This moment would forever be burned in Dawn's memory. She dropped the small knife she had grabbed to try and defend herself as she knelt down next to her older sister. Buffy was sprawled out on the floor, unconscious and broken after pummeling the Hell bitch. Dawn used both hands to try to stop the flow of blood from the gaping hole in the Slayers leg. She put as much pressure on it as she could while her hand grew wet and sticky with the hot blood that was pooling out of the mortal wound. Regardless, the puddle underneath them on the floor of the magic shop's training room just kept spreading. It's impossible the amount of blood one person could hold, she kept thinking as she tried in vain to hold the hole in her sister's femoral artery closed. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks as a sob tried to build in her throat but her voice was to raw from the screaming she'd already done when the first of the little scabby henchmen had burst into the shop, it seemed like hours ago but in reality was probably only a few minutes.
Dawn took a deep breath and almost choked on the copper tinged air. She looked at the chaos around her as she tried to find anything that could help her stop the bleeding caused by the sword Glory had thrown at her to try and anger the Slayer - obviously Glory had never learned she was the key. Buffy had intercepted the deadly projectile meant for her, but had gotten badly hurt because of it. It hadn't immediately stopped her sister from fighting though, but it had caused an enraged snarl to erupt from the other fighter in the room at the time. She took note of how everything was trashed, broken equipment, weapons, and more than a dozen bodies belonging to Glory's minions scattered everywhere. Dawn's eyes paused though when they passed over the body that was a mer five feet away. The one person that Buffy and the scoobies had spent so long trying to keep her away from.
Ben, the nice intern from the hospital lay just out of arms reach with his neck twisted at an unnatural angle and wearing women's clothes. She remembered seeing him change after Buffy used the last of her strength to pummel Glory with the troll hammer. Glory went down, Buffy went down, but then Ben stood up. Dawn was so shocked she barely had enough time to register Ben's look of horror and confusion before the only other person who had been with her and Buffy in the magic box, the other one who had been fighting fist and fang too keep her safe, stepped up behind the unsuspecting Hell god turned man. Dawn watched as a bloody and barely standing Spike took the interns head in his hands and twisted it sideways with an audible crack that seemed to echo around the then still room. The silence you would expect to follow such an act never came though. Instead Spike grabbed his own head and began to scream in anguish as the chip fired in his brain, punishment for the action of killing what it registered as a human. Dawn could only imagine the pain he had endured in order to do the deed. It wasn't long after Spike had fallen down to the floor that he started bleeding from his eyes and passed out. At least Dawn hoped he was only passed out, she kept telling herself that if he wasn't dust he would heal.
Dawn snapped back to reality when she realized the flow of blood from Buffy's wound had slowed. She looked at her sister's face, hoping to see some sort of sign that her slayer healing had kicked in, but her sisters deathly pale face only made Dawn fear the worst.
"Come on Buffy, please, wake up!" she begged hoarsely right before a single sob managed to make itself heard. Then, as if the sound of the sob had been the magic word, she watched as Buffy's eyes slowly fluttered open. The Slayer's eyes searched for the sound and Dawn managed a weak but hopeful whimper. Buffy's eyes slowly dragged towards Dawns face and she felt a weak smile try to form only to slide away as she realized that her sister's eyes seemed unable to focus.
She heard Buffy take a ragged, difficult breath that sounded sickly and wet as she managed to exhale. The sound made Dawn afraid she had a hole in her lung. Buffy's lips lightly moved even though the rest of her was more still than Dawn had ever seen her. She leaned in closer in case Buffy was trying to say something. "Buffy it'll be okay, the bleeding is stopping, please tell me what else I need to do," Dawn begged after a long few seconds had passed with her leaning as close as she could get to her sisters face. Buffy still hadn't said anything. Dawn listened to the sound of her sister struggling to breath while she watched her eyes still trying to focus.She was about to say something else, to beg her sister to be okay when she felt a pressure on her leg. She looked down to see Buffy had managed to move her hand to rest on her lap. Dawn quickly took her hand in her own. When Buffy felt her, she closed her eyes as if gathering her strength and took a deep breath that was accompanied by a bubbly crackle noise from her chest. Dawns entire being froze at the nightmarish sound. When Buffy's eyes opened again they seemed to look right though her.
"I'm sorry Dawnie, love you," Buffy managed to whisper out pausing as she tapped into her final reserve of strength " so much, I'm so sorry." As if her mission had been accomplished her eyes dropped closed and her hand slipped from Dawns grasp.
