It's getting to the point where Dawn feels just as sick of Starbucks as the library. Same people frequent both places, doing the same thing in both places, except they won't let you have powerful espresso drinks in the library. And there's music here, but she only likes it about half the time.

She's been here all morning, waiting for a seating upgrade. It's the overstuffed chair near the fireplace she's after. Dawn's lost count of the number of times she's been faked out by the girl sitting in one of the chairs. She grabs her book bag, Dawn starts gathering her own things, ready to pounce. But each time she's merely pulled out another book and continued studying.

The man in the other fireplace chair has noticed the last couple of fakeouts. He gives off an air of amusement, but he's not obnoxious about it. After her third disappointment, he checks his watch, then closes the book he's been reading and crooks a finger toward Dawn.

She pulls her books together (she's gotten good at this; the chair upgrade goes only to the swift and prepared) and gives him an inquisitive glance. He nods, smiling, and she crosses the room with her things.

The man rises and folds his trench coat over his arm. "I have an appointment, so I'll bequeath you my chair."

"Oh, thanks. I don't think I've retained anything of the last five pages I read."

He smiles, and there's a blend of sympathy and mischief that she warms to. "Don't get too comfortable, now."

Dawn thanks him again, and finds herself watching as he steps out and stands in the sheltered doorway, adjusting the collar of his raincoat before dashing out into the rain. He's way older than her, but there's something kinda sexy about the grace of his hands, the knowing smile that lets you in on some secret, but you're not quite sure what it is. She thinks about him from a purely academic standpoint, an illustration in real life to supplement Faith's lecture on Why Cary Grant Was Hella Hot.

The next couple of times she studies in Starbucks, Dawn finds herself looking for him and feeling a pang of disappointment when he's not there. Totally silly, but the guys her age who are eye candy get boring after a while.

It's another rainy day when she sees him again. She's managed to score one of the fireplace chairs, where she sits with her bare feet tucked beneath her, struggling with a Sumerian translation. A gust of cold, damp air makes her look toward the door and she spots him, rain glittering in his hair like diamonds.

He places his order and walks over to warm himself at the gas fireplace for a moment while the barista works through a backlog of triple shot nonfat half-caf lattes. Smiling at her, he murmurs, "Filthy weather," then leaves her to her studies.

She wishes he'd say more. Maybe she imprinted on the British accent with Giles, because everything sounds so much more interesting, even a remark about the weather. Filthy. Nobody around here would ever say that in their boring Midwestern accents.

He moves off to pick up his drink, then heads back out into the gusty rain.

It's a week before she sees him again. Yeah, she's been keeping count. It's actually a good thing to crush on someone so wildly inappropriate, not to mention wildly never-around. If she got interested in someone more suitable for her, and he got interested back, things would happen and then there'd be this ginormous distraction from her course work. This year is key if she's going to transfer to the Watcher's Academy. Dawn's completely aware how desperate she is for a ginormous distraction, too. At least this one's a mini-distraction, and safe.

This time the rain is mixed with spitting snow. As it gets sloppier and sloppier, people have started clearing out of the coffee bar, trying to get home before it's too nasty. Dawn's planted herself in one of the fireplace chairs, and the other one is vacant. It would be the perfect time for her friend to show up. It takes her a half hour to settle in to studying and stop looking up whenever the door opens, but once she does, she's totally engrossed

When she finally looks up to rub at her stiff neck, he's there in the opposite chair, involved in his own book.

"Oh. Hi," she blurts.

"Hello." He bends down, picks some pages off the floor. "I believe these are yours." They're covered with her densely written notes.

"Talk about filthy," she says. "The weather, I mean."

He merely smiles, and again there's that air of shared confidences and mischief.

She decides, she's not sure why, to share a small one with him. "My name's Dawn."

"Delighted to meet you, Dawn." He extends a manicured hand. "Ethan."

In no time at all he has her babbling about her studies.

"I thought most students these days thought Latin was pointless and hopelessly dull, much less the more obscure of the ancient languages."

Dawn shrugs. "I grew up around the kind of people who loved that stuff. I guess it rubbed off."

Turns out Ethan is a professor, which she'd suspected. Which makes him even safer as a crush, really. The university has such a tough policy forbidding student-teacher affairs that no one would be crazy enough to defy it.

"What department?"

"Oh, not here. I teach at Oxford. I'm spending some of my sabatical here to conduct some research. Your library is brilliant, and I've found some scholars and dealers who aren't affiliated with the university but have the specific focus I need."

He's a visitor, not subject to the normal rules. Why is Dawn's stomach suddenly fluttering? "What's your field?"

"Ancient civilizations. Particularly their belief systems and mythologies."

Wow. Just ... wow. The last guy she'd dated was getting a master's in watching television.

Not that she's having a date here. Or ever will. Just indulging in a little fantasario, as her friend CarrieJo would say.

Prompted to say more about his research, Ethan does, and while Dawn listens to every word, at the same time some part of her merely basks in the sound of his voice. Silky and smooth, like some impossibly expensive robe she's always dreamed of slipping over her naked body. There's just enough irony -- and a hint of mockery for the world at large -- to keep the smoothness from getting dull.

The conversation turns somehow to his own student days. "I confess, I was quite the tearaway in those days. So now I attempt to keep the Young People of Today speeches at a minimum."

"Oh, I can't imagine you being that stuffy ever." Dawn feels a slight twinge of guilt at the word stuffy, because Giles indulges in those speeches all the time. Much as she loves him, though, he does not make her think of naked skin and expensive silk.

It crosses her mind that Ethan and Giles might actually have met each other at Oxford, or somewhere along the line in their research. The question doesn't even form in her head, though. Her family and her crush are things she's definitely keeping separate, because she can imagine the enormous quantity of crap she'd get from absolutely everyone if they knew about the age difference. And why remind Ethan of that gap?

"You'll have to tell me some stories," she says. "Being a tearaway."

