Title:
Memory In Motion
Chapter
Title: Murphy's Law or Something Like That
Author:
Restive Nature
Disclaimer:
I do not own the rights
to BtVS. They belong to Whedon & Mutant Enemy. I also do not own
the rights to Supernatural. They belong to Eric Kripke and The CW.
Rating:
PG-15
Genre:
Crossover
Type:
Humor, Angst
Pairing:
DaddyDean/ WeeWillow
Summary:
Through a magical mix-up, Willow ends up in the Impala, disoriented,
terrified, facing the barrel of a gun and somehow... only six years
old.
Spoilers/
Time line: Post series for Buffy and late season one of Supernatural.
Feedback:
Always welcome!
Distribution:
Ask first please.
A/N:
This is a challenge response to pezgirl's The Little Demon Hunting
Challenge at the Twisting the Hellmouth site. Please refer to chapter
one for challenge details.
Memory
In Motion
Chapter
Two
Murphy's
Law or Something Like That
Dean
stared in horror at the thing that had appeared in his car. Talk
about karma or... or Murphy's law or some shit like that. Thinking
about needing a kid for bait, and bam! One appears. One that was
freakin' the hell out.
But
the thing was, while he might be called a pessimist and a conspiracy
theorist by certain quarters of the normal world, Dean called it
prudency. You couldn't always take things at face value. He had been
around the block too many times not to distrust everything.
Especially when something you needed just freakin' popped into your
car, looking all big eyed cute, innocent and teary.
“Who
the hell are you?” he demanded tightly, curbing the instant what
that he would normally want to know. Just in case this kid actually
was a kid and something bigger was at play, he didn't want to scare
her too badly. Though in his opinion, sometimes kids were better off
knowing the truth than taking some of the chances that they did.
“W-w-w-w-Willow,” the girl gasped
out finally, as she continued to hyperventilate. Dean was of two
minds about what to do. On one hand, the sight of the kid scared
mindless tugged at hundreds of heartstrings. But on the other, if
this shtriga was as smart as it was purported to be, it could be
using this thing exactly to get under Dean's defenses. Or a
distraction. But then the twitching began and he was worried that
someone might notice and if they did, assume the worst and he'd be
nose deep in boiling hot water with no way to go but down.
He lowered the gun just a little,
keeping it at the ready as his eyes flicked down to the seat between
them. With the gun still in his left hand, he wasn't as comfortable
using his weaker hand, but he would if he had to, he used his right
to reach for an old take out bag. He shook whatever contents were
left in the bag onto the floor and tossed it to the girl. She stared
down at the bag on her lap and then brought terrified eyes up to him
again.
“Breath into it,” Dean mimicked
lifting his hand to his face. The girl slowly picked up the bag and
seeming to understand, brought the opening of the bag to her face.
She inhaled once and threw it back down.
“Ewww! It smells like the back of a
refrigerator after the power goes out,” she complained. Dean curbed
the responsive smirk. He had no doubt that it probably did. The girl
glared at the bag for a moment before remembering the bigger threat
and turned back to Dean.
“Maybe it does, but it worked,
didn't it?” he pointed out and the girl's eyes widened momentarily
before she glanced down at herself.
“Uh, yeah,” she nodded slowly.
“But it didn't make the gun go away.”
“No, it didn't,” Dean agreed.
“Because that's not going to happen until I figure out what the
hell happened here.”
“Oh! You said the H word.”
“Yeah kid, I did,” he complained
gruffly. “Don't tell me you've never heard it before.”
“Uh huh,” she nodded brightly. “My
daddy says it when he tries to build things. And then my mother
explains why his negative example is detrimental to my mental well
being.”
Dean's jaw almost dropped to gape. And
people thought his upbringing was skewed. “Okay,” he drawled,
unsure. There were very few ways that he could figure out if this
really was a kid, because he sure as hell wasn't going anywhere with
a demon in the car.
“My mom's a psyche actress,”
Willow offered and Dean suppressed the urge to chuckle.
“Psychiatric?” he corrected her
and she nodded quickly. “Sorry kiddo.”
“Oh no,” she shook her head then.
“It's very interesting.”
“Uh huh,” he breathed out through
his nose, completely unconvinced. He shook his head, his lips pursed
as he regarded the bright redhead. “Look, like I said, I don't
trust what's happening here. So do me a favor and hold still, will
ya?”
“You're not going to touch me in my
doll places, are you?” the girl asked, a certain innocence in the
question kept Dean from snarling out a disgusted explicative.
“No!” he protested loudly. “I'm
not some sick bastard. Okay?” She nodded slowly and once she had
placed her hands in her lap to wait, Dean transferred his weapon to
his right hand and watched her face. “Cristos.”
