Braids
Fandom: Buffy
Canon Compliancy: Dawn-inserted AU Season 2 episode “Passion”
Characters: Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Joyce
Genre: Drama/Angst genfic
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~2700
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Written for dawn_all_along and posted there. This fic explores what “Passion” might have been like with Dawn inserted. I’ve chosen not to repeat scenes from the episode itself but instead focused on what occurred ‘off camera.’ Humongous thanks to my beta, firefly_124, for all of her help and a speedy turn around on this!
Summary: Outside, Angel surreptitiously stalked Buffy, determined to weaken her via attacks on friends and family. Inside the Summers’ home, Buffy tried to keep things ‘normal’ - bratty kid sister and all.
Multiple awards winner - details here.
Buffy climbed the stairs with a tired sigh. The gang had been great tonight - really. Xander had danced with her, Cordelia had okayed it, and Willow had walked arm in arm with her through the quiet streets home, filling them with chatter. But the skin on the back of her neck had prickled the entire time, and no matter how quickly she had turned, she had never found a reason for it.
Shrugging her shoulders, she stepped on the next-to-last step, raising a faint creak from the wood. A quick flash of light beneath the hall’s middle door caused Buffy to grin, murmuring, “Gotcha.”
She opened the door quietly, slowly, drawing it out, and waited for the covers to move.
Twitch.
Pouncing, Buffy landed across legs that strove to wiggle away and pulled the blankets off of Dawn’s upper half.
The bright beam of the flashlight danced around the room, finally coming to rest on Buffy’s face, blinding her.
Batting the offending instrument away, she said, “Dawn, you know you’re supposed to be in bed by now.”
Even in the half light, the younger girl’s smirky smile showed clearly. “I am in bed.”
“You know what I mean. In bed and asleep - as in not awake and moving.”
Arms crossed. “You get to stay up.”
“Yes, and I’m also much older than you, so give me the diary and go to sleep, or I’ll tell Mom.”
Moving amazingly slowly, one arm reached out to gather up the book and snap it shut before holding it out. “Fine. Take it.”
Buffy reached forward and tugged lightly on the braid that framed one side of Dawn’s face before taking the journal with one hand while the other reached out to grab the flashlight. “Fine,” she mimicked. “And the next time I come in here to check on you, I better find you sleeping the sleep of the dead, got it?” The flashlight turned off with a snick.
Flopping back on the bed, Dawn clamped her arms straight at her sides and seemed to lie still, though the shaking stomach of poorly repressed mirth ruined the picture.
Buffy stood up and placed the diary and flashlight on the nightstand before reaching over to pull the covers up to Dawn’s chin. “Night, bratty.”
“Night, bossy.”
As Buffy turned in the hall to close Dawn’s door, she thought she saw a flash of movement through her sister’s window. She waited, door half closed, but saw nothing more. In her own room, she looked out the window again, the uneasy feeling unabated, then turned away with a slight shrug of shoulders.
~~~
Sleep, so hard to come by the night before, held her in its arms for longer than it should have the next morning, so she woke to a loud “Buffy!” yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“I hear ya,” she grumbled, knowing her pain-in-the-butt sister couldn’t hear her.
“Buffy!”
“I’m up!” she yelled back, rubbing a hand over her face. “I’m up,” she said again, quietly, in an attempt to convince herself.
Yawning, she pushed back her comforter and heard the crinkle of paper under her hand. She froze - unlike her sister, Buffy never went to bed with anything having to do with the written word.
The off-white paper felt rich to the touch, heavier than any notebook paper she’d ever owned. The drawing of her sleeping face appeared carefully rendered as if the artist had had hours in which to get it right.
Hours. In her house.
Ice curled through her bowels.
Minutes later, she was still staring at the paper, thinking of everything she knew of pre-soul Angel, when Dawn burst through her door.
“Buffy, it’s late. And you were going to redo my braids today, remember?”
“Hmm?” She looked up.
The younger girl twirled one of the front sections of hair around, raising both eyebrows.
“Oh, yeah. Well, they don’t look too bad yet. We can use a little hairspray to get the flyaways to stick to the rest before pinning them back.” She gave a little smile. “We’ll redo them tomorrow morning, ‘kay?”
