"Loss of Direction"
Rating: PG. Or K. Or whatever the heck it's supposed to be, now that the regular movie guidance standards are apparently copyrighted.
Timeline: Takes place in the summer between seasons Five and Six, post-"The Gift."
Summary in a Nutshell: Dawn tries to come to grips with the reality of her situation, post-"The Gift." Spike tags along for moral support.
Feedback: Loved whether good or bad, always responded to. It's how I grow, folks!
They were the grown-ups, and they were lost. Dawn's gaze lingered on a picture of Buffy, Willow, and Xander that was tacked up with random words from a magnetic love poetry set. Pinned next to it was a solo portrait of Giles with a battle ax, grinning in a pleased little-boy way.
It was why she'd become much closer to Spike and Tara in the days since Buffy had died. As a unit, as a personality created by their combined personages, the four Scoobies could function moderately well, one person's shortcomings masked by another's. But without Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles drifted in various stages of denial, the heart, mind, and spirit struggling to fill the void that the hand had left behind.
Xander wasn't so bad, when he and Anya weren't engaged in furious low-voiced hissing arguments, but recently, Dawn had begun to see his reluctance to attend Scooby meetings. When he walked into the Summers house these days, it was with a palpable lack of enthusiasm and a cheeriness that seemed false, even for him. With Willow, it had started earlier, when she had sweetly and quietly told Dawn that she and Tara would be moving in to look after her. Personally, Dawn would have rather stayed with Giles, feel the comforting presence of a "real" adult in command. But she couldn't ask the hollow-eyed Watcher - she felt his loss of direction even more acutely than the other Scoobies. She wished she could give him the words he needed - You're more than just a Watcher, we need you, too - but she didn't feel it was her place to say them. She was the trade-off for his beloved Slayer.
And asking was difficult for Dawn, anyway. All the people around her that took care of her had no complete obligation to, and with her absentee father's, well, absence, she'd become highly aware of the precarious position she was in, being taken care of by her sister's friends, who were grieving for her in their own way as well. Please, thank you, you don't have to if you don't want to…the politeness was unfamiliar on Dawn's tongue after a lifetime of sarcasm and fairly reasonable demands, but now tumbled out with ease. She could tell it relieved Willow and Xander to some degree - one less problem to worry about, she supposed.
Anya would notice it in her didactic manner, but she filled her life with the running of the Magic Box and the harrying of Giles and Xander.
Tara noticed, a crease forming between her eyes as she knitted her brow, then would gently lead her over to another room to talk about Buffy or Mom.
A low-voiced argument behind closed doors between Tara and Willow had Dawn more anxious than she'd care to admit. If they broke up, would Tara still want to stay around? Being a Scooby appendage rather than an original Scooby, would she go the way of Angel, Cordelia, Oz, and Riley? Giles was making noise about leaving for England, as soon as business at the Magic Shop was in order. She knew an act of self-preservation when she saw one.
Would anyone left want to stay with her out of want, and not a sense of duty to a dead hero?
Spike was something else altogether, when he noticed it. Once they'd gotten through the first month, they'd developed a pattern - when the evening came, when the remaining Scoobies plotted strategy or worked at the Magic Box, Spike stayed with her, and in their combined misery, there was a bit of peace. He'd order out, claiming that he couldn't do more than slap a sandwich together and heat up blood. They'd watched 'Twilight Zone' marathons in comfortable silence, until Dawn drifted off into the first peaceful slumber she'd had in a while.
She slept through the carrying part, oddly enough, but woke to find herself reclining on the pulled-back sheets of her bed, while hands gently pulled off her shoes. Mom had done this for her a few times, when she was sick or still light enough to be carried. Buffy had done this while saving her life a few times, carrying her away from danger. She smiled, until the coolness of the hand against her ankle registered for a moment, before the sheets were pulled back over her, up to her chin.
And she remembered - how could she have forgotten? Mom was dead, so was Buffy. The ache, which had dulled the past few days to a semi-livable throb, welled back up again with a violent sob, and she curled into her chest with the force of it.
"Easy, Bit," his voice rumbled quietly, "Let it out." His hands hovered near her head, not quite touching. His uncertainty hurt her heart - one more person who didn't know how to act around her. The last, actually, of those who truly, truly mattered in the scheme of things.
"I'm sorry!" she burst out, feeling the horrible grief seize her chest and burn it from the inside out, scrunching her face up in agony as hot tears were granted release. She'd hidden her pain for so long after the first few days because it was easier to be numb inside, when the people she really wanted to share her pain with were dead.
"I just can't take this! I'm so sorry!" she wailed, clenching her teeth. I'm so sorry you and the others don't know how to treat me. I'm so sorry that I'm the consideration that keeps everyone held back. I'm so sorry that my existence was the bane of hers.
I'm so sorry it was her and not me.
She was about to tuck her knees into her chest to better subdue the pain when Spike seized her by her shoulders, and she got a good look at his face. He wasn't sad or confused or sweetly understanding - he was flat-out angry.
"You're not foolin' me," he growled, eyes hardened to ovals of ice. "Could I, do you mind, please? You're scared of breathin' too loudly."
His anger brought out an answering fury in Dawn. "Am not! I'm just trying to get past it…get…" her voice dropped from a screech to a pitiful mewl, "Get to a point where it's bearable."
"And you're going to do that, how, exactly?" he questioned. "Coop it up inna tight little ball in your innards? Not let anyone see you grieve? Bein' so polite - you're never that polite when you're feeling something strong."
