CHAPTER ONE - DEAD THINGS
BATH - ENGLAND
Dawn lay on her side and watched the glowing green hands tick towards - well - dawn, which was still hours away.
She was tired, but wasn't the least bit sleepy. So she stared at the fire- truck red clock. It was one of the three things she'd brought with her that wasn't clothes. Her mother had had the clock since she was a little girl, then Buffy had taken it for a few weeks, and now it was hers.
She wondered who'd have it after her.
The other two things were in the large frames she was carefully curled around under the thick covers. Photographs. She'd spent enough time staring at them that she didn't think she'd ever have to look at them again. The larger of the two was of everyone researching around the Magic Box table; with Willow and Tara to one side of the table and sitting so close together that they might as well have been in each other's laps, Anya actually sitting in Xander's lap on the other, and Buffy and Giles sitting in between the two couples.
Sitting next to each other, no laps involved. Thank God.
The other was of Buffy and Mom sitting under a Christmas tree. Mom was grinning and waving, her hair just starting to grow back after her surgery, while Buffy was mock glaring at the camera because she was still in pajamas and had the worst case of bed hair ever.
Dawn rolled away from the photos, the clock, everything. The sudden move got her an annoyed meow from Miss Kitty, who'd been sleeping at her feet.
And was soon asleep again.
It didn't seem fair that cats got to skip out on the whole jet lag thing.
Neither did mice, for that matter. She could hear the squeak of the wheel as it went around and around inside the little Habitrail that was set up on the other nightstand. It was too dark to see more than the dimmest outline of the cage, but she still stared at where she thought Amy was and wondered if the other girl could still think human thoughts or if she only had little mousy thoughts.
Or did she think in some bizarre Mickey Mouse-like mash of the both? In which case, her and ducks were probably unmixy things.
Either way; if she could think, did she realize that without Willow.
Dawn rolled out of bed all together and let out a little noise when her feet hit the cold wood floor. Anya was right; England did only had two seasons; winter, and not quite winter.
She came this close to ducking back under the nice warm quilts she had piled on her bed.
And then Amy's wheel let out one extra loud squeak.
The floor didn't seem quite so cold after that. She grabbed some of the cleaner clothes up off the floor - a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with a white wolf's head outlined on the front that she'd only worn once this week - and skipped shoes and socks altogether. She was still buttoning the jeans as she hurried out of her room.
And into a hallway that was longer than her house, pitch black, and unearthly quiet except for a ticking of a grandfather clock at the end of the hall next to the staircase. Dawn shivered and knew she was being stupid, but she swore that the ticking sounded just like high heels walking across old cement. All she needed was a couple of scabby demons holding her in place and she'd be back at the tower.
She shivered again and hurried away from the clock, going deeper into the blackness that was the hallway.
Which was also the direction to Giles' room. Two doors down and to the left, to be specific. It hadn't sounded very far when Giles had first told her on the plane, a fact that thrilled her to no end. But when she complained he just sort of almost laughed and sat back in his seat. In her defense, she didn't know that there was enough space between rooms that they could've landed the jet right there in the hallway and had room to spare.
And that was how it looked during the day. At three in the morning.
Giles' door was open, but she couldn't hear anything inside. She knocked and waited, but no one answered. So she slowly pushed the door open, ready to slam it shut if she saw him, and stuck her head in.
The shades were still pulled back and that let in just enough moonlight to see that Giles was nowhere inside.
Dawn opened the door a bit more to be sure, but - unless he was hiding in the closet - he wasn't there and hadn't been since that morning. Not unless he stopped and made the bed before he went wherever he was going.
And God only knew where that could be. There were eight more rooms on this floor alone, most of which smelled worse than her grandmother's closet, and she didn't know where to start looking.
Or why she wanted to find him to begin with.
It wasn't like Giles had been around much in the past month. He'd usually show up, ask if she or Anya needed anything, and then vanish again.
Toss in a dire warning or two and Angel would've been proud.
