The Lovers
Lately, Dawn existed in a constant state of hurry, for she knew that if she could find all of the magical items she needed in
five minutes or less, she could spend the remaining nine or fifteen with him before the others awoke and crammed their busy
schedules in with his and hers.
Dawn, her thoughts percolating with caffeinated randomness, took the key to Willow’s rooms from the roll-top desk on the
second floor landing and bounded upstairs. She wondered, idly, as she turned the key with a snick, why they bothered
locking doors if everyone in the house knew where they kept the keys.
Willow’s rooms smelled of rose-oil, sage, and amber resin, like a woodland cabin belonging to an apothecary. Her canopy bed
was made, buttoned up and tidy with its bronze satin duvet. Her lavender robe lay across the foot, patiently awaiting her
return.
Dawn breathed deeply, feeling Willow’s presence in the room. It felt like so long since Willow left with Connor and the others
to travel into The Deeper Well. Even though it had only been a few weeks, Dawn missed her.
Not now, Dawn thought, getting stern with herself. No time.
She went to Willow’s writing desk, pulled open the upper drawer and began to rifle through the field journals and books
there. The book Andrew wanted – the one with the hammered-tin cover and grey leather ties – had once been here, in the
drawer of this desk. How Andrew had seen it, though, Dawn was unclear, but also, not overly concerned. Willow had lent him
her spell books before.
However, this little journal, which had been a gift from Ariadne way back when Willow first came with Giles to the Coven in
Devon, was not in the lap drawer of the desk.
Dawn pivoted on the braided rug. Where else could it be? She thought. Simple, in any one of two dozen other shelves and
drawers in Willow’s bedroom, which seemed, now that Dawn thought of it, more like book storage than a place where Willow
actually slept. And of course, that had been true. Willow had lived in the Westbury house with Kennedy. She resided at the
Flat on weekends when she wasn’t on magic missions for Giles or was off on a foreign jaunt to find newly-awakened Slayers
who seemed to crop up like mushrooms after a spring rainstorm. And what if the book they sought was there, in Westbury,
gathering dust on one of those hundreds of shelves?
The hairs on her arms bristled as she effortlessly extended her awareness. Dust and sunlight sharpened as it floated through
the splintered light of the curtained windows. For a moment of spiraling dizziness, Dawn felt as though she was floating near
the ceiling, looking down on the room the way a hawk sees a field or the flat, glittering surface of a mountain pool. There,
from the corner of her eye, she caught a glint of silver – just a flash, and she returned with a sudden rush to herself.
Dawn darted to the bedside table where she found, not the book, but a silver case with the same triskele design tooled into
its shining lid. She opened it and found inside a deck of Tarot cards.
She took them into her hands, knowing that she did not have the time to dabble with Tarot, but could not resist the rose
and honeycomb design on the back of each hand-painted card. The motif of each cardback was wrought with lithe and
elegant lines, like the delicate fairy-tale strokes of a Froudian elf.
Dawn paused, wondering why she felt so drawn to these cards, like maybe she was meant to find them. She fanned them face
down on the bed, experimentally, and then restacked them. She cut two-thirds into the deck.
When she turned it over the top card, the image of The Lovers did not surprise her. The pair of androgynous figures lay on
their backs side by side on a stone slab strewn with dusky rose petals. The left hand of one figure nested in the open palm of
the other’s right hand. Their heads lay almost touching, but in the place where their faces should have been there blazed a
diaphanous haze of brightly burning light.
Dawn brushed the surface of the image with the tips of her fingers. She traced the outline of the figures – the shape of a
heart made by the curves of their shoulders, the lines of their arms, their linked hands, the blind blankness of their eyes as
they stared forward together, not fully knowing, but trusting anyway.
It was…
Dawn clutched it to her chest. She felt tears sting her eyes. She knew she had to have this card. She needed to take it, to
share it, but she thought taking a card from a witch’s Tarot had to be the worst kind of mojo. And besides, she thought as
she replaced the card on the top of the deck, she would draw it herself, re-create it on her own. That was something she
knew she could do.
Dawn left Willow’s suite, feeling content with what she found, even though it was not what she went looking for.
Xander awoke with the certainty that he was the only one awake. It was like a kind of radar – awake-dar? – and he had no
particular use for it except to ensure that he got the first cup of freshly-brewed dark roast every morning.
But before that, he had to shower. What was it about arguing, he wondered, that made women want the sex? When it came
down to a mighty screaming match, Maya turned out to be no different from Anya in that category. Not that he wanted to
compare them. Ever.
However, comparing them did call to mind some naughty and arousing imagery.
Xander chided himself inwardly as he slipped from his bedroom into the drafty hallway, and then into his small bathroom.
It had been a needle of bother to him that he was the only person in the entire house to have to share his bathroom.
Granted, Giles was old and everyone else was a girl, with the barest minimum of exception being Andrew, but Xander paid his
share of the rent same as everyone else. Why was it he had the communal toilet? The one used by visitors or anyone
downstairs who didn’t want to take their business all the way upstairs to their own… place of business.
Xander dwelled on this while he took out his electric razor and a blue and white striped towel. He patted his stubble,
scratched in all his manly places, and then removed his eye-patch in order to get in close for optimal shaving.
As he did so, he noticed a smudgy place on the edge of his mirror, which resembled, to his reckoning, a lowercase r turned
on its side. He cocked his head to have better look.
