To Be a Hero: Family

Chapter 1: Meeting Cousins

Disclaimer: all characters are property of their respective owners.

Spoilers: to season 7 of Buffy (I'm not including the season 8+ comics in this continuity), general spoilers for Batman and mild spoilers for X-Men: Evolution season 1.

Author Note: the version of the Batman that will appear here draws from several versions.

Westchester County. New York. A county road

"It wouldn't have killed you to accept his offer to open a portal directly from Hamden, and then to Gotham, you know," Dawn said as her sister drove through the forest. "I thought that you were over your hostility to him."

"And I am... It's just that his magic makes me queasy," Buffy said, and chuckled as her sister snorted. "Yeah, I find it as ridiculous as you."

"And why didn't you say anything?" Dawn said.

"Because I'm the senior Slayer, I have a reputation to keep up," Buffy said with a smirk, that disappeared as her expression grew serious. "You know what's really bothering me?"

"Let me guess, something related with the old Council?" Dawn said. "You haven't stopped cursing Travers and his minions since you came back from Scotland last month."

"Yeah, we found that the old Council rejected the help of one of the most powerful wizards of the world, many, many times," Buffy said "His help would've made our life much easier."

"I suspected as much." Dawn said, and added, when Buffy looked a her with a puzzled expression "What? I asked Strange, and told me that apparently the Council felt protective of their turf. An idiotic reason, but that's the Council for you."

"Yeah." Buffy nodded. "Well, what do you have about the guy whose will we are going to hear?"

"Technically, it is not his will, it's an additional disposition to his will, a codicil I think they're called, as he died a couple of years after I was born." Dawn explained "And, well, Thomas Wayne was loaded, Wayne Corp being basically tied with LexCorp and Stark Enterprises in the rankings, leaving behind, by a good margin if I may add, Von Doom Industries and Oscorp." She then paused for a moment, as she read something in her smartphone, and added "And he wasn't a heartless CEO. He basically left trusted people in charge, while he worked as a doctor in a private free clinic in the worst part of Gotham. And his wife was a cousin of mom."

"What?" Buffy said, startled.

"Oh, yes. Do you remember that mom's maiden name was Kane? The Kanes and the Waynes are two of Gotham's old families, and Thomas' wife, Martha Kane, was the daughter of Grandpa Rick older brother, Robert. Apparently, there was some kind of fight and Grandpa Rick moved to L.A., after being disinherited," Dawn said, reading from the articles that Willow and she had been saving all the past day. "Mom studied art in Gotham University, where she met Martha and they became good friends, as well with Martha's fiancé, Thomas."

"All right... Mom only told me that she had studied in the East Coast and she met my biological father there. It was only when she came back to L.A. with me, when she met Hank," Buffy said, who then frowned as she remembered something. "I think that I vaguely remember visiting somebody in a dark and foreboding mansion one of the times that Mom and Hank had been fighting, months after you were born, but it's not very clear, apart from getting into a fight with a spoiled brat there."

"This brat?" asked Dawn, showing her a picture of a boy in front of a tomb.

"He could be, the memory is really vague," Buffy said with a shrug. "Who is he?"

"Bruce Wayne, the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne and the only witness of their murder," Dawn said. "He is roughly your age."

"Bruce Wayne? The Bruce Wayne? Mr. Hunky Millionaire Playboy?" Buffy said, and Dawn nodded with a smirk "Daaaamn."

"Yeah. Our cousin is yummy, all right," Dawn said. "He even looks a bit like Angel. Tall, dark and handsome."

"Cousin, remember. We are not from... one of those places with hillbillies like, I dunno, Kansas?" Buffy said.

"Kansas? Are you sure?" Dawn asked.

"Not really, but anyway, let's change the topic," Buffy said "Did you get something of that idiot?."

"Nope, he was too stoned to say anything coherent." Dawn said, looking at the fuel tank gauge "We are going to need to..."

Whatever they were going to need it was never said because a deer jumped out of the forest in that moment, forcing Buffy to make a sharp turn that threw the car out of the road, down a slope and despite Buffy's frantic attempts to avoid it, onto a tree. Fortunately, both Summers sisters survived the ordeal reasonably unscathed, though the same couldn't be said of the vehicle.

"For God's sake!" Buffy said, after seeing that the car didn't start up and managing to open the door with a shove. "Can anything go without a hitch for once? I should have suspected something was going to happen when that demon folded so easily."

"At least it's not Tuesday," Dawn said, stopping to struggle with her door, and exiting the car through the driver door, "What are you doin'?" she asked, as she saw Buffy starting to walk, phone in hand.

"Checking the cell coverage," she said, walking around the car in wider circles, phone in hand, before slumping down "Nothing. You, any luck?"

"No signal either." Dawn said, before getting the map again and checking "Okay... we took this county road twenty minutes ago... and giving the speed we were going... If you follow the road you will end in Graymalkin Lane. There will be better cell coverage there, given that it's a residential zone, and you should be able to find somebody to give us a lift."

