taxonomites | 001 [Holo]

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001 [Holo]

There's a loud thump and a pained groan as Dawn does a bellyflop-- without the whole 'into water' part, which is both better and so very much worse-- onto the platform. Groaning again, she rolls onto her back then slowly sits up, stretching her neck and rubbing at her face.

"Did I mention that 'hey, sure I'll help with baby Slayer training today' is not secret code for 'time to try to break Dawn'? I may not be able to squish you with my huge giant-y feet anymore, but that doesn't mean it's open season. Seriously, you didn't have to hit me that--"

She breaks off mid complaint as she actually looks around, taking in her surroundings and realizes that wherever she is, it's not Scotland. And unless one of the baby slayers hit her hard enough she passed out and this is all a wacky coma dream, things are seriously wrong.

"--Hard. What's going on?"

She pushes up off the ground, wincing as her knees sting a little thanks to the whole 'scraped from crashing into the ground' angle. Grabbing the weird fake Blackberry thing is priority number one, then heading down the stairs and out the door.

...The door which promptly disappears behind her. Dawn's eyes get wider, and she presses a hand against the space where a door should be. "Oh, this cannot be good. Buffy? Oh, my God, I'm so dead. Buffy's gonna kill me if I got kidnapped again. I just got all normal Dawn-sized and not half horse or creepy doll-like. I can't be kidnapped." She runs a hand through her hair, trying to calm down. "It's okay. There is obviously a perfectly logical reason for this. A reason which is just... eluding me for a second. I just need to calm down. No freaking for Dawn Summers, for I'm an adult-type responsible person with coping skills that help in these situations."

She rolls her eyes. "And I'm talking to myself. Which is not at all a sign of freak out-ness. Nope." Looking around again, moving past freaked to 'let's work this out'. "Can anyone hear me? Willow? Xander? Even Andrew. Andrew would be okay right now. In fact, I would be really glad to see Andrew, which usually doesn't happen until I need an ANTM marathon buddy or some funnel cake, but... yeah, I'd be happy to see Andrew right now."

Dawn bites her lip and looks down, swallowing hard. Tiny Watcher is officially a little more worried than she would like to be. "...Anybody?"

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And Giles might be a little bit hurt that it would occur to Dawn to ask for Andrew - good lord Andrew of all people - before asking for him but that's an emotion he'll ignore. He is, after all, British. What he can't ignore is the shock at seeing the tiny image of Dawn Summers popping up above the screen of his tablet. He's not sure why he's so surprised - so many of the other people he is closest to are here - but still it's almost as much of a jolt as seeing Tara.

"Dawn?" A smile slowly turns up the corners of his mouth. How he has missed her.

"Are you really here?" Did I mention the shock?

With a little explanation, Dawn could easily fix the hurt. Giles-- her Giles-- is currently traipsing across Europe with Faith because Buffy is mad at him. She's kind of out of the habit of calling for him, in the most involuntary fashion possible. He should expect much clinging in the days to come.

"Giles?" She stares for a moment, then grins. There could be a little bit of bouncing. "Giles! Hi, oh my-- Hi!"

Now there's definitely bouncing. "Me? What about you? I mean, duh I'm here, wherever here is." She frowns for a moment, then shrugs that off in favor of-- "I missed you so much!"

--More bouncing. And grinning so widely her cheeks start to hurt a little.

If Giles knew that, knew all that was to come in the next few years... who knows what he would think. And he won't mind the clinging, all mock gruffness he might show to the contrary. He's rather fond of Dawn, for both Buffy's sake and as her own person.

"Here is Taxon, which is nowhere near anyplace we've been before." Typical Giles he goes for the easiest most practical information first. But the bouncing and grinning is enough to make him chuckle and he freely admits that "I've missed you too, Dawn."

Staring at a tiny hologram is hardly satisfying as far as reunions go, though. "I'm not far from where you are. Stay there and I'll arrive in a few minutes."

And now hologram Giles is running, without slowing down to close the door of the Magic Box behind him.

Any lack of enthusiasm on Giles' part would... probably only slow Dawn down a tiny bit, on the clinging side. Her idea of personal space is somewhat limited, sorry all non-touchy feely people. But she has the Giles decoder ring, so she knows the gruff is a cover-up. His secret is safe with her.

