Authors Note:
The title of this Chapter as well as the quoted lyrics at the end of it, come courtesy of “The Lord of the Ring,” by J.R.R. Tolkien, all rights reserved.
The Road Goes Ever on and on,
Down From the Door Where it Began
Being the eighth part of “What Dreams may come”
“Oh, aren’t you the most beautiful baby in the whole world?”, Dawn cheerfully asked little Elizabeth, who was lying in her arms looking curiously into the former keys face. “I don’t think I will ever put you down again Liz!”
“And for the past hours you most certainly haven’t done so,” Buffy observed sourly, doubting she would ever have the chance to hold her god daughter too.
Of course she was exaggerating shamelessly, after all they had arrived only an hour ago. And unlike her sister, Dawn saw Willow’s and Tara’s now three month old daughter for the first time.
It also was quiet heart warming to the Slayer, to see her sister with a baby in her arm. In a way it made her not only see what a good paediatrician Dawn would become, but also that one day she might become a good mother too, if she had the wish that is.
Now that was something Buffy hadn’t given up hope on herself. And for the past three month there was this chance, that maybe – just maybe…
“Oh my goddess! I almost forgot!” Willow suddenly cried out and stormed out of the living room, to return only seconds later carrying a very important looking envelope.
Here Dawn,” she said, “just yesterday this arrived for you.”
At once Dawn’s face turned very pale and she carefully handed Elizabeth over to her older sister. This was it, she knew. From the three universities she had applied to; both Cambridge and London University had already turned her down and if Oxford did too…
Well even if worse came to worse – England wise, she still would study medicine for sure; she‘d already secured a place at the medical school of U.C. San Francisco.
No, this was not so much about her future career in medicine, that she had set her heart on studying in England, but because of her love to Susan.
Twenty-nine year old Susan.
Dawn’s eyes went all dreamy as she thought about her girlfriend.
‘My girlfriend,’ Dawn thought. ‘Susan’s my girlfriend’. She liked the sound of these words and was amazed at the same time.
Not especially that she was in love with another girl – but that she’d fallen so deeply and completely in love, it almost scared her.
In Susan she’d found her soul mate, her special someone and the person she wanted to grow old with.
To be honest, this love had come as quite a surprise for Dawn, for given her past track record in this field, with crushes on different vampires, Elisabeth (who wasn’t only hetero, but homophobic too), not to mention her unfaithful ex-boyfriend; she had already started to believe that the monks hadn’t included the ability to find true love within her bodily makeup, when they had transformed her from this mystical key to a real human being.
But then she had walked into Liz’s future nursery and there she’d stood – Susan.
Maybe one head taller then herself and very attractively butch, with short reddish blond hair. Brown eyes and a beautiful face with – if possible – more freckles then Willow had and oh, so smoochable red lips.
But most of all it had been her hands, that had Dawn mesmerised.
They where strong hands and no doubt used to strong labour. But at the same time they looked quiet gracefully formed and well shaped. Much like the hands of an artist or a surgeon.
These hands also where very gently, but Dawn wouldn’t find out, until some time later.
However, there she' stood and despite her more realistic nature, found herself falling head over heals in love with Susan Walker.
[Not to be confused with the character of the same name from BBC’s highly popular “Coupling.”]
Dawn spend most of her time during the next days, that Susan worked on Elizabeth’s as well as two other rooms in the house, with her. Helping Susan with her work and talking with her about every possible subject, from politics to favourite music, to their secret dreams.
It didn’t take Dawn long to find out that the attraction between her and Sue was indeed mutual and her lips as smoochable as she had imagined them.
Eventually, following some quiet memorable dates, Dawn had to return to Frisco with Buffy and in the light of the medical school applications Dawn had packed, Susan gave her the most wonderful parting gift when she whispered to her at the airport: “I love you Dawn Michelle Summers, and I will wait for you to return to England and me next fall.”
