CHAPTER 4
As exhausted as she was, and as much as she tried to let go of things, Buffy slept fitfully and then finally got out of bed shortly before sunrise. She stepped out through the living room and opened the door to the hallway to pick up the hotel's complimentary copy of the LA Times. There was nothing on the front page that wasn't about the collapse of Sunnydale, so she tossed it on the coffee table and returned to the bedroom. She sat in an armchair by the picture window and turned on the TV, turning the volume to minimum so as not to awaken Dawn, and a quick surf of the hotel's entire cable system showed very little that again wasn't still covering the Sunnydale crater. She turned it off.
Dawn had managed to go back to sleep after she'd felt Buffy get out of bed, and then again after she'd turned on the TV. When Dawn awoke for good, she turned to see her sister sitting in the chair and staring out the window, past the golf course and at the horizon in the general direction of Sunnydale. She got out of bed and gave Buffy a gentle hug and a kiss on the forehead. "Good morning, Buffy."
"Good morning, Dawn," she smiled back. "Today's the first day of the rest of our lives."
"Yeah," Dawn nodded. She still felt a big dark hole inside her for Spike, for Anya, for Amanda and the other dead Slayers, and was sure Buffy did too, but she would let Buffy take the lead in the conversation.
"The first morning in over seven years that I woke up without the weight of the world on my shoulders alone. We've got at least a dozen already with us to share the load, and more out there."
Good! Dawn thought. If that's what she wants to focus on, instead of grieving. And I have just the thing to keep this conversation going down the track! "Buffy," she said tentatively, "I have to tell you something. I'm pretty sure my Slayery powers are back."
Buffy laughed. "Well, duh! Dawnie, I knew your powers were back when you kicked me in the shin the other night! Why do you think I paired you up with Xander in the Atrium? That was to protect him with his blind spot and poor depth perception, not you!"
"You knew, and you didn't take me into the Hellmouth with Faith and the Potentials?" Dawn fumed.
"Dawn, if I didn't know that you would've just zapped him and come back to Sunnydale again, I would've sent the two of you away again. You're my little sister- Mom's baby- first, and the Key and somebody with Slayery powers second."
"Dumbass!" Dawn managed to smile as she kicked Buffy in the shin. She was barefoot instead of wearing pointy boots as she had been the last time, but she still managed to make Buffy feel it. "Oh, and in case you haven't noticed, I didn't get killed!"
"Did you even read the note I told Xander to give you?"
"Just the first couple of sentences."
"You still have it?"
"I threw it in the back seat of Xander's car right after I zapped him."
"So it's in Xander's car. In the crater with everything else that was in Sunnydale." Buffy sighed. "Well, apart from wanting to keep my promise to show you the world some day..."
"I read that part," Dawn nodded.
"Well, apart from that, I also explained that the night before Mom had her operation, when she knew that she might die, she made me promise her that if anything happened to her, I'd look after you and keep you safe. That promise came first. I did it for Mom."
Dawn's eyes misted. "Okay. But Mom never knew that I'd have Slayer powers too. She never knew her father was really Kolchak the Night Stalker. That slaying vampires and demons was part of her own legacy."
"It wouldn't have made any difference, Dawn. Not in what she asked me to do or in what I tried to do."
"Speaking of which, why did you let Xander try to take me to his friends in Oxnard? Why not to Grandma and Grandp-" Dawn stopped, thought about it and smiled. "Because Grandpa being who he is, he would have grabbed his old stake, jumped in the car with us and made Xander turn around and go right back to Sunnydale. Stupid question!"
"You got it," Buffy nodded and smiled, "although the visual of seventy-something Kolchak the Night Stalker, still in his seersucker suit and straw hat, charging into the Hellmouth alongside his granddaughters and a bunch of other teenage girls... But he was right that first night in the cemetery after we met him. He is too old for this crap!"
"And the torch has been passed on to a new generation," Dawn smiled, a little sadly.
"Yes," Buffy nodded.
"Buffy, I understand what Mom would've wanted, and I'm not mad at you and Xander about the chloroform anymore. But I was prepared to go into the Hellmouth with you."
"I know you were, Dawnie."
"If it ever came to it, I'd be willing to die fighting at your side like Tom Custer."
"Tom Whoster?"
