Well, here it is. After way too long since the last update. The last full
chapter. And ya know what- I still don't own anything! Not Dawn, not
Legolas (damn!), none of it. Whedon and Tolkien do, why don't you go bug
them for it?
.
.
.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN- TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE BACK. . .
//And don't you cry tonight
Don't you cry tonight
Don't you cry tonight
There's a heaven above you baby
And don't you cry. . .//
"Arwen?"
The She-Elf's head swung gracefully around at the sound of the tentative voice from the doorway to her sitting room.
"Dawn?" Arwen queried, not quite able to keep the surprise out of her voice at the sight of her troubled friend. Dawn had not actively sought anyone's company since her return, yet she was here now, standing in the doorway, waiting as if for permission to approach.
"Will you come and sit with me?" Arwen invited, gesturing to a chair by her own.
Slipping into the room swift and fleeting as a shadow, Dawn settled herself in the chair. After a few moments of awkward silence, Dawn gave a small, uncertain smile that sent thrills of joy through Arwen's being. Small and timid as it was, it was a genuine smile, a gift she had secretly feared she would never receive from Dawn again.
"I have something to tell you," Dawn confessed all of a sudden, as if she'd only just managed to muster her courage for the task. In patient silence, Arwen listened. She reached out a supportive hand to rest on Dawn's, and was heartened when the Mirkwood Queen did not pull away from the contact.
"I guess you'd figured out where I was?"
"Sunnydale?"
With a short nod, Dawn continued. "Well, while I was there, I had a. . . visit from someone we used to know. He came to help bring me home," she amended slightly from the truth, not yet ready to admit she wasn't sure she should've returned to Middle-Earth at the time of her brother's visit. Arwen nodded, somehow seeming to guess the truth, though she chose not to confront Dawn with it.
"Estel sends you a message, Arwen. He says you shouldn't have to be lonely. Nobody should," Dawn added, more to herself than to her friend.
Arwen, meanwhile, had gone slightly rigid at the mention of her late love. Her eyes brightened with her lingering grief before they fluttered closed against the tears threatening to well up in them. Noticing, Dawn twisted her hand around under Arwen's so she could squeeze it comfortingly.
Making a swift decision, Dawn reached over and wrapped her arms around her friend in a gentle hug. Both grateful and pleased at Dawn's seemingly swift recovery in connecting with her world, Arwen returned the hug with feeling. For a long while, the two women drew silent comfort from each other. Tears were spilling down onto the material of Arwen's dress, and she was surprised to find that they were not her own. Puzzled, she pulled back to look into her friend's face.
Embarrassed by her apparent lack of emotional control, Dawn wiped hastily at her eyes. For a moment she appeared more as the eighteen year old girl her appearance suggested, rather than the century-old Queen contained within. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "Look at me- crying. Can't even keep a promise to my own big brother without bursting into tears."
But Arwen smiled. If Dawn was crying, she was feeling, and it was now possible for the Elves to help her. "There is no shame in your tears, Dawn," she insisted.
Dawn shook her head, her memory drifting back to Estel's Sunnydale visit. "He was so disappointed in me," she said, her voice small, her gaze averted from Arwen's. "The look in his eyes. . ."
"No," Arwen said softly to Dawn. "Aragorn could never have been disappointed in you, not even if you had marched into Mordor and handed the One Ring straight into Sauron's clutches. His heart may have broken for you, mellonin [my friend], but he would not hold you in less esteem for your pain. His spirit holds far too great a wisdom to allow such a thing."
A fleeting, toothless smile twitched on Dawn's face, but did not quite reach her eyes and Arwen knew in that instance that she was unconvinced. A soft noise from the door drew their attention, and they turned to find Elladan and Elrohir staring at them. More particularly, at Dawn and her newfound sociability.
"Dan, Ro," she smiled warmly at them. "How are you guys?"
