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This nineteen year old is pacing through the hallways, stopping at each door on every floor whether it's a personal room or a room to another world. She knocks on the door and if someone answers she'll explain her dilemma. If no one answers, she'll be peeking inside whatever rooms are unlocked. If a room is one that leads to another world, she'll step inside and call out the name of the person she's looking for before going to try the next door.

One by one the people from her world had been disappearing. Dawn could cope with it as long as she had her sister her. But now that Buffy had been missing for a few days, now that Dawn literally could not find her anywhere, well... her usual vibrant nature was drastically muted. She felt very alone and she was not okay.

She's practically vibrating with energy, barely able to keep herself from completely and entirely freaking out and shutting down. If she could find the door that leads to her own world she would go through it and never come back. But even that has proven difficult.

Sadly, being left behind is not a new occurrence for her. It happened all the time at home. Between everyone having their lives to live and occasionally saving the world, sometimes she got lost in the shuffle. There was a difference though, between being left behind at home where she knew all the people and all the rules and being left behind here where things were still so uncertain. Dawn, sadly, didn't do being alone very well.

It's later, after she's exhausted every door and every room and spoken to too many people to name in her search for her sister than she winds up sitting on the floor in the hallway outside Harvey's door like a stray cat who's suddenly hanging around for no reason at all. Without her sister here, he's the one she's closest to. He's her friend. Of course she'll gravitate toward him.

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When there is a knock to his door, Aramis answers it, fully expecting it to be one of the Musketeers or the Queen.

Instead, there is a young girl there, looking entirely shaken and of course, he responds, stepping forward clad in his shirt sleeves. "Are you all right?" he asks, hand hovering under her elbow should she need support, "madamoiselle?"

Edited 2015-04-02 20:25 (UTC)

The only other person who calls her 'mademoiselle' here is Porthos. Usually every single time she hears it, it makes her smile. Right now she's just trying really hard to hold herself together. Tears have been threatening her all day now and so far she's held it together. There have been a few close calls though.

"Hi. I'm Dawn. My sister seems to be missing. Or gone." Please don't let her be gone. But as each day passes and the more Dawn is searching for her today and coming up empty handed, the more the truth of it is hitting her. "She's shorter than me. Blonde hair. Really pretty. Her name's Buffy." He smirks. "I know, right? Buffy. Like what was my mom thinking? But seriously..." She looks at the man, her eyes hopeful. Maybe he had seen her.

Alas, Aramis has not seen anyone who matches that description, but the girl's clearly distraught and far be it from him to let her go on being distraught if he can help it. He reaches for his sword and steps into the hall to sheath it. "Where did you last see her, madamoiselle? I can help you look."

"She was in the room we share. She's not there anymore. She's not anywhere." Dawn's voice breaks on the last word. But she tries to swallow down that lump in her throat that keeps threatening to make her cry. Yes, she is very distraught. But she's also obviously trying so very hard to remain stiff upper lippy. Her sister would punch through worlds to get to her. Dawn knows this. But Dawn didn't have the power to punch through worlds without performing a very dangerous ritual involving her own blood.

It was a ritual that would put the whole hotel in danger. She was only partly considering it. Mostly.

She folds her arms over her stomach and cocks one hip out, shifting her weight as she studies the sword the man had just sheathed. It's a very cool sword. Buffy would probably be pissed at her if she knew Dawn had left their room without any weapons. But Buffy isn't here to be pissed at her. "She was here a few days ago. I thought... maybe she went into a door to another world. But..." She shakes her head.

"Is there a means of knowing?" Aramis asks, entirely understanding of the girl's distress, seeing as he would be equally distressed to learn of the Musketeers' disappearance, let alone the Queen's.

Dawn shakes her head. But even as she does that, she realizes she could probably go ask the front desk. Would she believe them though? That was another matter. It was easier to look with her own eyes.

"There's nothing I can do." She says. "It's like George Weasley losing Fred. I bet his world crashed down around him and he had no idea what to do with himself afterwards." She's going to ramble now, Aramis. Sorry. "And with her gone, it's not safe here anymore. No one is safe. I'm not safe. Neither are you."

She takes a step backward from the man. "It's not safe and I'm going around talking to strangers. It's stranger danger central here now."

Most of that makes so little sense that Aramis simply blinks through the onslaught of references he doesn't understand.

