FIC: angst_bingo
Title: Sloppy Seconds
Author: slashmarks
Rating: G
Summary: Dawn isn't Buffy, no matter how hard she tries.
When Dawn was eleven, she was Buffy for Halloween.
Buffy helped her bleach her hair blonde, and let her borrow one of her miniskirts and a tank top. She didn’t let them come trick-or-treating with her and her friends, because they were Big Kids and Dawn was only a sixth grader. Sixth grade was plenty big, she’d argued, but Buffy rolled her eyes and stomped off.
Then everyone else turned into their costumes, and once she realized what was going on - quicker than the others with homemade costumes, she was a Slayer’s little sister, after all - she held her breath and waited. Waited for her hair to shrink into a stylish cut and turn blonder than they’d managed it in one attempt, waited to shrink from her gangly, pre-puberty self into Buffy.
When Dawn was eleven, her sister was coolness personified.
It didn’t happen, of course. Her costume was homemade. All she’d needed was to borrow one of Buffy’s bleach kits and the clothing and stuff some padding into her trainer bra, nothing from the magical store, though she didn’t find out about that until later.
Now, Dawn’s lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. The Potentials are training in the backyard, so she’s got maybe twenty minutes’ privacy more. And she’s thinking about that Halloween and wishing that, since the whole fracking thing had never actually happened, the monks might as well have given her that one memory.
She had been Buffy, once. She wondered if that was how they did it - had they taken Dawn out of Buffy? Taken the coltish, dark haired, awkward girl who kept diaries out of Buffy, and left the Slayer all the more pure?
Dawn is sixteen and Buffy is now power personified. Dawn wants some of that for herself, thanks, and now that she knows she was made from her sister she has one more thing to hate about herself.
She is the duplicate. More than that, she’s the lesser one. She remembers how Ms. Wilkins, all the way back in first grade, used to call the first draft the sloppy copy and that’s what she is, except that she was never in Ms. Wilkins’s first grade class and Buffy was the first draft, so what is she? Sloppy seconds?
She glances at the clock - three minutes gone, seventeen left. That was what it would be if twenty was an exact measurement, anyway, but Buffy didn’t keep a clock out there to manage the exact time of the training sessions, and three minutes would easily be looked over either way, so it was almost like no time had passed at all.
No time had passed at all when she’d been whining. The sloppy seconds were unnecessary - they already had a perfect copy.
Dawn is unnecessary. Here they have Buffy, shining, golden eldest, the Slayer herself. Even if they need more of her, they have about a million Potentials, Potentials practically coming out of their ears. And then there’s Willow, the super-powerful witch, and Anya, the ex-vengeance demon, and Spike, vampire with a soul who tried to rape her sister. And then there’s Xander, the normal one who thinks he’s useless except for carpentry.
And then, finally, there’s Dawn.
Dawn isn’t strong or fast like the potentials. She isn’t a demon, not even an ex-demon like Anya, who at least has a thousand years of memories in her head to console herself. She isn’t a witch like Willow, and she’s still in high school so its not like she has a valuable skill to contribute, either. She’s a teenage girl.
More than that, she’s an ugly teenage girl. An ugly, useless, teenage girl and nothing can change that. When she was fourteen, she’d wanted to be a Slayer like Buffy - before all the mess with Glory started. In fact, she isn’t even sure if it was part of her real memories, or faked. Buffy had never gotten an exact day, the day that Dawn’s existence had begun.
She’d gone running every day, and joined a gymnastics class, and begged secondhand karate lessons out of one of her classmates. And it didn’t matter. No matter how hard she worked, she fell during most of her cart wheels, she was out of breath before half a mile had passed, her punches hurt her knuckles and she couldn’t do a back handspring.
When she’d finally admitted this to Buffy, with a wail and tears and every bit of teenage angst she could work up, her sister had laughed. Laughed, and laughed, and told her how cute she’d been, and how they’d all been wondering what she was up to.
Dawn punches the pillow and checks the clock again. Two more minutes gone.
