Morning came much too soon for Buffy. It felt almost as though she had only just laid down her head and fallen asleep when her alarm clock began belting out an incessant electronic buzzing that woke her with a jolt. She sat bolt upright, heart thundering with the sudden flood of adrenaline, and whacked the 'off' button. The noise cut out immediately and Buffy flopped back onto the bed, heaving a weary sigh. She ached still from the fight the night before and her eyes felt sore and gritty, her brain working much too slow. Coffee. Coffee would help.
With a groan she managed to roll out of bed. She landed on her feet and trudged across the room, pulled open the door and shuffled out onto the landing where she met Willow and Tara as they left their bedroom across from Buffy's, dressed and fresh faced already.
"Morning, Buffy!" Willow said, much too chirpy for the slayer's liking. Buffy groaned in response, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.
"Rough night?" Tara asked sympathetically as she followed the slayer to the stairs.
"Something like that…" Buffy replied, pushing blonde hair mussed from sleeping back out of her face.
"Well, Tara's making pancakes, right, Tare?" Willow said, and her girlfriend smiled and nodded in agreement. "That'll make you feel better."
"Funny shapes?" Buffy asked hopefully as she made her way down the stairs and into the hallway, glancing back at Tara.
"Yup." Tara said.
"Make some for me!" Called a voice on the couch.
"Kennedy?!" Willow cried, staring through the doorway into the living room. "What are you doing here?!"
"Ooooh…" Buffy said slowly. "I forgot you were here…"
Kennedy's face scrunched in a frown and a pout as she stretched on the sofa, arms above her head, feet poking out from the end of her blanket.
"You guys are just…so accommodating…" She grumbled.
"Hi, Kennedy." Tara called cheerfully, waving from behind Buffy and Willow. "Um…We didn't know you were…back…? Are you back?"
"Yup." Kennedy slid upright as Buffy, Willow and Tara entered the living room. "Got back last night."
"Yes." Buffy said suddenly, waking up immediately. "We, um…bumped into each other. Patrolling." She shot Kennedy a pointed look, not wanting the precise details of that patrol to get out. While it wasn't the first time vampires had gained the upper hand, and probably wouldn't be the last, it was incredibly embarrassing and she hoped to keep that quiet.
The corner of Kennedy's mouth twitched in a playful smile, but she seemed to get the hint.
"You went on patrol before you even got here?" Willow frowned at her. Kennedy shrugged, not meeting her gaze.
"Well, it was an unsociable hour..." She said vaguely, deciding it would also be best to forget she had intended to find a hotel. Willow would object as much as Buffy had and would no doubt give her a long speech on accepting the hospitality of friends that she really couldn't be bothered to listen to right then. Or, ever.
"It's nice to see you, anyway." Tara told Kennedy, who looked pointedly at Buffy and Willow.
"Tara's nice." She told them.
"I'm tired!"
"It was a shock!"
Buffy and Willow protested at once. Tara jerked a thumb over one shoulder and backed out of the room as her girlfriend and friend continued to talk over each other, disputing the reason for Kennedy's comment.
"I'll just go make breakfast…" She said, and hurried off to the kitchen.
Buffy and Willow fell silent, both flopping onto the sofa either side of Kennedy.
"You look rough." The dark haired slayer told her fair haired counterpart. Buffy groaned and tipped her head back against the back of the sofa with her eyes closed.
"I just want to sleep." She sighed, then leaned forwards to look forlornly at Willow. "Why do we have to be responsible adults? I don't wanna go to work." She pouted.
"Think of the money." Willow replied.
"You sound like Anya…" Buffy told her, and Willow offered a small smile.
Between them both, Kennedy inhaled deeply as the scent of pancakes filtered out of the kitchen. She leaned back on the sofa with her arms folded behind her head.
"Breakfast smells good." She said, then looked sideways at Willow with a mischievous grin. "Finally get to try your girl's famous pancakes, huh?"
Willow beamed proudly at her and nodded.
"I can't believe you're back." She said, eyeing Kennedy as though she expected her to poof into smoke and disappear. "It's been so long…"
"A month." Kennedy told her promptly. Not long in her eyes.
"No phone call…" Buffy raised an eyebrow. "We were worried."
"We missed you." Willow added.
