A/N: I'm in the process of moving my stories over from my other screen name, so if this looks familiar, I didn't steal it from anyone but me. Just another Dawnie-focused venture because she's fun to write, chock-full of teenage angst and turmoil. Is it just me who always found her more sympathetic than whiny? Yeah, she could whine with the best of them, but the girl had some trauma in her life. I'm recovering from the lack of feedback on my last update to Fireflies, so any reviews you can toss my way would help mend that wound. How pathetic does that sound? Oh well, I'm not proud. Thanks in advance.

xXxXx

"We need to be delicate about this, guys. Dawn's at that age where being embarrassed in front of your friends is tantamount to torturous death," Tara warned, walking a few paces behind the others as they picked their way across the crowded dance floor toward the unsuspecting girl.

"That's fine then. I don't plan to embarrass her. I plan to kill her."

"Spike…"

"Just you try and stop me, Red."

"I'm just saying. I might do it for you."

Dawn didn't see them coming because she was busy sucking face with a large, unshaven guy who looked to be about twenty, and who, by the look on Spike's face, was soon to be missing the tongue he currently had crammed into the young Miss Summers' mouth.

Willow reached them first, which was good for Scruffy because if Spike had been the one to pull the two apart, there might well be some dangling appendages. As it was, Willow took Dawn by the elbow and tugged her backward. Dawn spun around, her startled and angry expression evaporating when she saw who had grabbed her, replaced by a kind of guilty dread.

"Will! I—"

"Let's go. Now." Willow's tone and the look in her eyes left no room for argument.

Dawn struggled to keep her dignity as she said, "All right, I was about to head out anyway." Turning back toward her companion, who looked more than a little irritated by the intrusion, Dawn pasted a smile on her face. "I'm kind of tired, Jake; I think I'll catch a ride with my friends. You—ah—you have my number, right?"

"Don't go yet, it's early," he protested, reaching for her waist, apparently oblivious to the low growl coming from Spike's direction. "I can take you home later … or you could crash at my place." In the time it took for him to make his meaning apparent by a not-so-subtle arch of the eyebrow, Jake was slammed against the wall, pinned there by Spike's unyielding vampire strength, his hand around Jake's throat. He must not have hurt him, though, because there was no accompanying shout of pain from Spike himself.

"Spike, don't!" Dawn screamed, tugging ineffectually at his leather coat. "Leave him alone!"

"Go with the witches, Little Bit," he said, not sparing her a glance. "Romeo and I are going to have a talk about keeping our hands off of fifteen-year-old girls—if we want to keep our hands at all."

"Fifteen? She's…!" Jake held his hands up in surrender. "Hey, man, I didn't know. She said she was nineteen. I swear I wouldn't … she's a kid!"

"Come on, honey, let's go." Tara took Dawn by the arm and gently tugged her in the direction of the door. "Spike won't hurt him; he can't," she said reassuringly.

Dawn reluctantly let herself be steered away, watching Spike and Jake over her shoulder all the way. Once outside the club, in the crisp night air, she lashed out at Tara, the easiest—and least threatening—target. "You guys had no right to do that," she yelled, her voice breaking with restrained tears. "I'm not some little kid you can just humiliate for kicks because your own lives suck and you want mine to suck more. You can't treat me like this!"

Tara shot Willow an anxious look. "Dawn, please, just calm down."

"No! YOU'RE NOT BUFFY! I don't have to answer to any of you." She spun around and started away.

"Arrete." The word hung in the air, firm and cold and unmovable, and the moment it was uttered, Dawn stopped dead in her tracks with a gasp, as if she had just slammed face-first into a brick wall. She spun around to glare at Willow.

"Don't do magic on me!" she yelled. "That's not fair!"

"I'm sorry, Dawnie, but … wait. No, no I'm not. I'm not sorry." Willow's eyes widened determinedly, and she stood up straighter and squared her shoulders as if readying for battle. "You scared the hell out of all of us tonight, and you're the one who should be sorry. I'm not letting you run off again and put us through more crap just because you feel like testing the limits with your new guardians."

"You're not my guardians," Dawn hissed through clenched teeth.

"Well somebody's got to be, and it looks like you're stuck with us. Unless you want to track down your dad, tell him Buffy's dead, and see if he rolls out the welcome mat for you to come and live with him."

"Willow, stop," Tara chastised, noting the subtle flinch that racked Dawn's body at the abrasive mention of her sister and father. Tara's voice softened when she looked from her girlfriend to the irate teenager. "Dawnie, you worried us very much tonight, and I think you know it was a pretty inconsiderate thing to do. Bottom line, our nerves are a little frayed right now, and I don't think we should make things worse by attacking each other. Okay? Willow, that goes for you too. Okay?"

Dawn looked at Tara and gave a reluctant little nod. "Fine. I'm sorry I worried you," she managed to say, putting the slightest emphasis on the last word to show the apology was meant for only Tara.

"Let's just go home," Willow said. "I'm exhausted. I called Giles; he and Xander are back at the house."

Dawn's head snapped back in Willow's direction. "Giles? Why is he there?"

