"So." Jess said eventually, after about thirty seconds of neither him nor Dawn saying anything. "I can't think of any way to change the subject without seeming like a complete jerk."
"Yeah, I'm kind of stumped too." Dawn admitted. She didn't want to talk about Joyce. She'd gotten over her death (as much as she felt she ever would), but sometimes memories would just pop up and completely blindside her, like they were doing now. At times like that, it was generally a bittersweet experience – often, the memories were happy ones, but there was always the knowledge that those were all she had of her mother. Even her grave was gone now that Sunnydale had collapsed. She didn't want to talk about it. She just wanted to be left alone with her mom.
"I'm guessing you don't want to talk about it?"
Dawn shook her head, not quite able to force words past the lump in her throat.
Jess sighed gently. "Well, um, I guess I'll leave you to your… I'll let you… ah, you know what I'm trying to say."
Dawn nodded, standing up. "Thank you."
Jess didn't move when Dawn left. He just sat where he was, staring at the table, feeling like a callous fool. After a while, he sat back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling and sighed again. This wasn't the way he'd expected the evening to go.
He stood up, and went looking for Luke.
Xander shook some feeling into his hand, and then knelt down by Rory. "How're you doing, Ro-Gil?" he asked gently, hoping that there wasn't some other complication that could only be solved by the man whose lights he'd just punched out.
Rory thought for a moment. It was a difficult question to answer. When she had actually turned into a vampire, she'd been asleep. She'd gone from unconscious to vampire, which was a lot easier than a going from vampire the human.
For example, she felt extremely cold. She guessed that that was because, up until a few seconds ago, she'd actually been dead. Now, with blood pulsing through her veins, she was heating up to the normal temperature for humans.
Speaking of blood, she could still taste the blood she'd drunk. It wasn't the riotous mixture of delicious flavours it had been moments before. It was thick, and coppery, and coating her mouth. It made her incredibly nauseated, especially when she realised that there was a not inconsiderable amount of it in her stomach.
Rory looked over at Xander, and realised that there was really only one answer that she could really give.
"I feel alive."
Jess didn't find Luke. He was about to ask Lorelai, thinking that if anyone knew where his uncle was, she would, but just as he was about to approach her Emily and Richard Gilmore came through the door. Not wanting to be looked at as though he was something that had been scraped of the bottom of one of their shoes, Jess sat down in a chair in the lobby.
"Oh, hello." Said a man with a stupid looking beard and moustache. Jess fought the urge to roll his eyes. If he'd known that he would have to engage in conversation with some complete stranger, he would've just gone home and talked to Luke in the morning.
"I'm Jason." Jason said, apparently not to be put off by Jess' silence.
"Congratulations." Jess said, sourly. He wondered if Rory's grandparents would corner him if he made a dash for it.
"You waiting for Lorelai too?" Jason said cheerily, still not getting the hint.
"No, I just enjoy sitting in lobby chairs." Jess said drily.
"Well, I'll let you talk to her first. We'll probably be talking for a while."
Jess' curiosity briefly warred with his apathy. It wasn't even a contest. He stayed silent.
Apparently, though, Jason really wanted to talk, and was willing to latch onto even the most unwilling of ears. "She's my girlfriend, you see."
Jess looked up sharply. "Since when?" he said warily. He didn't think that Lorelai was the kind of person to string Luke along, but this guy seemed pretty sincere. What was going on here?
"Oh, months now."
"Okay, I've got to ask this – does Lorelai iknow/i that you're her boyfriend?"
"Of course!" Jason said indignantly. "We kept it a secret for a while, until her parents found out." He nodded at said parents. "I'm kind of a persona non grata with them at the moment."
"Uh huh." Jess said noncommittally. "What did you do?"
"Me? Nothing. I just filed a lawsuit against Richard because he ruined my career. I'll never be able to work again. Lorelai and I kind of had some difficulties after that." Jason explained.
Suddenly it all made sense. Lorelai wasn't cheating on Luke, or even using Luke to cheat on Jason. Jason and Lorelai had broken up, and Jason didn't seem to have gotten the memo. "You know she's dating Luke now, right?"