Their eyes widened minutely in surprise, and Elladan's answer of "Five by five," was given completely unconsciously. It seemed to satisfy Dawn though and she studied the attire of the twins a moment.
"Been hunting?"
"Yes, and quite a good haul too," Elrohir answered, while Elladan raised his eyes at Arwen, whose grey eyes danced in response to her brother's unasked question. "So I hope you're hungry tonight."
"Yeah, I am pretty hungry," Dawn said softly.
"It is no surprise, Dawn. You've barely eaten a full meal since you've been home," Elladan lightly admonished. "There's near nothing left of you."
"You sound like Spike," Dawn groaned. "He was always on my case about not eating right."
* * * * *
That evening when Dawn sat down to dinner with Legolas and their friends, Elrohir remembered her earlier confession of increased hunger and added a little more food to her plate in the hopes that she would return to a healthier eating pattern.
"Thanks, Ro, this looks great. One of your kills?"
"Probably one of mine," Elladan snorted. It was widely known that when Elrond's sons were engaged in either battle or a hunt, it was a constant competition for the most kills, just as it had been between Legolas and Gimli. Unlike the Elf and the Dwarf, however, the twins would tell no-one but each other their scores, only announcing the winner at the end of the day.
Dawn felt Legolas cover her hand with one of his own as it rested on the table and turned to smile at him.
"I love it when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Smile."
"I guess I should try to do it more often," Dawn admitted, half- sincere, half-sheepish.
"I'd like that."
Elrohir leaned over and whispered to his siblings. "Are they actually flirting?"
"I believe so," Arwen commented playfully.
Dawn sighed in mock annoyance. "I'm so glad I taught you guys my language," she said sarcastically.
Legolas laughed. "Melamin, I think it is safe to say that none among us will ever truly understand your language."
Dawn smiled along with the others as they laughed, but her thoughts turned reflective inside her. Was there an element of truth behind Legolas' words, innocently as they were meant? She didn't know that they would understand her, even if she told them what she'd been through. After all, how could they understand what it was like to come to hate the family that raised you because of the way they hurt you? Dawn shook her head to herself. She didn't even think she wanted them to understand, didn't like the idea of the four most important people in this world to her enduring that sort of pain.
Innocence. The Elves still had it, somehow. She'd lost it. It had bled out of her along with her unborn baby and her love for anything in that hell dimension Buffy had called home. Dawn sighed to herself, hating to think of anything that had once been pure and beautiful becoming jaded.
'But Spike,' a voice whispered in the back of her mind. 'Spike is not innocent, but he is still beautiful. It is possible. It's possible for you, too.'
At the small, fond smile creeping across Dawn's lips, Legolas cocked his head to the side. "What are you thinking of?" he asked softly, glad of the fact that now she would probably give him an honest answer.
"Oh, I was just thinking about Spike," she admitted, not noticing the way Legolas' back stiffened, or the way his jaw hardened at the mention of the Dawn's favourite vampire.
"He sort of kept me going while I was in Sunnydale, y'know, kept me in some semblance of living if you could call it that. Breathing, in any event. All he did for me, he was really beautiful, and I miss him a lot now he's gone forever."
Legolas closed his eyes, and in that moment he knew what his mind had been telling him all along, ever since the dreams of Dawn making love to another began invading his sleep and his sanity. All the while through their separation, he had lived on her, and she had lived on Spike. Again his mind was assaulted with the image.
Dawn flat on her back on what he recognised as the Summers' living room floor, having seen it in visions of her past long ago, her beautiful body naked, covered only by the cold flesh pressed against it, invading her. Her eyes were closed tight, her forehead slightly creased in pain and discomfort, but Dawn clung to Spike's shoulders as if holding on to him for dear life. As if he was the only thing in the world.
Legolas' eyes snapped open, the crystal blue glittering harshly with rage and grief. Yet Dawn was oblivious, chatting to a curious Elrohir about the almost unique vampire while the others busied themselves with their food, choosing to quietly listen.
