Chapter 5: Two steps back…

A/N (Hello again. : ) . I'm happy to say that here's another chapter for you, even though I'm beginning to feel as if people like the Path of Kyane better… I can't imagine why :P. Thanks again, Kim, for reviewing. . I hear your point about Buffy and Dawn saying 'Mom'… but I can't help it . ;;. It will always be 'Mum' for me because I live in Australia. And although Cass does have the headaches, they're slightly different from Cordelia's. I'm glad you found the last chapter interesting, and I hope everyone enjoys this chapter. : )

8 8 8

Everything's been moving way too fast for me lately.

Got a lot to get my head around, I do. I love the Slayer. 'm helpin' the Slayer. 'm talkin' with three kids I would have ripped to pieces for the fun of it. I know I would have gone for the Nibblet first. She's strong an' brave an' pure. Then I would have gone for Junior. Let Platelet's fear seep into m' very skin before killin' her as well.

But that's all in the past. I can't even think of doin' that now. Why's it so hard to believe, eh? ThatI'mamanI'mamonsterI'mademonI'maperson? They blur together they do. Why doesn't anyone else seem to see it?

Even the Slayer. Even… Buffy. I've… we've talked, and it's felt like a miracle, every second of it. When we fight on patrol. When we fight in general. Arguin' always did get my blood running. And she gets my blood running even faster. But she doesn't get it, yeah. Not yet. I don't want to get my hopes up, though. She blows hot and cold, she does. One second, she's lookin' at me and I can see awe.

The next second, though I think she tries hidin' it from me sometimes…

The next second, I just see disgust, all over again.

And that kicks William the Bloody Awful Poet to the curb, it bloody well does. Takes all of me to stay, stay an' help her from the beasties of the night. Takes all of me to stay next to her, feel her gold radiatin' off her like the bloody sun itself and I feel like 'm gonna dust if she looks at me like that again.

Ah, what'd I expect? Only people that treat me real decent I have to admit are Joyce, the Juniors, and surprisingly enough, Glinda.

Glinda an' Joyce are the ones that look at me like they can see me. And Platelet. But she doesn't see me the way Glinda does. Always feel as if it's her eyes that just take everything away and all that's left is the man and the demon.

Make sense?

Doesn't to me.

8 8 8

"See?" Tara smiled gently. "Things don't always have to be about the upcoming Apocalypse."

Willow chewed her bottom lip, looking back and forth between her lover and her mentor. "Are you sure, Giles? I just want to help… this new thing that's coming up sounds pretty bad and I…"

He waved a hand and pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. "Nonsense, Willow. I'm sure that one afternoon off won't do much in the way of harm. Besides, even though I am loath to admit it, we don't really have much in the way of a timetable. The Apocalypse could be months away."

A wry grin tugged at his lips, then.

"Then again, have we ever been so lucky?

8 8 8

Things were happening way too quickly for my liking, I decided as I poured the sand. Mum getting sick again. The new thing in town, which sounded bad from what Giles read out of the book and the business with Cassandra. Then there was the other new thing in town as well, by the look of the glowing orb. Maybe they were connected and it was just one thing?

Oh wait. I'm the Slayer. It's the Hellmouth. Since when did I ever get that lucky?

I finished pouring and began preparing myself. Mum was resting in her room now. Dawn, Cass, and Daniel were inside theirs, studying. Or so they claimed.

For various reasons, I thought I was justified in doubting it. Not in the least my own experiences at their age.

Now, I sat down, lighted the candles, and let my mind be blank, just like Giles had taught me. It was hard at first, despite everything.

8 8 8

Everything… slows.

I swim through the air, intoxicated. For one, for me, to reside in the body of a Slayer, to be the Slayer, this felt impossibly, improbably unnatural, and yet natural at the same time.