Jason looked uncertain for a moment. "No, she isn't."
"Uh, yeah, she is. Trust me, he's my uncle. I know who he's dating." Jess pointed out. "Besides, you two have clearly broken up. Maybe it's about time you moved on?"
Apparently Jason wasn't quite ready for that. He stood up and made his way over to Lorelai and her parents. Jess groaned. He doubted he'd be able to get his hands on Lorelai for hours yet. He got up and left, hoping he could find Luke in the morning.
Xander guessed he should thank Riley (he'd be damned if he was going to thank Ethan, even if he had been the one to actually save Rory. He figured that stopping at only one punch was thanks enough) but, if he was honest, all he wanted to do was go back to the Dragonfly and have that dinner that Rory had promised him, without any interruptions or supernatural problems. The world could come and bother him in the morning. He just wanted the night off.
So, Xander was just about to make some kind of brisk farewell before scooping Rory up and going off to do just that when Riley reached out to touch the blood-stained amulet. "What are we going to do with that?"
"Don't touch it!" the null magician (what had Ethan called her? Yelena?) snapped suddenly. Riley recoiled. "It's still active."
"What?" Rory said, suddenly going pale. She reached around the back of her neck to unclasp it. "Am I going to turn into a vampire again?"
"No." Giles said tiredly. "The link to you is broken, but the amulet is still enchanted. Anyone who puts it on and isn't you will probably turn into a vampire." He paused. "Or at least, I think so. I'm not actually an expert on transformation magic. It would probably be for the best if no one but Rory touches it until Ethan wakes up."
"Sorry." Xander said with as much contrition as he could muster. Which wasn't really very much.
"Don't worry about it. He deserved it." Giles said, smiling slightly.
Rory unclasped the necklace and put it gingerly in the sink, then rinsed the blood off of it. She'd had enough of that particular substance to last a lifetime. Speaking of which, she should probably get herself cleaned up. "I'm just going to go wash this blood off." Rory said to Xander in a matter-of-fact tone of which she was rather proud. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
"Sure thing." Xander said fondly. "You want to go down to the Dragonfly later? Or do you-"
"Of course I want to go. I wouldn't miss it for the world!"
Xander smiled and sat down in an armchair to wait.
Giles cleared his throat. "Um, Yelena, is it?"
"Yes."
"I'm Giles. Rupert Giles."
"I know who you are. Ethan has spoken of you."
"He has? What did he - never mind. I wanted to ask you something."
"You want to know how my gift works?"
"Yes. I've found records of null magicians, but I had thought that it was a lost art, that all those who practiced it had died out centuries ago."
"Uh, Giles?" Xander interrupted before Yelena had a chance to answer. "Would you mind not brushing up on your magical history while I'm here. I thought I'd given up research when Sunnydale collapsed. I don't really want to hear you doing your own research just now."
Yelena frowned. "That isn't very polite."
"Don't mind him." Giles said. "He's had a bit of a rough day."
Xander was saved the trouble of answering by Rory's return. She'd gotten changed, and fixed her hair. "Shall we go?"
"Let's." Xander replied, offering her his arm. Rory took it, and they left.
Ethan groaned, and sat up. "What happened?" he said, wincing.
When Dawn got home, she didn't bother to get something to eat or even to turn the light on. Instead, she just lay down on the sofa, closed her eyes, and lost herself in the happy memories she had of her family before Buffy had been called and everything had become so complicated. She didn't care that, technically, those memories had never actually happened. Dawn had eighteen years' worth of memories; it didn't matter that only about three years of them were real.
She wasn't sure if she'd fallen asleep or not. All Dawn knew was that she had been shocked out of her reverie by someone knocking at the door.
She knew without having to find out that it would be Jess. She suspected that she blamed himself for the disaster that their not-a-date had become. It wasn't actually his fault, of course, but Dawn could see why he might blame himself. Dawn thought it was actually her fault, for pushing him so much about his relationship with Liz.
