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Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, Supernatural or their respective characters.
The short answer to whether angel whammy could get them home was no.
No also happened to be the answer to a lot of other questions. Questions like 'does Bobby know anything/anyone that could help', 'could the girls try to find a coven that might know something', 'were they allowed out of the panic room without supervision' and Dean's personal favourite, 'could they help with any hunts the boys were on'. As if he was going to let two witches - Sorry, one witch and a little helper - he'd just met, and had no evidence to prove weren't as evil as any other witch he'd met, on a hunt with him and his (not so) little brother.
However, the captives had managed to negotiate (and Dean had the nagging feeling that this wasn't exactly the first time either of them had been held against her will) to the point of supervised access to the rest of the house and a few of Bobby's less dangerous books. A liberty they were currently indulging in in Bobby's living room with boxes of pizza and bottles of various fizzy drinks.
Dean watched from the doorway as Bobby and Sam set to work on their own kind of research in the corner of the room; looking serious and tired, with intermittent rubbing of chins and foreheads and sighs of frustration or boredom. It was quite a different picture from that of the girls, who seemed to be enjoying their research.
Willow was enthusing over the history content of a book she was pretty much flipping through (how anyone managed to do thorough research by flipping Dean had no idea) while Dawn balanced a slice of pizza precariously over a very old and very valuable illustrated text that she seemed to be looking at for the pictures.
The amazing and somewhat annoying thing was that they seemed to be making steady progress; as steady as Sam and Bobby with their serious and detailed perusals, and Dean really had to learn how to do that.
He meandered over, trying for nonchalance as he peered over their shoulders. "Anything?" He asked the room in general.
"Nothin' relevant." Bobby scratched his beard and looked at Sam.
"Uh, a vague account of a woman who claimed to be from another world in the late fourteen-hundreds. Said she 'opened a door' that she used both ways. Could just be another demon though." Sam rubbed a hand over his face.
They all turned to look at the girls.
"There's this philosopher that thought that heaven and hell were different dimensions and that everyone had an angel and a demon counterpart." Willow answered. "Really interesting but there's no way of telling if he meant real heaven and hell or that there was a dimension where everyone had a good or bad counterpart. Says he used various herbs to catch glimpses of these alternate realities, but more 'n likely he just got high." She shrugged a little and leaned over to look at Dawn's book. "Got anything Dawnie?"
"Faeries." Dawn smiled in amusement as her own words. "They're meant to come from alternate dimensions that exist along-side this one and they pop in and out to abduct people then chuck 'em back through years later. Might be nothin' but I figured if it meant alternate reality like our alternate reality they must have a way of knowing which world to send them back to."
"Faeries?" Dean said cynically. "Come on, there's no such thing."
"Oh, because angels and witches are perfectly normal, but faeries are wack-a-doodle." Willow retorted with an eye roll.
Sam smiled a little at that and came over to look, the movement of crossing his gargantuan legs beneath him resembling a large, clumsy spider. "Can I have a look?" He held out his hands for the book.
"Sure." Dawn passed it over and reached for more pizza. "Want me to look over that fourteen-hundreds thing?"
Sam nodded absently and Dawn stood up to check the web page open on Sam's laptop.
Dean looked at Willow who was taking a lemonade break. "So, ah, where did you learn to research like that?"
She looked up. "Like what?"
"Like it's a big pizza party and not..." He paused and gestured a moment, not sure how to continue, "Not, you know, scary life or death stuff."
Willow frowned and shrugged. "I dunno, we've kinda always done it this way. Pizza and sugary, caffeinated drinks just seem to go hand in hand with hours of reading and web searches."
Dean thought of endless cups of coffee and cold burgers and fries. "Yeah, that bit i get, but how do you not get bored, how do you have fun with it?"
"I guess I just find it interesting. And it does get boring after a while; but then you have a break and complain about how boring it is, someone cracks a joke, and by the time you get back to it it isn't so bad anymore. I guess it kinda is a big pizza party." Willow grinned in memory of some of the better group reseaching sessions and Xander's ridiculous jokes. "There are bad ones here and there, where you don't have a lot of time, and nobody can find anything, but it always works out in the end."
"I bet you really enjoyed high school, didn't you?" Dean asked accusingly.
Willow laughed. "Guilty. I was a real nerd. Even substituted our teacher in computer science for a while; loved every second. Wasn't too keen on some of the people though... Blood sucking, soul destroying monsters."
"Your school had a vampire problem?" He raised his eyebrows. No wonder the girls knew how to research.
"No... Well, yeah, that too, but I mostly meant the other students." Willow smiled sheepishly. "The vampires you could kill; the students were a little more permanent."
"Amen sister." Dean smirked. He definitely knew what she meant there.
"So how do you guys do the research thing?" Willow asked. She already had an idea from the show, but she wanted to know his opinion on it after his evaluation of the scooby technique.
"Mostly I land it on Sam and watch TV," He grinned, "But sometimes I join in. We just tend to read until we can't keep our eyes open, down some coffee and repeat the process until we pass out."
Willow pulled a face. "Sounds fun."
"Yeah, not so much." He glanced at the others. "Take it you do something like what we do back where you come from?"
"Kinda. Our highschool was a hellmouth." She explained.
He frowned a second, trying to work out if that was another euphemism.
"Like a hell gate? Lots of demons inside trying to get out, and plenty of others on the outside trying to help 'em." She tried.
"Oh, yeah. We had one of those." His face cleared in understanding, though his smile was now strained with bad memories.
Willow gave him a look of sympathy. "Anyway, that meant we used to stick around Sunnydale to do our monster killing. There wasn't exactly a shortage."
"When you say 'our', you mean you and her?" He asked.
