Dawn carefully pulled the baggy UC Sunnydale sweatshirt on over her head, sucking in her breath as the material brushed against the wound nestled in the crook of her elbow. She didn't want to look at it. It made her sick, to see those two neat little punctures standing out dark crimson against her pale, soft flesh, faint blue veins visible just beneath the skin. Unwilling, just yet, to think about what had happened in the alley next to the bar, she covered the evidence up with Buffy's old sweatshirt and climbed between the cool, clean sheets of her bed.

Her reception upon returning home hadn't been nearly as dramatic as she'd feared. Xander had been uncharacteristically distant, and she sensed that he was holding back a few choice words for her. Giles had been sitting on the couch nursing a cup of tea, and when Dawn followed Tara into the living room, he merely looked at her over the rim of his cup, raised an eyebrow, and asked in a casual, off-hand way if she was all right. She nodded because a silent lie didn't feel as deceitful as a spoken one, and he suggested that she go to bed. Grateful for the excuse, Dawn gratefully escaped upstairs.

Once safely in her room, she had pulled off the smoky, long-sleeved red blouse she'd been wearing and caught a glimpse of the marks on her arm in the mirror. As the still-fresh memory washed over her, she fought a panicky urge to vomit, scream, and break something—not necessarily in that order.

Voices downstairs. Three guesses what they were talking about. Dawn shifted in her bed, eyes fixed unseeingly on the shadow-obscured ceiling, and listened. It amazed her that, considering the vast number of highly sensitive conversations held in this house over the years, no one but she had ever noticed the incredible acoustics that allowed one to eavesdrop from virtually any room without even really trying. It was quite a handy architectural quirk, actually.

"I'll have a word with her tomorrow, not that it will do much good," Giles was saying. "There's only so much I can say that I haven't said already, and to be quite honest, I'm becoming weary of lecturing her when she seems so determined to continue spiraling."

"First of all, somebody quick, make a note of the day Giles got tired of lecturing," Xander threw in. "And does that mean we're not going to do anything about it?"

"What do you suggest? Locking her in her room? Calling their worthless excuse for a father to come and take some responsibility for his youngest daughter, who in fact he's never laid eyes on before? We're up against a wall here, Xander. We've got absolutely no legal right where she's concerned."

"And if she keeps this up, eventually the wrong person is going to figure that out," Willow added.

Giles sighed. "Yes, unfortunately, any undue attention could upset the balance we've achieved and have her snatched away so quickly our heads would spin." He paused, and Dawn could picture him rubbing his temples in that way he had when he was tired or troubled. "We can't let that happen. We owe it to Buffy to make sure her sister is taken care of."

"Dawnie's all about the 'undue attention' lately," Xander said. "She's the undue attention poster child. It's like she doesn't give a damn what happens to her anymore."

"Like she's tempting fate," Willow added.

"That's precisely what worries me," Giles said.

"Hey, guys, what about the blood?"

Upstairs, Dawn froze at Tara's soft-spoken input to the standard "what to do about Dawn" conversation.

There was a brief silence, and Giles said, "Does someone care to enlighten me?"

Hesitantly, Willow spoke up. "Spike. He smelled Dawn's blood in the alley by the bar. That's how we found her; he tracked her there."

"Did she have an explanation?" Giles asked after a long, thoughtful pause, and Dawn noted the shadow of concern that tinged his words now.

"We didn't ask her," Willow said, even more hesitantly. "We were just so relieved to see her in one piece, and so distracted by that creep who had his tongue down her throat … I guess we were all too upset to bring it up. Giles, where are you going?"

"To bring it up." Footsteps sounded downstairs, and then Giles' voice called up from the landing. "Dawn? Come here for a moment, please."

Dawn considered feigning sleep, then thought she'd do better to defuse this now. She got out of bed and went out to the top of the stairs, squinting in the light. "Yeah? What's up?" she asked cautiously.

"Were you hurt tonight?" Giles asked.

Direct approach, Dawn thought, taken aback. "No! Yeah. Not really," she began. She was nothing if not smooth. "I mean, I tripped. Just scraped my knee, no big. Why?"

"Spike said that you were bleeding. That's how he found you tonight. But if that's all … are you quite sure that's all?"

Dawn forced a smile. "Yeah, I'm sure. You know me, I'm a klutz. Good thing we have a two-legged bloodhound on our side, huh?"

Giles held her gaze a few moments longer, and finally nodded and cleared his throat. "Yes, well, I suppose that explains that, then, doesn't it."

"So I'm going back to bed, okay?"

"Hm? Oh yes, yes, certainly," Giles said distractedly. "And Dawn, I'd like to speak to you in the morning, at breakfast. You'll be there?"