She had thought Giles would be happy to be back in England, to be home. But he seemed even more out of sorts here than he had in Sunnydale. There, at least, he was verbal.
Here, he was a ghost in his own home.
Dawn realized she'd been dancing from one foot to the other and started walking again, this time back towards the clock. Standing still had never been her thing, now it almost hurt to be doing nothing.
Because doing nothing gave her time to remember.
She hurried back down the hall and all but ran past the clock and it's evil ticking. The stairs were even colder than the floor, but she barely noticed in her rush. She spared a glance to the living room, it wouldn't have been the first time she'd found Giles sound asleep on one of the thick chairs that were scattered around the room, but no go.
She kept looking anyway, until her eyes came to rest on the massive painting over the fireplace. A fifteen by ten foot landscape painting of the White Cliffs of Dover that was beautiful even at night.
It was just the kind of thing Mom would have swooped up for her gallery.
Dawn almost turned to the kitchen before she decided she wasn't hungry in the least. And even if she was. Well, Anya had tried to clear the table after breakfast, but the plates had slipped off of her lap and badness resulted.
Dawn had swept up as best she could, but she knew there was always one more piece just waiting for some dope with bare feet.
Anya had taken it harder than she should have. It wasn't like they were the good plates - Dawn had the feeling Giles had made sure the good stuff was gone before he'd handed the place over to the Council - or really her fault.
Well, everything but the glass Anya had flung at the wall after she'd dropped everything else. That one was her fault. Dawn would have said so, but she broke down right after and had been creepily quiet for the rest of the day.
And considering that the ex-demon was the only other one around Dawn could not talk to that wasn't of the good. They spent a lot of time doing that, not talking. They didn't talk for most of the time they were together, which was pretty much always. Especially when she was helping Anya with the hundred and one things that were designed for people with two working arms and legs to do, like getting dressed, or getting in a tub, or even getting out of bed.
Not that she minded doing any of it. Well, she minded, but so did Anya. Probably. Hopefully.
Dawn scowled and shook the thought away. Unlike most, this one stayed that way.
Mainly because she doubted that Anya even noticed. All she did was sit silently - a word she never would have thought she'd use to describe the ex- demon - and stare at things Dawn couldn't see.
So she didn't mind - much - that she took care of Anya. If Giles had to do it, he'd probably faint and hit his head on something and she'd have to take care of both of them.
Which she would have done, because she knew that it was all her.
She shook her head and hurried down the other hallway, the one that lead to Anya's room, which used to be a den before Giles rented the house to the Council. They remodeled it into bed and bath just for this kind of thing, mainly because while the Watchers could find a Slayer half a world away, the concept of wheelchair access was apparently beyond them.
All of which meant Anya had the floor to herself. Not that she was in any shape to enjoy it.
There was a sliver of light shinning under the bottom of Anya's door, but that didn't mean anything. Anya slept with a sleep mask and left the lamp on. It wasn't exactly an easy reach, after all.
This time Dawn didn't bother to knock before she opened the door. And not just because she'd seen way too much of Anya already, or because it wasn't like anyone in the house slept well as it was and she wasn't about to wake Anya up if the ex-demon was actually asleep.
Either would have sounded good, heck, one was almost noble, but the real reason came down to one word. Fear. And not just because Anya had an arm when it came to pillows, which was amazing since she was right handed and that arm was both down and out.
No, that she could deal with that, it was the cursing in ancient Scandinavian that was freaky. Dawn thought it was Scandinavian, anyway. What else would have that many references to Trolls?
Dawn let out a justified sigh of relief when she opened the door and heard the soft wheeze that passed for snoring.
Anya was stretched out across her bed and wearing one of Xander's shirts, if wearing was the right word. Living in might be better description. The thing could pass for a tent with a bit of work. It was certainly big enough; it stretched down to mid thigh and had a neck so big that it had slipped off of Anya's shoulder.