The smudge was more or less eye level, about the width of his hand, and reminded him, curiously, of a bird’s wing. He placed
his palm over the mark and tried to think about what might have imprinted it on his mirror.
After a moment’s thought, he dismissed it. “It’s practically a public toilet,” he said to his reflection. “Who knows how it got
there?”
And he proceeded then to shave.
Dawn found Andrew in the kitchen, quietly brewing tea. She slipped up behind him, prepared to jab him in the ribs, when he
turned suddenly and pinned her between him and the kitchen sink.
“Hey!” she said in a harsh whisper. “No fair, using Watcher’s training against your girlfriend.”
Andrew’s laughter bubbled deep in his chest. “Not Watcher training, little girl. Deep meditative samurai warrior training.”
She shoved him. “You wish.”
He shrugged. “I saw your reflection in the oven door.”
Dawn pushed him again, but he held firm. She locked her eyes with his. “Get off,” she said, playfully.
Andrew shook his head.
“Do it,” she said through her teeth.
He stuck out his tongue. “I am sooo the boss of you.”
“Not even.”
“Even,” he answered with a resolute nod.
“Fine, I relent. Basement or bedroom?”
Andrew grinned in a very Spike-ish way. “Basement. Seven minutes.”
“Too long,” Dawn said. “Someone will come in and interfere.”
Almost as if in answer to her statement, the whir of an electric razor bit into the morning’s silence. Dawn jumped.
“Two minutes,” she said. “Go. I’ll make sure the coast is clear and will be down in two minutes.”
Andrew disappeared into the basement, closing the squeaky door with the greatest possible care he could deliver under
such circumstances.
Dawn glanced around the archway of the kitchen into the hall. A thin wedge of pale light fell across the floor in front of
Xander’s bathroom. Dawn blushed at the memory a day and a half before, when she’d ambushed Andrew and coerced him
into taking her standing up against Xander’s full length mirror while Xander and Maya ate a peaceful dinner in the next room.
Andrew had whispered, “But we don’t have condoms.” Such a sensible lad.
Dawn had responded by slipping one into his palm.
“You are the perfect girl,” he’d gushed.
She kissed him hard and said, “I know.”
Dawn was sure that two minutes had passed, and even if it hadn’t, their hiding games would soon be at an end. She opened
the basement door and closed it behind her, not nearly so worried about its infernal rusty-hingedness as Andrew.
And Maya, who had witnessed Andrew’s and Dawn’s kitchen conversation from her fold-a-bed in the seldom-used parlor, also
watched Dawn from the mirror that hung in the entry hall which showed a slice of the kitchen, the breakfast table, and all of
the basement door. Once Dawn disappeared and the door was firmly shut behind her, Maya went into the kitchen to dispose
of Andrew’s abandoned cup of tea. She returned to the snug blankets of her fold-a-bed and pretended to go back to sleep.
Things got downright porny in the basement. This was because, in Willow’s absence, no one ever went into the Spell Room in
the basement except for Dawn and Andrew, and they weren’t down there to mix potions. Since the place was all their own,
they made good use of Willow’s overstuffed floor pillows, and Andrew’s army surplus sleeping bag with built-in foot warmers,
which they also did not use as was factory-indicated. It was, after all, both cold and dank in the basement.
After getting their early morning groove on, Dawn and Andrew lay together in semi-swoon in a tangle of limbs and tasseled
orange Indian organza. Dawn realized with a measure of humor that she still had on her woolly knee socks, and that Andrew
had only managed to take off one sleeve of his Miskatonic University Sweatshirt before they had tackled each.
Dawn caught her breath and propped on one elbow to look down at him. His face was flushed, his blond curls damp with
sweat and clinging in an attractive way to his temples, and she had to think, Was this the same boy they once tied to a
chair and slapped senseless because of his connection to The First? Could that even be possible?
But as she stared at him, she decided, No. It was not. He was different. She was different. Utterly. Entirely.
She understood, then, how Buffy and Spike could finally have made amends after all they had been through. They were The
Lovers in the Tarot, their faces blank but not empty, their hands joined but open.
Andrew touched Dawn’s face with his fingers. He said, “Earth calling Dawn?”
“I was just thinking,” she said lightly. “Maybe we should tell Xander. About us.”
Andrew held up his hands in mock surrender. “Augh! Xander! Put down that Plus Two Sword of Wounding!”
Dawn shoved him. “He won’t do that.”
Andrew craned his head to the side and said, “He might.”
Dawn considered a moment more. She said, “He might. But his aim isn’t what it used to be, so one of us might make a clean
getaway.”
Andrew shrugged, but still looked doubtful. “Maybe.”
“Besides,” Dawn said. “I already told Spike.”
Andrew ran an uneasy hand along his throat, as if recalling with vivid detail the tasty treat he’d almost become at the fangs
of Spike.
“He’s fine with it,” Dawn assured him.
Andrew’s concern melted into visible relief. “Really?”
Dawn nodded. “Really really.”
Andrew rolled onto his back and stared into the murky damp of the basement ceiling. Then his brow clouded again. He said,
“Maybe we should wait on Xander, at least until we have a Fortress of Solitude of our very own.”
“Fortress of Solitude?” Dawn asked.
Andrew grinned weakly.
“That’s a Smallville reference.”
He massaged his forehead and groaned.
“Points for me, Andrew,” she giggled, jabbing him in the ribs. “Thought you could slip that one by, but I caught it.
Advantage Summers!”
