patriciatepes | Fic: The Funny Thing About Keys (19/25)

Author Name: Patriciatepes (Patricia de Lioncourt )

Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Batman: the Animated Series

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Dawn Summers, The Joker, Nightwing/Dick Grayson, Batman, Giles, Willow, Xander, Buffy Summers, OCs, several minor scenes with major characters

Pairing: Dawn/Nightwing (Dick Grayson)

Chapter Links: Prev | Next

Warnings: (for all chapters) Torture, swearing

Summary: When Buffy is poisoned and dying, Dawn is left no choice but to go to Gotham for the cure that she is told is too dangerous to retrieve. Time is on her side... too bad the universe isn't.

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, Batman, or any related characters. They belong to Whedon, DC Comics, and WB. No money made here.

Author's Notes: Art by the wonderful 20thcenturyvole. I started this story long, long ago, and decided to finish it for the

wipbigbang. I do author's notes every chapter on fanfiction (dot) net, but I'll only copy the relevant ones here.

Chapter 19- Closer

It was their first lead since realizing that Dawn had been kidnapped by the Joker. Willow's scrying spell had been a success, leading the Scooby Gang and the Bat crew like a mystical GPS to an abandoned warehouse on the wrong side of Gotham—a descriptor of the city that made the Scooby Gang scoff and laugh. So far, all sides of this town seemed wrong. But, as they arrived outside the looming building, its once bright red bricks darkened and discolored by age and disuse, something felt strange. Stranger than anything thus far.

Willow put out a hand as the two groups left their various vehicles. She shook her head, her eyes locked on the warehouse down the block from them. She couldn't put her finger on it, not by a long shot, but the vibe was weird. It almost seemed… too easy.

"Something's off," Nightwing said, the first to voice this feeling aloud.

Willow nodded. "That's just what I was thinking. The scry for the Joker led us straight here, which isn't unusual. He doesn't have any experience with magic that you're aware of, right?"

The Dark Knight, looming just over Willow's shoulder, nodded. The witch pursed her lips.

"I've had a pretty strange feeling ever since we stepped foot in this city, but this is the strangest yet. It's like… like playing that game where you have two pictures and you're supposed to spot the differences. Thing is, though—"

"You can't find them here, no matter how hard you look?" Robin offered.

"Not of the good," Xander noted, instantly taking the reward for understatement of the century.

"This is the only lead we have on Dawn," Batman said. "We should fan out, look for any sign of her or the Joker. But be vigilant."

The group nodded, with Nightwing adding, "I'll take the roofs."

He was gone, alone, before anyone could protest. Willow sighed.

"I guess we're hoofing it, then," she said as the remaining members of the group began to approach the warehouse.

Alone. Time to think. Those were things that Nightwing had desired ever since learning the truth about Dawn "Winters." He took his watch on the rooftop directly opposite one of the side entrance of the warehouse that, according to Willow, housed Dawn and the Joker. He rested one foot on the ledge of the roof, eyes baring down on the simple, metal, industrial door across from him.

Dawn had lied. He had accepted that much. But… perhaps no more than he had to her. After all, she had no idea that her neighbor from upstairs was currently dressed as a nocturnal vigilante taking part in an attempt to rescue her. Maybe it was best that Dawn might never know how angry he had been at her for her small lies—well, perhaps not that small. It had been foolish, now that he had the crisp night air around him, helping to clear his head. She did nothing that he wouldn't have done, given the same situation.

But it hurt. He thought of her, sitting beside him, telling him stories about her mother and sister, about her attempted suicide. He had been so touched, so honored that she had felt safe enough with him to share these obviously personal things. And now he just had to wonder… was it all a story? Part of the lie to save her sister?

He would have no more time to think. The door to the warehouse opened and a dark figure that Nightwing could only vaguely make out exited. He could tell by little things—the gait of this person, the size—that this was a man, one who was a bit heavyset. Brow arched, Nightwing could think of no reason why such a person could be meeting with the Joker. He placed a finger to the comm link in his left ear, gently activating it.

"Batman, I have something," he began, but the loud whine of static was all that replied.

He tapped the comm, his eyes never leaving the shadow that was now making his way down the block away from the warehouse.

"Batman?" he tried again.

More static. Willow's feeling—and his own—had been right. Something was off. The comm was jammed, something that did not happen easily to any of the technology employed by Batman or those trained by him. With a small sigh, Nightwing found himself echoing Xander's words.

"Not of the good," he said, launching a grappling hook and following after the shadowy man.

William Cane had indeed heard of Willow Rosenberg and all the wonderful, mystical talents the witch possessed. However, the fact that his involvement with all of this, even the slayer's poisoning, was still shrouded in mystery, had given him quite the advantage.

