He looks at me with those big cold, hurt eyes. The same sensation runs through me as Spike's stare of late. But he's not Spike. He's not anyone really, he was her escape and now she's gone. For good this time. No more spells to bring her back, no more pain and no more families...No more Buffy. Just me, Dawn, the shadow that was her little sister, the shadow that whined and cried even when she felt nothing.

When she died, I felt nothing. No pain, no joy, no hate. Just a numbness that attacked my body and my mind. I lived days on end without memories. I lived for countless months infact, without Buffy, without the shaded torment of never really feeling the sun on my face; without finding him, her escape, her Angel, the man I knew so well but never really knew at all.

He's searched for me all this time. They all have, not my friends but hers. I don't have friends anymore; friends just bring you pain. Friends just steal things - sometimes even your heart - and disappear. All that time I just had me, living it up, being allowed to experience who I really am... and then I found I had something more. My Solace. My Escape.

Spike was never really mine. From the first moment I loved him I knew it wasn't right. He got a soul for Buffy; my beautiful, powerful, overbearing siter and he would love her right through death. He would love her forever, or at least that's the impression I got, and maybe that's why I ignore it when he whispers her name instead of mine. I let him take me over and he was so afraid to hurt me, I was vunerable and lonely - all the things Buffy never allowed herself time or space to be.

So he owned me. He looked after me like I was his pet and it suited me for a very long time. It suited me because for all his stupid, ignorant stunts, I loved him, I loved escaping and finding solace in the colourful, ever mysterious world of William the Bloody.

"Dawn."

I look at him again, biting my lip and waiting for the tears and the memories to consume me. I don't know who I am anymore. All of that, all of that talk and all of that running and living and experiencing led me to one thing; I was always meant to be in the shadows. I was always meant to not go noticed, thats why I was the key so long ago and thats why I found escaping so hard until Spike finally found me. "Hello Angel."

I ran to him and folded myself in his arms, not quite knowing what else to do.

"I'm so glad we've found you... I was beginning to think we were too late."

"Too late for what?"

Willow came out from behnd a door and smiled that sweet, sickening smile. "The end of the world's here again Dawny and you are right in the line of fire...again."