"Her sister and our other friends mostly, but she got dragged in when she was about fifteen. Still, only a year younger than the rest of us." Willow observed his face go blank when he heard how young they'd been. "We all chose it though. Well, except for Buffy; but the rest of us did. We saw what she was doing, saving everybody and keeping us as safe as she could, and we wanted to help. Dawn especially. She always wanted to be like her big sister."
"How many of you are there?" He wondered aloud.
"The original gang? Me, Buffy, Xander, Giles, Anya, Tara..." She paused and looked away for a second. "Actually there've been so many people come and go it gets kind of confusing. Always been Buffy, Giles, me and Xander though." She smiled sadly. "Buffy's ex started another branch in L.A a few years ago. Angel investigations. A few of us that left went there. Buffy came from there."
"Angel investigations?" Dean asked incredulously.
"Yep. His name. Well, his name was Angelus, but we kinda save the full name for his Mr. Hyde." Willow wondered why she was explaining any of this. "He had like a demon speciality P.I business."
"Right." Dean tried to fit his head around this for a moment before opening his mouth to ask another question.
"So, your powers. Spells, whatever. You use them to save people? Kill monsters?" Sam spoke before Dean had a chance to. Neither of them had noticed him listening in.
Willow shifted her attention. "Yeah, if I have to. We try and do it the good old fashioned way, but if we need magic..." She trailed off, seeing the point he was trying to make (about his own special kind of magic and using it for good), and wondering how badly they'd messed up the order of things. She hadn't thought to ask until now, but it seemed suddenly important. "When are we? I mean, what's the last big hunt you guys did?" She broke into the meaningful stare Sam was giving his brother.
"We're kind of focused on this one demon right now, she's trying to..." Sam broke off and pulled a face like he knew what he was about to say would sound crazy. "She's trying to let the devil out of hell."
Willow swallowed, and Dawn looked around at her with wide eyes that said she knew what Willow was thinking. They'd watched this happen in the show; they'd seen Sam hopped up on demon blood killing Lilith and letting Lucifer free. They'd essentially travelled back in time, or at least the same rules applied. Them being here was changing the story, which probably wasn't a good thing. They just had to try not to change it too much. She gave a brief panicked thought to what they might have changed already.
"Can I talk to you a minute?" Dawn pushed herself up to stand and tugged at Willow's arm.
"Hey, you know the rules; you wanna talk alone you go down to the panic room where you can't get up to any mischief." Dean pointed between the two of them and Dawn rolled her eyes before changing the direction of her tugs.
Once alone Willow turned to her friend. "We have to get away from them real soon, before we mess everything up." She spoke her concerns aloud.
Dawn chewed her bottom lip for a second. "Do we? I mean, wouldn't it be so much better if the devil didn't get let out?"
"Dawn, no! You know how this goes, you can't mess with history like that!" Willow said, a little surprised Dawn had even thought that.
"Why not? Nothing good comes of letting the devil out." Dawn argued.
"And how would you know? We haven't even seen all of season five." Willow pointed out. "There could be all kinds of reasons for this to happen."
"There are all kinds of reasons for it not to!" Dawn was getting flustered. "Everything they do, everything they go through, all the people that die. We could save them!"
"Dawn I said no!" Willow shivered at the thought of the kind of power they wielded over this world now. She couldn't abuse it; she of all people knew the consequences of using power you shouldn't have.
"Name one good thing that comes of letting the story take it's course." Dawn folded her arms in defiance.
"Lilith dies, Castiel fights for humanity, Sam quits the demon blood." Willow listed.
"All things that can happen without starting the apocalypse." Dawn replied.
"You know we can't do this; you've seen what happens when you mess with the natural order of things." Willow said a little more softly. "You always think you have the best reason in the world, but it never works out that way. I want to help them just as much as you do, but there's always a reason for everything that happens-"
"Exactly!" Dawn cut in. "What if there's a reason for us being here now?"
Willow had to give her credit, she'd have made a great debate team leader. "And what if there isn't? What if we make things worse? Could you live with that?"
Dawn rolled her eyes. "I don't see how we could make things worse by stopping the end of the world."
"There's no guarantee it would even work; the natural order of things has a way of pushing back. What if we couldn't stop it but hurt more people trying, or stopped something good from happening that we've missed?" She couldn't stress enough how bad of an idea it was to try and change this, but she had a bad feeling that Dawn would never see it that way.
The younger girl heard movement from the stairs. She worried for a moment that whoever was there would overhear. Although thinking about it, maybe that woudn't be such a bad thing. She raised her voice a little. "Willow, we save people! We don't just sit around and watch people get hurt! Things have already changed just by us being here, and they'll keep changing until we find a way to get back home, whether we stay around the Winchesters' or not. We can at least try and make sure that they're good changes."
"And how would we know what would be good changes? This isn't our world to change, and these aren't our choices to make. They need to do this themselves or what's the point?" Willow didn't know how else to get Dawn to understand; this wasn't just a story they could rewrite a happy ending into, this was a world with real people who had real feelings and who needed the freedom to make their own future.
"So we won't make their choices for them; we'll just give them all the information first. You think Sam wants to-"
"Dawn! Just stop!" Willow shouted. She sighed guiltily at Dawn's wide eyes. "Just trust me on this; changing things is a bad idea. At least promise me you won't change anything for now, okay? Right now we don't even know how far through everything is."
Dawn nodded mutely.
"All right then. Let's just focus on getting home." Willow turned and led the way back up stairs.
Dawn looked around at the hunters in puzzlement as she re-entered the room. She was sure she'd heard someone at the top of the stairs, but the men didn't look like they'd moved from where they'd left them.
She shrugged and went back to the books.