As soon as Willow and the Bat family had left Arkham, Cane had left his disguise as Alisha behind. He performed a scry right there in the inmate personal effects closet, discovering the Joker's—and thus, his Key's—location. In truth, it wasn't far from the warehouse he had just left. Maybe a handful of blocks or so, but that wasn't the point. The point was that Willow was smart and powerful. She could sense a trap… but not until she was expecting one. So, he had altered her scrying spell, leading her and the Dark Knight to the wrong warehouse. Once inside, the group would find themselves trapped, unable to leave. At least, temporarily.

Cane did know of Willow's talents. He was confident of the witch's ability to escape even one of his charms. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he had bought what he needed most of all now that he knew that he wasn't the only one looking for Miss Dawn Summers. Now, he had bought time. Every minute counted as Cane made his way the several blocks away to pay a visit to the clown and the key.

It's not like colleges offered courses on being kidnapped. However, Dawn was fairly certain that, if they did, not falling asleep would probably be at the top of the rule list. However, she had been the Joker's hostage—and strange colleague, in some ways—for God knew how long now. She had only the vaguest realization that her friends now knew she was in danger, and were no doubt looking for her as she sat there, dozing. But one thing she was absolutely certain of was the fact that she had not been asleep for long enough that she needed it.

She still was not bound to the chair she sat in—a good sign, she supposed—and had placed it near a table that had exactly nothing sitting on it. Joker would get suspicious if one of his weapons, or so much as a spoon, had been on the table. It would look too much like she was trying to get away. But she knew she would never hear the end of it from the Clown Prince if she were to fall asleep and fall out of her chair. So she leaned against the table, head propped up on one of her hands, and let sleep win.

At least for a minute or two. Dawn was sure she couldn't have been asleep long before the loud clacking noise of a keyboard roused her to consciousness again. She blinked, trying to get the blurriness out of her vision, as she settled a glare on the purple-clad back of her captor. The Joker was hunched over a table set perpendicular to the one she was using as a makeshift pillow. The rolling office chair he had found was ratty, with the yellow foam insides peeking out at the seams, but he had it scooted up to the screen of the computer he was tapping away at, his own gaze clearly locked on whatever was on the screen.

Did he have the internet here, in the old, musty abandoned warehouse? How the hell did he accomplish that? Dawn knew that was the least of her problems, but still… The Joker may be crazier than seeing a mirage of an ice cream stand in the desert, but there may be a large chance that the media was underselling his intelligence.

More clacking, and Dawn watched, silently, as the clown's gloved hands flew over the keyboard. He hadn't even noticed whether Dawn was awake or not, so whatever he was looking at had to be damned interesting. Lips pursed, Dawn dared to move out of her chair, leaning up in it just a bit to try and get a glimpse at the screen—still marked by swipes of dust that the Joker had missed when cleaning it off for use.

She had to squint to see, as she was a good couple of feet away from the Joker—all the better for him not to know she was spying. But from what she could make out, leaning out of her chair and praying that the old thing didn't squeak with any slight movement, it looked as if there were runes on the screen. Dawn had studied enough with Willow to know the difference between mystical runes and non-mystical—not that there was too much of a difference—and she suddenly felt as if there was a stone settling in the pit of her stomach.

The Joker was researching. And his current topic of interest? Her. Or, more specifically, the Key.

Her heart thudded against her chest. She didn't know what this meant, but she knew that it wasn't good. What had he learned, so far, that she hadn't told him? Was he learning things even she didn't know? The worry was creeping up within her, and she almost fell out of her seat when she heard the sound of a distant door creak open and slam shut.

Joker whirled. "Dawnie, is that you?"

Dawn shook her head, giving a tiny wave of her hand. "Been here the whole time."

"Oh, goody," Joker said, his permanent grin widening. He withdrew a gun from within the folds of his jacket. "Company."

The clown stood, starting off in the direction of the noise, when Dawn called him to a stop.

"Hey! Don't you think I could, maybe, I don't know, use a freakin' weapon?" she asked.

Joker chuckled. "Yeah. Right. Now be a good little key and stay on your hook while Uncle Joker goes and kills the nice visitor."

With that, he vanished into the shadows of the warehouse. Dawn rolled her eyes, catching in the corner of them the glow of the computer screen. In his haste to discover the intruder, Joker had left his internet window up. Dawn grinned.

"Must've been an only child," she muttered, rushing to the computer.

