"Phases"

Dawn POV, set sometime in Season Seven, after "Potential" but before "Lies My Parents Told Me"

Dawn's a 'huggy' type of girl. She never likes to think of it in those terms - too close to a brand name that would so completely ruin any social standing she ever had. 'Physically effusive' is also out, because of all the lewd and violent connotations that the word 'physical' has had to shield.

Simply, she likes to hug and be hugged, to touch and be touched. And that doesn't happen so much anymore.

With the absence of her mother, Dawn feels it most keenly now. She's something of a mamma's girl, gravitating magnetically towards her mother's petting or snuggles. But her mother is gone now, and the house, once the 'just us girls' house, is filled with strangers who routinely sleep and heal in her mother's bed and make out where her mother died.

The potentials aren't much for hugs, and Dawn's rather afraid that a hug from Kennedy would leave a knife in her back, so she stays away. (Kennedy saves her touch only for those she has designs on) Amanda's different, but she's on a strict schedule - class, chorus, and slaying training. Little time for chit-chat...but maybe someday, they'll get a class together and be able to have the same homework assignments.

Giles, attempting to herd the potentials into some sort of fighting group, rarely sees her any more. A pseudo-father when she needed one and the best male role model she thinks she could have. Dad hasn't been by in a while, but she could identify Giles by his scent (a little musty and old, but with a hint of some light cologne clinging to his shirts), and by the way his awkward pose in her impulsive embrace quickly fades into a strong surety that this is where he belongs. Her chin in his hand, dark eyes trying hard to look into the inner turmoil of a former blob of energy/teenage girl with a boatload of angst beyond the erupting pimple on her neck.

And yet she wasn't daughter enough to make him stay after Buffy left, and deep down, she wondered if he secretly resented her. Once he broke with Buffy, and the Magic Box was destroyed, Dawn feared that she would never see him again. Now she fears he won't stay.

Anya only hugs when she's feeling very emotional herself, very high or very low. Dawn wonders if this is an ex-demon thing or just an Anya thing. There is a desire to help others from the woman, just problems in translation sometimes.

The day of Buffy's death, after Xander brought Anya to the Summers house at her insistence, Dawn silently walked into her mother's old bedroom, where Anya lay on the bed, pretty brow drawn up with stitches and tears. Seeing Dawn, she silently (amazingly!) opened her arms, and Dawn gratefully slid into them, weeping quietly.

There isn't a great deal of emotion issuing from Anya these days, but that's okay. Like Spike and Tara, she's stayed despite the disappointment. Perhaps she'll be up for a quick hug every once and a while, when she finally shakes the dust of Xander off her shoes.

Dawn once longed for the touch of Xander, soft-colored fantasies that never strayed beyond PG (much). He was older, friendly, funny, and had a smile that made her stomach drop up and down. A hand on her head or pressing on her shoulderblades as he guided her along, and she could feel every ounce of concentration in her body fade to the very cells his hand pressed against.

The intensity faded, and she's not sure when - was it before or after she found out she was the Key? She wonders if he knows that she crushed on him, and hopes she didn't come across as too obvious. Now that he's kissed her forehead, she realized that there was no expected electric tingling in her toes. But she still liked it. Xander said that he sees her struggle - does anyone else? (Of course not, freakishness is the norm in this town)

Xander's very busy, what with work and research and babysitting Potentials that act half their age, so she doesn't ask him for a parting kiss on the head before he leaves. She still hopes, however, that one will be given, and she can settle those feelings that still stir in her belly.

Also in the air? Her relationship with Willow. Once the coolest girl she knew, who could fit slaying and a boyfriend (and later, girlfriend) into a rigorous academic schedule without becoming stuffy. Even 'Recovering Junkie' Willow, who endangered her and got her arm broken was forgivable, reachable, and touchable.

Last year, during Hanukkah (or is it Chanukah? Not certain which is right, or if they're really the same thing, come to think of it - got to look that up), Dawn realized that she wasn't lighting the candles. Using some of her dwindling gift funds, Dawn found a cheap menorah and some tea lights, and, knocking softly and entering Willow's room. She knew Willow wasn't supposed to be near candles, and hoped she wasn't cruel by asking if Willow wanted to light the final one. She said as much.

