To all who've waited patiently for the rest of my Connor/Dawn story, thank you so much for your continued interest. I've lost my own interest and momentum, getting seriously sidetracked into some OC fic I've been writing, but I will attempt to keep coming back to this story bit by bit until it's finished.
"Dawn In L.A." – chapter 2
Time was running out. More of the Slayers had dispersed to their homes and Buffy was starting to make serious plans for flying to England, which at one time would have been as exciting to Dawn as Christmas but now filled her with dread. Having your home get sucked into the bowels of the earth tended to drain your desire to travel. Besides Dawn was on a mission to locate Connor, which had become a single-minded obsession for her. Maybe it was because it distracted her from thinking about the other missing people in her life, people who could never be reclaimed, like Mom, Tara, Anya and Spike.
Angel had stonewalled Dawn for weeks, refusing to divulge the location of his son beyond the fact that he was somewhere in California, despite her entreaties and tantrums. She couldn't cajole or bully the information out of him and he was the only one who knew. But a few days ago Dawn had suddenly had a brainstorm. She had often seen Tara or Willow use locator spells and Dawn knew which book contained the spell. How hard could performing it really be? It was like following a recipe or a chemistry lab assignment, and Dawn was a wiz at both.
So she had nicked the book and assembled all the ingredients, including a map of California and a personal item from Connor to aid in the location. She was using the knife he had given her on her birthday last year; the knife modified by Holtz to fit the hand of his foster son when Connor was a little boy. The weapon must be infused with the essence of Connor after all those years of use.
She set the knife carefully on the floor just inside the circle she had drawn, which encompassed the map. She referred back to the book as she lit candles, sprinkled herbs and chanted the passages carefully. Dawn felt her hair begin to crackle with static electricity as energy gathered in the air around her. As she felt the magic actually begin to work, she was both elated and extremely nervous.
A diffuse light began to glow around the knife, and then a concentrated red light, like the beam from a laser pointer rose from the weapon and began circling the map slowly. It hovered and then came to rest at a particular point. Dawn leaned over and read the name of the town before the light blinked out.
Pleasantville. The name couldn't have been more ironic. You just had to love the sense of humor of the Powers.
Dawn blew out the candles, folded the map and swept up the ground herbs as she planned her next move - commandeering a vehicle for the drive up the coast.
"Mom! I told you I don't care what shade of blue. Let's just pick something and get out of here," Connor said.
It wasn't his idea to go shopping for bedding and other stuff for his dorm room, but obviously his mom was in need of some bonding so he agreed and had been trailing her around the mall for the past two hours. Mom seemed to think he needed more shirts as well, because after the sheets and comforter were purchased she had begun dragging him into clothing stores. The key word was "after," so Connor was schlepping the awkwardly large bags all over the mall.
"What about this one?" she asked, holding up a blue button down that looked to him exactly like the last three she had showed him. "You want to try this one on?"
"I don't need to try it on. I'm sure it'll be fine." Then, aware of how snappish and ungrateful he must sound, he added, "Thanks. You know, I really don't need any more clothes. I have everything I...."
"I know," she interrupted. "But you have to start out the school year with a couple of new things too."
"Mom, it's not kindergarten. And if I want something I can buy it myself. I have a job now, you know."
She pierced him with a 'don't argue' stare.
"All right. One shirt," he agreed with a sigh.
She smiled. "And another pair of shoes. Your tennis shoes are a wreck. We'll just stop at The Finish Line, then we can go home."
Connor rolled his eyes and returned her smile. Mom on a shopping mission was not to be denied.
He stood with the bags of previous purchases hanging from either hand, while she carried the blue Oxford and a couple of other sports shirts to the sales counter. He lounged in the archway of the store, staring out at the passing people in the mall. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her again, that familiar looking girl with the long brown hair.
He frowned and straightened, moving to the right to get a better view of her. She was half hidden by a potted fern and he could've sworn she had been watching him. Considering that this was the fourth time he'd caught sight of her in the mall today and the third time they had made eye contact, he didn't think he was paranoid to believe she was following him.
Connor glanced back at his mom, who was still at the cash register, and then he started to walk toward the column behind which the brown-haired girl had disappeared. He passed the fern and rounded the pillar and there she was, leaning against it, looking away from him.
"Hello?" he said tentatively.
The girl jumped and spun to face him, wide-eyed and gasping. "Jeez!"
