Chapter Five: Man In the Mirror
Dawn ducks her head into the Buffy's old room, the room that was going to be Willow's when she returned. Right now though it was the room that Madison was going to be using while she stayed with them. Her back was to the door, her guitar strap over her left shoulder, a pair of headphones in her ears as she alternated between picking and strumming a dizzying tempo. Her fingers blazing up and down the fret board, gliding between bass and tenor as easily as she drew breath. It was the kind of beat that would make people want to get up and dance despite the fact that it was clearly hard rock, it just had that infectious rhythm that made you want to move your feet.
Her fiery red hair was loose for a change, hanging to the middle of her back. It was slick with sweat as she moved her bare feet in time to the soft, yet driving music that was being pumped out of the amp. Her upper body moved in time with the rhythm that she was playing, the hard driving beat seeming to control her as she lost herself in the music she was playing.
As she begin to sing her voice was soft, hesitant. Dawn thought it sounding like Madison wasn't sure what her voice was going to sound like. "We came here to entertain you. Leaving here we aggravate you. Don't you know it means the same to me, honey." Despite the fact that her voice was barely audible it was crystalline in tone, a rich distinctive tenor, each word clearly understandable as it flowed out of her mouth. As she continued singing the words gained in intensity and melded into the rhythm her guitar playing had created. "I'm the one, the one you love. Come on baby, show your love. Hey, give it to me. I see a glow that fills this room. I see it rolling out of you. Feed her your message from above. I'm tellin' you, ow. Show. Come on and show your love, ah, yeah. Ow, woo, oh, show, show your love babe, ah, yeah. Show it, ow."
She stopped singing and once again simply lost herself in the music she was playing. Her fingers moving like quicksilver over the fret board as they struck, bent, held, and manipulated the strings to create the sounds she wished. Her body moving, swaying, rocking to the music that poured out of the amp. Dawn was simply mesmerized by the display of raw passion that Madison was displaying before her, she was fairly certain that if she was never called as a slayer the petite redhead definitely had a shot in the music industry. Then her voice picked up the second verse with the same intensity she had ended the first, "look at all these little kids. Takin' care of the music biz. Don't their business take good care of me. Honey, I'm the one the one you love, come on baby, show your love. Hey, give it to me. I see a glow that fills this room. I see it rolling out of you. Feed her your message from above. I'm telling you, ow. Show. Show your love babe, ah, yeah. Ow, whoo, woo, show. Show your love babe, ah, yeah. Show me."
For nearly thirty seconds her fingers danced up and down the strings reaching dizzying heights before striking even higher. Then her fingers clamp down on the strings killing the music in an instant. Sound didn't stop though. Her voice picked with a simple, "whoo, Bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doobe doobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, bop bada, shoobe doo wah, whoo." As suddenly as she had started the be-bob she stopped and her fingers once again set fire to her guitar.
Dawn wasn't sure how long she stood there, having simply lost herself in the performance Madison had put on for her even if she didn't know she was performing for someone. As the music fades Dawn comes back to herself. Deciding that now would be an appropriate time to announce her presence she claps approvingly.
Michael looks over his shoulder, only slightly surprised to see Dawn standing just inside the doorway. Keeping his startlement at her presence hidden he turns around to face the brunette playing the opening bridge to Heart's Crazy on You. "Hey," he mouths as way of greeting.
Dawn steps into the room still smiling from ear to ear. "You're really good with that," she says stating the obvious as far as she was concerned. She's amazed to see her minor compliment cause the confident girl to blush.
Michael shrugs unable to believe the heat he feels rising in his cheeks, "its just something I do to will away the time," he says modestly.
"Please!" Dawn gasps exasperated with the younger girl's radical shifts in attitude. One moment arrogent and cocky. The next reserved and vacillating, "that was good..."
"That was somebody else's work," he tells her. His voice sounding a little harsher then he had intended. "Someone else wrote that piece of music. Played it, poured their heart and soul into giving it live. Making it something I'd want to learn," he tells her passionately. His voice is full of self-deprecation when he speaks again a few seconds later, "all I had to do was come along later and memorize notes, chord changes, beats, rhythms..."
"But it still takes skill to play it like you did," Dawn cuts in tired of listening to Madison berate her own talent.
Michael rolls his shoulders as he turns in a slow circle to avoid Dawn's intense glare. Going from experiences he had in dealing with women he decided to change the subject instead of swaying her around to his point of view. From everything he had learnt over the years once a woman got in idea stuck in her head getting it out again was about as easy as demolishing a skyscraper with your barehands. It could be done, but it was hardly worth the effort trying involved. "Since I doubt you stopped in to praise me on my unparalleled virtuosity," he begins bitingly, "what did bring you to my temporary abode?" He finishes asking as he slips the strap from his shoulder.
