Title: Defining me
Summery: After finding out she was the key and dealing with Buffy's indifference after her resurrection Dawn ran away, but as she comes across a scythe created slayer in L.A Dawn realizes that her life may be still tied with Sunnydale
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Joss Whedon
Dawn didn't remember the night she ran away for good. She supposed she should-it had been such an important night in her life, even after the few dry runs she had performed beforehand. The apartment she lived in was empty and bare, which was good. She moved around a lot, in case the latest batch of vampires found her or if she ran into Angel.
The latest apartment held the backpack full of clothes and the money she had stashed away as well as the books she had bought from the local coven on witchcraft. She didn't have a gift like Willow but she could perform simple spells that enabled her to fight vampires. It had a kitchenette and a bed and a bathroom and that was all.
It had been such a long time that she had forgotten what her house looked like. Well that was a lie it was just getting fuzzy around the edges. She could see clearly though the looks on Buffy's face the hell she was living in, the hell she was creating for those around her.
She knew it was stupid to run away but she didn't care. Let them think it was a childish stunt they didn't know how she had craved to get out of the black hole her life had become how she had scratched and screamed at her walls for days and no one heard her.
She had faded into the background in L.A but at least she was defined other then Buffy's little sister, the one almost but no quite a member of the Scooby gang. The one almost but not quite good enough.
She sat on the floor, an ancient book lay on her lap, and Dawn had studied ancient languages so that she didn't need to buy books in English anymore. She felt a certain amount of smugness when her foreign language teacher had said she had no grasp of language.
The spell was a simple one, just to create heat for a while before she went to sleep. Although she liked creating magick it felt off to her, as if she could do the magick but wasn't supposed to. She liked learning things though, she understood magical procedures, tenants and codes she could walk someone through the most difficult spells that had ever been written but all she could do was small, initiate level spells.
She sometimes wondered whether Willow still did spells, she was always so cool, showing Dawn the uses of spells and their components as if they were a science exam. She was all alone here, there were other girls like her, who offered friendship but Dawn had isolated herself. A good thing or a bad thing she couldn't tell. Perhaps if she was unlucky with a vamp someone should know or say something or just to call Buffy but Dawn never encouraged friendship. Not anymore.
And she was fine with that.
All great writers and actors had some tragic upbringing or were alone and unhappy and they were successful later on. Dawn wasn't thinking that far ahead, just till the next vampire attack maybe. But it was a nice detour sometimes, to think she could be something someday and Buffy would see it in the paper and think of her baby sister she never wanted and never really existed and realize that there was some spark in her, some real talent that didn't involve killing and maiming.
Dawn huddled next to the orange light that hung suspended over the carpet full of questionable stains and realized that she may not have found herself or a place she belonged but she would find something.
And if she didn't it wouldn't matter because her whole life was a lie anyway.