"Sorry." He smiled. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just thought.... Were you...?" He could hardly ask her if she had been following him without sounding crazy. "I mean, do we know each other?"
She shrugged quickly. "I – I don't know. I don't think so," she said hurriedly, her eyes darting this way and that as though looking for an escape. "I was just...." She gestured toward the row of shops. "I'm shopping. For, uh, shoes. I need shoes," she explained, and then she quitlooking around and faced him with a frown. "Is there a problem with that?"
"No," he said in a placating tone, wondering if he should back away slowly from this very weird girl.
"Connor! There you are." His mom's voice made the girl startle like a frightened deer. She looked toward Connor's mom and then at him. For just a moment their eyes met and he felt a weird sense of deja vu looking into her wide hazel eyes.
"Connor," the girl murmured under her breath.
"Yeah. What's your name?" he asked.
"Oh! Uh...."
"Hello." Mom approached, laden with another shopping bag. Her eyes were curious as she regarded him talking to the strange girl. She knew pretty much everyone from his regular crowd at school. "I don't believe I've met you before. I'm Mrs. Brady." She held out her hand to the girl before Connor had time to explain that he didn't know the girl either.
"I – I'm Dawn," she replied, taking his mom's hand. "Pleased to meet you."
Okay. This was getting more surreal by the second. A strange girl he had barely spoken to, who may or may not have been stalking him, was now shaking hands with his mom and looking at her with an intense, almost searching stare. Connor decided to end it.
"Well, it was nice running into you ... Dawn. But we still have some shopping to do, so...."
"Oh yeah. Me too," the girl replied, pointing vaguely at one of the shops. "The – the shoes." She snuck another of those quick, furtive glances at Connor and he frowned as their eyes met and that odd sense of familiarity hit him again. He did know this girl. He was sure of it.
"Really? We're shoes shopping too," Mom was saying.
"Hah. Coincidence," Dawn said, smiling nervously and backing away. "Weird."
You're weird all right, Connor thought, watching her awkward exit.
"Well, um, goodbye. Nice ... seeing you," she said, turning and bumping into the edge of a bench and tripping. She pointed at it as she regained her balance, her face flushing bright red. "Bench." Then she turned and fled, merging into the crowd.
"What an odd girl? Very nervous. Where do you know her from?"
Connor didn't want to go through the strange explanation that he didn't know her at all, had indeed only just met her, so instead he said, "Work. She comes to Mr. Freeze for ice cream sometimes." He looked at his watch, the bag-o-bedding banging against his thigh as he lifted his hand. "Speaking of which, we really don't have time to look at shoes, mom. I have to get home and change before I go in."
"All right, you little weasel. But before you leave next month we ARE going shopping again."
Connor threw his head back and let out a dramatic sigh. "Fine. My mother the shopaholic."
He followed her to the escalator, stopping every several yards as she looked in another display window. Neither of them saw Dawn emerge from the CD Warehouse and keep pace with them at a discreet distance.
By the time Dawn got out to her car and tried to fit the key into the ignition, her hand was shaking so badly it took her three tries. Her breath was coming in hitching gasps and tears blinded her.
"Come on. Get a grip," she mumbled, finally inserting the key. She looked up to see Connor and his mother loading bags into the trunk of their car. "You've dealt with weirder stuff than this every day of your life for the past three years." She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes and sniffed loudly.
Sitting back, she rested her head on the seat and her hands on the steering wheel and took a few calming breaths as she watched Connor disappear into the interior of the family car. Family. Connor had a family. A real family with a dad, a mom who shopped and, from what Angel said, a pair of sisters. Weren't they real even if their minds had been altered to accept Connor into their circle? As real a family as Buffy was to her?
Connor looked so relaxed and ... normal and ... happy, an expression Dawn hadn't seen on his face in the whole time he had stayed with them in Sunnydale. What right did she have to take the chance of messing up his perfect, new life by possibly starting a chain reaction of memory? She should go back to L.A. right now. Go to England with Buffy when their passports were ready and start her own new life. Leave Connor to his.
But when the white Ford Explorer pulled out of the parking lot and headed onto the highway, Dawn was right behind it, cutting off a sedan as she pulled into traffic.
"Hi. Can I help you?" Connor looked up at the next customer. "You!" He frowned.
"Sorry. I know it seems like I'm stalking you or something, but really I just came here for the ice cream." When he looked doubtful, Dawn added, "Really."