Still, Dawn wasn't entirely sure whether she wanted to see Jess just then. It wasn't that she wanted to be left alone for some quality wallowing time, but rather she didn't want to open the whole can of worms that was her past.
Jess knocked again. On the other hand, Dawn thought, Jess had been a lot more respectful of her desire not to reveal her history than she had been of his. She didn't think that he would press her about it. It was entirely possible that he'd come down to suggest they watch Pride & Prejudice to cheer her up or something.
That she could do.
So Dawn got up and opened the door.
She had expected it to be Jess, and in this expectation she was proved totally correct. However, what she hadn't expected was for him to be carrying a six pack of beer.
"What's with the booze?" Dawn asked. "You planning on getting me drunk and then having your wicked way with me?" Then, as her mouth caught up with what she had just said, she blushed and looked down at her feet. iOh, way to go mini-Faith!/i
Jess didn't appear to notice her blush. "Uh, no. I'm not really that kind of guy."
"Good to know."
"I was thinking we could do that thing that people do in movies where they drink and talk about every embarrassing thing their parents have done. Or nice things, if you swing that way. I thought about getting some kind of spirits so we could do shots for each one, but I'd probably end up getting my stomach pumped if we did that and I'm not too keen on that. I thought it would probably be best if we stick with the beer."
Dawn frowned. "What film are you talking about?"
Jess opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again. Eventually, he said "Actually, I can't remember. I'm sure I've seen it somewhere, though."
"Well, it's a nice thought, but I don't drink."
"Seriously?" Jess said incredulously. "You've never gone out and gotten drunk with your friends?"
"Nope." Dawn said. She'd been too busy dealing with the fact that she didn't exist, followed by the fact that her sister was dead, followed by the fact that her sister had PTSD, followed Willow nearly causing the apocalypse, followed by the First's apocalypse and the whole swarm of mini-Slayers that had brought to go out and do teenager-y things. "That wasn't really my scene. Besides, I've been reliably informed that beer bad."
"Uh, I think you might be missing a verb there." Jess pointed out.
"Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you?"
"Oh well, there goes my plan of having a nice cathartic night getting wasted." Dawn giggled. "What?"
"Nothing. It's just kind of funny to hear you talk about catharsis and getting wasted in the same sentence. It's not really something you expect to hear very often."
"Okay, I can see that." Jess admitted. "Anyway, I don't want to pressure you into getting drunk with me. I'm not that kind of guy either. I just figured that… um, well, you seemed sad earlier so I thought I should probably do something and this is pretty much the best ideas I could come up with."
"It's not that bad an idea, I guess." Dawn said. She knew that, during the time that Buffy had been dead, Spike had spent a great deal of his time so drunk that he hadn't even known what century he was in, and it seemed to have worked well enough for him. "I'm just not that kind of girl."
"Good to know. Anyway, I suppose I should probably leave to whatever it was you were doing before I came."
"Wait!" Dawn said suddenly, before Jess could leave. "Wh-why don't you come in?"
"Well, if you're looking for a reason, I'm pretty sure that Xander or Giles wouldn't be best pleased to find out that you were alone with a boy in your house at this time of night."
"What are you talking about?" Dawn asked, baffled.
"Uh, you asked "Why don't you come in?" so I was telling you why." Jess replied. "Honestly, I think you'd probably be better off if I didn't. You know, if you work through your stuff yourself."
"Nah. I-I guess I wasn't to talk about it. About her, I mean." Dawn said, knowing as she did so that it was only half true. While she did want to talk about Joyce, to relive her happy memories, she also didn't want to be alone. "If you don't mind."
"Sure. I'm cool with that." Jess replied after a moment's thought.
"Just, um, leave the beer by the door."
Xander knew that this test run for the Dragonfly was an incredibly important event for Lorelai. As such, he probably should've suspected that her parents would be there. Of course, being confronted with them in some kind of argument with Lorelai and some other man that he hadn't seen before wasn't really the best way to encounter them. He'd known that he would have to make an apology to them for his antics at dinner, but he had hoped that he could catch them in a better mood. He thought that, if they saw him now, they would probably bite his head right off. He wondered if he and Rory could sneak past them and have a nice enjoyable dinner together, without even more drama.