"With bells on," she said in that forced cheerful tone, before heading back to her room and shutting the door. The punctures on her arm throbbed with her rapid heartbeat, and she raised the sleeve of the sweatshirt to see two small drops of blood welling up from the wounds.

xXxXx

Nightmares chased her into awareness the next morning, and she enjoyed the usual few moments of blissful fogginess before reality crashed in on her. For those brief periods at the beginning of each day, Buffy wasn't dead and Dawn was normal again. She grasped the irony there, since she'd never been normal, never even been real, until recently, but she supposed a fact was only as strong as the feeling that supported it. Or so she chose to believe, so that her existence wouldn't feel so fragile.

When the mental cobwebs cleared, it was always like a knife twisting in her gut. Today that pain wasn't quite as strong as usual, and she vaguely wondered why. And then she stretched and yawned, and was punished with a sharp twinge from the punctures, and that answered the question. Maybe the only way to heal pain was with a different kind of pain. It was a morbid thought, and oddly comforting.

Giles was in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the paper when Dawn came down. He looked old, she thought, and tired. The fine lines around his pursed lips seemed deeper, and the smile he offered when she appeared in the doorway didn't touch his eyes. Buffy's loss was etched into him, weighing him down under a burden of guilt shared, in some part, by each of them.

"Good morning, Dawn," he said. "Did you sleep well?"

"Not bad," she lied, pouring herself some orange juice and leaning against the counter. Then she took a deep breath and made a concentrated effort to keep her voice light and friendly as she said, "Listen, Giles, not that I don't enjoy the small talk, but can we just cut to the chase? Janice is on her way over, and we're gonna hit the mall. It'd be great if you'd go ahead and tell me off so we can be done by the time she gets here."

Giles shot her a mildly irritated glance as he folded his newspaper neatly and set it aside. "I don't intend to tell you off, Dawn. We've gone that route before, and it obviously made no impression."

"Well then what did you want to talk to me about?"

"I am concerned about you … for you. There's something going on that you're not telling us about, and it worries me. If you're in trouble, I want you to feel that you can come to me, and if not me, then one of the others. We will do anything to help you; you know that."

Dawn shifted uncomfortably, feeling incredibly vulnerable under his intelligent, searching gaze. "Yeah, I know. And if there was something to confess, you'd be the first to hear about it. But there's not. I'm fine. I mean, aside from … you know, dealing with things … but otherwise, I'm okay. That thing at the bar last night, that was just stupid teenager stuff. Cute college boy, a night of pseudo-debauchery, you know. I didn't mean to worry anyone. I really thought Xander was sacked out for the night. Who knew he'd wake up and freak?"

Giles' eyes bored into her for a few more moments, and then he seemed to relax slightly. There was an almost imperceptible shift in his demeanor as his deep-rooted concern eased off a bit and he slipped back into the good old familiar lectury tone.

"Yes, well, I wouldn't say he 'freaked,' Dawn. He had valid reason to worry, and you know better than to disappear without letting anyone know where you're going."

"I know, I'm sorry," Dawn said, relief flooding through her and bolstering her apology with sincerity.

"Well, rightly so. And I'll risk overstepping my bounds by saying that I don't believe a fifteen-year-old girl should be fraternizing with a college boy under any circumstances, much less in a bar, alone, when no one knows her whereabouts. I trust it won't happen again."

Dawn grinned. "I didn't like him anyway." Giles' exasperated comeback was interrupted by a knock at the front door, and Dawn gulped down the last of her orange juice and tossed the glass into the sink. "That's Janice. Are we done?"

Giles frowned, but relented as Dawn slipped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. "Yes, well, I suppose so. For now," he added sternly, though a fleeting smile touched the corners of his mouth. He took off his glasses and began to wipe them on his napkin as he watched the teenager snatch up her bag and head out to meet her friend. For an aching moment his mind drifted to the bubbling bright brassy Buffy who had so confounded him in the beginning; the irreverent, stubborn, willful girl who from the first moment defied everything his Watcher training had taught him to expect in a Slayer. The funny, sweet, enchanting child who possessed an infinite strength born not of duty or obligation to her calling but of love, loyalty, simple goodness, and a moral code that she refused to compromise. That had, in the end, claimed her life. (This is the work that I have to do.)

He reached up and was unsurprised to find a tear making a slow track down his cheek. He wiped it away and replaced his glasses on the bridge of his nose. All business, again. Back to the matter at hand. Back to Dawn (The Key, The Key, you would have killed her, you were making plans)—no, damn it. Dawn.

Buffy had never been a good liar, but Giles feared that the monks had instilled this dubious talent in Dawn. All his instincts told him that something was deeply wrong. He only hoped they could figure out what it was before he lost another child whose life was in his hands.

xXxXx