Disclaimer: The pixies tell me that I don’t own the BTVS and ATS characters. However I had a nice little shouting match with them about who owned Ariel and Cat.

Author’s note: Thanks to everyone who is leaving the great feedback! *hugs*
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Chapter 26: Screaming Matches

The holiday festivities continued the following day. Willow was floating baking ingredients around the kitchen while she and Cat baked Christmas/Hanukah/Winter solstice cookies.

In the living room Ariel and Oz were puzzling over how to put together the tree that was recently purchased from Wal-Mart. The debate in the house between the pro real tree and the pro fake tree camps were heated. Spike and Anya, the pro fake tree camp expressed the financial benefits of not having to spend every year for a tree. Buffy and Dawn, the pro real tree camp wanted the authenticity, the tradition. In the end it was the loud declaration by Ariel that she thought she was allergic to the sappy stuff that inevitably came with the tree that decided the argument.

That was why Ariel was now trying to put this monstrosity together. It was Buffy’s thinly veiled retribution for losing the argument.

Buffy watched on while filling out Christmas cards which admittedly were a bit on the late side.

“Here, sign this,” said Buffy more ordered than requested of her mate, who was sitting at her feet attempting to untangle a set of Christmas lights that had been out of the box for less than a day.

“What is it?” he asked casually, looking up at her smiling face.

“Christmas card.”

“To whom?”

“Your Grandsire,” she said finally.

She knew he didn’t want to be signing anything that was addressed to Angel, but she really thought he should sign the card, he lived with them now.

“No,” he said defiantly.

“Spike...”

“No.”

“Please?” she begged sweetly.

“Not bloody doing it!” he protested, breaking a bulb on the string of lights in the process.

“Spike! Dawn and I send him a card every year, you are part of our family now, and you always were his family...”

“No.”

“Fine!” she said in a huff, “I’ll sign it for you.” Buffy got up out of her seat and walked up the stairs to her office, leaving Spike gaping on the living room floor.

“Slayer!” protested Spike, setting down the tangle of lights and making to follow her up.

“You won’t win Da,” said Ariel from the half put together tree. “You two have this same argument every year. No matter what you do, Angel will still get a Christmas card with all our names on it.”

Spike pouted. If you had asked him if he was pouting, of course he was pouting, but the big bad would have denied it. But the pouting Big Bad, fangs and bumpies, pouting in the living room was what Valery walked in on. Dressed like a Holt Renfrew model, the step thing strode into the living room like she owned it.

“Where is Dawn?” she asked, no hint of politeness in her voice.

“The Bit’s going thought Red’s spell books. The witch agreed to teach her a glamour,” said Spike brushing past Valery in the doorway, smiling a fangy smile in her direction.

“And...and where would she be doing this thing?” asked the step thing nervously.

“In the witch’s room, third floor,” said Spike over his shoulder, on his way into the kitchen.
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Up in Willow’s room, Dawn was indeed looking through books. When Valery approached, Dawn visibly flinched.

Valery sat down on the bed beside the teen.

“So I thought that you and I should talk. I have this feeling that you think we abandoned you when the mess with the green fire happened.”

“Excuse me?” asked Dawn looking up from a spell book.

The green fire? Oh that’s rich, thought Dawn. Clearly she’s repressing.

“The green fire, the voices, the men,” Valery tried to explain. “When your father was being questioned by the police.”

Dawn finally nodded.

“We didn’t want to send you away, it was just safer when you were away from us. Now that its over, you can come home, with us to California. I want you to feel like you belong there.”

“I belong to Buffy,” exclaimed Dawn, slamming her glowy green hands down on the book she had in her lap. “I don’t belong in LA or anywhere else. I am not your step daughter, I am a bundle of green energy made to open gates between dimensions. I was made from Buffy’s blood and this human form was given to Buffy to protect. There is no way I’m going back to LA when I can stay with my protector, my sister.”

“Dawn, that’s nonsense, these people who live in this house, they’ve corrupted your mind!”

“Oh really, well you know what Valery, I like how they’ve corrupted my mind, I wish...”

Dawn paused as Anya suddenly appeared at the door, demon face and all.

“Are you seeking vengeance?” asked Anya. “I know you are, cause I was in the office, with Giles and I could feel it.”

“Anya!” screamed Dawn.

“Well vengeance? Yes or no, cause I think I’m making progress with Rupert.”

“You are calling him Rupert now?” asked Dawn.

“Of course! You don’t expect me to call him Giles when we are intimate, do you? I wonder if he likes to be called anything else while in bed with a woman?” she asked no one in particular.

“Anya!”

“Well if you don’t want vengeance,” Anya flounced away.

“You don’t know just how lucky you are Valery,” said Dawn snidely, getting up off of Willow’s bed, taking the spell book she had and carrying it in her crossed arms.

“Dawn!” said a shocked Valery, that Dawn was leaving, not truly understanding what was going on.

Dawn pushed past the woman and headed down the stairs to the second floor.

“You will not ignore me like that young lady,” shouted Valery.

Dawn turned to face her step mother. The yelling had begun to draw a crowd on the second floor landing.

