Dawn Winchester?
Summary: Dawn isn't a magicl clone, she's Buffy's daughter and John's
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it ain't mine.
John sat up with a stifled yell, his gun already in hand and sweeping the motel room. Dawn was sitting at the table eating a piece of fruit from the bag of snacks John had stocked up on. She had noticed that although they ate at a lot of diners and fast food places, John always insisted they eat as healthy as possible. For her, he insisted on no sugar whatsoever. She didn't know where that came from. She froze as she saw the gun. She knew that John would never shoot her, but she had made the mistake of charging into Buffy's room and jumping on her bed to wake her mom up. It had only taken that one time (and the early morning trip to the ER) to teach her to wait until a warrior was awake before speaking or touching. You never knew what they had been dreaming about, after all their lives were the things nightmares were made of. When he put the gun down and scrubbed his face with both hands, she knew he had woken up. "Nightmare or Slayer Dream?" she asked, finishing her banana. If it had been Buffy she would defiantly have said Slayer Dream, but with John she wasn't sure of the signs signaling the difference.
"What?" John asked. Although he knew what a nightmare was, (shit his whole family had enough of them) he had never heard of a Slayer Dream. Was that a code phrase for fighting supernatural monsters in your sleep? He got out of bed and started his daily exercises; 200 push-ups, 200 sit-ups, and then another 200 push-ups. Some might have considered it excessive, but they didn't have to fight things that were 4 or more times stronger than they were and dig graves the same night.
"Slayer Dream." Dawn repeated as she watched her dad do his push-ups. She had already done hers, well she had done a few at least. "The PTB's send slayers dreams to tell them when something big is coming. Bigger than usual anyway. New nest moving into town,no; end of the world coming, yes. doyle, he gets visions though. They're real sledge hammers, wes says. Those show him where there is a current threat that the PTB's want Angel to take care of and what it is." Dawn saw her father freeze mid-push-up and wondered what was wrong. She grabbed her knife and started searching the room for whatever the danger was that he had noticed and she hadn't. Then she saw that he wasn't going for his weapons, he was staring at her.
"PTB's?"
"The Powers That Be. They are the ones in charge of the good guys. They chose and call the slayers, and I know that they do a bunch of other stuff, but I don't know what it is. I only know things from the slayer end." She figured if she had her knife out she might as well sharpen it.
When John staarted cursing quietly as he resumed his push-ups, Dawn glared at him but then shrugged. He made her do extra push-ups for swearing but he was doing push-ups while he was swearing so she figured that counted. John couldn't believe he'd been being ordered around by angels (or whatever they were) for 23 years and never knew it. At least he now knew where the nightmares and visions came from and why. Being one of God's soldiers wasn't a bad thing, even if the messeage system sucked. After he finished his exercises, he ordered Dawn to finish hers while he took his shower. He knew Dawn well enough by know she hadn't finished her 10 push-ups, 10 sit-ups, and 10 push-ups routine, even if they were modified. He chuckled as he watched Dawn give him the full put upon teenager drill, complete with rolled eyes, heaving sigh, and slumped shoulders. He knew that she was eager enough to hunt that she wasn't giving him half the amount of grief she could be. He had also found out that if he just told her to do something, there was a good chance she'd give him major grief. She was far too much like Sam in that respect. It had taken him 4 years of silence and the worry and agony in both Dean's eyes and his own for him to figure out where he had gone wrong with Sam, and in many ways Dean as well. For Sam, and now Dawn too it seemed, needed the reasons why before they could give themselves to something. Dean had trusted that he would eventually get the answers. But he had stopped giving them. He had become a drill sargent. How could he have forgotten that drill sargents were for training not operations? Operations needed leaders, and leaders shared intel when they could. They didn't just shout orders. Now that he had Dawn he HAD to remember that. At least he could see the difference it made with Dawn. Was it too much to hope it would make a difference when he saw Sam again? When he stepped out of the bathroom he could see Dawn attempting a flat handed, unmodified push-up. He had explained to her why he did his exercises and also showed her that he really did do them every morning. He wasn't telling her to do what he said and not what he did. The difference in his approach was visible in the determination on her face, as she shakily completed the push-up. And in the ear to ear grin he received.
"The answer to your question," he said as he sat down to pull on his steel toed boots. "Is a Slayer Dream, and thank you for telling me where they come from. All I've had for years was bad theories about them. Your brothers are in trouble. Does Glory have any cannon fodder types?"