"Tom Custer. George Armstrong Custer's younger brother. Been reading a little about him. He went off to join the Army and fight alongside his brother during the Civil War. Actually won two Congressional Medals of Honor in the Civil War. Stayed with his brother fighting the Indians afterward. Their bodies were found next to each other at the Little Bighorn. But since Armstrong was the one who graduated from West Point and was a general, nobody remembers Tom."
"I know I never heard of him," Buffy shrugged.
"They were about the same age difference as you and me. Five and a half years. They were our ages when they went off to fight in the Civil War."
"And yet up until last night, you were sleeping in a bed full of stuffed toy animals!" Buffy laughed.
"Hey! We're girls! And you still have- had Mr. Gordo! But we've seen our share of fighting too."
"True," Buffy nodded. "But Dawnie, I think we can stop comparing ourselves to General Custer and his brother getting killed by Indians. Like Giles said, we have a lot of work ahead of us- finding the other Slayers out there, rebuilding the Council- but we can also think about you finishing school, then when you're old enough, finding the right guy and getting married and having kids someday."
"Okay," Dawn smiled. "And Buffy, maybe I shouldn't even go there yet, but maybe the same can go for you, someday. You'll love again."
Buffy became misty-eyed again. "Yeah. Someday when I'm no longer just cookie dough, and I'm done baking and I'm cookies."
"Huh?"
"Never mind," Buffy said, then gave her sister a hug. "Okay. Let's make a pact. If and when that day ever comes, let's make sure that your kids and my kids are closer than you and I have been to Aunt Polly's kids."
"Okay," Dawn laughed softly as she hugged Buffy back. "But why do I get this feeling that sometime before any of us were born, Mom and Aunt Polly made the same kind of pact?"
"It's not too late for that, either," Buffy smiled as they separated. "Mending fences."
"I think we made a pretty good start to that the last time we were here in Glendale, when we brought Grandpa's car down."
"I think we caught 'em a little off guard, though," Buffy laughed. She paused thoughtfully, then said, "Dawn, I think it's time to tell Giles about your powers. The main reason I didn't want him to know was because of that rift we were having over Spike..." She blinked back tears and forced a smile. "Well, now that reason no longer exists. And now since he's trying to rebuild and reorganize the Council of Watchers, he needs to know so that he knows how best to use you."
"Okay," Dawn nodded, "but Buffy, please don't tell Xander about my powers. The morning after we found Amanda- after we'd thought I was the new Potential and then realized I wasn't- he gave me this long talk about how he thought I was so extraordinary, and how we had this bond because we were the only two members of the gang who didn't have any super powers. It'd break his heart and bruise his ego if he knew. And he's still grieving over Anya, and coping with the eye thing..."
Buffy smiled, then reached for the phone on the bedside table and dialed a four-digit room extension number. "Xander? Did I wake you?... Oh, good. Listen, could you please step over here to Dawn's and my room real quick? The main door's unlocked, so come right in. Thanks."
"Buffy, no!" Dawn gasped and turned white as her sister hung up.
"I'm not going to admit to him that I paired the two of you up for his protection," Buffy smiled reassuringly. "However..."
It took only a few seconds before the door into the living area to the suite opened and Xander knocked on the bedroom door. "Buffy?"
"Come on in, Xander!"
Xander had obviously just gotten out of bed himself, wearing a hotel robe and slippers. "What's up, ladies?"
Buffy shot a quick glance at Dawn before turning back to him. "Xander, tell me again what you said last night, about what happened in the Atrium."
"I said I think Dawn may be a Slayer, too!" Xander smiled at both of them, "She took out five of those Ubervamps all by herself, after we ambushed the first three with a tarp over the skylight."
"Five Ubervamps, Dawnie," Buffy said, almost beaming. "That's more than any one of the other Slayers besides me and Faith dusted down inside the Hellmouth. Told you you'd be my ace in the hole someday."
"I guess Willow's Potential-finding spell was right after all," Xander said to Dawn. "Just got confused since you and Amanda were so close together at the time. I started suspecting when you killed those four Bringers that kidnapped you and your aunt... Wait! Ace in the hole?" He turned to Buffy. "You knew she was a Potential?"
"It's a teensy bit more complicated than that," Dawn smiled. "I wasn't exactly a Potential and I'm not exactly a Slayer."
"I know you're not," Xander said. "You're still mysterious green ball of energy Key girl. But now, since your physical form was made from the blood of a Slayer, you got activated by Willow's spell."