"Well," Dawn begins hesitantly as she watches Madison move around the room. Leaning her guitar against the wall by the headboard, her long legs carrying her across the floor to where she turns her small amp off. "I was watching you before," she rushes out only to stop as Madison turns her large eyes on her. A smirk curving her lips into the semblance of a smile, "not like that," she blurts out quickly. "When you were outside training," she clarifies.
"Ah," Michael states knowingly as he turns back to the window he had been opening a moment before. Shoving it the rest of the way up he tantalizingly inquires in a voice just short of being sultry, "so you see anything you like?" Pulling a cigarette out of his pack he misses seeing Dawn brighten several shades.
"I wanted you to teach me..."
"Teach you what," he teases lightly, igniting his cigarette, devil may care smirk plastered to his lips as he watches Dawn's color rise once again.
"How to fight," Dawn finally manages to blurt out under Madison's smoldering eyes.
Michael flicks his ash out the window, "of coarse," he answers. Taking a drag off his cigarette he asks playfully, "now why didn't you just say that to begin with?"
Dawn growls low in her throat exasperated with the young girl's antics. Turning on her heel she storms out of the room in a huff. Michael lets out a relieved breath once she's out of the room trying to think of some way out of having to train her now that he's agreed. It wasn't that he didn't want to train her, or spend time with her.
Fact was he did, too much so. No matter how he looked at it he was an almost twenty-eight year old man while she was a sixteen year old girl. Now if Buffy was showing signs of interest in him... But she was twenty-two and he was fifteen.
Crushing his half spent cigarette out he throws himself onto the bed more frustrated with each passing second. With the way his mind was working around the problem he thought the next time he had a shot of getting laid was a good three years in the future. Groaning softly he silently curses Madison, katra devices, god, fate, and just about anybody, or anything else that pops into his head.
"That's it," Michael encourages Dawn as she moves forward hitting the stance he had taught her earlier. He had been with her for nearly an hour and half now, ever since Buffy had left for work.
Almost immediately after the blonde had left, Dawn came bonding into his room. The room in which he had been up until five in the morning playing his guitar till his fingers were raw. At nine in the morning he was hardly a barrel of sunshine at being woken up after only four hours worth of sleep.
He was, in simplest terms, a bitch. Snapping lightly at the slightest thing Dawn said. He couldn't help it. Yesterday, earlier this morning, his emotions had been bouncing around like a superball on acid, and while that hadn't changed in the least, there was also this languid feeling sapping his limbs of strength as well as a slight pain shooting through his abdomen as deep muscles tightened spasmodically. Worst yet he could feel a sticky substance covering his upper thigh and groin. He was still able to feel the warm fluid seeping out from between his legs.
Dawn had taken one look at the horrified expression that blossomed on the girl's face and knew exactly what had happened. She quickly bundled Madison into the bathroom, set up the shower, and allowed her to wash in peace. Before leaving the bathroom though she had set out the box of tampons hoping Madison was able to figure out how to use them because she was fairly positive she would die of mortification if she had to demonstrate how they were applied.
Michael had simply allowed himself to be swept up in a daze, gathering the clothes Dawn had instructed, and following her to the bathroom. After Dawn had left the adequately sized washroom he simple stood in the middle of the floor. This was just the latest in a long series of shocks that kept driving the fact back to the forefront of his mind with the force of a piledriver. He was no longer a man, he was a woman and the sooner he accepted that fact the quicker he could get on with his life.
Coming back to himself with a start he realizes he's simply been standing there while the steaming water blankets the room in a thick fog. Stripping out of his clothes he steps under the spraying water. Numbly, he showers trying to scrub his body clean. For the first time since Madison stole his body trapping him in hers he didn't feel the usual stirrings of arousal he had every other time he had bathed. Something he had thought would have been comfort just a few minutes ago was now nothing but one more oddity in a life suddenly riddled with the bizarre.
"And again," he calls out and Dawn moves forward as he had shown her. "Punch," he commands. Dawn immediately strikes out with a basic front punch, nodding slightly he says, "good. Enough."
Dawn nearly collapses to the ground after Madison calls a stop to the torture she calls training. Placing her hands on her knees the brunette pants heavily for oxygen as sweat drips from her brow. When she had first asked Madison to teach her how to fight she had been expecting training like how Buffy had taught her: punching the heavy bag, a few simple techniques, and some free sparring.
