When a key is not a key ((for Harry))

[slayers_desire]

It has started a few weeks ago, with the disturbing nightmares that forced April to wake up in the middle of the night. Nightmares that while connected to her voices, were so real and visual, that it was like she had been there in the moment.

In the moment of a death. It was not like most deaths that she saw through her voices... instead, it was like the person has disappeared. And April knew each time it happened it was like a little piece of the universe had been stolen.

Clark had advised her to go to the research library hidden in Lorne's bar. And that was where she was, when a commotion was raised from the meeting area of the Scoobies. Coming out of the library, she saw her father, Spike, placing Dawn onto a couch. The young girl was flickering... disappearing and reappearing... it was so shocking, she thought she was dreaming again.

"Someone help her! I am nothing without her!" Spike called out.

April frowned. Something was seriously wrong. And her intuition was telling her that whatever was going wrong, had to do with some serious magic. Returning into the library, April used her PINpoint to call up Harry Dresden. Hopefully he could provide some insight...

Comments

[slayers_desire]

"We were just talking when this started..." Spike frowns.

"Dawn... doesn't really have any parents. She is a Key. So I can't imagine it would be something like that..."

[thepizzalord]

"A Key?" Harry says, looking up at April. "Like you?"

[slayers_desire]

"Yes. Her Key strengths are different than mine..."

[thepizzalord]

Harry's memory of the time he looked at April with his Sight is still as vivid in his mind as the day he Saw her, and he looks back at Dawn, wondering what he might See if he did the same to her. "Tell me about it."

[slayers_desire]

"Dawn was created to stop Glory... a Demon that came by... but there is more to her than that. She is a source of inspiration. Of knowledge..."

Dawn's inner soul might look like looking into a thousand libraries all at once. At the source of knowledge. Of hope.

[thepizzalord]

"Like a muse?" Harry looks at them. "Step away from her, please. Where I won't See you."

[slayers_desire]

April nods, understanding his request, and leaves the room so he can only see Dawn. "Do we have to leave?" Spike questions.

[thepizzalord]

"If you don't get behind me, yes. No offense but I don't wanna See any more than I have to." Harry isn't sure what he'd See in Spike and the others, but the Sight is distracting enough when he's only looking at what he wants to See. "Just stay out of my line of sight. I haven't quite learned the whole eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head thing or anything."

[slayers_desire]

Spike really does not want to leave Dawn's side, but he trusts his judgement that Harry is not going to hurt her. So he moves to get behind Harry, along with Wes.

[thepizzalord]

Harry closes his eyes and breathes deeply, preparing himself to open his Third Eye. It's always a disorienting experience, no matter what he Sees, and depending on the result, he could be incapacitated for a while. When he's ready, he opens his eyes, taking care to look only at Dawn.

At first, he isn't quite sure what he's Seeing. Piles and piles of books, stacks curving impossibly to create a shelter, deeply shadowed. A heart-sized globe of light pulses in the darkness, and he realizes that it's the heart of a girl, curled in on herself, her face hidden against the knees drawn up close to her. The pulsing light pushes traces of itself outward, and he can tell they're supposed to encompass her entire self, but it's being swallowed by darkness before it can reach out.

[slayers_desire]

Truly, if it was not for the fact that one of Dawn's abilities was to inspire hope -- and that includes hope in herself -- that darkness would have encompassed her true self. And she would have disappeared.

It is that light, that heart, that is keeping her in the here and now.

[thepizzalord]

Harry takes a closer look at the light, and quickly realizes that it's like staring into the heart of a sun. He looks away, quickly - catches sight of something big and dark out of the corner of his eye - and passes a hand in front of his face, closing his eyes for a moment as his sight returns to normal.

[slayers_desire]

Spike and Wes, who are not sure what Harry is doing, wait a couple of moments. Then Spike speaks. "You a'right mate?"

[thepizzalord]

"Yep. Gimme a second," Harry says, keeping his eyes shut. It won't help reorganize his thoughts, not when the image is seared into his mind the moment he thinks about it. "You can come back in," he calls out to April, and looks up again, blinking.

[slayers_desire]

April returns back into the room. "What were you able to see?"

[thepizzalord]

"She's in some kinda... self-protective state. There's some kind of darkness smothering her inner self." It's hard to sum up what he Sees in mere words. "It's still there, just... smaller."

[slayers_desire]

"So she is protecting herself from the darkness..."

"Can we stop the darkness? Help her?"

[thepizzalord]

"That's the question, isn't it?" Harry considers his options. "If she was possessed I could just do an exorcism, but I don't think that's the right call here."

[slayers_desire]

"We need to find out what it is... and why it is affecting her. And why the others..."

[thepizzalord]

"How many others have disappeared? Was it just like this?" He hasn't heard of anything like this before, but he's not going to simply give up and leave.

[slayers_desire]

"I have seen six faces in my dreams." April is an artist... and thus she takes out a sketch book. With each face drawn in detail.

[thepizzalord]

Harry looks at her sketches thoughtfully. "No one you know personally, I take it," he asks the room at large.

[slayers_desire]

Both Spike and Wes shake their heads in negation. "Sorry mate..."

"Love? If you concentrate, maybe you will get something..." He turns to April. She can tell that he really need to have Dawn protected.

So she kneels by the other woman's side. "We are connected... she and I. Her pain is my pain. If she died... I would feel empty. Much like the others..."

"Maybe they were Keys too?"

[thepizzalord]

That's something that hadn't quite occurred to him already. "How many Keys are there exactly?"

[slayers_desire]

"We have never found out." April answers truthfully.