FIC: The Prophet - Part Five

[<djgirl1978@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for the lack of update - been out of town.
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Title: The Prophet
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: W/Other, W/Buffy (eventually)
Distribution: Please ask me first.
Feedback: Well, yeah! :)
Disclaimers: The usual. If you recognize them, they're not mine; if you don't recognize them, they are mine, but Joss & Co are welcome to them.
Summary: An old friend of Willow's comes back to Sunnydale and throws a wrench in things.
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It must have been a dream, because I was human. I was strolling down the main street of downtown Sunnydale, looking at shop windows. Willow was walking with me, chattering about something. The sunlight shone on her red hair and flashed off her bright smile. She was the light at the center of my universe.

"Well, well, look who's here, Dakota and Willow, come to look at things they either can't afford or haven't got the fashion sense to accessorize with."

"Oh, no," Willow whimpered. I looked at her, and the smile was gone. My world was darker for its loss.

"Don't worry," I whispered back. "I'll take care of her." I turned to face our tormentor. "Cordelia! Oh, and Harmony, too! How lovely to see bothof you," I exclaimed in a loud voice.

They looked at each other, startled, but I didn't give them a chance to react more than that. "Look," I continued, drawing them to one side and speaking loudly enough that some boys from our school who were sitting nearby turned to look. "I've been thinking really strongly about your offer, but I gotta tell you ladies, I'm flattered but I'm just not into the idea of a threesome. Not that I'd never do it, you know, but just that the thought of being in bed naked with the two of you is really rather repulsive. Sorry."

They were too dumbfounded to say anything as I turned then and, taking Willow by the hand, walked away. We could hear the laughter of the boys all the way down the street and into the bookstore. We fell, laughing, into thefloor behind the computer book rack.

"Oh, Dakota, that was great!" Willow exclaimed.

I just grinned. "I'd been looking for an opportunity to use that one," I told her. "I thought it up weeks ago." She was still holding my hand, her eyes bright on my face as I looked carefully around hers, and I took a deep breath. It had been tough not to exercise my talent on her, to find out how she would respond to what I wanted to tell her, but I had managed to do it. I wasn't going to use it on Willow. I would never ever do that to Willow. Not that it wouldn't make my job easier, but I just couldn't bring myself to invade her mind. So I took a deep breath. "Willow, I have something I want to tell you."

"Dakota, you know you can tell me anything."

I bit my lip and took my heart in my hands. "Willow, I - I love you."

She blinked at me for a second. "Well, I love you too, Dakota. You know that."

"No." I shook my head. "I mean I love you. Like love. Really love. Like the heart-pounding, violin-playing, ring-buying, real live love."

She seemed to stop breathing for a second, and then something changed in her face. Suddenly I could see something there that I'd never seen before. And she was smiling. "Dakota. I love you too," she whispered, just before she leaned forward and kissed me.

In the manner of dreams, when the kiss broke we were lying on her bed. I looked around the room at the clothing strewn everywhere - we hadn't been too careful when undressing each other - and knew when I was. Her parents were out of town, and I was staying with her to keep her company. We had declared our love to one another some three weeks previously and, alone in thehouse together, had found the pressure of hormones and young lust too muchto bear. One thing, as things tend to do, had led to another and here we were now, basking in mutual First Afterglow.

She snuggled closer to me. And she was asleep. And I just held her close,loving her so hard that I thought my heart would break with it. And I knew that no matter what happened, I would never let her go. In my dream, I fell asleep and then awoke to find her looking at me in wonder. "What's that look for?" I asked with a sleepy grin.

She smiled. "For you," she told me, kissing me quickly. "Because you're so awesome."

I grinned cheekily and winked. "Well, you know, I kind of figured from theway you were saying my name."

She poked me in the ribs and I squealed, ticklish. She followed her poke up with a full out tickle assault, which turned more into a wrestling match,which ended in another sweet kiss.

And again in the manner of dreams, when the kiss broke, we picked up our study things and tromped down the stairs. I said goodbye to her mother, who was standing in the kitchen, and we stepped out onto the front porch. The Sunday afternoon sun was sinking quickly and I wanted to get home before itwas gone. I could make it if I was quick.

I didn't know that they didn't need full dark. I didn't know that all theyneeded, really, was protection from the sun. I didn't know that the cool,dark place between Mrs. Bentz's house and her garage, blocked from the view of the street by thick azalea bushes, was enough of a safe place for them. So I wasn't careful enough. And then they had me, and Darla's voice waswhispering in my ear, and I was trying to scream, but there were teeth in my throat and I couldn't get enough air, and then - 

Then Darla's voice became Mercedes', begging me to wake up, and Darla's hands on my shoulders became Mercedes', shaking me hard in an effort to rouse me. I blinked at her for a few seconds before her fine little features came into focus, trying to remember where I was. Then I realized it was just room 112 at the Sunnydale HoJo, and I sighed. "Sorry, sweetie. Did I wakeyou?" I asked as she tumbled into the double bed beside me.