"Before meeting you, Dawn, all Elves know beyond doubt that all vampires are evil beings, without emotion or hope for redemption. Yet you speak of one who would prove us wrong, yet again," Elrohir chuckled.
Dawn smiled. "Actually, Ro, Angel was the one big with the redemption kick. Spike was the one with the emotion. It was all about the passion with Spike, always about love one way or another."
"Vampires feel? But only the ones cursed with a soul, as you explained it, correct?"
"Nu-uh. Spike was always falling head over heels for the wrong girl even when he was supposed to be the Big Bad. He even used to admit he was love's bitch," she smiled fondly at the memory of Spike trying to get over Drusilla. "And when I was back there, he loved me more than anything," Dawn concluded quietly.
Something inside Legolas snapped. He had the vague notion it could've been his heart, but the fury flooding his body was numbing the pain for the moment. Abruptly, he stood, knocking his chair back.
"Then you should not have left him," he snarled, stalking from the dining room and leaving a stunned table in his wake.
Dawn turned wide, fearful eyes to her friends, who stared just as blankly back. 'He doesn't want me here,' she thought wildly. 'No! It can't be true. He does, I know he does!' Without a word, she sprang to her feet, flying through the castle in pursuit of her husband.
//Don't you ever cry
Don't you cry tonight
Baby maybe someday.//
"Legolas?" Dawn called, stepping into their bedroom.
He did not answer, but he was there, staring out at the shadows growing over the Forest. Dawn closed the door behind her and made her way over to his side, where only hours before he'd sworn she belonged.
"What's wrong, Melamin? Why are you cranky?"
"Cranky?" Legolas spat the word. "I am cranky because my wife was unfaithful to me, giving herself to a vampire, no less! Tell me, Dawn, why should I not be cranky?"
Dawn froze. Unfaithful with a vampire. Sleeping with Spike. The dream. Why he wouldn't look at her. How he had started to slip from her subconscious. She backed away slowly, sinking down onto the bed and into a memory from her old life. The one where she'd grieved Buffy's second death fighting the First Evil.
~~~
Her eyes were closed, she was trying so hard to block the harsh world out as she sank back into the plushy couch. He was sitting beside her, watching her, trying desperately to think of a way to comfort her but he was too caught up in his own grief to give much consideration to anything.
Dawn felt something cold touch her cheek, but she didn't flinch. The soft cold contact coaxed her eyes open and she found herself locked into a deep blue gaze shining with unshed tears.
"Spike," she whispered, her voice thick with her own tears and she shifted closer to him, wanting so badly for something to cling to that would take the pain away. Something that would lie to her and tell her she wasn't alone.
She burrowed into him and wound her arms around his neck. She was shaking with grief, but this time was different. Spike's shirt was dry, when he thought it should be wet with the Nibblet's tears, maybe even his own by now. Still she buried deeper and deeper, as if she was trying to escape herself by climbing out of her skin and into his, and the heat of her body was starting to intoxicate Spike.
Before either of them knew what had happened, they were on the living room floor and Spike was popping the buttons of Dawn's jeans open. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Dawn knew this was wrong, but she didn't care. Soon there was nothing between Spike's flesh and her own, and a feeling of sharp pain clouding her senses.
Dawn clung to the pain, clung to Spike, a warm body clashing with a cold one in a bid to drive the emptiness from the hearts of each. She never knew how long it had lasted, only had a hazy memory of pulling her clothes back on some time later and knowing that what they'd done would never happen again. She did not even want it to happen again, but was grateful that it had happened anyway. Maybe there were reasons to live, ways to fulfil her promise to Buffy that she would do so.
~~~
In the silence that greeted his questions, Legolas' temper grew.
"Well? Have you no answer to give me then? I should think you at least owe me that, amin Tari," he reasoned, using her title sarcastically. [My Queen]
"You would really think so little of me?" Dawn whispered brokenly. The knowledge that Legolas so easily believed she would ever cheat on him burned Dawn on the inside and made her eyes sting with tears.