The bright blue and yellow number was one of the many Cordelia had packed - many as in all except for the two she'd taken for herself - because it was a heck of a lot easier to slip Anya's bad arm through Xander's shirts than it would have been any of her normal blouses.
Dawn tip toed over and straightened the covers that Anya had kicked down in the middle of the night. The arm and leg were bad enough; a cold would be pushing it. After that she stood there for a long moment, at a loss for anything else to do, before she sat down on the edge of the bed and watched Anya sleep.
Or, more accurately, eyed the thin gold chain that Anya was wearing. Was always wearing, unless there was a chance that Dawn would see it. Then she'd hide it somewhere.
Dawn had lost count of the times she'd seen Anya playing with whatever was hanging from the chain, and had just started to wonder what it was. Before she would have asked and asked and asked until Anya's showed her whatever it was just to shut her up.
"In the before time," Dawn murmured to herself. "The long, long ago."
Now, now she barely cared. Not that she didn't want to know.
Still, it took her a while to actually do anything. A part of her said it wasn't her business, and another part said she probably didn't want to know. Especially considering the knickknack's Anya had probably collected over the centuries.
If it was a dried finger. Not that Anya would keep fingers.
That thought almost sent her from the room. But in the end she ignored both voices. She wouldn't be a Summers if she let a little thing like someone else's privacy or ickiness get the best of her. She carefully reached over and hooked the chain with her finger. She spent a long moment ready to run if Anya woke up, a wasted moment because Anya didn't even stop snoring.
So Dawn started to gently pull on the chain and kept pulling until the thing at the end slipped free. It wasn't a finger, or the other thing.
Either would have been easier to take.
Dawn sat there and stared dumbly at the ring at the end of the chain. She knew what it was, of course. She remembered the time she and Buffy had tried on their mother's. She'd been barely seven at the time, and the ring had just slipped off her finger and hit the ground with a thump.
Buffy had yelled at her then, afraid that her clumsy sister had somehow broken the ring. She wished Buffy were here to yell at her now.
It was an engagement ring. Xander and Anya had been engaged. They'd been happy, and in love, and were going to get married.
Then she came along and ruined everything.
She left just as quietly as she'd come in, with Anya still wheezing away. She closed the door and ran down the hallway to the library. The room was massive and filled with books on demons, spells, history, and, of course, classic literature. Though it was a bit disconcerting making the jump from stories about 19th century orphanages to the mating habits of Hybralli demons, or - even better - trying to translate a book written in Sumerian.
All of which made it the perfect place to hide whenever she couldn't eat, sleep, or find anything good to watch on the television.
Or spend one more minute inside her own head.
Willow would have loved the place; it was almost as good as the old high school library. Not that she was really ever there enough to judge.
No, she'd never been there. She was a glowy ball of energy and everyone else was..
Dawn hurried, desperate to outrun her thoughts. She walked passed the billiards room, one of the few rooms she'd never gone in to. She would've, but she'd been afraid to look inside. Afraid that if she squinted and turned her head just right, she'd see Xander and Spike standing around the table, pool cues in hand, and snarking at each other.
She looked now. The room was empty.
They should have been there. They all should have. Buffy, Willow and Tara should have been there, helping Xander and Anya plan their wedding and joking about ugly bridesmaid dressed while Mom.
Dawn blinked away tears as she opened the door to the library and all but fell into the room. To her surprise, the fireplace in the far wall was already burning. She turned and let out a surprised gasp.
She'd found Giles.
He was sitting in one of the thick chairs. His eyes were shut, his chin was on his chest, and his face pale except for the dark, three-day-old stubble that was fast becoming a beard.
He looked like a corpse in the flickering light.
She would know, she'd seen enough of them lately. She stumbled over, ignoring the tears that were now flowing down her cheeks. She could hear him snoring softly as she got closer, but that wasn't enough.
She wasn't, couldn't be sure. She knew it wouldn't seem real until she touched him.