"Not exactly, but you're close," Dawn smiled. "See, Xander! You do see things no one else does, and that's your power!"
"Hey, I'm okay with you having super powers, Dawnie. I'm happy for you." He hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. "Besides, now I've got Andrew to commiserate with about having no powers."
The three of them laughed, then Buffy smiled. "Now I'm ready to tell Giles."
"Wait!" Xander looked at her. "Giles doesn't know?"
"We kept it in the family," Dawn smiled. "Not that we don't consider you and Giles and Willow family. It was just the two of us and Grandpa, who told us about it in the first place."
It was nearly an hour later, after Carl and Joan had awakened and Buffy had called both Giles and Willow into the suite. Buffy had also ordered a huge Room Service breakfast for all and then hustled the maid out with a huge tip.
"Well, I'm glad you called us here," Giles mused. "I was planning on calling an informal meeting of the new Council sometime today, and it seems we have a quorum here."
"Giles, you're more than welcome to hold your meeting after I'm done," Buffy said, "but this is my meeting. Actually, mine and Dawn's and Grandpa's. We have something to tell you and Willow."
Joan and Carl were seated on the couch facing Buffy, Dawn and Xander. "Just a second, Buffy," Joan said, then gestured toward Dawn. "Dawnie, come here."
Dawn came over and sat next to her grandmother, who put both arms around her. "Now, before Buffy says anything else, I want you to know that your grandpa told me everything he knows, and it doesn't change a thing. You're still my little Dawnie, whom I remember my own little girl giving birth to sixteen and a half years ago."
"Thanks, Grandma," Dawn replied, resting her head on Joan's shoulder as she stroked Dawn's hair. "Mom found out before I did, and when I did find out, she said pretty much the same thing."
"So we all know the real story about Dawn," Giles nodded.
"No, you don't- yet!" Carl smiled at him. "And Joan and I don't know the whole story, and I've told Dawn and Buffy that there are certain specific details that I don't want to know for Dawn's own safety."
"What else is there?" Giles asked.
"Well, my old friend," Carl smiled, "it seems that the old Council, may they rest in peace, had cut you out of the loop yet again. This goes all the way back to before I found out they still existed and then they took me on as a consultant. I was doing some independent research on the Slayers' history, and it led me to this old monastery in Austria that had been bombed out in World War II. I found some old records there. It seems that the practice of giving certain orders of monks the charge of keeping custody of, and protecting, certain supernatural entities from evil has been around a while. And it seems that the idea of giving the entity human form from the blood of the current Slayer, and turning her into the Slayer's little sister for protection as a last resort, didn't originate with our Dawnie."
"So Dawn wasn't the first," Giles nodded.
"From what I could glean, it had happened at least three other times over the last eight or nine hundred years," Carl nodded. "No records of what the entities actually were originally, presumably for their own protection."
"An interesting little factoid to file away," Giles said. "I presume there's more?"
"The most important part. The part that the monk who told Buffy about Dawn either didn't know, or died before he got to finish the story. With a Slayer's life expectancy being so short, they couldn't count on whatever Slayer whose little sister they happened to turn her into, to protect the entity indefinitely. The whole point of making the entity's human form out of the Slayer's blood was so the entity would have at least some Slayer powers, so she could protect herself from whatever evil forces were after her."
Giles and Willow both raised their eyebrows.
"So essentially," Buffy nodded toward Dawn and smiled, "what we have is another Slayer. More or less."
"But one that I didn't activate with the scythe!" Willow interjected.
"Right," Carl nodded. "Not part of the line of succession, and whose powers emerged slowly while at the same time she grew up learning from her older sister." He smiled and added, "Of course, when I learned about this over thirty years ago, I never imagined that one day it would happen to my granddaughters."
"But you told the Council about it when they took you on as a consultant," Giles said.
"Sure did. Never wrote it down in my papers, but I told most of the bigwigs in the Council at the time, including Travers."
"And, as you said, they- he- cut me out of the loop yet again," Giles shook his head. "Bloody fool. So how did you figure out that this situation applied to Buffy and Dawn?"
"When we got the results of the DNA testing to establish I was Buffy and Dawn's grandfather."
"Turns out Dawn and I have 99.99 percent common DNA," Buffy said. "She's actually my clone. My monk-mojo created clone."