There was no response and when he
grunted the girl relaxed slightly.
“What was that supposed to do?”
she wondered. “Was it a magic word?”
“Sort of,” Dean allowed, turning
an eye to watch carefully, a few people passing in front of the car
in the parking lot.
“Well,” the girl began, “well
maybe it didn't work because I'm Jewish. Maybe...”
Dean chuckled then. “So what do you
recommend I use? Yahweh?”
The girl braced herself, squeezing her
eyes shut and waited. But after a moment had passed, she let one eye
open and focused on Dean. “Did it work?”
“Yeah kid, worked perfect,” Dean
nodded. He had one more acceptable test that he could perform, and
one less so. “Can you do me a favor?” Willow looked eager when he
asked and Dean was hard pressed to remember that this, in his
reality, could be some evil son of a bitch riding around in a kid. A
kid! She looked so damned much like Sammy when he was young that he
had to swallow heavily. “Reach in that glove box and pass me the
flask,” he directed as he tried to swallow down the bitter bile
that was curling up his throat.
The girl turned to do so, but when she
pulled it back out and turned it over in her hands, she turned to ask
him, “are you old? Because my friend says you have to be old to
drink. But that's only booze. Like his dad. His dad likes to drink
booze a lot. Is this booze? My friend's Daddy has a booze bottle like
this that he keeps in his shirt pocket.”
“Nope, just water,” he told her,
cutting across her little ramble. Bracing the gun enough that he
could also hold the flask of holy water, he took a swig and then
held it out to her. “Have some.”
“O-okay,” she stammered, carefully
accepting the flask. “I'm...”
“It's part of the test,” he warned
her. “I only drank some so that you'd know I wasn't trying to
poison you.”
“You'd poison me!” she shrieked
and Dean winced and then glanced around to see if anyone else had
heard.
“No!” he protested. “I just
wanted... just take a drink. Please!” He cringed a little as
Willow's eyes were focused on the gun that had been waved around a
little and suddenly she was gulping down the rest of the contents.
She was gasping again and Dean feared another hyperventilation
episode, but when she was done she flushed slightly.
“I drank it all, sorry,” she half
whined, cradling the flask worriedly. Dean watched her again for
signs of possession, but there was nothing.
“That's okay kid,” he shook his
head and returning the safety on the gun, leaned over to tuck it back
under the seat. “I can always get more. You feel okay?”
“Ummm,” she hesitated and Dean's
sharp eyes were quickly back on her. The flush hadn't disappeared. “I
have to... go.”
“Go where?”
“The... the bathroom,” she
squirmed under his raised eyebrow gaze and then tucked her hands
under her thighs. “But I can wait. It's okay.” She squirmed a
little more and Dean tiredly shook his head. He was wasting time.
Time that could be better spent figuring out how to take that shtriga
out. Quickly making his decision, he turned back to the kid.
“Look, there's something going on
that I need to take care of,” he explained. “Where do you live
Willow? I'll drop you off.”
“816
Sycamore Street,” she responded promptly. Dean nodded and turned
forward to start up the ignition.
“Sycamore,
okay,” he muttered to himself, wondering if he could find a map or
would have to call his brother, while the girl straightened herself
out as well.
“Sunnydale,
California, the United States of America,” she rambled on, not
realizing that her words had caught Dean's attention and not in a
good way. “continent of North America, Western Hemisphere, of the
planet earth. And I should be in the back seat.”
“What?”
Dean demanded, focusing still on the initial part of her address.
“I
should be in the back seat,” Willow repeated. She grew thoughtful
looking and pronounced with care, “it's stah-tis-tickly safer.”
“Yeah,
yeah,” Dean shook his head. “What city did you say you're from?”
“Oh,”
Willow's mouth rounded into a small smile. “Sunnydale.”
“Crap!”
“You
said the C word!”
“Which
was better than the S word,” he snarked back, shaking his head.
“Or
the F word,” Willow agreed. Dean couldn't help the small chuckle
that escaped his lips. Mini Samantha in the co-pilot's seat.
“Tell
me Willow,” he grinned, even though his mind was whirling with the
implications of what she had revealed. “You like school?”
She
nodded happily. “Miss Tattersall is nice. And I have a best friend.
I get to color and two times a week, I go with Mrs. Gettle to do
advanced reading. And I'm learning third grade math. Even though I'm
only in first grade.”
“Wow,”
he nodded, trying to sound suitably impressed, when all he was
wondering was why the hell this shit didn't happen to his brother.
Why didn't she know her address here? And if it wasn't a simple case
of her family having just moved here, how in the hell she got from
California to Wisconsin. Well, all he could do was get her some place
safe and figure out where to go from there. Being a Winchester meant
having a game plan, even if it fell to pieces the moment your brain
thought of it.