"Sorry, mom." Kennedy quirked a mischievous smile, then looked between them apologetically. "I wanted to work some stuff out by myself. And then I got distracted by the vamps and the demons, and the other slayers…"
"Other slayers?" Willow asked curiously.
"Breakfast!" Tara called from the kitchen. Kennedy grinned at Willow and patted her knee.
"Later." She said, and hopped to her feet and dashed into the kitchen for pancakes.
An hour later Buffy, Willow and Tara were rushing out the front door, eager to get to work. Kennedy sat cross legged on the sofa, eyes glued to the TV screen with the remote in one hand as she idly channel hopped.
"Okay, so Dawn should be up around eleven, you can do something with her later." Buffy said, rummaging through her messenger bag to make sure she had everything she needed to get through the day.
"Aha." Kennedy answered vaguely.
"Giles is here, gotta go, bye!" Tara called, waving to the group as she made her way to the front door.
"See ya." Kennedy replied.
Willow kissed Tara's cheek as she passed.
"Have a good day." She said, and closed the door behind her girlfriend.
"Cat might be round for lunch. Please don't destroy anything. I know what you three are like." Buffy continued, zipping her bag shut and looking up at Kennedy. "Help yourself to food. We have to go now. Back around six."
"Bye." Kennedy said, not looking up from the TV.
"Careful in the kitchen. Have fun!" Willow called as she and Buffy rushed out the front door.
"Yup." Kennedy muttered. The door slammed shut and she was alone. Well, at least until Dawn woke up.
She heaved a sigh, bored already.
"Looks like it's just you and me, Jerry." She told the TV, dropping the remote beside herself and settling down to watch a mind numbing episode of Jerry Springer.
Half an hour later she hit stand by on the TV remote, unable to watch a moment more of stick thin, snaggle-toothed, peroxide women screeching at each other about home-wrecking.
"Billy Bob is clearly the father anyway." She admonished the blank screen as she rose from the sofa and made her way into the kitchen for a snack, raising her arms above her head and stretching out her spine as she walked. Entering the kitchen she immediately began raiding the cupboards for food, scoring the last of the Oreo pop tarts that had been hidden behind a box of store brand cereal. Feeling very pleased with herself she tore open the foil and shoved the sweet treats into the toaster, adjusted the timer and hit the button to toast them. She flicked on the radio as she passed it on her way to the bin, scrunching the pop tart packaging and chucking it into the bin. Turning back to the toaster a small clay urn caught her eye, sitting on the window ledge above the sink. In appearance it was fairly boring. Smooth, and matt grey, fairly squat, out of place in the relatively modern kitchen. And glowing from inside. She reached out and touched her fingers against the side and was surprised to find it felt warm, as though it had been standing in the sun all day, despite the overcast sky outside. She picked it up and peered inside to see a small glowing sphere sat inside, like a tiny sun, the resulting radiance bathing her face in warmth.
"Neat!" Kennedy exclaimed, shaking it lightly from side to side to see if the orb would move. It didn't. Somewhat disappointed she stuck the urn on the counter beside the sink and turned expectantly to the toaster as the smell of warmed sugar and pastry began to fill the kitchen. Seconds later her pop tarts jumped up. She grabbed a clean plate from the drying rack next to the sink and whipped the pop tarts out of the toaster before the pastry could burn her fingers.
"What are you doing?"
Kennedy spun round at the unexpected voice, her elbow catching the urn and sending it crashing to the floor where it shattered and the light swiftly fizzled out.
"Kennedy?!" Dawn blinked at her from the doorway of the kitchen. She still wore her pyjamas, hair fluffed up from sleep, with the bleary look of someone that had only just woken up.
"Hi, Dawn." Kennedy spoke around a mouthful of food. She put her plate on the counter and crouched to start scraping the shards of clay into a pile, but stopped abruptly when she noticed it was steaming. "Uh…That's not good…" She dropped the shards she had picked up and rubbed her fingers together as they felt cold and wet. Dawn hurried over and stared down at the broken urn.
"Oh no…You broke Willow's experiment!" She cried.
"Experiment?" Kennedy looked up at Dawn to find that the steam was slowly coalescing into a shape that was steadily rising up between them both. "Uh…What kind of experiment?" She asked, standing up and backing away.