"I saw you, Dawn!"
Dawn almost jumped. She'd never heard Legolas yell like that before. But he was not finished.
"I saw you in the dreams, and I know they were real! I felt it! How can you sit there and deny it? You made love to him! How dare you lie to me!?"
Green eyes flashed dangerously with a temper that had not been released in far too long. Legolas' words had kindled it though, and Dawn shot to her feet, staring him down.
"You have no idea what you saw!" she screamed, raising her voice to match his.
"It is not something easily mistaken, Dawn!"
"Obviously, it is! Did you even look at what you were seeing? Did you really?" Dawn screeched, not giving him time to answer before continuing with her rant. "Well, you can't have looked too closely, because if you had pulled your head out of your ass long enough to do so, you'd have realised that you were seeing something that happened when I was fifteen!"
Legolas knitted his brows together in confusion. It could not be, could it?
"That's right," Dawn stormed at him. "You've been hating me for something that was long dead three years before I even met you. So I hope you feel like a complete jackass for everything you've just said, because it really hurt." By the end of her speech, Dawn's tone had lowered itself, subdued with the sorrow Legolas' accusation had caused her.
"I never hated you," Legolas whispered.
"Well you sure looked at me like you did," Dawn flared up once more. "And you know what- you really have nothing to worry about. I love you, Legolas. It's always been you, and nobody has ever even come close to making me feel the way you can with just one look."
Legolas looked down, ashamed of his own stupidity and mistrust. He should have known better of Dawn, and he deserved her wrath. "So Spike was your first?"
"Yes. Spike was my first. And since you're all of a sudden so interested in my romantic history, let me lay it out for you; there was that one night with Spike, and yes we both know it was wrong and stupid, but it happened anyway! Then there was Justin, the cute guy I made out with on Halloween when I was fifteen. He turned out to be a vamp and I staked him. That's pretty much it. Oh- I'm sorry- there was also this one time back in Edoras when I gave Eomer a hug, I'm pretty sure I accidentally touched his ass! As you can see, you've never had anything to worry about. I just hoped you had always trusted that."
Dawn finished her tirade out of breath, colour high in her cheeks, waiting for Legolas to respond. A part of her was embarrassed at her outburst, but it was all true, and at least it was all out in the open now.
As he stared down into Dawn's emerald eyes, Legolas could think of no suitable response. There was so much he wanted to tell Dawn, a million apologies he wanted to make to her, but there were no words in the Elven tongue, the Common, or even in Dawn's Valley-speak that would suffice.
Finally, he reached out and laid his hands gently on Dawn's cheeks, pulling her face to his, his kiss speaking much more eloquently than his words. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he murmured against her lips, pressing light kisses to them in between words.
"I was wrong, and stupid. Amin ikotane hiraetha, amin saimela lle ikotane. Please forgive me." [I'm so sorry, I love you so much.]
"Of course I'll forgive you. Amin mela lle, vithel, amin Aran. Estelio tanya," Dawn responded, littering his face with feather-light kisses of her own. [I love you, also, my King. Trust that.]
Pulling away, Legolas smiled. "I do," he vowed. "I do trust in that."
A sudden realisation swept over Dawn, lightening her heart in ways she'd almost forgotten. Certainty settled within her. "We're gonna be ok, aren't we?"
"Count on it," Legolas quipped, knowing she loved it when he used her phrases. A slient communication passed between the couple, and hand in hand they made their way to the door, prepared to go and find the friends and guests they'd so hastily abandoned.
Legolas reached out a hand and pulled the door open. Two identical Elves jumped back in surprise, having not been prepared for the approach of the couple, only to jump into a third dark-haired Elf hovering in the hall just behind them.
"Hello," Elrohir smiled brightly. Elladan and Arwen seemed to be attentively studying their feet.