She didn't have a lot of time—not once, actually, in this whole kidnapping, had this not been the case—so she lost no time. She scrolled like her life depended on it. It probably did. Again, she knew enough from her time with Willow to recognize some of the runes, and the text around the images of the runes was in plain old English. Dawn's lips were now pressed so hard together that she was sure it looked like she had sucked on a lemon… and that her face might stick that way. Joker was researching the Key. There wasn't much on the site—not much more than what she had already told the maniac—but there was still a bit more, which could mean something or nothing all at once. If Joker thought that Dawn was deliberately holding information out on him… she shuddered to think of what his reaction might be.

Suddenly, a weighty hand landed on her shoulder, causing Dawn to start and whirl around.

"I wasn't doing anything, I swe—" but the rest of her defense died in her throat. Where she had been expecting the Clown Prince of Crime, there was only the hefty William Cane instead.

He grinned down at her. "My sweet Key… oh how I've searched for you."

Dawn was frozen, the warlock's hand still on her shoulder. She was weaponless, alone, and utterly, completely, frozen. There was no way she could get away, and she was at no good angle to get a hit in on him to make a break for it. It was like she was a kid all over again, some menacing vamp baring down on her, waiting to use her as the perfect bait for the slayer. Her breath caught in her throat, and for the first time since the whole ordeal began, she really felt like she was about to cry.

"Now I finally have what I need," Cane said, digging his fingers into her shoulder and yanking her to her feet.

"Let go!" Dawn struggled.

Cane laughed, gripping her with a strength that she would have never guessed the poison-maker to possess. Dawn put her whole weight into leaning away from the man just in time to hear a faint whooshing noise fill the air. Cane was too busy eyeing his prize to notice apparently, as a dark figure swooped down upon him—fist first. The momentum of the blow caused Cane to lose his grip on Dawn and go falling off to her right. Dawn blinked, trying to get her brain to focus on what had just happened as a black-clad figure down stood in front of her.

He was tall, with long dark hair. His suit was stream-line and black with only a blue emblem of a bird emblazoned across his broad chest. His face was covered with a domino mask angled to be reminiscent of a bird as well. Dawn blinked again. This was Nightwing, one of Batman's own team of vigilantes, right here in the flesh.

"Where's Joker?" he asked, his voice low and colored with gravel tones.

"I-I don't know. He went after a noise we heard," Dawn explained.

Nightwing nodded once, taking Dawn by the hand. "We have to get you out of here. Now."

She didn't need to be told twice. But before Nightwing could begin to lead the way, the sound of a bullet whizzing off a nearby pipe caused them to duck and turn. Joker was back, a faint wisp of smoke rolling from the barrel of the gun he now had leveled at the two of them.

"Now, isn't that rude? Batsy must not teach manners in his household, but you just simply do not swoop in to someone else's party and steal their guests," the Clown growled.

"Run," Nightwing said as Joker fired another shot.

This one caught a pipe in just the right way, sending a spout of steam shooting off in between Nightwing and Dawn. Nightwing yanked Dawn down, forcing her to go under the hissing mist, and started the both of them running off toward the back of the warehouse, more shots ricocheting off after them.

They passed Cane's lumpy form just as he was getting to his feet, and Dawn heard him mutter some Latin under his breath. In seconds, what was once just a shadowy, dusty old building was now a shadowy, dusty, old, and fog-filled building.

"What the hell?" Nightwing muttered.

"A spell," Dawn answered.

They didn't slow their run, though now their path seemed maze-like. Dawn couldn't tell which way was left, right, up, or down. It was like they had fallen down the rabbit hole, but in this case, they didn't even have a white rabbit to follow. At least Dawn couldn't hear Joker shooting at them anymore, which she was taking as the only good news at the moment.

"Where's the door?" she asked after a moment of running.

Nightwing never slowed, despite his answer of, "Don't know."

They ran straight ahead, as far as Dawn could tell, and reached nothing but more fog-filled space. Suddenly, this finite space of a warehouse seemed endless. There were no sounds around them, nothing discernable anyway, so they pressed on ahead, trying to outrun both the crazed clown and the wicked warlock. However, the sound of a small ping—metallic, like a pin being pulled on a grenade—sounded off just to their right. Nightwing came to an immediate stop, with Dawn almost slamming into his back.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

Dawn had enough time to breathe before Nightwing let out an "oomph" and was sent flying out of sight by some large thing that looked vaguely like a swinging log. Dawn heard his body hit the ground somewhere off to her left with a groan, and she ran toward it, careful to stay out of the presumed path of Joker's booby trap—when the hell had he had time to set that up?

