Love Brings You, Chapter 1/14

I have 14 chapters planned, 11 written, and currently 6 back from beta. I’ll post the first 6 today. So here goes:

Title: Love Brings You
Author: maryperk73703
Season: 5
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Buffy’s talk with Glory’s dying monk has surprising revelations.

Chapter 1

After Buffy successfully got Dawn off her back about she was doing, she returned to her ritual circle where she sat down. She started to meditate. After a few minutes, her eyes popped open. She was surprised to see that her home was now drained of color. Buffy thought it looked just like an old-fashioned picture.

Buffy got to her feet, and she made her way through the house. Everything looked different, grainy and altered. It was like she was in a strange, new world. At the bottom of the stairs her mother was putting on her long jacket.

“Buffy?” Joyce asked. She’d noticed that her daughter was acting a bit strange.

Buffy stared at her mother trying to determine if she could see anything wrong that she could detect, but there was nothing. It appeared whatever was wrong with her mother didn’t have any supernatural origins. “Mom, are you going out?”

Joyce shrugged. “Well, either modern medicine’s working or I just took the world’s best placebo, because I’m feeling really great. Either way, I’m going out for a while.”

“Nothing …” Buffy said, interrupting Joyce’s actions.

“Hmm, did you say something?”

“There’s nothing.” Buffy’s attention was drawn away from her mother to a picture behind Joyce. One of Joyce’s gallery friends was a professional photographer, and Joyce had arranged for a sitting. The picture was of Joyce, Buffy, and Dawn. However, to Buffy’s eyes Dawn was flickering in and out of the picture . Buffy stared at the picture for a few moments before Joyce spoke to her again.

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay, sweetheart? You seem a little out of it.” Joyce paused. “Hey, Buffy.”

Buffy looked away from the picture. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just had a long day. You go. Have a good time, Mom.”

“You’re so grown up,” Joyce said in a wistful voice.

Dawn skipped down the stairs. “Hey Mom, can you drop me off at Janice’s on your way? We’re doing this stupid book report, and she just called to say she finally got a copy from the bookstore.”

Buffy turned around to look at her sister. Instead of fading in and out of existence like the photograph, the real live Dawn flickered from the fourteen year old that Buffy knew to an older Dawn. Buffy wasn’t good at guessing ages, but she’d put the older Dawn at being closer to her own age of nineteen.

“Hurry up and get your jacket on, Dawn,” Joyce said. “I guess I don’t need you to stay here with your sister after all.”

Dawn darted back up the stairs.

“Are you sure she’s my sister?” Buffy blurted out.

Joyce rolled her eyes. “I thought you grew out of that phase already. Like I told you when you were ten, yes, Dawn is your real sister. Not a changeling or switched at birth baby.”

“It’s not like I want to be related to you either,” Dawn said disdainfully while she came back down the stairs, jacket and backpack in hand.

“You two need to stop this fighting,” Joyce replied. “Go get in the car, Dawn.”

Buffy looked at the floor while Dawn stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

“Well, you’re so grown up until you’re not.” Joyce shook her head. She just didn’t understand her daughters sometimes. “Be good,” she admonished before left the house too.

On autopilot, Buffy climbed the stairs to Dawn’s room. She stood in the doorway watching as the room switched back and forth from bedroom to cluttered storage room. She stood there watching the room shift back and forth, asking herself questions she couldn’t answer.

Dawn obviously wasn’t her sister. So, who was she? Why was she here? Was she a threat to Joyce.

Buffy was jolted out of her trance when the phone rang. When she answered, it was Giles. She greeted her Watcher with a simple ‘what?’.

“Buffy? I’m glad I’ve caught you. I think we may have underestimated what we’re dealing with.” Giles stuck a finger in his ear to block the noise of the Magic Box customers.

“Go on.” Buffy wondered what Giles was talking about.

“We’ve uncovered more than expected about this orb. It’s called the Dagon Sphere, and it has a history going back many centuries.” Giles tried his best to be discrete.

“What’s it do?” Buffy thought back to when the guard gave her the small glowing ball.

“It’s a protective device used to ward off ancient primordial evil. However all accounts of what this evil might be are vague. All we’ve managed to uncover so far is that the Dagon Sphere was created to repel That Which Cannot be Named,” Giles informed the Slayer.