She looked up at the menu. "I'll have a banana boat sundae with vanilla ice cream for all three scoops and chocolate, butterscotch and strawberry syrup. No nuts. Extra whipped cream, please, and three cherries instead of one. Oh, and chocolate sprinkles too."
She gazed at him with innocent, ice cream loving eyes and Connor smiled. "Okay. No nuts. Got it." It was actually kind of flattering, if creepy, that she was following him. As he prepared her sundae, he talked to her over his shoulder.
"So, are you new here in Pleasantville?" he asked. "I've never seen you at school so...."
"Yeah. We just moved from L.A. Well, actually, some of my family still lives in L.A. and I'm going back and forth right now. I'm only here part of the time."
"Will you be starting school here in fall?"
"What makes you think I'm still in high school?" she asked.
He gave her an 'are you kidding' look.
"All right, I'm just a junior," she conceded. "What about you?" she responded.
"Just graduated. I'm going to USC starting next month."
"Oh. That's good. Um. What are you studying?"
"History, for now. I'm interested in archeology too. Ancient weapons particularly."
"Weapons, huh." Dawn was smiling.
"What?"
"Nothing."
He gave her another curious frown as he finished garnishing her sundae with three cherries and sprinkles. "You know. You look really familiar to me. Are you sure we haven't met somewhere?"
"Oh, I get that all the time. 'You look like my cousin' or my best friend's sister or whatever. I guess I just have one of those average faces."
"Not really," Connor said with a flirtatious smile. "Not average at all."
Dawn blushed and busied herself pulling napkins from the dispenser.
"Look, I'll be off work by ten tonight. If you haven't got anything else to do, you could meet me here and we could ... go out for coffee or something." Connor couldn't believe the words even as they were coming out of his mouth. Not only was the girl too young for him but he was going to be leaving after next month. Also, there was the fact that she was kind of stalkery and strange. But somehow he wanted to talk to her more, without interruption, and try to figure out why that feeling of deja vu persisted.
"I....I should...." She stopped. "I suppose I could. My, uh, dad was expecting me back in L.A. this evening but I guess I could ... stay with mom tonight and go back tomorrow. Sure, I'll meet you here later."
"Great."
A family with six little kids in bathing suits was piling out of their station wagon. Dawn stepped away from the serving window.
"All right then. I'll see you at ten."
"Buffy.... Buffy.... Buffy...." Dawn tried to interrupt but her sister was on a rant. She held the phone away from her ear, rolling her eyes and tapping her foot. After a few seconds she put her ear to the receiver again. "Are you finished? Good. Now let me talk for a change. I'm okay. I'll be fine and I won't be home until tomorrow. Don't worry about me." Before Buffy could say another word, Dawn hung up.
She shifted on the bench and looked around the park that was the center of Pleasantville and at the quaint, old-fashioned storefronts that bordered it. This had to be one of the cleanest, prettiest little towns anywhere in America, and that clued Dawn in right away that there must be something wrong with it. In her experience anything that looked too good to be true usually was.
She wondered how she was going to kill time until her 'date' with Connor and then she wondered about the expression 'kill time' for a while. What a hideous concept. Dawn didn't think she wanted to kill anything again in her life if she could help it. After all that time hounding Buffy to train her and let her participate in the vampire and demon slaying, Dawn had finally come to realize that she was much happier as a researcher than a hands on member of the team.
Rising from the bench, Dawn walked one of the pathways through the park, admiring the fountain at its heart and the happy people enjoying a hot summer evening. A pair of rollerblading little girls screamed out a ''scuse me!' as they sped past her down the path. More children were laughing, yelling, climbing, swinging and sliding in the playground area. A young couple was making out, stretched full length on a blanket by some bushes, totally oblivious of her passing. Dawn smiled and blushed a little as she stole a glimpse at them.
A family was setting up a late meal at one of the picnic tables. The smell of grilling meat cramped Dawn's stomach and she thought that maybe an ice cream sundae wasn't enough dinner. As she watched the family interact; the dad intent on his grill, the mom trying to break up an argument between two younger kids while the teenager sprawled at the picnic table affecting an air of supreme boredom at being forced into a family outing, Dawn was hit by a pang of a different kind.
Family. Her unorthodox family circle had fractured over the past year and looked like it would be splintering further in the days to come. After losing mom and then Buffy, Dawn had become intrinsically linked to Giles, Willow, Tara, Xander, Spike and even Anya. They had become her family more than her absent father ever could have even if he'd shown enough interest to come and claim her.