She stumbled over a bottle she hadn't seen before, the glass rolling with a clatter across the wood floor until it hit the chair. She let out a yelp of fright as he sat straight up in the chair and his bloodshot eyes saw everything before they finally settled on her.
"Dawn?" He asked, her name slurring a bit in his mouth.
"Yeah," she said, one hand on her heart as she reached over with the other and poked his. She felt the warm skin of his hand and let out the breath she'd been holding.
"Why are you still up?" He stuttered as he blinked a thousand times a second and stared down at her hand.
"I - I was checking on Anya. And you. Do you need anything?"
Giles grinned at that and started chuckling. A chuckle that kept going on and on until tears started falling. "Do you know what I need?" He waited for Dawn to shake her head before going on. "I need someone to take back the last bloody year. Or get me another Scotch, I seem to have run out," he added as he hefted the empty bottle.
Dawn felt like she'd been punched. "Does it help?" She asked, her voice a strangled whisper as she stared at the bottle.
The grin left Giles's face. "Only for a moment."
"A whole moment?"
"Sometimes not even," Giles admitted before he shook his head and dropped the bottle. It hit the ground with a bang that made Dawn jump, but the bottle somehow didn't break. "Go 'way," he muttered and shifted in the chair. "'M tired, lemme alone." He closed his eyes and started snoring again.
Dawn's eyes spilled from him to the empty bottle. A whole moment.
A whole moment when she didn't feel Buffy standing behind her shoulder, didn't have to watch out for ghosts.
A whole moment that she didn't have to worry about Anya or Giles or Amy or how she could possibly make up for.
"It's all my fault."
She wanted to pull the words back as soon as they'd left her mouth. She'd thought it before, had been thinking it ever since she'd found out what she was.
'Has your mother been exposed to any high voltage lines?'
.but this was the first time she'd said it out loud. If the monks had sent her somewhere else, made her into something else, then none of the last year would have happened.
Maybe Xander and Anya would be planning their wedding right now, with Buffy and Willow and Tara and her Mom all helping.
Her eyes went back to Giles, did he know? Is that why he spent so much time avoiding her? And what about Anya?
She wished she could make things better. Everything that had happened was her fault; she should be able to fix it. She just wanted the pain to go away.
Which sparked a memory, and then a notion, and then a plan.
It took her a half hour to find the book. She'd read so many that they'd all blended together, and it wasn't like she'd been all that careful putting them back in the right spot.
The book was plain, with a faded leather cover and the words inside weren't even embossed or written in blood or anything the slightest bit cool. No, it was just ordinary ink and a few pictures that didn't look like much at all.
Despite all of that, it was still the kind of book that would've been ripped out of her hands a few weeks ago.
She froze before she opened it, half expecting Giles to charge up and do just that, but the snoring behind her never stopped. So she opened the book and read the ingredients list before she marked the page and closed the book again. The spell called for exactly two objects.
It took her another ten minutes to find them both.
Giles had one in his room, a white crystal that he'd been using as a paperweight. The flowers were a little harder, only because there were a dozen flowerbeds scattered around the mansion, all the size of small houses, and she'd pushed Anya around them all so many times that they'd blended together.
She scooped up the book and brought everything over to the still lit fireplace. There wasn't any hesitation as she tossed all six of the flowers into the fire, the soft while petals smelled like vanilla as they burned.
She opened the book and started reading. "For Giles and Anya and I this I char, let Lethe's Bramble do its chore. Purge our minds of memories grim, of pains from recent slights and sins..."
She picked up the pure white crystal and touched it to a burning flowers and watched as the crystal turned gray. "When the fire goes out. When the crystal turns black. The spell will be cast. Tabula rasa. Tabula rasa. Tabula rasa."
With that done she lay down and curled up against the cold stone hearth so she could watch the fire burn everything away.
'You're my little pumpkin belly'
'Niblet'
'You're so pretty, all green and sparkly'
'We're going to take candy from. Some guy, I don't know his name'
'They're just doing some Scooby stuff'
'I love you, Dawn, never forget that'
BATH - ENGLAND
Dawn lay on her side and watched the glowing green hands tick towards - well - dawn, which was still hours away.