He gives her that smile full of mischief. "I will. Some other time, though. I'd better be getting to my hotel before the taxis stop running altogether." He glances out the window at the sloppy street, and she follows his lead. The light turns red and a car slithers halfway through the intersection before the driver can get it stopped. "Can I give you a lift?"

Oh, but you already have. She rises and pulls on her coat, though she leaves it open. Her skin is so hot from sitting near the fireplace for so long. "That would be really nice. I'd appreciate it."
 

Dawn turns back and picks up her cardboard cup, downing the last of her hot chocolate.

Ethan laughs. "So that's one thing about students that hasn't changed since my time. You still drain the last drop of any drink you've paid for."

"Well of course. That's because we're still poor. Most of us." She drops her cup in the trash and accompanies him to the door, which he opens in courtly fashion.

The wind slices through her coat, allegedly rated to twenty below. She stands in the doorway while Ethan flags a cab, while her feet grow even colder than the rest of her. When he beckons her toward the taxi, she approaches and says apologetically, "Hey, listen. I just realized -- if Veronica Mars did this, I'd be hollering at the television."

"I have no idea what you just said," Ethan tells her. "But I know exactly what you mean. Forgive me, that was thoughtless of me."

"Not at all, I just--"

"It was. Being too forward with a kindness is still being too forward. You're wise to be cautious." He opens the back door, leans in to address the cabbie. "Driver, please take my friend here wherever she requires."

"But this was--"

"Do me an undeserved kindness and take this one. Get home safely."

***

"And then he slipped the cabfare into my hand and closed the door before I could protest," Dawn says. "Totally Cary Grant."

"Totally daddy issues," Valryn retorts. She offers the bowl of popcorn, which Dawn waves off.

"Not. I can't begin to tell you how not like my father he is."

"Because he's the anti-Hank," Valryn says. "The idealized father. The Father Knows Best guy."

Dawn flops back against the edge of the futon chair. "You wouldn't say that if you saw him. He's smart and sexy and just a little bit wicked. Not that he's acted that way, there are just ... glimmers."

Valryn chases down a popcorn that falls to the carpet. "Oh, like that's okay? What you've just described, chickie, is a geriatric bad boy. To which I say, Ick."

"Jealous."

"Deluded. C'mon already. It's been your turn for about three days."

She places her letters. "There. 'Smug.' And 'bitters,' both with a triple word score."

"Bitters is so not a word."

"It so is." She pushes the dictionary toward Valryn with her foot. "You think I'll run into him again?"

"Count on it. You're a pretty young thing who's probably beaming the worshipful vibe right into his skull. He's on sabbatical and away from his own adoring minions--" there's a word she picked up from Dawn, who appropriated it for social usage -- "You can be sure you'll see him around."

"You're a real riot. And totally wrong."

Letters clack as Valryn places them on the board. "Ten minutes till American Idol. Whoever's ahead then wins."

Once the city gets shoveled out, Dawn moves into the Starbucks pretty much fulltime, except when there's a book she needs that the library won't allow out of the reading room. Though she spends more time there than most baristas, she hasn't had a glimpse of Ethan.

She tells herself he's just on a research side trip. Or home to England to visit his family. (Which does not include a wife.) It's not like she's seen enough of him that he would have explained a coming absence.

She tells herself she did not scare him off with her OMG r u stalking me? performance when the guy was just trying to treat her to a comfortable ride home instead of a long wait for the bus and then a slog home from the stop. That he's not staying away to put her mind at ease on that score, which would be even worse.

She tells herself he hasn't left for good already. He had said he was spending just part of his sabbatical here. What if he's finished already, and gone?

"What's the big deal?" Valryn asks her one night over pizza and power ballads on Idol. "You had maybe one conversation with this guy. Actually, that's probably it. If you'd spent any more time with him, he'd have had a chance to bore you shitless, and you'd be over it."

Valryn probably has a point. And boredom -- that's the key word. Dawn's stuck here up to her ears in books after all those years fighting demons and vamps and fending off the apocalypse of the week. Now the people she grew up with are still doing that while she's being all ivory towery.

Two weeks later, she gives up the Starbucks vigil and accepts another date with the grad student. While he's talking over gourmet burgers about the pet theory of his mentor, all Dawn can think about is how Xander could talk this guy into the ground about any single one of the shows he's mentioned. It wouldn't be full of academic buzzwords, but it would be impassioned and funny and (though Xander wouldn't think so) smart, which this guy is missing, at least two out of the three.

At least, that's all she can think about until the sound of laughter rises above the general din of conversation in the restaurant, prompting her to glance in that direction.

And there, his graceful hands in motion to illustrate some point he's making to his companion, is Ethan.

 

Dawn loses the thread of what her date is saying as she watches Ethan several booths away. A booth full of frat boys completely blocks her view of his companion, so Dawn can't even tell if it's a man or a woman. She looks for clues in his body language. There's not much facial expression to work with: between the glass-sdaded light hanging above the table and the candle flickering below, shadows on his face make it impossible to read from here.

She watches his hands. They're in almost constant motion as he talks, but they don't extend across the table to rest on his companion's arm or clasp a hand. When the other person talks, Ethan toys with his pint glass, listening intently. Several empty glasses litter the table, so clearly they've been there for a while.

Dawn's date drones on, completely unaware that he's lost her. Blah blah blah father images, Ozzie Nelson to Ozzy Osborne.

"I have to use the ladies," Dawn says as he's mid-sentence. "Be right back."

She sails past his booth on the first pass, seemingly oblivious. Having a direct look at the dinner companion would be totally obvious, plus she wants to give her hair a quick brush and do the spinach check. Inside the restroom she fixes hair, teeth, makeup, pops an Altoid -- and while she's there, she has a pee.

She lets out a breath as she approaches Ethan's booth. His dinner partner is Professor Roberts, the chair of her department. Old as dirt, sweet as pie, and gayer than all the Queer Eye guys rolled into one. He lights up as he sees Dawn coming, and gestures her over.

"Ethan, I'd like you to meet one of our star students, Dawn Summers. Dawn, this is Ethan Devereaux, who's been undertaking some specialized research here."