"I don't know, they don't like me anywhere near the magic stuff." Dawn told her, looking nervous. She snatched up a tea towel from where it was hooked over a drawer handle and began flapping it at the steam in an effort to disperse the cloud. The cloud merely changed shape, growing larger and darker until it formed an angry thunderhead the size of a standard bed pillow.
"Oh great…" Kennedy muttered as the cloud gave a muffled rumble and began raining on the floor, still rising steadily between them.
"What should we do?" Dawn asked, sensing the mess would land them in a heap of trouble with Buffy and Willow.
"You're better with magic than me." Kennedy replied, dark eyes tracking the cloud as it hovered at head height. "For now I'd grab a bucket."
Dawn chucked the towel in amongst the shards of urn that were rapidly turning into a large puddle on the linoleum and turned to go to the utility cupboard when Kennedy gave a loud exclamation from behind her.
"You gotta be kidding me!"
The cloud was now hovering firmly in place above Kennedy's head. She dodged to the left and then the right, but the cloud drifted after her. She paused a moment, eyebrows creased in frustration as cool water streamed over her head and shoulders, then sprinted across the kitchen and out into the hallway, the cloud following close behind and raining all the way.
"Ooooh…Hell no…" Dawn muttered, sensing an impending flood in the living room. She wrenched open the cupboard door and grabbed a bucket and a mop, then chased after the slayer. "Kennedy!"
Cat had enjoyed an unusually long lay in that morning and had woken up feeling refreshed and full of energy. She had pottered around her apartment a respectful couple of hours until she was certain Dawn would be awake before taking a leisurely stroll across town to the Summers/Rosenberg/Maclay residence. The morning was cool and crisp, hinting at the coming Winter. Cat had pulled on a heavy black duster that flapped behind her in the wind. A red-and-black striped scarf was wrapped twice around her neck and protected her lower face from the chill air, while the ends trailed passed her waist. She had her hands stuffed into the pockets of her black skinny jeans watching the scuffed toes of her old black Doc Martens as she walked the familiar path without thinking about it.
By the time she approached her destination it was just gone midday. Cat hopped up onto the front step and stretched up for the door knocker, rapping it twice and stepping back down onto the front path to wait for Dawn to answer. A minute passed. Two. Cat cocked her head and arched one eyebrow. Knocked again. Still no answer.
Maybe Dawn was having an extra long lie in? No…She could hear voices from the living room, but the curtains were drawn preventing her from seeing inside. So maybe the TV was on too loud for the teen to hear the door. Cat rolled her eyes and moved away from the front of the house to head around the side, squeezing passed the metal trash cans, to the back door. It was usually unlocked.
A quick peek through the kitchen window revealed no one in sight. She could hear the radio playing on the window sill. Hooked on a feeling reached her ears as she tried the door handle. The back door clicked open and she stepped inside.
"Yo, Dawn, are you a-woah!" A loud squeak and a bang announced her feet sliding out from beneath her and the reaper crashed down onto the kitchen floor into a puddle of water. Stars exploded behind her eyes as her head struck the tiles and she lay flat on her back blinking up at the ceiling in surprise.
Dawn's face appeared in the air above her looking confused and concerned.
"Cat? Are you okay?!" She asked, reaching down and helping the reaper to her feet. Cat's boots skidded in the water but she managed to get up and stood rubbing the back of her head where a small egg was now forming, while looking around at the minor flood around her.
"Uh…What's happening?" She asked, wincing as her fingers brushed against the lump on her skull. Dawn threw up her arms in frustration.
"I have no idea! There's a mystical rain shower in the front room that won't shut off and I can't get hold of Willow or Tara to find out what I'm supposed to do and the magic books are useless." Cat quirked an eyebrow at Dawn.
"What did you do…?" She asked. Dawn scowled at her.
"I didn't do anything!" She grumbled. "It was all Kennedy." Cat did a double take.
"Kennedy?" She asked. "Kennedy's here?"
Dawn gave an irritated sigh and waved the reaper through as she marched across the kitchen and out through the hall into the living room where she pointed accusingly at the dark-haired slayer who was stood miserably on top of a shower curtain, holding an open umbrella above her head and surrounded by buckets that were rapidly filling with water as an angry thunderhead roiled above her, omitting the occasional low rumble and light fizzle of lightning. Cat frowned at her, then turned to Dawn.
"You took the time to go get the shower curtain but you didn't think to stand her in the bath tub?"
