all_inclusive | Like shadows in the faded light, we're invisible.

Entry tags:

Like shadows in the faded light, we're invisible.

As if not being home wasn't bad enough, Dawn has been getting sicker and sicker by the day. She'd barely even been out of bed in a week. This morning she had rolled out of bed feeling just a little bit better after having slept for twenty-four hours straight. She had shuffled her way through a shower that only added to her feeling better. Wearing a white tank top with a purple glittered star on it and some purple pajama pants, she combed through the tangles in her hair and picked up a blow dryer to start working the heat through her hair. Today would be a straight hair sort of day, no curls because she didn't have the energy for it. As her hair dried, the steam slowly filtered away from the mirror, giving her a better image of herself in the reflection.

She dropped the blow dryer. Blinked. Looked again. Blinked again. Squinted her eyes. How could she see things behind her? Through herself? She looked behind her, just to check and make sure that she was seeing what was behind her through herself. Then she looked back to the mirror. She lifted her hand, seeing the bathroom counter through it. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her chest. So loud that she swore she could feel it throughout her entire body inside and out.

And this is what had her barreling barefoot through the hotel hallways looking for Buffy or Angel or Peter or yes, even Faith who had no idea who she was. The ghostly see-through girl calling out as she ran from one place to another until she couldn't run anymore. "Buffy?" Each time she rounded a corner or hit a new floor or corridor of the hotel she called out. "Buffy!" She might run into people and apologize before she hurried on her way to find her sister. Or she might stop to talk if anyone wanted to.

Eventually, tired and spent, she would end up plopping down on one of the couches in the lobby, a box of kleenex beside her and a book in her lap. The couch could be seen through her and every once in awhile she lifted her hand to look through it at things, trying to gauge whether it was getting better or worse. Her eyes were puffy from crying. Her nose was red from sniffling. She was generally a train wreck of a person right now. But she figured anyone would be if they were slowly disappearing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, I'm kind of... not supposed to exist." She adds quickly after that. "And not supposed to talk about it so sayeth my sister. You know, just in case any evil lawyers wanna destroy the world. It happens."

If he were part of the Scooby gang, he'd likely utter something along the lines of 'who's-a-what-now?'. But he's not, so he says, "Come again?"

He's starting to wonder if he's not losing it.

"Of course," he says of her not talking about her existance that shouldn't, "who would believe a story like that?"

He's not exactly sure what to do with any of this information.

"It's kind of ridiculous right?" She answers in response to who would believe such a thing. She even goes so far as to smirk. She remembers the time Buffy got injected with a toxin that had made her believe she was crazy, that her entire life had been made up, including Dawn. Easy to believe for normal people who had no experience in the subject.

"You won't tell anyone?" She asks him.

He draws out his phone (that doesn't actually work here) and feigns sending a text message.

"I'm renting a billboard on Times Square right now," he says, poker face fully in place.

For a brief moment she looks shocked, then pissed off. And then finally realization hits her and a sardonic sort of expression settles in place. "Joking in the face of terrible things, I like you." It was a trait that almost everyone she knew had, actually.

Now he feeds her a self-satisfied smirk.

"I'd tell you that no one would believe me, but since I'm standing in what is apparently a 'magic' hotel and I travelled around in a British police box with a strange man who claimed to be able to go anywhere in space and time, someone here probably would." He puts his phone away.

"If you give me five bucks, I'll call myself your attorney, then it's priviledged." Usually his retainer is more in the ten-grand range, but a girl who's almost invisible and only about nineteen, probably doesn't have ten-grand just lurking in her pockets.

"You met the Doctor and traveled in the TARDIS? He is so cool..." Look at her, momentarily forgetting her troubles and geeking out much in the same way she would over Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

But right, money. That thing she only has a tiny bit of. She's in her pajamas though. "Well you can come with me back to my room and I have some money." She starts back toward the rooms she shares with her sister. "Although I might pay you from Buffy's stash cause... I use her stuff all the time." And she might need five bucks someday.

His eyebrows go up at her reaction to his trip to the year of whenever. He'd honestly been too stunned at most of what he'd seen to do a lot of 'fan' geeking.

He grins a little when she says she'll take the money from her sister. He does follow as she goes.

"Are you sure you don't have any idea how this happened to you?"

"I just got out of the shower and looking in the mirror." Dawn explains as they walk up the stairs to the top floor. "There are few things more creepy than watching the shower steam go away and noticing you're not foggy and can actually see the room behind you through you in your reflection. At first I thought wacky mirror hyjinks but that was just... wishful thinking."

"I don't think water causes invisibility," he says. Then adds, "Or see-through-ed-ness." Though he is sure the latter isn't actually a word.