"BUFFY!" Dawn wailed, her aching throat managing to give voice to her agony. "Please no, don't give up, the bleeding is stopping you'll heal, please you'll be okay" she begged even as her eyesight grew blurrier. " FIGHT IT BUFFY, DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE!" Dawn put one shaking hand on Buffy's throat and desperately felt for a pulse like she had been taught in the first aide class they'd had in school. She was hard pressed to hold her sobs in as well as her breath, as she desperately tried to find a pulse. Time slowed to a crawl and she could almost physically feel the seconds ticking by. Finally, but just barely, she felt a weak chug in the artery as if to signal hope, but Dawn wasn't stupid, she forced herself to acknowledge the hard truth that unless someone was about to come through that door with all the necessary things for a transfusion that Buffy was going to die, she was going to be left alone. She had lost too much blood and there was nothing Dawn could do to stop her sister from dying, she was just going to have to sit there and watch the only person she had left that she considered her family slip away and leave her alone. She knew there weren't even minutes left with her sister. The sobs broke loose.
She could feel her heart crumbling, she tried not to but she had to look away from the sight of her sisters pale face. When she turned her head though, her sight landed on another person just as pale as her sister that Dawn knew was actually supposed to be that way. Her eyes grew wide as she quickly flashed back to a quiet time not long ago in a crypt where she had gone to get away for a while, a crypt where the man she was now staring at laughed at her question.
"If a vampire went and replaced a bunch of the blood from the hospital with bags of vamp blood could they cause the people that got the infusions to turn into vamps or do they have to be almost dead. Do you actually have to be bitten to turn?" A curious Dawn had asked the Vamp as he sat atop one of the sarcophagus and repainted his nails black as he listened to the teen ramble on. He just cocked his head to the side and laughed.
"What kinds of shows have you been watchin' on that telly, bit? Your sister's the slayer, you should know how turning works" He chuckled, she'd just rolled her eyes.
"I know that vamp bite human, vamp drink blood, vamp give human blood, human die, then a few days later you have a new vamp popping out of the ground like a daisy ready for my sister to dust." Dawn had shot back with a healthy load of sarcasm.
Spike smirked at her teenage attitude."Well, if you get down to basics, then that's right. To answer your question though, yes and no." Dawn quirked her eyebrow at his unclear answer but he had ignored her and continued. "The person has to be almost dead BEACAUSE they were drained of blood. It can't be because they had a heart attack or some other thing like that. So IF some vamp did put a bunch of their blood in the hospital and the person that got it was so low on blood that they were about to die, then theoretically it could work. It's not really necessary for us to drink their blood only for the human to get ours. Never heard of anything like that happenin' though because where's the fun if you don't get all that nummy blood in the process?" He had finished his explanation with a wiggle of his eyebrows to show he was making a joke.
Dawn had laughed at the time but at this current moment the humor in the explanation was shoved to the side so she could focus on the facts that Spike had shared with her. Before she could talk herself out of it, she shot to her feet, ignoring that it was Buffy's lifeblood that she felt dripping down her legs and into her shoes. She shot over to the unconscious vampire and grabbed him under his arms. He was battered and bleeding a bit from the fight and the blood coming from his nose, ears, and eyes from his chip firing didn't look to promising, but she had seen worse injuries than these on the vamp before. He was bigger and taller than her and about as close to the definition of dead weight as you could get, but desperation and adrenaline fueled her efforts and she managed to drag him the short way to Buffy's side. Without pause, because if she gave herself even a millisecond to think about what she was about to do she might change her mind, she grabbed the knife she had previously dropped. Gritting her teeth against the idea of hurting her surrogate big brother, she held the blade to Spikes wrist and cut deep. The comatose vamp never even twitched, which she took as a good sign that she could get this done without any interference.
Dawn clamped her hand over the fresh cut while she made sure that Buffy's head was at just the right angle and then brought the bleeding wrist to the Slayers mouth. She waited. She counted the seconds as she kept her full attention on Buffy's throat. An eternity passed as Dawn silently prayed that her sister would swallow the blood that was quickly filling up her mouth. When the first bit of red liquid began to dribble from the corner of Buffy's lips and Dawn felt a brief moment of dread that she hadn't made it in time when miraculously she finally heard Buffy audibly swallow. Hope flared in her chest as she watched Buffy's throat move with the tell-tale signs that her sister was filling her belly with Spike's blood. The swallowing was steady and after that first few drops no more escaped Buffy's lips. Dawn continued to hold Spikes wrist up for Buffy while she finally allowed herself to believe that she wasn't going to lose her sister.
Several minutes later the swallowing stopped and the rise and fall of Buffy's chest ceased. Dawn dropped Spikes arm and then gathered her sister into her arms and prayed with her tears.