“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I would have preferred ‘Hi, dad,’” Hank said as he turned to face Buffy. “But seeing you again could make me forgive anything.”
“Can’t say the same for me. So I return to my previous question. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Your sister called me.”
“Buffy,” Angel said, gently gripping his lover’s arm.
“Stay out of it, Angel,” she whispered, turning back to him. She looked at Willow. “What’s Dawn have to say for herself?”
“We haven’t been able to get a hold of her,” Willow answered. “Her phone is busy.”
“We’re thinking maybe she’s got a guy over,” Kennedy said.
Willow gave Kennedy a reproachful look while Buffy rolled her eyes and Hank’s jaw dropped.
“Maybe I should go over and see her,” Hank said.
“Subtle, dad,” Buffy said. “Besides, she’s a grown girl.”
“Not to me.”
“Of course not. Last time you saw her she was like twelve years old. Do you even know what she looks like?”
“Your mother sent me pictures.”
“Oh. So, after mom died three years ago, who sent you pictures then?”
“Buffy, I-”
“You didn’t even come to her funeral.” Buffy’s voice was calm and even, but the anger in it was unmistakable. “And now, after your youngest daughter has turned eighteen and become an adult, when we no longer need your financial support, now you come back to us. My only question is why. Why come back now?”
“Because I’m your father,:
“You’re not a father. You’re not even a man. You’re nothing. At least to me.”
“Obviously your sister feels differently. Perhaps, in time, you might feel differently, too.”
“And perhaps I’ll turn orange and sprout horns,” Buffy said, turning her back on Hank.
“Buffy,” Willow whispered. “I wouldn’t tempt fate if I were you.”
*
“Stop,” Connor yelled, grabbing at the air.
“Hey,” Dawn said quietly from across the room. “Are you okay?”
“Bad dream,” Connor said. He was clutching Emily’s pillow. Even after all the time that had passed, it still smelled like her.
“Sorry,” Dawn said.
He looked around the room. “Your phone’s off the hook.”
“When you fell asleep, I wanted to make sure no one called and woke you.”
“Thanks.”
Dawn was backlit by the sun rising outside her window. Dawn at dawn Connor laughed to himself. He could still make out her features. More importantly, he could see the look in her eye.
Connor set the pillow he was clutching aside and sat up. He knew why Dawn was doing this. Why she was letting him sleep in his dead girlfriend’s bed and taking the phone off the hook to keep him from disturbance. Time had passed, but her feelings hadn’t. She still had a crush on him. He could see it in her face. In her eyes.
“Want to go for a walk?” Connor needed company badly. He knew this would only make things worse for both of them in the long run. But for the time, he decided to ignore the look. It wasn’t hard to do. On a daily basis, he ignored seventeen years of his life. Ignoring a longing look from an infatuated girl was easy.
The birds were still chirping as they walked around the Lagunita. “That used to be dry down there,” Connor said, pointing to the pool of water that was drained in from the foothills. “That’s where I first met your sister and Willow.”
“I thought you met Willow in L.A.?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Sometimes, at moments like this, that past came back to him for the briefest of moments. But still a master of compartmentalizing, he could take that one scene from the violent portion of his life and ham-handedly sew it into the peaceful childhood of Connor Reilly.
“Sorry,” Dawn said. “I forgot you don’t like to talk about that.”
Connor shrugged as Dawn chipped away a piece of another barrier in his mind. She was still so attentive to his mood. She was still infatuated.
“You have any meals left on your meal plan?” Connor asked. “We should get breakfast.”
“You don’t have your meal plan anymore.”
“I can pay the three dollars. I just really don’t want to be alone right now.”
He was leading her on and he knew it. But like the pillow he clutched in his sleep the night before, he just couldn’t let go. Besides, Connor could tell Dawn knew what was happening, too. If she was allowed to ignore it, why wasn’t he?
Seventeen years of his life had never happened. Ignoring this was easy.
*
“Connor, sorry to bother you,” Angel said into his cell phone. “I’m wondering if you can go over to Dawn’s and knock on the door.”
“I could, but I don’t think she’d answer since I’m in the dining hall and she’s sitting across from me eating Fruit Loops.”
