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Part XXI
Jack brought up the rear of their little procession, holding his end of
a trunk, following Cassie and Andrew up the stairs, and down the hall in
one of the dorms of Cambridge's Queens' College. Andrew got off light in
this detail, carrying only one of Cassie's suitcases. He was checking
the numbers on doors as they moved down the hall.
"Here it is," he said, stopping in front of one of them. He knocked on
the door, and waited for a moment to see if anyone would answer, before
he started trying to fish the key Cassie had given him out of his
pocket.
The door opened before he could find it. Jack heard a high pitched
shriek of "Andrew!" which he was sure wasn't far off what was required
to shatter glass. "It's good to see you again! It's been too long." Arms
reached out to grab Andrew, and drag him into the room.
Jack followed Cassie through the door, and saw Andrew enveloped in the
hug of a tall, dark haired girl. She let go of him after a few seconds,
and stepped back to take a better look at him. "You're looking good!
You're even looking a little buff! How've you been?"
"I've been good," said Andrew. "You're not looking bad yourself."
Jack couldn't help but agree with Andrew, as he set his end of the trunk
down on the floor: she did look good, and his teenaged body was reacting
to her the way it did to just about any pretty girl, these days. You'd
think that spending a few months surrounded by nubile young women in
Cleveland would have inured him to their influence, but it seemed to
have had the opposite effect.
The girl smiled at Andrew. "I spent the summer traipsing around China
after Buffy. I got lots of exercise."
"Did you see the Great Wall?" asked Andrew.
"Yep, and the Forbidden City, and the Terracotta Warriors, and a lot of
places that regular tourists don't get to see. China's got some weird
demons." She looked toward Jack and Cassie, and smiled. "So, are you
going to introduce me to your friends?"
"Oh!" Andrew looked embarrassed. "Dawn Summers, these are Jack O'Neill,
and Cassie Fraiser. I guess that Cassie is going to be your roommate for
the year."
Dawn held out her hand. "Hey Cassie, good to meet you in the flesh."
They shook hands, and then Dawn turned to Jack. "Hi, Jack." She smiled
at him.
Jack silently cursed his hormones, and rubbed his suddenly sweating palm
against the seam of his thankfully loose pants before he shook her
offered hand. "Hello Dawn."
"So, are you guys here for the Linguistics program?" asked Dawn.
"I am," said Jack. "Cassie's here for the Physics."
Dawn shuddered. "Gyah! Science!"
"You don't like science?" asked Cassie.
"I don't like anything that has too much math in it." Dawn turned back
to Jack. "So, Linguistics?"
Jack shrugged. "I've been around, I'm good with languages." And he had
spent much too long hanging around with Daniel.
"What do you speak?" asked Dawn.
"Nothing well," said Jack, "but I can get by in Arabic, Farsi, and
German. I've also picked up a little Latin, and learned to read some
Egyptian hieroglyphics along the way."
"That's an interesting mix."
Jack shrugged again. "Air Force brat. I spent a lot of time kicking
around Europe and the Middle East. How about you?"
"I can read Sumerian, and Turkish," said Dawn. "I learned Italian last
year, and I picked up some Mandarin and Cantonese this summer."
"Sumerian?" asked Jack. Even Daniel wasn't very good with that one.
"Yeah, it's amazing how many ancient dark rituals are recorded in
Sumerian. So, is that all of Cassie's stuff?"
"Oh no!"said Andrew. "This is just the first load."
---
Dawn helped them get the rest of Cassie's stuff, and to move Jack and
Andrew's things up to the set that they would be sharing. Once
everything had been moved to their rooms from the van that the Council
had loaned them, she took them to a pub that she had discovered the day
before, after she had arrived herself. It wasn't very crowded:
international students started a week earlier than most of the others at
Cambridge, to give them a chance to get oriented. Most students still
hadn't returned from their summer holidays.
They found an open table for themselves, and took seats around it.
"Since we're in a civilized country, does anyone else want a beer?"
asked Jack.
"Yeah, sure," said Dawn. She'd had wine a few times while she and Buffy
had been living in Rome, but she hadn't had much experience with beer,
yet. Xander had told her the story of Buffy's first encounter with the
beverage--which she had no intention of repeating--but she figured that
a glass or two wouldn't hurt.