"I assure you that I will not hurt you," he says. "And I will do all I can to make sure you stay safe, madamoiselle." It is the least he can do since being a Musketeer here doesn't seem to mean quite the same thing.

Okay, so that stiff upper lip that she had been trying to maintain, it fails when this stranger says that. With Porthos, every time he calls her mademoiselle she lights up. And she would have now too. Except that her sister is gone and she's alone and Dawn is so sick people leaving her alone that it's this ache she feels deep inside to her core.

After a moment, tears start falling and she steps forward again. Her arms are still wrapped tight around her stomach but her brow rests on the strange man's shoulder silently asking him to hug her. What he just said meant he would hug her, right? If not, this was going to be very awkward.

Oh, no, well, it could mean hugging, certainly. That would not have been Aramis's first thought, but now that it's happening, there's only a slight hesitation and he hugs her back, gently patting her back.

He is, after all, very lucky to have the other Musketeers here as well. It would be quite lonely without them.

Harvey had crawled out of bed with the full intention of going for a run - somewhere. He supposed the grounds of the hotel would suffice. Barring that, a treadmill would do in a pinch.

He's tugging his shirt over his head as he goes to the door and pulls it open in preparation for entering the hallway to make his way outside. But, he finds a person sitting on the floor in front of his door. He's quite surprised he didn't trip over her.

He pulls his shirt the rest of the way into place over his chest, then leans against the doorjamb, arms folded in front of him. "Keeping the door closed so I can't get out works better from the other side," he says.

The door opens and Dawn starts to fall backward since her back had been leaning against the door. She starts to stop herself and then decides to just let herself fall back because she really doesn't care. This means she gets a full view of Harvey's abs from the bottom up as her hair feathers out over his feet. She is the least graceful.

"I'll remember that. I figured you were sleeping so I decided stalking from the outside was best." She says, her voice kind of dull and tight like she's trying not to cry. She just lays there, looking up at him.

"You're stalking me now?" he asks, watching her lean back onto the floor. "I can think of a-hundred-and-twenty other things that are more exciting," he tells her.

Does he know she's looking at him? Yes. Does he care? Yes, but not in the way one might think. He's actually smirking a little, because he does like the attention.

He waits a bit, then he asks, "Okay, give. What's going on?" Because she isn't pouting outside his door for no reason.

"No." Dawn shakes her head, lips pursing a bit before continuing. "This is the only thing I can think of doing right now." She says dryly, her tone lacking in the normal enthusiasm she usually has. "This is the only exciting thing there is."

She exhales a slow breath of air. She will not cry. She will not cry. She will not... Tears are already settling in her eyes again and she hates it. Harvey is up there smirking about something, looking cool as a cucumber and kind of sexy, while she's a mess down here. Her world has sort of imploded. And she no longer feels safe or at home here.

"My sister's gone." She says finally. And by the time she's said those three words, those stupid tears are trickling down the sides of her face from the corners of her eyes to settle in her hair.

He's going to stick with the concerned expression. Partly because he might be a little concerned, but mostly because he can see the big crocodile tears waiting to fall. Emotions are not his strong point - either his own or others. And tears - don't even get him started.

Harvey is almost always cool as a cucumber, when he's not seething angry. That cool, controlled demeanor is well-practiced and keeps everyone else on their toes, since they can never tell what he's really thinking or feeling. (Even if he claims to never feel anything.)

She says her sister's gone and he lets out a little sigh. He holds a hand out to her. "Come here," he says.

Dawn literally has no idea what to do right now other than this. And she knows how Harvey is with emotions. It's part of the reason she's trying so hard not to full out cry right now in front of him. She doesn't want to put him in an uncomfortable situation. But he really is her closest friend here. And she has no where else to go.

He offers her his hand and she reaches up to put her hand in his and let him help her up. "I'm sorry. I know you don't... I know this is... not your thing." But what else was she supposed to do?

He pulls her to her feet. "What happened?" he asks. He knows this place is weird and people come and go and, maybe, he figured people go without coming back, but he hadn't really experienced it. Not from the perspective of someone he'd gotten to know well disappearing and not coming back.