“Ha! I got you yesterday on the Ryan and Sharpay reference. It’s a deuce…”
“Did not!” she protested.
“Did too, Jazz Squares,” Andrew shot back, and Dawn gaped at him, wordlessly, while he donned a look of smug.
After a beat of silence, she said, “Place of our own. You really think about that?”
Andrew eased back into the pillows again, his bare arm looped in hers. “All the time,” he answered. Then thought for a
moment before saying, “It would have to be close to the Council, of course, and near enough to the tube station so that you
could still get to your classes, you know, ’cause you promised Buffy you’d finish school and Mr. Giles even called in favors.”
“Wait,” Dawn said, in complete seriousness. “You think we could afford that? You as a Watcher and me, a student?”
Andrew scratched his head. “Well. Yeah,” he said.
A whole new line of thoughts and images bloomed in Dawn’s mind. She pictured one of those stylish flats near Wapping, two
bedroom deals with polished chrome and blonde wood, with plates of picture window glass that overlooked the park, or the
Thames, depending on which side you signed on for. The beaded Bohemian lampshades alongside an attractive second-hand
settee, with end tables ordered from Pier One.
And then she saw them stretched out on a sleigh bed, him reading from a Watcher’s journal, her sprawled with schoolbooks
and her laptop and a lipstick-marked cup of fragrant Chai tea.
The thought of it felt exhilarating and frightening at the same time, and she could think of only one thing that she wanted
more, and that was Buffy.
“Wow,” Dawn whispered, and she kissed him.
Andrew hazarded a grin. “Is that a yes?”
“Resounding yes for Fortress of Solitude,” Dawn said.
“Ha ha ha! Advantage Wells,” he shouted.
Dawn elbowed him in his side. “You can’t count that. I just got you with it.”
“Rules are rules,” he said, airily, folding his arms in a way that cut off further discussion.
Dawn sat up. “Whatever. I’m hungry,” she said. “What have you got planned for today?”
“Staying in,” he said, simply. “Figured now that we woke Spike, I can return the focus of my research to the pan-spectrum
geographic anomalies I was studying before.”
“And that’s techno-jargon for…?”
“Places of concentrated Big Badness,” he said. “I think there’s a pattern. I also hypothesize that the Taonyx Parchments
might offer fresh insight into the location of the paranormal-slash-geographical hot-spots.”
“And this theory is based on?”
“Pure hunch,” Andrew admitted.
Dawn shrugged. “Oh good. For a second there, I thought you were getting too concrete.”
She sat up and began to pull on the mist colored negligee she had worn beneath her bulky flannel PJs. Taking her cue, Andrew
threaded his arm back into the sleeve of his sweatshirt and started to hunt for his pants. Then he remembered.
“Did you find Willow’s spellbook?”
“It wasn’t there,” Dawn said with certainty. “I think it must be in Westbury. We can pick up this evening, if you’re up for a
train ride.”
Andrew rubbed his chin. “I wish I could remember that rhyme. The one about the angels.”
Dawn wasn’t sure which rhyme he was talking about. She wasn’t even sure it had been Willow who had told them. All she
knew was that it had some link to the Sisters who had made Spike, and it was not the one about The Rose, the Key and The
Willow Tree. This was one of Andrew’s entreaties into randomness, and she just had to trust that it would come to make
sense to them both in time.
They heard the clang of the over door upstairs simultaneously, and Dawn’s eyes flicked to Andrew’s.
“You first?” she asked.
He glanced down to indicate that he was in a higher level of undress than she.
“Gotcha,” she said, fastening her robe with its terry cloth tie. “Come up in ten minutes. I’ll see you at breakfast. And the
Xander thing: I’m okay with waiting.”
Andrew kissed her, and Dawn floated upstairs.
As Andrew lingered in the semi-dark, watching her glide up and away from him, a partial thought came to him like a tiny fray
in a blanket. He pulled at it, but in seconds, it had gone, and so had she.
Dawn stepped into the kitchen to find Xander bent over the frying pan, grumbling.
“Hey,” she said, a little too brightly. She skirted him, stairway bound. She paused in the archway, and turned. “You’re a
little Squidward this morning. What’s up?”
Xander knew he had to play it cool, if his hunch about the wing-shaped mark on his mirror turned out to be correct. He
knew that she had to disappear, if he meant to corner the other one… the whelp.
He seethed. “Spike used my towel,” Xander lied, but found that easy enough to manage, so he went with it. “Whole linen
closet full of towels, why does he use mine? I’ll tell you why. Fancies himself Alpha, that’s why.”
Xander went to the refrigerator, took out the carton of eggs, plopped it one the counter. “I’ll tell you what else. He’s been
awake less than 24 hours, and he’s already managed to drink all of my Beck’s. Mind you, I only had two left, but it’s the
principle, see? You don’t horndoggle another man’s ale!”
“Horndoggle?” Dawn giggled, her arms cradled over her belly like she was about to have a good laugh, like she did when she
was an innocent little girl...
Xander was sweating now.
Dawn hovered in the entry way. “Maybe you shouldn’t cook when you’re so clearly incensed?”
Xander glared at no one in particular. He snapped off the burner with a click and stormed out of the kitchen. A few minutes
later, once he was sure Dawn had vacated, Xander returned to the kitchen and waited.