Ethan takes her hand, but instead of a businesslike shake, he just holds it in a way that makes her feel, as Faith would say, twelve kinds of horny. "I hope you're not wasting this young woman's talents burying her under household accounts."

Exactly what they've been doing with her.

"You know Dawn?"

"We frequent the same coffee bar."

Though frequent is not exactly the word, Dawn thinks.

"She dropped a few papers," Ethan continues. "I got a look at them as I handed them back. You wouldn't want to bore this one to tears, Iain. It would be a shame to lose her."

Still holding her hand, gazing at her. Dawn feels a sudden throb that makes her cheeks flame. What Faith calls the down-low tickle.

Ethan releases her hand. "Delighted to meet you officially at last."

"Me too. I have to -- someone's waiting. I --" She finishes all in a rush. "I hope I see you around."

Dawn flees, back to the boring safety of her date.

Devereaux. She likes it. He's so British, it's so not. Automatically there's a story, some dramatic tension. She wants so badly to go home and google him (and how has she never noticed how vaguely dirty that expression sounds?) that her fingers practically twitch with the urge to type.

Finally she extracts herself from her date with news of an impending migraine, but he insists on taking her to her residence hall. He tells her his mom gets them, and sometimes it helps head them off if she concentrates on making her hands feel hot. He even turns this into a lecture, telling her how it works by directing blood flow away from the head, and how his mother has this tiny thermometer she holds and can even bump it up if she concentrates hard enough.

"My mother had headaches too," Dawn says. "They killed her."

That shuts him up.

She doesn't need any help making her hands hot anyway. At least not the one Ethan held back at the restaurant. Dawn remembers the heat his touch generated, the powerful sexual buzz from such simple contact.

As they walk up the sidewalk to her building, her date asks, "Is there anything you need?"

"Thanks, no. Just to turn out the lights and lie down before the puking starts."

He tries taking her hand -- the one Ethan held -- but she slips it out of his. "Goodnight."

"Feel better," he calls after her.

On the way upstairs Dawn decides she was telling the truth about what she needs. She turns the lights off, goes to bed and does something that involves heat and her hand.

***

If things run true to form, Dawn thinks, she won't be seeing Ethan for another ten days or so. That thought curtails her interest in getting out of bed, and she's five minutes late to her first class. She has a couple of hours to kill before her next class, so she drops into the Starbucks, though she doubts he'll be there.

He is, though. Sitting right in the front window, books and papers covering his tiny table, completely engrossed in his work.

She mulls it over while she waits for her triple-shot latte. A table isn't the same as a pair of chairs near the fireplace. You can't just park yourself without an invitation. Dawn's not even sure she should go say hi, as deeply as he's concentrating. She hates it when she's pulled out of some thorny text -- there's a phrase that came from Giles, if ever there was one -- by someone asking if she's seen the latest stupid car crash movie.

Dawn turns back to the counter and adds a scone to her order, then steps aside to wait, watching Ethan. His graceful hand, capturing some thought on paper. Most guys she knows write with Bic pens; the pen snobs go for Uniballs. Even from here, she can tell it's a fancy pen, and not just a basic Cross. If it doesn't have a cartridge, it's a good replica.

The barista hands over her venti, and she looks around for a place to sit. Should she find a table first, then wander over to say hi? Skip the saying hi completely, or wait until he might look less involved in his reading? Maybe just take the damn thing to go, and find a good spot near her next class?

This is so totally stupid and junior high. Irritated with herself, she shakes her head and decides on the to-go course of action. As she's pushing through the door, she hears a tap on the window. Ethan has finally seen her.

He raises an eyebrow and taps his watch. She checks hers unnecessarily, then nods, and goes back into the coffee bar. "Ethan, hi."

He offers his hand, and she just about melts into the floorboards. "Dawn. You're just the person I wanted to see."

"Do you have a few moments?" Ethan asks. "You seemed very focused."

"No, I have some time." His hand and his gaze are having the same effect on her as last night, but she's completely incapable of withdrawing her hand. She wonders if it's possible for her to have an orgasm right here in the middle of Starbucks.

Ethan releases her hand. "Here, let me make a space for your coffee." He gathers up his papers and stuffs them in his book, which he tucks away in a battered leather satchel.

Dawn's too bedazzled to think of looking at the title until it's already out of sight. She stands there in a fog until he gestures toward the empty chair across from him.

"Please."

She laughs weakly. "You see why I'm so desperate for coffee." She chugs some to prove her point.

Ethan favors her with that wicked grin. "Late night?"

"No. Well, studying, but not -- no partying." Dawn drinks more coffee, convinced she sounds dumber with each thing she says. "You wanted to see me?"

"I was hoping you could advise me. I have a gift to buy, and I've no idea where to begin. For my niece, who's ten."

"Oh." Stupid to feel such intense disappointment. What did she think he was going to ask, for an opinion about his research? Or if she'd go out with him? He thinks of her as barely out of girlhood -- why would he see her any other way?

"You're an intelligent and creative young woman, and the one person I know for whom childhood isn't a long distant memory."

Okay. Young woman. That's better -- she thinks. "What can you tell me about her? What is she like?"

"I haven't the slightest idea." He offers a smile, this one more wistful than his usual. "My brother and I had a falling-out before she was born. I've been thinking lately that I'd like to repair the relationship if I can. This seemed like a safe place to begin. So. We'll have to operate on generic assumptions. Nothing too lavish. I don't want to make them nervous."

Dawn's disappointment crumbles away. He's shared something deep and painful with her, and asked her to share his hopes, too. That's more than she'd hoped for when he tapped on the glass. It's huge. "Okay, the two things I was really big on at that age were books and jewelry. I was an absolute nut for Harriet the Spy. I wanted to be her."

"Harriet the Spy," he repeats, as if this is some arcane piece of information.