Have you ever felt what it's like to swim? Not laps, not going up and down the lanes mindlessly, churning like a machine. To fight against the water pounding against your skin, salt rough against your throat. It's been a long time since I've swam like that. Haven't been too fond of water for a long, long time. For obvious reasons. But this, this was like swimming in a sea, eddies of… power? Energy? Colour? Spirit? Soul? swirling all around me, pulling me this way and that. And yet, my body remained still, stable, moving fluidly, slowly, against an onrush of magic.

For the first time, I saw our world as it was. Magic. Was this what Willow and Tara felt, saw? Giles on the odd occasion? Slayers? Demons? This was the world we walked in?

How could I have never seen it before? The feeling you get that someone's watching you… a direct energy/magic line from their eyes to you. The feeling of walking into a room and having the air become heavy before you because of the argument, one of many, that would eventually end your parents' marriage? That feeling. Feelings.

They're magic.

So I walked downstairs, buoyed by a breath of determination that still glazed the staircase, glowing faintly, from a half-hour ago when I'd marched up, magic in hand. I walked through the hallway, noting a strong stream of green, emerald magic that seemed to encase the entire house like a memory. It was beautiful. A part of me wanted to remain like this, seeping in and out, drinking in this…

No. I had a mission. I pushed away those thoughts, and just as I was about to swim to find her, Mum was in front of me.

Her voice came like an echo.

"Buffy? I'm going out now, okay?"

"Going… out?" my fuzzed!Buffy brain only comprehended that that was somehow a bad thing. "But…"

"Either the miracle of science in the form of those handy little pills have worked, uh… miracles, or I'm just suddenly feeling a whole lot better. I'll be back later, alright?"

I studied her. Frantically. Searching. Something was wrong, wasn't it? Why couldn't I find it?

"Nothing…"

Her eyes became concerned. "Buffy? Are you alright?"

"Nothing…" I repeated, before shaking my head. Have to cover up…

"Nothing," I repeated, again. "Just had a long day, is all."

She smiled as she shrugged into her coat. "You're so grown up."

I watched the door close, leaving tendrils of white floating in Mum's passage. And I watched, breath in throat, the photograph on the wall she had stood in front of.

8 8 8

"Do I have to separate you two?"

Cassandra Evans was angry. Which was rare. And when she was angry, her wavy black hair somehow became completely straight. Which was just as rare. Not that anyone around was going to be commenting on the state of her hair any time soon. Not when the only other two people in the room happened to have a electrostatic field of one thousand tons of anger sizzling between them.

Briefly, she wondered whether that was even possible.

"I'm not saying that!" Daniel yelled, completely oblivious to the anger rolling off his other friend.

"You damn well are!" Dawn yelled back. "I so can do this! I haven't lived with Buffy for my entire life and not learnt anything!"

"I'm not saying that," his voice had become deadly again, and it was the calm that Cassandra Evans had always feared. The calm, because it was so obvious that nothing was alright. That everything was wrong.

The calm, because that was what had always come before her father's rages.

The calm, because to her, that had always signified pain.

"Oh?" Dawn challenged, her eyes blazing. "Sounds like it to me! Just because you're scared doesn't mean you can start pulling me down with you, Daniel!

He took a step back, and Dawn stepped forwards. One step lost, another gained. It poured in slow motion across her eyes as she struggled to comprehend what was going on, that deeper tension, the undercurrent between the two of them that was so much more than the contents of a simple book.

"I'm not scared," he said evenly.

There was a crack in the wall. Cassandra found her eyes drawn to it, and remembered. Ah, those memories. The false, real, confusing, memories. Time and withdrawal and everything spun into fragments of power that the monks had woven together. She remembered Dawn sheepishly telling her of the time when Buffy and her had gotten into a fight. Dawn had wanted to tell Joyce when Angel had become Angelus, in case he had targeted her. Buffy had paled and gone out to hunt. Dawn had flung a stake at the wall in frustration and fear and pain. It was the one she'd been painstakingly carving for her sister's birthday, ever since she'd learned that her sister was the Slayer.

One crack.

"Sure you're not," she jeered. "Why, then? You just don't think I'm good enough?"