Erik was in the middle of tying his shoes when he heard a knock on the door; he gestured absently and it swung open. He was expecting Jordan to swan in and make herself at home, and so when her tread and perfume didn't immediately make her presence known, he looked up, more than a little surprised to see a teenaged girl standing on his threshold.

For a startling second, he thought she was Caroline, and felt a brief stab of regret for the Proserpina. Just as quickly it was stifled, and he offered the stranger a cool look. "Yes?"

When the latest hotel door she's knocked on swings open and no one is standing there, Dawn's first thought is 'ghost'. What is a creepy hotel without a few creepy ghosts to go with it, after all? And she's used to the supernatural sort of things like this. The problem is that she's used to confronting them with her sister, not by herself. Not that she couldn't by herself, but never has Buffy's absence been more clear than now.

Someone calling out to her is more of a relief than it should have been because of that. She steps inside and peeks to the man sitting on the bed. Her voice is nervous and tight like she's trying her hardest not to cry. "Hi. I was looking for someone and, you know, kind of in a door-to-door salesman way without the salesman. She's shorter than me, blond hair, goes by the name of Buffy."

Erik finished tying his second shoe and got to his feet, giving the girl a critical once-over. She looked older than she sounded, a mix of defensiveness and nerves in her voice that spoke of vulnerability she didn't want to admit to.

He'd normally have given a swift dismissal to anyone who bothered him in his room, but instead he found himself replying in a neutral tone of voice, "I haven't seen her." He was going to leave it at that, but upon seeing the girl's face fall and her shoulders slump, the last word was practically torn from his mouth. "Sorry."

While he gives her the once over, she idly thinks that he's attractive. It would be something she would probably fumble over under normal circumstances. But right now all she can think is that she's here alone and that she hardly knows anyone. Here, this hotel, is no longer safe without Buffy in it. Not for anyone, and especially not for her.

The moment he says that he hasn't seen her sister, Dawn presses her lips together in attempt to keep from crying. She will not cry, she tells herself over and over. But there's no denying the moisture pooling in her eyes or the tight lump in her throat that's hard to swallow around.

After a moment, she nods and looks away. She's completely at a loss for what to do with herself without Buffy right now. Not that she wasn't independant. She was. But this wasn't home anymore with Buffy gone. It would take her a minute to figure out what she should do next.

"Uhm..." Her voice cracks over the word and she has to clear her throat to continue. "No sorries. You didn't make her disappear. It's not like we could do a spell and make her reappear." Yes, she has considered that. Dawn has never been above using dark magic to undo bad things. "I mean first you've gotta find all the right ingredients and then channel the PTB's..." She shakes her head. "Okay. Can't do that."

Finally she looks back up at the man. "I'm okay." She is not okay. "Sorry for bothering you."

If it weren't for Jaenelle, he might have forgotten that magic was real, that there were people as accustomed to doing a spell as he was to manipulating metal. But Erik's power had never extended to changing the past, or to bringing someone back when they'd gone. He couldn't imagine having it— but he did know something about having your power stripped from you, about losing an ability that was part of how you made sense of the world.

"No apology needed," he said, taking a measured step toward her. "It's no bother." That wasn't strictly true, but it would make her feel better. Erik hesitated before going on, choosing his words carefully. "I've lost people too, to the way these places work. It's— it never gets easier." Harsh words, though his tone was mild. Sugar coating wouldn't do her any good, he reasoned— but he didn't have to be an ass about it.

"She was a friend of yours, this girl?" He wasn't sure why he asked, except that it seemed cruel to let her wander off alone when she was so obviously crushed.

Dawn inhales a heavy breath at those harsh but true words. No, loss never gets easier. She's trying so hard to be stiff upper lippy but it's getting more and more difficult to maintain. She's nineteen now. She shouldn't need her sister like she does. And if she were at home it would be a much different scenario than it is now. Now she's alone in this place that is definitely not home and it's not okay.

The strange man is being overly kind to her and she's thankful for that. Because she feels like a light breeze could tip her over the line from holding it together into being an absolute mess. No one deserved a messy Dawn Summers.

"She's my older sister." Her older sister who always kept her safe. Dawn could handle herself, sure. But she was also wasn't quite as extraordinary as many of the people she usually held her own with. She had no super powers, no abilities. She was just the odd thing that had been created to potentially cause mass destruction if the right ritual was performed.

Dawn shakes her head, a soft admission on her lips. "It's not safe here anymore."