Dawn and Legolas exchanged a look, and then, grinning, leaned in for a kiss.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN- TWO STEPS FORWARD, ONE BACK. . .
//And don't you cry tonight
Don't you cry tonight
Don't you cry tonight
There's a heaven above you baby
And don't you cry. . .//
"Arwen?"
The She-Elf's head swung gracefully around at the sound of the tentative voice from the doorway to her sitting room.
"Dawn?" Arwen queried, not quite able to keep the surprise out of her voice at the sight of her troubled friend. Dawn had not actively sought anyone's company since her return, yet she was here now, standing in the doorway, waiting as if for permission to approach.
"Will you come and sit with me?" Arwen invited, gesturing to a chair by her own.
Slipping into the room swift and fleeting as a shadow, Dawn settled herself in the chair. After a few moments of awkward silence, Dawn gave a small, uncertain smile that sent thrills of joy through Arwen's being. Small and timid as it was, it was a genuine smile, a gift she had secretly feared she would never receive from Dawn again.
"I have something to tell you," Dawn confessed all of a sudden, as if she'd only just managed to muster her courage for the task. In patient silence, Arwen listened. She reached out a supportive hand to rest on Dawn's, and was heartened when the Mirkwood Queen did not pull away from the contact.
"I guess you'd figured out where I was?"
"Sunnydale?"
With a short nod, Dawn continued. "Well, while I was there, I had a. . . visit from someone we used to know. He came to help bring me home," she amended slightly from the truth, not yet ready to admit she wasn't sure she should've returned to Middle-Earth at the time of her brother's visit. Arwen nodded, somehow seeming to guess the truth, though she chose not to confront Dawn with it.
"Estel sends you a message, Arwen. He says you shouldn't have to be lonely. Nobody should," Dawn added, more to herself than to her friend.
Arwen, meanwhile, had gone slightly rigid at the mention of her late love. Her eyes brightened with her lingering grief before they fluttered closed against the tears threatening to well up in them. Noticing, Dawn twisted her hand around under Arwen's so she could squeeze it comfortingly.
Making a swift decision, Dawn reached over and wrapped her arms around her friend in a gentle hug. Both grateful and pleased at Dawn's seemingly swift recovery in connecting with her world, Arwen returned the hug with feeling. For a long while, the two women drew silent comfort from each other. Tears were spilling down onto the material of Arwen's dress, and she was surprised to find that they were not her own. Puzzled, she pulled back to look into her friend's face.
Embarrassed by her apparent lack of emotional control, Dawn wiped hastily at her eyes. For a moment she appeared more as the eighteen year old girl her appearance suggested, rather than the century-old Queen contained within. "I'm sorry," she choked out. "Look at me- crying. Can't even keep a promise to my own big brother without bursting into tears."
But Arwen smiled. If Dawn was crying, she was feeling, and it was now possible for the Elves to help her. "There is no shame in your tears, Dawn," she insisted.
Dawn shook her head, her memory drifting back to Estel's Sunnydale visit. "He was so disappointed in me," she said, her voice small, her gaze averted from Arwen's. "The look in his eyes. . ."
"No," Arwen said softly to Dawn. "Aragorn could never have been disappointed in you, not even if you had marched into Mordor and handed the One Ring straight into Sauron's clutches. His heart may have broken for you, mellonin [my friend], but he would not hold you in less esteem for your pain. His spirit holds far too great a wisdom to allow such a thing."
A fleeting, toothless smile twitched on Dawn's face, but did not quite reach her eyes and Arwen knew in that instance that she was unconvinced. A soft noise from the door drew their attention, and they turned to find Elladan and Elrohir staring at them. More particularly, at Dawn and her newfound sociability.
"Dan, Ro," she smiled warmly at them. "How are you guys?"
Their eyes widened minutely in surprise, and Elladan's answer of "Five by five," was given completely unconsciously. It seemed to satisfy Dawn though and she studied the attire of the twins a moment.