"It's just the best book ever for a kid. About this girl in New York City who makes the rounds spying on her weird neighbors and writing everything down. And what happens when her best friends find her notebook and what she said about them. I used to do that too. So you could get her a cool blank book or diary and a copy of Harriet the Spy."

Ethan smiles, charmed. "Who did you used to spy on?"

"My sister and her friends, mostly. One of the neighbors until she called mom and threatened to go to the police."

"An arch criminal in your youth."

"Truer than you think."

"Do you still have your notebooks? Ever go back and read them?"

The question blindsides her. Pierces her through. Dawn looks away. "No. All that stuff got lost."

"I'm sorry. I've distressed you."

She shakes her head. "It's okay. There was a fire." It comes out automatically. This is what she tells people now. It usually shuts down the conversation, where saying she was from that town that fell into a sinkhole just led to a billion new questions.

"Did everyone get out safely?"

She nods, because what else can she do? When you've reduced Sunnydale to a house fire, you can't say your best friend's orgasm-friend died in it, and your sister's -- well, whatever Spike was by then.

"I must apologize." Ethan puts his hand on hers. "I was prying."

"It's okay," she repeats. "Really. It comes up now and then. We've wandered off topic anyway. Your niece."

"You said your other suggestion was jewelry."

"I always loved it. Around that age I started going away from the little heart necklaces and that. I had a big bead on a leather cord -- it looked like carved ivory, though it couldn't have been. I wore that thing to death. I went in for these weird Day of the Dead skulls on a pair of earrings for a while, but that probably wouldn't really get you back in your brother's good graces."

The corner of his mouth quirks up. "I very much doubt it."

She toys with her coffee cup, looking up at Ethan through her lashes. "I got in a little trouble with the jewelry thing," she admits. It feels bad that she lied to him about Sunnydale, after his revelation about his brother. "I was a little klepto for a while. The skull earrings I stole, and that's not all."

Ethan's smile widens into that inviting just between us mischievous grin. "A bit of the rebel in you, even as a girl. I thought I saw something in you, even the first time I laid eyes on you. A kindred spirit."

Kindred spirit. That's what she's been lacking, so far from her family and friends.

Dawn offers him a mischief-laced smile of her own.

Ethan's so easy to talk to, so interested in what she has to say. He draws her out about her childhood in California. "We all had this rather romantic notion of California when I was an adolescent," he tells her. "We were certain every spare moment was spent on a surfboard, all the women were blonde beauties in bikinis -- the whole prepackaged vision."

"Not that blonde, not that beachy," Dawn says. "Not that I didn't curse fate for denying me my rightful blonde hair. The town I grew up in, though, I don't think it was different from that many other small towns. I'm probably a disappointment as your interpreter of the California experience."

"You're not disappointing in the least." No one else has ever favored her with a smile like he bestows on her now. It acknowledges some bond between them, recognizes something in her that no one's ever taken the trouble to see before. Kindred.

Still she withholds the information that she's from Sunnydale. It complicates her story, brings an element into it that she doesn't want clouding things between them just yet. Besides, what he's avid for is the kind of thing that could have happened anywhere. Small adventures and heartbreaks, the smell of the living room crowded with the biggest Christmas tree her father could find, the glories of the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich -- though the name of it makes him shudder.

"I think we're getting into some pot and kettle name-calling here," Dawn says. "Because I happen to know your people eat yeast smeared on bread, and excuse me for being forthright, but ick."

His delighted laughter rings out over the sound of the espresso machine and makes the heat rise in her cheeks.

"And the jelly thing, that's just semantics," she goes on. "You're thinking of what we call Jell-O. Think jam."

He's still dubious and she wonders whether there's a way to offer to make him the perfect PBJ without sounding all come up to my place with a subtext that's way too Lolita. While she's contemplating, her phone flutters its tune for general callers. "I'm sorry," Dawn says. "I won't be a minute." She flips the phone open. "Hello?" She gushes apologies and promises to meet her caller in ten minutes, then snaps the phone shut. "Shit." She starts gathering her things.

"What is it?"

"I do this volunteer gig. English conversation for an overseas student, so she can practice, get corrected nicely, that kind of thing. I completely spaced." What's worse, if she's late to her weekly appointment with Jin-Kyong, she's completely missed her class that comes before. "Can I leave my stuff here for a second? I'm gonna hit the ladies."

"What have the ladies ever done to you?"

In her frantic state it takes her a moment to process this, but it's just enough to derail her panic. She grins. "I just don't like the look of 'em. Be right back."

When she returns she slips on her coat and winds her scarf around her neck. "Sorry to run off like this."

"Clearly I kept you far later than you meant to stay. My apologies for being so careless with your time."

"There is no need to apologize for that, I loved every minute." She hovers there a moment, wishing he'd take her hand again. "Well. See you."

"You will indeed." The deliciously insinuating tone of his voice makes her want to drop back into the chair right now and forget about English conversation.

Pushing back the temptation, Dawn knocks back the last of her triple shot latte and pushes out into the cold wind.

She should never have gotten a triple shot. The taste of coffee lingers in Dawn's mouth and she feels too jittery to pay much atttention to Jin-Kyong's description of something that happened in a store. Though she'd planned to stay past their usual stopping time to make up the full hour, she cuts the lesson short, apologizing.

She hits the gym to try to work off the caffeine, but that just winds her up more. After her last class she studies past her normal pass-out point but doesn't feel tired. Taking a look at the clock, she goes to bed anyway, hoping she catch enough sleep to let her get up and make it to her early class. Half the night her mind races with school work, arguments she wants to put forth in her Western civ paper, a line of questioning she has for her lit prof.

The other half is even less restful. When she shoves aside the thoughts about her classes, Ethan steps right in to fill the empty space. Dawn replays in her head the stories he told her about his own childhood, letting the remembered sound of his voice wash over her. She thinks about his hands, their quick grace that she could take in forever. Well. Not precisely true. Watching only satisfies for so long before she starts thinking how much she wants him to take her hand in his.

