Mutually Assured Destruction 1/1
By The Walking Happy Meal (walkinghappymeal[at]rinkworks[dot]com)
http://www.geocities.com/walkinghappymeal/
Rated G
Spoilers up to 'All The Way'
Archival by permission only


He's gone back to lurking around the house occasionally, since Buffy
came back. Sometimes I'll see him and he'll pretend he wasn't. That
it was just a friendly social call. He always says the same thing.

"How are things in the land of the living?"

I wish he wouldn't.

Before I burnt them all, I used to keep three diaries at once. One
would be full of obviously fake stuff and would be left on my
dresser. That was the joke diary. The second one would be full of
faked stuff too, but that would be plausible. That one was hidden in
a shoebox in my underwear drawer. The last diary was my *real* one.
That was full of my most secret thoughts and was on my bookshelf in
the dust jacket of a different book.

A lot of the time, I'd spend longer filling in the second diary than
the first. That would be the one Buffy read. I almost let slip to her
one time that the shoe-box one wasn't my *real* diary either.

///If they're really spying on you all the time, you just say
something so you know they'll hear you. Like sometimes, I write fake
things in my diary, in case...///

I thought she might have guessed, but she was all hung up over Riley
that day and she didn't notice.

Anyway, I was used to her trying to snoop in my diary. She did it all
the time and I did it right back and I did it *after* she came back.

And now I know.

I know all about how she was in heaven until Willow yanked her out. I
know how she feels that she's disconnected from everything, like
she's seeing the world through tinted glasses and knowing that
something's wrong about the picture. How much it hurts that the only
person she thinks she can share this with is a neutered vampire who
cheats at kitten poker. How scared she is of letting slip to me that
everything's not perfect. How lonely, how afraid and how certain,
beneath everything else, that she's not supposed to be here. That she
should be dead and even secretly wants to be.

And I can't tell her that I feel the same way.

I'm all used up inside. Not just the Key part of me, the Dawn part. I
was all ready to take a dive into the portal myself, until she
stopped me. I'd started it, so I was gonna finish it. Things would
have come full circle and maybe I could have atoned for the billions
of years of evil deeds that I committed and can't remember. Life
would go on like it had before the monks majicked me out of nowhere
and it would fit, y'know? It would be symmetrical. In a twisted way
it would have been beautiful.

But then she stopped me and I froze. I stood there and let her
explain that she was gonna kill herself and even though I could have
stopped her and should have stopped her, I didn't.

I chickened out.

And that's why everything feels so out of step now. Why I have to
concentrate so hard on just looking at things to stop the static that
fizzles down from behind my eyelids and threatens to fade me out of
existence like a TV that's going slowly out of tune. Why I cry when
nobody can see me. Why I came so close to letting myself be a vamp
snack. Why I stopped writing diaries altogether after the night she
died. That sticky molasses thought that lies underneath all my other
ones that I should be dead and that I. Should. Not. Be. Here.

And I can't tell her. Not ever.

She died to keep me safe. After she died, she was at peace, knowing
that I was happy and alive.

I know exactly what she's going through and I can't say a word,
because if I did it would crucify her to know that she was going
through it for nothing.

Because I'm not safe. I'm not happy. I'm not living either, not
really.

And I can never tell a soul...or in this case, the soulless.

"How are things in the land of the living?"

"Fine," I answer. Same as I always do.

But we're not living.

Just existing.