“Well . . . I think she . . . she called her father recently and asked to see him. And he’s here.”
Less than ten minutes later, Dawn was running into her father’s arms.
“Hey, sweetie,” Hank said.
“I missed you so much,” Dawn said, squeezing him tightly.
Willow and Kennedy watched the reunion awkwardly. They were happy for Dawn, but knew Buffy would approve of neither their happiness nor Dawn’s. Angel had stepped outside with Connor while Dawn saw her father.
“I . . . I don’t mean to pry,” Angel said. “But, are you and Dawn-”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Because you smell kind of like her.”
“I fell asleep in her room. We were just talking.”
“Talking late enough at night that you fell asleep in her room,” Angel clarified.
“What’s your problem?” Connor asked crankily. He knew what Angel’s problem was. But he didn’t want to open that box just now.
“She has feelings for you, Connor. And you’re vulnerable right now.”
“It’s a bit late for this.”
“It’s eight in the morning.”
“I mean it’s a bit late for you to start acting like my father. For a year, I needed you. I even reached out to you in my own twisted way, and you were too absorbed in your own life and your own problems to give a damn. So don’t come to me now and try to be a dad. I have a dad. I’ll call you when I need demon hunting tips.”
Connor turned and stormed away.
“Ouch,” Buffy said as she sidled up to Angel. She’d caught the end of their conversation from the doorway. “Who knew they still had that much brattiness left in them in college?”
“He’s not wrong. I wasn’t always there for him. I . . . I don’t imagine I was a much better father than yours.”
“You had a pretty unique problem. There’s nothing wrong with being a father and not knowing what to do. My father knew what to do. He just didn’t feel like doing it.”
“It might have been more complicated than that.”
“Or it might not have been.”
“You’ll never know unless you talk to him.”
“Dawn will talk to him. Then I’ll talk to Dawn. It’ll be like junior high all over again.”
Angel gave a snicker. “I don’t think Dawn’s going to talk to him about that.”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“Because that’s not what she’s been thinking about. You had to carry the burdens of adulthood. You had to wonder why he wasn’t sending money or calling to give advice. Dawn didn’t have to do any of that. She just missed her dad.”
“And now that he’s back, you think she’s just willing to forget all that?”
“She’s trying to forget it, Buffy. She wants to forget and just move on with your father from where they are now.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Since I became human, I’ve been thinking about that. Fathers and their children.”
“You and Connor.”
“I think we both want to forget L.A. And I know he wants to forget what came before it.”
“That’s the problem. Dawn will forget dad left us in the lurch and she’ll let her guard down. And then it’ll all happen again. Unless you talk it out, nothing gets resolved.”
“Maybe you’re right. But if that’s the case, then you need to be the one to talk to your father about what he did. Because Dawn won’t do it. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn’t know how. It’s not fair that these responsibilities always fall on you. But then again, when have our lives been fair?”
Buffy put her arms around Angel’s neck. “I dumped the Immortal for you,” she said with a smile. “That has to feel pretty fair to you.”
Angel laughed and kissed her. “Actually, that does feel pretty good.”
“He cried on the phone, you know.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel good.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.” Buffy kissed him again. “But speaking of having to be the one to talk to someone . . . you remember when I had to stop Acathla?”
“I seem to recall that,” Angel said, remembering Buffy running a sword through his gut.
“It hurt. And I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. And I didn’t really want to. But Giles kept pestering me about this spell. He just wouldn’t shut up about it. Finally, I told him. I told him that Willow’s spell worked. That you were back. But I had to do what I did anyway. Talking about it made me feel sick. But after I did, I started to feel better.”
“Good thing Giles needed to do that spell.”
Buffy laughed. “Will told me a couple years later that there was no spell. Giles just knew I needed to talk.”
“Oh. He is a sly one.”
“That he is. Knowing his history, he’ll probably try to decapitate you for bringing it up, but Connor needs to talk, Angel. He needs to share his pain. Until he confronts it, it’ll never go away. It’ll always be lurking there, just under the surface.”
“He’s the world champion for keeping pain under the surface. But I’ll talk to him.”
