The daylight just didn't suit her. Waking up with dried tears on her eyelids in the arms of a vampire fit her much better.

Dawn's namesake burned into her eyes as she slipped out the old barn door, letting it hang behind her. When it made an unpleasant squeak, she turned to peer back into the room. Spike was propped up against the back wall, sound asleep.

She sighed.

/Dear, Dear Diary, I want to tell my secrets

'Cause you're the only one that I know will keep them/

She walked around to the other side of the barn where it cast a large shadow for her to sit in, away from the blinding light of the sun. Her hands were shaking violently. God, I need to get high, she thought. She slid down the wall to sit with her knees pressed to her chest, the fetal position she always acquired when the world got too big for her.

/and this is what I've done/

Dawn pulled out her diary from her jacket and set it in her lap. As she did this, her sleeve rode up and rubbed painfully against semi-fresh cuts on the inside of her arm. She grimaced as a scab opened and a drop of blood fell to the clean page in front of her.

"So much for starting fresh," she said with a bitter smile. Irony just wouldn't stop knocking at her door.

/I've been a bad, bad girl for so long

I don't know how to change what went wrong/

She ran her shaking hands through her tangled dark hair. She took a strand between her fingers and examined it with a disgusted laugh. She had her father's hair.

/Daddy's little girl? Well, he went away/

She rested her head back against the barn, as if listening for any sign of Spike on the other side. She heard nothing and picked her diary back up to start writing over the dried blood.

Dear Diary,

I never expected to be writing in here again. To think, my well-hatched plan went awry. Who'd have thought? I'm in some random barn in the middle of the woods. It reminds me of the campgrounds Hank took Buffy and I the weekend before he ditched out on us.

Anyway, to cut to the chase- Spike knows pretty much everything that's been happening. I thought he didn't give two shits about the kid-Summers. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or threatened. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little, or a lot, of both.

Yesterday I was so excited to get out of Sunnydale, but now... Jesus, my veins ache. I'm so empty; I have to get on something soon. It feels like it itches underneath my skin, I want to run and run and snort and huff...

Spike is on a trip of his own, a "Let's rescue Dawn' vibe. I still don't know if I buy it. It'll be short lived; I'm sure, just like all of his other ideas. He'll figure I'm a lost cause. He'll leave.

/What did that teach me? That love leaves, yeah/

Her blood continued its slow and steady drip onto the paper and she wasted no time in stopping to wipe it up. Instead, her pen danced among the small puddles, dragging it along with each word she wrote. She was shaking uncontrollably now, tears streaming down her face to mix with the ink and blood on the chronicles of her life.

/I've been down every road you could go

I made some bad choices as you know/

Dawn closed her diary mid sentence, and exhaled deeply. This was too hard, it was too much. Her anxiety was boiling in her arteries and she felt bloated with pain and nerves. Everything was spinning, and she knew she was having an anxiety attack. She had them often enough, but was never too far away from an easy fix to either calm her down or knock her out cold. Her hands clenched and she looked down at her wrist.

I might as well.

/Seems I have the whole world cradled in my hands

It's just like me not to understand/

Dawn reached into her jacket pocket and withdrew a neck chain with a pendant in the shape of a cross. She unscrewed the top of the charm and peeked inside to see white power. Her body was wracked with shakes at the mere sight of the familiar shape and feel of it in her hands. This was the right choice she knew now, this felt so right, so much better.

/Dear, Dear Diary, I want to tell my secrets

'Cause you're the only one that I know will keep them.

I've been a bad, bad girl/

With shaking hands, Dawn leaned over her diary and poured a line onto the cover. She snorted the cocaine in two long hits and screwed the cap back on her cross, tucking it around her neck and letting it rest near her heart.

She pulled herself back into the fetal position, letting her diary fall off her lap again and it opened to the page she had last used. Her heart began to race and she had the sudden urge to laugh. She felt so high, so elated- her scabs were a prison, they were holding her back. She began to scratch vigorously at the new scabs on her wrist, itching and bothering them until they were even deeper than they were when first inflicted. She smiled sadly. Why not bleed freely? She wanted to be open, to let the world taste her for all she was. Broken, bloody, high, lost, scared.

She heard the barn door creak shut and she looked up to see Spike dodge around to the shaded side of the barn.

"Dawn, I smelled blood and-" He dropped the blanket when he saw her.

She smiled vaguely as her eyelids fluttered closed. Her grip on her knees slackened.

Spike glanced down to her open diary and knelt to pick it up. He read her bloody words and an angry fist twisted his intestines as his stomach dropped with each doubt she had been filling her mind with about him.

Why hadn't he watched her better?

"I'm a junky, baby." Dawn said, laughing through her tears. "I'm a junky like Major Tom."

/I learned my lessons young

I'll turn myself around/

Spike knelt before her and made her look up at him. Her eyes were unfocused and he blanched. He knew this all too well. "Oh, Dawn," he said, pulling a thumb across her lower lip, where tears had gathered. "You're worth so much bloody more than this."

/I've got a guardian angel tattooed on my shoulder

He's been watching over me/

"We're away from Sunnydale, but you still can't stop playing fantasy games. No one is worth more than this Spike." Dawn dabbed a finger in her blood and rubbed it across his bottom lip, a sick mimic of his innocent actions. Her smile disappeared, and her voice was mocking. "We kill or get killed, we get high or we suffer without a vice. We kill ourselves little bit by little bit each day before someone does it for us. It's the way it is."

He was deeply shaken by this. There was far too much truth in her convoluted words.

"You're right," he said.

"It's just routine, ink, cocaine, blood and tears."

/I've been a bad, bad girl/