The truth of that was both horrible and inane, and it hit Erik unexpectedly hard.

"It never was," he said, the words startled out of him, secondhand anger and regret thrumming a sympathetic chord in his chest. "The world's not— no one's ever safe. But some people can make you feel like it is. And losing them— nothing fixes it." A sister, a lover, a friend— that old saw was a lie, as it turned out. Time didn't heal wounds like that; it just made you forget what it was like not to be wounded.

But self-indulgent complaining wouldn't help her any more than it would help him. Erik cleared his throat, forcing his tone light, redirecting. "For what it's worth, there are given values of safe. I doubt we'll find giant centipedes or flesh-eating aliens roaming the halls anytime soon."

Edited 2015-05-01 15:37 (UTC)

Porthos opens his door expecting one of the Musketeers, and his eyebrows raise when he finds a certain young woman instead, looking nothing if not distraught. "Mademoiselle Dawn," he greets her. A kerchief is tied over his hair, as he had been about to go out, but he hasn't put on his hat just yet. "What's wrong?"

She only kind of knows Porthos, but right now the fact that she knows his name and face at all makes her eyes well and glisten with tears she's been working so hard not to shed. Her throat is suddenly tight and she has to swallow down over the lump in her throat before she actually speaks.

"I'm looking for my sister. She's gone I think." Oh those words are so very hard to say. Mostly because the more and more she looks, the more true the words are. And for how verbose she usually is, she's less so right now, visibly shaken by how alone she feels to anyone who has spent any time with her. The 'mademoiselle' which usually gets a big smile from her, doesn't even have its normal affect on her.

Porthos seems about to say something, but then thinks better of it, and compassion settles over his features. "I'm sorry," he tells her honestly. "I wish we had better control of our comings and goings." For more than one reason. He catches her gaze and offers, quietly, "Would you like to go for a walk?"

He would have invited her in, but having a beautiful young woman of high enough birth in his private chamber seems wrong, even in this place.

She's sorry too. But then again she didn't think that there was much she could have done to make a difference in whether Buffy was here or not. There were no deals to make with the Devil, no wishes to make from vengeance demons that would keep people here. Even locking her in wouldn't have kept Buffy here. Her sister could kick down any door. Lots of doors. Most doors.

Circling her arms around her waist, she seems to consider the offer. Normally she would have jumped at the chance, prattled on about how cool she thought Porthos was and yes of course she wanted to walk with him. But right now she's just... upset.

After several moments, she finally nods. "Yeah. I'd like to go for a walk. I mean you don't have to come..." The moment she says the words she feels tears again, settling in her eyes and welling there. She really didn't want to be alone. "Unless you want to." She whispers because she doesn't trust her voice.

Porthos can't help it, when he sees the tears well up in her eyes. He reaches out and gently rests his bare hand on her shoulder. He makes sure he has her eye, and then he assures her, "I want to. Please." Please believe him, please trust him, please stop crying. All of the above, truly.

"Let me grab my things," he adds, and vanishes back inside his room long enough to put his hat on, buckle his scabbard on, and he's pulling his gloves on as he joins her again, locking the door behind him.

"Some fresh air will do you some good," he tells her, and offers her his arm.

Dawn nods when he says he wants to come for a walk with her. She's just so sick and tired of people leaving, of being left alone. And right now she feels just as surely as if her sister had died. Again. Only this time there was no Willow, no mega witch to bring Buffy back from the dead.

When Porthos returns, she hooks her arm in his and for awhile they walk in silence before Dawn, who doesn't usually do silence at all, who it was a miracle was silent at all for this long, has had enough.

"It makes sense. She's always leaving me. She probably had to go save the world from something... dire." Because Dawn didn't think Buffy would choose to leave her. Not anymore. Not unless there were more pressing matters that needed taking care of. "She's so annoying." Said without much vehemence. It was more of a sibling to sibling statement, in which Dawn was the only one allowed to call her sister annoying. But if anyone else tried, she would defend her sister with her last breath.

"I'm sure she is," Porthos mock-agrees, his tone making it clear he's only being sarcastic. It's soft sarcasm threaded with warmth, though, nothing mocking, he's more aiming to get a smile out of Mademoiselle Dawn. "Saving the world. Very annoying habit, that."

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