He is beginning to think he should investigate the hotel a bit more. He doesn't have anything better to do, since he can't leave, and lurking about the lobby is only so much fun.

"Well a spell could've been cast on the water but then the same would have happened to Buffy too." She says thoughtfully.

At their room, Dawn lets herself in and goes to Buffy's bags under the bed. First she pulls out a bag of weapons before pushing it back under. Then another bag of various things where she finds a glittery billfold and gets a ten dollar bill from it. She stands and hands it to him with a smile. "This feels so official. Right? I'm all client-like now."

"How do you know this didn't happen to Buffy?" he asks, waving a hand at her. So far she hasn't suggested anything that would definitively determine that her sister was unaffected. He isn't trying to scare her; just to understand what the hell is going on.

The bag search is interesting, if nothing else. She hands him the money and asks a very good question. He pulls a bit of a face, then asks for paper. He has a pen. On the paper, he scribbles down a rough version of a retainer agreement, explaining that his services typically run in much higher numbers, but he can make an exception. Essentially, he's written that for the price of ten dollars - he's assuming she's not asking for change - and a few favors if they become necessary, he will act as her attorney for one year. "Sign here," he says, pointing to a line he drew on the paper and handing her the pen. "Then you're all 'client-live'," he tells her, using her odd phrasing - that sort of reminds him of Mike.

Dawn takes the paper and studies it, her eyes poring over what he writes to make sure she isn't signing away her soul or anything. (Wouldn't her sister be proud of her for thinking of that.) She talks as she reads. "Because I'm sort of a special case and if both of us were disappearing wouldn't it be everyone in the hotel? Cause... you know, I can totally only see you and not through you... or through anyone else I've seen."

She looks up to him just to make sure. And yep. She still can't see through him. She lifts one finger up in the universal sign for 'just a minute', goes to her side of the room and digs around in a book bag until she comes up with a purple glitter pen. She signs her name, Dawn Summers, to the contract with said purple glitter pen in purple glitter ink. You're welcome, Harvey. She puts the pen away and brings the paper back to him.

"This is kind of exciting, I've never had a lawyer before." She says. "And a not evil working for hell kind of lawyer at that. I think we'll make a great team. I mean, if there were something we were doing that required teams. Right now we can just be team us."

He shakes his head. "Don't you think someone could target your rooms specifically?" He is a lawyer.

The glitter ink gets a raised eyebrow. He's trying to remember if signing in purple glitter ink is legal and binding. He shakes his head, but doesn't say anything.

"How do you know I'm not evil?" he asks.

At her mention of 'team us' he just says "No." And yup, she reminds him of Mike.

"Well, yeah I guess they could if they were a mega witch and able to focus their powers so that..." But she kind of doubted it. Buffy would have found her by now if something was wrong with her. As overprotective as she was, if something were obviously wrong with Buffy, she would come check on her. Dawn was absolutely sure of it. "She would find me if this were happening to her. I mean sometimes the hovering can be a bit much but sometimes it's right on cue, like during a crisis type situation. And disappearing totally counts as a crisis type situation."

At his evil question, well, she barely even pauses a heartbeat before answering. "You didn't make me sign in blood, for one. All the biggest of the big bad evil types make you sign contracts in blood. Everyone knows that."

She gives him a look at his 'no'. He is totally a part of the team now, like it or not. She reaches out to try to snatch the papers from him. Only her hand suddenly can't grasp anything. It goes through it instead. And does she look even more transparent than she had moments before. "I was gonna say you're a part of the team now but maybe it's safer not to be on our side of things." And Dawn knows that most people, including lawyers, will always take he safer, easier path.

Ok, so the big brother in him might grin a little at the big sister hovering Dawn describes. He was a little protective of his brother in his day.

"Everyone knows that, huh?" He grins a little bigger. "How do you know they all didn't change the rules just to throw you off?"

The grin immediately fades when her fingers pass through the paperwork in his hand. That doesn't look like something that would fall under the 'good' heading. At all.

"Which side should I be on then?" he asks, a little alarmed. And don't ever let anyone try to say that Harvey Specter takes the 'safer' anything.

"Well we're the side of world save-y goodness. But..." Her palms press flat to her stomach and she looks down at herself, just making sure she's still here. Strangely, in spite of her transparency, she can feel her heart beat ricocheting in her chest and up into her throat and ears.

After a moment, she relaxes again as much as she can and looks back up to Harvey. "But good things don't always happen to the side of good."

And here's the moment where she starts to tell Harvey the things she isn't supposed to talk about. "I've only really been in existence for just under five years. I mean I was created... almost five years ago. I'm not... real. And now the world is setting things back the way they should be, I think. By taking me out of it." She can't help it. Tears are in her eyes again. She wants a hug so bad it aches and sorry Harvey but she's going to try with you. Only when she reaches out, her hands go through him. And that's when she starts to panic again. Her breath short and her eyes wide.