Andrew checked the time on his Scooby watch and guessed that roughly ten minutes had passed. He climbed the stairs,
thinking of Dawn and the potential of a flat near Wapping, of the Sisters and the topple-down cathedral on Mercer Street, of
a day’s worth of unbroken research stretching as far as his eyes could see. He was not thinking of someone waiting for him
in the kitchen, so that when he opened the basement door, the left hook that caught him squarely in the chin knocked him
for two kinds of loops.
Andrew jarred against the door, knocking it closed with an insolent groan. Xander rounded on him and twisted his hand into
the collar of Andrew’s sweatshirt.
“Were you just canoodling with Dawn in the basement?” Xander bit out.
“Canoodling,” Andrew said, swallowing hard, trying to evade the question. “Sounds like making spaghetti in a kayak.”
“Sit down,” Xander said sternly.
Andrew obeyed like a dog on command.
Xander paced, his fists clenched tight. He said, “We’re going to have a man to… boy chat.”
Andrew was aware that he was cornered, aware that Xander had ambushed him, and so he merely sat by and watched while
Xander prepared his tirade.
Xander stopped pacing. “Let me tell you a story,” he said.
Andrew looked hopeful. Xander grimaced.
“Once upon a time, there was a really beautiful, really special girl. A lot of bad things happened to this girl. Lots of changes.
All of them bad,” Xander said.
“That’s really unfortunate,” Andrew said encouragingly.
“Don’t interrupt,” Xander said. “So this girl kept doing things to try and get a handle on her life. But nothing, I mean,
nothing worked out. But, as fate would have it, she met a boy.”
Andrew started to say something. Xander cut him off with a slicing gesture.
“Someone who adored her,” Xander went on. “Would do anything for her. Someone who was both weaker and totally
devoted. And, presto, she finally found that one thing in her life she could control. But that was all it was.”
A lingering pause passed between them.
Andrew said, “You’re talking about Buffy, right?”
“No,” Xander said, with a tight-lipped smile.
“Anya?”
“No!” Xander shouted, with a tight-lipped not-so-smile.
Andrew squinted. He said, “Claire from Lost?”
Xander heaved a sigh. “I’m talking about Dawn,” he said.
Andrew looked confused for a long moment, and Xander took this contemplative look to mean that the whelp was listening to
Xander’s argument and taking it to heart. Andrew, on the other hand, had thoughts that were elsewhere.
After a moment of this, Andrew glanced down at his hands. “You mean…” Andrew said.
“Yes!” Xander said, relieved that Andrew was finally getting it. “I do mean.”
“She wouldn’t,” Andrew whispered.
Xander knew he had to at least fake some sympathy. He said, “People do… really strange things in the midst of chaos.”
“Chaos,” Andrew repeated. And then Andrew suddenly, finally heard everything that Xander had been trying to say. Andrew
looked up at him. He said, “I gotta...”
And then, he left.
Xander did not feel proud when Andrew squeezed past him and disappeared into the entry way. The elation he expected
when he heard Andrew slam the front door behind him did not come, and in fact disappeared entirely when he turned to find
Maya’s bewildered face reflected back to him in the entry hall mirror.
He shuffled from one foot to the other, and offered a feeble grin. “Heard that, didja?”
Maya, her bird-like shoulders tense to the point of quaking, said, “Believe it or not, the sound of a man’s heart breaking… it
resonates. I felt it.”
Xander knew then that he had made a mistake, handling it this way with Maya in the next room, but it was too late to stop
the events he had set in motion. Dawn and Andrew, they were blind and young and stupid. There was no way Andrew could
make their Dawnie happy. Xander understood this.
“It’s for the best, Maya,” he said in a tone he hoped would put an end to discussion.
Maya came in to the entry hall, her white face aflame. “How can you do that to him? To Dawn? They are happy together,”
she said, almost shouting. “You have no right…”
Xander scoffed. “Aww. Wittle Jimmy has a cwush?” he said. “He’s not in love. It’s sick obsession, just like with Buffy and
Spike.”
Maya stopped in front of him. Her shoulders went slack. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Don’t look that way,” Xander said. “You have that… don’t look that way.”
Maya leveled her eyes on his. “You did this with them. With Buffy and Spike. What gives you the right to interfere with their
lives, Xander?”
Xander swelled with indignation. He said, “You don’t know what Andrew’s done, Maya. He’s…” he laid it out before her like a
poker player who has reserved his winning card. “Andrew’s a murderer.”
Maya looked both hurt and doubtful.
“That’s right,” Xander said, “Back in Sunnydale, he murdered his best friend. His only friend. And don’t start me on the
crooked lane that is Spike…”
“And yet Andrew has lived with you for half a year,” Maya countered suddenly. “He lived with Buffy and Dawn in Rome before
that. They trust him.”
Xander smirked. “He’s valuable. Hence, with the using.”
Maya uttered a weak laugh. “You’re unbelievable,” she whispered. “You would think that of your friends?”
Xander cocked his head to the side in disbelief. “You’re twisting this around, Maya. And you don’t understand. You haven’t
been… You weren’t here.”
Maya’s eyes had filled with tears. “No,” she said. “I think I do understand.”
Xander tried to place his hands on her arms, but she recoiled. He went on, anyway. “Deep down, Andrew knows as well as I
do,” Xander said. “He’s not worthy of a girl like Dawn.”
Maya took a series of deep steadying breaths before she raised her eyes to once again meet Xander’s. She said, “Xander,
I’m not sure you’re worthy of a girl like me.”
