I was going to put in a limerick about the fact I didn't own BUFFY here but ran out of time. In the Deluxe Anniversary Edition, maybe.
*********
Back in the library, the pile of filled notebooks was growing by the younger Giles. Occasionally the older Watcher would leaf through and add notes and corrections. The details of the Mayor’s plot were clear enough in everybody’s memories to provide copious details and the fate of Principal Snyder got a round of applause from the room.
Everybody had kept their tempers during the story of the Initiative and the various events at UCSD. Even Angel had not spoken more than a few muttered observations as the topic drifted to Riley although he did say that if anyone was going to have a control chip put in his brain, it ought to be Spike.
The story of Jonathan’s brief career as a superstar brought the suggestion from Xander that with his talent for magic he ought to be recruited into the Scoobies. “And if you can stand it, even Andrew might be useful. You’ll pay for it in wear and tear on your nerves but you’ll be keeping them from doing worse things.”
The defeat of Adam. The confrontation with the First Slayer. Faith’s return and imprisonment. They talked on and on into the night and even the visitors (for whom it was not the middle of the night yet) began to flag.
The older Buffy rubbed her eyes and said: “The next bit is going to be difficult. To say and to understand. Maybe to believe.” She looked over at her sister who had been sitting watching and occasionally making coffee but keeping largely silent through the evening. Dawn nodded sadly and said: “Go for it, Buff. Don’t mind me.”
“Okay, beginning of my second year at college, we got a visit from Dracula.”
”Really?” The younger Buffy looked suitably boggled.
“I kid you not. The Count himself, having heard about yours truly came to Sunnydale. And very nearly took us. He’s good.”
”I’m a little shocked,” said Angel. “I know Spike claimed to have met him, but I thought Dracula was just something a writer came up with.”
”Nope and you need to apologise to Spike. He’s a better mind-controller than any other vamp I’ve met: Dracula, I mean, not Spike. Better than the Master, better than Drusilla. He took control of me for a while. I… I drank some of his blood. I wonder if that made a difference later…”
”You think you had it hard,” said Xander, “You didn’t get turned into his giggling, bug-eating minion.”
”That’s not your usual response to bugs, Harris,” said Cordelia. “Not from what I’ve heard anyway…”
“Anyway, I managed to break free and stake him… Don’t know if I killed him. Seems he can survive most of what will destroy other vamps. Drove him out of town, anyway. And it must have been about that time that the Order of Dagon came under attack.”
Giles took up the story. “The Order of Dagon is, apparently, an order of Christian monks (although probably quite heretical) with headquarters in the Balkans. They’re monastic magicians and they have, as of now, something quite unique in their keeping. An entity of pure energy called the Key.” He paced back and forward, not looking directly at Dawn. “The Key (they believe) was used by God to separate the many universes and planes of existence from one another and set up the ordering of the cosmos. Or cosmoses. It can open the way between any plane and any other. It is fantastically powerful and dangerous and I’d give a pretty penny to know how they got their hands on it.”
”Anyhow, about twenty five years ago on another plane, a Hell plane, there was a civil war. The place was ruled by a triumvirate of Hellgods, one of whom, Glorificus, tried to overthrow the other two and rule alone. They won instead and sent Glorificus into exile, seemingly because they hadn’t the power to destroy her alone.”
”Her?”
”Glorificus, or Glory as she was known here was definitely female.”
”A sleazy, bleached blonde bitch with superstrength and superspeed waaay beyond a Slayer’s,” said Buffy. “I hated her.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may, the Hellgods’ plan was to bind Glory into a human host who would contain her and stop her from manifesting on this plane and while she was trapped inside her host, her powers would gradually fade and eventually she would cease to be. And the plan worked for many years but then the spell began to break down and Glory would emerge, take over their shared body and do whatever she wanted. What she mostly wanted was to go home to where she was a God and destroy the others who had exiled her. To get home she wanted the Key. Used properly the Key would open the way home for her. The fact that using it would destroy this universe and several others did not matter a jot to Glory.”
”So where did you guys come in,” asked Cordelia.
“Well, the monks were attacked and their monastery destroyed but with the last of their magical strength they took the Key and sent it to the Slayer. And in order to be sure that the Slayer would protect the Key they sent it to her in the shape of a sister. Her younger sister, Dawn.”
