Title: Changed

Disclaimer: The usual, nothing is mine.

Spoilers: Up to the Gift

AN: This fic is told from four different view points. So at every division it goes on to the next person.

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I am sitting here making small talk with a woman I don't know, again. Once a month we have these talks over coffee, always in a public place, we would never go to one another's house. Sometimes I wish we didn't do this, then it might be easier to remember the girl I used to know, the one who was bright and bubbly and always on the right side. This woman is not that girl though, and never will be again.

I still remember that day, years ago with Glory. Seeing that body fall from the tower changed all of us. Seeing her lying there on the crates was worse. She didn't look dead, she didn't look like she'd even been in pain, it was as if she'd just fallen asleep and might wake up at any moment. Only she wasn't asleep and she wasn't going to wake up, she was gone.

The stranger sitting opposite me was one of the first to leave. She left with Spike less than an hour after her sister's body hit the ground. Neither of them could cope with staying in the place where 'she' died. Nobody says her name anymore; it's just 'she' or 'her'.

I stayed in Sunnydale after that day. Giles suggested I move into the Summers' residence, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't stay in a place so full of the three Summers women who had left us.

I look at my watch in hope. There is only five minutes to go. It's an unspoken rule that we stay half an hour, after that we make our excuses and forget one another until next month.

I look out at the garden where my oldest child is playing in his sandbox and smile. I can hear Anya in the house. I think she's in the middle of her usual rant, she says 'No wonder so many women turn to vengeance when they're forced to cook and clean all day'. All I can do is stay out of the way. Hopefully it's just another pregnant mood swing and she'll get over it as soon as she starts eating her way through the fridge, mixing things that even I find disgusting.

Anya and I moved out here a few years ago, a couple of months after it happened. We just wanted to be somewhere quieter, well I did anyway. I just wanted to be somewhere without a mouth of hell and a few hundred vamps and demons to battle. I guess it worked, I've seen about two vamps since we left. Two year old Alex is happy anyway, he doesn't know anything about the supernatural, and if I have anything to do with it, he never will.

I think I've changed a lot since 'she' died. I remember when we were talking about names for Alex I wanted to call him Alexander after me. Anya said it was corny to name him after me, then she decided she liked it; it reminded her of the old me. I guess it's true, I'm quieter now, less of a joker, but I find it harder to see the funny side of life, to find the humour in a world that let 'her' die.

She's just arrived back from coffee and I can smell the tears from across the room. She hates all the reminders from the past, but she needs them too. She has to keep some tie to Sunnydale and everything in it, Red's that tie.

I walk up slowly and put my arms around her. She smiled gratefully and leans her head up to kiss me. Sometimes I still struggle to believe we're actually together. It never occurred to me that this could happen when we first left. We were both grieving after her sister but I just wanted to take her pain away. I would wipe away her tearsand hold her while she slept, screaming her sister's name as she relived that night every night in her dreams. We were friends back then, we were all each other had, but it grew. She can make me feel like a man again. When I'm with her I can feel alive and almost forget the past. Almost, but not quite.

She was looking at me as if I'd made the wrong choice. She always does that, she still thinks she knows better than me because she's smarter. I had to leave Sunnydale though. There was no doubt in my mind, Spike was running too, well driving to be more exact, I asked if I could go too and that was that. We were gone.

The pain watching my sister die was just too much. I just kept feeling like I could have done something different. I just know that it's my fault, I could have orevented it somehow. I watched her jump and die that day and my faith in anything died with her.

Angel is really the one that's close to the Powers That Be. He's the one with the link and all the evidence that they exist and he's meant to fight for them. I always kinda liked the idea that there someone was up there rooting for us, that somebody wanted our side to win. Watching her die made me lose that faith, nobody could allow somebody like her, somebody so innocent to die. She did nothing wrong but she died anyway.

It changed us all. We split apart. It hurt us all, I still wake up some nights screaming her name, screaming 'Dawn'. But my little sister is dead, and one day I'm going to have to accept that.

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An: Was it really obvious that it wsa Dawn who was dead? In my original version it was so well hidden that a lot of the fic didn't make sense, so I rewrote it to be completely obvious, saying she was dead from the beginning. I didn't like that version easily so finally I settled on the slightly less obvious, but I think still pretty obvious version.

Did that last comment actually make any sense?

Anyway please review.