*
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Buffy said as she entered the house. “I don’t care about you.”
Hank’s face dropped. She’d said it already, but it still cut like a blade. Even Willow and Kennedy seemed shocked. Dawn just looked down sadly.
“But I care about Dawn,” the slayer went on. “If she wants you in her life, if that makes her happy, then I guess I’ll deal. But first we need to talk so that I can have assurances you won’t hurt her again.”
Hank looked at Buffy and smiled slightly. “It’s weird for me. That you’re a woman. And a responsible one.”
“Don’t butter me up. I know you smooth talk your clients, your secretaries, and anyone else in a skirt who’s not related to you by blood or marriage. I need guarantees. If we let you back in our lives, how do we know you won’t pack up and leave again?”
“Buffy, I just want to put the past behind us.”
“Am I talking about that past? I’m talking about the future. How do I know you won’t leave us again?”
“I can buy a house here. We can all live together again.”
“Oh my god!” Dawn shouted. “That would be so awesome!”
“You’d rather live with him than me?” Buffy said, slightly hurt.
“I’d live with both of you.”
“I can’t live with him. Not again. You know that.”
Dawn sighed. “Then we’d visit or something. The point is, we could all be close again.”
*
“Follow my scent?” Connor asked without looking back.
“Of course,” Angel said as he walked around at sat on the bench next to Connor. They were in a park in the Foothills about a mile from campus. “Did you hear me or smell me first?”
“Heard. But only because you said hello to that lady.”
“Right.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Not now or not ever?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Connor said. “When it’s been a while longer, maybe I’ll know.”
“How about the other thing? Think you could talk to me about that?”
“What other thing? The ghost?”
“Quar’Toth.”
Connor literally cringed at the word. “Why the sudden interest?”
“I always cared about you, Connor. I know I didn’t go about it the right way, but . . . I did the best I could. And granted, that wasn’t very good.”
“Didn’t have much to work with.”
“Yeah, I did. I never should have lied to you about going to see Holtz. I definitely never should have thrown you out of the hotel. But most of all, I should have sat down with you on a bench near a park and said, ‘Connor. Tell me about Quar’Toth.’”
Connor smiled. “That was another life for me. I mean, sometimes I have nightmares but . . . you know.”
“Tell me about.” Angel hesitantly put his arm around Connor’s shoulders. “I want to know.”
Connor looked up at the sky. “Can we do it some other time?”
“As long as we do it eventually, then yes. We can do it another time.”
*
“I don’t exactly know how we should tell my dad about this,” Dawn said as they crept through the cemetery.
Kennedy laughed. “I’m thinking we tell him by sitting him down and saying, ‘Mr. Summers . . . your daughter tutors people.’”
Connor laughed. “I think vampires and goblins might freak him out just a little.”
“Let’s not be ridiculous,” Dawn said. “We’ve never fought goblins.”
“Maybe you haven’t,” Connor snickered in a flirtatious voice as he bumped his shoulder against her.
“Maybe we should split up,” Kennedy said, suddenly seeming very businesslike. “Cover more ground.”
“Yeah,” Connor said, splitting off on his own. “I’ll yell really, really loud if I need help.”
“I still think we should buy those CIA-type headsets like they use on ‘Alias,’” Dawn said.
Connor crept around the cemetery almost soundlessly. He noticed two vampires who looked like college students with safecracking gear trying to pry their way into a tomb.
“Hey,” Connor said calmly as he came up on the vamps. “What’s up?”
The vamps jumped up and took aggressive postures.
“Relax,” Connor said. “I’m on your side.”
“I can hear your heart beat,” one of the vamps said. “You’re human.”
Connor circled around them in a flash. They spun to face him, stunned. “Know any humans who can move like that?”
“Slayer,” the first vamp answered.
“Slayers are girls,” Connor grinned. “I look like a girl to you?”
“Yeah, kinda,” the first vamp answered.
Connor frowned. “If you’re going to be assholes about this, I can just stake you.”
“What are you?” the second vamp asked.
“Demon. What kind isn’t important.”
“We should take him to the professor,” the second vamp said.
