Disclaimer: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and Angel are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and the WB. Not mine, please don't sue.

Chapter 9: Lies

Connor kept her from slumping all the way to the floor, and she clung to him desperately. Thoughts swirled in her brain as she tried to remain upright.

Buffy wasn't a slayer anymore?

"How can this be?" She gasped to Connor, who had managed to seat her on a bench in the hallway, a short distance from the door to Buffy's room. Dawn was so distraught she hadn't even noticed him moving her.

"What? The baby?" Connor asked, thinking that she was having her second meltdown since she'd heard that her sister had gone into labor.

"No. Buffy. Sh-sh-she said that sh-she wasn't a s-s-slayer anymore." Dawn stuttered out, staring at him with wide eyes.

"She gave it up, Dawn." Connor tried for soothing. It didn't work.

"You knew?!" She practically shouted. He could see that she was becoming hysterical, and knew that Buffy and his dad could not see her like this. Not only would her memory loss secret come out, but the vampire bite would likely come up as well. Not to mention that his dad and step-mother were dealing with enough already. He gripped her tightly by the arm, whisked her back past an open-mouthed Scooby Gang, put her in the first elevator that arrived, and nearly speed-walked her into the hospital chapel.

"Buffy gave up her slayer powers when she found out she was pregnant. She'd been doing some investigating out near the old vineyard, and found this scythe. Willow used it to pass her powers onto someone else." Connor explained.

"I don't understand why she would do this. She's vulnerable with out them." Dawn was trying to come to terms with it, but she just couldn't seem to grasp what Connor was telling her.

"She did it for the baby." He said gently, pulling her in his arms. She stared up at him.

"A lot of good that did." Dawn's tone was extremely bitter. "The irony is that if she was still the slayer, she'd probably have carried the baby to term...with the slayer healing and all." Dawn's eyes were teary as the news settled in.

"I know this sucks, Dawn." Connor tried to comfort her. She let out a wild, nearly hysterical laugh.

"You don't know anything." She said, her voice having a maniacal edge.

"I do know, Dawn. It's happening to me too." He attempted to reason with her. She broke his embrace, her tears spilling over.

"You have no idea. You don't know what I've done." Dawn whispered.

*

"Of course it's not, Buffy." Willow told her friend. The words washed over Buffy, meaningless. It was her fault, her FAULT that her baby was coming early. She'd reneged on the whole world-saving gig, and now the world was extracting its payment. She clutched her stomach as another contraction hit, fighting the urge to cry out.

"Dawn...Where's Dawn?" Buffy nearly sobbed.

"She'll be here, Buffy." Willow patted the former slayer's hand and shared a worried glance with Angel. "She'll be here."

*

"What you've done? What are you talking about, Dawn?" Connor demanded. Dawn covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, Goddess." She cried out. "This is my fault, Connor. Mine."

"There's no way. These things just happen. The doctor said so." Connor assumed she was having a guilt trip, and attempted to soothe her out of it.

"You don't understand." Dawn refuted.

"Then make me understand, Dawn. That's my littler brother or sister up there." Connor's voice had an edge to it that she hadn't heard since that night they'd jumped off the tower. She wrung her hands. Life was full of defining moments. Dawn supposed this was hers.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be, Connor." Dawn began. He started to speak, but she held up a hand to silence him. "This isn't my world. I did something...foolish, and now everyone I love is paying for it." She told him.

"Dawn, you're starting to sound..." He spoke up again.

"Crazy?" She filled in for him, her laughter slightly hysterical. "Maybe I am crazy. Maybe this is all a dream and I'll wake up." Her tone was melancholy and full of longing. Connor stared at her.

Suddenly, everything clicked.

It was her.

"This isn't my world. This isn't my world."

"When did you start taking Italian? You don't speak Italian."

"Goddess, Connor."

"You don't speak Italian."

"This isn't my world."

The words echoed around him, the shock slamming into him like a freight train. She was staring at him, a worried expression on her face. He did the first and only thing he could think of.

He kissed her.

*

A clearly upset Willow approached the other members of the Scooby Gang, chewing on her bottom lip. Lindsey noticed her arrival first, and greeted his intended with a comforting hug.

"Dawn's not here?" Willow asked, looking at them.

"She was, but she got upset, so Connor took her somewhere to talk." Xander answered when none of them would.

"I should go find her." She said. "Buffy's asking for her. I'll be back in a bit." Willow told Lindsey, kissing him lightly.

"I'm gonna go visit the Buffster." Xander announced. He headed off towards Buffy's hospital room, while Willow headed for the elevator. The rest of them sat back down, resuming their previous positions.

*

Connor and Dawn broke apart, breathing heavily. He rested his forehead against hers.

"What was that for?" Dawn managed a whisper.