Cassie and Andrew opted for the beer as well, so Jack ordered a pitcher
for all of them. They spent the first little while with Dawn and Andrew
catching each other up on what they, and the other Sunnydale survivors,
had been up to over the last few months. Jack and Cassie weren't left
out of the conversation, since they had come to know some of the
survivors themselves, and had seen many of them more recently than Dawn
had.
A second pitcher of beer broadened the subjects under discussion. One of
them was politics, and the recently announced "resignation" of Vice
President Robert Kinsey for "personal reasons." Dawn knew that there was
more to it than that, but she had no idea what. The Council's sources
had told them that Kinsey had done something a few months back that had
seriously pissed off President Hayes, but it had taken a while for his
fall from grace to be made public knowledge.
Dawn was surprised by the delight that Jack took in the news. He even
raised his glass in a toast. "May he rot in hell!"
"Wasn't your cousin accused of shooting him, a while back?" she asked.
"Back when Kinsey was still just a Senator?"
She saw Cassie shoot an indecipherable look Jack's way, but he just
grinned. "Yeah, but I knew he didn't do it. If Jack had tried to kill
Kinsey, he'd be dead. Too bad, it might have saved some grief, if he'd
really done it."
"Didn't hurt your cousin's career any," said Dawn.
"I still haven't figured out what they were thinking. There's no way
anyone in their right minds would have made him a general."
"Xander and Faith seemed to like him."
"They did?" asked Jack. "They never gave me that impression. Seems to me
that he kept trying to toss them into a cell."
"Yeah, but he was doing it because he thought he was protecting Cassie
from a couple of lunatic stalker types," said Dawn. "That impressed
them."
"We take care of family," said Jack. "Ever since we-- Jack rescued her
from that plane wreck, Cassie's been family."
Dawn didn't miss Jack's slip. He counted himself among the people who
had rescued Cassie, but she didn't know how that could be. He couldn't
have been more than twelve himself when that--or whatever had really
happened to her parents--had happened.
Willow had done more digging into Cassie and Jack's histories, and she
had uncovered nothing but dead ends. She had constructed enough fake
histories for people over the last year to recognize the signs when she
saw them. Neither of their official histories were true.
Dawn suppressed a laugh. <em>No one</em> seated around this table had a
truthful official history. She certainly wasn't in any position to
criticize anyone else over modifications to their records. She was
pretty sure that at least Cassie and Jack couldn't claim that anyone's
memories had been changed to support the fiction of their pasts. Even
Andrew had had a few important incidents--like an attempted armoured car
robbery--wiped from his record.
She saw Jack giving her a curious look, and she realized that her
expression really didn't suit the serious turn their discussion had
taken. "Sorry," she said. "I just got started thinking about family. I
mean real family...the sort you make, not the sort you're related to."
Andrew raised his glass "To family."
Everyone picked up a glass, and they all clinked together over the
centre of the table. "Family!"
---
Classes at Cambridge took up most of Dawn's time. She shared a lot of
them with Jack, since they were both in the linguistics program, but she
was studying Middle Eastern languages, while Jack was specializing on
Nordic and and Celtic. Cassie and Andrew were both following science
tracks, but they were all sharing one practical archaeology course.
Outside of classes, there were a lot of other activities for students.
There were clubs for people interested in almost every sport imaginable,
and for every other sort of activity. Jack had joined the school hockey
team, and Andrew was deeply involved in the role playing gaming club.
Dawn had joined the fencing and jujutsu clubs.
Jack was a member of the school's aviation club. It took a little time
to process the paper work to get all of his FAA qualifications
transferred, but once the red tape was all cut through, he was a fully
qualified instructor pilot. Dawn added that bit of information to the
growing mystery that was Jack O'Neill. She found out that he'd added his
instructor's qualification to his airman's certificate while he was
still in Cleveland, and that a bunch of the Slayers there had taken
lessons from him, but he was still one of the youngest qualified
instructors in the world.
Dawn had joined the aviation club too. Partially because she had always
wanted to learn how to fly, and partially to try to learn more about
Jack, both professionally and personally.
On the professional level, there was the ongoing mystery of just who
Jack O'Neill was, and how he had come to acquire his many talents.
On the personal level, Dawn couldn't help but feel attracted to Jack. He
was a really cute guy who treated her with respect. His sense of humour
reminded her of Xander, and she knew from the story Cassie told of their
encounter with vampires in Colorado, and the test that they had run with
him against Angel, that he had Xander's courage too. Xander was her gold
standard for any guy, and she knew that if she'd been a few years older,
she would have given Faith some serious competition, but their age
difference had firmly fixed her and Xander into an older brother/kid
sister sort of relationship, despite her earlier crush on him.