There was silence for a moment and then the younger Xander said: “Sorry, I’m not getting this. They put this Key gizmo into Dawnie?”
There was a collective ‘What?’ from the future Scoobies and Dawn looked up from where she had been huddling in the corner, listening to Giles and Buffy explain her hated secret.
“Xander? You know who I am?”
“Sure I do, Dawnie. And can I say the way you’ve turned out is pretty damn fine.”
“I would say so,” agreed Cordelia. “I’m glad to see someone in the Summers family grows up to have some sense of style.”
”Though you’ve been a bit standoffish all evening,” added the younger Xander, “Like you’d caught stiff-upper-lip disease from Giles and didn’t want to talk to the guy who babysat you.”
Dawn stood there for a moment with her jaw hanging down and then said: “Giles! This isn’t possible!”
The older Watcher seemed as boggled as his friends. “I.. I… Well I certainly…”
His younger self seemed happy to see someone who had been telling him all evening how much growing up he had to do at a disadvantage. “What exactly is the difficulty here?”
”The monks… The monks created Dawn. Out of nothing. Specifically to embody the Key. Before their magic created a false history of her existence, false memories for everybody who knew her, false documents and keepsakes… There was no such person as Dawn Summers until the autumn of the year 2000. It’s quite impossible for you to know who she is!!!”
The younger Giles threw down his pen and said: “All right, that’s it. You’re definitely some sort of fake! Or maybe a joke! Yes, this…. It’s Ethan Rayne! This is a bit of his damned chaos magic, the whole thing! Ethan! Where are you, you swine! Laughing your head off at me!”
”But… But… I did the test!” The older Buffy was as boggled as anyone. “The tirer the something or other!”
“La couture, Buffy. Tirer la couture. Yes, and that confirmed what the monk told you… I really, really don’t understand this! You all know who Dawn is?”
”Buffy’s irritating kid sister,” Cordy offered. “Why all the What-What-What-ness? Don’t you remember her?”
”Oh, yes! I remember her being with Buffy from the start. I remember reading the Watchers’ reports about the Summers family and there being two children. I also remember finding indisputable proof that Dawn was the Key and had only existed for a few weeks! This… This… This…. Is not…not…”
”Logical, Captain!” burst out of both Xanders at once and they collapsed into shared giggles.
At that the doors of the library banged open and they all turned to see a slight figure step in.
“Oh, here you are! Buffy, you’ve got to come home! Mom’s on the warpath and I can’t cover for you. She got up in the middle of the night and found you were gone…. And…” The girl with a track suit thrown hurriedly over her pyjamas and with sneakers on her feet looked again at the group. “Say what? This is some of the weird stuff, isn’t it? Why’s everyone looking at me?”
Dawn looked across the room at her ten year old self. “Buffy, if it’s OK with you, I think I’m going to faint now.”
”Oh, OK. Dawnie, I’ll just go and see if you’re real…”
”Fine…”
Dawn swayed and fell backwards. Luckily both Xanders leapt forward to catch her and miraculously succeeded in doing so, without bashing their heads together, dropping Dawn or otherwise making a mess of things.
She came round from her swoon lying on the floor of the library with Xander’s coat under her head. Someone somewhere was chanting and waving a rattle. Some other people were shouting. Her ten year old self was looking down at her with a quizzical but slightly smug expression on her face.
“You’re really very pretty,” said the moppet. “I’m glad.”
”Thank you. You’re cute. And you have a chocolate milk stain on your track-suit top.”
”Personal remarks,” sniffed the young girl. “Sign of an immature mind. Not to be dignified with a reply.”
”You know, I can see why Buffy always found me so infuriating.”
”I will take that as a compliment.”
”That’s the way it was intended. Who’s making all the noise?” She raised her head slightly and looked around.
“Giles… umm our Giles, has decided that you’re all products of something called Chaos Magic and is doing a ritual to disperse you… Or dispel you. Dis you somehow anyway…”
”Well, if I go pop and vanish he’ll turn out to have been right.”
”Ummm. And the other noise is everybody else shouting and waving their hands and trying to figure out what it means that I exist. I think that must make me important!”