“I can go on my own if you want,” Connor offered.
“I don’t think so,” the first vampire said with a grin. He reached into his book bag and pulled out a black hood. “Put it on.”
*
“Maybe we could do a locator spell,” Kennedy said.
Dawn shook her head. “Don’t you remember when we were trying to find him before? He’s not a demon, but he’s not quite human either. We don’t have a locator spell we can use unless I go back and get a bunch of supplies or we have a lock of his hair.”
“And you’re saying you don’t have one in your room,” Kennedy joked.
“Ha ha,” Dawn deadpanned.
“Wait a second,” Kennedy said, spotting something on the ground. She stepped forward and picked up Connor’s ID card.
“You think something happened to him?” Dawn asked worriedly.
Kennedy looked up at the crypt. “No.” She stepped forward and touched the chisel-damaged door frame. “I think he was leaving it as a marker for us. Call Willow.”
While Dawn called Willow for backup, Kennedy stepped forward and tried to pry the door open. “Tell her to bring something we can knock this thing in with.”
*
“Here?” Connor questioned. “You stuck a sack over my head to bring me here?”
“We didn’t want you to see where we were bringing you,” one of the vamps said.
“This is the Main Quad.”
“Great going, Murray,” one of the vampires laughed to the other.
“We’re going to the CASA building?” Connor asked.
“Casa?” Murray asked. “As in ‘house’?”
“As in Cultural and Social Anthropology.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Murray said. “They split. It was still just one department when I went here.”
“When was that?” Connor asked.
“Eight years ago,” Murray answered.
“So what were you guys after in the crypt?”
“Why you so nosey?” Murray asked.
“Now that I know where your boss works, I wanted to see how much more information I could get before I killed you.” Connor threw his left arm out. A stake sprung from his sleeve and slammed Murray in the heart.
The other vamp whipped out a pistol. “That’s so not fair,” Connor said as he moved forward and slammed his left leg down on the vamp’s upper leg. The vamp fired the pistol in the air as he fell backward. Connor dropped to his knees and slammed the stake into the vampire’s heart.
“Freeze!” a man in a campus police uniform said as he trained his pistol on Connor.
Connor put his hands in the air.
The policeman held up his radio and hit the button. “Professor, we have some commotion down here.”
The radio squawked a response about Murray.
“No, I don’t see them.”
The radio squawked something back and the officer holstered his pistol and approached Connor.
Connor glanced around worriedly. The security guard was with whatever professor that controlled the two vamps he’d just dusted.
“What are you doing here, son?”
“I was just going for a walk at night,” Connor answered.
“You a student here?”
“Yeah.”
“May I see your student ID?”
“I didn’t bring it with me. But I can show you the key card to my dorm.” He held up the card.
“You better get back to your dorm, son.”
“Right.” Connor turned and hurried off before the officer had time to notice the pistol and two piles of dust two feet from where he’d been standing.
*
“Hey,” Connor said as Dawn opened the door to her dorm room.
“Hey,” Dawn said back. “I have your ID. Thanks for leaving it for us.”
“Sure. You find out what was in the tomb?”
“We got into the tomb, but couldn’t figure out what was of interest. We’re going to watch it and see who goes after what.”
“Good plan. Whoever it is, they’re a professor here. I let Willow know.”
“Cool.” Dawn stared at him awkwardly for a moment. They were standing in the doorway to her dorm room. It was eleven o’clock at night. She knew it was wrong; that it was bad for both of them. “So . . . you wanna come in?”
Connor smiled nervously. “Can I?”
“Yeah. Sure.” Dawn backed away from the door and Connor entered. “You can . . . you can stay again if you want. I mean, sleep over.”
“Thanks. It’s just . . . Pete’s overseas for the quarter. I . . . I hate sleeping in a room by myself.”
“It’s okay. You don’t snore or anything. If anything, I feel a lot safer. I mean, if a demon attacks while I’m sleeping, who better to defend me?”
“Your sister, probably. And maybe Faith. But other than them, I’m your guy.”
Dawn laughed and turned back to her dresser. She only wished what he said were true. She wished he were her guy.
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