Lately, Dawn existed in a constant state of hurry, for she knew that if she could find all of the magical items she needed in
five minutes or less, she could spend the remaining nine or fifteen with him before the others awoke and crammed their busy
schedules in with his and hers.
Dawn, her thoughts percolating with caffeinated randomness, took the key to Willow’s rooms from the roll-top desk on the
second floor landing and bounded upstairs. She wondered, idly, as she turned the key with a snick, why they bothered
locking doors if everyone in the house knew where they kept the keys.
Willow’s rooms smelled of rose-oil, sage, and amber resin, like a woodland cabin belonging to an apothecary. Her canopy bed
was made, buttoned up and tidy with its bronze satin duvet. Her lavender robe lay across the foot, patiently awaiting her
return.
Dawn breathed deeply, feeling Willow’s presence in the room. It felt like so long since Willow left with Connor and the others
to travel into The Deeper Well. Even though it had only been a few weeks, Dawn missed her.
Not now, Dawn thought, getting stern with herself. No time.
She went to Willow’s writing desk, pulled open the upper drawer and began to rifle through the field journals and books
there. The book Andrew wanted – the one with the hammered-tin cover and grey leather ties – had once been here, in the
drawer of this desk. How Andrew had seen it, though, Dawn was unclear, but also, not overly concerned. Willow had lent him
her spell books before.
However, this little journal, which had been a gift from Ariadne way back when Willow first came with Giles to the Coven in
Devon, was not in the lap drawer of the desk.
Dawn pivoted on the braided rug. Where else could it be? She thought. Simple, in any one of two dozen other shelves and
drawers in Willow’s bedroom, which seemed, now that Dawn thought of it, more like book storage than a place where Willow
actually slept. And of course, that had been true. Willow had lived in the Westbury house with Kennedy. She resided at the
Flat on weekends when she wasn’t on magic missions for Giles or was off on a foreign jaunt to find newly-awakened Slayers
who seemed to crop up like mushrooms after a spring rainstorm. And what if the book they sought was there, in Westbury,
gathering dust on one of those hundreds of shelves?
The hairs on her arms bristled as she effortlessly extended her awareness. Dust and sunlight sharpened as it floated through
the splintered light of the curtained windows. For a moment of spiraling dizziness, Dawn felt as though she was floating near
the ceiling, looking down on the room the way a hawk sees a field or the flat, glittering surface of a mountain pool. There,
from the corner of her eye, she caught a glint of silver – just a flash, and she returned with a sudden rush to herself.
Dawn darted to the bedside table where she found, not the book, but a silver case with the same triskele design tooled into
its shining lid. She opened it and found inside a deck of Tarot cards.
She took them into her hands, knowing that she did not have the time to dabble with Tarot, but could not resist the rose
and honeycomb design on the back of each hand-painted card. The motif of each cardback was wrought with lithe and
elegant lines, like the delicate fairy-tale strokes of a Froudian elf.
Dawn paused, wondering why she felt so drawn to these cards, like maybe she was meant to find them. She fanned them face
down on the bed, experimentally, and then restacked them. She cut two-thirds into the deck.
When she turned it over the top card, the image of The Lovers did not surprise her. The pair of androgynous figures lay on
their backs side by side on a stone slab strewn with dusky rose petals. The left hand of one figure nested in the open palm of
the other’s right hand. Their heads lay almost touching, but in the place where their faces should have been there blazed a
diaphanous haze of brightly burning light.
Dawn brushed the surface of the image with the tips of her fingers. She traced the outline of the figures – the shape of a
heart made by the curves of their shoulders, the lines of their arms, their linked hands, the blind blankness of their eyes as
they stared forward together, not fully knowing, but trusting anyway.
It was…
Dawn clutched it to her chest. She felt tears sting her eyes. She knew she had to have this card. She needed to take it, to
share it, but she thought taking a card from a witch’s Tarot had to be the worst kind of mojo. And besides, she thought as
she replaced the card on the top of the deck, she would draw it herself, re-create it on her own. That was something she
knew she could do.
Dawn left Willow’s suite, feeling content with what she found, even though it was not what she went looking for.
Xander awoke with the certainty that he was the only one awake. It was like a kind of radar – awake-dar? – and he had no
particular use for it except to ensure that he got the first cup of freshly-brewed dark roast every morning.
But before that, he had to shower. What was it about arguing, he wondered, that made women want the sex? When it came
down to a mighty screaming match, Maya turned out to be no different from Anya in that category. Not that he wanted to
compare them. Ever.
However, comparing them did call to mind some naughty and arousing imagery.
Xander chided himself inwardly as he slipped from his bedroom into the drafty hallway, and then into his small bathroom.
It had been a needle of bother to him that he was the only person in the entire house to have to share his bathroom.
Granted, Giles was old and everyone else was a girl, with the barest minimum of exception being Andrew, but Xander paid his
share of the rent same as everyone else. Why was it he had the communal toilet? The one used by visitors or anyone
downstairs who didn’t want to take their business all the way upstairs to their own… place of business.
Xander dwelled on this while he took out his electric razor and a blue and white striped towel. He patted his stubble,
scratched in all his manly places, and then removed his eye-patch in order to get in close for optimal shaving.
As he did so, he noticed a smudgy place on the edge of his mirror, which resembled, to his reckoning, a lowercase r turned
on its side. He cocked his head to have better look.
The smudge was more or less eye level, about the width of his hand, and reminded him, curiously, of a bird’s wing. He placed
his palm over the mark and tried to think about what might have imprinted it on his mirror.