"He was with us when Xander called to round up the search party," Willow said pointedly.

Dawn sighed. Her sister's Watcher was just about the last person she felt like dealing with tonight. Beyond Spike's showy aggression, Willow's weary frustration, Tara's maternal concern, Xander's brotherly protectiveness … beyond all of them was Giles. Giles, who could fill her with shame from a disapproving frown or make her feel normal, safe, and loved with a kind smile and warm hug.

When Dawn had first started acting out, doing things like stealing and sneaking out of the house more to prove that she still existed than for any real desire to become a juvenile delinquent, it was several weeks after That Night. Soon after, Xander had been forced to bring the Buffybot down to the police station to pose as Dawn's guardian when she'd been caught shoplifting. That night, Giles had come to her room to lecture her, she assumed, about the Dangers of Calling Attention to Their Delicate Situation. He'd rapped once on the door, a firm thud that was less requesting admittance than warning her that he was coming in whether she liked it or not. She had been lying on her bed, her back to the door, and refused to acknowledge his presence. He didn't wait for her to. His voice was soft, his words sharp, picking relentlessly away at the too-fresh wounds that made up her psyche.

"You have been through more over the past year than any child your age should have to endure. You've lost your mother, your sister, essentially your father. You've even lost your childhood in all but the most rudimentary sense. You are hurting and you're angry, and you've every right to be both. You do not, however, have a right to inflict the pain you're experiencing on the people still left in this world who love you. You don't have the right to throw away a life your sister died to protect. We will help you get through the horrors you're suffering—we're all suffering—in any way we possibly can. But you must do your part as well, Dawn. This self-destructive behavior must stop. Immediately."

He'd stood there for a few silent moments, then turned to leave when he got no response. Just before he reached the door, Dawn had jumped up from the bed to throw her arms around him from behind, and he'd clasped his hands over hers where they clung together around his middle. They'd stood like that for a long time, and then Giles had turned to face the girl, smiling kindly down into her tear-streaked face. "Does this mean we have an understanding?"

He would have killed her, not so long ago. Not because he wanted to, of course, but she wasn't sure that made it any better. Dawn knew he would have done it himself, because he never would have asked it of Buffy. Her, he would protect with everything he had. They all would. And they weren't the only ones who rued the outcome, who resented that last show of strength (Listen to me, Dawn. Listen.) as hell howled its fury all around them. Dawn thought she sort of hated Buffy for it, now. Proof positive that she should have been the one to go. Ungrateful little figment of everyone's imagination.

Now, standing with Tara and a stern-faced Willow outside a club less innocuous than the Bronze, Dawn began to regret her actions if only because Giles would be angry and Spike would be difficult. The acidic glare Spike leveled at Dawn when he joined them on the sidewalk confirmed her suspicions. He was holding a hand to his forehead in a familiar gesture that meant he and Jake had done a bit more than "talk." Enough to warrant punishment from his violence-prohibitive chip. Dawn didn't care enough to ask what had happened inside. She turned and began walking in the direction of home, and the others took up the pace behind her.

"Where are you going?" Willow asked suddenly as they crossed Chariot onto Revello, making Dawn stop and turn around. The black-leather-clad figure had broken off from the group and was striding away toward the cemetery, in the direction of his crypt.

"I think you know the way from here, yeah?" he said without looking back.

"Spike?" Dawn called. He kept walking, so she trotted to catch up to him. She snatched at his arm, but he yanked out of her grasp and fixed her with an icy stare that took her off-guard. She actually backed up a couple of steps under the force of it. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? Are you really that mad?"

"Go home, Dawn," he said coldly. "Not a good idea for you to be near me for a while."

"Why not?" she persisted, registering his use of her name uneasily. He rarely called her Dawn, and when he did it was usually not a good sign.

He gave an exasperated sigh. "Because I thought you were dead, and now that I know you're not, I'm tempted to remedy that."

"Why was everyone so worried? I mean, really. I've been out by myself before."

"You have no idea what is out on these streets. What we've been fighting, day in and out since the beginning of summer. Your blood—" his voice was rising, and he reached out and caught her arm just above the elbow. "I smelled your blood in the alley, Dawn, do you want to explain that?"

Dawn froze, her blue eyes snapping up to lock on his. Excuses swam around in her mind, but she couldn't seem to get a hold on one, and it was taking her too long to answer, and his eyes were growing colder, and his hand on her arm was tightening. "I…"

"Answer me. Or I'll form my own conclusions, and I won't like what I come up with."

"You're hurting my arm. Let me go," she said listlessly. There was long pause, Spike staring at Dawn, Dawn at the ground, and then he released her.

"Not going to let you self-destruct, Bit. She'd kick both our asses to hell and back."

"Guys, it's cold," Willow called from the street. "Let's go."

Dawn swallowed, afraid to meet Spike's eyes because he might read something in hers. She turned and trotted back to where Tara and Willow were waiting to walk her home. Spike watched them go, his eyes fixed warily on the steadily unraveling girl he had promised the Slayer he would protect.

Till the end of the world.