A laugh, a hysterical laugh rolled around his throat, and that was when Cassandra knew that something had ripped.

"I don't think you're good enough! Hah! We don't even know whether you're real!"

8 8 8

"We don't even know whether you're real!"

I stared. Wide-eyed. For a second.

Dawn's entire room was shifting back in and out of reality. One second, I saw all the girly, teenage paraphernalia. The next, it was just an empty storage room. One second, Dawn was standing, shocked. The next, there was nothing but a fierce, intense green nothingness.

And…

Oh…

My…

My brain struggled to comprehend.

One second…

There.

Not there.

There.

Not there.

All three of them shifted, back and forth, back and forth, backandforthbackandforthbackandforthbackandforth. I felt pain begin to swell at the back of my head. I felt something snarl. Felt something hiss. Felt something sing. Felt it all wash over my consciousness, and then suddenly I broke free.

"You're not my sister."

She stared back at me from a million miles away. I saw red glowing amongst the green. "What the hell! Why is everyone being so insane-o today!"

I looked at the other two. "What are you? Get away from me! Get out of here!"

"Buffy… are you alright?"

"Buffy, what's wrong?"

"What did you mean I wasn't real!"

Wasn't… real?

I heard her last part. I was on her before she knew it. I seized her arm and slammed her up against the wall. "What are you?"

"Get off me!" she shouted.

I felt hands clawing at my back. Two well-placed kicks sent the… whatever they were, crashing against the opposite wall, dislodging her posters. "You want to hurt me?" I demanded.

She struggled. "Let go of me, you freak!"

"Then you deal with me!"

Fear? "I'm telling Mum!"

Anger. "You stay away from my mother!"

Plaster cracked as I shoved her even harder against the wall. She saw death written in my eyes. I saw nothing.

The moment was broken by my cellphone ringing. I grabbed it slowly out of my pocket with my free hand.

"What?"

Giles' voice crackled. "Cassandra was right. This thing… the Dagon Sphere. We looked it up, and it has a history going back several millennia. It's a protective device, used to ward off ancient primordial evil."

I fixed my fingers near her throat. "Any idea what this evil looks like?"

"Unfortunately, no. This is where accounts get vague. All we've managed to uncover so far is the Dagon Sphere was created to repel That Which Cannot Be Named."

Resolve. "I'm going to go back to the factory where I found it. Whoever planted this doohickey's got answers."

I heard him clean his glasses. "Buffy, you've heard me say this before but do be careful. Anything that goes unnamed is usually an object of deep worship or great fear… maybe both. Have you completed the trance? Seen what's harming your mother?

"That's the thing... I just saw…"

I remembered who's throat my fingers were curled around, and the slumped forms behind me.

"Nothing. It didn't work."

I clicked the phone off. I changed my grip to her sweater. I marched her to the door and threw her, still stunned, out.

The other things were unconscious.

I threw them out as well, out into the night, and then locked the door against them.

I needed to find answers.

8 8 8

To this day, even the Watcher doesn't know why I felt it. It was like a jerk through the bonds that still surrounded all of us from the enjoinment spell. I'd called 'em cowards just to piss 'em off when they didn't want to try it again before more research.

Hell, I hate that word.

Not that I blame them, of course. It was purely a thing I had to say. Had to remind 'em who the Big Bad was. Just had to needle 'em a little bit. I know they ached for it. I know they ached for it cos I ached for it. But I didn't want Rupes or anyone gettin' injured again. Cos of me.

No, it was not guilt, you soddin' idiots.

But back to the point, still don't know why I was the only one who got it either. Didn't make sense. Still, the fact is that on the 17th of February, 'round half past eight, I felt something pull. At my undead heart.

No, that is not ironic. Really.

And no! I didn't remember it cos it was important or anything. I just remember the exact date, time, and whatnot cos I got a good memory.

Oh, sod it all.

Yeah, I remembered it cos of the bloody pain it dealt me both before and after, in the form of a Slayer-shaped package and her lil' tumble with a near-death experience.