She was tired, but wasn't the least bit sleepy. So she stared at the fire- truck red clock. It was one of the three things she'd brought with her that wasn't clothes. Her mother had had the clock since she was a little girl, then Buffy had taken it for a few weeks, and now it was hers.
She wondered who'd have it after her.
The other two things were in the large frames she was carefully curled around under the thick covers. Photographs. She'd spent enough time staring at them that she didn't think she'd ever have to look at them again. The larger of the two was of everyone researching around the Magic Box table; with Willow and Tara to one side of the table and sitting so close together that they might as well have been in each other's laps, Anya actually sitting in Xander's lap on the other, and Buffy and Giles sitting in between the two couples.
Sitting next to each other, no laps involved. Thank God.
The other was of Buffy and Mom sitting under a Christmas tree. Mom was grinning and waving, her hair just starting to grow back after her surgery, while Buffy was mock glaring at the camera because she was still in pajamas and had the worst case of bed hair ever.
Dawn rolled away from the photos, the clock, everything. The sudden move got her an annoyed meow from Miss Kitty, who'd been sleeping at her feet.
And was soon asleep again.
It didn't seem fair that cats got to skip out on the whole jet lag thing.
Neither did mice, for that matter. She could hear the squeak of the wheel as it went around and around inside the little Habitrail that was set up on the other nightstand. It was too dark to see more than the dimmest outline of the cage, but she still stared at where she thought Amy was and wondered if the other girl could still think human thoughts or if she only had little mousy thoughts.
Or did she think in some bizarre Mickey Mouse-like mash of the both? In which case, her and ducks were probably unmixy things.
Either way; if she could think, did she realize that without Willow.
Dawn rolled out of bed all together and let out a little noise when her feet hit the cold wood floor. Anya was right; England did only had two seasons; winter, and not quite winter.
She came this close to ducking back under the nice warm quilts she had piled on her bed.
And then Amy's wheel let out one extra loud squeak.
The floor didn't seem quite so cold after that. She grabbed some of the cleaner clothes up off the floor - a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with a white wolf's head outlined on the front that she'd only worn once this week - and skipped shoes and socks altogether. She was still buttoning the jeans as she hurried out of her room.
And into a hallway that was longer than her house, pitch black, and unearthly quiet except for a ticking of a grandfather clock at the end of the hall next to the staircase. Dawn shivered and knew she was being stupid, but she swore that the ticking sounded just like high heels walking across old cement. All she needed was a couple of scabby demons holding her in place and she'd be back at the tower.
She shivered again and hurried away from the clock, going deeper into the blackness that was the hallway.
Which was also the direction to Giles' room. Two doors down and to the left, to be specific. It hadn't sounded very far when Giles had first told her on the plane, a fact that thrilled her to no end. But when she complained he just sort of almost laughed and sat back in his seat. In her defense, she didn't know that there was enough space between rooms that they could've landed the jet right there in the hallway and had room to spare.
And that was how it looked during the day. At three in the morning.
Giles' door was open, but she couldn't hear anything inside. She knocked and waited, but no one answered. So she slowly pushed the door open, ready to slam it shut if she saw him, and stuck her head in.
The shades were still pulled back and that let in just enough moonlight to see that Giles was nowhere inside.
Dawn opened the door a bit more to be sure, but - unless he was hiding in the closet - he wasn't there and hadn't been since that morning. Not unless he stopped and made the bed before he went wherever he was going.
And God only knew where that could be. There were eight more rooms on this floor alone, most of which smelled worse than her grandmother's closet, and she didn't know where to start looking.
Or why she wanted to find him to begin with.
It wasn't like Giles had been around much in the past month. He'd usually show up, ask if she or Anya needed anything, and then vanish again.
Toss in a dire warning or two and Angel would've been proud.