"Thanks," Buffy said, before checking under the car. "At least it seems to be not losing fuel. But it should be better that you don't stay inside, just in case."

"We still have the camping stuff in the trunk, I can set it up in a moment, as well as the same wards we used when we were hunting that stupid demon." Dawn said.

"I'll help you, and then I'll go." Buffy said, "You never know what can be lurking around in the woods."

"I'm not twelve, Buffy." Dawn said, rolling her eyes. "Come on, we have a deadline."

Xavier's school for Gifted Youngsters. Access road

Scott waved as Duncan's car sped out, while Jean waved back. He never understood what Jean saw in that jock, but... He shrugged mentally, and was turning back to reenter the mansion grounds when he heard somebody calling.

"Hey, you, the guy with the funky glasses!" a female voice was saying.

He turned and saw a petite blonde walking toward him. She was wearing outdoors clothes, although they were probably the more stylish version of outdoors clothes he had seen.

"Can you help us? We had to dodge a deer, got out of the road and crashed the car," said the woman with a charming smile, talking with a Californian accent.

She looked familiar for some reason, but she couldn't place her at the moment. He silently cursed his faulty memory before answering.

"I'll see what we can do." Scott said "You have come in a bad moment, though. Right now, most of the faculty...?"

"Faculty?" the woman said, who then noticed the sign saying Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. "Oops, I didn't realize that this was a school."

"As I was saying, most of the faculty is out, miss...?"

"Buffy Summers," Buffy said. "But call me Buffy. And you are?"

"I'm such an idiot," he said aloud, mentally kicking himself for not having recognized her earlier.

"What?" Buffy said, perplexed.

"I'm Scotty. Scott Summers, your cousin," Scott said.

"But... but... the plane crash... Hank said..." Buffy said, looking at him as if he was a ghost.

"Mom and dad...didn't make it," Scott said, his voice low "I knocked my head in the crash, and was in a coma for more than a year. Alex got lost in the system, adopted elsewhere. And when I woke up, I had lost most of my memories. Hell, I couldn't even remember Alex for years."

"That's harsh," Buffy said.

"Yeah, if it hadn't been for the Professor..." Scott said, shaking his head "With his help I regained most of my memories, and started to search for my family. Hank wasn't a great help, precisely."

"Tell me about that, he didn't even come to Mom's funeral..." Buffy started to say.

"Aunt Joyce is dead?" Scott said, shocked.

"She had an aneurysm, a complication from a brain tumor." Buffy said, her voice sad.

Scott sighed, this was a bit too much to handle right now.

"Okay, we're going to need to sit down and talk later, Buffy," he said and opened the door. "If you wait a moment, I'll bring the school van."

"Okay, I'll wait here, I have to call the motor club, anyway." Buffy said. "Cell coverage there is shit."

/\

When Scott mentioned the school van, she expected a minibus in the school colors, not something that looked like a cross between a SUV and an Armored Personal Carrier in black with tinted windows.

"Wow, Scotty, where did the school get this? In the Marines clearings sale?" Buffy said as she climbed into the passenger seat.

"Actually, Miss Summers, it's just a customized version of a SUV," said a woman from the back seats, speaking with a slight accent.

"Buffy, this is Ororo Munroe, one of the professors of the school." Scott said, from the driving seat "Professor Munroe, this is my cousin, Buffy Summers."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Ororo said, smiling.

"The same, and thanks for helping me. I don't know what I would have done; we have to be in Gotham later today..." Buffy paused when she noticed Ororo grimacing "Something the matter?"

"Bad experiences in Gotham," Ororo said, her eyes looking at a faraway place. "It's a bad place."

They did the rest of the short voyage in silence, only broken by Buffy's indicating which path they had to take to go to Buffy's car.

/\

Dawn was bored, so after she had settled down, she had started to try to translate a book that Giles had been working on lately, and that she had managed to photocopy, a presumed book of prophecies by a heretic Byzantine monk in the XIIth century. 'Presumed' because sometimes the author of the prophecies seemed to have a grasp on reality barely stronger than Drusilla.

"How does this translate? Black half? Before the black half masters the... numbers of death? ... he will be defeated by the ... partners of the blind goddess?...damned obscure medieval Greek dialect, and damned fruitcake monk," She grumbled as she was taking notes. "But it will not be dead, only asleep... Yeah, God forbids that the Powers allow a Big Bad to be finished early..."

She stopped because she was hearing a car. She looked and saw a black SUV coming toward the car. Before she could do anything, it stopped and Buffy, a thirty-something black woman and a guy with tinted red glasses, who for some reason looked awfully familiar to Dawn.

"So, Buffy, who are your new friends?" Dawn asked.

Buffy smirked, but didn't answer, before she approached the car with the gas can.

Scott looked at the tall teenager in the car in confusion. 'Who is she?' he thought for a moment, before as if by magic, a torrent of images opened in his head.

"Dawnie?" he said, finally remembering Buffy's little sister.

"Do I know you?" Dawn said, looking at the guy and racking her brain trying to remember him "I mean, you look familiar, but..."

