Chapter 17
Dawn came down stairs from putting her babies to bed. She sat down next to Lauren and sighed. "What am I going to do, Lauren?" Dawn asked her mother-in-law shakily. Lauren put a hand on her Daughter-in-law's shoulder and the other on her still flat stomach. " Don't worry dear, you know what has happened to him and you know what you have to do." Lauren said soothingly. Dawn nodded and closed her eyes. " I trust him with my life, but I will not let Angelus anywhere near my children. -- Lauren, will you come with me?" Lauren nodded. "We'll make it look like were going to live with your family because of his death." Dawn nodded solemnly as a couple tears rolled down her face. Lauren rubbed her daughters back soothingly.
Dawn lie on the on the bed she shared with William and cried herself to sleep. As she slept she dreamt of husband, the vampire he was now, and the vampire he would become. She woke up with a start at the sound of her baby crying. Dawn ran to Andrew's room and picked him up to shush him back to sleep. She strolled into Michael's room and then Danielle's to check on them. It was in her daughter's room that she found her husband looking in through the window. Mind you all the bedrooms were on the second floor. His eyes were yellow and his face was rigid.
He looked at her with sad eyes as he watched her rock his youngest son to sleep. He felt a pang in his chest as he saw tears run down her face. She slowly walked up to the window and placed her hand on the windowpane. He placed his hand over hers on the other side of the pane of glass. He knew she was letting him go to let him learn how he had to live now. He also knew she was letting him go because she loved him. His babies were safe with her and his mother. He also knew she could take care of herself. He felt Angelus, Darla, and Drusilla were closing in; he looked ever his shoulder to make sure he had a few moments. When he looked back at her, she nodded sadly. "Go, you have to learn how to survive to be able to watch over your children from afar. Don't look at me like that; I know you won't force your children to live a life you have to, now. I could try and convince you all I wanted that everything would be okay, but you wouldn't change your mind. Just remember, you are my husband and I love you William and so do your babies." She finished in a choked up voice. His super hearing picked up on her sadness that he knew she was trying to keep under control so as not to wake the sleeping baby in her arms. Andrew had always been able to pick up on her feelings and they both knew if sensed she was sad he would have the whole house up in a matter of moments. He didn't quite have his powers under control yet, but he could control them enough to sense her emotions. "I will see you again, Pet." He lingered for a minute and then sadly went off into the night.
"I know you will, William. But for now my children will learn to defend themselves, before we live in Sunnydale." Dawn whispered into the night as she held her son. Dawn smiled down at her little boy as he slowly opened his eyes as though he knew she needed to look into his eyes right then. His ice blue eyes that were so much like his father's. "Don't worry, one day Daddy will be back and he will be daddy again. Until then you, your brother and your sister have to learn how to defend yourselves and learn about the part of you that I gave you. And unfortunately you can't do that in this dimension." Andrew looked up at her with the most trusting gaze she had ever seen. HE was going to be her little boy, a little mama's boy just like his sister was a little daddy's girl, she could tell already.
Dawn stayed up the rest of the night watching over her children, and coming up with a plan. Lauren found Dawn in the Library doing research. Lauren had Andrew in her arms. "Danielle and Michael are watching Margaret cook." Lauren said calmly as she handed Andrew to Dawn to feed him his breakfast. "I don't want to go to Sunnydale yet. I know a dimension that we will all be safe and they will have the proper time to be able to control any powers that I gave them. And I know I did I can feel it every time I'm around them. Plus they also need to learn how to defend them selves against the evil in the world if I don't succeed in what I have to do when we get back to Sunnydale. And if any of my children are like their father then they won't just stay home and not fight if I die." Dawn said Lauren distantly.
Lauren nodded; she knew her Daughter-in-Law was right. William wouldn't have stayed home and done nothing if she had died at any point in her life here in London. And from what Dawn had secretly told her about Spike, he would be raging mad if she died. Lauren herself knew a bit about vampires, and the way the vampires acted after they were turned was due to the influence their sires had on them, and the suppressed personalities they had before they were turned. So the thought of her grandchildren being anything like either William or Spike would not be surprising. Her and Dawn had always secretly talked about this. How she had kept such a secret, as becoming a vampire, from her son was beyond her. But both she and Dawn had suspected that William was always meant to become a vampire, even if Dawn had intervened that one time. And due to that suspicion of them had two plans. Depending on the age of the children there was: Plan A: If the children are older then they would travel straight to Sunnydale. Plan B: If the children were to young, then Dawn would find a dimension that they and the children would be safe in, until the children were old enough to defend themselves in Sunnydale, California.