How To Kill Your Boyfriend In One Hard Lesson Chapter 3, an angel fanfic

Disclaimer: Don't own, etc., etc. Joss Whedon rules supreme and retains pretty much everything. Only written for personal enjoyment and because this plot bunny just wouldn't die, even after some serious staking…

Summary: Occurs after Brother, Unfortunately Mine. Rating 18 for sexual references. The sibling theme is not entirely played out …

HOW TO KILL YOUR (PSYCHO) BOYFRIEND IN ONE HARD LESSON

Chapter 3 – Dawn's Early Flight

Driving strictly within the speed limit, Dawn carefully watched the exit signs as she headed south. Her paperwork was already done, completed on a previous visit: notarised, itemized and lobotomised in triplicate, trapped in the bureaucratic black hole of the Dean's office. Dawn consciously relaxed her hands on the wheel. She had a clear five days; please godlet her be able to fix this mess by then.

Dawn remembered Buffy's happy face she hugged her goodbye, the Slayer having no notion that Dawn was making the gesture…just in case. 'Just in case' was Standard Operating Procedure in the Buffyverse. Her first thought had been to go to Buffy but…Dawn, on the sidelines, had a panoramic view of the workload, observing the stress-fest unnoticed in the same way that she realised Xander, the only Scooby Gang member with no 'special' powers, was accustomed to doing because as he'd told her, "'I see more than anyone realises, because nobody's watching me.'"

Dawn had seen. Buffy worked 24/7, and had lost inches she could ill afford to. Giles was getting greyer by the hour, even Willow's bright eyes dimmed when she thought nobody was looking, and Xander…well he was like the Energizer Bunny, but when he thought nobody was around, his face would relax and the lines that hadn't been there around his mouth before would come back. Faith; Robin; Kennedy; Andrew…all the survivors of the First Evil's attempt to open the Hellmouth were working flat out.

Dawn knew that Buffy – that they all – loved what they were trying to do with the new Slayers and the Watchers Council, but it was also clear that they were working incredibly long and hard to make it succeed. The last thing Buffy needed was for her little sister to come whining to her yet again with more problems, especially as Dawn had only herself to blame for this mess. My first boyfriend and the guy turned out to be a vampire – you'd have thought I'd develop at least some early warning system, but noooo.

She glanced in her mirror. Yep, beat up old Plymouth five cars back had been on her tail since she took the Interstate from Sunnydale. Yeah, come on, Dawn silently taunted it, come down to the woods after me, and boy are you gonna get a big surprise… She hadn't known where to turn, until…thank god for Andrew the Geek and the fact that being a teenager in modern America made adults think that you became deaf and blind to the world around you for seven years. Using his cell-phone in the vast jungle that was the mansion's garden had probably seemed like a good idea to Andrew, except for the fact that an entire army of CIA agents could have been hanging on every word, completely disguised by the Triffid-like foliage; or in this case, one desperate kid trying to come up with a plan.

Dawn hadn't meant to eavesdrop when Andrew was talking to the LA ex-Watcher, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, but was curious as she listened, idly pondering whether Buffy having an ex-Watcher as her second-in-command and Angel having an ex-Watcher as his second-in-command was just an amazing coincidence or of mystical significance; of course, one of the Scooby Gang's mottos was: There Are No Accidents, which probably answered that one.

Faith rarely talked about the British man who had been, very briefly, her replacement Watcher after Kakistos murdered her first, except to slice through the Scooby Gang's joking reminiscences of Wimpy Wesley the Dean of Dork with a quiet statement that Wesley had changed a great deal. He had been to a 'bad place', and unlike many had made it out alive, with his soul – mostly – intact. But like all such survivors, he had come through the fire with chunks hacked out of his soul, bits of him burned away that he could never get back: "'Mix a chunk of James Bond with a dollop of Bruce Lee, add a hint of Terminator – and throw in a whole bag of Angelus with better fashion sense,'" the Dark Slayer had advised the chastened group, " 'in fact – just think of my evil twin brother on bad acid.'"

Now there was an image to terrify. At that point, Dawn's heart had stopped when she heard Andrew rather coldly tell the Brit that he would keep his word and that Buffy wouldn't learn that Spike was back, restored by the amulet he had been wearing when he deep-sixed the Hellmouth. Once her heart started up again, Dawn had had to restrain herself from bursting out of the bushes and smothering Andrew with kisses. She was saved!

In the end, Buffy had chosen Spike as her Champion to save the world, but what nobody seemed to remember was that he had been Dawn's Champion first…

Author's Note: "mystical rape" is a quote from Clea Saal's website (that can be accessed via Cascade Library The Sentinel Fan Fiction Archive. It is from her Watcher's Universe series of stories, which is a multi-Crossover between Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Sentinel and Highlander: The Series…it's brilliantly written and well worth reading!