In her imagination, he does. Just as she's standing before him in her coat with her scarf wound around her neck, he reaches for her unmittened hand. "Tell me you're not going out like this in such vile weather."

It sounds almost like something her mother might have said, but oh, not the way he says it.

"I lost my gloves on a bus." Mittens sounds so juvenile. When she looks to replace them, she's going for gloves. Leather, not the bright knitted stuff in the hippie crap store.

"We'll have to do something about that," he murmurs. Ethan holds her hand in his, gazing at her as if there's nothing else in the world, and heat suffuses her body.

Dawn gasps and he offers her that special smile that is hers alone. He feathers his thumb over the back of her hand, making little circles on her bare skin. That down-low flutter becomes an insistent throb and her breathing grows unsteady. She is standing in the Starbucks in her puffy down coat, right in the front window, letting him tease tiny gasps from her. The espesso machine screeches, covering the sound of her soft moan.

"Do you have any idea what a remarkable girl you are?" Ethan asks, but the only response she can form is a whispered "Please."

She's not sure if that means Please, not here or Please, finish it.

Ethan turns her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her palm and the soft mound of flesh at its base. "Such a remarkable girl," he repeats, and she tumbles over the edge, crying out and not caring who hears.

Dawn wakes to the sound of her 7 a.m. alarm and her own soft cries.

Dawn makes it to her lit class on time, but can think of none of the astute questions she'd developed during her long, insomniac night. She has no trouble remembering other things she'd thought about in the dark.

She half expects to crash during her first or second class, but she rides a wave of energy that doesn't flag. After a quick yogurt in the student cafe, she heads to Starbucks to study.

She's almost afraid she'll find Ethan in the front table, but he's not there at all. There's an atypical lull in business, so she slings her coat and messenger bag on one of the fireplace chair and goes to place her order. Might be wise, she thinks, to have tea instead of an espresso drink to avoid caffeine backlash. Yet when the barista asks for her order, she orders a double shot latte.

Dawn stays until it's time to meet Valryn for Idol, but he doesn't show. So what's it going to be, another ten days, two weeks?

Valryn asks about "the old guy" during a denture glue commercial, and Dawn says, "Aren't you a riot."

"Well?"

"I saw him the other night with Prof Roberts and said hi, that's all."

"Ohhh," she says, like that tells everything, and Dawn could bite her own tongue. "I guess one girl's old guy is some other man's hot young thing."

"Oh, don't be gross," Dawn snaps.

"You're no fun," Val says without rancor. She drops the subject, so Dawn stays through the whole broadcast and hangs out after while Val texts dozens of votes for the worst singer.

Around midnight she scuffs back to her room in her slippers, but she doesn't bother trying to go to bed. She finishes her reading for tomorrow, outlines her paper, emails Buffy and Xander, then cleans her room.

Sometime around four she goes to bed, hoping for another dream about Ethan. But he's nowhere around there, either.

***

One more mostly sleepless night and she still hasn't crashed. After her early class she drops into Starbucks more from habit than expectation, but this time Ethan is there.

"Do you mind walking and drinking?" he asks as she approaches his table. "There's someplace I'd like to show you."

Relief gusts through Dawn. After the dream she had, just as real as standing here with him now, she'd never be able to sit across from him and be even remotely normal. Yet she has no desire to be away from him. Walking, with other things to focus on, will be just perfect. "That would be great. Where are we going?"

His smile, so damn entre nous, makes something flutter in her stomach. "Let's leave it a surprise for now. You needn't worry; it's completely public."

She thinks to say, "Oh, I'm not worried at all," but she doesn't want to sound like a careless idiot, so she bites it back. But it's true. He's proven he cares about her comfort level, that he's not going to push her in any way. "It's warmed up a lot since the other day," she says. "A walk would be nice."

Ethan gathers up his satchel -- considerably lighter today, she notices -- and accompanies her outside. He leaves his coat unbuttoned, his cashmere scarf loose around his neck. "So the conversation -- was it satisfactory?"

"The what? Oh. With Jin-Kyong."

"What do you discuss, in the interests of improving her English?"

"Everyday stuff, most of the time. Yesterday she told me about a misunderstanding she had at a store. Sometimes she asks questions about words or expressions." She glances at Ethan to determine if his interest is real or exaggerated, but he's plainly engaged. "One time she asked me what 'pick up' meant. So I launched into this whole discourse on the different ways those two words show up in American English. Y'know, 'pick up a quart of milk, get that room picked up right now, missy or you're grounded, I picked up this totally hot babe last night, hey, look at that pickup truck.' She didn't look any less confused, so I asked what the context was. She pulls out a tabloid headline: 'Cobain bio-pic up in smoke.'"

Ethan laughs, and the flutter deepens. "Proof of the dangers of learning English from the tabloids." He leads her onto a side street and halfway down the block, gestures her down a short flight of steps into a lower-level shop.

"What's this?"

"The most essential antiquarian bookseller in North America," Ethan says.

"Oh my god, how did I not know about this?"

He holds the door for her and bends to whisper in her ear. "Because it's a deep, dark secret."

Dawn doesn't know if it's the words themselves or his breath stirring the hair by her neck, but she gasps softly, and the flutter becomes a throb.

Ethan offers her a sly smile.

Deep.

Dark.

Secret.

Dawn wets her lips and steps inside.

She loves the shop from the second she walks inside. No stacks of glossy bestsellers, no espresso bar, just old books in a jumble that seems completely random, but somehow Dawn's sure the shopkeeper could lay hands on any book without delay when asked.

She breathes in the perfume of old books. "Wow," she murmurs. "This is just like--"

Just like the rare book closet at the Magic Box. She'd stolen and copied the key without anyone ever finding out, and she used to shut herself inside sometimes, gorging herself on the scent of ancient things. There's a buzz of power here, too, that she hasn't felt in forever. She used to feel it in the book closet, but that was back before everything that happened on the tower. She'd lost it and eventually came to believe it had just been her imagination, lost to grief and growing up.

But now it's here, that tingle of energy, stronger than she's ever felt it.

