Title: You Will Never Die
Author: mispel
E-mail:
Rating: PG
Summary: Dawn didn't turn out to be a normal girl. Starts around season 5 and 6.
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing
Feedback: Any comments would be welcome
I Can't Believe It's Not Xander
They had been in the middle of a conversation. Or Xander was since he was saying something Dawn wasn't listening to. Then she heard a weird sound coming from him.
"He's broken again! Damn it!" Dawn yelled. Xander was stuck like a broken record. He had been in the middle of saying something. Now the end of his last word was repeating. His hand kept going, making a hole where he was scratching at his face. Dawn dragged Willow into the living room.
"I'll fix him. Calm down," Willow said as she turned him off. She went to get her tool kit. Dawn followed her. She didn't want to be alone in the room with Xander's gouged face. It was already growing back but Dawn could see the wires imbedded in the flesh.
"Where's Buffy?" Dawn asked.
"Patrolling," Willow told her. She almost ran into Dawn when Willow turned around quickly and found that Dawn had been following too closely.
"Why are they breaking down so much?" Dawn asked, now face to face with Willow.
"They're old," Willow answered simply.
"What will happen when you break down?"
"I am a later model. I'll outlast them. But you'll need to learn how to fix us, Dawny," Willow said seriously. She walked past Dawn back to the motionless Xander.
"No," Dawn said just as she always did. Willow had tried to teach her. Dawn learned the basic emergency procedures. Then she stopped. She didn't want to look inside.
As Willow started to work on Xander, she opened him up. Dawn could see the wires hanging from the strange, bloodless flesh, and she turned her back.
"Just fix him. We have a conversation to finish."
Breaking The Routine
Dawn must have made too much noise waking Willow because Xander was up too.
"Where is she?" Dawn asked pacing the hallway.
"Staying out late fighting evil," Xander answered instead of Willow.
"Her emergency homing signal hasn't been activated," Willow told her.
"Maybe it's broken," Dawn said not reassured as it was almost 5 AM.
"It was working fine when I checked it yesterday," Willow said.
"If it was on all the time we'd know her location," Dawn complained.
"So would everyone else with the right equipment," Willow pointed out.
"That's right. Can't attract attention. You're supposed to fool everyone not just me," Dawn snapped.
"Why don't we mount an expedition. Hit the usual spots. I'm sure Buffy is just extra busy tonight," Xander suggested.
"I'm coming too," Dawn insisted.
"No, we'll..." Xander started to say.
"I'm coming," Dawn said firmly, cutting him off.
Xander looked like he was trying to figure out if there was any point in arguing. He was so real now. No trace of the mechanical, broken Xander.
He was the one who carried Buffy home the first time she got mangled by a demon. He had been so upset. Dawn was nearly hysterical seeing so many wires ripped out and the flesh growing all wrong around them. Then Willow went to work, and Buffy was as good as new. Dawn got more used to seeing Buffy like that after it happened a few more times. Willow had to fix Buffy more than anyone. It was almost routine.
This time they found Buffy sitting on the ground of a cemetery. Her mouth was opening and closing. Her leg was twitching, like she was trying to kick. There was no sign of demon attack. Nothing broken or torn off the way it usually was.
"We'll carry her home," Willow said as Xander lifted her.
Extraordinary Measures
Anya almost burned the house down when she broke. That was only a few months after Buffy.
Anya was fussing with her hair before a major business meeting when something went wrong. She pulled out a clump of hair from her head and some scalp came off with it. Anya's elbow jerked and hit the wall over and over again as she clutched the handful of skin and hair. She made a hole in the wall and ripped up her elbow too. Then her wiring and the house wiring crossed and almost fried everything.
Tara put out the fire, but not before the alarm went off. They had to scramble to hide the damaged Anya from the firefighters. Anya's face was perfectly blank the whole time. Like it didn't bother her that her blackened hand was convulsed around the scalped piece of her hair. Smoke rose from her and there was a terrible stench – a mix of burned flesh and wires.
Dawn was cleaning up, throwing away all the burned stuff. As Willow looked into the hole Anya had made, she complained about the ancient wiring inside the walls. Anya's wiring would need major repairs too. Willow thought it was the perfect time for Dawn to learn the ins and outs of robotkind.
"We might have to redo the magic," Willow told her like everything was a go not paying attention to the way dawn was shaking her head in the negative.
"Who's this we? You can't. I can't. You saw what happened before. I almost zapped the whole town out of existence," Dawn reminded her. This Willow was useless with magic. And Dawn had felt the power building up beyond her control as she did only a minor spell. There was a reason Willow had never allowed it.
"We have to find someone to do it," Willow said.
Dawn shook her head some more as she picked up something from the scorched floor. It was blackened, melted, and curled inward. It sort of looked like an ugly, tropical flower. Dawn turned it all around, but she couldn't tell what it was.
"No," Dawn said with finality. "Things weren't meant to last so long. It isn't natural." Dawn held the thing she couldn't recognize and stared at it.
"Don't talk like that, Dawn," Willow said turning to her with concern.
Dawn was a very old woman now. Who looked like a young girl. She wasn't even that out of place any more. The world was full of old people who paid big bucks to look exactly like teenagers. Well not exactly. No one paid big bucks to look like a pimply and gangly real teenager. These people were buried looking like perfect, fresh, and dewy sixteen-year-olds when sooner or later their transplanted organs failed. No amount of money could let them live forever. Not yet. But maybe the world was catching up.
Dawn missed things, though. TV remotes you had to fight over. Microwaves with buttons. Toasters that didn't talk to you. People that aged.
"Just fix them," Dawn said sadly. She hated to see them broken. Frozen in one motion. Stuck doing the same thing over and over again.
The end