After a moment’s thought, he dismissed it. “It’s practically a public toilet,” he said to his reflection. “Who knows how it got
there?”
And he proceeded then to shave.
Dawn found Andrew in the kitchen, quietly brewing tea. She slipped up behind him, prepared to jab him in the ribs, when he
turned suddenly and pinned her between him and the kitchen sink.
“Hey!” she said in a harsh whisper. “No fair, using Watcher’s training against your girlfriend.”
Andrew’s laughter bubbled deep in his chest. “Not Watcher training, little girl. Deep meditative samurai warrior training.”
She shoved him. “You wish.”
He shrugged. “I saw your reflection in the oven door.”
Dawn pushed him again, but he held firm. She locked her eyes with his. “Get off,” she said, playfully.
Andrew shook his head.
“Do it,” she said through her teeth.
He stuck out his tongue. “I am sooo the boss of you.”
“Not even.”
“Even,” he answered with a resolute nod.
“Fine, I relent. Basement or bedroom?”
Andrew grinned in a very Spike-ish way. “Basement. Seven minutes.”
“Too long,” Dawn said. “Someone will come in and interfere.”
Almost as if in answer to her statement, the whir of an electric razor bit into the morning’s silence. Dawn jumped.
“Two minutes,” she said. “Go. I’ll make sure the coast is clear and will be down in two minutes.”
Andrew disappeared into the basement, closing the squeaky door with the greatest possible care he could deliver under
such circumstances.
Dawn glanced around the archway of the kitchen into the hall. A thin wedge of pale light fell across the floor in front of
Xander’s bathroom. Dawn blushed at the memory a day and a half before, when she’d ambushed Andrew and coerced him
into taking her standing up against Xander’s full length mirror while Xander and Maya ate a peaceful dinner in the next room.
Andrew had whispered, “But we don’t have condoms.” Such a sensible lad.
Dawn had responded by slipping one into his palm.
“You are the perfect girl,” he’d gushed.
She kissed him hard and said, “I know.”
Dawn was sure that two minutes had passed, and even if it hadn’t, their hiding games would soon be at an end. She opened
the basement door and closed it behind her, not nearly so worried about its infernal rusty-hingedness as Andrew.
And Maya, who had witnessed Andrew’s and Dawn’s kitchen conversation from her fold-a-bed in the seldom-used parlor, also
watched Dawn from the mirror that hung in the entry hall which showed a slice of the kitchen, the breakfast table, and all of
the basement door. Once Dawn disappeared and the door was firmly shut behind her, Maya went into the kitchen to dispose
of Andrew’s abandoned cup of tea. She returned to the snug blankets of her fold-a-bed and pretended to go back to sleep.
Things got downright porny in the basement. This was because, in Willow’s absence, no one ever went into the Spell Room in
the basement except for Dawn and Andrew, and they weren’t down there to mix potions. Since the place was all their own,
they made good use of Willow’s overstuffed floor pillows, and Andrew’s army surplus sleeping bag with built-in foot warmers,
which they also did not use as was factory-indicated. It was, after all, both cold and dank in the basement.
After getting their early morning groove on, Dawn and Andrew lay together in semi-swoon in a tangle of limbs and tasseled
orange Indian organza. Dawn realized with a measure of humor that she still had on her woolly knee socks, and that Andrew
had only managed to take off one sleeve of his Miskatonic University Sweatshirt before they had tackled each.
Dawn caught her breath and propped on one elbow to look down at him. His face was flushed, his blond curls damp with
sweat and clinging in an attractive way to his temples, and she had to think, Was this the same boy they once tied to a
chair and slapped senseless because of his connection to The First? Could that even be possible?
But as she stared at him, she decided, No. It was not. He was different. She was different. Utterly. Entirely.
She understood, then, how Buffy and Spike could finally have made amends after all they had been through. They were The
Lovers in the Tarot, their faces blank but not empty, their hands joined but open.
Andrew touched Dawn’s face with his fingers. He said, “Earth calling Dawn?”
“I was just thinking,” she said lightly. “Maybe we should tell Xander. About us.”
Andrew held up his hands in mock surrender. “Augh! Xander! Put down that Plus Two Sword of Wounding!”
Dawn shoved him. “He won’t do that.”
Andrew craned his head to the side and said, “He might.”
Dawn considered a moment more. She said, “He might. But his aim isn’t what it used to be, so one of us might make a clean
getaway.”
Andrew shrugged, but still looked doubtful. “Maybe.”
“Besides,” Dawn said. “I already told Spike.”
Andrew ran an uneasy hand along his throat, as if recalling with vivid detail the tasty treat he’d almost become at the fangs
of Spike.
“He’s fine with it,” Dawn assured him.
Andrew’s concern melted into visible relief. “Really?”
Dawn nodded. “Really really.”
Andrew rolled onto his back and stared into the murky damp of the basement ceiling. Then his brow clouded again. He said,
“Maybe we should wait on Xander, at least until we have a Fortress of Solitude of our very own.”
“Fortress of Solitude?” Dawn asked.
Andrew grinned weakly.
“That’s a Smallville reference.”
He massaged his forehead and groaned.
“Points for me, Andrew,” she giggled, jabbing him in the ribs. “Thought you could slip that one by, but I caught it.
Advantage Summers!”
“Ha! I got you yesterday on the Ryan and Sharpay reference. It’s a deuce…”
“Did not!” she protested.