Kennedy and Dawn exchanged a look, then both made a sprint for the stairs.
"There has to be a spell in here somewhere!" Dawn grumbled, flicking through dry and brittle page after page of the third spell book she had picked up since transferring Willow and Tara's collection of books to the bathroom for ease of access. She stood pacing the small room while Cat sat cross legged on the toilet with hers. Even Kennedy had pitched in with the effort and was huddled in the bath tub beneath her umbrella with a book open on her knees as she frowned at the pages.
Cat gave an "Iono." Noise and looked up at Kennedy.
"What's yours saying?"
"I don't know." Kennedy said in exasperation. "It's in Latin or something."
Dawn snatched the book away from the slayer, flipped it round and shoved it back at her.
"Try reading it the right way up."
Cat stared at Kennedy, slowly raising one eyebrow, until the slayer glowered at her.
"What? I'm being rained on indoors, ya know? It's distracting!"
"Well then, you shouldn't upset Willow's urns, should you?" Cat taunted her. Kennedy opened her mouth to snap a comeback and jabbed a finger in her direction, but was stopped from responding by Dawn snapping her book shut and chucking it onto the discard pile.
"Please do not start!" She begged. "I really need to fix this before the others get home. You know I'll get the blame."
"Yes, ma'am." Cat said, flipping her current book closed and reaching for the next one in her pile.
Standard 'finish' spells hadn't done anything to stop what was happening and the reaper was fast beginning to suspect Willow had crafted her own halt command into the spell. If so, that was going to cause them serious problems. Her knowledge of magic was incredibly limited. She had no clue how to undo that kind of spell crafting.
"Ooh, what about…" Kennedy frowned at the book in front of her, and slowly sounded out a word. A puff of smoke exploded at the end of the bath tub, causing the three of them to jump. The smoke cleared to reveal a fluffy white rabbit sat in the tub with Kennedy. As they watched it sat up on its hind legs and began to clean its ears.
"Cute, but I don't think that's what we're looking for." Cat told Kennedy deadly seriously. Kennedy rolled her eyes at her friend and looked back at her book to find the word that would send the rabbit back to wherever it had come from. A moment later she had it and the rabbit disappeared in a second puff of smoke.
"This is so boring." She grumbled, flicking pages and skim reading. "I don't know how Willow and Tara do it."
"With a healthy respect for the natural order of things." Cat replied vaguely as she scanned the contents page of the hefty tome she currently held. "And a deep understanding of balance." She looked up at the ceiling as she considered that. With magic if you took something away, you had to replace it. Did that apply here? Maybe… Or maybe Kennedy's disruption of the spell had created an imbalance that only one with the proper magical understandings could correct.
"Magic is awesome but headache inducing…" Dawn sighed, fast losing hope that they could fix the problem before the others returned home from work.
"Woah…" Kennedy said suddenly.
"That was hardly deep." Cat replied, glancing up to see Kennedy had sat up straight and was staring at her book, dark eyes flashing from line to line with an unusual interest.
"Woah?" Dawn asked, sensing the change in the slayer also.
"I think I've found something." Kennedy said, looking over to Dawn. "But you're not going to like it."
Dawn kicked open the bathroom door and stumbled inside to thump down her bucket of dirt on the tiled floor.
"You're totally cleaning this up after." She told Kennedy and Cat. "Even if it doesn't work."
"It will." Kennedy said with certainty. "It's magic, right?"
"Which never goes wrong." Cat rolled her eyes, reaching into the bucket and adding more damp earth to the lines she was making on the floor in the shape of a square, while Kennedy sat in the tub being rained on and supervising with her book. "And this is so wrong! It's always a magic circle! Whoever heard of a magic square?!"
Kennedy waved her book at them, and hastily whipped it back within the safety of her umbrella as it received a dangerous sprinkling of rain water.
"The magic book says so." She insisted. "The shape associated with earth is square."
"And earth is going to neutralize the spell?" Dawn asked sceptically.
"Apparently." Kennedy replied. "Fire melts metal, water quenches fire-"
"Earth absorbs water. So you keep saying." Cat said, standing up from where she knelt on the floor and wiping her muddy hands on her jeans. "The part you kinda glazed over is that we don't speak Chinese!"
"Duh! It's in English too!" Kennedy shot her a dark look. "I might be magically illiterate but I'm not an idiot. How'd you think I read it?"
