Dawn: No one understands. No one has an older sister who's a slayer.
--from "The Real Me"
Dawn: When I was younger, I used to put my chopsticks in my mouth like this, and then Buffy would chase me around the house yelling, 'I'm the slayer, I'm going to get you!'
--from "Into the Woods"
Cut to: Dawn walking through a playground, night. She looks over at a swing-set. Flash to a bright sunny day, small girl with Dawn's hair on the swing, bigger girl with Buffy's hair pushing her.
Young Dawn: Bet you can't push me all the way around!
Young Buffy: Oh yes I can!
Young Dawn: No you can't!
--from "Blood Ties"
She remembers being slapped by Buffy when she was eight and having a bruise mar her face for a week.
They say Slayers come into their power only when they're called. It's not true. Dawn lived her life in the shadow of the all-perfect Buffy. All-star cheerleader, getting the gold in gymnastics, blowing everyone away in dance, et cetera, ad nauseam.
Well, she really hadn't lived that life at all. But that's not really the point here.
When the Summers sisters were kids, Buffy would push Dawn on the swings. It would start out slow, a gentle shove, but soon Dawn would be soaring high, looking over the rooftops of suburban L.A. She would barely be able to suck in a breath because she'd be going so fast, and so hard, and she'd love it and hate it but always she reached for *more.*
Buffy almost sent her all the way around the swing set once. Dawn broke her arm and was spoiled for weeks, with Buffy looking jealously from a corner. Not that it matters, because their Dad swayed under the power of the Summers lower lip and took Buffy out for pizza, ice cream, and shopping. Dawn was soon the jealous one.
Dawn still remembers the sharpness of the pain - how it didn't really hurt at first, but then the fire set in and she was crying and wailing and Buffy was trying to get her to shut up but she *couldn't* because it hurt too bad and Mommy! Buffy hurt me!
Buffy had always been the Slayer. It was hazy, of course; most of her memories were, if she tried to remember them hard enough. Always the Slayer. Buffy'd beat up the bullies, protect Dawn. She was always protecting Dawn. Of course, then Buffy went to middle school and got ... popular. Dawn was just a dinky little elementary school kid, not old enough to hang out with the big girls or play with Buffy anymore.
Then came cheerleading. And incoherent babble that Dawn would try to imitate all the time, driving both her mother and her sister nuts. Boys were next, and somewhere in there the parents started to fight. Buffy would spend all her time out of the house, and Dawn would curl up in her lonely room with a book and her journal and her thoughts.
The arguing could be heard throughout the house. Mom would yell at Dad for staying out all the time, not paying attention to her or the kids. Always working. Dawn covered her ears with her pillow, tried to crawl into Buffy's room but usually got kicked out for her troubles.
They argued about Buffy staying out all the time, though they never seemed to prevent it. They argued about Mom's job, about paying the bills, about the astronomical credit card expenses and how her father always seemed a little bit drunk when he came home.
Dawn became a latchkey kid. No one wanted to stay in the house. Too much yelling, hurting. But she was always there, alone, a scared twelve year old kid who had no clue what was going on and had no one to lean on.
And Buffy was always the Slayer.
But there was a thing about the hazy memories she couldn't quite pin down. If she really concentrated, Dawn could get to that place between sleep and awake and realize that all her memories are of the not real version. She thinks she understands now, after reading some incomprehensible physics books and a heavy dose of Star Trek.
When she was created, when she was made from the Key and a chunk of Buffy, she ripped off a new part of reality. She started a new timeline. Kind of like when Biff got hold of the statistics book in Back to the Future and made everything all scary. 'Cept this timeline isn't really scary. At least, no more scary than anything else. So. New timeline, new rules. But Dawn remembers both - the original timeline, with No Dawn, and the new one, With Dawn.
It's pretty weird.
See, she wasn't there for the original timeline, but she knows everything that happened with No Dawn. It's sharp, and painful. It comes to her in dreams, and when she secretly meditates in her room in the middle of the night she can sometimes tap into it and watch it like it's an episode of television with a straight feed to her mind. She knows more than she would ever let on, and she knows that Buffy was not always the Slayer. Well, she was. But she wasn't. It's hard to explain, and Dawn doesn't pretend to understand.
