Title: Mom, Buffy Said Hellmouth!

Author: Jeanny

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Season 5 kinda

Distribution: I don't mind, just credit me and let me know where it's going.

Feedback: Please. jeannygrrl@hotmail.com

Summary: Welcome to the Hellmouth in the Dawnverse.

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all the characters that appear on the show are the exclusive property of Joss Whedon, Fox, Mutant Enemy, Inc., UPN and any one else with a legal binding claim to the shows and/or characters. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is an alternative retelling of “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest”, both written by Joss Whedon. A lot of the dialogue and plot are his, just twisted a bit by little ole me.

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The jeep pulled up to the school building, and the women inside gazed at it for a moment. Everything was new to them here. Everything they had known before was gone, changed, different. They were charting new territory with every step.

Joyce Summers smiled back at her daughter Buffy tentatively, nodding towards the school.

"Okay." Buffy opened the rear door and exited on the side closest to the school. Her mother leaned across the front seat to talk to her.

"Have a good time. I know you're going to make friends right away, just think positive."

"And don't burn down the gym!" the ten-year-old girl seated next to Joyce piped in, a smug look on her face. Buffy looked at her mother with the expression of indignation only a sixteen-year-old can manage.

"Mom, tell her to stop talking about that!" Joyce sighed, giving Dawn a reprimanding look.

"Dawn, we've talked about this a hundred times. Your sister is a Slayer, and that occasionally means that she might have to do things that are...unconventional."

"More like criminal," Dawn muttered under her breath. Joyce and Buffy both glared at her.

"You are not to tease or make fun of her about this anymore, Dawn. It's bad enough that she's a..." At the hurt expression on Buffy's face, Joyce quickly shifted gears. "Buffy has a sacred duty to slay vampires, and that's burden enough without you making it worse. Apologize to your sister, right now." Dawn looked at her sister, and knowing her mother couldn't see from her current angle, stuck her tongue out at her.

"Sorry, Buffy, for reminding you of how you got kicked out of school for being a pyro...to kill vampires," she finished sulkily at Joyce's gentle nudge. Buffy's expression said that wasn't really good enough, but Joyce knew that was the best she'd be able to manage. For not the first time that morning she mentally cursed her ex-husband and his narrow-mindedness. Looking at her watch, she sighed again.

" I have to get your sister to school. Buffy, just for today...try not to slay anything, all right?"

"I promise." Buffy squared her shoulders and marched towards the school, her mother giving her one last wistful glance before glaring at her youngest and driving away. Dawn stared gloomily out the window.

*Sure, not only do I have to move to stupid Suckydale, lose all my friends, lose my Dad and everything, all because Buffy had to go all commando and get herself kicked out of school, but I have to watch that her precious Slayer feelings don't get hurt. God, how much does my life suck right now. And I can't even tell anyone because it's supposed to be some sort of mega-huge secret. Like anyone would really care about her precious vampires, anyway, that Anne Rice thing is so over.* Dawn's bitter mental diatribe continued all the way to the new elementary school.

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Buffy hadn't seen Joyce when she got home, which was good. She pretty much dreaded telling her Mom about her school day. On the plus side, she was fairly sure she had made some new friends. Willow, though painfully lacking even a shred of self-esteem, was really smart and kind; Buffy could just tell she was a good person to know. Willow's friends Xander and Jesse had been sweet and funny, too. Cordelia had been nice to Buffy, but she was the type of girl she had been friends with at Hemery, and Buffy knew that the weirdness that went along with being the Slayer would keep her from ever being part of the popular crowd again. The twinge of regret that that thought brought her was surprisingly slight. Those girls seemed incredibly shallow and self-serving to her now.

And there was the neutral part, which was the new Watcher, Rupert Giles. Willow had been very enthusiastic about the guy, but Buffy wasn't so sure. Merrick had been her Watcher, and had trained her and had died for her, and she really didn't want to go through that again. But it was nice to know that maybe she wasn't all alone. Slaying was so lonely. Maybe this Giles guy was okay; maybe he could help her.

And then there was the 'it's an understatement to call this negative' part of her day: dead boy in locker, definitely attacked by a vamp. She knew that her mother had been hoping that the vampires would be left in Los Angeles along with her father and the bad memories attached to both. Buffy now knew that was not to be, and she would be slaying tonight. As well as dancing at the Bronze, which was why she was busy trying to find an outfit that would work for both. She held up a shiny black outfit, grimacing.

"Hi, I'm an enormous slut!" Buffy mocked to her mirror.

"You said it, not me." Buffy whirled at the unwelcome voice, which was attached to pint-sized unwelcome visitor. She took a deep breath for maximum shouting volume.

"MOM! Tell Dawn to stay OUT of my room, please!!!"

"I didn't do anything! Tell Buffy to quit being mean to me!"

"Get out of here, you little brat!"

"What are you gonna do, SLAY me?" Before Buffy could reply, Joyce appeared in the doorway, looking frazzled.

"Girls, stop this shouting right now!" The sisters were instantly quiet, but still glared at each other. Joyce turned to her youngest first. "Dawn, go to your room."

"But Mom, Buffy-" Dawn began to whine

"Room. Now." Dawn stalked out, giving one last bitter look to her sister. Buffy stuck her tongue out at her, which Joyce unfortunately saw. Avoiding her mother's look of disappointment and hoping to delay the impending lecture, Buffy replaced the dresses she had been looking at in her closet.