But Jack was her own age. He wasn't six years older than her, like
Xander was.
And she liked the flying.
She liked soaring above the English countryside, her hands on the
controls of the plane, feeling the power of the engine, and the air
currents buffeting her wings. She liked being in control of the plane.
Right from the start, the first time they had sat in the cockpit
together--after hours of ground school--Jack had let her take off. He'd
sat there beside her, guiding her, but it had been <em>her</em> hands on
the controls, flying the airplane. He had trusted her to do it right.
She knew that he had been there, watching over her, ready to take over
if the need arose, but it hadn't happened. <em>She</em> had flown the
airplane.
Another thing she liked about flying was that it let her spend a lot of
time with Jack.
Dawn loved her sister, but when you got right down to it, Buffy had some
flaws. One of them was that she had a tough time letting go. Sure, when
the chips were down, when the shit was hitting the fan, when it was do
or die, Buffy would let Dawn stand on her own, let her look out for
herself, but in the intervening times she was always there, always
stepping in to take over.
Jack was different. He was there to back her up. He was ready to take
over if she made a mistake, but he was willing to let her make the
mistake first.
She knew that Jack was just as interested in her, as she was in him.
She'd seen the way he looked at her in some of his rare, unguarded
moments. And then he'd catch himself, and the look would go away, and he
would seem to berate himself for it, like he thought that she was off
limits, or something.
<em>She</em> certainly hadn't done anything to discourage his interest.
She'd done just about everything she could think of to encourage it. She
was sure that she was giving him all the right signals, but he wasn't
responding to any of them. If this went on much longer, she just might
have to pull an Anya.
---
Jack didn't know what he was thinking. He was thirty years older than
her! Okay, fine, anyone who looked at them might actually think that she
was older than he was, but come on! He knew the truth! He was fifty, and
she was barely eighteen.
She did seem to be mature for her age, though. If you defined an adult
as someone who knew that death waited for everyone, she qualified. She
had lived through the death of her mother. She'd had friends who had
died. She had seen her sister die, and be resurrected. (And here he'd
thought that Daniel was the only one who'd managed that trick since
about 30 AD.) Dawn Summers had seen more death than most SGC veterans.
But she was still a teenager! He shouldn't be feeling this way about her!
---
Cambridge was nearly as dead, for the undead, as Colorado Springs had
been. The Council had had a presence in the town for centuries, which
kept the worst of the demonic world away. Since the old Council hadn't
always distinguished between the evil, and not-evil demons, there was
also a lack of other supernatural creatures in the neighbourhood.
There was some supernatural activity though. An ancient coven of witches
made the town their home. A few other creatures had gravitated to the
area in the last couple of years. There were a dozen Slayers attending
the university, and they acted as a potent repellant to the nastier
demonic species, and made it more attractive to some of the peaceful
ones.
There were enough Slayers that they could split up the patrolling
duties. Cassie usually only went out one night a week, with one of the
other Slayers, or Watchers for company. She enjoyed exploring the back
corners of the ancient town, wandering through its cemeteries, reading
the markers left behind for people who had died before Columbus had
sailed for America. Usually she found it restful.
Not tonight. If there were any evil demons about, they would have heard
them coming blocks away.
"What is <em>wrong</em> with him?" asked Dawn, kicking an empty pop can,
that clattered away down the alley they were in.
Cassie had been watching Jack and Dawn dance around each other for
weeks, and she knew what Dawn was talking about, but she feigned
innocence. "Wrong with who? Or should that be whom?"
"Whom," said Dawn. "And you know perfectly well which whom I am talking
about: Jack. I know he likes me. Everyone--even Andrew--agrees that he's
not gay. I've done everything short of jumping him, but he doesn't
<em>do</em> anything!"
Cassie knew what Jack's problem was--and to a certain degree, she
sympathized with it--but unless he wanted to get picked up by some
cougar, there was no way he was going to find himself a girl 'his own
age.' "So, why don't you?" she asked.
"Don't I what?" asked Dawn.
"Jump him," said Cassie. "I do know what his problem is, and frankly, I
think that he needs to get over it."