But Giles had left, and Buffy returned. Spike had disappeared from Dawn's life long before he actually left Sunnydale, and then Tara was stolen from all of them by that murderer, Warren, and Willow was shipped off to Devon for recovery.
Fast forward a year and the hits just kept on coming. Dawn felt like she lost Tara all over again when she had to watch Kennedy infiltrate Willow's life. She really kind of hated Kennedy with her smart mouth and cocksure attitude. And Dawn could see Willow slipping further away every day now in the Sunnydale aftermath. Willow and Kennedy had announced that they would be taking a trip to see Kennedy's parents on the East coast and then probably jet off to a vacation in Italy while they decided what they wanted to do next in their lives.
Giles had already left for England again, to organize the remnants of the Council into some new form that could facilitate the hundreds of Slayers now walking the earth. Buffy intended to move there with Dawn and help him in the work but was still seeing off the last of the injured Slayers to their respective homes. Evidently Dawn didn't have a say in the matter and would be towed along in Buffy's wake.
With Anya dead and his hometown sucked into the earth, Xander seemed rudderless and spent most days looking for repair jobs that needed doing at the hotel. Angel had offered to create some type of a position for him at Wolfram and Hart but Xander refused. He hated L.A. but didn't know where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. Dawn got the feeling he would probably drift along with her and Buffy for lack of any plan of his own.
And the last member of Dawn's pseudo-family, Spike, was also dead, although he had actually been dead to her for quite a while now. It hurt to think of how close they had become during the Summer Without Buffy when he was her protector and confidante and how their relationship had so quickly slipped away after Buffy's return.
Dawn smiled wistfully as she continued to watch the family in the park; dad was announcing that the burgers were ready, mom was getting the rest of the food laid out on the table, the little kids were squabbling again as they jockeyed for position as far from the dropping of bird doo on the picnic bench as they could possibly get, and the teen continued to lounge. Dawn felt like smacking that jaded teenager upside the head and telling her that she should appreciate every second of this family time because it could be stolen away quicker than the blink of an eye.
She walked on, looking for a place to find a bite to eat while she waited for her meeting with Conner.
To be continued....
I intended to tell a larger chunk of the story but figured I'd better just get this thing up so people would know I haven't completely abandoned the project. Hope there are still readers out there.
"Dawn In L.A." – chapter 2
Time was running out. More of the Slayers had dispersed to their homes and Buffy was starting to make serious plans for flying to England, which at one time would have been as exciting to Dawn as Christmas but now filled her with dread. Having your home get sucked into the bowels of the earth tended to drain your desire to travel. Besides Dawn was on a mission to locate Connor, which had become a single-minded obsession for her. Maybe it was because it distracted her from thinking about the other missing people in her life, people who could never be reclaimed, like Mom, Tara, Anya and Spike.
Angel had stonewalled Dawn for weeks, refusing to divulge the location of his son beyond the fact that he was somewhere in California, despite her entreaties and tantrums. She couldn't cajole or bully the information out of him and he was the only one who knew. But a few days ago Dawn had suddenly had a brainstorm. She had often seen Tara or Willow use locator spells and Dawn knew which book contained the spell. How hard could performing it really be? It was like following a recipe or a chemistry lab assignment, and Dawn was a wiz at both.
So she had nicked the book and assembled all the ingredients, including a map of California and a personal item from Connor to aid in the location. She was using the knife he had given her on her birthday last year; the knife modified by Holtz to fit the hand of his foster son when Connor was a little boy. The weapon must be infused with the essence of Connor after all those years of use.
She set the knife carefully on the floor just inside the circle she had drawn, which encompassed the map. She referred back to the book as she lit candles, sprinkled herbs and chanted the passages carefully. Dawn felt her hair begin to crackle with static electricity as energy gathered in the air around her. As she felt the magic actually begin to work, she was both elated and extremely nervous.
A diffuse light began to glow around the knife, and then a concentrated red light, like the beam from a laser pointer rose from the weapon and began circling the map slowly. It hovered and then came to rest at a particular point. Dawn leaned over and read the name of the town before the light blinked out.
Pleasantville. The name couldn't have been more ironic. You just had to love the sense of humor of the Powers.
Dawn blew out the candles, folded the map and swept up the ground herbs as she planned her next move - commandeering a vehicle for the drive up the coast.
"Mom! I told you I don't care what shade of blue. Let's just pick something and get out of here," Connor said.