"Are you going out tonight?" her mother asked, her tone somehow managing to be light and grave. Buffy knew the real question she was asking was if she was going to go seek out vampires, but chose to pretend otherwise.

"Yeah, I'm going to a club."

"Oh. Will there be boys there?" The normalcy of this mother-daughter interaction was both comforting and painful for Joyce. At moments like this she could pretend that the only thing her daughter was Chosen for was to get into an Ivy League college. Buffy rolled her eyes at her mother.

"No, Mom. It's a nun club." Joyce nodded slowly.

"Well, be careful." Again with the double meaning. Buffy knew the time to tell her mother about Rupert Giles and the dead boy was now, but she didn't think she'd be able to do it. She opened her mouth to speak, when a loud crashing sound came from the other room, followed by a high pitched voice.

"I didn't do it." Buffy raised her eyebrows and gave her mother her patented 'you gave birth to that' look. Joyce closed her eyes for a second wearily, then walked out of the room. Buffy flopped onto her bed. *Saved by the walking disaster.*

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Dawn could hear her mother pacing the hall and sighed again. Didn't Buffy get what she was doing to their family? They had to move to this stupid town, which apparently is vampire central, and none of them ever got any sleep anymore. Typical of Buffy to make them all worry like this.

*She probably isn't even slaying. She probably just found some boys and she's...ewww, I'm not even having that thought.* Dawn blinked up at the dark ceiling, using her annoyance to blunt the fear that even now had her body covered in a thin sheen of perspiration. The fear that kept her awake and haunted her dreams when she slept. That one of these nights Buffy wouldn't come home. That tonight was that night.

She pretended she wasn't almost faint with relief when she heard her mother call her sister's name and heard her sister's voice respond. After the initial greeting their voices were too hushed for her to hear. She was about to go to the top of the stairs to eavesdrop when she heard Buffy stomping up the stairs, her mother calling her name plaintively after her. She planned on pretending to be asleep, but the need to make sure that her sister was really here was overwhelming. Anything to make that anxiety go away for awhile, make it small enough that she could pretend it didn‘t even exist.

"Dad called," she called out as Buffy passed her door. She heard her sister stop, then heard the footsteps coming closer. She looked up and saw Buffy silloutted in the light shining from the hall, creating a halo effect all around her. Dawn thought she looked like something that came from another world, something not even real.

“When?” Buffy asked, her voice raw with emotion. Dawn pretended not to notice that too.

“Tonight. After you left.”

“Oh. How did he sound?” Buffy asked, trying to sound casually interested. Dawn shrugged, the blanket falling from her shoulders.

“Like Dad,” she answered softly. As Buffy spoke again she came into the room, sitting on the edge of the bed but not turning on the light. This was due to some unspoken sisterly agreement that neither of them even realized they had. Some tacit acknowledgement that this conversation, like similar ones on nights past and since, were not for their mother’s ears.

“Did he ask about me?” Buffy asked, for a moment sounding younger than her sister. Dawn felt a small wave of sympathy, quickly overridden by her anger at the memory.

“Mom told him you were out. And then there was yelling. You know, the usual,” she finished accusingly. Buffy looked away, putting her hand up to her face.

“Oh,” responded Buffy. To Dawn’s alarm, she realized her sister was crying. A wave of guilt passed over her.

“Buffy, are you okay?” she asked, her voice cracking. Buffy looked at her and tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Sure...no...I don’t know,” she admitted, the tears flowing more freely and becoming sobs. Dawn sat upright in bed, not sure of what she should do. “I just...I was making new friends, you know? And now there are more vampires and one of my new...well, we weren’t really friends yet, but we were kinda getting there...I think....I don’t know, maybe I just can‘t. God, it sucks so much.” Dawn found herself completely flummoxed by the nearly incomprehensible babble coming from her sister. There were only a few times since she found out about the Slayer thing that she’d seen her sister so upset, and all of those times really bad things had happened. Not to Buffy, but to other people. An upset Buffy scared Dawn more than just about anything.

“Buffy, what happened?” she asked, her voice trembling with worry.

“He was taken. Jesse. The vampires took him and I couldn’t save him,” Buffy said. Dawn didn’t know who Jesse was, but she understood what Buffy was saying.

“Is he...?” she began, swallowing hard and unable to say the word ‘dead’. Buffy looked at her through red-rimmed eyes. Her sobs had subsided, and now she just seemed empty.

“I don’t know,” she answered. Dawn nodded, then gave her sister a small punch in the arm.

“Then he could be okay, right? And you’ll save him tomorrow,” she said brightly. Buffy smiled at her sister’s innocent faith.

“You think?” she sniffled, and Dawn nodded, her smile faltering.

“Of course...Buffy?” she said, her tone serious again.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever...?” Again Dawn found herself unable to finish the sentence; again her sister knew what she was trying to say.

“I miss him too, Dawn. All the time. I wish things were different, but I can’t change this. Can you understand that?” The last came out in a pleading tone. Dawn wanted to tell Buffy it was okay, that she did understand, that it wasn’t her fault. But a larger part of her was too irate about everything that had happened, demanded that someone had to take the blame. If not Buffy, then who? She lay back down and turned her back on her sister, pulling the blanket back up to her chin. Resentment made her suddenly cold.

“I guess. Good night, Buffy,” she said. She could feel Buffy watching her for a while, then the weight on the bed shifted and she heard the steps to the door.

“Good night,” her sister whispered, closing the door behind her. None of the Summers women got much in the way of sleep that night, each lost in their own litany of anger, hurt and regret.

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