This was nothing like that. This was all about stances, proper low stances. Stances that after holding for five minutes had left the muscles in her legs burning so badly she hoped someone would come along and chop the offended appendages off. That had been forty-five minutes ago and while they hadn't worked on stances the whole time it certainly felt like it to her.
Madison had started the lesson off with what she called light calisthenics; jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, and then a very aerobic stretch that left Dawn bathed in sweat, but feeling loose and limber. The young brunette had thought she was flexible before she started, then she saw Madison stretching and suddenly she felt almost as supple as a wooden horse. The entire time the fiery redhead had encouraged her, pushing her beyond what she had thought she was capable of with words kind and patient.
"So how was it?" Michael inquires handing Dawn a water bottle.
She takes the bottle gratefully, upending it over her head. Finally managing to pour some of the luke warm liquid down her throat she swallows greedily. After nearly half a minute of dumping water over her face and head, she lowers the bottle to her side. "Different then what Buffy has me do," Dawn admits as she explains what Buffy was having her do.
Michael nods his head as he turns away from Dawn. Other images of the brunette, with water cascading over her partially clad body, flashing through his head. "Buffy never had any formal training?" He questions sitting down on the ground leaning his back against the trunk of a tree.
"Just what the watchers give you guys," Dawn replies with a shrug. Walking over to the tree Madison is leaning against she gingerly plops down next to the redhead. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"She teaches how she was taught, I teach how I was taught," Michael tells her.
Dawn frowns as she chews on her lower lip. After a moment she asks, "I thought you guys were all trained the same way."
Michael face takes on a neutral expression as he says, "all my training was done a long time before I ever met Jacob," he answers a sad, bitter edge tinting his voice. With a shake of his head he hops back up, "come on," he says heading towards the house.
"What?" Dawn calls out as she stands despite the severe protestations her muscles shoot throughout her body.
Michael turns around for a second still walking backwards as he says two simple words, "supply run," before turning back around and disappearing inside the house.
Dawn follows Madison into the house at a more sedate pace. She had a nervous feeling that what Madison had called a supply run somehow involved the black corvette the younger girl had arrived in. As she nears the house a sudden thought pops into her head, it was something that people should have asked previously. Madison was only fifteen years old, yet she had driven cross country to get here, and unless laws across the country had been changed in ways she hasn't been informed of, Madison had broken laws from one side of the continent to the other.
Now she was planning on breaking them in California. As Dawn walks into the house half a minute after Madison the thought of breaking a few laws with the younger girl fills her with a sense of excitement. A rush she's never felt before.
"There we go," Michael states spotting what he was looking for.
"Where?" Dawn asks looking up the road as she turns the volume down on the song blasting out of the speakers. It was some ancient hard rock number she had never heard before. The singer was going on about how the boys were back in town with lyrics like, "this girl was hot, I mean she was steaming," and, "the beer will flow and the blood will spill so if the boys wanna fight you better let 'em," or, as Giles would likely say, some such drivel.
She looks where Madison is pointing at a twenty-two, maybe twenty-three year old collage student walking down the same side of the street they were driving down. His dark brown hair was long, scraggly, and in need of a good washing just as his pointed goatee was in need of a good trim. The white t-shirt he was wearing, while having a few stains on it, for the most part look cleaned as did the almost brand new jeans he wore. The white tennis shoes on the other hand were filled with holes and the sole on the left one flopped crazily every time he took a step.
Dawn glances at Madison, "you can do a lot better then that," she informs the redhead as Madison pulls up to the curb. Madison gives her a reproachful look as she puts the Corvette in neutral before setting the parking brake. Pulling her wallet out of the door holder she slips out of the open window sitting on the door frame.
"Hey you!" She hears Madison shout from above before whistling sharply. "Yeah, you. Come here," she commands expecting to be obeyed. Dawn watches wide eyed as the man in question walks up to the car.
Dawn can hear them talking but she can't make out what their saying over the radio and the everyday noise from off the street. Instead of trying to listen in on their conversation she turns her head to study Madison openly while there isn't a chance of the younger girl catching her sneaking furtive peeks at her. She had change out of the sweatpants and black tank top from this mornings workout into an outfit not too dissimilar from the one she had arrived in yesterday. Today's assemble consisted of a dark forest green midriff top and low-riding, hip-huggers that were such a dark purple they were almost black. One of the differences between today and yesterday was today Madison had forgone the make-up she had worn previously.
She had to admire the younger girl. Madison wasn't going to let a little thing like getting her period for the first time keep her from going out, or looking her best doing it. Dawn knew she would never be able to get dressed in anything half as skimpy or revealing while she was on the rag.
