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Chapter 7 - Brother

Dimension: 165 - Earth
Date: 19th July 2001 AD
Country: USA - California
Location: Sunnydale - The Magic Box
Time: Afternoon

"That was my brother." he said solemnly, his gaze on the floor.

The sentence hung in the air for over a minute before anyone spoke.

"Your brother?" Willow finally asked.

"Yes," he answered, slowly moving into one of the chairs that was still in one piece. He collapsed in to it. The effort of the fight had evidently taken a lot out of him.

For the slightest second, his face also showed sadness. Only those watching closely would have noticed (in this case only Tara). It pained her to see someone so strong brought down so far.

The others moved to sit or lean against various surfaces that still remained intact to listen to what he was about to tell them.

"I created James over two billion years ago as a contrast to myself."

"Created?" asked Willow

"If anything were to ever happened to me," he continued. "He would take over."

"Wait," Anya interrupted. "Doesn't that make you his father, rather than his brother?"

Adam smiled slightly.

"It's an interesting dilemma, isn't it? Though I created him, he is my brother, but he is also my twin as he is an exact biological copy of myself, though I am over thirteen billion years older. I have always called him brother, as he did before he was corrupted."

"Corrupted?" Giles questioned, leaning closer. From the look on all their faces it was evident they were hanging on his every word.

"I spent millennia training him. After about ten million years he had learned everything that I was prepared to teach and I believed it was time he had the chance to find his own way in the universe."

He paused to sigh.

"No sooner had he left than he was attacked by agents of The First. They subdued him and infected him with darkness," he paused, obviously disturbed by the memory.

"How come he was so easily corrupted?" Willow asked cautiously.

"When I originally created him, I placed all the dark magic from myself into him. I knew that in the final battle light alone will not defeat the darkness."

"So you were going to use black magic's against The First. That's not very hero like." Anya commented, receiving glares from the others that clearly said, "shut up", though most tended to agree.

"This is not a Disney movie," retorted Adam, obviously fairly annoyed at being told how to fight his own battles. "I was hoping the two of us could stand united against the shadow. He would represent the darkness and I the light. Dark magic is useful if you know how to control it. What they did was force their way in and fill his soul with darkness. Even I wouldn't be able to resist the torrent of darkness they forced into him....I....couldn't get to him in time."

He lowered his head in sadness, clearly holding back the sorrow and guilt at believing it was his fault that his brother befell such a fate. Tara got up from her seat beside Willow, walked over to him and gave him a comforting hug.

It wasn't clear who was more surprised by her actions, the Scoobies or Tara.

"Thank you," he smiled, easing out of her embrace.

"What are we going to do about James and Glory?" Willow asked obviously a little jealous of having her lover in the arms of someone else.

"Glory, I'm afraid, is a problem you will have to solve by yourselves," he stated standing, again the image of authority and power. All the weakness from mere moments ago vanished as if it never happened "I will take care of James. He has plagued me long enough. He will not destroy what I have spent lifetimes protecting," he spoke to himself though easily loud enough for the others to hear. He turned, beginning to leave.

"I'll help," Tara spoke up quickly astonishing everyone.

"You can not help me," he said stopping and half turning to face her. He did not say it as though she was helpless but simply she could not physically help. "I must do this alone."

"Then I will be there for moral support," she said defiantly. The others were wondering what had gotten into her lately. She somehow just felt a lot more safe and confident around the Guardian.

"As you wish," he smiled. "But you will have to return before the actual fight."

"Ok." she smiled, accepting this partial victory.

"Tara," Willow spoke up, increasingly concerned about Tara's actions of late. "Don't go....we need you....I need you."

"I can return her before she is even missed." Adam stated.

"I'll be back soon," Tara said to a slightly tearful Willow, before kissing her and following Adam, who was waiting in the doorway.

"You two stay with them," he said, turning to the animals. "Help in any way you can." both seemed to nod

Adam held his hand out to her, tentatively placing hers in his they walked through the door.
________________________________________________________________________

Upon stepping through she discovered that they were standing in the hallway of the Guardian's mansion.

"How...how did you do that?" she stuttered out of shock.

"I only use a car if I have to, although it is a refreshing change sometimes. I usually just transport myself between two places, if I have enough power that is." He proceeded up the stairs, pausing slightly in front of the painting of the lady, before continuing up the rest of the flight with Tara on his heels.

After four flights of stairs, they reached a set of double doors which were open to what appeared to be a study or office. Closing the doors, Adam then reopened them to reveal the room full of hand weapons that the Scoobies had seen earlier.

He proceeded to the door at the other end of the room, which was obviously unlocked this time, though Tara suspected that it had also been unlocked when they had tried to get through, it just hadn't permitted them access.

The room they opened was completely bare. It looked like a cross between a cathedral and a meditation chamber. Along each side of the room were stone pillars heading up to a very high ceiling. On the walls on each side of here were stained glass windows all at least eight meters tall.

The centre of the floor was covered in a cream carpet which closely resembled a crash mat. At the end was what appeared to be an altar, above which was another stained glass window, this time containing an image of a golden eye. On the altar was a gold object in the form of symbol Tara recognized as being called the Ankh, an early form of the Christian Cross created by the Egyptians and used as a religious icon to represent Physical and Eternal Life and later adapted and used by Christians as a holy sign. In the centre of this symbol, across the cross beam, was another image of the eye.