She had thought Giles would be happy to be back in England, to be home. But he seemed even more out of sorts here than he had in Sunnydale. There, at least, he was verbal.
Here, he was a ghost in his own home.
Dawn realized she'd been dancing from one foot to the other and started walking again, this time back towards the clock. Standing still had never been her thing, now it almost hurt to be doing nothing.
Because doing nothing gave her time to remember.
She hurried back down the hall and all but ran past the clock and it's evil ticking. The stairs were even colder than the floor, but she barely noticed in her rush. She spared a glance to the living room, it wouldn't have been the first time she'd found Giles sound asleep on one of the thick chairs that were scattered around the room, but no go.
She kept looking anyway, until her eyes came to rest on the massive painting over the fireplace. A fifteen by ten foot landscape painting of the White Cliffs of Dover that was beautiful even at night.
It was just the kind of thing Mom would have swooped up for her gallery.
Dawn almost turned to the kitchen before she decided she wasn't hungry in the least. And even if she was. Well, Anya had tried to clear the table after breakfast, but the plates had slipped off of her lap and badness resulted.
Dawn had swept up as best she could, but she knew there was always one more piece just waiting for some dope with bare feet.
Anya had taken it harder than she should have. It wasn't like they were the good plates - Dawn had the feeling Giles had made sure the good stuff was gone before he'd handed the place over to the Council - or really her fault.
Well, everything but the glass Anya had flung at the wall after she'd dropped everything else. That one was her fault. Dawn would have said so, but she broke down right after and had been creepily quiet for the rest of the day.
And considering that the ex-demon was the only other one around Dawn could not talk to that wasn't of the good. They spent a lot of time doing that, not talking. They didn't talk for most of the time they were together, which was pretty much always. Especially when she was helping Anya with the hundred and one things that were designed for people with two working arms and legs to do, like getting dressed, or getting in a tub, or even getting out of bed.
Not that she minded doing any of it. Well, she minded, but so did Anya. Probably. Hopefully.
Dawn scowled and shook the thought away. Unlike most, this one stayed that way.
Mainly because she doubted that Anya even noticed. All she did was sit silently - a word she never would have thought she'd use to describe the ex- demon - and stare at things Dawn couldn't see.
So she didn't mind - much - that she took care of Anya. If Giles had to do it, he'd probably faint and hit his head on something and she'd have to take care of both of them.
Which she would have done, because she knew that it was all her.
She shook her head and hurried down the other hallway, the one that lead to Anya's room, which used to be a den before Giles rented the house to the Council. They remodeled it into bed and bath just for this kind of thing, mainly because while the Watchers could find a Slayer half a world away, the concept of wheelchair access was apparently beyond them.
All of which meant Anya had the floor to herself. Not that she was in any shape to enjoy it.
There was a sliver of light shinning under the bottom of Anya's door, but that didn't mean anything. Anya slept with a sleep mask and left the lamp on. It wasn't exactly an easy reach, after all.
This time Dawn didn't bother to knock before she opened the door. And not just because she'd seen way too much of Anya already, or because it wasn't like anyone in the house slept well as it was and she wasn't about to wake Anya up if the ex-demon was actually asleep.
Either would have sounded good, heck, one was almost noble, but the real reason came down to one word. Fear. And not just because Anya had an arm when it came to pillows, which was amazing since she was right handed and that arm was both down and out.
No, that she could deal with that, it was the cursing in ancient Scandinavian that was freaky. Dawn thought it was Scandinavian, anyway. What else would have that many references to Trolls?
Dawn let out a justified sigh of relief when she opened the door and heard the soft wheeze that passed for snoring.
Anya was stretched out across her bed and wearing one of Xander's shirts, if wearing was the right word. Living in might be better description. The thing could pass for a tent with a bit of work. It was certainly big enough; it stretched down to mid thigh and had a neck so big that it had slipped off of Anya's shoulder.
