Dawn moved forward, out from
shadows cast by the warped bodies of unfinished concrete structures and their
dull metal appendages. She walked forward from the back, from the corner of the
roof that was still deep with night. She walked past Spike, crouched like a
Samurai warrior, meditating in fierce tears and the rhythms of his defeated
sobbing. Past Xander as he held Anya and she held him and they both stared
ahead and cold seeped into them. Past Tara who had only the gentle tilt of her
head and the earnest love in her large eyes to comfort Willow, whose face was
red and wet with her unhidden grief. The Watcher was closest to the body,
standing above her and looking down with sad resignation, and Dawn brushed past
him, stepping onto the slope of rubble. Her ornate gown, ridiculous in this
moment of gritty reality, brushed the fingertips of her sister. The fingers
remained motionless.
Dawn could
feel the others behind her, hear the rustle of clothing as the sadness washed
over them and they reached for comfort. They each held on to something, to each
other, to the blood they had shed, to the weapons that now had no meaning or
purpose but to be squeezed tight in hands that wanted to shake. Everyone held
on to something and then let the pain in. Dawn could feel them let it in.
But she did
not. It swirled around her, teasing the hem of her dress, caressing her hair.
It lapped at the corners of her eyes, but she would not surrender sight to
sorrow. Her eyes looked past the pain, resolutely, looked past to see the body
of her sister. Buffy was spread across the stones with a solidity, with a
purposeful kind of peace. She was finished with the hard part, the living part.
She was finished with being unsure, with being afraid, with all the fights that
had given her this strength. The strength to spread into death like this, on
the jagged hill of waste with the light before dawn soaking into her.
Everyone
reached for something. Dawn reached for the words.
"You
have to be strong"
She held on
to the strength given her as the light that held no warmth painted the edges of
her vision gold. She held on and she reached. Dawn reached for the unknown
power that throbbed within her, far beneath the shallow wounds of her abdomen.
She held this supplement to her strength and knew what Buffy had given. Her
sister lay in peace, because the standard had been passed.
"Be
brave."
Dawn
thought of her attempt to throw herself over the edge, into the violent light,
and was not shocked at her own courage. She was calm, knowing. Knowing she
would do it again. She stared at the body with level eyes and a firm mouth,
feeling the resolve she had known as she stood at the edge of death and didn't
bother looking down before she tried to run to it. She knew that it was
stronger than fear. And that it was hers, now. For the rest of the life that
had been given to her.
"Live.
For me."
Dawn lifted
her chin into the rays of growing daylight. She would live for Buffy. She would
live for the world to which Buffy had sacrificed her own life. Dawn felt a tired
but swelling pride. This new life had not been assembled by stranger monks,
weaving magic and fiction into a sheath that would disguise the truth. It was
not ordained by faceless, distant powers. In that moment when night prepared to
unleash a million hells upon the new day, in that moment when two women stood
at a precipice and one gave the other life, in the moment, a Slayer had chosen
a Slayer. Buffy had entrusted everything that had caused her pain and joy and
love to her sister.
She let the
grief inside, then, not to rush through her in waves, not to drown her. She let
the grief in, to be part of her, to share her with the love and the friendship,
with the petty teenage tribulations, with the ancient power and the newly given
strength. And there was the darkness, too, that had been transposed, that
blended with the strength and the sorrow and the love.
"Thank
you," she whispered to the still body that let dawn wash over it, to the
element of her blood and her soul that was Buffy.
"You
have to take care of them, now."
She thought
of the others behind her, clinging to whatever they could as the pain seeped or
rushed or burned into them. She thought of Tara standing in the middle of a
construction site in flannel pajamas, her arm-cast ragged and filthy as she
held Willow. Of Anya ignoring the blood that trickled down from her temple she
shared her silent melancholy. She thought of Spike contorted with the agony of
his failure and his emptiness, heedless of the fatal light that approached. His
decent to inanimate dust was mere inches from the vibrant torment he now
possessed, the closest thing to life he'd felt in over a century.
Dawn looked
back at all those she had passed to stand here at the edge of day with a corpse
at her feet. She saw their letting pain in. even Giles, who gave up his
reserved sorrow, tearing his glasses from his eyes so he could cover them with
the hands that had taken human life that night, so he could bring his eyes into
shadow and let the cold come in. She saw day come closer and closer to Spike
and his shuddering misery.
"You
have to take care of them, now."
Dawn moved
to face the body again, to stand one more moment sharing the new day Buffy had
given with the quiet form of her sister, feeling the warmth finally coming as
the sun ascended to dominion. Then she turned her face back into the darkness.