Tara also knew that both the image of the Ankh and The Eye were symbols of The-Powers-That-Be, The Ankh represented The Powers in General, whereas the Golden Eye, 'The All Seeing Eye', 'The Eye Of The Gods', showed that a person or place had earned the favour of the Powers or had been chosen by them.

Adam moved into the middle of the room and sat down and crossed his legs. Tara could now see that the carpet had the symbol of the Ankh on it as well. Adam had placed himself right on the crossbar of the symbol. She tentatively approached and sat down beside him, not crossing her legs as she was wearing a skirt.

Adam began to chant quietly in a language Tara didn't recognize. The room began to cloud as mist rose from the floor and surrounded them, slowly swirling around the pair.

In a matter of seconds the mist withdrew and all Tara could see was that they were surrounded by lights of every colour which weaved, swirled and streamed around them in every direction.

"Wow."
________________________________________________________________________

Dimension: 165 - Earth - Sub Reality
Date: 19th July 2001 AD
Country: USA - California
Location: Sunnydale - The Guardians Mansion - The Meditation Chamber
Time: Afternoon

"Wow." she gasped as she rose to her feet.

"We are in another level of reality. From here I can see even a slight disturbance in the fabric of reality. At the moment we are seeing everything, people, demons, nature, magic, everything."

He closed his eyes briefly and the colours changed to black and white, with small patches of other colours, mainly red, blue, green and yellow light.

"We are now seeing the all the beings. Normal humans show up as grey, black or white depending on how good or evil they are."

Tara was relieved to see that most was a light grey, with only a few darker patches.

"The yellow is natural magic. The green is harmless man or other mortal created magic. Blue is light magic and red is dark magic."

He stood and walked around one patch of grey light which was darker than most. He looked intently at the area, focusing the image. It expanded and Tara could see she was standing in a smoky colour map of Sunnydale.

"That is the Magic Box," he stated, pointing to an area of bright colour. Upon closer inspection, she could see the outlines of the Scoobies glowing in different colours, though she didn't see what she expected.

"Why is Buffy flashing red then blue?" Tara asked.

"Because her Slayer power is demon based. The blue is the personality, just like Giles and Anya. They have been dark, that is, a demon and Ripper, but now they fight for good."

"But why do Willow and Dawn also show blue and red? And why are they all brighter than Xander?" Tara asked getting slightly worried as she pointed at the moving figure of Willow, who was very bright in comparison to the others.

"It also shows what will happen in the future," he said sadly.

"What do you mean?" Tara asked, turning to him.

"I can't tell you. What I can tell you that Dawn is NOT the best behaved teenager in the world, but she never goes dark, which is the reason why she is only slightly red."

He quickly moved to answering the other question

"The brightness represents the power levels." The map misted then reformed showing the two of them in the room they were currently in. Tara was still worried by the colour and brightness of the Willow image as the red was a lot brighter than the blue, but the new image in front of her distracted her line of thought.

The image of them was breathtaking. The figure of Tara was brighter than Buffy, Willow and Dawn, which confused Tara further. She was nowhere near as powerful as Willow.

Her figure was also fluctuating between all the colours, which made her take a breath in shock; she would never do anything dark. When she looked at the Adam figure it was staggering. While Tara's model was fairly bright, his was so bright she couldn't even see the colour even when she shielded her eyes.

The image moved again to the original swirl of colours, and Adam closed his eyes. If Tara didn't know better she would have thought he was studying the back of his eyelids and seemed to squint. The colours around them swirled and flew past. Adam was obviously searching. The colours blurred into shades of black and red.

"There." he said opening his eyes and studying the cloud before them.

"He has found a way to block his signature, but that's him. With that amount of dark magic's, it has to be. He appears to be in another dimension. That would account for some of the blurring."

He waved his hand once over the cloud and it cleared to reveal an island.

"Yes, he's in another dimension, twenty two days and five hours ahead of this one. He's done that deliberately to annoy me. He knows how much I hate portals, particularly dimension and temporal portals." Tara could tell he really was annoyed about this.

"I'll snap in to avoid giving him the satisfaction. It takes up more energy, but it's worth it." he turned to Tara. "It's time for you to go. I can't risk you getting hurt. I will return you when we left."

"You can do that?" Tara asked.

"That's why some have gifted me the title of Time Lord." he said with a slight smile

"Like Doctor Who?"

Adam gave an annoyed sigh. She must have said something wrong.

"The characters name is 'The Doctor'," he corrected. "The 'who' is a question, so it's Doctor Who? Not Doctor Who. But yes, like The Doctor, although I'm real, not an alien and I only have one heart."

He turned away from her, raised his arm and moved it in an arc, creating an arch of white stone in the shape of a door; a doorway filled with white light.

He gestured towards the arch.

Tara stepped up to it.

"Goodbye and good luck...Time Lord," she added with a smile.

"I'm going to regret telling you that, aren't I?" he said though his look clearly said. "Not another one."

She laughed and stepped through the arch.