The bright blue and yellow number was one of the many Cordelia had packed - many as in all except for the two she'd taken for herself - because it was a heck of a lot easier to slip Anya's bad arm through Xander's shirts than it would have been any of her normal blouses.
Dawn tip toed over and straightened the covers that Anya had kicked down in the middle of the night. The arm and leg were bad enough; a cold would be pushing it. After that she stood there for a long moment, at a loss for anything else to do, before she sat down on the edge of the bed and watched Anya sleep.
Or, more accurately, eyed the thin gold chain that Anya was wearing. Was always wearing, unless there was a chance that Dawn would see it. Then she'd hide it somewhere.
Dawn had lost count of the times she'd seen Anya playing with whatever was hanging from the chain, and had just started to wonder what it was. Before she would have asked and asked and asked until Anya's showed her whatever it was just to shut her up.
"In the before time," Dawn murmured to herself. "The long, long ago."
Now, now she barely cared. Not that she didn't want to know.
Still, it took her a while to actually do anything. A part of her said it wasn't her business, and another part said she probably didn't want to know. Especially considering the knickknack's Anya had probably collected over the centuries.
If it was a dried finger. Not that Anya would keep fingers.
That thought almost sent her from the room. But in the end she ignored both voices. She wouldn't be a Summers if she let a little thing like someone else's privacy or ickiness get the best of her. She carefully reached over and hooked the chain with her finger. She spent a long moment ready to run if Anya woke up, a wasted moment because Anya didn't even stop snoring.
So Dawn started to gently pull on the chain and kept pulling until the thing at the end slipped free. It wasn't a finger, or the other thing.
Either would have been easier to take.
Dawn sat there and stared dumbly at the ring at the end of the chain. She knew what it was, of course. She remembered the time she and Buffy had tried on their mother's. She'd been barely seven at the time, and the ring had just slipped off her finger and hit the ground with a thump.
Buffy had yelled at her then, afraid that her clumsy sister had somehow broken the ring. She wished Buffy were here to yell at her now.
It was an engagement ring. Xander and Anya had been engaged. They'd been happy, and in love, and were going to get married.
Then she came along and ruined everything.
She left just as quietly as she'd come in, with Anya still wheezing away. She closed the door and ran down the hallway to the library. The room was massive and filled with books on demons, spells, history, and, of course, classic literature. Though it was a bit disconcerting making the jump from stories about 19th century orphanages to the mating habits of Hybralli demons, or - even better - trying to translate a book written in Sumerian.
All of which made it the perfect place to hide whenever she couldn't eat, sleep, or find anything good to watch on the television.
Or spend one more minute inside her own head.
Willow would have loved the place; it was almost as good as the old high school library. Not that she was really ever there enough to judge.
No, she'd never been there. She was a glowy ball of energy and everyone else was..
Dawn hurried, desperate to outrun her thoughts. She walked passed the billiards room, one of the few rooms she'd never gone in to. She would've, but she'd been afraid to look inside. Afraid that if she squinted and turned her head just right, she'd see Xander and Spike standing around the table, pool cues in hand, and snarking at each other.
She looked now. The room was empty.
They should have been there. They all should have. Buffy, Willow and Tara should have been there, helping Xander and Anya plan their wedding and joking about ugly bridesmaid dressed while Mom.
Dawn blinked away tears as she opened the door to the library and all but fell into the room. To her surprise, the fireplace in the far wall was already burning. She turned and let out a surprised gasp.
She'd found Giles.
He was sitting in one of the thick chairs. His eyes were shut, his chin was on his chest, and his face pale except for the dark, three-day-old stubble that was fast becoming a beard.
He looked like a corpse in the flickering light.
She would know, she'd seen enough of them lately. She stumbled over, ignoring the tears that were now flowing down her cheeks. She could hear him snoring softly as she got closer, but that wasn't enough.
She wasn't, couldn't be sure. She knew it wouldn't seem real until she touched him.