With a huff, Dawn flounced over to the vanity dresser and grabbed Buffy’s best hairspray, the Paul Mitchell, even though the VO5 sitting right beside would be more than good enough.
Opening her mouth to protest, Buffy let it slide and patted the bed beside her. Giles’s whole ‘choose your battles’ thingy worked equally well for dealing with big bads and little sisters.
~~~
She came home early that evening, skipping slaying, determined to spend time there until Giles figured out the disinvite spell.
The Drusilla stuff had her wigged - none of Giles’s books mentioned Angelus killing the vampire’s whole family, but Angel had told her about it. Unfortunately, a quick afternoon research session had turned up that Angelus had also killed his own family.
Buffy still wasn’t sure which was more distressing - the thought that Angel had such a problem with families or, as Giles thought, a real issue with human emotions in general.
“Buffy.” Dawn’s whine cut through her thoughts.
“Hmmm, what?”
“You’ve almost washed the glaze off that plate. Could you rinse it now so that we can get done? Some of us have homework, you know.”
The initial stream of water from the tap was cool before warming, and the suds sluiced off in a sheet, swirling around the drain.
“Buffy!”
Turning, she saw Dawn standing with one foot tapping, hands wringing the dishtowel, brow creased.
“This is about that Angel stuff you told Mom at dinner, isn’t it?”
Dropping her eyes to her hands, Buffy thrust the plate towards Dawn quickly, murmuring, “Yeah.”
“Well, Mom was watching one of those relationship shows last week, and I heard that no matter what, it always takes two people to make things go bad. So what did you do?”
“What?” she sputtered, looking up at Dawn sharply. “I didn’t do anything. Not anything, Dawn.”
“So it’s all Angel’s fault?”
She turned back to the sink, reaching for the last glass and jamming the scrub brush into it so hard the bottom broke off and clanked loudly against the stainless steel basin. Sighing, she lowered her hands to rest them on the front edge of the counter. “Look, Dawn. You’ll get it when you’re older. Things … things between people aren’t that simple.”
Glancing over, she saw Dawn close the cabinet and turn, brow still creased, lips pursed.
“Why don’t you go and get started on your homework, and I’ll clean this up,” Buffy said. “Then we’ll go ahead and take your old braids out tonight so things’ll go faster in the morning. Sound good?”
Dawn stood, watching her for a bit longer, then began to open her mouth.
To curtail her, Buffy reached out with one soapy hand and made to tug at a braid.
Dawn ducked, shrieking, “Get away!”
Buffy followed her across the kitchen, opening and closing fingers like crab claws, Dawn backing away from her all the while.
They were both laughing as Dawn made it into the hall and threw the dishtowel back at Buffy. “Fine! I’m going. Bossy.”
“Bratty.”
Dawn stuck out her tongue and turned on one heel to go running up the stairs.
Picking up pieces of broken glass from the bottom of the sink, Buffy glanced up and thought she saw something through the window. She paused and waited, but nothing more happened except that the knot of tension in her shoulders that had eased temporarily wound tighter.
She threw the shards into the trashcan with extra force, hearing a brittle jangle of glass as they shattered some more.
~~~
The next morning, Dawn grumbled as Buffy unwound the now messy braids. “You were supposed to do this last night.”
“Yeah, well, Willow came over, and things changed.”
“Things always change if it’s Willow or Xander.” Dawn’s lower lip jutted out, and her arms crossed.
Reaching for the brush lying on Dawn’s bed, Buffy asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dawn looked down. “Nothing.”
Buffy ran the brush through Dawn’s hair, watching as the typically braided front section frizzed outwards in tightly crinkled waves. “You know, you might think of doing your hair differently sometime. I mean, I know you don’t like having it get in your face, but you could have short bangs instead of braiding them to the side.”
Shaking her head so vehemently that she pulled her hair from the brush, Dawn said, “But I like the braids.” Her arms tightened across her torso, fingers digging into triceps. “And you said you’d always do them for me, remember?”
“Yeah.”
Running the brush repeatedly through the long hair felt hypnotic, and Buffy noticed Dawn’s arms beginning to relax.