“Did too, Jazz Squares,” Andrew shot back, and Dawn gaped at him, wordlessly, while he donned a look of smug.
After a beat of silence, she said, “Place of our own. You really think about that?”
Andrew eased back into the pillows again, his bare arm looped in hers. “All the time,” he answered. Then thought for a
moment before saying, “It would have to be close to the Council, of course, and near enough to the tube station so that you
could still get to your classes, you know, ’cause you promised Buffy you’d finish school and Mr. Giles even called in favors.”
“Wait,” Dawn said, in complete seriousness. “You think we could afford that? You as a Watcher and me, a student?”
Andrew scratched his head. “Well. Yeah,” he said.
A whole new line of thoughts and images bloomed in Dawn’s mind. She pictured one of those stylish flats near Wapping, two
bedroom deals with polished chrome and blonde wood, with plates of picture window glass that overlooked the park, or the
Thames, depending on which side you signed on for. The beaded Bohemian lampshades alongside an attractive second-hand
settee, with end tables ordered from Pier One.
And then she saw them stretched out on a sleigh bed, him reading from a Watcher’s journal, her sprawled with schoolbooks
and her laptop and a lipstick-marked cup of fragrant Chai tea.
The thought of it felt exhilarating and frightening at the same time, and she could think of only one thing that she wanted
more, and that was Buffy.
“Wow,” Dawn whispered, and she kissed him.
Andrew hazarded a grin. “Is that a yes?”
“Resounding yes for Fortress of Solitude,” Dawn said.
“Ha ha ha! Advantage Wells,” he shouted.
Dawn elbowed him in his side. “You can’t count that. I just got you with it.”
“Rules are rules,” he said, airily, folding his arms in a way that cut off further discussion.
Dawn sat up. “Whatever. I’m hungry,” she said. “What have you got planned for today?”
“Staying in,” he said, simply. “Figured now that we woke Spike, I can return the focus of my research to the pan-spectrum
geographic anomalies I was studying before.”
“And that’s techno-jargon for…?”
“Places of concentrated Big Badness,” he said. “I think there’s a pattern. I also hypothesize that the Taonyx Parchments
might offer fresh insight into the location of the paranormal-slash-geographical hot-spots.”
“And this theory is based on?”
“Pure hunch,” Andrew admitted.
Dawn shrugged. “Oh good. For a second there, I thought you were getting too concrete.”
She sat up and began to pull on the mist colored negligee she had worn beneath her bulky flannel PJs. Taking her cue, Andrew
threaded his arm back into the sleeve of his sweatshirt and started to hunt for his pants. Then he remembered.
“Did you find Willow’s spellbook?”
“It wasn’t there,” Dawn said with certainty. “I think it must be in Westbury. We can pick up this evening, if you’re up for a
train ride.”
Andrew rubbed his chin. “I wish I could remember that rhyme. The one about the angels.”
Dawn wasn’t sure which rhyme he was talking about. She wasn’t even sure it had been Willow who had told them. All she
knew was that it had some link to the Sisters who had made Spike, and it was not the one about The Rose, the Key and The
Willow Tree. This was one of Andrew’s entreaties into randomness, and she just had to trust that it would come to make
sense to them both in time.
They heard the clang of the over door upstairs simultaneously, and Dawn’s eyes flicked to Andrew’s.
“You first?” she asked.
He glanced down to indicate that he was in a higher level of undress than she.
“Gotcha,” she said, fastening her robe with its terry cloth tie. “Come up in ten minutes. I’ll see you at breakfast. And the
Xander thing: I’m okay with waiting.”
Andrew kissed her, and Dawn floated upstairs.
As Andrew lingered in the semi-dark, watching her glide up and away from him, a partial thought came to him like a tiny fray
in a blanket. He pulled at it, but in seconds, it had gone, and so had she.
Dawn stepped into the kitchen to find Xander bent over the frying pan, grumbling.
“Hey,” she said, a little too brightly. She skirted him, stairway bound. She paused in the archway, and turned. “You’re a
little Squidward this morning. What’s up?”
Xander knew he had to play it cool, if his hunch about the wing-shaped mark on his mirror turned out to be correct. He
knew that she had to disappear, if he meant to corner the other one… the whelp.
He seethed. “Spike used my towel,” Xander lied, but found that easy enough to manage, so he went with it. “Whole linen
closet full of towels, why does he use mine? I’ll tell you why. Fancies himself Alpha, that’s why.”
Xander went to the refrigerator, took out the carton of eggs, plopped it one the counter. “I’ll tell you what else. He’s been
awake less than 24 hours, and he’s already managed to drink all of my Beck’s. Mind you, I only had two left, but it’s the
principle, see? You don’t horndoggle another man’s ale!”
“Horndoggle?” Dawn giggled, her arms cradled over her belly like she was about to have a good laugh, like she did when she
was an innocent little girl...
Xander was sweating now.
Dawn hovered in the entry way. “Maybe you shouldn’t cook when you’re so clearly incensed?”
Xander glared at no one in particular. He snapped off the burner with a click and stormed out of the kitchen. A few minutes
later, once he was sure Dawn had vacated, Xander returned to the kitchen and waited.
Andrew checked the time on his Scooby watch and guessed that roughly ten minutes had passed. He climbed the stairs,
thinking of Dawn and the potential of a flat near Wapping, of the Sisters and the topple-down cathedral on Mercer Street, of
a day’s worth of unbroken research stretching as far as his eyes could see. He was not thinking of someone waiting for him
in the kitchen, so that when he opened the basement door, the left hook that caught him squarely in the chin knocked him
for two kinds of loops.