”It makes you puzzling. I am having to re-examine some stuff I thought I had figured out.”
”What? That you’re the creation of some monks with more imagination than sense?”
”Something like that. See…”
”No, it’s OK. Your Buffy gave me the skinny.”
”That was nice of her. Didn’t your puny, pre-adolescent mind collapse under the revelation?”
”Not so you’d notice. I don’t see what the fuss is all about.”
”Well…. It’s all to do with discovering you’re not, you know….real! Owww!”
Her younger self had reached over and pinched her hard in the ribs.
“Does that feel real? Can unreal people feel real pain? Seems to me you’re as real as the next person.”
”That’s easy for you to say!”
”Look, we just did sex education for pre-adolescents at school.”
”I remember. Mrs Johnson and her slide show. Funniest thing I’d seen all year.”
”Well, do you remember Tommy Easton?”
”No. Oh, wait yeah…”
”He refused to believe the whole thing. I mean sperms and eggs and genes and all that. He said it sounded far too complicated to work and they’d probably made it up.”
”He’s crazy.”
”I know that. But it seems to me that if I came out of Mom and Dad, y’know, doing the horizontal mamba or if I came out of some monks doing hocus pocus it doesn’t actually make much difference to me. I didn’t have any say in either process and no matter which one it was I’m still here.”
”You are a frighteningly calm and clever child. Are you sure you’re me?”
”It’s probably that I haven’t done all that puberty stuff yet. It screws up your brain with all those hormones. Everybody says so. I mean, look at Buffy….”
”Point. Uh oh, if that’s the Etruscan Rite of Cleansing he’s trying I think Giles is nearly finished...”
Sure enough at the far side of the room Giles gave a swift pirouette, rattled the bones her was using as percussion instruments and cried out a phrase in a long dead language. He then looked around the room to see everybody looking at him and the visitors from the future still firmly there.
“Very nicely done,” said his older self. “I couldn’t manage some of those steps now, not with what I’ve done to my back in the last six years… Oh, look Willow’s here. Perhaps she can clear things up…”
Coming through the door were both Willows arm in arm with and supporting either side of an elderly woman. Behind Jenny and Faith were carrying bags bulging with bottles.
“Hi guys! How far have you managed to get? We bought some booze. This is Chra’histra, she’s a really powerful… priestess and magician I suppose. Oh, and Giles? I now outrank you!”
The younger Giles, quite crestfallen at the failure of his exorcism, made a few token protests about bringing wine and beer into school but eventually admitted that he too could use a drink. Plastic disposable glasses were filled (both Dawns got told no! to their disgust) and people sat down and made themselves comfortable. At the old lady’s request the windows were closed and the heating turned up a bit. The chill of the night air started to disperse with the heat from the radiators outside and the wine inside.
“What was all the chanting for?” asked the old lady as she accepted a glass of red wine from Faith.
“My… Ummm….Him over there…” the older Giles gestured vaguely at the younger, “had got it into his head that all this was the work of a Chaos Mage of our acquaintance and was trying to remove us. What did you mean about outranking me, Willow?”
”I’m a Guardian now. The only surviving Guardian on our time line just as Chra’histra is going to be the one to carry the Order forward in this new history. The Guardians are senior to the Watchers, Giles.”
”Indeed,” Chra’histra confirmed. “It has been that way ever since before the Fall.”
”The Fall?”
”Of Atlantis. Don’t they teach you young Watchers anything of your organisation’s history?”
”Ummm. Apparently not…”
The younger Giles murmured into his beer about nobody ever telling him anything…
”And why did you decide that these people were malefic illusions?”
At that everybody started to explain at once.
“These monks….”
”Glory….”
”The Key…”
“False memories….”
At the end of a few incoherent moments the old lady burst with indignation. “Cha! What a lot of fuss about nothing! The standard of Watcher training has fallen further than even I thought possible! Mr Giles, I’m ashamed of you. Both of you!”
“What did I do?”
”You failed to reassure this young woman! Your academic preparation should have told you, your common sense should have told you, that this idea of false memories is an entirely chimerical one!”
