Fic: Shanshu 21 - By the Lake

[dragonyphoenix]

Title: By the Lake
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 451 - Gemini
Rating: PG
Summary: Part 20 of Shanshu
Word Count: 551

Okay, maybe midnightish wasn't the safest time to be bolting for the lake, but Dawn had grown up on a Hellmouth. She could handle campus, even at night, and sometimes you just had to be alone. The two sets of benches – one out in the open and one the under under the pines – at her favorite overlook were empty. Well, yeah, of course they were. No one in sight. She settled in under the pines. It wasn't like she needed the extra shade, but sometimes she wanted, or maybe even needed, the extra sense of seclusion, like right now when Buffy hadn't thought it worth calling to tell her another apocalypse was in the works.

Dawn got it, she really did. It wasn't as if she could do anything, being all the way on the other side of the country and there'd been that whole agreement that she'd put school first, but Buffy was flying in from Rome. Boston was a lot closer to California than Rome. It wasn't like she'd miss anything too important, well, except for that test, and that lab, and a couple of papers that were due. Dawn sighed. She liked school. She really did. Wellesley's campus was the best. Nothing on the west coast could stand up to it. And she got that she was learning, building a foundation so she could help with the Slayers in the future. It was just … she felt all out-of-the-loopey. Really, come on. Buffy couldn't call? It's not like she had anything else to do while flying across two continents and one ocean.

“Hey.” Geez, where had the old hippie come from? Dawn reached into her backpack for her cross. Let her friends think she was weird for always having one accessible. You never knew when you might need one. “I'm looking for the Gemini.”

“Um, sorry but I'm a Scorpio.”

“Oh no, man, not that kind of Gemini. The twin, you know?”

“Uh, no, not really.”

“The two who are one. Mortal and immortal both. Glowing green energy but human-form born.”

Oh. Shit. Did anyone else even know that Glory wasn't dead? Dawn held the cross out at arm's length. Of course Glory didn't do vampire minions, not so far as she knew anyway, but it couldn't hurt, right? “You stay away from me.”

“Oh, hey, it's you. I've been totally looking all over for you.”

“Get back.”

“They need your help. The dude, he's off in another dimension. They can't get to him in time, not without you.”

His hand was a grip of iron around her wrist. The sickness in her stomach gave way to a sense of triumph as her book-laden backpack smashed into his head, but when he hit the ground it wasn't with the thump of a body collapsing on wood. It was a softer sound, less echoey. Dawn stood staring at the road before her. The green closeness of Boston had given way to a barren landscape, one she recognized. She'd been here before. She didn't need to turn to see the huge hole behind her. Dawn inched to the edge and looked down. By the light of the moon she could see the outline of a sign. She didn't need to read it to know what it said: Welcome to Sunnydale.