"Been hunting?"
"Yes, and quite a good haul too," Elrohir answered, while Elladan raised his eyes at Arwen, whose grey eyes danced in response to her brother's unasked question. "So I hope you're hungry tonight."
"Yeah, I am pretty hungry," Dawn said softly.
"It is no surprise, Dawn. You've barely eaten a full meal since you've been home," Elladan lightly admonished. "There's near nothing left of you."
"You sound like Spike," Dawn groaned. "He was always on my case about not eating right."
* * * * *
That evening when Dawn sat down to dinner with Legolas and their friends, Elrohir remembered her earlier confession of increased hunger and added a little more food to her plate in the hopes that she would return to a healthier eating pattern.
"Thanks, Ro, this looks great. One of your kills?"
"Probably one of mine," Elladan snorted. It was widely known that when Elrond's sons were engaged in either battle or a hunt, it was a constant competition for the most kills, just as it had been between Legolas and Gimli. Unlike the Elf and the Dwarf, however, the twins would tell no-one but each other their scores, only announcing the winner at the end of the day.
Dawn felt Legolas cover her hand with one of his own as it rested on the table and turned to smile at him.
"I love it when you do that."
"Do what?"
"Smile."
"I guess I should try to do it more often," Dawn admitted, half- sincere, half-sheepish.
"I'd like that."
Elrohir leaned over and whispered to his siblings. "Are they actually flirting?"
"I believe so," Arwen commented playfully.
Dawn sighed in mock annoyance. "I'm so glad I taught you guys my language," she said sarcastically.
Legolas laughed. "Melamin, I think it is safe to say that none among us will ever truly understand your language."
Dawn smiled along with the others as they laughed, but her thoughts turned reflective inside her. Was there an element of truth behind Legolas' words, innocently as they were meant? She didn't know that they would understand her, even if she told them what she'd been through. After all, how could they understand what it was like to come to hate the family that raised you because of the way they hurt you? Dawn shook her head to herself. She didn't even think she wanted them to understand, didn't like the idea of the four most important people in this world to her enduring that sort of pain.
Innocence. The Elves still had it, somehow. She'd lost it. It had bled out of her along with her unborn baby and her love for anything in that hell dimension Buffy had called home. Dawn sighed to herself, hating to think of anything that had once been pure and beautiful becoming jaded.
'But Spike,' a voice whispered in the back of her mind. 'Spike is not innocent, but he is still beautiful. It is possible. It's possible for you, too.'
At the small, fond smile creeping across Dawn's lips, Legolas cocked his head to the side. "What are you thinking of?" he asked softly, glad of the fact that now she would probably give him an honest answer.
"Oh, I was just thinking about Spike," she admitted, not noticing the way Legolas' back stiffened, or the way his jaw hardened at the mention of the Dawn's favourite vampire.
"He sort of kept me going while I was in Sunnydale, y'know, kept me in some semblance of living if you could call it that. Breathing, in any event. All he did for me, he was really beautiful, and I miss him a lot now he's gone forever."
Legolas closed his eyes, and in that moment he knew what his mind had been telling him all along, ever since the dreams of Dawn making love to another began invading his sleep and his sanity. All the while through their separation, he had lived on her, and she had lived on Spike. Again his mind was assaulted with the image.
Dawn flat on her back on what he recognised as the Summers' living room floor, having seen it in visions of her past long ago, her beautiful body naked, covered only by the cold flesh pressed against it, invading her. Her eyes were closed tight, her forehead slightly creased in pain and discomfort, but Dawn clung to Spike's shoulders as if holding on to him for dear life. As if he was the only thing in the world.
Legolas' eyes snapped open, the crystal blue glittering harshly with rage and grief. Yet Dawn was oblivious, chatting to a curious Elrohir about the almost unique vampire while the others busied themselves with their food, choosing to quietly listen.