“Tell you what,” Buffy said. “How about I come home right after school today, and you and I do something just the two of us?”
“Really?” Dawn’s arms flew open, fingers spread wide, wiggling in excitement. “That would be great! Will you paint my nails for me and put those little butterflies on them?”
“Sure.” Buffy grinned. “And we can do some in pink and some in lavender if you want, alternate them like a little rainbow - well, a two-colored rainbow at least.”
“And can we watch a movie? With popcorn?”
“We’ll watch a movie.” Buffy ran the brush through one last time before setting it down to begin to work on Dawn’s hair. Creating three same-sized sections, she centered them on Dawn’s temple and began to weave them over and under each other. “And I bet we’re just about at your two-week limit for ‘Harriet the Spy,’ so I have a feeling I know what we’re going to watch.”
Dawn gave a little squeal with a bounce and kicked her feet.
“Hold still!” Buffy tugged a little to make her point. “We don’t want these going in all wonky. You’ll be the fashion scandal of all fifth grade if your hair’s wonky.”
Giggling, Dawn said, “Yeah, I can just see Chrissy’s face now - all twisted up like a monkey’s butt.”
“Dawn!” Buffy tried to sound horrified, but couldn’t completely control a big grin.
“It’s true - she’s all ugly when she’s mean!” Dawn looked at her from the corner of her eye, only turning slightly. “Besides, you don’t make wonky braids. You’re really good at it.”
Slipping a hair band decorated with a white butterfly onto the end, Buffy said, “Thanks. Now, let’s get the other side done, and you can tell me all about your mini-Cordy.”
~~~
As it slammed in Angel’s face, Buffy sagged against the inside of her front door in relief, tension draining from her neck and shoulders, stomach settling from the nervous clench it had maintained ever since seeing the drawing of her mother Angel had left at Willow’s. Still, she couldn’t quite shake her unease at the fact that his face had worn a smug grin instead of any of the other looks she’d thought he’d have: anger, shock, confusion.
But she glanced at her mom leaning against the mantle on the far side of the living room and realized that Angel would no longer be able to breach her family’s home, no longer be a danger to her mother or sister, though Buffy would still have to warn them about going outside after dark.
She smiled at Willow. “Spell casting sure is hungry work. Think I should talk Mom into ordering us a pizza?”
“And just who was doing the spell casting?”
“Okay, Miss Picky-Pants. Watching you do spell casting is hungry work, or really, it’s that I haven’t wanted to eat for days. But this gives us a breather.” She patted her stomach. “I finally feel a lack of foodage.”
“You sound like Xander.” Willow gave a short laugh, and then her eyes widened, hands rising to flutter excitedly. “Oh, do you think we could get pepperoni? My parents went on a Kosher kick again last month. I’m not sure that it’s going to stick anymore than the last three times they’ve done it, but for now, I already miss pepperoni.”
“Sure thing.” Grin fading, Buffy turned towards the living room and moved a few steps into it. “Mom, look - I know this is really strange and all, but like I told you, I’m not seeing him anymore -”
Joyce turned quickly, eyes flashing, shoulders rigid. “And that makes it all better?” Her hands clenched, voice rising in pitch with each word. “Buffy, you slept with him!”
Eyes widening, Buffy took a half step back, feeling the knot in her stomach return. “Mom.” Buffy drew the word out, making at least two syllables of it. Tilting her head towards Willow, she continued. “Could we go upstairs please?”
“No, we will not go upstairs.” Sharp finger jabs punctuated each word. “I don’t want Dawn to hear this.”
“Dawn! She wasn’t with you?”
“What do you mean, with me?” Her brow furrowed. “She told me you were going to be with her all afternoon, so I stayed late at the gallery and then did a little grocery shopping on the way home.”
“Oh, god.” She’d forgotten - gotten so caught up in Giles finding a disinvite spell that she’d stayed at the library researching it and then rushed off to help Cordelia and Willow first.
Icy panic shivered through her muscles, and they felt weak, like they couldn’t move, though she turned and started for the stairs anyway.
“Don’t you walk away from me,” Joyce called out.
Brushing past Willow, Buffy kept going, saying a wooden, “Stay here.”
Buffy climbed the stairs slowly. Her legs worked, but just barely. Her heart raced.