“Okay, since we don’t know what we’re looking for, I’m going to go back to the factory where I found it. Whoever planted this doohickey’s got the answers.”

“Buffy, do please be careful. Anything that goes unnamed is usually an object of deep worship, great fear, or both.” Giles’ voice was filled with caution. “Have you completed the trance? Did you see anything harming your mother?”

Buffy shook her head even though Giles couldn’t see her. “No, nothing about Mom. Just Dawn. It’s confusing. We’ll talk about it later when we can figure it all out.”

“Don’t take too long. Whatever this is could be important. I’ll see you soon.” Giles hung up the phone.

Buffy grabbed her jacket before she left the house. She’d walked part way down the front path when she felt something. Something familiar. Buffy glanced over at the tree in the front yard.

Yep, there he was.

Buffy marched over to pull her stalker out from behind the tree. “Spike,” she hissed. She stepped back when he flickered much like Dawn had before. One of him was the bleached blonde menace that she knew him as, while the other was a shy bespectacled man with curly dark hair wearing not so modern clothes.

Buffy was stumped. Why did Spike look like someone else? She wondered if that was how he’d looked when he was human.

“Hi, Buffy.” Spike looked embarrassed that he’d been caught.

Buffy closed her eyes, and she rubbed her forehead. “What are you doing here, Spike? Five words or less, please. I’m having a really shitty day.”

Spike counted off his words with his fingers. “Out. For. A. Walk. Slayer.”

Buffy opened her eyes. “Out for a walk at night by my house. No one has time for this, William.” She didn’t know why she called Spike by his human name except maybe because of the other not-Spike she saw when she looked into his face.

“On your merry way then. You know, contrary to one’s self-involved world-view, your house happens to be directly between parts … and other parts of this town. And I would pass by in the day but I feel I’m outgrowing my whole ‘burst into flame’ phase.” Spike blustered his way through his speech. He didn’t want Buffy to know that he thought he was in love with her.

“No. No, I get it. You have places to be and people to see. Go then. Don’t let me stop you.” Buffy waved Spike away.

Spike was confused. He expected a punch in the nose and death threat from the Slayer. “Okay, let me guess … you won’t kill me? The whole crowd-pleasing threats-and-swagger routine.” He knew he was trying to rile her up to get the expected reactions out of Buffy.

Nothing happened, except a mildly curious stare.

“How stunningly original,” Spike continued. “I’m just passing through. Satisfied. I hope so because God knows you need some satisfaction in life besides shaggin’ Captain Cardboard.” He still didn’t get the expected reaction. “I never really liked you anyway. And you have stupid hair.”

Spike turned and marched off into the darkness leaving a stunned and perplexed Buffy behind him.

“That vampire is the strangest person I know,” Buffy muttered. She looked down at where Spike had been standing. She saw a pile of cigarette butts. “I don’t have time for this. I really don’t.”

Buffy walked off in the opposite direction of Spike.

~~~

At the warehouse, Buffy snapped the chain on the fence before she went into the lot. She turned on her flashlight to start exploring the building. There didn’t appear to be anything interesting until she found a gaping hole in a wall and the twisted remains of a steel door.

When Buffy peered through the hole in the wall, she was surprised to see a monk tied to a chair. “Whoa.” She ran over to him, and she started to loosen the ropes. “It was you who planted the Dagon Sphere, right? Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

“It’s too late,” the monk choked out. “I’m dying. She caused too much internal damage. Don’t worry, Slayer. I told her nothing about the Key.”

Buffy removed the man’s restraints, and she laid him on the floor with ease. She could tell that there was no time for her to get help. He was dying. “The Key? What is the Key?”

“My journey’s done. You must protect the Key. More will die if you don’t keep it safe. You must not let the Abomination get the Key. She will destroy the worlds.” The monk coughed up some blood.

Buffy pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket. It was one of Giles’ but she was sure he wouldn’t mind if she ruined it. She vowed to get him some more for Christmas. “What is it?” she asked while dabbing at the blood.

“The Key is energy. It’s a portal, and it opens a door.” The priest coughed again. “For centuries, it had no form. My brethren was it’s only keepers. The abomination found us. We had to hide the Key. So, we searched through time and space until we found your soul mate.”

“My soul mate?” Buffy shook her head. “Angel?”

The monk shook his head. “No, not Liam. Your soul mate is William.”

 

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/530887.html