Chapter 1: The Binder
By: Hope
Dawn walked down the streets of L.A., looking up at the tall buildings as though she had never seen anythingn like them before. Well she hadn't, had she? All those memories of living in L.A. and of visiting her father there so many times since her parents had gotten divorced had never really happened. In fact, Dawn had never met her father...in her memories she had but accordingo to Bu-- "Stop it..." She said to herself, she was thinking to much again. It's what she seemed to do whenever she got nervous, and boy was she nervous today.
Out of all of the students in SunnyDale High, some law firm had picked Dawn to shadow one of their lawyers for a week. Buffy didn't like the idea at first, not being comfortable with Dawn being away for that long but was later able to convince the manager at the Doublemeat to let her take about a week and a half off, so she and Dawn would have some sister time in-between all the business.
"Are you going to go see him?" Dawn had asked the night before she and Buffy left.
"What are you talking about Dawnie?" Buffy replied, continually stirring her hot chocolate with her index finger, even though she had known exactly what Dawn was talking about. In fact, that was what had been on her mind ever since she decided to go to L.A. with Dawn...instead of asking her father to keep her for the week.
Buffy hadn't spoken to Angel in the past year, let alone seen him at all. And he had made no attempt to contact her either, as far as she had known at least.
"Angel, and you know what I'm talking about." Dawn said, slumping back into her chair, looking out the window to the front yard.
"I...I don't know yet." Buffy had replied. The conversation had stopped there, neither one wanting to revisit ugly memories of Angel....or the happy ones. Dawn had known that Buffy had spent the past few weeks thinking, alot. Willow was in England with Giles and Xander was spending most of his time either at work (his crew was rebuilding the old highschool) or at the Magic Box, slowly trying to get Anya back. And Spike....no one knew were Spike was. The only thing they knew was that he had asked Clem to look after his crypt for him while he was gone.
Dawn wasn't even sure if she wanted to know where Spike was, or if she wanted him back. Xander had told her what he did....tried to do to her sister. She didn't believe Xander of course, she had to bring the subject up with Buffy, making her tell her every detail of what had happened. Although Spike had hurt Buffy that night, she didn't totally blame him. Buffy felt that it was almost as much her fault as it was his, saying that she had led him on and given into him for so long that he had expected her to give in again..
- - -
"Excuse me." A thin, model looking girl said as Dawn was shoved into her, causing her to lose her balance and fall onto the ground, while dropping everything that she had been holding.
She stood up, realizing that a pain was shooting from her left knee. "S-sorry." Dawn replied, not even looking up but quickly bending down to pick up what had been knocked out of her arms when she had collided with the girl. She was able to pick up two of the folders that had dropped, along with their scattered contents before anyone had stepped on them but she found that her binder had been knocked out of her reach.
"Damn." Dawn cursed under her breath when she saw another hand reach out for her binder and pick it up.
She quickly stood up, ignoring the new pain in her left knee from being knocked down. Dawn had spent too much time working on everything that was in that binder to let it be taken by some asshole. So before she even saw who took it she was willing to chase him, tackle him, almost anything to get her binder back. While Dawn was thinking all of this, deciding how she would be able to track him, get him and still be able to get back to the hotel on time, (Buffy had spent the few weeks before they left training Dawn, like she had promised.) she didn't even realize that the man that had picked the binder up was standing in front of her, offering it back.
"Hello?" Dawn raised her head to look at him. He was absolutely gorgeous, there was no mistake about that. He looked around her age, maybe a year older. It looked like he had just gotten up out of bed, judging by his messed up brown hair. He half smiled at her when he said hello. Dawn's heart skipped a beat when she looked into his clear blue eyes and saw that he was looking back at her with a stare so intense but gentle and innocent at the same time. "I think this is yours." He smiled again, handing her the binder.
"Y-y-yea! This, this binder, it is mine, I-I dropped it, got these but that..." Dawn realized that she was beginning to babble and that she was making an ass out of herself. "Thanks." She said as she took it out of his hand.
He laughed a little. "Noo! You're supposed to laugh at me after you leave me here alone and embarrassed, doing that beforehand is just cruel." Dawn said, finally recovering her wits.
"Oh I'm very sorry, I didn't know that was a rule here." He replied.
"I was joking." Dawn said, catching that he had sounded serious.
"Oh..." He said, scratching his head while looking embarrassed. "Umm...I'm Stephen." He said, hoping that this was the right way to do an introduction. He hadn't really had that much contact with girls and he thought that he could sense something good about this one. Something powerful.
"I'm Dawn." Dawn said, both surprised and excited that he had asked for her name. "Well, I have to go, my sister, she'll get worried." She said, smiling. "Alright, um, nice meeting you, Dawn." Stephen replied.
Dawn took a step with her left leg and realized that the pain in her knee was almost unbearable. "AH." She began to fall down but Stephen (who she thought had been walking away) caught her before she hit the ground. "Ow." Dawn said quietly as Stephen lifted her up in his arms, holding her.
He walked her over to a nearby bench and set her down, examining her knee like he was a doctor. "Sorry about that, I'm fine, really. I'm sure it was just one of those...." Dawn was saying as the slowly tried to stand up again, but as soon as she put major weight on her knee, pain began to jolt through her whole leg. "one time things?" Dawn said again, slowly sitting back down. "I don't think you'll be able to walk on this today." Stephen said, still examining the knee. He looked up at Dawn. He couldn't believe that he had gone all of his life without seeing something as beautiful as she was. Her hair shined in the light and ran down past her shoulders. "I....I could help you back to where you were going." He added.
Dawn took a few seconds to consider this. Buffy would almost kill her if she found out that she had gotten hurt on her first day in L.A. But then again, Buffy would also almost kill her if she had a guy, a totally gorgeous guy, walk her back. Well if I'm already going to be in for it... she thought. "That would be great, if, if you can of course, I don't want to be a bother or anything."
"No, its fine, I don't have to be anywhere today anyway..." He said to her. "Where are you heading?"
"Oh, the Holiday Inn on the corner there." Dawn said, pointing to the large building on the corner of the main street.
Stephen then helped Dawn get up, having her put her left arm around his shoulder and let him carry some of the weight. He held her books in his other arm. They made it to the hotel with nothing said, they both seemed to be too shy to bring up a new subject.
Stephen opened the large doors to the hotel, going in first then holding them open for Dawn who was now hopping on one foot. "DAWN?" Stephen heard someone scream from across the lobby once they had both gotten inside.
He turned to see a woman that looked like she was 20 years old run up to Dawn. "Dawnie, are you ok? What happened? Who's that that brought you here? Why were you gone so long?" The woman leashed out so many questions at Dawn that neither Dawn or Stephen could even count how many, one just kept coming after another until she had run out of anything to say at all.
"Buffy." Dawn said, holding onto her sister's shoulders. "I'm fine, some as--moron knocked me down on the sidewalk and I hurt my knee. Stephen here." Dawn said, gesturing for Stephen to come closer to them. "Helped me here because I couldn't exactly walk on my own."
Buffy had seemed to calm down a little when she turned to Stephen. "Thank- - -" She stopped in mid-sentence when she had looked at him. He looked so familiar to her. She shook the feeling that she knew him from somewhere off and continued to thank him, telling him that she was so happy there was at least a decent teenager in the city. Stephen just shrugged, he had been raised to do that so he saw nothing else that he could have done but help her.
Buffy turned back to Dawn. "We need to get you back to the room, hopefully the knee will heal quickly, and Fred and Gunn, two friends of Angel's are coming here." Dawn nodded to Buffy and turned to say goodbye to Stephen. But he was gone and her books were on a chair next to where they were standing.