Dawn was lying on her stomach on her bed reading when the shouting began. She put her bookmark at her place and carefully put the book on her bedside table. Angel had given it to her in a big box of things that had been Wesley's. Giles hadn't liked it, but Angel had made it clear that he didn't care what Giles thought. Dawn had felt guilty about it for about five minutes - that being the length of time it took for her to feel comfortable reading in Sumerian again and realizing what she had. So she wasn't best pleased to be torn out of her reading, let alone by what sounded like furious women screaming at each other.

She eased open her door and looked both ways down the hallway. Faith was sitting on the sill of the window at one end of it, but far from shouting, she looked like she hadn't even heard the commotion. Obviously she had, what with Slayer hearing and all, but Dawn wasn't about to interrupt her thoughts. She looked the other way and saw Xander sitting on the floor, boxes spread out around him, peering through the bars to the lobby below. She crept out of her room and down the hall, crouching down next to Xander and following his gaze to see Willow and Kennedy, standing on either side of the pouf in the lobby, glaring at each other.

"How can you say that to me?" Willow said.

"How can I not?" Kennedy said. "You know it's true. Anything Buffy or Xander wants, you can't wait to do."

"They're my best friends, Kennedy. We've been over this." Willow wasn't shouting anymore; she sounded exhausted.

Xander pushed a box over towards Dawn. She looked inside it to see a jumble of books, magazines, and knick-knacks.

"No, thanks," she whispered. "I'll just eavesdrop along with you."
"I thought you might help me sort," Xander whispered back. "These are Cordy's. I asked Angel if I could go through them to see if there are any pictures from Sunnydale...I'm surprised he said yes."

"I'm not," Dawn said, thinking about her own box of books. She reached into one of the boxes but dropped the book she'd picked up when Kennedy's raised voice jerked her out of her thoughts.

"I don't care!" she shouted. "Or, wait - you don't care. About me, or about us."

"Sweetie, you know that's not true," Willow said. She sounded like she was about to cry.

"Are you sure I should be doing this?" Dawn asked Xander, pulling a Sunnydale High yearbook out of the box. "Cordelia didn't really like me, after all."

Xander grinned at her. "Maybe she was just threatened by the imminent arrival of yet another gorgeous brunette on her scene," he said.

Dawn snorted. "Somehow, I don't think that was it." But she opened the yearbook, anyway - it opened right to a picture of Cordelia cheering.

"You've never put me first," Kennedy said. "Never. I know quite well that if it were Tara asking you to go back to Rio with her, you'd go."

Dawn and Xander both looked up at that. Willow, even with tear tracks on her cheeks, looked murderous. Well, not literally.

"You don't know that," she said. "And even if you did, you don't have the right to say it. Besides, Tara wouldn't ask me not to do something I knew was the right thing to do."

"I don't have the right?" Kennedy exploded. She continued on that theme for awhile, seemingly ignoring Willow's last sentence. Dawn just shook her head. Trust Kennedy to go for what affected her pride, without even listening to what Willow was actually saying. She turned a page of the yearbook and saw the place where Buffy should have been. She snorted a laugh, remembering how angry Buffy had been over that, but when Xander looked at her, she shook her head. She didn't want to bring up everything that had happened around that time. Though maybe, with Willow not of his persuasion anymore, he wouldn't mind so much.

"It's the Hellmouth," Willow shouted. "End of the world, apocolypse - hello, any of this ringing a bell for you? I know you didn't really live with it like I did, but Kennedy, you should know how important this is. Why would you want to be anywhere else?"

"The point isn't why, it's that I do," Kennedy said. Her voice was softer now, almost pleading. "We're doing good in Rio, aren't we? Training Slayers, bringing some stability to neighborhoods that haven't seen it in decades! And we have a nice life there, don't we? Is it so wrong to want that to stay the same?"

Willow looked sad, though she wasn't crying anymore.

"Nothing stays the same," she said.

"Ain't that the truth," Xander said. He held up a picture in a frame for Dawn to see. It was of Angel, Cordelia, and Wesley, their heads together, grinning at the camera. Dawn couldn't remember Angel ever smiling like that. Cordelia looked much the same as when Dawn had known her, except...she squinted at the picture. Cordy looked...sure of herself. Confident, but not in her old, arrogant, "I'm better than you, so bow down and worship me" way. More like she knew her place in the world and was satisfied with it. Wesley looked about half-way between the man she'd known and the man she'd seen in her dream, but he looked happy, too. More than anything else, they looked like a family.

"Who'da thunk, huh?" Xander said.

"Yeah," Dawn said, still studying the picture. "Though this sort of work seems to make the strangest bedfellows."

"You're not wrong," Xander said. "So maybe you should stay out of any strange beds."

"Didn't Buffy tell you?" Dawn said, hearing the bitterness in her voice and not caring. "No bedfellows for Dawn. I thought it was no kissing at first, but Angel set me straight. It's just no sex."
"Hmm," Xander said. "You sure about that? Because Cordy told me she...anyway," he added quickly. "Even if it's true, I'm sure you'll find a way around it. In fact, if you haven't by the time you're, say, thirty-five, I'll even help find one."

"Thanks so much," Dawn said. "You're a pal." He'd given her something to think about, anyway.

"So, that's it?" Kennedy said. "We spend a year and a half together, and you leave me because I won't drop everything and move half-way around the world to a cutesy little tourist trap? There are plenty of things to fight in Rio - remember the glitter monster?"
Dawn peeked through the railings, hope in her heart. Willow was crying again, but she also had on her Resolve Face.

"Yes, I think it is," she said. "I'm sorry, Kennedy, but if you can't see how important this is to me, you don't understand me at all."

"Oh, I understand you, all right," Kennedy said. She stalked to the outer doors, flung them open, and stomped outside.

Dawn couldn't help herself - as soon as the doors closed again, she burst into applause.

Or, rather, she got one clap out before a pair of hands caught hers in a hard grip.

"Don't," Faith said, and Dawn looked up to see her bent over her, her eyes on Willow. "Even when you know it's the right thing to do, breaking up with someone you love is the hardest thing there is."

"Really?" Dawn said.

Faith must have understood her real question, because she let go of her hands, stood up, and smiled down at her, showing her dimples. "No, not really. It's damn hard, though, and it wouldn't help Willow to hear you clapping."

Dawn turned to Xander to see what he thought, but he wasn't there. She looked back down at the lobby and saw him already down there, holding Willow as she cried.