Ethan raises an eyebrow. "Just like--?"

Coloring, she smiles, shakes her head. "It's just that old-book smell. I don't know why I have a thing for it, but I do."

"You needn't explain it to me," he says. No. Kindred spirits, after all.

The shopkeeper emerges from a curtained doorway in the back of the store. "Ethan. Good to see you. James found quite a few from your list on this latest trip. I imagine you'll want them sent 'round to your hotel. The grimoire is particularly awkward."

Grimoire. That perks up her attention. She says nothing, but Ethan, so attuned to her, picks up on her interest.

"An intriguing side road my research has taken," he tells her. "Over the centuries there have been a number of magical texts that have cropped up that are quite fake. I've been collecting the different types: false translation, complete forgery --" He smiles. "I confess to a fascination with hoaxes of various kinds. An elaborate joke keeps academia from getting too dreadfully dull." He addresses the shopkeeper. "Sebastian, I'd like you to meet my friend Dawn. Speaking of the dull academic life, she's currently tormented by an endless round of '99 casks of beer on the wall,' Sumerian style."

"The extended trance mix, I think," she says.

"I have a text or two you might find more entertaining than that," Sebastian tells her. "If you'd like to see them."

Dawn looks to Ethan. "Do we have time?"

"Take as long as you like, Dawn. That's why we're here."

Dawn follows Sebastian into another room of the store, Ethan trailing behind. Sebastian reaches into a deep bookcase where the volumes are shelved two deep, producing two books of mismatched size from the hidden row. "They're a bit challenging, but I suspect any friend of Ethan's is more than equal to the task." He places them in her upraised hands as if bestowing a blessing. "Feel free to browse through them. Ethan and I have some matters to discuss regarding his other active searches."

Ethan tells her to enjoy herself, then they leave her for the main room of the shop. Dawn settles herself on the carpet and opens the top volume. "Oh," she says softly. Its yellowing pages are dense with cuneiform, some of which clicks instantly, some which eludes her understanding. She wonders if Giles would approve of her holding this text outside the oversight of the council. She doubts it, and the thought gives her a little thrill. She pages through half the book then sets it aside and picks up the other.

Its pages are similarly dense, but this time she feels an immediate sense of -- what? Belonging, maybe. Not ownership, but that this book was meant to be in her hands. She feels the same impulse that drove her to tuck charms and necklaces in her pockets when she was a teen klepto. Not that she could filch something as rare and noticeable as this. But she feels a lust for it that will hound her, she knows. Dawn wonders how much it costs, how long it will take to save up.

Greedy for whatever she can get, she settles back against the bookshelf and begins trying to puzzle it out.

The last golden light of the afternoon slants in through the windows by the time Ethan calls her name. Dawn looks up, almost woozy from the change of focus -- she's been looking at the book nonstop since she took it up. "You were so engrossed I didn't have the heart to disturb you," he says. "But I think you're probably in need of dinner soon."

She hadn't noticed, but now that he says it she realizes he's right. "Starving, actually."

"The least I can do is treat you to dinner. I know a lovely spot near here with wonderful soups and salads. Burgers, if you can't do without them."

"Perfect." Dawn rises and stretches, then retrieves the books. As she bends, she realizes she has the beginnings of a headache between her brows. She straightens and gives the books back to Sebastian as reverently as he'd handed them to her.

"You seemed very content with these," he says. "Is there one in particular that kept you so involved?"

"This one." Dawn lets her fingers hover over the book that had stirred something in her.

"It's yours," Ethan says. "Put it on my account."

"Oh no, I couldn't," Dawn says, though the words want to stick like peanut butter, just behind her teeth.

"Of course you can," Ethan says.

"But it must cost a fortune."

"A drop in the bucket compared to what I usually spend here. Please. It would give me great pleasure to give your studies a boost. You've heard of the micro-loans they're doing in developing countries. Consider this a micro-scholarship."

Take it take it take it, clamors the greedy voice in her head. What, you're worried about impure intentions? Like you don't have any. "I don't know--"

"You want it. You should have it." His tone indicates the subject is closed, and she acquiesces.

Sebastian hands her the book, then gives Ethan two from the stack sitting on the counter. He arranges for the delivery of the rest to Ethan's hotel, then Ethan ushers her back into the cold.

The frigid air reminds her of the gnawing pain in her forehead, and once they've walked a few blocks, it's developed into a full-blown skull-crusher. Dawn comes to a halt, rubbing her forehead.

"What is it?"

"I guess it's the hunger and the low light in there. I've got myself a raging headache."

"Here. Let me try something." He raises his hands to her face, his long fingers rubbing gently at her temples. Ethan's fingertips make lazy circles on her skin that remind her of the dream in which he'd stroked her hand.

She makes a helpless noise, so soft even she barely hears it.

"Am I hurting you?"

She releases a shuddering sigh. "No. It's nice. It helps." She tips her head back, her lips parting.

One of Ethan's hands drops to her shoulder, the other strokes her cheek as he leans in to kiss her.

Oh. He is as much a revelation as the books she held today, breaking her wide open and filling her with so much she'd never even dared to imagine. He tastes her, contenting himself with small sips, so different from the students she's been dating, who want everything right now. It's Dawn who deepens the kiss, teasing at him with her tongue, leaning into his body. She is close enough to feel that he's aroused, and it rekindles the greed in her.

Dawn makes a small, desperate noise, which seems to pull Ethan out of the moment.

"Dawn," he says, his voice roughened. "I beg your forgiveness."

"There's nothing to forgive." She tries to step into the embrace once more, but he takes her by the shoulders.

"This isn't right. I'm taking advantage."

The words claw at her heart. "No. I want this. I want more."

"But I allowed it to come to this. Led you on. I never meant to, it's just -- I've so enjoyed your company. But I cannot do this."

What happened to the co-conspirator, her partner in mischief? How could he be such a Victorian at heart? "Ethan, please. It's fine."

But he's already stepped away from her, is backing away.

