Dawn Winchester?
Summary: Dawn isn't a clone, she's Buffy's daughter, and John's
Disclaimer: I don't own either show. If you recognize it, it ain't mine.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews!
John looked ahead and saw a rest area. He could pull over and see if anything was wrong with Dawn other than shock. He slipped his gun back into his waistband and smoothly pulled off the highway. It wouldn't do to be raising anyones suspicions now. He pulled into a parking space and quickly glanced around. It was full of people, families mostly. Satisfied that there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary going on, he reached over to Dawn and checked her over. It was a skill he had perfected over the last 20 years, and his old sargent would have been proud to see how well John had taken his advice on getting all the medical training he could get even if he wasn't supposed to be a medic. A few bumps, bruises, scrapes and a case of shock were all he found.
John bundled his jacket under her head and put her feet in his lap. It was when he covered her with the blanket from the little jump seat in the back that he found the papers. There were 3 of them and they seemed to be some kind of test results. Damn, he was going to have to; he stopped. There was a note scribbled on one of them.
Glory's winning She's your daughter Protect her
John was staring at the note when Dawn came to. "What's that?" she asked quietly. John handed the note to her. "She didn't win." Dawn said sadly. "Willow go me out." Tears were slowly making their way down her face again. When John quirked his eyebrow at her, she calmly explained. "Glory is an insane hellgoddess who was sent to earth as a punishment. Basically earth is her jail. I was made by magic to hold and hide the Key. It's a big magic energy thing. Using it is the only way for Glory to get home. She needs to sacrifice me to use the Key. But if she does that, it'll tear the dimentions apart and earth will be destroyed. Anyway, the monks who had guardianship over the Key took some blood from Buffy and some from you, I guess, and made me. A magical test tube kid, Willow says. Then they put the Key in me. Willow ran a DNA test on all of the guys and they came back negative, so you must have been the other blood donor. And now Buffy's dead."
John sighed. Being sent from out of the path of one demon and into the path of another didn't seem like a good idea to him, but if Dawn was his child, she'd have been in danger the moment the demon who killed Mary and Jessica had found out about it. At least now, he was aware of both dangers to her. If her mother ahd just died, she needed time to mourn. Of all people John knew that. He also knew just how hard it was to mourn while on the run. Running from his in-laws threats to take the boys while mourning Mary had taught him that. Idiots, he hadn't thought about them in years. Calling him white trash because he was a marine with no high society background. Calling child services to get custody of Mary's children because he wasn't good enough for them. He shook his head. "How old are you Dawn?" he asked gently.
"14 or 6 months if you want to get technical." Dawn wasn't really thinking at this point, just answering John's questions.
He nodded. Too young for coffee, he thought, but maybe I can find some hot chocolate for her. Most of these rest stops have 'keep awake' stations of some sort, either that or vending machines. The coffee machines usually carried hot chocolate as well. "Dawn, I need to go over to that building over there, ok? I'll just be a minute or two." Dawn nodded and John locked the door behind her head. It wouldn't do for someone to kidnap her out of his truck now. He locked his door as he slid out, both from under Dawn's feet and the truck. He made sure his flannel shirt covered his gun, then quickly walked over to the bathrooms and sure enough there was a lady handing out free coffee and cookies. He turned on the charm and talked her out of an extra cup of hot chocolate to go with his coffee, along with a large assortment of the cookies.
It didn't take long to get back to Dawn, and then back on the road. It did, however, take a long time to get the chocolate and cookies into Dawn. She had quickly recovered from the physical shock, but the emotional one would take a while. "So, your mom's name is Buffy?" John asked with a smirk. He'd have laughed if it wasn't for the idea that he had a daughter with this woman.
"She was named after the singer. It could have been worse." Dawn pointed out. "Two of her classmates were named Harmony and Aphrodisiac." John nodded, that was definitely worse. "What about you? What do you do? How do you know about magic?"
"I'm a hunter." John replied. He looked over at Dawn who was still bundled into the blanket and had wrapped his jacket around her. There was more color in her face now. There it was, he thought. That inquisitive look. She looked so much like Sammy had at that age that there was no doubt she was a Winchester. If I'm lucky, she'll be more like Dean than Sam. I don't think I can take another 'but why dad?' kid at my age. I really don't think I'll get that lucky though. He sighed silently. "I hunt supernatural things. I've met witches on both sides of the line, but I only hunt things that kill people. As long as your mom's friend doesn't do that, I have no problem with her." Noticing Dawn had finished her hot chocolate, but not her cookies, John reached behind the seat and fished out a bottle of water. "Here," he said, handing it to her. "Milk's better for cookies, but I don't have any." He didn't tell her it was holy water. Father Donnally had an entire case of holy water bottles as well as jugs he had given John on this visit. They were easier to carry around he said. There was no such thing as too careful in his line of work. Especially if he was going to accept Dawn as one of his children. But Dawn didn't react to the holy water and John continued talking to that wide eyed look of expectation. "I have two sons, Dean and Sam. When Dean was 4 and Sam was 6 months, a demon killed their mom. She died protecting Sammy from it. That got me into hunting. It's still out there and I'm tracking it now. They're both older than you, Dean's 27 and Sam's 23 now. The same demon killed Sam's girlfriend not too long ago. I have to kill it before it gets another chance to go after Sam."