"Don't even think about it." Rory said, as though reading her thoughts.
"Aw, why not? Look, they're having a nice argument - they probably won't even notice we're here." Xander pleaded.
"No. You need to make amends." Rory said.
"Okay, Little Miss Forceful."
Rory thought about that for a second. There wasn't really any reason that Xander needed to apologize to her grandparents right now. It was, she realised, a question of control. She'd just been in Xander's world, and it had scared her witless, not least because she hadn't been able to do a single thing to help herself. However, her grandparents were firmly and definitively in her world. This, she could control.
Rory's ruminations were interrupted by Xander asking "Who's the guy?"
"Oh, that's Jason. Mom's ex."
"Ex? Since when does Lorelai have an ex?"
"I think she's had at least one ever since she was sixteen."
"Haha. Did it happen while we were, uh, you know…"
"While I forgot that you even existed? Yeah."
"Do you have any idea what they're arguing about?"
"I think he wants Mom back. She's not too happy about that. Neither are my grandparents, because Jason is currently suing them. Oh, and it sounds like they're angry that she hasn't told them about her and Luke."
"How on earth did you manage to pick all of that up?" Xander said incredulously. "It just sounds like a great big babble of voices to me."
"'cause I'm amazing."
"You are at that." Xander admitted. "Well, here I go. Wish me luck."
"Luck!"
With a deep breath, Xander walked forward, thinking about how he'd rather raid a nest of Fyarls unarmed than do this. "Uh, hello, Mr Gilmore. Mrs Gilmore. I'm very sorry about my behaviour the other day. I'm normally much closer to the epitome of professionalism than that." Turning to Jason in the hopes that he might be able to stall the forthcoming head-eating, he said "Oh, by the way, I don't think you really have a shot with Lorelai. Luke's madly in love with her, and at the very least she thinks he's ruggedly handsome. Besides, you're suing her family, and I've recently discovered that the Gilmores don't get on well with people who antagonize their family. Okay, once again, Mr and Mrs Gilmore, I'm sorry, and I'm going to leave now before you say something snarky and I run away crying like a little girl. Okay?"
At that, Xander turned and walked away, hoping against hope that he might get away with it. Sadly, as demonstrated by the multiple cries of "Wait!" it was not to be. With a sigh, Xander turned and walked back.
Lorelai, Jason and Emily all spoke at once, but they're voices were eclipsed by Richard's deep booming voice (God, the man seemed even taller than Dean!) saying "How idare/i you act the way you did towards my wife!"
Xander shrugged uncomfortably. "I, uh… I'd just had a bad day at work." iWhoa, where did that come from?/i
Richard raised an eyebrow. "And, pray tell, what exactly is iwork/i?" he said disdainfully, clearly expecting him to say something menial like a waiter or a janitor.
"I'm on the board of an international charity that helps teenage girls who have had… let's say difficult lives and leave it at that." Xander said. It was technically true. "That's what the building I went to you to get insured is for, Mr Gilmore. Most of the girls come from big cities, like New York or LA, and we think it might be beneficial if there was a change of pace, so they could immerse themselves in small town life, as it were."
Xander could quite clearly see the Gilmores trying to reconcile the idea of someone of the board of an international charity with someone who would play such a juvenile prank. Xander wasn't really surprised that they found it difficult. "What's the name of this charity?"
"The Watchers' Council." Xander replied, and hoped like hell that Giles could somehow pass off the centuries old organization as charity, because he had no doubt that the Gilmores would be scrutinizing it incredibly carefully.
"I'll have to look into it." Richard said thoughtfully. "In the meantime, we'd best talk about your abominable treatment of my wife. And your intentions towards my granddaughter."
"Yes sir." Xander said, wondering how much of a fuss Rory would kick up if he abducted her and moved as far away from Connecticut as demonically possible. Perhaps some other dimension would do. He'd never liked shrimp much anyway.
Richard looked at Jason, who seemed to have quietly gone into shock. "Although perhaps some other time might be better."
"Oh, thank God. I mean, yes, of course."