"I'm twenty," she declares. "I know what I want. You're not hurting me, or manipulating me. Come here and I'll show you."

"This is wrong." He steps into the street and hails a cab, handing a folded bill in through the window. Ethan beckons her toward it. "I'm so sorry, Dawn."

"If you want to be sorry about something, it should be this crap." But he's already on the run across the street, and the cab driver is cursing at her for holding him up. She folds herself inside the cab, trying not to cry.

Looking down, she sees her hands white-knuckling the book that had held her so entranced.

When the cab pulls up, Dawn leaves the taxi without even waiting for any change. She runs for her building, desperate to make it to her room before she breaks into sobs.

She gets as far as her floor. Valryn is returning from the soda machine with her standard Diet Cherry Coke, and by then Dawn is crying so hard she can't even form words. She wants Valryn to leave her alone, but she follows to Dawn's room and tries to tease out her story.

"Is it this Ethan? He's just a creep, forget about him."

"You don't know a fucking thing about it." This, at least, she manages to make comprehensible. "Go away."

But Valryn stays, trying to make her see reason. She doesn't leave until Dawn rises and shoves her out the door.

She sobs until her head throbs and her breath hitches uselessly. For the first time in days she falls asleep before three or four. For the first time in years she dreams about Glory.

Well, not Glory, but the tower. The sway of it, cobbled together by madmen and women. The chill of the wind up there, or maybe it was just the fear that made her shiver so violently. In the dream, blood wells and drips from her forearms where Doc sliced her skin. Shallow cuts, shallow cuts. The blood vanishes into thin air, but doesn't. It's like acid, eating away at this dimension. Each drop of blood creates a little hole in the fabric of the universe, and soon Dawn is staring at an opening the size of a bucket, seething and edged with a brimstony red.

She gazes at it and her eyes fill with tears. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

***

Dawn decides she owes herself a day to stay curled under the covers and cry. The sobs have given way to quieter weeping that produces a kind of altered state as the day wears on. It's almost comforting.

Valryn checks on her in the late afternoon. Dawn doesn't throw her out, but she doesn't respond, either. She wraps herself in her comforter and weeps through Val's pep talk, and then her annoyed lecture. "What's the matter with you? You're making yourself sick over some stupid guy who doesn't even notice you." At last she leaves and Dawn locks the door behind her, curling back up in bed.

She dreams again about the tower. The seething tear in the universe is bigger now, and she wills herself to bleed faster, open it wider. When it looks large enough, she opens her arms in a kind of embrace and dives into it.

But something goes wrong and the opening snaps shut on her as she's halfway through. She's suspended between dimensions, red hot blades slicing through her where the portal has closed on her.

Gasping, she wakes, bolting upright in bed.

Her skin feels like it's on fire.

***

Val stops by to see if she's going to their first class, finds her pacing her room. The pain is all Dawn can think about.

"I told you you were going to--"

"Just shut it," Dawn snaps.

"Tell me what's wrong."

"Everything. My head feels like it's full of broken glass, and my skin hurts."

"You think maybe you have shingles?" She tries to lift Dawn's oversized tee.

Dawn grabs at Valryn's wrist. "Don't. The air hurts it worse. I don't have a rash or anything."

"Get your coat and boots. I'm taking you to the clinic."

"I'm in my pajamas."

"Like half your classmates don't wear theirs to class. C'mon."

Valryn bundles her into her coat and marches her across campus to the clinic. While they walk Val calls their prof and makes excuses for them both. "I don't feel right just leaving her there. When I'm sure she's okay I'll check in for the assignment." She snaps her phone shut. "See? Easy."

Nothing seems easy but this. Letting someone else decide what must be done and letting them do it. She even lets Val push the elevator buttons to get to the fifth floor clinic, lets her talk to the receptionist and fill out the paperwork while Dawn sits huddled in her coat.

Though Val tries to impress on the staff that things are dire, it still takes more than an hour to call her in. Actually, she leaves it up to Val to track how long they wait, too; she only knows because every fifteen minutes Val stomps up to the desk and says how long it's been.

After the third time check, she leans her head on Val's shoulder and tells her about Ethan. The whole story.

"He sounds like less of a creep than I've been thinking," Valryn grudgingly admits.

"I could stand it if he were a little less honorable," Dawn retorts.

"Don't say that."

"Why is it okay to go out with guys my age who want to ram their tongues down my throat five minutes after they meet me, but a man who's older than me is automatically a creep? He's been nothing but concerned about my feelings and sense of safety."

She doesn't get an answer to that, because a nurse finally calls her into an exam room. Valryn stays in the waiting room with a battered People.

They poke and prod and stare down her throat, but they can't find anything wrong with her. They sell her a bottle of generic Tylenol for the pain and send her off.

Val walks her home and leaves her with orders to sleep, but as soon as she goes, Dawn pulls on a sweater and jeans and heads for the bookstore. The walk there feels miles longer than two days ago. She pauses just outside to catch her breath and summon as much calm as she can.

When she steps inside the buzz feels stronger -- that sense of power she'd gotten the first time she came here. It reduces the pain in her head and her skin to mere background noise. Though she's grateful for the relief, it also puts her on guard. What would Giles say about a place like this? Why is she in tune with this energy now, after so many years of registering nothing?

Sebastian emerges from the curtained back room, at first delighted to see her, then reluctant to give up the name of Ethan's hotel. She says somehow she ended up with an envelope with his name on it that she needs to return to him. Dawn's not sure how believable her story is, but it was the best she could come up with on the walk over.

Sebastian says he'd be happy to see that the envelope is returned to Ethan, but Dawn shakes her head. "I wouldn't feel right. I mean, he trusts you so I do, but I just wouldn't feel right unless I put it in his hands myself."

The shopkeeper chews his lip, considering. Dawn takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. The feeling of power here, of ancient mysteries, is too much for her. It grates against raw nerves, gathers in her throat until she feels she can barely breathe. She wants to reach across the counter and grab him by the shirt front.