During the past seven months and despite the long distance between them, the relationship between Dawn and Susan kept growing strong, since true love could never be hindered by mere distance.
And Susan Walker was Dawn’s true love, her soul mate and her special someone.
They had really made the best of it, talking to each other online or on the phone for hours. They even had had phone sex twice. And then there had been this surprise visit from Sue at Dawn’s dorm in Frisco when Dawn and Susan – Sue for short, but only Dawn would be allowed to call her that – had slept with each other for the their very first wonderful time.
However until now everything had developed under the prospect that Dawn would move to England for good within the next six month.
What if she did not get excepted at Oxford?
Could their love be strong enough for yet another five years of love in the distance?
Dawn did not know. All she did know was, that her heart would break if her relationship with Sue should ever end.
“Hello! Earth to Dawn! You’re still with us down here?” Willow asked, waving the envelope in front her eyes.
“Sorry”, Dawn said, shaking her head, “I was just thinking…”
“Of somebody else,” Buffy completed for her sister with a sympathetic smile. “But if you don’t open this envelope soon, I will do it for you.”
“That wouldn’t be necessary,” Dawn said and nervously fetched the envelope from Willow’s hand. But the moment she touched the it, Dawn knew she no longer needed to be nervous.
“I’m in,” she whispered and found herself in the middle of some puzzled looks until the others remembered Dawn’s special talents.
Nevertheless Dawn ripped open the envelope and took out the very important looking letter: “Dear Miss Summers, yadda, yadda, given your outstanding testimonies and excellent letters of recommendations we’re honoured to except you to our medical school, yadda, yadda sincerely.”
“You’ve made it!” Buffy cried out and little Liz in her arms let out the most cute giggle, as to celebrate Dawn’s success.
“But why do I get the impressing that you’re not all with the woo hoo here?” Buffy asked after she had a close look upon her sister, who was having a rather guilty look within her blue eyes.
“There’s woo and hoo,” Dawn said quietly to her sister, “but also the feeling that I’m leaving you all alone in Frisco when I’m leaving for England next summer.”
“Well, I feel honoured of course,” Buffy answered lovingly, “but there’s absolutely no need for you to feel guilty. First of all, I’m not completely alone, there’s Miss Kitty. And Xander and Jennifer they are certainly not planning on leaving, you know with Xander having made partner in his contraction firm and Jenny being pregnant. – Shame they won’t tell us what it will be, even though they already know.” Buffy added with a pout.
“A boy; James Alexander,” Dawn muttered under her breath.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“You deserved this,” Buffy said quietly. “studying at the best medical school in the world and”, she reached with her free hand for her sister’s hand, “to be with Susan. I know how much you love her and knowing that you will be living here happy and in love with Susan is all I’ve ever wished for you and it makes me forget the rather long physical distance between us.”
There was a moment of understanding silence between the two Summers sisters. A silence that sealed the deal again, forget long ago that they would always be there for each other whenever the one sister would need the other and no distance could ever change that.
“Plus,” Buffy added on a more cheerful note, “I have Steve, who unlike my previous boyfriends is neither dead nor like completely intimidated by my super natural strength. I’ll be fine.”
Steve Taylor, thirty five year old architect from San Francisco. Buffy had sat right next to him on her flight back home after Elizabeth’s birth.
And after talking for almost the entire flight, Steve had asked out Buffy for a date the next evening. Three months later they were still going steady and things were looking serious.
And that despite Steve knowing everything about Buffy’s role as the chosen one, as well as her super natural strength.
Smiling thankfully Dawn looked upon her older sister, holding her god daughter in her arm, and as Dawn kept looking the scene in front of her inner eyes changed; showing Buffy with not one but two babies in her arms and Steven standing lovingly behind her.
“Of course you will be fine Buffy,” Dawn said tenderly and then turning to Willow and Tara she asked: “so does your offer for me to stay at your place? At the weekends, or when I’m not in Oxford or staying in Frisco during summer break?” She added.
