Chapter Two

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“Dawn.” Giles’ voice was soft as he entered the room, and the teenager opened her eyes. “I don’t mean to wake you, but there are some things we need to talk about.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t asleep.” Slowly, she pulled herself away from the limp form of Tara. “She is, though. Can we take this somewhere else?”

Giles nodded, impressed and a little bit worried at how well Dawn had recovered in just two days. He knew she’d closed herself off emotionally and he worried about the potential consequences, but right now, she needed to deal in her own way, and he was going to do his best to respect that.

Dawn sat down at the kitchen table and nodded with her head for Giles to take a seat. “What is it?”

Giles looked at the table, not quite sure where to start. Dawn sighed in impatience.

“Okay. Can you categorize it for me? Does it have to do with my deadbeat father and social services, or the things I’ve just abruptly inherited?”

Giles looked up in surprise, and Dawn gave him a smile full of irony but no amusement. “Hey, I’ve done this before, remember?”

He nodded slowly. “The latter, actually.”

“What about them?”

The Watcher pulled off his glasses and started to clean them. “Well, you’ve just inherited a rather large sum of money, Dawn. And a house, and everything in it.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“What would you like us to do with them?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Get rid of it. All of it.”

“Not the money.”

Dawn sighed. “No, not they money. Everything else. The house, the furniture, everything.”

“Don’t you want to keep some things?”

She looked away. “Buffy’s things, I guess. Until... until I can look and see what I want to keep. And the books. Everything of mine that’s not furniture.”

“Okay.” Giles paused. “Xander has arranged for us all to go to LA after the funeral; Angel thinks he might be able to do something about your custody.”

Dawn nodded, not displaying any emotion about the news. Giles was mildly disappointed not to find her more enthusiastic, but kicked himself mentally for thinking that. She was still in shock, it wasn’t her fault. He continued.

“We’ll keep the house until you’re ready to come back and look at what things you want to keep.”

Dawn nodded again. “Is that all?”

The Watcher reached over the table and tried to touch her hand in a gesture of comfort, but she shied away. He took off his glasses again in a gesture of awkwardness and nodded. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

“I’m going to watch a movie.” She stood up and left the table. Giles took off his glasses, laid them down beside his teacup and sighed.

******

The funeral was meant to be a quiet affair, but so many people turned up that Giles was sure it almost qualified as a mob. Almost everyone in Sunnydale had had their ass saved by the Slayer at some point, and they all wanted to show their appreciation by coming to her funeral.

Dawn and Xander were incensed. “None of these people cared enough to acknowledge her when she was alive,” Xander groused. “Why should they get to come to her funeral?!”

Tara shrugged, her eyes shiny with tears, but still the balancing factor. “Some of them did,” she pointed out, nodding towards the bouncers at the Bronze, who always let Buffy in without paying or seeing ID. The Bronze was a frequent enough spot for trouble that they’d learned it was beneficial to everyone’s health just to let her in.

Dawn edged closer to the witch, and Tara put an arm around her shoulders. The teenager rested her head on Tara’s shoulder and closed her eyes, and the witch pulled her as close as she could, as though she could shield her from the horrors of what was going on with her body.

Angel stood under the canopy they’d arranged, and watched, silent tears falling down his face as Buffy and Willow were lowered into the ground. Tara’s power of attorney granted her the right to choose Willow’s resting place, and she knew the witch would have wanted it to be beside Buffy. The elder Rosenbergs’ hadn’t protested too heavily-- they knew that there was nothing they could do.

The high Priestess that Tara had gotten to do the ceremony blessed the Slayer and witch as the dirt was heaped on their coffins. The crowd was silent as she spoke, and the girls were laid to rest.

Dawn and Tara had decided not to deliver eulogies. They had both agreed that Willow and Buffy had been so special that no words could adequately describe them, so instead, they would use silence. So, after the graves were filled in and the fresh dirt made into two mounds, the girls knelt at their feet and said a silent prayer, Buffy first, and then Willow.

Finally, some murmuring softly but for the most part silent, the mob went on its way. Dawn and Tara held each other and then Xander for a while before Giles roused himself from his grief and started pulling supplies out of his car.

Wiping her eyes and standing slowly, Tara pulled away and began to bless a circle around the two new graves, lighting the points of the pentacle with white candles. Tara sat at the point of the star, Dawn on her left and Xander on her right. Giles and Cordelia, who had come to the funeral from LA, made up the other two points. Anya had argued that she had known Buffy and Willow better than Cordy, and therefore should have gotten that spot, but Tara had told her sadly that her demon energy would offset the balance of the blessing.

Dawn had gotten nervous at that point, and fidgeted for a while before finally managing to ask Tara if the energy of the Key would harm the intent of the blessing the same way. Tara had assured her it wouldn’t-- the energy of the Key was neutral, and the choices of Dawn Summers, the girl, decided whether she was good or evil. Anya, on the other hand, she’d explained, while maybe not exactly evil, couldn’t be good either, anymore. She had chosen to take on a demon of her own free will, something that tainted her soul forever.

So the circle sat and touched their hands to the earth as Tara intoned a blessing in Latin, then a similar one in English that the others could follow and repeat. It was dual-purpose-- a blessing to the continued happiness of Buffy and Willow, wherever they were, and a protection charm on the area to prevent a desecration of their graves. However painful of a thought that was, they had to be realistic and realize it was a distinct possibility someone would try.

The sun was beginning to set as they finished, Angel standing under the awning they’d erected for him with Anya by his side, both waiting for things to be wrapped up. Blowing out and gathering up the candles, Tara placed her magickal supplies back into the bag Giles had gotten, and helped Dawn pull their other bags from his car. They were going to go back to LA with Angel and Cordy.