It wasn't his idea to go shopping for bedding and other stuff for his dorm room, but obviously his mom was in need of some bonding so he agreed and had been trailing her around the mall for the past two hours. Mom seemed to think he needed more shirts as well, because after the sheets and comforter were purchased she had begun dragging him into clothing stores. The key word was "after," so Connor was schlepping the awkwardly large bags all over the mall.
"What about this one?" she asked, holding up a blue button down that looked to him exactly like the last three she had showed him. "You want to try this one on?"
"I don't need to try it on. I'm sure it'll be fine." Then, aware of how snappish and ungrateful he must sound, he added, "Thanks. You know, I really don't need any more clothes. I have everything I...."
"I know," she interrupted. "But you have to start out the school year with a couple of new things too."
"Mom, it's not kindergarten. And if I want something I can buy it myself. I have a job now, you know."
She pierced him with a 'don't argue' stare.
"All right. One shirt," he agreed with a sigh.
She smiled. "And another pair of shoes. Your tennis shoes are a wreck. We'll just stop at The Finish Line, then we can go home."
Connor rolled his eyes and returned her smile. Mom on a shopping mission was not to be denied.
He stood with the bags of previous purchases hanging from either hand, while she carried the blue Oxford and a couple of other sports shirts to the sales counter. He lounged in the archway of the store, staring out at the passing people in the mall. Suddenly he caught a glimpse of her again, that familiar looking girl with the long brown hair.
He frowned and straightened, moving to the right to get a better view of her. She was half hidden by a potted fern and he could've sworn she had been watching him. Considering that this was the fourth time he'd caught sight of her in the mall today and the third time they had made eye contact, he didn't think he was paranoid to believe she was following him.
Connor glanced back at his mom, who was still at the cash register, and then he started to walk toward the column behind which the brown-haired girl had disappeared. He passed the fern and rounded the pillar and there she was, leaning against it, looking away from him.
"Hello?" he said tentatively.
The girl jumped and spun to face him, wide-eyed and gasping. "Jeez!"
"Sorry." He smiled. "I didn't mean to scare you. I just thought.... Were you...?" He could hardly ask her if she had been following him without sounding crazy. "I mean, do we know each other?"
She shrugged quickly. "I – I don't know. I don't think so," she said hurriedly, her eyes darting this way and that as though looking for an escape. "I was just...." She gestured toward the row of shops. "I'm shopping. For, uh, shoes. I need shoes," she explained, and then she quitlooking around and faced him with a frown. "Is there a problem with that?"
"No," he said in a placating tone, wondering if he should back away slowly from this very weird girl.
"Connor! There you are." His mom's voice made the girl startle like a frightened deer. She looked toward Connor's mom and then at him. For just a moment their eyes met and he felt a weird sense of deja vu looking into her wide hazel eyes.
"Connor," the girl murmured under her breath.
"Yeah. What's your name?" he asked.
"Oh! Uh...."
"Hello." Mom approached, laden with another shopping bag. Her eyes were curious as she regarded him talking to the strange girl. She knew pretty much everyone from his regular crowd at school. "I don't believe I've met you before. I'm Mrs. Brady." She held out her hand to the girl before Connor had time to explain that he didn't know the girl either.
"I – I'm Dawn," she replied, taking his mom's hand. "Pleased to meet you."
Okay. This was getting more surreal by the second. A strange girl he had barely spoken to, who may or may not have been stalking him, was now shaking hands with his mom and looking at her with an intense, almost searching stare. Connor decided to end it.
"Well, it was nice running into you ... Dawn. But we still have some shopping to do, so...."
"Oh yeah. Me too," the girl replied, pointing vaguely at one of the shops. "The – the shoes." She snuck another of those quick, furtive glances at Connor and he frowned as their eyes met and that odd sense of familiarity hit him again. He did know this girl. He was sure of it.
"Really? We're shoes shopping too," Mom was saying.
"Hah. Coincidence," Dawn said, smiling nervously and backing away. "Weird."
You're weird all right, Connor thought, watching her awkward exit.
"Well, um, goodbye. Nice ... seeing you," she said, turning and bumping into the edge of a bench and tripping. She pointed at it as she regained her balance, her face flushing bright red. "Bench." Then she turned and fled, merging into the crowd.
"What an odd girl? Very nervous. Where do you know her from?"
