Title: Nesan (Innocence is Over)
Author: Frawley
Date: April 30th, 2002
Category: Songfic/Vignette
Spoilers: Everything up to and including until "Normal Again" to be
safe.
Summary: Dawn muses on her existence, her place in reality, and Buffy's own struggle with reality.
Comments: Nesan is Japanese for "Older Sister". It's a term that can be applied to either Summers' girl, depending on how you look at it. The song is "Rotten Apple" from Alice in Chains – Jar of Flies (EP). Rest in peace, Layne.
Disclaimer: Joss owns most of it, I lay claim to the scraps. FOX can sod off.
Innocence is over
(Over)
Ignorance is spoken
(Spoken)
Confidence is broken
(Broken)
Sustenance is stolen
(Stolen)
Arrogance is potent
(Potent)
She existed both in the world and outside of it. In two places at once, but never whole in either place.
That's how it felt.
She had memories she knew to be lies; loose bricks in a road that led from nowhere. She could almost lose herself in that reality. Almost. Except she couldn't even tell where the fabrication left off and the actual reality began. Was it her last birthday before Glory had come to Sunnydale? Her mom had told her, back when Dawn had found out she was the Key, that it had been six months, roughly... that she'd been alive for six months. Buffy had told her it'd been her birthday, trying to sound all authoritative on the matter (probably to give them both piece of mind)... but Buffy didn't know for sure either. For all Buffy could tell, she'd always existed, and Dawn was grateful for that, in a way – it made their relationship more real – but in another way, it robbed her of a true birthday, of a life which could be defined by actual events.
When I was six, I tore my arm climbing the neighbor's fence and had to get a tetanus shot. I cried when I saw the needle. The doctor lied – it did hurt. It hurt a LOT.
Dad and I used to go for Ice Cream, just the two of us, once a month, until he and Mom split up.
When I was twelve, I made a shy girl at school cry, and felt bad about it ever since; she died in a hospital a few weeks later from cancer that no one in the class even knew she had, until the end.
No you didn't. None of that happened. Yes it did. No, it didn't. It didn't, no matter how much you wish it did, even the bad stuff. It never happened.
A life that could be defined by actual events. That was the life she wanted. One in which she was made from blood, Summer's blood, but blood that was also entirely her own. The portal Glory had opened had accepted Buffy's blood as her own. Was she simply a twisted reflection of her sister? A tainted mirror image? Not outside, but in, just a copy, for the safety of that other part of her, the Key... She didn't want that. She wanted her own blood, and memories that were entirely her own.
If there was no beginning, there could never be a whole story.
She'd existed thousands of years but couldn't remember any of it. She could remember living some sixteen years, but couldn't trust the memories.
What she wanted to know most of all was where she came from.
What I see is unreal
I've written my own part
Eat of the apple, so young
I'm crawling back to start
And yet her sister was the one openly expressing problems accepting reality. It was funny, really. Lying in bed late at night, all but a thin sheet thrown back so that she could lie relatively comfortably in the Sunnydale heat – heat that persisted despite the sun having long since made its exit – it struck her as downright hilarious.
Cause what's more real, a sick girl in an institution, or a girl that sleeps with a vampire she hates?
Well, lets introduce another element into the mix. How about, having been created instead of born? How about existing instead of living? With no claim of insanity to bail you out...
If she was insane, it would make life a lot easier. A lot easier than knowing that, when your sister is in a demon-poison-induced alternate reality, with family supposedly intact, you don't even register.
I don't even exist, in the "normal" world. Ok, so it's a fraud anyway, but I don't fit into that family scenario.
And I don't know if I exist in this one.
The thought brought tears to her eyes, and she wound up crying herself to sleep.
A romance is fallen
(Fallen)
I repent tomorrow
(Tomorrow)
Is suspended by my sorrow
(Sorrow)
Recommend you borrow
Looking in on Dawn, Buffy saw that the younger girl was tossing listlessly in bed. Again. She'd been doing that a lot, lately. Buffy would take a look in on her each night after patrol, and each night, the same thing, obvious signs that something was weighing on her sister's mind. She never had the heart to wake her, though. She was pretty sure there was some old proverb around (one Giles would undoubtedly know, along with ten others that went with it) that said you shouldn't wake sleeping girls.
She'd ask her in the morning. After all, she had her own demons keeping her up at night. Some she deserved, some she didn't. Some she wanted and wished she wouldn't.
She'd remember, in the morning. She'd remember to ask Dawn what the problem was, this time.
Innocence is over.