Becoming What?

mistymidnight

Summary: Dawn's thoughts after Buffy runs away between seasons two and three.

Author's Notes: I just realized I haven't updated this story in nearly three months. Whoops. I wanted to update tonight because I was in the mood for some Dawnie angst. I guess I'm like Joss in that way--pain, good. Kitties and rainbows--boring. Okay, given the extreme amount of fluff fics I write, that's most definitely a lie. But cut me some slack. It's been a rough day.

Also, I'm using Word Pad instead of Microsoft Word, so I'm doing without the usual bells and whistles, i.e. Spellchck. As always, this fi is unbeta-ed. I am my own beta reader, which explains the numerous mistakes. =)

Last night I had a weird dream.

Buffy was sitting in a taxi cab, and I was driving. We passed a playground and Buffy looked outside. "Enjoy is, Dawn," she said.

"Enjoy what?" I asked her.

She gestured around. "Enjoy life. You know, playgrounds, back-to-school shopping, the new car smell." She smiled thinly and leaned forward. "I think you have another customer," she remarked, pointing to the side of the road. Mom was standing there with a black umbrella, even though it wasn't raining. Buffy sighed and clucked her tongue. "She just can't pull off the Mary Poppins look. Spoonfuls of sugar and all that."

I passed Mom and then realized I didn't know how to drive. The car sped out of control and crashed into a statue of a cow that had appeared in the middle of the road. I twisted around and looked at Buffy. a trickle of blood appeared at the corner of her mouth and began to drip down her chin. "So much for enjoyment," she groaned.

And then she collapsed.

I felt gross when I woke up. I was all sweaty and my hair was sticking to the back of my neck. My nightshirt was clinging to my back and my legs were slippery when I turned over onto my side. I checked the clock on my nightstand. Two-twenty-six. I didn't care how early it was. I felt disgusting and I had to take a shower.

I grabbed a pair of shorts, a tee-shirt, a new pair of underwear, and a bra from my bureau. I started wearing a bra this summer. Okay, so it's just a training bra and not a really-real bra, but it's a bra just the same. If Buffy were here I could have gone shopping with her, and we could have laughed about how much we really didn't want to be shopping for bras. Then we could go to the food court and split a pizza and I have to stop thinking about this. The dream gave me a weird sense of...something. Not comfort, that's for sure, and not closure. But I felt energized. I took my clothes to the bathroom and turned the water in the shower on. Normally I like the water super-hot, like a sauna, but tonight I set the temperature a little cooler. I was still all sticky and hot from the dream I had, and I didn'treally want to get sticky and hot all over again, because it would defeat the point of showering in the first place.

I stepped into the shower and tried to wash away the thing that was tugging at the back of my mind.

After my shower I put on my clean clothes, feeling a little better. I put my hair up in a ponytail and pulled on a pair of sneakers. Ha, sneakers. Kind of a funny choice of words, because that's what I was about to do. Sneak. Well, sneak out and then sneak around a cemetery.

Let me say right now that sneaking around a cemetery at two-thirty in the morning is not a good idea. I never recommend doing it. But I was determined. I grabbed a flashlight and went down the stairs as quietly as I could.

I had reached the door when I heard something in the living room. It was dark, and I couldn't see anything. I flipped on the flashlight and shone it into the living room.

Mom was curled up on the couch, one of the many family photo albums on her lap.

She was crying.

That very second, I forgot about "patrolling". I forgot about my dream and my shower and my grand scheme to sneak out. i walked to the living room and climbed onto my mother's lap, careful not to sit on the album.

She seemed surprised, like she hadn't expected me to come in and see her. But then she opened her arms and I leaned against her and we cried together. I know she noticed the fashlight and my clothes and the gigantic cross I had hung around my neck, but we didn't say anything about that. She just hugged me.

And I knew I had my mother back.

That's not the end. I know it sounds awfully final, but I'll probably update in the near future. No more three-month update lapses.

mistymidnight