Connor didn't want to go through the strange explanation that he didn't know her at all, had indeed only just met her, so instead he said, "Work. She comes to Mr. Freeze for ice cream sometimes." He looked at his watch, the bag-o-bedding banging against his thigh as he lifted his hand. "Speaking of which, we really don't have time to look at shoes, mom. I have to get home and change before I go in."
"All right, you little weasel. But before you leave next month we ARE going shopping again."
Connor threw his head back and let out a dramatic sigh. "Fine. My mother the shopaholic."
He followed her to the escalator, stopping every several yards as she looked in another display window. Neither of them saw Dawn emerge from the CD Warehouse and keep pace with them at a discreet distance.
By the time Dawn got out to her car and tried to fit the key into the ignition, her hand was shaking so badly it took her three tries. Her breath was coming in hitching gasps and tears blinded her.
"Come on. Get a grip," she mumbled, finally inserting the key. She looked up to see Connor and his mother loading bags into the trunk of their car. "You've dealt with weirder stuff than this every day of your life for the past three years." She wiped the back of her hand over her eyes and sniffed loudly.
Sitting back, she rested her head on the seat and her hands on the steering wheel and took a few calming breaths as she watched Connor disappear into the interior of the family car. Family. Connor had a family. A real family with a dad, a mom who shopped and, from what Angel said, a pair of sisters. Weren't they real even if their minds had been altered to accept Connor into their circle? As real a family as Buffy was to her?
Connor looked so relaxed and ... normal and ... happy, an expression Dawn hadn't seen on his face in the whole time he had stayed with them in Sunnydale. What right did she have to take the chance of messing up his perfect, new life by possibly starting a chain reaction of memory? She should go back to L.A. right now. Go to England with Buffy when their passports were ready and start her own new life. Leave Connor to his.
But when the white Ford Explorer pulled out of the parking lot and headed onto the highway, Dawn was right behind it, cutting off a sedan as she pulled into traffic.
"Hi. Can I help you?" Connor looked up at the next customer. "You!" He frowned.
"Sorry. I know it seems like I'm stalking you or something, but really I just came here for the ice cream." When he looked doubtful, Dawn added, "Really."
She looked up at the menu. "I'll have a banana boat sundae with vanilla ice cream for all three scoops and chocolate, butterscotch and strawberry syrup. No nuts. Extra whipped cream, please, and three cherries instead of one. Oh, and chocolate sprinkles too."
She gazed at him with innocent, ice cream loving eyes and Connor smiled. "Okay. No nuts. Got it." It was actually kind of flattering, if creepy, that she was following him. As he prepared her sundae, he talked to her over his shoulder.
"So, are you new here in Pleasantville?" he asked. "I've never seen you at school so...."
"Yeah. We just moved from L.A. Well, actually, some of my family still lives in L.A. and I'm going back and forth right now. I'm only here part of the time."
"Will you be starting school here in fall?"
"What makes you think I'm still in high school?" she asked.
He gave her an 'are you kidding' look.
"All right, I'm just a junior," she conceded. "What about you?" she responded.
"Just graduated. I'm going to USC starting next month."
"Oh. That's good. Um. What are you studying?"
"History, for now. I'm interested in archeology too. Ancient weapons particularly."
"Weapons, huh." Dawn was smiling.
"What?"
"Nothing."
He gave her another curious frown as he finished garnishing her sundae with three cherries and sprinkles. "You know. You look really familiar to me. Are you sure we haven't met somewhere?"
"Oh, I get that all the time. 'You look like my cousin' or my best friend's sister or whatever. I guess I just have one of those average faces."
"Not really," Connor said with a flirtatious smile. "Not average at all."
Dawn blushed and busied herself pulling napkins from the dispenser.
"Look, I'll be off work by ten tonight. If you haven't got anything else to do, you could meet me here and we could ... go out for coffee or something." Connor couldn't believe the words even as they were coming out of his mouth. Not only was the girl too young for him but he was going to be leaving after next month. Also, there was the fact that she was kind of stalkery and strange. But somehow he wanted to talk to her more, without interruption, and try to figure out why that feeling of deja vu persisted.
"I....I should...." She stopped. "I suppose I could. My, uh, dad was expecting me back in L.A. this evening but I guess I could ... stay with mom tonight and go back tomorrow. Sure, I'll meet you here later."
"Great."
A family with six little kids in bathing suits was piling out of their station wagon. Dawn stepped away from the serving window.
"All right then. I'll see you at ten."