"So... demon dimension time? Or alternate, or... alien abduction, with the freaky platform thing? Because if we got alien abducted I might have to be really weirded out." Ah, Dawn. Demons? Eh, whatever. Aliens? That's weird. Her comfort levels are so skewed, thanks Sunnydale.

"Duh you did." The grin gets a little wider. "It's okay, we can have mutual missing." It's true; Giles may be Buffy's Watcher, but Dawn came attached. Two Summers for the price of one. Maybe they're fake memories in the technical, but that doesn't mean Dawn can't think of a time in Sunnydale when Giles wasn't there. Even when she thought he was just a weird teacher who spent way too much time with Buffy, he was there, a constant. And Dawn is all about her constants.

She watches the tiny hologram run with ill-concealed amusement, but nods. "I will stick here so much you'll think I was superglued."

He knows, on some level at least, that Dawn knows that his gruffness is a facade but he's glad to keep the illusion. It's a safely blanket of sorts for him, a way to protect himself from the losses that are so expected in his life. Not that it works, of course, but he needs to try.

"Any of the above, or many other possibilities I'm sure. A demon dimension was my first thought but there are other ideas that both myself and our fellow - the other people here have come up with. Fortunately for us both the Sunnydale library and the Magic Box are here in this place, so we have a nice selection of reference material." Oh look, Giles fallen into exposition mode. Snap out of it, Giles. "But that's a matter for another time."

His run has slowed down to a jog, otherwise he couldn't be talking. Still he's almost to the Sanctuary, looking forward to the moment when he sees the girl. The woman he reminds himself, given how much she's grown in the past few years. But she will always be a girl to him.

Dawn is okay with keeping up the charade that Giles minds-- okay, minds more than a little-- that she has very little respect for things like 'professional distance'. Or 'no hugging the Watcher'. Or 'Dawn, that is not appropriate ink for official documents'.

"We have the library?" Dawn allows herself a little bit of glee, then: "Did we bring the mall, too?" What are her priorities.

"You can explain later. Xander promised the equivalent of explanation meatloaf with extra explanation ketchup. Plus, actual food because that particular metaphor gives me hunger pangs."

Even while Dawn quips at Giles, she's straining for a look; of him, of Buffy, of Xander. Her family. Okay, so alien abduction was not on the To Do List for the week. But at least they're here, too.

Giles is okay with the occasional disregard of the 'no hugging the Watcher' rule (as, for example, in a moment when he arrives) However glitter purple is still not an appropriate ink for official documents, no matter what the circumstances are. Nor is pink, orange, silver or anything sparkly or shiny.

"We have the library, as it was before graduation, and the Magic Box as it was before..." And that's not a sentence he wants to finish considering how the inside of the shop was destroyed long before the crater that finished it off. It's much easier, emotionally, to scowl at Dawn's mention of the mall. "No, much to your sister's chagrin, and mine there is no mall here." Take note of the sarcasm; almost an eyeroll there.

And there he is, just a little out of breath. He closes the gap between them quickly, smiling down at her. "Dawn."

...But it adds that festive touch! It's easier to handle potential apocalypses if they're delivered in purple ink.

Right? Of course right.

"Oh, cool! And I can actually go in it, now. Can I make a sign that says 'Restricted Section'? I always thought Buffy totally wasted all her sign making opportunity when she like... lived in the library."

Dawn smile is a thing of hugeness. "Giles!" She gives him a moment to catch his breath before launching herself into a hug. "I've missed you."

She breathes deep, burying her face in his shoulder. It's Giles all right. Tea and a hint of smoke and old leather and paper and maybe a tiny bit of Scotch. Just like home.

Yes, that's very logical... if you are a Summers woman. Or a Willow. Giles will keep to his black and blue pens, thank you very much. And if he so much as sees a color on one of his books...

Giles closes his eyes briefly, staving off the moisture that is collected there. He wraps his arms around Dawn, returning the hug. 'Welcome to the strange world that's seemingly kidnapped us' ranks right up there with 'the world didn't end' 'I'm leaving for another continent and don't know when I'll be back' and 'thank god that vampire didn't have you for dinner' when it comes to times it's easy for Giles to hug. Maybe he sometimes wishes it was different, that physical contact came half as easy to him as it does to his younger friends, but the events of a lifetime have shaped him already. He can have this moment, though.

