the door as silently as possible, they took off into the backyard, scaling the fence, and running as fast as they could once they hit solid ground on the other side.
"Watcher's Council," Kara finally answered once they were a good distance away from the house. Risking a backwards glance, Kara was relieved to see no one following them. "They probably assumed Faith was there."
"That makes me feel so much better," Callum grumbled. "Hold up. I can't run anymore," he said and doubled over, wheezing slightly.
Kara quickly surveyed their surroundings. They had run fairly far, now just on the outskirts of downtown Sunnydale. "Come on, let's get out of sight," she said, pulling Callum by the hand into an alley. "We should go to the Summers' house," she decided finally.
"Oh hell no," Callum quickly answered. "If those bastards shot up our house, they're probably in the midst of shooting up theirs as well."
"Exactly. We have to stop them."
"And how exactly do you suppose we do that?" Callum asked. "We don't have any weapons. You're wounded. And, let's face it, I'm practically useless save for moral support."
Kara couldn't help but smile. "Yeah, you really are," she answered jokingly. Wincing, she gingerly inspected her wound. With slayer healing, it would be healed in a couple of days, but it still hurt.
"We should get that looked at," Callum said. Tearing a strip of his t-shirt off, he gently wrapped it around Kara's arm. "This might hurt," he said and tied it tightly, creating a tourniquet. Kara smiled gratefully.
"Where should we go then?" She asked, leaning against the wall. She hated running from her enemies; she had been doing it ever since she could remember, but Callum was right. They had nothing to fight with.
"The Magic Box," Callum said, peaking out from the alley and seeing the storefront just down the street. "It's where Buffy told us to go tonight, we'll just get there a little early. Come on."
Callum grabbed her hand and held it tightly in his own as they stepped out onto the street. They hadn't seen their attackers, but with a quick study of the people surrounding them, they easily determined that gun toting Council members were not among the pedestrians. Kara glanced down at their entwined hands, shoving the mess of feelings the sight created into the back of her mind. Unbeknownst to her, Callum was doing the same.
They reached the Magic Box in a matter of minutes. Taking a deep breath, Kara pulled open the front door. The little bell overtop of the door whined and all heads in the store turned to look at Kara and Callum as they stepped inside. "Come here right away," Giles was instructing into the telephone. He hung it up, and almost whispering to himself, stated, "If Travers is behind this..."
Turning he saw two people standing just in front of the door, a man and a woman, the latter with a bloodied bandage on her arm. "May I help you?" He asked, moving forward to greet them with a worried expression.
"Does it look like we want any bleeding eye of newt?" Callum asked sarcastically. Kara shot him a glare before he could speak further.
"Has Buffy spoken to you about some people from the future?" Kara asked, weary at having to explain their situation yet again.
"Well yes, she called me this morning. Are you...?"
"Yeah. That would be us. The Council tried to kill us this morning. Do you know about Faith?" Kara asked, stepping further into the shop with Callum trailing behind her.
"Please, sit," Giles instructed them. "Xander, get the first aid kit."
Once seated, Kara glanced around the room. She recognized Willow and Xander, though the other two women in the room she didn't. She assumed they were Tara and Anya. Kara watched her father disappear into the back of the store. "Yes, Buffy also informed us that Faith was awake, and thanks to your intervention, was on the road to redemption," Giles answered.
"Good. The Council is looking for her," Kara started, but Giles cut her off.
"I'm aware," he said, removing his glasses and cleaning them thoroughly. "Buffy just called me from a payphone. She, Faith, Dawn, and Joyce were attacked this morning as well. They're all fine, a little shaken, and are coming here."
Xander reappeared at that moment with the first aid kit and passed it off to Giles. Kara ignored the pain as Giles fished the bullet out of her arm, focusing instead on the people sitting around the room. They were all staring at her quite intently, as if trying to read the future from her face. "So, in the future. What happens? Do we all die?" Anya finally asked, breaking the silence.
Kara stifled a groan. "Anya," Xander said, shooting a placating smile over to his girlfriend. "Remember Buffy said that Kara can't tell us anything. It could mess up the present?"
"Oh, right," Anya said dejectedly, then added. "Like you all don't want to know the same thing."
Kara smiled sympathetically at Xander, knowing that, with her help, he would be spending the rest of his life with the ex-vengeance demon. Giles was watching her out of the corner of his eye as he finished bandaging her arm. Kara knew that she and Callum would have to speak to him privately about Dawn and Glory. The bell overtop of the door jingled again aggravatingly and they all turned to see the rest of their companions trudging into the shop. Kara could feel the tension rise when the Scoobies saw Faith trailing closely behind Dawn. Glancing up from the floor, Faith met the eyes of each person, stopping on Kara.
"Shit, what happened to you?"