"Dawn, do you remember Scott?" Buffy said, as she filled the gas tank.

"Scott, what Scott?" Dawn said, genuinely confused.

"Our cousin Scott," Buffy said. "Well, I'm not sure if you remember him. You were six the last time you saw him, and we all thought he had died in a plane crash. Not that Hank made much effort to find him afterwards."

"Goddess, yes, now I remember," Dawn said, slapping her head. "I wanted Uncle Chris to fly us around in his plane, but Hank said no."

"Yeah, that thing," Buffy said. "It looked so... old, and what was it made of, wood?"

"Plywood, actually," Scott said with a chuckle. "It was a... ah, forget it. I'd have to explain everything and..."

"Well, given that I have to stay here until the tow truck arrives, I wouldn't mind to talk about these last years," Buffy said. "And we best get our things out of the car, before they come."

/\

Some time later, they were sitting in the back of the School van talking about the past decade. Of course given their lives, it was a considerably edited version of the real facts.

"On one hand, I'm sad for the loss of our house and everything I has called home since I was eight," Dawn said "On the other hand, Sunnydale was a hellhole," 'In more ways than one.' She thought to herself.

"Surely it wouldn't be that bad," Scott said

"Look at the stats of the town if you don't believe me," Dawn said "Mom once said that she should have suspected something was going on when the house was so cheap."

"Yeah, the first high school principal that I had on Sunnydale? Killed by gangs on PCP." Buffy said, managing to avoid a snort when she said 'gangs on PCP'. She paused for a moment, before saying, "Boy, this is getting heavy. Why don't we change the topic?"

"I agree. We could spend all day and night talking about the badness that was going on in Sunnydale," Dawn said. "So, is there a way to enroll in just school?. I haven't been there and it already looks way better than that crappy high school I'm going."

"Ehm, I don't know," Scott said, while thinking. 'I'd say not, unless you are also a mutant.'

"Are those bitches still bothering you?" Buffy said in a dangerous tone.

"No, not really. But, now I am an outcast there," Dawn explained looking at the floor. "The only classmate that is still talking to me is Mari, and she is missing half of the classes due to her job."

"I'll see what I can do, but don't get your hopes up, the Professor is very selective," Scott said with a shrug.

Just at that moment the recovery vehicle arrived. After checking that everything was in order, Scott carried the teenagers to the Repair Shop in Bayville, where they received the bad news.

"Two weeks at least. Goddammit." Buffy said, exiting the repair shop, and then he looked at the time. "And we have to be in Gotham later today. "

"Actually, we may be able to lend you a car." Ororo said. "If you don't mind driving the old school SUV around."

"That I presume it's in the school." Buffy said "Wouldn't that put you in problems with the headmaster?"

"No, he trusts my judgement." Ororo said.

"Okay, but I want to take a shower, if it isn't much of a bother." Buffy said "We have a change of clothes with the rest of our things, and we just came from a camping trip."

"No problem, just don't go wandering around, okay?" Ororo said.

Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters

Dawn stepped into the kitchen. She had just showered and put on the clean clothes and felt better. Buffy, who had already showered and changed, was drinking coffee there talking to Scott.

"...not the better, really. I tend to fall for bad boys, and they are, well, bad." Buffy said, and noticed Dawn "Well, I have already moved everything into the SUV. So, are you ready to go?""

"As ready, as I can be." Dawn said.

"Well, we have to go. Thank you for the coffee," Buffy said to Scott. "We'll try to visit you some time, Scotty. After all, we are living on New York right now."

As they were leaving Scotty gave them a slip of paper.

"This is my phone number, if you have any problem, call me," Scott said, accompanying them to the door.

"Thank you," Buffy said, politely.

Outside, just besides the school old SUV, not the one they had used earlier, they found Ororo, looking to the East, toward the sea.

"If I were you, I would try to get to Gotham as soon as possible," Ororo said, without facing them, looking at the black clouds that could be seen coming from the horizon, ignoring a shooting star that went from East to West "Tonight there is going to be a storm,"

"But the weather prediction..." Buffy said, weirded by her tone of voice.

"Never bet against Ororo in the weather department," Scott commented "She has been right every single time"

"It comes from growing up in the savanna," Ororo said, turning toward them with a slight smile. "Storms can form suddenly and last for days, and if you don't learn to recognize the signs, you're screwed."

"Okay, thanks, we'll try," Buffy said, and in an impulse, she went and hugged the older woman.

"Not that I complain about it, but why did you hug me?."

"It's difficult to explain. You have a... presence, so to speak, that remind me of a dear friend who died some time ago."

Ororo smiled, a sad smile, brought by memories of her own.

"I would love to know more about that person, but as people say, time waits for nobody," Ororo said, getting out of the way for them to access the car.

A she was about to climb into the car, Dawn suddenly held her head and would have fallen if Scott hadn't caught her.

"It's nothing, just a dizzy spell," Dawn said, standing up again.

"Are you sure?," Buffy said, clearly worried.

"Yes, don't worry," Dawn said, rolling her eyes. "Let's go, then."

To Be Continued…