"Why did it go after Sam?" Dawn asked. She had relaxed a great deal when she found out her new dad was a demon hunter, and not one of those idiots like the initiative who went after everything supernatural in sight.
"Everything goes after Sam." John said in annoyance.
"Oh!" Dawn said brightly. "He's a demon magnet! Xander is one of those. Every girlfriend he's ever had was demonic in someway. I mean Cordy was human, but with her attitude she might as well have been a demon. He's dating Anya right now and she's an ex-vengeance demon. Patron saint of scorned women to be exact. It doesn't even have to be a girlfriend. He's got a de-fanged vampire living in his apartment-like basement with him right now. That is if they survived." She mumbled the last sentence. She could still see the image of that sword swinging at Spike's neck. What would she do if it had connected, dusting him?
John, in an attempt to stave off more tears, hastily handed her his cell phone. Dawn looked at it with blank eyes. "Someone must have made it out, right?" he questioned. Dawn nodded and with hope blazing in her eyes, pulled out her own cell phone. Quickly scrolling through it, she found a text message. ALL OK. STAY PUT.
"They made it!" she squealed and threw her arms around John's neck.
"DRIVING!" John yelled. Dawn eeped and shifted quickly back over to her seat and put on her seatbelt. "Thank you. And what do you mean Xander has a de-fanged vampire living in his basement?" John asked. He had never heard of a way to de-fang a vampire, and who would want to live with one in their basement even if you could? Nasty creatures. Dating demons, well, if you weren't careful that could easily happen.
"That's Spike. He, well, there were these Army idiots who were dueing "research"," Dawn used air quotes and laid the sarcasm on heavily. "to try and do god knows what, on the demons in Sunnydale. They ended up nearly kicking off their own let's end the world party. I think they were doing 'simple' mind control with Spike. If he harms a human in any way he gets a wave of agony through his head due to this microchip they put in his brain. He decided that since he can't be a Big Bad and hurt humans anymore, he'll help out with the Scoobies and be a white hat for a change. As long as he gets blood and violence I don't think he really minds not being the bad guy anymore, but never mention it to him because he pouts like you wouldn't believe. There is no way his sire made him right, because he is waaay to close to what he was like as a human. I'm not sure if he ever really lost his soul; buried it beneath the demon maybe, or maybe merged them together, but he just flat out cares to much to be all demon. Not about most humans you understand, but anyone that he considers to be his family." Dawn glanced over at John and catching the look on his face, laughed. "Oh yeah, it's right up there on the weird meter, but Sunnydale sits right on top of the most active hellmouth in the world. When you add in my mom's the current Vampire Slayer and was raised a total LA valley girl, her Jewish/Wicca best girlfriend, and Xander the demon magnet, the weird list just keeps growing. We've learned to roll with the weird."
"Buffy's the current Vampire Slayer!" John panicked. He couldn't have a kid with minor! Ok, Mary's dead, and he didn't actually have sex to get Dawn, but Slayers never lived to be more than sixteen, seventeen max. 6 years younger than Sammy! Nononnononono!
"You got a problem with that?" Dawn growled. She had had enough of that with Riley and his 'I have to be the man' attitude. The fact that Buffy could and occasionally did kick his sorry ass really stuck in his craw and if John was bothered by that then he was going downhill in her 'good dad' assesment.
"Slayers are kids! They don't live past seventeen! Her father's going to kill me! Hell, I'd kill me!" John's rant was interrupted by Dawn's giggling. "WHAT!"
"First off, Buffy's 20. So; not a kid. Giles, that's her Watcher, is the only father type she's got, and good riddance to the jerk that really is her dad. He also voluntered for the DNA test, so he's very aware of how I came to be. Buffy's mom is super-supporto mom on the slaying front and she just considers how they got me to be a part of that. Also Giles says that Buffy's the best slayer in several centuries, maybe ever. So if anyone's going to kill you, it would be her. And no one is going to blink about you being older, because Buffy's well known for liking older guys."
John can't wrap his mind around the idea that he was the only one upset that he could have a kid with someone younger than his youngest son.