She stepped deliberately on the next-to-last step, raising a loud creak from the wood. The darkness beneath the hall’s middle door remained unbroken.
Hand trembling, she opened the door slowly, unable to move faster, and waited for the covers to twitch.
Completely covering Dawn’s head, they remained still.
She flipped the lights on. “Dawn.” Her voice broke, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Dawn, I know you’re mad at me, and you should be, but I can explain.”
Nothing.
“Dawnie?”
Shaking more obviously, she reached out and pulled the covers down inch by inch, waiting for a squeal or a leg jerk.
Nothing.
As the material finally slid over the younger girl’s face, Buffy could see that the unnatural stillness lay everywhere - in the eyes as they gazed at the ceiling, in the mouth hanging slightly open.
Descending slowly to mid torso, the covers suddenly pulled off quickly just as the angle changed. Buffy observed the strange movements of the blankets without realizing her knees had given out, hands fisting in the fabric. Her heart paused as if refusing to beat, and then raced, a roaring hum filling her ears. Screams and retching sounded behind her, but as if from a great distance. She was held transfixed by the tableau Angel had created of Dawn.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d unclipped them from the back of her head.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d wrapped his strong fingers around their ends.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d crossed them over her throat, pulling them tighter and tighter and tighter and …
The roaring grew louder, and she thought someone might have tugged at her shoulders, but their touch felt far away.
Dawn must have struggled at first, or at least until she passed out, but the rest of her hair lay neatly spread across the pillow, and her arms rested perfectly straight by her sides.
Yet it didn’t look like he was quick with it. Purpling edged the twists of hair - the kind of bruising that comes before death. The braids were embedded in her neck - like rope pressed into soft clay that’d been left to dry. Buffy imagined the impression they’d leave in the skin when pulled away.
A hand stretched slowly forward to lightly touch the twined hair, and long moments passed before the tactile sensation registered and Buffy realized the hand belonged to her. The close sound of her mother’s weeping suddenly filled her ears.
No, Angel wasn’t quick about it.
And Buffy wouldn’t be either.
When she killed him.
Canon Compliancy: Dawn-inserted AU Season 2 episode “Passion”
Characters: Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Joyce
Genre: Drama/Angst genfic
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~2700
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Written for dawn_all_along and posted there. This fic explores what “Passion” might have been like with Dawn inserted. I’ve chosen not to repeat scenes from the episode itself but instead focused on what occurred ‘off camera.’ Humongous thanks to my beta, firefly_124, for all of her help and a speedy turn around on this!
Summary: Outside, Angel surreptitiously stalked Buffy, determined to weaken her via attacks on friends and family. Inside the Summers’ home, Buffy tried to keep things ‘normal’ - bratty kid sister and all.
Multiple awards winner - details here.
Buffy climbed the stairs with a tired sigh. The gang had been great tonight - really. Xander had danced with her, Cordelia had okayed it, and Willow had walked arm in arm with her through the quiet streets home, filling them with chatter. But the skin on the back of her neck had prickled the entire time, and no matter how quickly she had turned, she had never found a reason for it.
Shrugging her shoulders, she stepped on the next-to-last step, raising a faint creak from the wood. A quick flash of light beneath the hall’s middle door caused Buffy to grin, murmuring, “Gotcha.”
She opened the door quietly, slowly, drawing it out, and waited for the covers to move.
Twitch.
Pouncing, Buffy landed across legs that strove to wiggle away and pulled the blankets off of Dawn’s upper half.
The bright beam of the flashlight danced around the room, finally coming to rest on Buffy’s face, blinding her.
Batting the offending instrument away, she said, “Dawn, you know you’re supposed to be in bed by now.”
Even in the half light, the younger girl’s smirky smile showed clearly. “I am in bed.”
“You know what I mean. In bed and asleep - as in not awake and moving.”
Arms crossed. “You get to stay up.”
“Yes, and I’m also much older than you, so give me the diary and go to sleep, or I’ll tell Mom.”
Moving amazingly slowly, one arm reached out to gather up the book and snap it shut before holding it out. “Fine. Take it.”