They'd caught up with the can, and Dawn kicked it again. "What
<em>is</em> his problem?"
"Sorry," said Cassie. "That's for him to tell you, if he ever decides
to. It's not up to me."
---
Dawn was still trying to decide whether or not to jump Jack the next
Saturday night, though not at just that moment. They were all together
in her and Cassie's set, playing a friendly game of poker. She took a
card from her hand, and laid it face down on the table in front of her.
"I'll take one."
Andrew dealt out a card to her. "One for the lady."
Dawn picked up the card, and placed it into her hand, being careful not
to give any sign whether it made her hand any better. Rather that
fiddling with her cards, the way Cassie was, she set her hand back face
down on the table. She tried not to give any sign of what sort of hand
she might have.
Andrew looked at the player next to her. "Jack?"
"I'll stand pat," said Jack, in the same confident tone of voice that he
always used when playing poker, no matter what sort of hand he had.
Whatever Jack's tells might be, Dawn hadn't learned them yet. He might
have a great hand, or nothing but crap. She didn't know.
"Cassie?" asked Andrew.
"Three," said Cassie, as Dawn had already known she would from the way
she had kept arranging and rearranging the cards in her hand.
Andrew gave Cassie her three cards, and the look of disgust on Cassie's
face made it plain to everyone--even Andrew--that she still had nothing.
"And the dealer takes two," said Andrew, laying aside a pair of cards
and taking two more for himself. His poker face was better than
Cassie's, but Dawn knew that he wasn't happy with what he had picked up.
Dawn had started this round with two pairs, kings and tens, and she had
just picked up another ten, giving her a full house. She tossed a coin
into the growing pot in the middle of the table. "50p."
Jack smiled at her. "Ooh, big spender." He pushed a one pound coin out
into the pot. "I'll see your 50, and raise you 50."
"Cassie?" asked Andrew.
Cassie tossed her cards onto the table. "I'm out."
Andrew sat and thought for a bit, and then tossed a one pound coin of
his own into the pot. "I'm in. 50p to you," he told Dawn.
Dawn was a little surprised by that, but she was pretty sure she kept it
off her face. Andrew couldn't bluff worth a damn, she knew he had
nothing. The thing was that <em>he</em> didn't know that she knew, and
she was pretty sure that Jack knew as well. It didn't matter, whatever
Andrew did had no effect on what her next move was.
Dawn tossed another 50p coin into the pot, and then followed it up with
two more pounds.
Jack considered her for a moment, and then pushed everything he had,
about 20 pounds, into the pot. "I'm all in."
Andrew tossed his cards onto the table. "I'm out."
'He has to be bluffing,' thought Dawn. He'd sat pat, the whole hand. The
chance of him having been dealt something better than her full house was
tiny.
But they'd been playing for a while. That tiny per-hand chance did
happen. He could have been dealt it, this time, or maybe he just had
something that he thought was good enough. Even if he knew she had a
good hand, he couldn't know <em>how</em> good.
She looked at Jack carefully. She still hadn't been able to spot his
tells. Everyone had tells. Something that gave away when they thought
they had a winning hand, and when they were bluffing. Dawn had learned
to play poker from Spike, and he had taught her how to spot tells in
others, and in herself. He had identified tell after tell in her, and
schooled her to suppress them.
But for every tell you suppressed, there was another: sometimes more
subtle and harder to see, but they were always there. Dawn knew that,
and she knew that Jack knew too. She was also pretty sure that Jack knew
what her tells were, and she hadn't figured his out yet.
So Jack knew she had a good hand. The question was: was his better?
She looked at Jack. He was looking like he always looked when he played
poker: confident. Even if he had nothing, he had the same look. Seven
high crap, or a royal flush, he looked the same. She wondered again how
someone her own age, who hadn't grown up on the Hellmouth with a vampire
as a tutor, could have such poise.
There was only one thing to do. The odds really were in her favour. "I
call." She laid her hand, face up, down on the table.
She still couldn't read Jack as he started to lay down his own cards.
There was a sudden flash of light, and she was somewhere else. She,
Andrew, Jack and Cassie were standing on a platform, surrounded on three
sides by windows looking out over...
Dawn's mouth dropped open. She could see the Earth below her, blue and
green, with white swirls of clouds. Above her was a black sky, blacker
than any night sky she had ever seen.
"Oh, for crying out loud!" said Jack.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
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