Author: slashmarks
Rating: G
Summary: Dawn isn't Buffy, no matter how hard she tries.
When Dawn was eleven, she was Buffy for Halloween.
Buffy helped her bleach her hair blonde, and let her borrow one of her miniskirts and a tank top. She didn’t let them come trick-or-treating with her and her friends, because they were Big Kids and Dawn was only a sixth grader. Sixth grade was plenty big, she’d argued, but Buffy rolled her eyes and stomped off.
Then everyone else turned into their costumes, and once she realized what was going on - quicker than the others with homemade costumes, she was a Slayer’s little sister, after all - she held her breath and waited. Waited for her hair to shrink into a stylish cut and turn blonder than they’d managed it in one attempt, waited to shrink from her gangly, pre-puberty self into Buffy.
When Dawn was eleven, her sister was coolness personified.
It didn’t happen, of course. Her costume was homemade. All she’d needed was to borrow one of Buffy’s bleach kits and the clothing and stuff some padding into her trainer bra, nothing from the magical store, though she didn’t find out about that until later.
Now, Dawn’s lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. The Potentials are training in the backyard, so she’s got maybe twenty minutes’ privacy more. And she’s thinking about that Halloween and wishing that, since the whole fracking thing had never actually happened, the monks might as well have given her that one memory.
She had been Buffy, once. She wondered if that was how they did it - had they taken Dawn out of Buffy? Taken the coltish, dark haired, awkward girl who kept diaries out of Buffy, and left the Slayer all the more pure?
Dawn is sixteen and Buffy is now power personified. Dawn wants some of that for herself, thanks, and now that she knows she was made from her sister she has one more thing to hate about herself.
She is the duplicate. More than that, she’s the lesser one. She remembers how Ms. Wilkins, all the way back in first grade, used to call the first draft the sloppy copy and that’s what she is, except that she was never in Ms. Wilkins’s first grade class and Buffy was the first draft, so what is she? Sloppy seconds?
She glances at the clock - three minutes gone, seventeen left. That was what it would be if twenty was an exact measurement, anyway, but Buffy didn’t keep a clock out there to manage the exact time of the training sessions, and three minutes would easily be looked over either way, so it was almost like no time had passed at all.
No time had passed at all when she’d been whining. The sloppy seconds were unnecessary - they already had a perfect copy.
Dawn is unnecessary. Here they have Buffy, shining, golden eldest, the Slayer herself. Even if they need more of her, they have about a million Potentials, Potentials practically coming out of their ears. And then there’s Willow, the super-powerful witch, and Anya, the ex-vengeance demon, and Spike, vampire with a soul who tried to rape her sister. And then there’s Xander, the normal one who thinks he’s useless except for carpentry.
And then, finally, there’s Dawn.
Dawn isn’t strong or fast like the potentials. She isn’t a demon, not even an ex-demon like Anya, who at least has a thousand years of memories in her head to console herself. She isn’t a witch like Willow, and she’s still in high school so its not like she has a valuable skill to contribute, either. She’s a teenage girl.
More than that, she’s an ugly teenage girl. An ugly, useless, teenage girl and nothing can change that. When she was fourteen, she’d wanted to be a Slayer like Buffy - before all the mess with Glory started. In fact, she isn’t even sure if it was part of her real memories, or faked. Buffy had never gotten an exact day, the day that Dawn’s existence had begun.
She’d gone running every day, and joined a gymnastics class, and begged secondhand karate lessons out of one of her classmates. And it didn’t matter. No matter how hard she worked, she fell during most of her cart wheels, she was out of breath before half a mile had passed, her punches hurt her knuckles and she couldn’t do a back handspring.
When she’d finally admitted this to Buffy, with a wail and tears and every bit of teenage angst she could work up, her sister had laughed. Laughed, and laughed, and told her how cute she’d been, and how they’d all been wondering what she was up to.
Dawn punches the pillow and checks the clock again. Two more minutes gone.