Giles was going to stay in Sunnydale until the house had been sold and the insurance claims put through. They had all encouraged him to go with them, that being in Sunnydale wasn’t healthy for him in any sense of the word, but he refused. Tara thought that perhaps he needed a few days alone to think and maybe just be in the Summers’ home, getting used to the idea that Buffy was really and truly, finally gone. She only hoped he didn’t put himself into an extremely bad mental place while he did so.

Angel drove the black convertible he’d brought, Cordy in the front seat and Dawn and Tara in the back, the roof up. Xander followed closely behind, him and Anya and the rest of their bags in his car. Anya could have easily teleported to LA, but Angel had pointed out that maybe that wasn’t the preferred way of meeting his co-workers. It had been suggested that she stay in Sunnydale with Giles until everyone was at Angel’s place, but she hadn’t wanted to leave Xander.

The ride was long and silent in the convertible. Angel didn’t speak at all, Cordelia tried briefly to get Dawn to talk and then gave up, and Tara stared out the front window for the entire trip. In Xander’s car there was less silence due to Anya’s babbling and occasional sobbing, but the ride was still long. When they pulled to a stop in front of the Hyperion, everyone was glad.

Angel, Xander, Tara and Dawn grabbed bags and carried them inside, setting them down in the lobby. A greenish demon with red horns was waiting for them alongside a skinny brunette and a bald black guy. Dawn looked over everyone fairly impassively, and Xander nodded his hello tiredly. Tara attempted to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

Angel’s voice broke the silence. “Everyone, this is Gunn, Fred and Lorne.” He pointed at the black man, the girl, and finally the demon. He then nodded his head at the Sunnydale crew. “Guys, this is Xander, his ex-girlfriend Anya, Willow’s girlfriend Tara and Buffy’s sister Dawn.” They all nodded distractedly.

Lorne shook his head, a sad expression on his face. “Boy, you guys are a sorry-looking bunch. Awfully close to them, weren’t you?” His face reflected real sympathy, and Tara and Dawn nodded. Xander studied him with a suspicious eye, but didn’t say anything.

He shook his head again. “Terrible tragedy. We have some rooms for you, but there’s only three. How do you want to work this?” Angel seemed partially paralyzed, so the Host had quickly decided it was time to step in and play host.

“Dawn and I can share,” Tara offered, and the teenager nodded.

“Yeah.”

Lorne nodded back. “Good. Then let’s go get you settled in, okay?” He waited as they picked up their bags, leaving a couple for Angel, and then started up the stairs. The vampire tagged along at the end of the group.

Lorne opened the doors to three rooms, two beside each other and one across from them. “This is a hotel and we have a lot of rooms, as you may have noticed,” he explained, “but these are the only ones with electricity and plumbing that works all the time.”

Xander looked inside the first room they came to, deemed it satisfactory, and threw his bags inside. He closed they door even as they continued a few more steps down the hallway.

Anya took the room next door, though she wasn’t sure if she would use it. She was still mad at Xander, and so part of her protested at the idea of sleeping next to him, but she was so full of pain that she wasn’t really sure she could muster up the energy to be mad enough to stay away. The indecision in her head plagued her, and she was touchy and easily angered, something they could all identify with at the moment.

Rather than face her fears, she shook her head and teleported out. Maybe helping scorned women would take her mind off things. Or, Halfrek was always encouraging her to turn to new types of vengeance... she could go enact some wishes for the families of murder victims.

She smiled a cruel smile. That could have some potential.

******

Cordy was sitting in the lobby, trying to read an ancient demonology book and take her whirling mind off of everything when Angel flew through. The vampire had gotten so much less tense lately that she’d almost forgotten what he looked like in full brood-mode. Even the loss of Connor hadn’t made him this particular kind of crazy. Rather, he’d been obsessed with getting his son back. But Buffy had already come back once, and now she was gone for good, and he was back in the mood.

He was tall, and he was mightily pissed off so his presence seemed even larger than it was. The leather duster flew behind him and the boots that he’d taken to wearing only on especially rough cases stomped over the floor, despite the stealth with which he was capable of moving. His face was furrowed with anger and pain, and he didn’t speak to or acknowledge anyone.

Cordy was pretty sure demons would be going out of their way to avoid him tonight.

As soon as he’d cleared the door, Gunn glanced at Cordy and sighed. “Well. I guess Hurricane Angel has made his appearance.”

Fred leaned over and asked quietly like she was afraid he might still hear her, “He’s done this before?”

Cordy looked up from the book she’d gone back to trying to decipher. “Oh yeah. And that was the light version of Angel-brood. He used to be worse than that, all the time, in Sunnydale.”

“Wow.” Fred pondered this for a moment. “He seems so sad.”

“Anguished,” Gunn offered softly, uncharacteristically feeling sympathetic towards the vampire.

“It was pretty much a permanent state when I first met him,” Cordy agreed. “You know, I don’t think I saw him laugh until sometime last year.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

They all went back to their previous activities, but the Seer gave up on the book in her lap a few moments later. She wasn’t getting anything done, her head was spinning too fast. Despite the outward animosity she and Buffy had shared, they’d been close, in a manner of speaking. Certainly she’d been closer to Buffy than she had to anyone else before LA. Well, except Xander.

And the witch... well she wasn’t particularly fond of Willow, especially after seeing the witch and Xander cheating on her and Oz. Let no one say that Cordelia Chase couldn’t hold a grudge. But she’d never wished her dead.

Well, maybe once. Or twice. But she hadn’t meant it!

The urge to hit something as hard as she could came over her and she stood abruptly. “I’m going downstairs.”

Gunn looked over at Fred, who was immersed in something on the computer, as the Seer disappeared. “Looks like it’s hit both of them pretty hard.”

Fred, too, was following Cordy with her eyes as she stomped off. “Yeah.”

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