Author Notes — Many thanks to the terrific Navona for betaing this fic for me!
Story Notes — This is set sometime between "The Body" (5.16) and "Tough Love" (5.19).
Disclaimer — Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I own nothing but these thousand words, and I don't even make any profit off of them, either. Please don't sue.
The last rays of light are just disappearing over the horizon when Anya and Dawn arrive at Xander's apartment. Dawn wordlessly brushes past Anya and curls up on the couch as the blonde turns on the lights and sets down her purse. Nervously wringing her hands, Anya turns to Dawn.
"Xander will be home soon," she says awkwardly, staring at Dawn as if she is some sort of highly theoretical textbook that she cannot quite understand. "He has lots of fun things planned for us to do tonight while Buffy is out patrolling."
Dawn merely nods her head, flummoxing Anya further. "Would you like something to eat? I can order pizza — lots of anchovies." Her face suddenly brightens. "Oh! I know!" She rushes to the pantry and procures a rectangular blue box. "Macaroni and cheese! Do you want some macaroni and cheese?"
Dawn smiles politely. "No, thank you."
Anya frowns. "But children love macaroni and cheese," she says, shaking the box in Dawn's direction. "I read so on the Internet."
"I do like mac and cheese." Dawn's voice is tired, but it still maintains a veneer of pleasantness. "I'm just not hungry, that's all."
"Oh." Anya drops her hands to her sides, uncertain of what to do next. "I suppose we could just sit here, silently, and wait for Xander to come home," she says, taking a seat next to Dawn. After a beat, she adds, "This is fun."
They sit in silence for several minutes; Dawn stares at nothing while Anya fidgets and looks desperately around the room for something to occupy her attention. "Hey, Anya?" Dawn finally asks, her voice small. She's still staring at a spot on Xander's carpet.
"Yes?" Anya responds, a bit too enthusiastically.
Looking up at Anya, Dawn whispers, "Do you remember your mother?"
A look of surprise washes over Anya's features. "A little bit," she finally answers, clearly unnerved. "Why do you ask?"
"I—I've just never heard you talk about when you were a human. I mean, the first time," Dawn adds. "What was she like?"
A frown crosses Anya's lips as she wrinkles her brow in concentration, searching for thousand-year-old memories. "She was very beautiful, I remember," she begins softly. "I mostly remember her eyes. They were a very vivid shade of blue. Our village was a harsh place — it was cold, and Vikings raided frequently — but I remember that her eyes were always very warm, and full of compassion." Anya brushes a stray strand of pale hair from her eyes before adding, "She was the village midwife, though; she had to be compassionate."
Dawn repositions her body so that she is facing Anya, clearly interested in her tale. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she asks, "Did she teach you how to become a witch?"
"Mostly," Anya acknowledges. "She taught me all about herbs. She showed me which ones would soothe a teething baby, and which ones would cause boils on the penis. You know, that sort of stuff." She pauses. "She died when I was ten or eleven, I think, and after that I just kind of took what she taught me and built on it from there."
Dawn's eyes grow wide at this admission. "How did she die?"
Anya smiles ruefully. "In childbirth. It was all very ironic. Her apprentice was the only other woman in the village who had been trained in midwifery, and she was never a very good student."
"Do you—" Dawn stops, and does her best to swallow the lump in her throat. "Do you miss her?"
Anya understands enough about humans, and about Dawn, to understand what it is that the teenager wants. Aware that this question must be answered delicately, she is uncharacteristically quiet while she formulates a response. "I don't know. I didn't used to. I… I think that I don't, mostly. But ever since Joyce died, I think about her a lot." Dawn flinches at the bluntness of the words, but Anya doesn't notice. "But I remember that it hurt terribly, back then. It was very hard, because I was the only daughter and I had to take care of the house and the garden and the new baby, and my father had no other use for me. But mostly…"
She trails off, trying to remember feelings that she had buried and forgotten over a millennium ago. "Mostly I remember feeling very alone. None of the other villagers were ever very fond of me, and my brothers all looked down on me because I was a girl. Before I met Olaf, I just remember feeling terribly lonely all the time."
Tears begin to sting Dawn's eyes. "But you said that it doesn't hurt anymore, right?" she asks hopefully. "You don't miss her anymore?"
Anya sighs. "It's not quite that simple. I think… I think that I stopped feeling after Olaf cheated on me. Well, I felt an overwhelming desire for vengeance, but that was pretty much it. And then I became a vengeance demon, and none of us ever really dwelled much on our human days."
Tears start to roll down Dawn's face, which she furiously wipes away with the back of her hand. "I wish I could be like you." Her voice is hard, and she stares down at the couch, refusing to meet Anya's eyes. "I wish I could make all of the pain just go away. Make it stop, forever."
It's Anya's turn now to have her eyes fill up with tears. She scoots closer to Dawn on the couch and sweetly smoothes her hair, like she's seen Buffy do before. "Oh, sweetie," she murmurs. "I know that it hurts, but I think… I think that it has to. I think that we have to ache, and long. I think it's what makes us human." Guilt and remorse flicker across Anya's eyes, and Dawn truly understands, for the first time, that Anya has done terrible things that she can't even begin to imagine.
Dawn sniffles, resting her head against Anya's shoulder. "It just hurts so much," she whispers miserably.
Anya strokes Dawn's hair. She has a flash of soft, warm arms that smell of sage and kind, bright blue eyes. "I know," she breathes. "I'm starting to remember."