Normal
course would be to drop her at the cop shop, but with his track
record, that'd net him even more problems. Maybe they could just get
to the motel and call her parents to come get her. She was maybe,
well, probably here visiting someone and didn't have the address
handy.
“Willow?”
he questioned as he let the engine idle, “what's your parent's
number?” She instantly reeled off a phone number, but Dean
recognized the California area code and shook his head. “No, I mean
their cell phone.” She looked doubtful.
“What's
a cell phone?” she asked politely. Dean frowned and reached into
his pocket to show her his. She looked interested enough as she
reached forward, hesitant until he nodded to her that it was all
right to turn it over in his hand. Then she sat back and shook her
head. “They don't have a cell phone.”
“Great,”
Dean sighed. Techni-phobes, probably, of some sort or another.
Really, who didn't have a cell phone in this day and age?
“So who are you visiting?” he
tried again. The little girl shook her head, confused again.
“I'm not allowed to visit anyone,”
she told him. “Miss Gold picks me up from school and we go straight
home. I have a nutrition an' then do my homework. And then I read
until it's time for dinner. Then I have a bath an' go to bed,” she
finished happily. “But that's on school days. I can play on the
weekends.”
“Okay,” Dean sighed, pinching the
bridge of his nose. Try again, and calmly, he reminded himself. “Did
your parents bring you with them to visit someone, or did you just
move here?”
“No,” Willow answered quietly,
seeming concerned as she looked out the windshield of the car, very
concerned that she wasn't telling him what he wanted to hear.
“So what were you doing before you
were here... in the car?” he wondered. The girl looked down in her
lap and her shoulders hunched over. “Willow?”
“I... I don't remember,” she
murmured so quietly that Dean barely heard her. He leaned a little
closer and tried to smile encouragingly when all he felt like doing
was thunking his head against his seat, repeatedly.
“Well, were you in school, or at
home?”
“I don't remember,” she repeated
and then shook her head. “I don't remember!” she wailed this time
and Dean cringed at the sudden increase in noise volume from her.
“Shh, shh,” he tried to quiet,
soothing wasn't even a word for him at the moment. “It's okay kid.
No problem, just don't...” he glanced out the windshield to see
that a few people were staring at him in disapproval. “Willow, come
on kid, quit!” he hissed. “You're gonna get me in trouble right
now. Trouble that frankly, I can't afford, the kind that'll lock me
up for twenty years.”
The girl stopped her wailing, though
the tears continued to stream copiously down her cheeks. “What kind
of trouble?” she asked breathlessly, though it seemed to be more
from her crying jag than any awe.
“The... doll touching thing,” he
tried to explain without truly explaining. “Even though I haven't.
But... I don't know what to do here, kid. I take you to the cops to
get you help and I get burned.”
“Do they have a lost and found?”
she asked with a sniffle. Dean sadly shook his head, though her
vacillation between hopefulness and curiosity, mingled with the other
was kind of cute. He ruffled her hair quickly and then decided.
“Look, we can go see my brother,”
he offered. “He might have some idea how the he- heck this
happened. And he's better with computers. But, there's gonna have to
be some ground rules.”
“Yes sir,” she nodded, calming
even more now.
“First of all, you're right,” he
decided. “You should be in the back seat.” The moment the last
word left his lips, Willow was scrambling to climb over the seats.
Dean rolled his eyes and just narrowly avoided being kicked in the
head by her Mary Jane's. “All right,” he twisted around to eye
her as he ran over what could be acceptable rules for a little girl
in his car. “Buckle up and listen good.” She followed his
immediate advice as Dean turned back and reached once more for his
cell phone. “Rule number one,” he improvised as he pulled up the
texting feature of his phone. “Driver is always right. About
directions, music, everything, no matter what anyone else says.”
He saw, from the corner of his eye in
the rearview mirror, Willow nodding, her serious little face taking
in everything he said as she now sat primly, her hands on her lap.
“Second, just for now, we're gonna
play a game of pretend,” he told her as his thumb punched the
appropriate buttons on the phone.
MiM~MiM~MiM
Sam glanced at the phone nestled next
to his laptop. It had chirped, denoting an incoming message.
Finishing typing another idea into the on line search engine, he
pulled his hands back and reached for the phone. There was a message
from Dean and since Sam had just talked to him recently, he sighed,
figuring it for a reminder to pick up some food. Even though it was
Dean that had the car. What he read instead, made him sigh even more.
Dude,
things just got worse. Brace yourself and just go with it.
Now what in the hell could that mean?
With the brother that Sam had? One never knew
Chapter Three- FUBAR'd
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