Time and Time Again
by Lady Dawson
Chapter Three: Tales of the Future
As she sat on the front desk with her hands lying between her knees, Katie listened as her father recounted the happenings of that night to Cordelia, Wesley, and Gunn. It was strange to be sitting around, watching people that had been dead for her entire life be walking around and talking. It felt like some bizarre dream, Katie mused as the story came to a close and Cordelia shook her head in disbelief.
"So . . . it's over, then?" she asked. "I mean, Darla's really gone this time?"
"Hopefully," Katie muttered, bringing all of the attention back to her and she found herself staring at four pairs of curious eyes. She blushed. "Sorry, I'll just wait until you're finished."
"Actually, I think that pretty much covers it," Angel replied, folding his arms across his chest and fixing her with a stare. Katie met his familiar brown eyes and swallowed. She still hadn't figured out how exactly she was going to explain all of this. "And I think you have some explaining to do."
"Yeah, who exactly are you, anyway?" Cordelia demanded, turning towards her now. "And what was the stupid decision that you were talking about earlier that you were trying to stop Angel from doing?"
"Stupid decision?" Angel echoed, bewildered.
Cordelia glanced at him. "She came in here about an hour ago, demanding to know where you were and said that you were about to make a really stupid decision that you were gonna regret later that she was here to help you," she explained before turning back to Katie. "Now that the danger is over with, could you please explain who you are?"
"Her name's Katie," Angel explained for her, his gaze still fastened upon her. "And apparently, she's from the future."
Katie chuckled nervously as all of them stared at her now. "Yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it," she agreed. "Um . . . why don't you guys sit down, because it's kind of a whole thing and it's gonna take a little while to explain."
"So you just came all the way from the future to stop Angel from doing what exactly?"
"Locking Darla and Drusilla up with those lawyers," Katie said, inspecting her nails carefully. She looked up to see the guilty expression on Angel's face; clearly, he had already been considering it and would have carried out the idea if she hadn't intervened. "But no, that's not why I came all the way from the future. It has to do with something else. A lot of really bad things are happening in the future and I need your guys' help to fix it."
"What kinds of things?" Wesley questioned. Katie sighed, running a hand through her brown hair as she jumped off of the counter, landing easily on her feet and wrapped her arms around herself, choosing her words very carefully before she spoke.
"Just picture this," she said softly, "a world full of chaos, of destruction. Buildings are little more than rubble, people are starving, fighting for their lives, demons run free, and every day, you hear of more death, more destruction, someone else being taken by the demonic forces.
"That's what the future's like. In twenty or so years, that's what the world has become. No one is safe; no one can even step outside their front door without being attacked. It's all that you can do is keep your family with you and hope that you won't be the next target. Against the demon army, there's a rebellion, a group of fighters, both human and supernatural, that resist and strike back. I'm one of those rebels and I've been sent back to change the past so that we might be able to change the future."
"But how did this happen?" Wesley whispered, looking stricken. Angel's expression was tormented, horrified. "Why didn't anybody stop it?"
"Because it couldn't be stopped," Katie said with a sigh. "The demons took over because of things that will happen in the very near future. If I can prevent that event from happening, then we have a very good chance of actually preventing my future. It's our only hope."
"Wait a second, what events led up to your future?" Angel asked slowly. "How were demons able to gain the upper hand?"
"Because the First was released," Katie answered, meeting his eyes evenly. If it were possible, then he went paler than his usual vampiric pale. "You remember the First, don't you?"
"The first what?" Gunn asked.
"The First Evil," Katie answered, turning her head towards him. "It's stronger than anything and everything that anybody's ever faced and it can't truly be defeated."
"Why did it come back?" Angel whispered, shaken.
Katie swallowed and for the first time since she had begun her story, she hesitated, looking down.
"Hey," he said sharply, moving from his rigid position and walking over to her. "If you expect us to be able to help, if you expect us to even believe your story, then you're going to have to tell us everything. We can't really do everything if we don't have all the facts."
"Angel," Wesley said and there was a warning tone in his voice. Katie shook her head at the former Watcher, never removing her gaze from her father's face.
"It's not that I don't want to tell you," she told him flatly. "I just know how much this is gonna hurt you. It's for your benefit, not mine, that I don't want to tell you everything."
The ensouled vampire's expression softened slightly and he relinquished his guard. "Sorry."
Katie shook her head, hating to do this to him, but knowing that he had to know. Her father hated talking about either one of her mother's "deaths." Angel and Buffy were and would always be soul mates and her death had sent him into the brink of despair that no one ever really understood. It was only after she met Sam that Katie really understood the depths of her parents' relationship.
"It's okay," she assured him. "What happened was . . . do you know what's happening in Sunnydale right now?" she asked. Angel blinked, startled, and shook his head. "Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm not even sure if Buffy knows exactly what she's dealing with right now, but you know Dawn?"
"Buffy's sister Dawn?" he questioned. She nodded. "Yeah, of course, what about her?"
"Buffy doesn't really have a sister. Dawn is this key, this green energy that a bunch of monks turned into a girl and sent to her. They changed everybody's memories so it was like Dawn had always been there. You see, they knew that she had to be protected from Glory. I'll explain about Glory in a minute," she assured him. "But they knew that Glory was coming from them and the key, so they transformed it into Dawn and sent it to Buffy, knowing that she would protect Dawn. They figured that the safest way was for her to be in the form of a sister. So they rebuilt everybody's memories—everybody who had been in contact with Buffy and her friends, anybody who had ever known Buffy and her family. Anybody who could have even tipped off Buffy, their memories were changed to include Dawn in them. In your guys' real memories, you haven't even met Dawn. She wasn't there until just a few months ago.