"Okay, gimme." Dawn held out her hand for the book. "You sit in the square. Without the umbrella." Kennedy opened her mouth to protest.
"Hey, we don't want any stray Chinese elements messing anything up." Cat said with a little smirk. "That pole is metal!" Kennedy glowered at her and thrust the umbrella and book at Dawn to sit in amongst the dirt on the floor with her cloud hovering above her head raining down on her and emitting the occasional rumble of thunder and spark of lightning. "We so need to talk to Willow about her magic health and safety."
"Funny." Kennedy said deadpan. Cat pressed a finger to her lips as Dawn began to read from the book, slowly enunciating the words that had been written out in English. Her brow was creased in a frown of concentration as she stared down at the book in her hands.
Kennedy watched as the water flowed over her and pooled around her on the floor. It spread out to the earth square but moved no further. A moment later the falling rain began to slow. She glanced up to Cat and met her gaze, looking a little stunned that the crude magic seemed to be working. Cat grinned and gave her a thumbs up, then pointed above Kennedy's head. The slayer looked up and blinked as she saw the cloud was shrinking and turning bright white and fluffy. The final rain drop fell and splashed onto Kennedy's forehead. She looked back down over to Dawn, the raindrop rolling down the bridge of her nose to fall off the tip, and grinned. As the teen stopped speaking the cloud dispersed into nothing.
"You did it." She needlessly announced. Dawn looked up from the book and seemed surprised at her own success.
"Holy rainclouds, Batman," Cat said, hopping from her perch on the toilet lid to clap Dawn on the shoulder. "We'll make a Wiccan of you yet."
"You guys helped." Dawn replied with a crooked smile, closing her book and resting it atop the neat pile of unread books.
"Okay, I'm thinking lunch then clean up?" Cat said, clapping her hands together, then pulling a face and wiping her gritty palms on her T-shirt.
"I'm going to dry off first, but I second that plan." Kennedy told them from the floor.
"Thirded." Dawn announced as her stomach rumbled loudly.
"I hope you have a load of hairdryers, 'cause the carpet's soaked out there." Cat told her. Dawn sighed and trudged out of the bathroom.
Buffy, Willow and Tara arrived home at the same time, as they usually did, and were chattering amongst themselves as Willow let them in with her door key. Buffy paused as her feet squelched on the carpet, and looked down to see a large damp patch that seemed to trail into the living room at up the stairs.
"What the…?" Tara blinked as she stared past her friend at the mess that hadn't quite dried in time… Willow closed the door behind them and thought about taking off her shoes but changed her mind when she saw how wet the floor was.
Buffy's jaw set and she stood with her hands on her hips.
"DAWN!"
They heard a scramble from the living room as several people clambered to their feet and dashed into the hall. Dawn, Kennedy, and Cat stood side by side in front of them attempting to look meek. Kennedy wore a fluffy pink bathrobe borrowed from Dawn, and Cat's clothes appeared covered in mud. Buffy hadn't been prepared for that sight, and merely stared at the trio.
"Um…What happened?" Tara asked curiously.
"Kennedy did it!" Dawn said quickly.
"Dawn!" Kennedy protested.
"We have a traitor in our midst!" Cat announced melodramatically.
"Kennedy did what?" Buffy demanded.
"I knocked the urn over." Kennedy admitted with a sigh.
"Urn?" Buffy asked in confusion, but Willow gasped in horror and dashed into the kitchen. She came running back out seconds later, green eyes fixed furiously on Kennedy.
"You broke my solar bomb?!" She cried. Kennedy arched one eyebrow.
"Wow, that was a bomb?"
"It would have been if you hadn't broken it!" Willow snapped. "Do you have any idea how long that took me to make?! It could have revolutionized the way we flush out vampire nests!"
"Definitely with you on the flushing." Kennedy commented.
"You ruined my experiment! And trashed the house! The least you could do is apologise!" Willow said furiously. Tara reached up and lay a calming hand on her lover's shoulder.
"Witches be crazy…" Cat muttered, and Kennedy snorted. Tara softly cleared her throat, blue eyes focussed on a spot behind the three miscreants. Kennedy got the point.
"I'm sorry I broke everything." She said sincerely.
"Great." Buffy said, sighing as she shrugged off her jacket and squelched further into the house. "So. Who's up for Chinese?"