He almost rolls her eyes when she talks about 'saving the world' - that is stuff of television shows and movies. Then she keeps talking...

...and says that she's not real. His face falls into a deep frown, because if what she's saying is true, then he is now the proud owner of a retainer agreement signed by his imaginary friend. And he's about to tell her that he's going to leave when she tries to hug him.

That look on his face that used to be a frown, now it's an almost-terrified, confused version. "What...?" Then there's the panic attack.

Now he sighs and gives her a stern look. "Dawn," he says, "calm down."

"Calm down? I'm about to be a green ball of energy again and I can't... I can't..." She shakes her head, a frantic movement. "Deep breaths. Deep breaths...." She'll just be pacing back and forth in front of him trying to slow her breathing down.

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?" She says. "I probably am."

He sighs as she rants.

"I think you're a lot like my associate," he mutters. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is still undecided.

"Now, take the drama down a notch and tell me what's this about you being not real?" Because that part still doesn't make any goddamned sense and he's going to fucking stand here and talk to her and get information until it does. Or until he wakes up at home in Manhattan in his own goddamned bed.

"Oh so your associate's a fake person with a fake life and fake memories and fake friends and fake everything?" She might be a little touchy about it right now in spite of the fact that she now has almost five years of real everything. So over dramatic it is. But this is nothing new with Dawn. She tends to be pretty volatile and over the top as far as any emotion goes.

She continues to pace back and forth, translucent hands fidgeting in front of her. "There was this key in the form of ancient mystical energy that could tear down the gates between every dimension... which is a crazy amount of dimensions. To use the key it would pretty much unleash hell on Earth." She decides that's as good a description as any. Yes, the key is bad. "In the twelfth century, The Order of the Dragon was founded to keep the key safe from evil people and from this other group called the Knights of the Byzantium who just wanted to destroy the key and be done with it." She's done a lot of research on herself.

"And then in the five years ago kind of present tense, there was this hell goddess stuck in our dimension who decided to find the key and give it a twist to use it to get back to her hell dimension." She pauses there because she wanted to give him a chance to catch up. "You can imagine that both the Dragon people and the Knights didn't want her to get her hands on the key. It was pretty much an almost everyone's gonna die kind of scenario."

He rubs a hand at the back of his neck. "Fake law degree," he says half out of the edge of his mouth. Whether or not she hears isn't really relevant.

But he is listening as she goes on with the story. Now, Harvey's a lawyer and he's heard some fantastical bullshit stories before - even some fantastical non-bullshit ones - but the yarn she's spinning at him right now is downright head-spin-inducing.

There's a chair in here right? In the room? Because Harvey's going to need one really soon or he's going to be sitting on the floor. This is a bit much for even his Trek-filled brain to roll together into sense.

He blinks at her, hand pressed against the wall or a piece of large furniture for balance. "I'm sorry, what?" Because, yeah, none of that actually made any sense to him - something about keys and locks and gods - what?.

She caught that muttering and filed it away for now. Mostly because he looked like he might be getting sick. There are chairs and a couch in the room. "Key. Ancient mystical energy. Tears down walls between dimensions. Hell goddess wants. Dragon order protecting. Byzantium Knights hinting down to destroy."

She pauses, shrugging. "Cliffs notes version."

He rubs a hand over his face, mostly to avoid giving her the 'you have got to be fucking shitting me' look he can feel creeping over his features. He mumbles, "What the hell have I gotten myself into?" behind his hand.

The hand comes down and he looks at the young woman across the room. "You know this makes you sound insane, right?" At least it would in his world. "I've been here a few months and seen some wacky shit, but most of it was still in the realm of reality - at least for me. But now you're telling me that you're not a person, but some mystical energy entity?" He scratches at the back of his head. "Did I die and wake up as Captain Kirk?"

She can't refute any of that. Harvey had just gotten himself into some weird stuff. Yes, to normal people who had lived normal lives this would all sound so very insane. And she was some mystical energy entity. There was one thing though. "As far as cool military type leaders though, you strike me more as an Agent Coulson."

But Dawn had experience with this. She knew some people couldn't handle the wacky shit. The fact that Harvey was still standing here said a lot though. And that's why she continues. "So they did a spell. They as in the Order of the Dragon. Their spell took some of the Slayer's blood and used dark magic to make the key mortal. They knew that the Knights and the Hellgoddess and anyone wouldn't think to look in a person." She lifts one hand and waggles her fingers. "That would be me."

Like shadows in the faded light, we're invisible.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)