She was beginning to understand that was how Madison functioned. The redhead had to be strong, had to be the best and she couldn't show anybody anything different. In a way she was a lot like Buffy. Unlike her older sister Madison had a tendency to flare up occasionally venting her pent up frustrations.
Sitting through her open car window, as she flirts with guy, the muscles of her abdomen would bunch together then expand as she talks, moves, breathes. Dawn's eyes latch onto the subtle movement, the Dragon's dark eye winks at her knowingly with each inhalation. It smirks every time Madison exhales. She can feel her breath quicken, her heart race as she ponders what the skin of Madison's sleek stomach would feel like under her soft fingers. Would she feel like the softest silk barely covering hardened steel. Would the dragon's scales feel rough like sandpaper or would they be smooth to the touch? If she tweaked Madison's naval ring would she gasp with pleasure?
Leaning forward she stretches out her hand. Her fingertips hover a hairs breadth from the smooth flesh she wants to touch. Her hand trembles lightly as she moves closer still...
"Hey!"
Dawn jerks back to reality with a sharp jolt as Madison's voice breaks the vivid daydream. "What?" She squeaks feeling heat flush her face as she looks into Madison's large doe like eyes as she leans in through the window. The younger girl was staring at her with something like impatience. Dawn simply wanted to find a deep, dark, dank, hole to crawl into right now. She was just glad it had been a fantasy and she hadn't been reaching out for real. That would have been something she would not like to have to explain.
"Want anything?" Michael asks her curious as to why she suddenly looks like she spent the day sleeping at the beach.
Dawn shakes her head answering Madison with a strangled, "no," hoping she would look anywhere but at her.
"You sure?" He inquires softly worry evident in his voice.
Dawn nods her head as she manages an almost normal sounding, "yes." Madison continues to look at her anxiety shinning in her soft hazel eyes for a moment before popping back out the window. Dawn lets out the breath she didn't realize she had been holding while the redhead had been looking at her.
With a supreme effort she cast her gaze down at the floor, away from where she truly wanted to be looking. She couldn't believe she had been checking Madison out. Fantasizing about what she would feel...
Slamming her eyes shut Dawn cuts off that line of thought. She needed someone to talk to. Someone that would be able to give her advice about what was going on. Someone that would understand the turmoil she felt right now. She wishes Willow was here for...
"Hey," Madison's concerned voice cuts into her thoughts as she rest a strong hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Dawn nods her head without opening her eyes.
"Are you sure? Because honestly Dawn, you look kinda freaked," her melodious voice remarks offering Dawn what comfort it can.
Dawn opens her eyes, looking up at Madison, "yeah... Could you take me someplace after you're done here?" She pleads.
"Sure," Michael answers instantly feeling a desire to help her, but unsure of what to do.
Ducking her down so she's not looking at Madison she explains, "there's just somebody I need to talk to."
Michael nods his head, "whatever you need. You just let me know and it's yours," he vows to her.
Dawn looks up smiling at her, "thank you."
Michael returns her smile with one of his own. "Whatever you need," he says wiping away the tear rolling down her cheek with a gentle stroke of his thumb.
A soft, gentle breeze blows its way over the small clearing. The bright green grass was far too short to be disturbed by its passing. A few people are scattered about the small cemetery, staying to themselves mostly or gathered in tiny groups of twos maybe threes, but seldom as many as four. This, like all graveyards, was a solemn place full of those seeking solace, to grieve in peace undisturbed, or to visit a friend taken too soon from those who loved them.
"Hey," Dawn greets Tara as she kneels down on the ground in front of the headstone unconcerned about the grass that might stain her white jeans. "Sorry about not being around more, but... Its hard. Not having you with us," she says placing a hand on the warm stone. "Willow's in England, Giles says she getting better. But you probably know that don't you."
She sighs closing her eyes, "just like you probably know why I'm here." She begins opening her eyes, "I know, I'm a horrible person only coming to see you when I'm in an emotional meltdown, but you were always the person I could talk to. Well you and Spike, but we're so not going there today, not that you don't know that as well."
She takes a deep breath trying to order her thoughts. She needs to explain this to Tara, not just blurt it all out in a rush, but to explain it right. She didn't want to insult Tara, or belittle her friend by trying to justify what might be false feelings, or worse emotions spawned simply because Madison was being nice and paying attention to her.
"See there's this girl. She just showed up on our doorstep the other day," she starts off a slow smile creeping across her lips. "She's funny, smart, more then a little cynical, has an attitude a mile long, and the music she listens to, plays, is so dated you'd expect Spike or Giles to be into, besides that she's so far beyond weird its not even in the same zip code, but nice in a in your face kind of way.