"Buffy.... Buffy.... Buffy...." Dawn tried to interrupt but her sister was on a rant. She held the phone away from her ear, rolling her eyes and tapping her foot. After a few seconds she put her ear to the receiver again. "Are you finished? Good. Now let me talk for a change. I'm okay. I'll be fine and I won't be home until tomorrow. Don't worry about me." Before Buffy could say another word, Dawn hung up.
She shifted on the bench and looked around the park that was the center of Pleasantville and at the quaint, old-fashioned storefronts that bordered it. This had to be one of the cleanest, prettiest little towns anywhere in America, and that clued Dawn in right away that there must be something wrong with it. In her experience anything that looked too good to be true usually was.
She wondered how she was going to kill time until her 'date' with Connor and then she wondered about the expression 'kill time' for a while. What a hideous concept. Dawn didn't think she wanted to kill anything again in her life if she could help it. After all that time hounding Buffy to train her and let her participate in the vampire and demon slaying, Dawn had finally come to realize that she was much happier as a researcher than a hands on member of the team.
Rising from the bench, Dawn walked one of the pathways through the park, admiring the fountain at its heart and the happy people enjoying a hot summer evening. A pair of rollerblading little girls screamed out a ''scuse me!' as they sped past her down the path. More children were laughing, yelling, climbing, swinging and sliding in the playground area. A young couple was making out, stretched full length on a blanket by some bushes, totally oblivious of her passing. Dawn smiled and blushed a little as she stole a glimpse at them.
A family was setting up a late meal at one of the picnic tables. The smell of grilling meat cramped Dawn's stomach and she thought that maybe an ice cream sundae wasn't enough dinner. As she watched the family interact; the dad intent on his grill, the mom trying to break up an argument between two younger kids while the teenager sprawled at the picnic table affecting an air of supreme boredom at being forced into a family outing, Dawn was hit by a pang of a different kind.
Family. Her unorthodox family circle had fractured over the past year and looked like it would be splintering further in the days to come. After losing mom and then Buffy, Dawn had become intrinsically linked to Giles, Willow, Tara, Xander, Spike and even Anya. They had become her family more than her absent father ever could have even if he'd shown enough interest to come and claim her.
But Giles had left, and Buffy returned. Spike had disappeared from Dawn's life long before he actually left Sunnydale, and then Tara was stolen from all of them by that murderer, Warren, and Willow was shipped off to Devon for recovery.
Fast forward a year and the hits just kept on coming. Dawn felt like she lost Tara all over again when she had to watch Kennedy infiltrate Willow's life. She really kind of hated Kennedy with her smart mouth and cocksure attitude. And Dawn could see Willow slipping further away every day now in the Sunnydale aftermath. Willow and Kennedy had announced that they would be taking a trip to see Kennedy's parents on the East coast and then probably jet off to a vacation in Italy while they decided what they wanted to do next in their lives.
Giles had already left for England again, to organize the remnants of the Council into some new form that could facilitate the hundreds of Slayers now walking the earth. Buffy intended to move there with Dawn and help him in the work but was still seeing off the last of the injured Slayers to their respective homes. Evidently Dawn didn't have a say in the matter and would be towed along in Buffy's wake.
With Anya dead and his hometown sucked into the earth, Xander seemed rudderless and spent most days looking for repair jobs that needed doing at the hotel. Angel had offered to create some type of a position for him at Wolfram and Hart but Xander refused. He hated L.A. but didn't know where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do. Dawn got the feeling he would probably drift along with her and Buffy for lack of any plan of his own.
And the last member of Dawn's pseudo-family, Spike, was also dead, although he had actually been dead to her for quite a while now. It hurt to think of how close they had become during the Summer Without Buffy when he was her protector and confidante and how their relationship had so quickly slipped away after Buffy's return.
Dawn smiled wistfully as she continued to watch the family in the park; dad was announcing that the burgers were ready, mom was getting the rest of the food laid out on the table, the little kids were squabbling again as they jockeyed for position as far from the dropping of bird doo on the picnic bench as they could possibly get, and the teen continued to lounge. Dawn felt like smacking that jaded teenager upside the head and telling her that she should appreciate every second of this family time because it could be stolen away quicker than the blink of an eye.
She walked on, looking for a place to find a bite to eat while she waited for her meeting with Conner.
To be continued....
I intended to tell a larger chunk of the story but figured I'd better just get this thing up so people would know I haven't completely abandoned the project. Hope there are still readers out there.