”But…but…”
”Oh, yes, it could be done that way! It’s a common use of magic to create false identities for the purposes of infiltration. Very popular among spies and conspirators. But it takes time! It’s a fiddly, delicate operation and if you’re doing it to huge numbers of people it takes immense rituals and resources. The way you’ve described what the monks did, hurriedly hid the Key as the Hellgoddess was pounding at their portals, it’s quite impossible for them to have done it that way.”
”So what did they do?”
”What I would have done in that situation. Firstly they took themselves and the Key outside of the time stream entirely so that they could work calmly and safely. Then move backwards in time to the point where they wished to create the new reality. About ten years and nine months ago, judging by the child’s appearance. Then…Humph!”
“What?”
”I’m sorry, but I’m still rather imbued with Victorian ideas of what’s proper to discuss in polite company.”
”There’s no polite company here,” said the younger Xander.
”Yep. Spill,” said the elder.
She glared at them and continued: “Most likely, they found a moment when your mother, child, had conceived a second time.”
”But…” said Buffy the elder.
“Yes, yes. Originally, you had no siblings. But a woman will conceive many times in the sense of having a sperm and an egg meet and fuse inside her without a baby resulting. The fertilized egg can fail to implant properly for a thousand reasons and be purged in the monthly cycles without the woman noticing. Some genetic flaw making it incapable of survival or just bad luck.”
“Did they know about genes and all that in Victorian times,” asked Cordelia.
“We knew all about it in Atlantis, child. So they found a moment when an egg destined to fail was on it’s way down the fallopian tubes to the womb. And then they modified it. They knew of at least one set of genes that would safely implant and be carried to term so they used those.” And she pointed at Buffy.
The younger Dawn objected. “But… You’re saying I’m a clone of Buffy? That’s crazy! I don’t look anything like her!”
”It would be a simple matter for magic to rearrange the genetic material to alter a few features. Height, eye and hair colour. But all of the genetic material that was found in her, I’ll wager, can be found in you.”
”Which explains,” said the elder Dawn, “why her blood worked to close the portal…”
”What?”
”We’ll get to that….”
”You’re going to have to push along fast, you know,” said Cordelia, looking at her watch. “We’ve talked most of the night away….”
”But… I did the spell the tirer… the Pull Back The Curtain spell! It showed Dawn… Well, it seemed to show…”
”Slayer, do you have time for a lengthy course in paratemporal physics? Take it from me, a change in the universe is unstable until some time has passed from its point of change. For some while after the monks returned to their point of departure and got slaughtered by the Hellgod your sister’s existence would have been only thinly written into the history of the universe. But now, both your now and their now she is and always has been, your younger sister. This is now reality. Only retroactive reality but you’d be surprised how much of the time line has been patched and repatched in various ways so she’s not alone in that. I’m a Guardian. Trust me.”
There was silence and then the elder Buffy looked over at her sister.
“Dawnie? How do you feel?”
”I’m fine!” said the younger Dawn. “Oh, you mean her…”
”I’m…. fine too. I think. I suppose being retroactively real is… good enough. I suppose. If that’s all that’s on offer. I’m a bit… light-headed…. Hey, look Buff: I got a W-I-S-H too.”
”I know it’s what you’ve always…” Buffy swallowed. “That’s good.”
“Hmm.”
Dawn took hold of her younger self’s hand and pulled both of them to their feet.
“Cordy’s right. We’d better push on. Come on you: we’ll go and chat somewhere while the rest of them get more stuff down in writing.”
”What are we going to chat about?”
”Boys.”
”Uh huh?”
”And goldfish…”
”Huh?”
|
|
|
|
Rave
Barbie Girl (Becca)
biscuit07
Filmtheory (Jim)
Malice (Jess)
MebbtheScribe (MichaelB)
Reset (Allie)
Shay (Marrisa)
somnambulist29 (Shea)
Stephanie Loss
Wendyness (Wendy)
Questions?Contact Us
|
|
All stories on this site have been archived with the authors' consent. Do not copy these stories for your own uses without the express consent of the author themselves. Buffy the Vampire Slayer TM and Angel TM are © UPN, WB, Fox and its related entities. All photos on the site are © UPN, Fox, Warner Bros, and/or their respective owners. No profits are being made by use of these images.
Powered with the assitance of eFiction.
|
|
|