"She's a potential slayer. Someone tried to kill her. Did kill her watcher and her cousin so she came here looking for help, sanctuary I guess. And God what kind of person am I, forming a crush on a girl whose just lost everything she's ever cared for. All because I know she's a lesbian and she's been nice to me."
Taking another deep breath to relax herself and stop the rant she was on Dawn realizes she was doing what she didn't want to do. She was blurting things out and going off on disjointed rants. She needed to get back on track, get back to what she desperately needed to discuss with Tara.
"Could I really handle another label. I mean people still see me as the freak, the girl who sliced her wrist open," She stops again as the memory of that awful day pops back into her head. The day she found out she was nothing more then a ball of green energy wrapped in a human wrapper. Shuddering she takes a deep breath as she opens her eyes and pushes the memory away. It was done and over with. She was here and she was a real girl. That was the only thing that she cared about, not how she came into existence.
"I'm still the girl being raised by her older sister and a pair of lesbians. I hear the kids at school, what they say, the jokes they tell. I don't know if I could take that being said about me. It's cowardly and weak and you'd be so disappointed in me." She stops as she truly thinks about what Tara would say to her, "No you wouldn't," she corrects herself. "You'd tell me that every person has to be true to themselves and let me find my own path. Whatever that may be."
Michael winds his way through the graveyard. From what Dawn had told him it was the newest and the smallest of Sunnydale's thirteen cemeteries. The number had surprised him. Sunnydale wasn't that large of a town which meant it had to be an old town.
When he made that observation to Dawn she had informed him the town was just over a hundred years old. Then she told him Sunnydale sat on top of a Hell Mouth and had a death rate that could compete with most large cities. He had been dumbfounded to say the least, unable to think up a proper response. He wanted to know what the proper response to something like that was, especially when you didn't know what a Hell Mouth was to begin with.
He had dropped Dawn off at the grave she wanted to visit. A woman by the name of Tara Maclay, Willow's lover, and someone Dawn cares for deeply. Wanting to give her as much space as possible Michael had grabbed his denim jacket, a couple of bottles of his Long Island Ice Teas, a pack of Camel Cigarettes and left Dawn alone. Leaving his Corvette parked near her he had headed off deeper into the cemetery.
Setting his second bottle of Long Island Ice Tea on a headstone he pulls his pack of cigarettes from his denim jacket's inside pocket. Packing the cigarettes before opening them he looks around the graveyard. At the row upon row of headstones splayed out before him. Some made from white marble, some granite or concrete, large altaresque structures, some standing as high as his chest, to small plaques sunk in the ground.
Everybody here had one thing he was never going to have. The decency of being buried with their proper name donating who was resting in the ground underneath. Even his body wasn't going to have that. Instead buried in an unmark grave like some nameless vagabond just so nobody had the chance to take the fortune he had spent a decade building.
He lights his cigarette with small trembling hands. Her hands. The hands that had caused him to suffer one degradation after another. Wishing he had her before him right now so he could rip her apart he picks up his drink and takes a stiff pull off the liquor filled bottle. As the cold liquid settles in the pit of his stomach, sending a warm chill throughout his body he knows he wants to do nothing more then get good and drunk tonight.
He wanted to get so drunk that when he looked at himself in a mirror tonight he would be able to see the face of the man he was. Not the face of this bitch who had taken everything from him. Twirling around he strides purposefully back in the direction he had come. He had a mission to complete tonight and nothing was going to stand in his way from accomplishing his objective. And if anyone tried then he'd just have to teach them the folly of their action.
________________________________________________________________________
Man In the Mirror - Savatage
There's a man that I used to know
And sometimes he still visits with me
When it's late and the alcohol's glow
Is nearly gone
And it's time to awaken
And he looks and he laughs at the sight
And he asks what has happened to me
And I blame it all on the lights
But he smiles and says i'm mistaken
And there is no use in disguising
What the eye can so clearly see
That i've spent my whole life denying
That the man in the mirror is me
Give me one second chance
Give me one final dance
Give me one magic line
Take a minute off my time
Give me one final bow
If the moment allows
While he stares at the scars
Saying just who you are
Just who you are
Just who you are
In a child like illusion of life
He imagined the things yet to be
But they all disappeared on this night
Carry on among the forsaken
For there is no use in denying
What the eye can so clearly see
That one day I too will be dying
And the man in the mirror agrees
Give me one second chance
Give me one final dance
Give me one magic line
Take a minute off my time
Give me one final bow
If the moment allows
While he stares at the scars
Saying just who you are
Just who you are
Just who you are
Just who you...