"Dawn," he breaths softly against her hair, taking in the smells of conditioner and perfume, mint and something sweet he never can define. She's here, and she's real. As much as he regrets the fact she's been snatched from wherever she was before he can't help feeling like the most vital part of his family is complete now. She is his family, and has been since the first time Buffy had dragged her kid sister into the library and told him that if she was going to slay vampires he was going to have to babysit her sister. He didn't know then what the unauspicious meeting was going to begin. "You can make all the signs you so desire, so long as you know that I'll move them when they are in the way."

Dawn would never write on the books! That's close to sacrilege. That one time was so Buffy's fault, and she cleaned it up.

She clutches Giles tight, eyes a little moist herself. Family reunions are allowed to make people teary, and she won't say anything if no one else does anyway.

"Hi Giles." Her voice is muffled against his shoulder just a bit, flattening normally high tones. But the excitement-- the contentment-- is easy to hear, even without the death grip Dawn has on his shirt. "I promise I won't tape them in places that are needed for other stuff."

Isn't it funny, the way the writing was Dawn's fault according to Buffy and Buffy's fault according to Dawn? For his part Giles doesn't care whose fault it was, just as long as it doesn't happen again. Some of his books have survived hundreds of years without damage, and he doesn't want that to change during his guardianship of them.

"Yes, well..." he pats her on the back, unsure how to end this reunion hug - and not really sure he wants to. There's a level of freedom he has with his interactions with Dawn that he can't claim with anyone else. She's not his child - she's Joyce's and he'd never want to change that even if he could - but she's the closest he'll ever feel to being a father.

he strokes the hair that falls down her back, not noticing that he's rocking a little back and forth on his heels. "I suppose the signs in the Magic Box could use refreshing too."

Buffy is always blaming things on Dawn. The broken vase, the last of the cookies... it's a sister thing. A sister thing of which Dawn is an innocent victim and not an active participant, of course. Or maybe they both do it. But regardless, that time was 100% Buffy's fault and always will be.

She gives herself just a few more moments of soaking the hug in-- Giles has been much missed since Buffy went all overreact-y about Faith; admittedly, Dawn is so very much not marching in the We Love Faith parade, but that doesn't mean she was happy with Buffy's grudge match-- because may be the least starched of the old school Council set, but there are still different rules for interaction. After the invisible 'this is how long Giles hugs can last without getting awkward' countdown ends, she sighs quietly and lets go, stepping away with the huge grin still stuck firmly in place.

"Dawn Summers and her massive collection of sparkly pens, reporting for duty."

Considering that depending on how you look at it, her father is either Hank Summers, secretary chaser and daughter abandoner extraordinaire, a bunch of monks, or Buffy, Dawn is really okay with the father-type feelings from Giles. And anyway, the Scoobies in general are kind of the very best example of how a non-nuclear family can be way better than the traditional definition. As far as she's concerned, Giles is the closest thing she has to a father and that's how she likes it.

Edited 2009-06-29 18:11 (UTC)

Giles is long past the point where he'll believe anything to do with 'Summers sister' and 'innocent' in the same sentence, but that's neither her nor there. He's just glad they're well past the Dawn stealing because she needs attention phase of things - a little 'she did it' isn't enough to bother him.

The hug ends just as he's worried about hurting Dawn's feelings by ending it first, and for that he's grateful. Hugs may be a rare thing in his life now, but they were almost unexistent before coming to Sunnydale some seven years ago, and he always feels as if he doesn't quite know the etiquette of when or how long or any of those things that seem to come natural for the others.

"Before the sparkly pens and all that we might want to see your sister and the rest. Your home is here, as it was before the... the battle." It's been some time since she's seen it, he thinks - she looks at least a year or two older then the girl he saw only hours before arriving in Taxon. "I've been... it's a rather full house at the moment. I've been staying in one of the rooms, and Buffy and Tara are in the others. Xander and a friend Dean are in the basement."

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001 [Holo]

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[location: Sanctuary]

[location: Sanctuary]

[location: Sanctuary]

[location: Sanctuary]

[location: Sanctuary]

[location: Sanctuary]

Re: [location: Sanctuary]