Things Unseen

By Gidgetgirl

Chapter Twelve

“Buffy,” Dawn repeated. “She’s you.”

“She’s what?” Buffy asked, thinking that Dawnie had eaten a few too many of Hopie’s graham crackers on the plane ride.

Dawn looked from her sister back to Chance. “Look at her, Buffy. She’s you when you were eleven or twelve.” Dawn looked to Doyle for confirmation.

“There’s a good lassie,” Doyle said, praising the slayer’s little sister for finally getting it at least partially correct.

“Doyle?” Cordelia said again, a bit of the old Queen C coming into her voice. “You’ve been playing with my daughter for over a week, and you let us think you were her invisible friends? What’s up with that? Thanks for the visions, by the way. You’re a doll.”

Hopie grinned at her mother. “Told you he was real, Momma,” the little girl said, tossing her crossbow from hand to hand excitedly. “It’s not Mr. D’s fault you couldn’t see him before, a cause we had to come to the place of the big magical no-no before he and Miss T could be real.”

Hopie grinned at everyone.

Anni could feel Chance trembling behind her, and she put an arm around the girl, hugging her. Chance, more than confused, stared at Buffy. Was that what she was going to look like when she grew up?

Willow’s eyes had glazed over with tears, and she took a step toward Tara. “Tara?” she asked again. Tara nodded, her hair swishing in the slight light that surrounded her.

“There were strong magics released,” Tara said, her voice wavering a little at first as it always had during her lifetime; however, now it also contained wisdom and a quality of peacefulness.

“Strong magics?” Willow asked.

Hopie stared pointedly at Travers, who was still writhing in agony on the floor from being thoroughly trounced.

“The blood of the Five,” Giles commented, remembering something he’d heard of and dismissed as improbable. “‘The blood of five possibilities shall release the deep magic and rip the fruit from the womb.’ The possibility part must refer to the girls being Potentials.”

Angel stared incredulously at Giles. “And you didn’t think that piece of information was going to be important?” he asked.

“Well,” Giles said, a little abashed, taking off his glasses to clean them, “I always assumed the womb part was a metaphor.”

Willow nodded, finally understanding what was going on. “The balance was disturbed,” she said softly, looking to Tara for confirmation. “When that kind of dark magic is released…” she trailed off.

“Aye,” Doyle said, tweaking Willow’s hair a bit with a grin. “An opposite agent of good magic was released.” Doyle’s face grew grave. “It hurt the little one,” he said referring to Hopie, “as her essence is tied to the old magics this pathetic scrap tried to violate.”

Cordy looked at Hopie, who was grinning like a maniac, and realized the full potential of what Doyle had said. “The invisible force that attacked Hopie? That was Travers’ doing?”

Doyle nodded a quick affirmation and grinned as the seer walked over to Travers, took one look at him lying on the ground and said, “Hopie, cover your eyes, baby.” Hopie covered your eyes.

“You’re gonna kick him, aren’t you, Momma?” Hopie asked, peaking through her fingers in time to see Cordelia deliver a crushing kick to Travers’ groin.

The smile on Kendall’s face grew. “You know, I always thought I wanted to be the one to kick his ass, but watching the three of you do it,” she paused, indicating Cordy, Hopie, and Anni, “was just as much fun.” She thought about it for a moment. “Well, almost anyway.”

“Not to make with the subject changing,” Buffy said, raising her hand slightly, “but can we get back to the whole ‘that little blonde girl is me’ thing?”

“Forget that,” Lilah said, staring greedily at the powerful beings in front of her. “If you guys are agents of good magic, then reverse this and put these things back where they belong.” She gestured to the babies, still suspended in the air.

Things? Wesley thought, irate.

They aren’t things, Willow thought back, subconsciously taking his hand in hers. He’s your son. Tara smiled softly at Willow, giving her blessing to the relationship.

You heard that? Willow thought. Tara nodded.

He loves you, she thought back. And you love him. Willow’s eyes filled with guilt. And that’s okay. Tara said. Your love for him and his for you only strengthens the love we shared. It gives me peace now to know that you have love in this world.

Thank you, Wes said silently, his mind still very much on his child.

“Enough with the mind talk,” Hopie said a little crossly, not wanting to be left out.

Tara laughed softly. “All right then, little one, are you ready to help put things right?” Hopie jumped up and down and nodded.

“Yup, yup!” she replied happily.

“We’ll need a vessel,” Doyle said, casting a look in Willow’s direction. “The wee one there can tap into our powers, but she doesn’t know how to use them.” Willow nodded, and at Doyle’s instruction, the Potentials, Anni, Wes, and the Fang Gang and Scoobies gathered around the Wiccan, forming a circle around her. Willow sat in the middle, with Hopie held in her lap.

As they joined hands, Chance took Buffy’s hand into her own, and a slight shock went through them both.

“Much with the weird?” they both muttered.