"Yep. Minions. They look like Jawas, only you can see their faces and man they are uggllyy!" Dawn flopped down on her bed and groaned. Maybe trying push-ups the way Riley did them was a mistake. If they made her arms ache this much how bad would the ones her dad did, pushing with fists, feel?
"How many did you do like that?" John asked, smiling. She really reminded him of his boys sometimes, but her energy and upbeat enthusiasm for nearly everything was purely her own. Dawn waved 3 fingers at him and groaned again. "It wasn't Glories minions then. These were more like giant groundhogs. Maybe 3 feet long? There was a swarm of them trying to get past the boys. There was a tiny little blond blowing the things to shreds with a couple of uzi's, but I couldn't see anyone else. They were at what looked like a construsction site. A school maybe." John looked over at her to see how much of her groaning was for effect and how much was really pain. Not much pain, he decided, but she was going to be sore for the rest of the morning. Her upper body strength wasn't something she had ever worked on before.
"Tiny blond?" Dawn perked up and sat up. "That's Mom. She doesn't weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, although you'd better not mention her shortness, ever. She loves weapons. The more destructive the better. For her 17th birthday, Xander gave her a rocket launcher. Of course Giles has forbidden her to touch it unless its absolutely necessary. I think she wished she could use it on her high school principal once where he could hear her or something."
"We'll head for California now then. We'll stay in L.A. until we get the all clear from the boys. We want to be close enough to help with the swarm of demon groundhogs, but far enough away that we don't attract Glory's attention. We don't want to interfere. Just be close enough to lend our support if necessary." John looked sternly at Dawn. "That means no contact. I know I've said this before, but sending I'm ok texts is all you can do. No phone calls, no e-mails, no getting close, nothing. No telling where you are or who you're with. Dawn," he said looking her right in the eyes. "I know you want to talk to them. I want to talk to your brothers very badly. But , if we say anything about where we are, even if we don't realize it, we'll have Glory taking off after us. And it is very, very easy to leave tiny clues to your location and identity even when you're just talking about the weather. That's how pedophiles track kids on the internet. And I've had demons track me every time I've called your brothers." Dawn nodded. She knew her dad was right. She also knew she couldn't distract anyone in Sunnydale because Glory was so very dangerous. The I'm ok text she sent every day to one of the Scoobies and never the same one twice in a row, would allow them to concentrate on their safety rather than hers. John sat down on the bed next to her and gave her a hug.
Dawn just wished she could tell someone that her dad had taken her hunting hellhounds. That way Buffy (it was still hard to call Buffy Mom in her head even with all of the practice she had been getting) would explode without her or her dad being in the area. Buffy, MOM she reminded herself again, wouldn't even let her patrol when all she was looking for was fledges and she already knew the location of the grave. Even though all she had done was clean up with the hellhounds, Mom was still going to be mad. Maybe if they stayed with Angel in L.A., he could break the news to her. He had that huge hotel too. Even if it wasn't fixed up, it had to be better than the place they were staying now, she thought looking around at the truly bizarre decorations. She hadn't told John that she recognized the owner as a harmless demon type. But it really showed in how the rooms looked, major 'human culture' cheese!
"Can we stay with Angel? You should know that he's an Aurliean Vampire who was cursed with the return of his soul. He runs a detective agency in L.A. out of a huge hotel. The 2 guys who work for him, Wes and Doyle? Well, Wes is an ex-watcher. Long story, but basically he told the watcher's council that they were wrong to fire Giles, not that Giles ever stopped Watching for Buffy! And they fired him for it Doyle is half Braken Demon. They are a mostly harmless bunch. Doyle is the one with the visions. Can I tell Angel about the hellhounds? That way he can tell Buffy and we won't get into too much trouble. Oh, and you should know that Angel is Buffy's ex. They're only exes because the curse has this happiness clause that says perfect happiness and you lose your soul. Well, they had a happy, and he did, and let me tell you! Angelus (that's the demon) he's a total creep! He's into mind games and he drove his childer mad. Did I tell you he's Spike's grandsire?" Dawn babbled through packing up and the next hundred miles, giving John the story surrounding the Scooby gang, Angel/Angelus, Drusilla the Mad and Spike. John thought she was trying to distract him from the mention of getting into trouble for the hellhounds. It was then that he understood why she had been so excited to help. It seemed that her family was extreamely overprotective of her, and everyone except for her grandmother was directly in the line of fire, even his side. Well, if being there when he shot the hellhounds from an ambush and letting her chop their heads off after they were down and not moving upset them, he'd deal with it. She had to get her feet wet sometime, evil wasn't going to leave her alone, no matter what anybody wanted for her.