Andrew jarred against the door, knocking it closed with an insolent groan. Xander rounded on him and twisted his hand into
the collar of Andrew’s sweatshirt.
“Were you just canoodling with Dawn in the basement?” Xander bit out.
“Canoodling,” Andrew said, swallowing hard, trying to evade the question. “Sounds like making spaghetti in a kayak.”
“Sit down,” Xander said sternly.
Andrew obeyed like a dog on command.
Xander paced, his fists clenched tight. He said, “We’re going to have a man to… boy chat.”
Andrew was aware that he was cornered, aware that Xander had ambushed him, and so he merely sat by and watched while
Xander prepared his tirade.
Xander stopped pacing. “Let me tell you a story,” he said.
Andrew looked hopeful. Xander grimaced.
“Once upon a time, there was a really beautiful, really special girl. A lot of bad things happened to this girl. Lots of changes.
All of them bad,” Xander said.
“That’s really unfortunate,” Andrew said encouragingly.
“Don’t interrupt,” Xander said. “So this girl kept doing things to try and get a handle on her life. But nothing, I mean,
nothing worked out. But, as fate would have it, she met a boy.”
Andrew started to say something. Xander cut him off with a slicing gesture.
“Someone who adored her,” Xander went on. “Would do anything for her. Someone who was both weaker and totally
devoted. And, presto, she finally found that one thing in her life she could control. But that was all it was.”
A lingering pause passed between them.
Andrew said, “You’re talking about Buffy, right?”
“No,” Xander said, with a tight-lipped smile.
“Anya?”
“No!” Xander shouted, with a tight-lipped not-so-smile.
Andrew squinted. He said, “Claire from Lost?”
Xander heaved a sigh. “I’m talking about Dawn,” he said.
Andrew looked confused for a long moment, and Xander took this contemplative look to mean that the whelp was listening to
Xander’s argument and taking it to heart. Andrew, on the other hand, had thoughts that were elsewhere.
After a moment of this, Andrew glanced down at his hands. “You mean…” Andrew said.
“Yes!” Xander said, relieved that Andrew was finally getting it. “I do mean.”
“She wouldn’t,” Andrew whispered.
Xander knew he had to at least fake some sympathy. He said, “People do… really strange things in the midst of chaos.”
“Chaos,” Andrew repeated. And then Andrew suddenly, finally heard everything that Xander had been trying to say. Andrew
looked up at him. He said, “I gotta...”
And then, he left.
Xander did not feel proud when Andrew squeezed past him and disappeared into the entry way. The elation he expected
when he heard Andrew slam the front door behind him did not come, and in fact disappeared entirely when he turned to find
Maya’s bewildered face reflected back to him in the entry hall mirror.
He shuffled from one foot to the other, and offered a feeble grin. “Heard that, didja?”
Maya, her bird-like shoulders tense to the point of quaking, said, “Believe it or not, the sound of a man’s heart breaking… it
resonates. I felt it.”
Xander knew then that he had made a mistake, handling it this way with Maya in the next room, but it was too late to stop
the events he had set in motion. Dawn and Andrew, they were blind and young and stupid. There was no way Andrew could
make their Dawnie happy. Xander understood this.
“It’s for the best, Maya,” he said in a tone he hoped would put an end to discussion.
Maya came in to the entry hall, her white face aflame. “How can you do that to him? To Dawn? They are happy together,”
she said, almost shouting. “You have no right…”
Xander scoffed. “Aww. Wittle Jimmy has a cwush?” he said. “He’s not in love. It’s sick obsession, just like with Buffy and
Spike.”
Maya stopped in front of him. Her shoulders went slack. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Don’t look that way,” Xander said. “You have that… don’t look that way.”
Maya leveled her eyes on his. “You did this with them. With Buffy and Spike. What gives you the right to interfere with their
lives, Xander?”
Xander swelled with indignation. He said, “You don’t know what Andrew’s done, Maya. He’s…” he laid it out before her like a
poker player who has reserved his winning card. “Andrew’s a murderer.”
Maya looked both hurt and doubtful.
“That’s right,” Xander said, “Back in Sunnydale, he murdered his best friend. His only friend. And don’t start me on the
crooked lane that is Spike…”
“And yet Andrew has lived with you for half a year,” Maya countered suddenly. “He lived with Buffy and Dawn in Rome before
that. They trust him.”
Xander smirked. “He’s valuable. Hence, with the using.”
Maya uttered a weak laugh. “You’re unbelievable,” she whispered. “You would think that of your friends?”
Xander cocked his head to the side in disbelief. “You’re twisting this around, Maya. And you don’t understand. You haven’t
been… You weren’t here.”
Maya’s eyes had filled with tears. “No,” she said. “I think I do understand.”
Xander tried to place his hands on her arms, but she recoiled. He went on, anyway. “Deep down, Andrew knows as well as I
do,” Xander said. “He’s not worthy of a girl like Dawn.”
Maya took a series of deep steadying breaths before she raised her eyes to once again meet Xander’s. She said, “Xander,
I’m not sure you’re worthy of a girl like me.”
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Mea Culpa
Things Unsaid
Home Sweet Gone
Eleventh Hour
Last Call
Time Is Running Out
Primal