“Of course you can stay with us,” Tara answered, but added puzzled, “but I thought you would rather move in with Susan.”
“And I certainly will,” Dawn with the utmost assurance in her voice. “But not right away. Our relationship has been a long distance one, for some time now and will continue to be for the next eight months. And despite the distance, things are going well. However, Sue and I both think that if we go from long distance, to living together all at once even if only on a weekend basis, might prove difficult if not dangerous.
“So we’ve decided to date for a while and then go from there.”
“Sounds like a reasonable way to go,” Willow said, “wouldn’t you agree Tara?”
Tara nodded slowly.
“What’d you think Buffy?”
Silence.
They all turned around to find Buffy soundly asleep, with a happy giggling Liz laying safe and sound in her arms. Looking curiously up to her sleeping godmother.
“Still hasn’t found a way to successfully deal with jet leg hasn’t she?” Willow wondered.
“Apparently,” Dawn said, “she looks peacefully though.”
Willow and Tara both agreed and since she looked comfortable too and Liz had also dozed of, they let them both sleep and continued to talk, but lowered their voices not to wake them.
“So you want to call Susan right away?” Willow asked, handing Dawn the cordless phone.
“No not just yet. I’m sure she already knows anyway. I mean she was so convinced I would get in to Oxford, that she wouldn’t mind if I don’t tell her right away,” Dawn explained.
But since both Willow and Tara looked rather sceptical, she added, with glance upon her wristwatch, “Plus she’s not home anyway, she’s at her fitness club and she always shuts her Mobile down when she works out. But I’m sure she will be calling me as soon as she turns it on again.”
Dawn raised her right hand to reveal to the other woman – awake – her Mobile, and the short text message she’d just send.
“You’re good,” Willow complimented, “I didn’t even see you get out your cell phone, let alone use it.”
“Practice,” Dawn said, “comes when you have to send messages during class, and you don’t want the teacher to know.” She placed her Mobil right next to her on a little side table.
“And now for something completely different!”, Dawn said cheerfully, “now Willow that you’ve got your ‘profile’ back, have the two of you decided on a wedding date?”
“Indeed we have,” Tara answered, looking thoughtfully at her engagement ring. “Next summer. And we choose the date so that you have time enough, to move in with us before that.”
“We also would need a willing slave to help us with the wedding preparations,” Willow added with a devilish grin on her lips.
“I’m born to serve,” Dawn answered obediently
“So when is the big day going to be?” Dawn asked impatiently, while franticly clicking through the menus of her palmtop organizer – a birthday present from Willow, who then answered:
“On Friday, July twenty fourth, we will be registering our partnership at City Hall. That will be a more private occasion, and only you Buffy, Xander and Giles with partners and of course my mother will be attending this one.”
“And on Saturday,” Tara continued, “we will have a nice formal open air wedding ceremony, in the private park right across the street, with all our friends and family. Followed by a big party.”
“And who will be marring you?” Dawn asked curiously, but also a little bit uneasily, knowing she was touching upon a somewhat sensitive subject.
“Well, we couldn’t find a rabbi who would bless our marriage. But luckily the Lutheran Church here in London to which Tara belongs, is more open to our way of living and so their pastor will be marrying us”, Willow explained and with a lovingly look upon her daughter dozing in her godmother’s arms, she continued, “also Tara and I have decided that Liz will be baptised and raised in the Christian faith. I however will not convert and I will make sure that Liz learns of my faith as well.”
There was a long meaningful silence between the three woman, interrupted only by Buffy’s soft snoring.
“And of course,” Willow continued with a more cheerful voice. “We want you, our sleeping beauty here”, she pointed to Buffy, “together with Emma and Lucimar to be Tara’s bridesmaids and Xander will serve as my best men.”
Catching a short frown upon Dawn’s face when mention the bridesmaids, Willow hurried to assure Dawn, “no need to worry. Unlike with Xander’s and Anya’s none wedding [Not wanting to chance it, he and Jenny married secretly in Las Vegas.] you will like the gowns me and Tara have selected already. As much as Tara’s wedding dress – as I’ve been told.”