"Before meeting you, Dawn, all Elves know beyond doubt that all vampires are evil beings, without emotion or hope for redemption. Yet you speak of one who would prove us wrong, yet again," Elrohir chuckled.
Dawn smiled. "Actually, Ro, Angel was the one big with the redemption kick. Spike was the one with the emotion. It was all about the passion with Spike, always about love one way or another."
"Vampires feel? But only the ones cursed with a soul, as you explained it, correct?"
"Nu-uh. Spike was always falling head over heels for the wrong girl even when he was supposed to be the Big Bad. He even used to admit he was love's bitch," she smiled fondly at the memory of Spike trying to get over Drusilla. "And when I was back there, he loved me more than anything," Dawn concluded quietly.
Something inside Legolas snapped. He had the vague notion it could've been his heart, but the fury flooding his body was numbing the pain for the moment. Abruptly, he stood, knocking his chair back.
"Then you should not have left him," he snarled, stalking from the dining room and leaving a stunned table in his wake.
Dawn turned wide, fearful eyes to her friends, who stared just as blankly back. 'He doesn't want me here,' she thought wildly. 'No! It can't be true. He does, I know he does!' Without a word, she sprang to her feet, flying through the castle in pursuit of her husband.
//Don't you ever cry
Don't you cry tonight
Baby maybe someday.//
"Legolas?" Dawn called, stepping into their bedroom.
He did not answer, but he was there, staring out at the shadows growing over the Forest. Dawn closed the door behind her and made her way over to his side, where only hours before he'd sworn she belonged.
"What's wrong, Melamin? Why are you cranky?"
"Cranky?" Legolas spat the word. "I am cranky because my wife was unfaithful to me, giving herself to a vampire, no less! Tell me, Dawn, why should I not be cranky?"
Dawn froze. Unfaithful with a vampire. Sleeping with Spike. The dream. Why he wouldn't look at her. How he had started to slip from her subconscious. She backed away slowly, sinking down onto the bed and into a memory from her old life. The one where she'd grieved Buffy's second death fighting the First Evil.
~~~
Her eyes were closed, she was trying so hard to block the harsh world out as she sank back into the plushy couch. He was sitting beside her, watching her, trying desperately to think of a way to comfort her but he was too caught up in his own grief to give much consideration to anything.
Dawn felt something cold touch her cheek, but she didn't flinch. The soft cold contact coaxed her eyes open and she found herself locked into a deep blue gaze shining with unshed tears.
"Spike," she whispered, her voice thick with her own tears and she shifted closer to him, wanting so badly for something to cling to that would take the pain away. Something that would lie to her and tell her she wasn't alone.
She burrowed into him and wound her arms around his neck. She was shaking with grief, but this time was different. Spike's shirt was dry, when he thought it should be wet with the Nibblet's tears, maybe even his own by now. Still she buried deeper and deeper, as if she was trying to escape herself by climbing out of her skin and into his, and the heat of her body was starting to intoxicate Spike.
Before either of them knew what had happened, they were on the living room floor and Spike was popping the buttons of Dawn's jeans open. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Dawn knew this was wrong, but she didn't care. Soon there was nothing between Spike's flesh and her own, and a feeling of sharp pain clouding her senses.
Dawn clung to the pain, clung to Spike, a warm body clashing with a cold one in a bid to drive the emptiness from the hearts of each. She never knew how long it had lasted, only had a hazy memory of pulling her clothes back on some time later and knowing that what they'd done would never happen again. She did not even want it to happen again, but was grateful that it had happened anyway. Maybe there were reasons to live, ways to fulfil her promise to Buffy that she would do so.
~~~
In the silence that greeted his questions, Legolas' temper grew.
"Well? Have you no answer to give me then? I should think you at least owe me that, amin Tari," he reasoned, using her title sarcastically. [My Queen]
"You would really think so little of me?" Dawn whispered brokenly. The knowledge that Legolas so easily believed she would ever cheat on him burned Dawn on the inside and made her eyes sting with tears.