"Her taller, darker-haired clone," Dawn smiled. "Apparently they changed my DNA just enough so it wouldn't be so obvious."
Giles suddenly frowned with a look of incense. "Wait a minute! You were going to get the DNA test results after you dropped me off at the airport when I went back to London, way back in April! Talk about cutting me out of the loop!"
Dawn saw Buffy casting her eyes downward guiltily, and quickly came to her rescue. "It was my call, Giles. I didn't want any more people to know than already did. Remember, we were in the middle of dealing with The First. And at that point, only three of us in the whole world- Faith, Buffy and I- had Slayer powers. I was scared to death The First was going to zero in on me if it knew."
"Plus, that same night was the night the Bringers kidnapped her and Aunt Polly," Buffy added. "After she got cut and bled all over the seal, I could tell that her powers had been drained. She was back to normal human strength a couple of days later, but there was no telling how long it'd take for her Slayer strength to come back. So there was no point in bringing it up."
"I see your point," Giles nodded.
"But it's definitely back," Xander said. "She took out at least five Ubervamps by herself yesterday, in addition to a bunch the two of us dusted together."
Giles smiled at Dawn. "Dawn, I think it's marvelous! You're worth more than your weight in gold. All the knowledge and experience you have, plus Slayer strength!" He chuckled to himself and shot a sly glance at Buffy. "I rather fancy the idea of a Watcher who can still knock a Slayer on her posterior if she ever gets out of line!"
Dawn raised her eyebrows. "Watcher? No! I've got Slayer powers, why shouldn't I be out on the front lines with the other Slayers?"
"Dawn, relax!" Giles waved his hand. "In the first place, you've known your sister's and my Slayer-Watcher relationship long enough to know that we Watchers can't help but get into the front-line battles even if we try to avoid them. In the second place, we are breaking new ground with the entire Slayer-Watcher dynamic since all the old Watchers besides Robson and myself are gone. In the third place, the Potentials- excuse me- the other Slayers have been telling me all along that they've learned as much from you as they have from Buffy or Faith or myself. They consider you one of their mentors, even without knowing about your powers."
Dawn smiled, obviously moved by what had just been said.
"And in the fourth place," Buffy interjected, "you and I are going to seriously cut back on the Slayage business. I am going to, as Faith put it, live like a normal person for a change. You're going to finish high school. Then we'll go see the world together like I promised, maybe I'll finish college and you'll start, before you get into any serious activity as a Slayer or a Watcher." She turned to Giles with a smile. "And if I have any say in the matter, I'd like my role to be a little less Slayery and a little more Watchery myself!"
"The roles are being redefined as we speak," Giles nodded. He glanced around the room. "Do I have the floor now?"
Buffy nodded.
"Right, then," Giles turned to Xander, who had quietly stood up and moved toward the door. "Xander, would you mind going back to our suite and get-"
Before Giles could finish, Xander turned the knob and suddenly yanked the door in, and Andrew came pitching in and crashing to the floor with a scream, holding a drinking glass with the bottom pressed to his ear.
"-ting Andrew to join us?" Giles finished, trying vainly to keep a straight face as the others tittered and chuckled. He waited for Andrew to pick himself up and for Xander to close the door again before clearing his throat. "Andrew," he continued, "you can be thankful that we're so short-handed. Under normal circumstances, such espionage and insubordination would be grounds for expulsion from the Council of Watchers."
Andrew gulped. "I'm in? I'm a Watcher?"
"With a lot of misgivings and a lot of work on all our parts, yes," Giles sighed, then turned to the others. "As I started to say earlier, not counting Robin Wood, who's in the hospital, and Edward Robson, who just got out of the hospital and is taking care of business over what's left of the original London headquarters and its assets, we are the Council of Watchers."
FEEDBACK/REVIEWS ARE INVITED. PLEASE!
Replies to Feedback/Reviews:
To Allen: So far you're the one and only, so thanks for at least breaking the ice! Not gonna give away too much, and I'm not quite sure yet when or if I'm going to have Carl himself meet Angel face to face. As for whether or not they've ever crossed paths before, I do want to refer you the first work of this storyline, Blood of the Night Stalker where, in reference to Spike, Carl tells Buffy and Dawn, "I may have never seen one before, but I've heard what the signs were for a vampire with a soul." As for the whole issue of Giles refusing to help save Fred, that will all be addressed in due time. ;-)