She shot Tara a annoyed look, “she won’t let me have a look you know. She’s such a traditionalist. But from what she told me, it ought to look fantastic.”
“Look who’s talking,” Tara interposed mockingly. “After all she won’t let me look at the ivory white suite that she’ll be wearing either.”
“So in a way,” Dawn said slowly. “ Willow will be the groom – well sort of – and Tara will be the bride. I wonder how you came up with that arrangement. Not because you are both girls, but more since unlike six years ago now Tara wears her hair short and Willow long.”
“I believe I know what you’re thinking,” Tara said in a friendly voice. “Since we’ve decided for a sort of ‘tradition’ wedding, why I’m not wearing the tux since I have the short hair right?”
“Sounds kinda cliché, I know,” Dawn amide, “but I really did wonder.”
“And you’re welcome to wonder”, Tara said, “And the reason why I’m wearing the dress is…”
“Because she cheated in a game of strip poker and thus won the dress,” Willow said jokingly and they all loudly broke into laughs, only to cover the mouth in order to not wake Buffy or Liz.
A quick look however assured them that right now possibly nothing could wake up the Slayer or loosen her secure hold upon her goddaughter.
And Elizabeth only shortly opened her eyes to have a unfocused look around before she closed them again, dozing off.
“But seriously,” Tara continued, and wiped away tears of joy from her eyes. “Both Willow and I have long thought and talked about it all.
“First of all, we really wanted the traditional wedding. After all who’s to say that this form is strictly for hetero couples only right? Now part of this form means the father to walk the ‘bride’ to the altar.
“Sadly as you know, Willow’s dad died just two years ago, and my father doesn’t even know I’m alive. I was as good as dead to him anyway, after I decided to stay in Sunnydale with Willow. I’m still not sure what he found more disgusting, that I was a practicing witch or that I was gay.”
Tara paused for a minute revisiting the pain she always felt about the way her own father rejected her for either being a witch or gay or both.
She shook her head, shoving her still unresolved feeling towards her father aside and then talked on: “Nevertheless the closest thing I ever had to a father – to a real father that is, is Giles. Right when I met him for the first time, I knew him to be someone I could trust. And when later things with Willow turned bad to worse and I had to leave her… Giles was there to comfort me.”
“Wow,” Dawn said softly, “I never knew you where so close. I don’t believe neither Buffy, Willow or me were ever that close. I mean of course we we’re close to him too. But just not in the same way he had been to you right?”
Tara nodded. “And that’s why we asked Giles to walk me to the altar. He said yes and that’s why I’m going to wear this beautiful white dress that you just have to see before you leave again.”
She paused for another moment before she added with a wigged smile: “and I didn’t cheat, I won that dress fair and square.”
Before Dawn could make up her mind about what Tara was getting at, her cell phone started ringing, and before she it had the chance to ring again she already answered it.
“Yes? Susan hi sweetie! Listen I’ve got some great news…”
And with that Dawn was up and out of the room, followed as usually by both Miss Trixi and Miss Cleo. For wherever Dawn should go those cats would follow.
“You know“, Willow said turning back to Tara, ”I think Dawn and Susan are really made for each other.”
“I think you’re right. And now I think it’s time for Liz to get her dinner,” Tara said and carefully took her daughter out of the sleeping Slayers arms.
Willow then covert her best friend with a warm blanket, and together with Tara and Liz went up the stairs, so she could breastfeed her little baby daughter.
The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it begun.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And must follow, if I can.
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way.
Where many path and errands meet.
And wither then? I can not say.
[hr]
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Really interesting story... More update-y goodness please 
Dax I love 
Liz, I am in tear's again as alway's love this story.
lol maybe a little bit ^^
and a Cherryl too? Oh I already know that this characters are good ones 