Buffy reached forward and tugged lightly on the braid that framed one side of Dawn’s face before taking the journal with one hand while the other reached out to grab the flashlight. “Fine,” she mimicked. “And the next time I come in here to check on you, I better find you sleeping the sleep of the dead, got it?” The flashlight turned off with a snick.
Flopping back on the bed, Dawn clamped her arms straight at her sides and seemed to lie still, though the shaking stomach of poorly repressed mirth ruined the picture.
Buffy stood up and placed the diary and flashlight on the nightstand before reaching over to pull the covers up to Dawn’s chin. “Night, bratty.”
“Night, bossy.”
As Buffy turned in the hall to close Dawn’s door, she thought she saw a flash of movement through her sister’s window. She waited, door half closed, but saw nothing more. In her own room, she looked out the window again, the uneasy feeling unabated, then turned away with a slight shrug of shoulders.
~~~
Sleep, so hard to come by the night before, held her in its arms for longer than it should have the next morning, so she woke to a loud “Buffy!” yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“I hear ya,” she grumbled, knowing her pain-in-the-butt sister couldn’t hear her.
“Buffy!”
“I’m up!” she yelled back, rubbing a hand over her face. “I’m up,” she said again, quietly, in an attempt to convince herself.
Yawning, she pushed back her comforter and heard the crinkle of paper under her hand. She froze - unlike her sister, Buffy never went to bed with anything having to do with the written word.
The off-white paper felt rich to the touch, heavier than any notebook paper she’d ever owned. The drawing of her sleeping face appeared carefully rendered as if the artist had had hours in which to get it right.
Hours. In her house.
Ice curled through her bowels.
Minutes later, she was still staring at the paper, thinking of everything she knew of pre-soul Angel, when Dawn burst through her door.
“Buffy, it’s late. And you were going to redo my braids today, remember?”
“Hmm?” She looked up.
The younger girl twirled one of the front sections of hair around, raising both eyebrows.
“Oh, yeah. Well, they don’t look too bad yet. We can use a little hairspray to get the flyaways to stick to the rest before pinning them back.” She gave a little smile. “We’ll redo them tomorrow morning, ‘kay?”
With a huff, Dawn flounced over to the vanity dresser and grabbed Buffy’s best hairspray, the Paul Mitchell, even though the VO5 sitting right beside would be more than good enough.
Opening her mouth to protest, Buffy let it slide and patted the bed beside her. Giles’s whole ‘choose your battles’ thingy worked equally well for dealing with big bads and little sisters.
~~~
She came home early that evening, skipping slaying, determined to spend time there until Giles figured out the disinvite spell.
The Drusilla stuff had her wigged - none of Giles’s books mentioned Angelus killing the vampire’s whole family, but Angel had told her about it. Unfortunately, a quick afternoon research session had turned up that Angelus had also killed his own family.
Buffy still wasn’t sure which was more distressing - the thought that Angel had such a problem with families or, as Giles thought, a real issue with human emotions in general.
“Buffy.” Dawn’s whine cut through her thoughts.
“Hmmm, what?”
“You’ve almost washed the glaze off that plate. Could you rinse it now so that we can get done? Some of us have homework, you know.”
The initial stream of water from the tap was cool before warming, and the suds sluiced off in a sheet, swirling around the drain.
“Buffy!”
Turning, she saw Dawn standing with one foot tapping, hands wringing the dishtowel, brow creased.
“This is about that Angel stuff you told Mom at dinner, isn’t it?”
Dropping her eyes to her hands, Buffy thrust the plate towards Dawn quickly, murmuring, “Yeah.”
“Well, Mom was watching one of those relationship shows last week, and I heard that no matter what, it always takes two people to make things go bad. So what did you do?”
“What?” she sputtered, looking up at Dawn sharply. “I didn’t do anything. Not anything, Dawn.”
“So it’s all Angel’s fault?”
She turned back to the sink, reaching for the last glass and jamming the scrub brush into it so hard the bottom broke off and clanked loudly against the stainless steel basin. Sighing, she lowered her hands to rest them on the front edge of the counter. “Look, Dawn. You’ll get it when you’re older. Things … things between people aren’t that simple.”
Glancing over, she saw Dawn close the cabinet and turn, brow still creased, lips pursed.