"Something strong?" Dawn shrieked back. "My entire family's either dead or doesn't give a damn. I don't know what's going to happen next! I'm not allowed to let that change me? I can't go quiet for a while without there being something wrong with me?"
As she spoke, her hands flailed in frustration, and half-blinded by tears, she didn't mean to hit him in the nose, but it happened anyway. It couldn't have been a hard hit, she would have felt that impact. Still, Spike raised one hand from her shoulder to grab his nose, and she saw the glint of a tear in his eye.
"Oh, I'm sorry…" Dawn whimpered. "I didn't mean to…"
"Know you didn't, Nibblet," he replied. "Got some real fists on you, and that wasn't one of 'em."
Quickly but tenderly, his hands moved to pull up her chin, thumbs gently brushing away tears from flushed cheeks.
"Nothing's wrong with you, Bit," Spike said firmly. "'Cept this wild notion you got that you're gonna be left alone, if you're not good enough."
Dawn bit back another sob as he struck at the core of her fears and lanced them.
"I saw it, after the Watcher said he'd be leaving, after Red and Tara had that little tiff last week. You think that one by one, we're all gonna leave you alone."
He waited for her reply, and got a slow nod when she could not meet his eyes.
"Right. Well then, I think you should know this." He tilted her chin up until she looked at him, and found that she could not turn away from the fervor in his eyes. "I'm not leaving you, Dawn. Only reason I ever would stay away is if I thought I'd be a danger to you, and I'd rather go shower in holy water than even contemplate that." He paused, jaw muscles clenching a bit. 'Sides, I swore an oath to your sister that I'd be there to protect you…till the end of the world…" he trailed off, losing his momentum.
Dawn felt her heart sink. Buffy, again. The reason she was being treated this way.
"Yeah, I know," she said, "I know you loved her."
Spike tilted his head in a birdlike fashion, regarding her for a long moment.
"First of all, Bit, I love her. Present tense. Death doesn't change the way I feel about her. Never could."
"Second, I didn't swear the oath because it was her who asked me to protect you. I'm not keeping it because it was her who died. I keep it because of you, Dawn."
"You're the pluckiest damn little bit I've ever known. Most people I know would be brooding…well, they'd likely 's not be brooding into their mugs, given most people I know drink. I know that, if it'd been you that night, Buffy'd have shut down, and nothing would ever bring her out of it." That pulled a little reaction from Dawn, not quite a smile, but her lungs didn't feel quite so tight anymore.
"You don't. You keep right on goin'. I've seen it all this year, what with all you've learned, all you've realized 'bout where you came from, yer Mum, Buffy…" his voice caught, but he pushed on. "You keep looking for reasons. You're strong. And I've always loved strong women."
His voice caught on an ironic note. "'Specially the ones who aren't afraid to insult or injure me. You know yer Mum took an ax handle to my head once?"
Dawn snorted unexpectedly, the image in her mind becoming farcical, rather than the desperate situation it probably had been. The movement shook loose a tear clinging to her lashes, and it rolled down her cheek coolly. In a gesture as tender as she'd ever seen from him, his thumb moved from its position on her cheek and firmly wiped it away.
The intimacy and the pent-up sobs came tumbling out again, but this time she didn't fight them, and he didn't hesitate to snatch her up in his embrace. Dawn buried her nose in the crook of his neck and let the sobs wrack her body, clutching him close.
"Hurts…" she breathed.
"I know," she heard him say hoarsely. Was he crying? She didn't have the heart to check.
Fifteen minutes, an hour - who knew how long later, her sobs eased. She was 'all cried out.' She'd thought the expression meant that the person who was all cried out would feel an easing in their grief, but the wound throbbed as much as it ever did. The difference was in expressing it. A hand was slowly stroking her hair, and for the moment, she felt as safe and secure. He would always be with her.
"Two things, though, Bit," he murmured. Reluctantly, she lifted her head from his shoulder to look at him. He'd settled his face back from its pained lines to the more composed I'm-Spike-and-you're-gonna-believe-what-I-say-because-my-eyes-are-boring-holes-into-your-head look.
"One, the politeness act isn't gonna fly with me. You do whatever you want with the Scoobs and their respective mates, but I'm gonna get brassed off if you start with me. One of the things I love about you is your bitchy honesty, and I don't want to see it go."
"Bitchy?" Dawn didn't know whether to feel insulted or pleased.
"Bitchy," he confirmed. "Second thing is, don't punch me in the nose." Immediately, of course, her eyes darted to his nose, inspecting it for damage. "Was your sister's favorite spot of mine to abuse."
There were boundaries in grief, things they preferred to keep to themselves about a person. It was why she'd been so angry at Buffy for acting like Mom.
"I can try to do that," she replied, nodding at Spike, noting his features relaxing, most notably those around his eyes. Did vampires ever get wrinkles?
"But you've also gotta do something. Don't carry me to bed - that's what Mom and Buffy would do." He nodded solemnly, and squeezing her hands once before releasing them, hauled himself up onto her desk chair, pulling her copy of Les Miserables off the shelf and muttering about the inadequacy of the abridged version.
He didn't ask, but then again, he really didn't need to.
Her eyelids shut heavily as she watched him page through the novel. The phrase misery loves company flitted between the confusion in her mind and the lump in her throat. Maybe it didn't mean that miserable people tried to make other people miserable. Maybe it meant that you felt better knowing that someone was going through the same pain you were.
Dawn fell asleep, not peaceful, but not unsettled, either.