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Both Sides Now	By : addielogan Category: BtVS AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 6136 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Reluctantly, Dawn decided she should discuss
the dreams she'd had with Giles. She didn't feel any better after waking that
morning�she felt worse. She kept replaying the dream with Summer over in her
head, trying to figure out what all it could mean. She had no doubt that it was
more than just a dream, and it had contained a warning of some sort of fight
that Dawn would be involved in. Dawn didn't think that cryptic messages given
in dreams by little girls who could possibly be your own unborn daughter were
the sort of things that usually led to hugs and puppies.
So hopefully, with a little help from the
Watchers, she could piece together what it had meant.
Dawn walked into Giles's office without
knocking and then came to an abrupt stop when she saw a man she didn't
recognize standing in front of the desk. His head was turned away from her so
she couldn't get a good look at his face, but the tight shirt he was wearing
did much to show off his well-muscled arms and back, and Dawn couldn't help but
pause for a moment to check him out. That was definitely one fine looking man�
She shook her head as she came to her senses
and realized that Giles wasn't in the office. "I'm sorry," she said
to the man. "I was looking for Giles, but I'll just come back later."
He turned towards her then and Dawn gasped
when she realized the man she was looking at now was not a stranger at all. She
fought to keep her knees from buckling, and it felt as if all the air had been
sucked from the room. "Andrew?" she finally managed to say, her voice
sounding small, even to her own ears.
Andrew crossed his arms over his chest and
regarded her coolly. "Hello, Dawn. It's been a long time."
Dawn didn't know what to say. So many
emotions were swirling inside of her as she saw him for the first time in three
years. Anger, hurt, confusion, elation� "When�when did you get back?"
she asked.
"This morning."
"Oh." Dawn looked at him as an
awkward silence filled the room. He seemed so different, so far from the unsure
young man she'd fallen in love with in Italy. No wonder she hadn't recognized
him at first.
Still, this was him, and she had to fight her initial urge to run to him and throw
her arms around him. She'd spent so many lonely nights missing the feel of him
holding her.
Instead, she looked him over, drinking in
the sight of him. Her gaze traveled up to his face, and she fought back a gasp
when she saw his eyes.
They
were exactly like Summer's�
What the girl had told her in the dream came
back to Dawn's mind, and she swallowed. Daddy's coming home soon�
Had Summer meant Andrew? Had her strange
feeling that week been telling her that he was coming back into her life, and
that he was really as important as the man who would someday father her
children?
Dawn wasn't sure how she felt about that,
how she felt about him. They'd had a
very short something�Dawn wasn't even sure now that she could call it a relationship�three years earlier, and it
was something that he had simply walked away from. He'd abandoned her and
turned his back on what they'd been starting together, and now the sting of
that was coming back to her with a vengeance. While part of her wanted nothing
more than to touch him again, another part of her wanted very much to scream at
him, to unload all the pain and anger his rejection had left her with.
She did neither. Instead, she cleared her
throat and stepped back towards the still-open door. "It was good to see
you again."
"You, too."
Andrew didn't ask her to stay, didn't even
seem the smallest bit affected by her presence, and Dawn decided that she could
take the hint. Clearly he'd moved on in the past three years. And of course, so
had she, so why did it even matter? She turned and walked out of the room,
telling herself with every step that he was just a guy she'd had a short thing
with in Rome, and that everything she was feeling now was only because seeing
him again like that had surprised her.
Dawn stopped outside of Emma's door and
rapped on it loudly until the other woman opened it, her sleepy eyes making it
clear that Dawn had woken her up. Normally, Dawn would've apologized for that,
but today she just pushed forward into the flat. "Gotta talk," she
said as she made her way over to the couch.
"Yeah, sure," Emma said, the look
on Dawn's face holding back any protests she may have had. "Just let me
get some caffeine. Want something?"
Dawn nodded, though with the way her hands
were trembling she wondered if maybe it wasn't the best idea. But when Emma
came back from her fridge and handed Dawn a soda, she took it and popped open
the top.
"So what's up?" Emma asked after
seating herself across from Dawn on the couch. "You look upset. Did you
have another dream?"
"Yeah, but that's only part of
it," Dawn said, her hands wrapped tightly around her drink. "Andrew's
here."
Emma frowned for a moment until recognition
hit her. "Oh, Andrew�that guy you told me about from Rome, right?"
"Yeah, him," Dawn said. "I
went to talk to Giles about the dreams and he was standing there in Giles's
office, and�" Dawn took a deep breath. "I have no idea what I'm
feeling right now. I mean, he just up and left three years ago, and that's
always lead to enough confusing feelings, but now here he is, back in London,
looking really damn good. He got all muscley�I didn't even recognize him at
first."
"So he's here and he's hot," Emma
replied. "Thinking about rekindling old flames?"
"No," Dawn said quickly, shaking
her head. "That whole thing is so over. Just seeing him like that
got me all shaken up. And, well, I had another weird dream last night that made
seeing him today even more disturbing."