See, the really difficult thing is when she sees the two realities overlap. When she's meditating, when she's dreaming, the timeline With Dawn and the timeline with No Dawn smoosh together and she gets an entirely new kind of memory, with some combination of haziness and clarity that makes her brain hurt if she concentrates too hard.
And then the memories get really scary. Because instead of Buffy always being the Slayer, she hid it from her family - except for the time when Buffy went away for a few months, but they never talk about that anymore - and Dawn remembers hiding behind the stairs while her mom and Buffy argue.
"Do what? Buffy, what is happening?" her mom says, shouting, not realizing how loud she is. There's a glass in her hand, filled with the stuff Dawn's not allowed to go near because she's just a kid.
Buffy tries to walk away, throw it off, just like Dawn remembers her doing a million times before. Both here and in L.A. "Just have another drink." She turns away, starts to walk off. Dawn jumps, almost letting her secret perch on the stairs be known when Mom throws her glass against the wall.
"Don't you talk to me that way!" And Buffy stops. "You don't get to just dump something like this on me and pretend it's nothing!"
"I'm sorry, Mom, but I don't have time for this."
Time for what? Dawn wonders. She hates this. The fighting. The angry words and the steely resolve that is behind them. At least on Buffy's part. When did her sister get so scary?
"No!" Mom says, worried and loud and pissed of and slightly drunk. "I am tired of 'I don't have time' or-or 'you wouldn't understand.' I am your mother, and you will *make* time to explain yourself."
Buffy turns around. "I told you. I'm a Vampire Slayer."
Mom doesn't know what to say. "Well, I just don't accept that!"
Buffy takes a step closer. "Open your eyes, Mom. What do you think has been going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences. How many times have you washed blood out of my clothing, and you still haven't figured it out?"
Dawn's mind goes numb. Because wasn't Buffy always the Slayer? Why are they fighting? Angelus, Angel, vampires Buffy warned them about. Or didn't. Who is Angel, the older history partner or the vampire with a soul? She feels the room spinning, reality slipping like it always does when she is about to fall from the memories she tries so hard to recreate in her mind. A shiver rolls through her body. No. She needs to see this, she needs to understand.
"Well, it stops now!"
"No, it doesn't stop! It *never* stops! Do-do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is, how dangerous? I would *love* to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or... God, even studying! But I have to save the world... again."
"No. This is insane. Buffy, you need help."
Again? Dawn wonders, as her vision shifts and realities get crossed. She sees the With Dawn reality for a moment, and instead of the fighting, Buffy's friends are gathered around the table and Mom is getting tea and cocoa and Spike do you really think you can be of any help?
Then her vision clears.
"I'm *not* crazy! What I need is for you to chill. I *have* to go!"
"No. I am not letting you out of this house."
"You can't stop me."
"Oh yes I-"
Dawn hears the sound of a body thumping the kitchen table, and she winces.
"You walk out of this house, don't even *think* about coming back!"
The false words cut at Dawn, and the world teeters, and now she wishes she just had the hazy memories where everyone was happy and together and worked without fighting and she could listen in and Willow would braid her hair and Giles would smile at her over his glasses and she'd get a cookie before going to bed and maybe Xander would tell her a fairytale about how the Princess saved the world.
She hears a door opening, shutting, and she rests her head against the wall. She closes her eyes. And she's back in her room, staring at the poster of the Backstreet Boys Buffy got her when she turned thirteen.
Dawn stands, shakily stepping out of the sand circle she'll have to dustbust later. She sits on her bed, frilly floral print standing out against the bright white. She picks up the letter, fingering the thick parchment paper that she found lying on her desk one afternoon after she found out she was the Key, after her mom died, after a lot of things. She figures Willow left it for her. She doesn't really care.
Dawn is stuck in the reality where Buffy was, is, and always will be the Slayer. But she remembers when Buffy wasn't the Slayer, and she remembers when Buffy was *and* wasn't the Slayer. Dawn doesn't know which one is the hardest to live in.
She doesn't really have a choice. She never does.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.