She frantically waved her hands, trying to clear as much fog as possible to give herself as much vision as possible, and managed to find Nightwing up against a metal beam. He was bruised, but breathing, and turned over so that he lay face down. But he was unconscious, completely out.

"Oh, God," Dawn gasped, rushing to the hero's side.

She knelt down, gripped one of his arms, and flipped him onto his back. She was seconds away from uttering the hero's name when she stopped, mid-name. Her jaw went slack, her eyes wide. Nightwing's mask had broken partially away when his face had made a hard connection with either the beam or the floor. Nothing else seemed broken—nose and other bones intact, just bloody—but the hero's face, his true face, was now completely visible to her.

"Dick?" she whispered.

Dick Grayson, upstairs neighbor and hot Judo instructor extraordinaire, lay before her… as Nightwing.

"God and Goddess," Dawn murmured, sure that calling on one deity was not enough to cover her surprise.

The sound of footsteps drawing nearer caused both a rising panic and focus within the slayer's sister. She felt frantically of the floor around her—still unable to see it for the fog—and quickly found the other half of Nightwing's (Dick's) mask. She pressed it to his face and recalled a "fix it" spell that Willow had taught her. A crazy giggle escaped Dawn as she remembered uttering "oculus reparo," and giggling just as crazily then—much to Willow's chagrin.

But this spell, the non-Potter one, fixed the mask easier than a tube of superglue, and right in time. Dawn felt a hand land on her shoulder, and she whirled, grabbing at the wrist and ready for a fight. Honestly, Dawn had expected to see the plump Cane grinning over her… but the grin over her now had ruby-red lips and the barrel of a silver gun pointed not at Dawn, but at the slumbering Nightwing.

"Dawnie, Dawnie, Dawnie… how you wound me! After all we've been through?" Joker sighed.

Dawn stood slowly, her gaze locked with Joker's. "Let me guess… for him to live, I have to—"

"Come along, quiet as a mouse," Joker finished.

Dawn nodded. "Figures. Are you gonna drag him?"

Joker's brow arched. "I hate to break it to you, my little Key, but I was gonna just leave him."

Dawn crossed her arms. "Well, that's not good business. I mean, Nightwing found me once. What if he finds me again? Or, more importantly, finds you? Honestly, other than Batman, who else has a better chance of finding you?"

"Harley," Joker chuckled.

Dawn groaned. "After Harley."

Joker's gaze slid down to Nightwing's unconscious form. "Hmm. I guess you've got a point there. Grab an arm, Dawnie girl."

Under threat of gunshot wound and death of Nightwing, Dawn did as she was told, coming up on the hero's left side. Joker bent, careful to keep his gun trained on the younger Summers girl, and grabbed the right arm.

"Not so fast!" the now unmistakable voice of William Cane called out from right behind them.

He began to mutter another spell, but before he could finish, Joker groaned.

"Oy," he sighed, aiming the gun at Cane and pulling the trigger.

Dawn jumped, letting out a squeak of surprise as the bullet appeared to catch Cane square in the chest, stopping the spell and knocking the warlock backwards. Joker hefted up Nightwing's arm.

"Let's go, Dawnie," Joker said, gun now back on her.

She nodded, her eyes locked on Cane until the fog obscured him from view as she and the maniac clown dragged Nightwing from the building.

It took a few moments, but Cane was able to catch his breath. Blood was filling his lungs, so he had to work quickly. He muttered the first spell he could think of, which sent the bullet lodged in his sternum on a reverse trajectory out of his body. Next, as he spat his own blood onto the warehouse floor, he muttered the most powerful healing charm he knew. It took great will of concentration, which was difficult for him at the moment, to say the least. Multiple tries later, each one making the large man angrier than the last, Cane finally felt the hole in his lungs knitting back together with the blood that managed to pool there going back into its proper vessels. He sat up with a gasp, cursing.

"I really hate this damn clown," he growled.

He had considered, before being shot by the Joker, letting Batman and the witch Willow deal with the clown so that he could better access his Key. But no more. The Joker was all his, and all Hell was going to rain down upon that lunatic. Cane had another spell up his sleeve, and he cast it as he dragged his body to its feet. He felt its success in the air, and grinned a satisfied grin.

"Let's see that damn witch scry for the clown—or anyone—now," he chuckled.

He cleared the disorienting fog with a simple wave of his hand, straightened his navy coat, and exited the building in pursuit of his prizes.

End Notes: I really hope the multiple scene changes weren't too bad here. I left myself a lot to cover in this chapter for some reason. I get the feeling that this won't be the last time I do this either.

Fun Fact: Last chapter's title was inspired by "Disturbia" by Rihanna. That's gotta be, like, Gotham City's theme song, right?