“Why don’t you go and get started on your homework, and I’ll clean this up,” Buffy said. “Then we’ll go ahead and take your old braids out tonight so things’ll go faster in the morning. Sound good?”
Dawn stood, watching her for a bit longer, then began to open her mouth.
To curtail her, Buffy reached out with one soapy hand and made to tug at a braid.
Dawn ducked, shrieking, “Get away!”
Buffy followed her across the kitchen, opening and closing fingers like crab claws, Dawn backing away from her all the while.
They were both laughing as Dawn made it into the hall and threw the dishtowel back at Buffy. “Fine! I’m going. Bossy.”
“Bratty.”
Dawn stuck out her tongue and turned on one heel to go running up the stairs.
Picking up pieces of broken glass from the bottom of the sink, Buffy glanced up and thought she saw something through the window. She paused and waited, but nothing more happened except that the knot of tension in her shoulders that had eased temporarily wound tighter.
She threw the shards into the trashcan with extra force, hearing a brittle jangle of glass as they shattered some more.
~~~
The next morning, Dawn grumbled as Buffy unwound the now messy braids. “You were supposed to do this last night.”
“Yeah, well, Willow came over, and things changed.”
“Things always change if it’s Willow or Xander.” Dawn’s lower lip jutted out, and her arms crossed.
Reaching for the brush lying on Dawn’s bed, Buffy asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dawn looked down. “Nothing.”
Buffy ran the brush through Dawn’s hair, watching as the typically braided front section frizzed outwards in tightly crinkled waves. “You know, you might think of doing your hair differently sometime. I mean, I know you don’t like having it get in your face, but you could have short bangs instead of braiding them to the side.”
Shaking her head so vehemently that she pulled her hair from the brush, Dawn said, “But I like the braids.” Her arms tightened across her torso, fingers digging into triceps. “And you said you’d always do them for me, remember?”
“Yeah.”
Running the brush repeatedly through the long hair felt hypnotic, and Buffy noticed Dawn’s arms beginning to relax.
“Tell you what,” Buffy said. “How about I come home right after school today, and you and I do something just the two of us?”
“Really?” Dawn’s arms flew open, fingers spread wide, wiggling in excitement. “That would be great! Will you paint my nails for me and put those little butterflies on them?”
“Sure.” Buffy grinned. “And we can do some in pink and some in lavender if you want, alternate them like a little rainbow - well, a two-colored rainbow at least.”
“And can we watch a movie? With popcorn?”
“We’ll watch a movie.” Buffy ran the brush through one last time before setting it down to begin to work on Dawn’s hair. Creating three same-sized sections, she centered them on Dawn’s temple and began to weave them over and under each other. “And I bet we’re just about at your two-week limit for ‘Harriet the Spy,’ so I have a feeling I know what we’re going to watch.”
Dawn gave a little squeal with a bounce and kicked her feet.
“Hold still!” Buffy tugged a little to make her point. “We don’t want these going in all wonky. You’ll be the fashion scandal of all fifth grade if your hair’s wonky.”
Giggling, Dawn said, “Yeah, I can just see Chrissy’s face now - all twisted up like a monkey’s butt.”
“Dawn!” Buffy tried to sound horrified, but couldn’t completely control a big grin.
“It’s true - she’s all ugly when she’s mean!” Dawn looked at her from the corner of her eye, only turning slightly. “Besides, you don’t make wonky braids. You’re really good at it.”
Slipping a hair band decorated with a white butterfly onto the end, Buffy said, “Thanks. Now, let’s get the other side done, and you can tell me all about your mini-Cordy.”
~~~
As it slammed in Angel’s face, Buffy sagged against the inside of her front door in relief, tension draining from her neck and shoulders, stomach settling from the nervous clench it had maintained ever since seeing the drawing of her mother Angel had left at Willow’s. Still, she couldn’t quite shake her unease at the fact that his face had worn a smug grin instead of any of the other looks she’d thought he’d have: anger, shock, confusion.
But she glanced at her mom leaning against the mantle on the far side of the living room and realized that Angel would no longer be able to breach her family’s home, no longer be a danger to her mother or sister, though Buffy would still have to warn them about going outside after dark.