"For being you." He answered.

"Ok, now I'm the one who's confused." Dawn replied, relishing the feel of his hair tangled around her fingertips. He smiled.

"I know." He said, staring into her eyes.

"You know?" She repeated, more confused than before. "You know what?" Dawn continued.

"About you. This isn't your world." Connor told her. "It's not mine either."

*

Willow rounded a corner, and stopped a nurse.

"Hey, have you seen a teenage boy and girl, both brunette, head this way?" She asked the frazzled looking nurse. The nurse gestured towards a door behind her, and continued on her way. Willow headed to the door way, and opened it.

"What?!" Dawn gasped out, more angry than surprised. "It's been you this whole time and you let me go on and on about how I had no memory?" She shouted, outraged. She slapped him on the arm in her anger, causing him to jump back and hold his hands up in surrender.

"How was I supposed to know that you were lying?" Connor defended himself. "I assumed you were the Dawn that I'd known for the last few years." He went on.

"Yeah, explain that one to me." Dawn interrupted what Connor thought was a pretty good defense, and he gave her a look.

"The portal dropped me back in time, to when I arrived back from Quor-toth." Connor answered. "I knew what was going to happen, thanks to that trip through my alternate memories, so I changed everything. I didn't want to become that...thing who dropped my father to the bottom of the ocean, became the father of a goddess or tried to blow up a sporting goods store full of people, myself included." He wound down his long winded recap.

"Is it wrong that I'm really proud of you?" Dawn asked, pulling him back into an embrace, her arms around his neck.

"Well, seeing as how that's part of why this whole mess is occurring, maybe?" He replied, only half-serious. "When I met you after the portal, I kept thinking, it has to be her...er, you. But it wasn't. It was another Dawn, one I hadn't wandered through the dark recesses of my mind with."

"You were all alone." Dawn's voice was teary. "Goddess, Connor. I'm sorry. I should've been there."

"How can you say that?" Connor's tone was incredulous. "We were in the hands of fate. Hell, I was expecting to die, not be transported back in time." He told her with some bitterness at the situation.

"It was my idea to screw up the memory spell by jumping into that portal, Connor. You went along with it, but it was my plan because I couldn't deal." Dawn muttered, angry with herself.

"Well..." Connor said slowly. "I know when I became 'Me'. When did you become you?" He asked.

"When do you think?" Dawn retorted. "A few days ago. On the anniversary of the spell, of course. One minute I was plummeting to my death and the next I was lying in bed, in a house that had previously been demolished, with a human Angel and a pregnant Buffy staring at me like I was two steps from the nut house."

"Oh." Was all Connor replied.

"That's all you have to say?" She demanded, suddenly outraged. He recoiled. What now?

"Uh, I'm sorry?" He questioned. She didn't even grace him with a glare, but looked over his shoulder with that pout of hers he loved so much. He pulled her tighter against him. "I really am sorry. I should have told you about it from the moment I heard the words memory spell." He apologized. He really should have known...he'd be kicking himself for a good long while for not realizing it sooner.

"I feel so guilty, Connor. We caused this. Buffy and Angel would not be in this position if it wasn't for what we did." Dawn lamented, her emotions taking a sudden turn. Connor was having a hard time keeping up.

"I don't know. I think that they're better off in this life." Connor disagreed.

"Better off?" She snapped back. "Buffy is upstairs having a baby, Angel's baby, several months premature without her slayer powers, and you think they're 'better off'?" Connor reeled from the force behind her words as they sank in. "In their other life, they may not have been married Connor, and Angel may not have been human, but at least they were happy. They'd already suffered through the misery and torment that goes along with being a champion and they'd worked past it. Not to mention that Buffy and Angel weren't even together in that life and Buffy was with Spike! How can you say that they're better off?" She was crying again.

"Aw, hell." He murmured, catching her tears with his thumbs and wiping them away. "Don't cry."

"If only there was some way we could go back and fix it. Make it so this never happens." Dawn nearly sobbed. "I don't know what I'll do if I loose her, Connor." Her voice broke mid-sentence and tears came with earnest now. He held her close, rubbed her back soothingly, whispering comforting nothings in her ear. He remembered something his father had once told him, a story about Buffy and reversing time.

"There may be a way." He said, pulling back abruptly to look her in the eye.

"A way to what?" Dawn asked, her voice thick with tears.

"A way to reverse what we've done here." Connor replied, looking almost happy.

"How?" Dawn asked, wanting to know desperately.

"I'll explain on the way." He said, taking her by the arm, and heading towards the door.

*

Willow jumped back into the shadows of the hallway as the two teens headed for the doorway she was standing in. They opened the door and walked away from her. She stared at their retreating backs, one thought reverberating through her mind.

What the Hell?