Emma arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Yeah. I couldn't sleep so I went out
into the living room to see if I could find something boring on television. And
I must've because I started dreaming, though I didn't even realized I'd fallen
asleep. There was this little girl, and I think she was mine. She led me
down the hall and showed me a scene of me playing with her and there was a
little boy, too, and then she told me that daddy was coming home soon, but I
was going to have to fight for what she was showing me."
"That is weird," Emma said.
"She told you that 'daddy' was coming home? Her daddy? You said she felt
like she was yours�"
"I don't know. She wasn't abundantly
clear about anything."
"Do�do you think Andrew was who she was
talking about?" Emma asked.
"I thought about it, when I saw
him," Dawn admitted. "But I don't know. I mean, it's been three
years, Em. I certainly haven't been sitting around pining for him, and he
didn't seem like he wanted to pick back up where we left off�or even all that
happy to see me, for that matter. So babies in our future�probably not."
"So maybe Andrew coming back now is just
a coincidence," Emma said. She nudged Dawn's shoulder. "Maybe you're
about to meet someone else who's gonna be your baby daddy."
"Ha ha," Dawn replied, giving Emma
a cross between a dirty look and a smirk. "And maybe I was completely
wrong about Summer being mine. I mean, she had Andrew's eyes, so maybe she was
just his�"
Emma held up her hand. "Whoa. You left
out some important details in the retelling of this dream, Dawnie. The girl's
name was Summer and she had Andrew's eyes?"
Dawn looked a little sheepish. "Uh
huh."
"Are you positive they were his
eyes?"
Dawn nodded. "I recognized them last
night when Summer was looking up at me. They were so familiar, like I'd seen
them somewhere else before, but I couldn't place them. And then today I saw him
and he looked at me, and there they were�that exact same shade of blue."
Dawn sighed. "The dreams aren't always literal. I'm more concerned about
the part where I'm going to have to fight. Fight how? Like some sort of
personal struggle or a big battle, because to be honest, I'm really not in the
mood for either one."
"You'll figure it out," Emma said.
"And whatever it is, you won't have to face it alone. I've got your back,
just like always."
"I know. Which is a big part of why
you're the best friend ever," Dawn said, managing a small smile.
"But I hate all this. I mean, what's the point of having prophetic dreams
if they're going to be so cryptic all the time? It doesn't really help. All it
does is make me go 'oh shit, this is what it was talking about"
while I'm in the middle of getting my ass kicked."
"Yeah, I can see where that would be
less than helpful," Emma said with a frown. "Oooh�maybe you could buy
a dream dictionary."
"Do they have ones for prophetic dreams
from mystical interdimensional energy sources?"
"Um, probably not. Damn."
Dawn took a sip of her drink, letting the
room be silent for a moment before she spoke again. "I was hoping the
Watchers could help me, but I'm not so sure about telling Giles anymore.
Andrew's a Watcher, and at one point I know he was pretty much Giles's second
in command. I don't know if that's still the case, and I'm sure if I told Giles
not to tell Andrew anything about the dreams I've been having that he'd respect
that, but at the same time�"
"There's too much of a connection?"
Emma offered.
"Exactly." Dawn sighed heavily.
"So I guess it's back to square one. Crazy Key dreams with no idea how to
piece them together. My favorite thing in the whole wide world."
"It'll be all right," Emma said.
"Whatever happens will happen, and we'll deal with it�same way we always
do. How about for now I go raid the public kitchen, steal their junk food, and
we eat it all and watch bad movies, hmm?"
Dawn grinned a little. "I like that
plan."
"Knew you would. Now just give me a
minute to change my clothes, and Operation: Kitchen Raid will commence."

***
*** ***
As soon as Dawn was out of the room, Andrew
had had to reach out and steady himself on the edge of the desk. He'd known
that coming back to London would most likely mean running into her since it had
been where she'd been heading off to the last time they'd seen each other, but
he hadn't expected it so soon. She'd caught him completely off his guard when
she'd walked into Giles's office the way she had, and it had been all Andrew
could do to keep his emotions in check.
Still, he had. Three years facing one living
nightmare after the next in a string of hell dimensions had taught him how to
keep a lid on his emotions at the very least. There were so many reasons for
him not to respond to seeing Dawn again the way he'd wanted to, and he'd kept
himself mindful of those.
But it hadn't been easy. She was even more
beautiful than he'd remembered, the last bit of childhood gone from her
appearance, leaving in its wake an absolutely stunning woman. She was even more
out of his league than she'd been in Rome, and even just a moment with her had
made Andrew painfully aware of that. Guys like him didn't get girls like
that�not even in the movies. He'd seen enough Molly Ringwald 80's movies to
know that the geek with the long-standing crush was always let down gently in
favor of someone better looking, with more to offer.
Not that it really mattered�not anymore.
Whatever had happened between him and Dawn was well in the past, and she
probably cringed every time she thought about it. Andrew was sure she was
disgusted with herself for sinking as low as she had with him. She certainly
hadn't seemed like she'd wanted to stay once she'd found him in there instead
of Giles. She'd all but run down the hall�
Andrew heard Giles come into the room, and
he pushed himself fully upright again as he drove thoughts of Dawn from his
mind.

***
*** ***
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