She smiled at Willow. “Spell casting sure is hungry work. Think I should talk Mom into ordering us a pizza?”
“And just who was doing the spell casting?”
“Okay, Miss Picky-Pants. Watching you do spell casting is hungry work, or really, it’s that I haven’t wanted to eat for days. But this gives us a breather.” She patted her stomach. “I finally feel a lack of foodage.”
“You sound like Xander.” Willow gave a short laugh, and then her eyes widened, hands rising to flutter excitedly. “Oh, do you think we could get pepperoni? My parents went on a Kosher kick again last month. I’m not sure that it’s going to stick anymore than the last three times they’ve done it, but for now, I already miss pepperoni.”
“Sure thing.” Grin fading, Buffy turned towards the living room and moved a few steps into it. “Mom, look - I know this is really strange and all, but like I told you, I’m not seeing him anymore -”
Joyce turned quickly, eyes flashing, shoulders rigid. “And that makes it all better?” Her hands clenched, voice rising in pitch with each word. “Buffy, you slept with him!”
Eyes widening, Buffy took a half step back, feeling the knot in her stomach return. “Mom.” Buffy drew the word out, making at least two syllables of it. Tilting her head towards Willow, she continued. “Could we go upstairs please?”
“No, we will not go upstairs.” Sharp finger jabs punctuated each word. “I don’t want Dawn to hear this.”
“Dawn! She wasn’t with you?”
“What do you mean, with me?” Her brow furrowed. “She told me you were going to be with her all afternoon, so I stayed late at the gallery and then did a little grocery shopping on the way home.”
“Oh, god.” She’d forgotten - gotten so caught up in Giles finding a disinvite spell that she’d stayed at the library researching it and then rushed off to help Cordelia and Willow first.
Icy panic shivered through her muscles, and they felt weak, like they couldn’t move, though she turned and started for the stairs anyway.
“Don’t you walk away from me,” Joyce called out.
Brushing past Willow, Buffy kept going, saying a wooden, “Stay here.”
Buffy climbed the stairs slowly. Her legs worked, but just barely. Her heart raced.
She stepped deliberately on the next-to-last step, raising a loud creak from the wood. The darkness beneath the hall’s middle door remained unbroken.
Hand trembling, she opened the door slowly, unable to move faster, and waited for the covers to twitch.
Completely covering Dawn’s head, they remained still.
She flipped the lights on. “Dawn.” Her voice broke, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Dawn, I know you’re mad at me, and you should be, but I can explain.”
Nothing.
“Dawnie?”
Shaking more obviously, she reached out and pulled the covers down inch by inch, waiting for a squeal or a leg jerk.
Nothing.
As the material finally slid over the younger girl’s face, Buffy could see that the unnatural stillness lay everywhere - in the eyes as they gazed at the ceiling, in the mouth hanging slightly open.
Descending slowly to mid torso, the covers suddenly pulled off quickly just as the angle changed. Buffy observed the strange movements of the blankets without realizing her knees had given out, hands fisting in the fabric. Her heart paused as if refusing to beat, and then raced, a roaring hum filling her ears. Screams and retching sounded behind her, but as if from a great distance. She was held transfixed by the tableau Angel had created of Dawn.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d unclipped them from the back of her head.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d wrapped his strong fingers around their ends.
He’d taken her braids, and he’d crossed them over her throat, pulling them tighter and tighter and tighter and …
The roaring grew louder, and she thought someone might have tugged at her shoulders, but their touch felt far away.
Dawn must have struggled at first, or at least until she passed out, but the rest of her hair lay neatly spread across the pillow, and her arms rested perfectly straight by her sides.
Yet it didn’t look like he was quick with it. Purpling edged the twists of hair - the kind of bruising that comes before death. The braids were embedded in her neck - like rope pressed into soft clay that’d been left to dry. Buffy imagined the impression they’d leave in the skin when pulled away.
A hand stretched slowly forward to lightly touch the twined hair, and long moments passed before the tactile sensation registered and Buffy realized the hand belonged to her. The close sound of her mother’s weeping suddenly filled her ears.
No, Angel wasn’t quick about it.
And Buffy wouldn’t be either.
When she killed him.