"Would you light it for me?" came the soft request, and Dawn complies, lighting it from the shamash. She didn't know the blessings, and since she isn't Jewish she supposed it was probably less sacrilegious that way. Willow hugged her then, once the candles were safely blown out, taking care not to squeeze her broken arm. The parts she does hug, however, are very tightly held, and there is apology and a plea for acceptance in her grip, and so Dawn returns it as best she can. (Hanukkah means 'rededication,' doesn't it? A new start? Willow?)

Nowadays, Willow's new start involves control, support from Xander and Buffy, and endless self-flagellation over her 'end-the-world' phase and whether Kennedy counts as moving past Tara's death too quickly while she stares out into space. She's not much for the hugs, not since Tara died.

Tara can never be replaced, not in Dawn's mind. Warm, endlessly patient, always interested, always loving, and always in motion. Had Tara lived long enough to consider adoption - or artificial insemination (ew!), Dawn would gladly have offered herself up as an example of Tara's parenting skills.

Whether it was an embrace to absorb her tears or an arm looped through her own as they went to beg forgiveness for Dawn's absence for the last few days of school, Tara was the soft wraith at her side. Always there, always with a wry comment to follow the right thing to do. And she loved the fact that Tara was there because Tara wanted to be with her, and not just as an accessory to Willow or Buffy.

Dawn remembers all too well what Tara's neck felt like, when she worked up the nerve and swallowed the shock long enough to feel for a pulse. Cold, so cold, not soft and warm and comforting, but stiff, with muscles limp where they shouldn't be and curled where they should not.

Spike is essentially a dead man walking, and on some level, Dawn knows this. Still, it's hard to remember when he's all over the room at once, arguing, pointing, accusing, laughing, strutting, fighting, longing, comforting...plus, touching him is not nearly as bad as dead flesh should be. He's not warm, but he's not a block of ice, either, and the movement and play of his muscles under his skin, even when in breathless sleep gives the lie to his state.

He tried to comfort her several times before Buffy died, and she knows he thinks she doesn't know (and it's just those types of long explanations and logic that any type of talking relationship with Spike leads you to). It's that feeling when you know a body is in close proximity, and know it's about to touch you. Not the heated nearby air, because that isn't so with Spike. It's the simple instinctual knowledge embedded deep in the cells of the body.

Sometimes she felt his hand ghost over her hair, and liked it. Having Spike around was like having a cranky Doberman Pinscher guarding her - in combat, he thinks nothing beyond tearing out the throat of something threatening her, and in the quieter moments, his lean, wiry body offered a world of solid comfort when she put her arms around him and he growled softly that she was safe, that it was okay to grieve and mourn.

She has to be the one making the first move, however. Whether it's fear of rebuffal or fear of Buffy that stays his gentle hands, his body nevertheless strained in an effort to hold himself back. This feature has been sponged away by the soul, and she can't divine if he wants to touch her or not, or feels too ashamed from what happened between him and Buffy. She knows it's not the fear of a burning bed.

The bed that he made with Buffy. Full of rage and bitter disappointment, she confronted him not long after first seeing him. Among the questions she shot at him in her low, slow style, the only one that got a discernable answer was when she asked about the soul.

"Is it worth it? Did you really think getting a soul would impress her enough to touch you again? After what you did?" Her voice trembled, but held steady (Look at me! Look at your victim!). Spike lifted his head from where he was slowly banging it against his knees, and she was struck by what she saw there. Spike and William coalesced, tortured, terrified, but sane, if only for a moment or two.

"Touch doesn't make anything real. She taught me that. Person can touch you all they want, all you let them, doesn't mean a bloody thing. Doesn't mean you matter to them, or they care. Blood and action, only things that really count for much." He swallowed, looking down. "And maybe this soul."

And just like that, Dawn began to suspect that Buffy had given her a lopsided view of what her relationship with Spike had been. But Buffy's always been her protector, her teacher, guardian of all that's true and good.

Those last few years in L.A., before the move to Sunnydale, when their parents' arguments would pierce the walls of the house, Dawn would scrunch up in a ball on her bed, waiting. Buffy tried as much as possible to sleep over at friends' houses on the weekends, but on school nights, she would tiptoe into Dawn's room.