“And what are you going to do to me Valery?” asked Dawn. “Are you going to take me away from Buffy? Are you going to lock me up in my room in LA and not let me out for year. News flash... Child Abuse!”

“Of course not Dawn, you respect me and I’ll respect you. I think I’ve earned the right to be respected.”

“How? My marrying my father? Ooh good one there, Val.”

“You deserve to be in a loving home, where you can grown up in a normal way away from your freak sister and her friends.”

“Cause this glowy thing...That’s not freakish at all,” said Dawn forcefully.

“That’s not real, Dawn, even I can see that.” Valery rolled her eyes in a very Dawn like way.

Dawn looked over to the various people standing in doorways. Buffy in hers, Giles and Anya in the office, Hank from Ariel’s room.

“It’s real. I’m the key. And...and I’m gonna be a watcher. I’m going to Oxford, I’m studying languages. I'm useful. Buffy needs me.”

“Buffy doesn’t need you. She’s gonna want her own family, not to be saddled with her kid sister,” explained Valery in calm manner, countering Dawn rising hysteria.

“Buffy needs me,” said Dawn again. “You need me, right?” Dawn turned to look at her sister in the master bedroom doorway

“I need you Dawnie. I need you as much as I need Ariel and Cat. You are a little part of me. I died to save you. I’m not ever giving you up.” Buffy smiled.

Spike came up the stairs at that moment, his hand clutching his still warm mug of blood, game face on.

“Bit?” asked Spike.

“Valery wants to take me away,” whined Dawn.

Of course she knew that Buffy and Spike would never let that happen, even if they had to spend all their money, and fight their way through hell itself to get her back.

“Over my dead body,” declared the vampire.

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Spike you are already dead,” said Dawn. “Buffy, the prophecy!” she whined again.

Giles’ voice cut through the silence.

“Blood of light, Blood of dark,
Blood of Blood,
Blood spilt to cover up the evils of blood’s evil,
Undercover of darkness blood is hidden,
Three times blood is split, three times evil rises,
Blood of light, Blood of dark,
Cycle begins anew.”

Ariel and Oz thumped up the stairs, followed by Willow, carrying Cat, adding to the large congregation of audience members for the Dawn versus Valery stand off.

“The prophecy doesn’t matter Dawn,” declared Buffy.

“You died before, because of a prophecy. Only someone who caries your blood, Buffy!”

“Dawn you aren’t going to kill me!”

“Mum’s right” said Ariel suddenly, breaking the back and forth exchange between the sisters. “I will, I have.”

Ariel turned and ran down the stairs pushing past Willow and Cat.

“What do you mean, you have?” asked Buffy following her daughter down the stairs, Spike following closely behind. The others left up on the second floor decided it was best to leave them alone.

Down in the living room Ariel was sitting beside the now assembled but bare Christmas tree.

“Ariel?” Buffy queried.

“I did it, two years ago. I was ten...”

“What happened?” asked Buffy soothingly crouching beside her.

“Mum told me not to tell.”

“Bit size, you can’t just tell you mum that kind of thing and then not tell all,” said Spike.

“You said you weren’t going to push!” Ariel screamed, standing up and rushing out the front door.

“Ariel!“ shouted Buffy, following out after her. “Spike!“ Buffy motioned for him to follow as well. Unfortunately he was stopped by the sun beating down on the snowy Cleveland afternoon.

Buffy followed Ariel across the street into the cemetery.

“Ariel!” Buffy chased after her daughter.

She found her standing in a bare patch of ground, not in use, the cemetery hadn’t grown to capacity yet.

“She’s not here...” said Ariel sadly.

“Who?” asked Buffy coming to rest by Ariel.

“I want to be a Potential you know just like her.”

“Her?”

“Niki.”

“Huh?”

“I never met her, died way before I was born but she was a Potential, the daughter of a Slayer and the granddaughter of a Slayer.”

“Who?”

“Niki Wood.”

“Robin Wood’s mom?”

“No, Robin Wood’s daughter.”

“Faith’s kid?”

“Ya, she’s buried here, or will be. She was kinda like an inspiration for me.”

“I can see that. Ariel?” Buffy questioned, still wanting answers.

“Please don’t ask,” said Ariel. “Mum, told me not to tell. You hate me. I kill you, I start the prophecy.”

“No! Ariel you...The prophecy, it doesn't mean anything!”

“I started it, before I killed you, there was only you, my mum, the First Slayer. Then there were two, and the First Evil came back. I caused it.”

“No, baby. It was the First, not you.”

“That’s why I want to be a Potential, to fight the First. Cause I started it. But now the First came before I could grow up enough to find out.”

“Ariel, I don’t want to you be a Potential. I don’t want to lose you before you get to grow up and have a family.”

“I wanna make a difference though.”

“And you will, in your own special way. Whether you are all slayery or not.”

“I’m not like Aunt Dawn, you know. I don’t want to be a Watcher.”

“And that’s fine. It really is.”

“I wanna be like Aunt Faith.”

Buffy’s eye went wide for a second.

“I wanna fight evil.”

“Oh,” Buffy relaxed.

There was a pause.

“I feel like cookies, you want cookies?”

Ariel shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.”
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tbc...