Doyle and Tara each took one of Hopie’s hands and the little girl wrinkled her forehead as the agents of good magic let their power flow into Hopie.

Hopie jumped up all of a sudden. She turned around and bent down, pressing a kiss firmly to Willow’s stomach.

“For good luck,” she explained.

“How is that good luck?” Connor asked.

“Like Pretzels,” Hopie said, reverting to four-year-old logic. Without saying another word, she sat gently back in Willow’s lap, taking the agents’ hands in hers.

Willow felt the incredible amount of magic the little girl contained, and she whispered the words that she knew needed to be said.

“Magic of old, I call on you…” As she said the remainder of the spell, her head was thrown back, her eyes glowing a brilliant blue and her hair emitting golden light. Suddenly the light disappeared. Nothing had happened.

“Slight delay,” Doyle explained, shrugging. “It happens sometimes.”

Buffy raised her hand again. “Back to the Chance is me issue,” she said.

Dawn grinned at her sister. “It’s always about you, isn’t it, Buffy?” she asked. Buffy rolled her eyes.

“Tara!” Willow cried suddenly, noticing the woman disappearing slowly from the room.

“Things are the way they are supposed to be,” Tara commented. “We must now return.” She pressed a final kiss to Willow’s lips, a soft kiss of friendship and tenderness. “Goodbye,” she said softly.

Doyle looked at his friends, knowing that they had barely had the chance to see him again. He, on the other hand, had been watching them for some time. “G’bye,” he said, grinning.

A tear fell from Cordy’s eye.

“Don’t be crying now, me queen,” Doyle said, wiping the tear from her cheek. “I’ll be back. The little one will see to that.”

Hopie, seeing Cordelia’s tears, started to sniff as well. “Don’t leave me,” she begged the people who had been her ‘imaginary’ friends. “Who will I play with?”

“Your daddy and mommy, Connor, Spike, Dawn, Buffy, Faith, everyone,” Tara said, kissing the top of the little girl’s hair.

“Angel’s a much more fetching Princess than I am anyway,” Doyle said, ruffling the little girl’s hair.

Spike snorted.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Spike,” Hopie said. “You’re the prettiest Princess of all. You and Connor.”

Connor groaned.

“I tied that whelp? I’m much prettier than…” Spike trailed off, realizing what he was saying.

And on that note, Doyle and Tara disappeared from view.

“So,” Buffy said finally, “how ‘bout that me having a clone thing. How did it happen?”

“I think I might have the answer to that,” a voice said from the floor. Everyone looked at Fred. She was sitting over in the corner, surrounded by file folders she had taken from a safe.

“The safe broke open during one of the squirmishes,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose a bit. “I saw one of the files labeled with a simple logarithmic based code, and I just couldn’t help myself.”

Gunn grinned at Fred, still not believing that he had such a wonderful partner in his life.

“Long story short,” Fred said, “these are genetic sequences.” She held up a group of files. “Of the potentials.” She pointed to another stack, “Of the babies.” Finally, she picked up three file folders. “And of the slayers and the key.”

“How in the world did they get those?” Faith asked, carefully censoring her language around Hopie.

“They must have had a blood sample, or something,” Fred said. Giles carefully avoided looking at Buffy.

“Giles!” Buffy said. Giles shrugged sheepishly.

“It was standard procedure for you and Faith, for records and such. I have no idea how the Council got a hold of Dawn’s blood.”

“Um, doesn’t my blood open portals?” Dawn asked nervously, expecting the entire room to implode somehow.

“Only when the right mystical and physical forces converge according to a proper matrix,” Giles said. Fred, Wes, and Willow nodded in understanding.

“Big with the ‘huh?’ here, Giles,” Buffy said. “Then again, I don’t really need to know, do I?”

Giles cleared his throat. “No,” he said, thankful he didn’t have to break the science down into Buffyese.

“Not meaning to be impatient here, but can we please listen to the floor lady’s explanation for why I’m Buffy?” Chance squeaked.

Fred held up two DNA chromatography x-ray strips. She placed one over the other and held it to the light. They were almost identical.

“Freaky,” Buffy said, “but that still doesn’t explain why we’re the same person.”

“You’re genetically very similar,” Fred said. “There’s a difference, and that’s not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is Dawn’s sequence.”

“I already know I’m not real. The monks made me from Buffy. Can we not dwell on it please?” Dawn whined.

“Not just Buffy,” Fred said. “Otherwise, I’d expect you to have the same DNA, like Chance. See, all kids get some of the genes from their mother and the rest from their father. Buffy wasn’t the only genetic donor, otherwise, you’d just have her genes.”

“Great,” Dawn said. “So those twisted monks made me out of Buffy and some Mr. Anonymous mystic sperm essence donor? I feel so comforted.”

Connor decided at that moment that he’d have to take sarcasm lessons from Dawn, as she was truly a master.

“Not a Mr. Anonymous,” Fred said, holding up another strip triumphantly.

“We know who it is?” Dawn asked.

