Author's note: supershort chapter, not very flattering for our little Dawnie... i'm not partial to Dawn, i like Alex a lot more. This is bitter and resentful but not all that angsty- its pretty light shot of it though. I love to write angst, but i'm trying to make this fic real light, so thi is the bitterest so far.

Chapter VIII - Dawn Bounces Back

1630 Rivello Drive, Sunnydale:

Dawn scowled into the suitcase as if somehow the things she had packed were taunting her. lately her face seemed to be in permanent scowl mode and if she wasn't careful she would start to get some serious permanent frown damage around her mouth.

Well, it wasn't as if she was doing on purpose.

Stupid Buffy. If she got premature frown wrinkles and ended up having to ration her smiles after the age of thirty, it was all her deceased sister's fault. She was the cause of EVERYTHING.

Dawn only just managed to keep her eyes from rolling.

Joyce had just told her that they would be leaving for LA that night for a couple of days. she didn't say anything about why.

Didn't matter, Dawn already knew, anyway.

They were leaving because of Buffy. God, everything was because of Buffy, she had been gone for months and still, everything was about older sis, slayer dearest, the almighty chosen one.

Her friends were being all worried about dawn because Buffy would not have wanted them to leave her alone.

Her family or what's left of it was picking up and leaving for a while because her mother just could not stand to be around a place with so many memories of Buffy. So much slayer memorabilia.

Dawn immediately felt horrible, Buffy was dead and here she was being Angry at her. As if it was the slayer's fault.

Her fault.

The scoobies had it all wrong; she was not pissed off because they had deserted the search for her sister. She was pissed of because they were still sitting around and talking about it.

Was she a horrible person?

Probably.

Did she care?

Nope.

All her life, Buffy had gotten all of the attention, all of the praise, all of the drama.

And of course, she took it all for granted. Ignoring her mother, running off to LA, letting her grades slip, getting expelled not once, but twice. She even shut her emotions off in a box.

All because of the whole 'I'm chosen' gig.

And how about Dawn?

Wasn't the baby of the family supposed to be the pampered one?

Was she so horrible that her freak of a delinquent sister still out shone her in her parent's eyes?

There was only one person (well, vampire, but you get the general idea...) who would understand her, and now even he was gone.

Spike.

God, could anything possibly get worse?

even Riley, Buffy's other beau who had made a sincere effort to get to know Dawn had almost disappeared completely, he only dropped into from time to time to see if they needed any help, or if another apocalypse was rolling into town.

Maybe going to LA was a good idea after all.

She could go there and make friends that would not know about Buffy or any other paranormal creatures of the night stuff. She could go to parties engage in underage drinking and other fun stuff, like a teenager.

And then she could come back to Sunnydale a new person.

Hell, she was a new person.

It was time for a new Dawn.

To hell with Buffy's friends, she didn't have to spend all her time doing the moping thing at the magic shop. She could go out to the bronze, party all night hook up with someone and then dump him.

As long as he was cute, funny and had a regular heart beat, she was cool.

Standing up, straighter, Dawn decided to head to the club just one more time before they left for LA. She was determined to get picked up or at least dance with one cute guy.

Couldn't be that hard, after all Buffy could do it, she could do it better. At least her guy will have a heart beat.