A/N- I've been working on this story for a while. It's short, and probably not very original, but I figured it's an ok start. Please review!
Running Away
It's never behind you. You toss it over your shoulder; you laugh over ice cream and watch dumb movies with your new friends. But it is never truly gone.
I took up running when we first got to Rome. I never liked exercise much. In gym class, I was always the girl sitting on the bleachers catching up on Chem homework with her headphones on. But one look at the narrow, crowded cobbled streets and my muscles screamed, "run." So I did. I dumped the bag on the bed; the brand-new suitcase, only half-full of hurriedly bought clothes, on the new bed, my new bed, never slept in. Throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt I didn't remember buying, I laced the squeaky white sneakers and burst out into the street.
Then I was free, wind weaving through my long, loose hair. It took me a few minutes to realize I had forgotten to pull it up, and even then I didn't care. The town swarmed around me like a movie on fast-forward. For a while, I wasn't Dawn Summers, girl with no home, former key. I was just a blur.
I started running every day. When I wasn't running, life was a daze. I was sleepwalking through my life, trying to force my American-born self into Italian culture. My days were full of cultural barriers, awkward silences, and muffled giggles at how stupid the new girl was. For the first time in my life, I couldn't practically sleep through class and still ace everything.
But those times are better, so much better, then when I'm alone. When Buffy goes out on her dates with the Immortal, and the apartment is so quiet that the only sounds are the soap operas the woman next to us watched seeping through the walls. I go to my room and crank up the stereo, bang on the door, do anything to keep the memories away.
God, do I have horrible memories. Some aren't bad, like when I used to visit the Sunnydale High School library, or all those movies Tara and I saw together, or the first time I went to the Bronze. But there are others. Like the day Dad left. I bawled for weeks, curled up in my bed at night, muffling my sobs into the soft comfort of my pillow. Or the day Buffy showed up at my school with that face. It was an expression I'd almost never seen before, and one that I would see too much of afterwards. She took me into the hall, and told my that our mommy was gone; that she would never be there to call me Pumpkin Belly and bake cookies for my school bake sales ever again. I cried again, in the middle of the hallway. Then later, when I saw her body, I swear, just for a moment, my heart stopped. I wish I could stop there, but then there was that moment, that one, freeze-frame moment of Buffy jumping off that tower. To save me, me, the slayer gone to save Dawn the nobody. And Willow and Tara's fights. I never thought my saviors, the ones who picked up the pieces the summer Buffy was gone, would turn into my mom and dad. But they did, and Tara was gone. Then when she finally, finally, came back, Warren took her away. And then Willow tore him away, along with herself. And all I did was sit there with Tara, with her glazed eyes and the crimson well on her sky blue sweater. There was Mom, then Tara, and then all the others: Cassie, Amanda, Anya, Spike. People who I shared my life with until theirs were taken.
They haunt me sometimes. Their faces, their voices. It's my past, a past I don't know if I can give up. Because no matter how long I am Dawn, the weird American girl adjusting to Italy, or whoever I become in the future, I will still be Dawn of Sunnydale: the key, the slayer's sister, the friend of death. And there is no running from that.