Waiting... | By : CWoodhaven Category: BtVS AU/AR > Het - Male/Female > Dawn/Spike(William) > Dawn/Spike(William) Views: 8689 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
She used to be so jealous that Buffy and her friends got to go Bronzing on weeknights while she had to say home with mom. That was such a long time ago. Back when she had a home, instead of a house. Back when she had a mother to stay at home with. Back when she secretly admired her big sister, the chosen one.
So many things had changed in just a year.
Buffy seemingly had been given two gifts. Not only had she been chosen to rid the world of evil, but also to rid her life of people who cared.
First had been Spike. Buffy claimed she hadn’t done anything, but Dawn knew that was a lie. Buffy had wanted to know how Spike had killed the other slayers, and somehow had gotten him to talk. No one had seen him since.
Buffy had to have done something unforgivable. Spike would never have just left without saying good-bye to Dawn. It just wasn’t like him – he was all dramatic like that.
Next to fall was Riley, off to 'be all he could be'. He’d had enough of being pushed away, being punished because he wasn’t Angel.
Then there was Mom. Unfair to blame her demise on Buffy, but Dawn lumped that in anyway. Dawn blamed her spitefully for not being home in time. If she had been home sooner, they might have been able to save her.
Dawn always felt that she should have been next.
Up on the rickety tower, Dawn could feel the portal opening – calling to her. Her bindings became a blessing, instead of a curse, because she would have mindlessly jumped. For the first time, she could feel her duality; her key-ness at war with her humanity. One pulling her to fulfill her destiny, and one pulling her to live and survive.
The decision had been ripped out of her hands, or more appropriately ripped out from beneath her feet. Giles had been working covertly with an English coven, and on his mark, they generated a localized earthquake to disrupt Glory’s plans.
She, Tara and Anya, the Anti-Scoobies, had 8 broken bones between them.
She really never knew how she survived the fall when the tower collapsed. She didn’t remember her bones breaking, but she’d felt herself come within a hairsbreadth of her lock – she felt its glorious malevolent energy snake towards her, calling her home. Then everything went black.
Ben had died that night, taking Glory with him. Dawn had been thankful at the time, but now all she could think of was that she’d missed her chance.
After the tower, Buffy had gone downhill. She said she was grateful that Dawn had survived, but even then, Dawn could see the shadow of something in her sisters hazel eyes.
Her sister seemed to be withdrawing into her self, listening to something that only she could hear. She cycled through phases of suffocating Dawn with manic attention one day, then nearly total indifference the next.
On the increasingly infrequent times that Buffy was there when Dawn got home, she was equally likely to come home to a sister who baked cookies and wanted some quality time, get grounded for weeks because she was five minutes late getting home, or get a bored lecture about being responsible and not turning out like stinky old man Phillips that hung out at the laundromat 2 blocks down from the Magic Box.
As time wore on, the indifference increased. It was like her sister had died that day, and the shell that was left was going through the motions, like a poorly programmed robot. Dawn began to have difficulty remembering what things had been like before, when she’d only pretended to hate her sister, and really admired her and wanted to be just like her.
Giles bailed next, back to England. Buffy couldn’t manage things herself, so he’d left in a misguided attempt to force her to stand on her own two feet. It never occurred to him that she might collapse instead. Or maybe it did, and he didn't want to stick around to watch.
Anya was next. She had a tough recovery, and although Xander had been there every step of the way for her, she said she couldn't stay any longer. She was planning to open another magic shop in New Orleans. She had a few contacts there that assured her that business was booming. She hadn’t wanted Xander to come with her. He had been willing to go, but the Buffy effect was in full swing. Anya told him that he cared more for Buffy’s calling than Buffy did, and didn’t want to be around when the next apocalypse got him killed. He had been so hurt. Now he hardly ever came around.
Willow and Tara had broken up over Willows use of magic. Buffy had sided with Willow and asked Tara to move out. She all but forbade Dawn to spend time with Tara because it upset Willow so badly. Dawn didn’t listen of course, but their visits were few and far between.
Tara was the only one who even said anything when she’d streaked her hair periwinkle and gotten her eyebrow pierced. She’d hugged her and said that finding out who you were was important, but to make sure that she did it because it was what she wanted, not just to impress others.
Buffy had rolled her eyes, and gone back to talking to Willow.
And so she waited, wondering who the next one to leave would be.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
She started stealing things wherever she went. She really didn’t need the stuff, but it wasn’t as if Buffy was going to buy her anything.
Buffy had gotten a job at the Doublemeat Palace to make ends meet, and her indifference toward Dawn had magnified. Some days she never even checked to see if Dawn had eaten, or gone to school. Dawn vividly remembered one Saturday that Buffy had awakened her screaming that she was late for school. She hadn’t even apologized when she realized that she’d mixed up the days.
She’d taken up smoking. It killed the time when she was waiting around for Buffy, and it wasn’t as if anyone cared if she got lung cancer. She probably wouldn’t live long enough for it to develop anyway.
Of everyone who had gone, she missed Spike the most. She could talk to him and he really saw her, talked to her. He never treated her like a child. He didn’t even know she was a key, and he still let her hang out with him in his crypt and just be herself.
He taught her all sorts of cool stuff – like how to pick locks, how to deal from the bottom of the deck and how to pickpocket. She wished she’d been older, he could have taught her how to hotwire a car.
Dawn had taken to staying in Spike's old crypt on nights that Buffy didn't come home. She felt oddly comforted there, among his old things. Sleeping more soundly in his bed than she did even in her own.
She had gotten Tara to do a masking spell on it, so nothing wandering around the cemetery would sense she was there and bother her. She had tried to do it herself, but after she'd woken up with a fledgling who decided she would make a good snack, she had been forced to ask for help. There was still a greasy burn spot on the floor where he'd gone up in flames from the candle she'd thrown at him.
She’d stolen some spell books and supplies from the Magic Box and stored them in the crypt. Sometimes she came there in the afternoon after school and practiced spells. She was still having difficulty floating a pencil. She figured she could either learn magic, or start to do drugs. She chose the magic, not wanting to be a loser like the burn-outs at school. Recently though, she’d started eyeballing her mom’s old pain medication again anyway. Wondering if it would help take away that awful ache where family used to be.
She wanted to be gone, she just didn’t know how. In her deepest, most secret, fantasies, Spike would swoop in from out of nowhere and take her away from all this. Her dark knight. She thought about him constantly. She wondered if he was all right, if he’d gotten the chip out, if he even remembered her.
The band was gone now, and canned music was blaring over the sound system. She was ready to risk Buffy’s potential wrath and head out when she caught sight of a bright-white something out of the corner of her eye, over by the stairs. She craned her head to look, but it was gone. She felt her heart speed up, thudding in her chest. She could have sworn that it was Spike.
She got up and headed up the stairs herself, scanning the darkness. When she got up on the catwalk, she didn’t see anyone who even looked remotely like Spike. Just a few couples here and there, groping each other in the half-light.
She sighed, and leaned on the railing, looking down on everyone having a good time. She wondered, not for the first time, if the otherness she felt was normal because she was a teenager, or if it was because of her key-ness.
She wondered if when she was a bright ball of energy if she had ever felt this lonely, this sad, this lost.
Just when she was about ready to head back downstairs, she felt someone walk up behind her. She was startled when they blocked her in, pressing against her back pinning her to the railing so she couldn’t turn around. Then they were wrapping impossibly strong arms around her waist. She was beginning to seriously panic and start to struggle, when she smelt it; leather and smoke. Spike
“Hello, ‘Bit. Miss me?” he whispered in her ear.
End Chapter 1
TBC
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