"I saw you, Dawn!"
Dawn almost jumped. She'd never heard Legolas yell like that before. But he was not finished.
"I saw you in the dreams, and I know they were real! I felt it! How can you sit there and deny it? You made love to him! How dare you lie to me!?"
Green eyes flashed dangerously with a temper that had not been released in far too long. Legolas' words had kindled it though, and Dawn shot to her feet, staring him down.
"You have no idea what you saw!" she screamed, raising her voice to match his.
"It is not something easily mistaken, Dawn!"
"Obviously, it is! Did you even look at what you were seeing? Did you really?" Dawn screeched, not giving him time to answer before continuing with her rant. "Well, you can't have looked too closely, because if you had pulled your head out of your ass long enough to do so, you'd have realised that you were seeing something that happened when I was fifteen!"
Legolas knitted his brows together in confusion. It could not be, could it?
"That's right," Dawn stormed at him. "You've been hating me for something that was long dead three years before I even met you. So I hope you feel like a complete jackass for everything you've just said, because it really hurt." By the end of her speech, Dawn's tone had lowered itself, subdued with the sorrow Legolas' accusation had caused her.
"I never hated you," Legolas whispered.
"Well you sure looked at me like you did," Dawn flared up once more. "And you know what- you really have nothing to worry about. I love you, Legolas. It's always been you, and nobody has ever even come close to making me feel the way you can with just one look."
Legolas looked down, ashamed of his own stupidity and mistrust. He should have known better of Dawn, and he deserved her wrath. "So Spike was your first?"
"Yes. Spike was my first. And since you're all of a sudden so interested in my romantic history, let me lay it out for you; there was that one night with Spike, and yes we both know it was wrong and stupid, but it happened anyway! Then there was Justin, the cute guy I made out with on Halloween when I was fifteen. He turned out to be a vamp and I staked him. That's pretty much it. Oh- I'm sorry- there was also this one time back in Edoras when I gave Eomer a hug, I'm pretty sure I accidentally touched his ass! As you can see, you've never had anything to worry about. I just hoped you had always trusted that."
Dawn finished her tirade out of breath, colour high in her cheeks, waiting for Legolas to respond. A part of her was embarrassed at her outburst, but it was all true, and at least it was all out in the open now.
As he stared down into Dawn's emerald eyes, Legolas could think of no suitable response. There was so much he wanted to tell Dawn, a million apologies he wanted to make to her, but there were no words in the Elven tongue, the Common, or even in Dawn's Valley-speak that would suffice.
Finally, he reached out and laid his hands gently on Dawn's cheeks, pulling her face to his, his kiss speaking much more eloquently than his words. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he murmured against her lips, pressing light kisses to them in between words.
"I was wrong, and stupid. Amin ikotane hiraetha, amin saimela lle ikotane. Please forgive me." [I'm so sorry, I love you so much.]
"Of course I'll forgive you. Amin mela lle, vithel, amin Aran. Estelio tanya," Dawn responded, littering his face with feather-light kisses of her own. [I love you, also, my King. Trust that.]
Pulling away, Legolas smiled. "I do," he vowed. "I do trust in that."
A sudden realisation swept over Dawn, lightening her heart in ways she'd almost forgotten. Certainty settled within her. "We're gonna be ok, aren't we?"
"Count on it," Legolas quipped, knowing she loved it when he used her phrases. A slient communication passed between the couple, and hand in hand they made their way to the door, prepared to go and find the friends and guests they'd so hastily abandoned.
Legolas reached out a hand and pulled the door open. Two identical Elves jumped back in surprise, having not been prepared for the approach of the couple, only to jump into a third dark-haired Elf hovering in the hall just behind them.
"Hello," Elrohir smiled brightly. Elladan and Arwen seemed to be attentively studying their feet.
Dawn and Legolas exchanged a look, and then, grinning, leaned in for a kiss.