When the door opened and a shaft of light from the hallway glided in, Dawn would look over with relief at Buffy's blonde head (too young for hair dye - why? you're away too much to remember what your daughter's face looks like?) poking into her bedroom.

"Could I borrow a kitty-cat?" she would whisper loudly, and Dawn is up like a shot.

She grabbed Estrella, her favorite blue-and-yellow starred plush bear, and tucked the others into her arms. Buffy took the remainder of the stuffed animals, and they tiptoed down the hall to Buffy's room, trying not to hear what was being quietly shouted at the end of the hall. (Secretary? That's rich - when do secretaries fly with their bosses to New York?)

Flipping over a corner of her rumpled white comforter, Buffy climbed back into still-warm sheets, and Dawn followed. There were a few minutes in which they would arrange themselves, spooning to some extent, Mr. Gordo pressed behind Buffy, Estrella under Dawn's arm. The menagerie of other assorted stuffed animals is also tucked under the covers, and if Dawn imagined hard enough, they were pressing back comfortingly against her side.

Buffy reached over and flicked off her bedside lamp, and the glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to her ceiling sprang to life before Dawn's eyes in fluorescent glory, where she lay nestled with her sister, warm and snug and safe. The hand traveled down into Dawn's silky hair, combing it with perfectly pink polished nails that scratched pleasantly along her scalp.

"Purr, kitty-cat." And Dawn did, setting them both to giggling, because when she tried to purr it sounded like an awful attempt at rolling her r's in an affected Spanish accent. And Buffy would concentrate her scratching right behind Dawn's ear, tickling her and making her giggle.

Later on, though, the fighting spread up the hall, making the sisters moody, adolescent standards of coolness making them irritated at their own clinginess. The night the divorce was announced, Dawn crept of her own volition into Buffy's sleepless bedroom, where both girls clung to each other, weeping.

Trying to get to her sister after that became a challenge, for Buffy often tossed and turned in the grip of what had to be terrible nightmares, and Dawn hung back for fear that she would be on the wrong side of a flailing, sweating limb. Soon enough, though, all that latent violence was channeled, Buffy set fire to the school gymnasium, and Dawn was left trying to figure out who or what her sister had become as they fled to Sunnydale.

They weren't much on physical contact in the ensuing years - a brief hug when Dawn had been rescued from an incipient vampire or demon scheme, a swat to the head when she took advantage of her sister's distracted behavior.

When Mom got sick, all that changed, and suddenly she became the willing kitty-cat, bending her lanky form in pretzels against the hard plastic hospital chairs in order to rest her head on Buffy's lap. There was a final kiss on the forehead before Buffy leaped to her death. The ultimate act of proving that she is real, Dawn supposes, at least by Spike's standards.

Since then, it's been tentative between them. Light touch on her forearms, (don't run away, don't leave me again). Most of the others were oblivious, but Dawn had clued in that something was wrong long before she almost became a demon's child-bride. After that, Buffy was hard to pin down, and time spent with her little sister was more a chore. Plus, she smelled like greasy meat, although on some level Dawn knew that this was for her and that the smell was an unfortunate side effect that was best unmentioned.

After Buffy's revelation, declaring to Dawn that she wanted to show her the world, Dawn waited. And waited. And waited. The heck with the world, she'd just be glad to see her sister again, and not this speechifying general that has taken up residence. Every attempt she makes has been pushed away, brushed off.

It's just a phase, she keeps telling herself. Once this Big Bad is dead and gone, she'll have her sister back, and they will hug again. After all, the teenage counseling books that Buffy agonized through in the fall all spoke of phases, periods of adjustment to new situations, times that people should be sympathized with and helped through.

Well, Buffy's had almost two years to adjust to resurrection. And Dawn's type of phase kind of runs more towards the 'now you're a ball of mystical green energy, now you're an adolescent Californian,' with precious little adjust time besides the fake memories of touch in her head.

It's why she yearns to be touched now. By Buffy. By anybody she knows and cares about. And prays that Spike was wrong.

Show me I'm real. I'm real to you.

Author's Note: I have absolutely nothing against Dobermans, and have known and loved several - it just seemed a good analogy. Plus, pit bulls and Rotties take it on the chin enough as it is.