“From each a half to each a half!” Hopie giggled behind her.

“Yes,” Fred said, “and it isn’t a ‘Mr.’ Anybody.”

“Aunt Faith, Aunt Faith, Aunt Faith!” Hopie chorused.

Fred nodded in confirmation. “You’re half Buffy, half Faith,” she said to Dawn.

Everyone was silent for a moment. Faith felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Before she’d met Lindsey, she’d never felt a part of anything her entire life. Now, she was learning that Dawn was a part of her. Dawnie was as much her sister as she was Buffy’s, and yet the monks had sent her to Buffy. The monks had known that B was worthy and that she wasn’t. Lindsey rested a hand on her shoulder and placed a quick kiss on the top of her head. He knew the phantoms that haunted Faith, and he was determined to banish them.

“You know,” Anya said slowly, “this explains a lot. Like why Dawn has brown hair. When you think about it, she sort of looks like a mix of Buffy and Faith.” Anya paused for a moment and then continued. “It’s just so sad that there was no sex involved.”

“An,” Xander said warningly.

Anya gave everyone an insistent look. “Sex is reproductive. Reproducing without sex is like playing Monopoly with fake money. It’s just not the same.”

“You play with real money?” Colette asked, her voice well above her normal whisper.

Anya nodded. “Fake money is just paper,” she preached, “whereas real money is paper with bartering value.”

“That still doesn’t explain why Chance is so much like Buffy,” Nicolaa pointed out.

“Yes,” Anni said slowly, “it does. An essence can’t just be torn in half. With sex, the diploid chromosome is split.” Wes stared at her. “Sex ed,” she clarified.

“Remind me to look into private school,” Wes muttered to the room as a whole.

Anni continued, making sense of the situation as she spoke. “But you can’t just split an essence like that. The remainder of Buffy’s essence, her genes, they had to go somewhere.”

“Me,” Chance said, wondering what in the world was going on.

“But Chance is much more similar to Buffy genetically than Dawn is,” Fred pointed out.

“And I’ve looked like this my whole life,” Chance said. “Honest.”

Wes picked up where Anni had left off. “Going from the assumption that Chance has indeed existed for eleven years,” he said, thinking carefully. “It’s entirely possible that the remaining half of Buffy’s essence chose her as a vessel because she was genetically similar to Buffy to begin with.”

Giles nodded. “I would imagine slayer genes to be quite powerful,” he said. “It’s not out of the question that the genes Buffy somehow donated to Chance would have the power to override existing genes.”

“So, what?” Chance asked. “So one day I’m me, and then the next day, boom, I’m Buffy.”

“I doubt there was a boom,” Willow said helpfully.

“And we know there was no sex,” Anya muttered underneath her breath.

“Anya, I’ll give you five dollars to stop talking about sex,” Xander said.

“Interesting proposition,” she said. “Capitalism at its best, isn’t it?”

“Will you give me five dollars not to talk about sex?” Maddy asked curiously.

Anya beamed at her.

Xander groaned.

“Shut it, Maddy,” Kendall said playfully.

Willow turned her attention to Chance. “You’re still you,” she said softly, “you’re just the Buffy version of you.”

“And you’re a Potential,” Dawn said, something becoming clear in her mind. If being a slayer was somehow genetic, then if Chance was a Potential, it meant that she wasn’t, that she’d never be.

“More than a Potential,” Anni said after a moment. “If she has part of Buffy’s essence as well as her genes, then she’s almost a slayer.”

“A demi-slayer,” Gunn said. Everyone stared at him. “What?” he said. “Can’t I say something intelligent every once in a while?”

“A demi-slayer,” Chance said.

“That’s bloody wicked,” Maddy informed Chance.

Lindsey rubbed Faith’s neck softly, knowing that she was coming to the same realization that he was.

“If Dawn is half me and half Buffy,” Faith said out loud, “and if Buffy’s slayer half went to Chance, where did my other half go?”

The question hung in the air.

“Somewhere out there,” Lindsey said, speaking the words they were all thinking, “there must be another demi-slayer. A demi-Faith.”

The room was silent for a moment, and then Hopie began jumping up and down excitedly. “It’s happening,” she sang out. As soon as the words left her mouth, a deep rumble went through the room as Willow’s spell took its delayed effect.

One by one, the babies started to disappear from the room and reappear in their mother’s wombs.

“It’s about time,” Lilah said. “I have too much invested in this to leave here without it.”

Wes gritted his teeth at the lack of emotion Lilah showed for their child. There was no way he was going to let her give their child to Wolfram and Hart. No way.

Pink smoke filled the air as the last baby was returned to the womb. When it cleared, chaos broke out.

“What the hell is going on?” Lilah screamed.

Willow looked down at her stomach. Her very pregnant stomach. Hopie grinned and ran over and kissed her stomach. Again.

“Good luck,” she reminded her with an impish grin. “Like Pretzels.”

 

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