She stumbled over a bottle she hadn't seen before, the glass rolling with a clatter across the wood floor until it hit the chair. She let out a yelp of fright as he sat straight up in the chair and his bloodshot eyes saw everything before they finally settled on her.
"Dawn?" He asked, her name slurring a bit in his mouth.
"Yeah," she said, one hand on her heart as she reached over with the other and poked his. She felt the warm skin of his hand and let out the breath she'd been holding.
"Why are you still up?" He stuttered as he blinked a thousand times a second and stared down at her hand.
"I - I was checking on Anya. And you. Do you need anything?"
Giles grinned at that and started chuckling. A chuckle that kept going on and on until tears started falling. "Do you know what I need?" He waited for Dawn to shake her head before going on. "I need someone to take back the last bloody year. Or get me another Scotch, I seem to have run out," he added as he hefted the empty bottle.
Dawn felt like she'd been punched. "Does it help?" She asked, her voice a strangled whisper as she stared at the bottle.
The grin left Giles's face. "Only for a moment."
"A whole moment?"
"Sometimes not even," Giles admitted before he shook his head and dropped the bottle. It hit the ground with a bang that made Dawn jump, but the bottle somehow didn't break. "Go 'way," he muttered and shifted in the chair. "'M tired, lemme alone." He closed his eyes and started snoring again.
Dawn's eyes spilled from him to the empty bottle. A whole moment.
A whole moment when she didn't feel Buffy standing behind her shoulder, didn't have to watch out for ghosts.
A whole moment that she didn't have to worry about Anya or Giles or Amy or how she could possibly make up for.
"It's all my fault."
She wanted to pull the words back as soon as they'd left her mouth. She'd thought it before, had been thinking it ever since she'd found out what she was.
'Has your mother been exposed to any high voltage lines?'
.but this was the first time she'd said it out loud. If the monks had sent her somewhere else, made her into something else, then none of the last year would have happened.
Maybe Xander and Anya would be planning their wedding right now, with Buffy and Willow and Tara and her Mom all helping.
Her eyes went back to Giles, did he know? Is that why he spent so much time avoiding her? And what about Anya?
She wished she could make things better. Everything that had happened was her fault; she should be able to fix it. She just wanted the pain to go away.
Which sparked a memory, and then a notion, and then a plan.
It took her a half hour to find the book. She'd read so many that they'd all blended together, and it wasn't like she'd been all that careful putting them back in the right spot.
The book was plain, with a faded leather cover and the words inside weren't even embossed or written in blood or anything the slightest bit cool. No, it was just ordinary ink and a few pictures that didn't look like much at all.
Despite all of that, it was still the kind of book that would've been ripped out of her hands a few weeks ago.
She froze before she opened it, half expecting Giles to charge up and do just that, but the snoring behind her never stopped. So she opened the book and read the ingredients list before she marked the page and closed the book again. The spell called for exactly two objects.
It took her another ten minutes to find them both.
Giles had one in his room, a white crystal that he'd been using as a paperweight. The flowers were a little harder, only because there were a dozen flowerbeds scattered around the mansion, all the size of small houses, and she'd pushed Anya around them all so many times that they'd blended together.
She scooped up the book and brought everything over to the still lit fireplace. There wasn't any hesitation as she tossed all six of the flowers into the fire, the soft while petals smelled like vanilla as they burned.
She opened the book and started reading. "For Giles and Anya and I this I char, let Lethe's Bramble do its chore. Purge our minds of memories grim, of pains from recent slights and sins..."
She picked up the pure white crystal and touched it to a burning flowers and watched as the crystal turned gray. "When the fire goes out. When the crystal turns black. The spell will be cast. Tabula rasa. Tabula rasa. Tabula rasa."
With that done she lay down and curled up against the cold stone hearth so she could watch the fire burn everything away.
'You're my little pumpkin belly'
'Niblet'
'You're so pretty, all green and sparkly'
'We're going to take candy from. Some guy, I don't know his name'
'They're just doing some Scooby stuff'
'I love you, Dawn, never forget that'