"Glory is a god from a hell dimension. She ruled there with two other gods, who became afraid of her power and so they banished her and she was reborn as a human. Or a god who shares her body with a human," Katie added, frowning slightly. "I'm not really sure about the details, but Dawn is the key that will get her back home. And she wants to get back home more than anything else. So for her to do that, she has to find the key. And the key is Dawn. Everybody with me so far?" Katie asked, looking around. They all nodded. "About next May, Glory will find out who Dawn is, kidnap her, and use her blood in a ritual to open the gateway. The gateway not only opens the door to Glory's dimension, but to every single dimension in the universe. They spill into one another, which would eventually lead to the destruction of the universe. But the key could close doors as well as open them. Dawn's blood would close the door just as it opened it. But she would have to sacrifice her life to do it. And Buffy won't let her, so . . ."
"So . . ." Angel prompted her, the fear evident in his eyes as he listened to what was going to happen to his soul mate. Katie looked up at her father, not wanting to be the one to tell him this, but knowing that the tale had to be told if it were to be prevented.
"So, she sacrificed herself for Dawn," Katie said quietly, looking down. "Her blood is the same as Buffy's. The monks made Dawn out of her. And so, Buffy threw herself into the portal, thus closing it and saving the world—the universe," she added quietly.
Angel had gone ghost white and he was gripping the counter so hard that Katie thought that it might shatter. "She died?"
Katie nodded, her throat closing as she blinked back tears, trying very hard not to cry as she watched Angel fall to his knees. Automatically, she moved to him, wrapping her arms around his neck like she had so many times when she was a child, comforting him as he had done for her.
The second that she hugged her father, the memories came flooding back of her childhood in this place. The hours in the garden, playing football . . . him reading one of the classics to her as she drifted up to sleep . . . him coming into her room when she had woken up from a nightmare. Katie had a hard time forcing herself not to cry as she held her father.
"It was Buffy's death that caused all of this to happen?" Wesley asked, interrupting. She looked up at him, her eyes bright. "It was because she died that was the cause of the demons' uprising?"
Katie managed a weak laugh, shaking her head. "No," she answered, her voice faint. "No, it wasn't her dying that was the cause . . . it was being brought back that caused it."
Everyone gave a start and Angel's head shot up. Katie took several deep breaths, trying to regain her composure as she stood up, pacing back and forth across the lobby. "Willow . . . she's been getting super powerful in the magics . . . especially in the dark arts and . . . well, she and the others thought that she was in a hell dimension . . . like you were," she said, looking at Angel now, sadly.
Her words caused him to jump to his feet. "Are they out of their minds?" he exploded, his human guise turning instantly to his vampiric one. "Buffy's the Slayer, a warrior for the Powers! Warriors for the Powers go to—" Katie looked up at him pointedly. "Heaven . . ." he whispered. "Oh, god . . ."
"They pulled her out of heaven, causing her to wake up in her own coffin and she had to bust out," she said grimly. "It took her years to be able to come to terms with that. But her being brought back caused an imbalance of power and it was that imbalance that allowed the First to return and be able to gain the upper hand."
She looked at Angel, still in his vampire face, and whispered, "I don't want her to die, okay? That's the last thing that I want. I came here to stop her death, not her resurrection."
His face shifted back then and he took a step towards her, really looking at her for the first time, straight into her green eyes.
"I believe you," he said finally. "But I still have some questions that need to be answered."
Katie nodded expectantly; she had expected no less from her father. "Okay, yeah, sure, I'll answer anything that I can, but there might be some things that I can't explain."
"Do your best. How come Buffy or I didn't come back here? Why did you come instead of someone that we know?"
Of all the questions, that wasn't the one that she had expected. "Well, you couldn't exactly do that," she said awkwardly. He gave her a look. "Time travel thing? Aren't you not supposed to meet your other self and cause disruption in the space time continuum?" Angel gave her another long look. "And because everybody in the Scooby Gang and A.I. are dead, okay? The only two people that are alive are Faith and Spike and we couldn't get hold of them."
"Faith and Spike are the only ones still alive?" Cordelia said incredulously.
Katie nodded quietly. "Faith always said that it was because you and M—you and Buffy died that the First was able to gain control," she told Angel, who was stricken, slowly sinking back down onto the funny round couch that sat in the middle of the lobby.
She wringed her hands nervously as her father tried to process everything that had happened tonight and everything that had just been revealed to him.
"And . . . when exactly do you come from the future?" he asked her. "How many years?"
"Um . . ." Katie did a quick calculation in her head. "Twenty years," she answered after a minute. They had long last track of the days and months back home. "This is about four years before I was born."
Angel nodded slowly, still staring at her pensively, his face twisted into the familiar brooding expression. "And who are you?" he asked finally. "You said you would explain everything. So who are you?"
Katie felt her heartbeat increase as she heard the question that she had been expecting all night. Now that the time had come to finally tell her father who she was, that he was his future daughter, she felt her bravado start to fail her, slither into the shadows.
Her breath trembled slightly as she looked at him, slightly afraid of what would happen if she told him. Would he say he didn't want her? Did he not want to get back with her mother? Would she disappear into nothing, vanish forever, cease to exist?
"Katie," he said firmly and she didn't mistake the tone. She had heard it all too often when she was in trouble.
"My name is Katherine," she said finally, her voice shaking ever so slightly as she spoke.
He let out a sigh of aggravation. "Yeah, you said that, but that doesn't tell me any—"
"Like your sister's name?" she cut across him, looking at him pointedly. "Katherine? Kathy?" He looked startled and bemused, staring at her with complete shock. "That's how I got my name."
Angel swallowed, not even blinking. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"Katherine Elizabeth Summers," she whispered, using her full name. Her father sucked in his unneeded breath sharply. "I'm your daughter."