She shook her head. "Not really." I glanced over her at her own bed and saw that it was strewn with schoolbooks. "I couldn't really sleep," she explained, "so I figured I'd catch up a little bit. They're ahead of me on the science and the math by about two weeks." She snuggled closer to me. "What were you dreaming about?"

"When they made me a vampire," I told her, thinking it safe to tell her that part of it.

"Oh," she replied and then was silent for a moment. "Did it hurt?" she eventually asked, reaching up to turn off the light.

"Nah, not really," I said after some consideration. "It wasn't, you know, pleasant or anything, but after the actual bite itself, you don't really feel anything. Mostly you just get weaker and. well, I do remember being very cold."

"Your skin is cold," she murmured, laying a hand on my arm.

"I know," I told her. "Does it bother you?"

She shook her head. "Not really. It's just different. Tell me about it. When they made you. What happened?"

And I told it to her. Not really a suitable bedtime story for a seventh-grader, but I told her anyway. If she was going to be my sister, she had a right to know. I began with leaving Willow's house, and then told her how Darla had come out of Mrs. Bentz's azaleas at me, grabbing me before I really realized what she was doing and pulling me behind the bushes, where another vamp held me down while she drained me.  

I explained the Turning process to her, how the vampire drains you nearly dry, then replenishes you with his or her own blood. I told her that in most people, with the introduction of the demon into their body, that the soulis released and what is left is a demonically possessed shell, personalityintact but the person themselves ordinarily gone.

"But not you, huh?" she remarked. "I wonder why."

"Yeah. Me, too."

She yawned. "You like Willow."

"Well, yeah, she was my best friend, and - "

"No," she interrupted me. "I mean you like her."

"Oh." I paused. Honesty, eh? "Well, yeah," I finally admitted. "Yeah. I do like her."

She nodded. "Good. I do, too. She doesn't care that you're a vampire, and I don't either. So go for it."

I grinned. "Perhaps I will, at that," I told her, but she didn't hear me. She was asleep.

---*---

Giles and Buffy were sitting at the island in the Summers kitchen, seriously discussing their new vampire in town. "I just don't know how stable she is," Buffy was commenting.

"I'd say she's not very stable," Giles remarked. "She had me positively terrified during her little... ah. dissertation this afternoon."

"Yeah," Buffy agreed. "I definitely get the feeling that she's not playingwith a full deck. The big question is, how short, exactly, is she? One or two cards and she could be okay. If she's missing the entire suit of clubs, though, it could be cause for alarm."

"Yes," Giles said. "Certainly the fact that she has a soul and won't be gadding about indiscriminately draining innocents is a help, as we won't haveto watch her too closely. But what exactly are her criteria?"

"Yeah, I was wondering that, too," Buffy remarked. "I mean, sure, the guy she talked about today had it coming and a lot more besides. But how does she know these guys really do these things? I can't imagine he was bragging about it all around and she just happened to overhear. So what makes a bad guy, in the Dakota Dictionary?"

"The other concern I have about her is Willow."

"Yeah. Me too. She's got this girl's back, no matter what."

Giles nodded. "Xander's theory of friendship certainly makes sense. Afterall, look at how he responded when his friend Jesse was made a vampire. He gave Jesse many opportunities to prove that he hadn't become evil. I am simply concerned as to how big of a blind spot Willow may have. Will she recognize the fact if Dakota should go over the edge? Or will she staunchlydefend her friend to the death?"

Buffy grimaced. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that, shall we?"

---*---

Willow, upstairs, was trying to fall asleep and didn't know that Giles and Buffy were a floor below her, concerned with her loyalty. She had been through a long evening after Dakota's story, wondering just how much she was going to be able to relate to her friend with this new facet to her personality. Certainly she'd seemed the same old Dakota when they had been talkingthat afternoon, but this new vampire part of Dakota was someone Willow didn't know.

Willow thought back to the last time she'd seen her friend - no, say it Willow, lover - before Dakota had disappeared. And how badly she'd hurt when Dakota went missing and nobody could find her anywhere. How heartbroken she'd been that she didn't even get a phone call to tell her, "Hey, Will, it's been fun but I've gotta split now." It had been hard to heal.

Xander had been awesome, and Willow thought perhaps his caring, consideratereactions to her during that time had possibly been what drew her to fall in love with him when she had. But she knew now, through much trial and error, that she could never be completely happy with a guy. Xander, Oz, guys just weren't for her. And she'd just been about to prove it with the young girl from her Wicca group, Tara, when suddenly the first love of her life returned. Fortunately, she hadn't actually gone anywhere with the Tara angle yet, so if she decided not to, there wouldn't be any painful removal of herself from that relationship. She could simply stay on a friendship level with the other Wicca and nobody would be the wiser.

She sighed. And then there was Buffy. There were too many choices in life. And she fell asleep to dream of making love to Dakota for the first time. 

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~~Rainne
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Xander: This isn't new ground for us. When our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them.
Willow: Sitting right here!
Xander: I'm sorry. But it's true.
--Selfless - Buffy 7.05 --
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