"This is against my strict policy," Sebastian says. "But since he brought you here and introduced you as a friend, I'll make an exception." He produces a slip of paper from under the counter and writes in excruciatingly slow but perfect penmanship, while Dawn entertains thoughts about pulling his heart from his chest.

"It's just four blocks from here," he says as he offers the slip, and begins to launch into fastidious directions.

She has to get out. Dawn snatches the slip from his fingers and thanks him profusely, then turns and flees.

She knows the name of the hotel. It's not the most fashionable place, not anymore, but it's grand and expensive. Now and again when she and her friends feel like playing grown-up, they break out the panyhose (or ties) and go for one or two pricey drinks.

Everything rebounds on her worse now on the walk to his hotel: her pain, her misery. Dawn bypasses the front desk and goes straight to the gleaming brass elevators, tears starting to flow again.

By the time she reaches Ethan's door, her breath is hitching again. There's no answer to her knock, and she raises her hand again, pounding on the dark wood with the side of her fist. For some crazy reason she thinks of first grade, how Mrs. Herschel taught her to make seahorses by pressing the side of her curled fist into fingerpaint, then onto the paper. She keeps up the pounding until she finally hears the snick of the lock and the door opens a few inches.

"Dawn," Ethan says.

She tries for a deep breath, but the sound of snuffling snot wrecks any dignity she thought that might provide. "You are stupid and heartless."

Ethan blinks. He looks vague and unfocused somehow, but in a moment he snaps back to his usual sharpness. "Dawn, I--"

"You like to think you're so unconventional, but you let something meaningless like a difference in ages dictate what you're allowed to want. What I'm allowed to want. And how patronizing is that? I can't be interested in you because I choose to. It has to be because you're taking advantage. How nice to be the master of the universe that way. You're big-headed and cruel and not so different from every other guy out there."

Ethan swings the door open wider. "Dawn, come inside, please."

"Because you're willing to listen, or because you don't want the other guests to?"

He offers a small smile. "A little of both." He extends a hand to her. "Come."

Dawn ignores the hand but steps inside, through a thread of cigar smoke. Ethan's not holding one, though.

"You're right," Ethan says.

No one ever says this to her.

"I thought I was being unfair to you."

"This is what's unfair," Dawn says. "Ignoring what I say because you've got it all worked out in your head how things are."

"Yes."

"You said I was remarkable. Wait, no--" That was the dream. She gives her head a shake. "I dreamed that."

"It's true. I find you quite remarkable."

"But not enough to know my own mind and heart."

"You've changed my opinion on that."

"You mean that?" She finds herself weaving on her feet.

"Dawn, you're ill." He lays a palm on her forehead. His hand is so, so cool.

"You didn't answer."

"Of course I meant it. Now tell me what's wrong."

"I don't know. My head really hurts, and my skin -- it's like I'm on fire."

"When did this start?"

"I don't know. Sometime during the night. I mean, my head hurt before, that started when I was with you the other day. But this -- god, I feel so bad. I thought maybe I had shingles, but the clinic --" She dissolves into tears again.

"Did anything happen? Did you have any dreams?"

"I was falling. No. I dived -- dove -- dived. There was an opening between, but I got caught. God, my head --"

"You saw a doctor."

Dawn nods. "They couldn't find anything."

Ethan smoothes her hair back from her face. "I want you to sit here. I'm going to make some tea -- it will make you feel better."

A laugh escapes her that's at least half a sob. "Tea. English cure-all."

"It will help, I promise." Ethan settles her on the sofa and goes into a little alcove where he makes noises that make her think of Giles.

She rises again to pace, so uncomfortable that she wants to claw at herself, yet too miserable to put a hand to herself. She can hardly endure the slide of fabric against her skin. Again she catches a thread of smoke and sees that it's coming from a little table by the door that leads to the hallway. The cigar smolders in an ashtray before a cone of mud or clay, with cowrie shells pressed into it where eyes would be. There's a shotglass of something amber next to the ashtray. It doesn't look like Ethan's abandoned his own smoke and drink there, but that it's some kind of offering, and the table's an altar.

The smoke makes her cough, and she resumes pacing. Most other surfaces are covered in piles of books, most old, a few new. A yellow legal pad peeps out from beneath one stack, and Dawn suppresses the urge to tug it out and read Ethan's notes.

Leaning against one of the stacks of books is a piece of vellum with some kind of symbol on it. Like a Chinese character, but not quite. Like the love child of a Chinese character and the dingbat Prince changed his name to. There's something beautiful and mysterious about it, and she brushes her fingertips on the vellum. Her skin is too tender even for that contact, and she sucks in her breath.

"Dawn."

She turns to him. "I'm sorry. I can't sit still."

"It'll be ready in just three minutes. You'll have a bit of tea, and you'll feel better." He closes the distance between them and raises his hands to her temples, rubbing gently. "Tell me if this makes things worse."

Dawn sighs. This is all she wants, all she's ever wanted. His touch almost reduces the pain to background noise. She thinks she should say something, but no words will come, not until he breaks the contact. "No," she whimpers.

"I'll be right back. The tea will help, more than this."

Her breath turns ragged as panic rises in her. She focuses on the sounds from the little alcove, more Giles noises. Maybe she should call Giles. London's so far away, though, and he'll be mad at her for letting her studies slide.

Ethan's right back, just as he said, and she lets her thoughts about Giles drift away. He presses a mug into her hands. "It should be cool enough to drink. I put some ice in." He leaves his hands cupped around hers, urges them upward. "Drink. That's right, Dawn."

She takes two swallows, makes a face. "It's horrible."

"You must drink it."

"What will it do?"

"It will take away the pain. It will also make you sleep."

Dawn suddenly realizes he's scared. "Am I dying?"

He strokes her hair. "Of course not." But it couldn't be clearer that he's lying, and that scares her too.

She takes a deep breath and finishes off the tea.

"You should lie down," Ethan says.

It hits her fast, and she sways. "Yeah. I really should."

He helps her to the couch, then draws up a chair beside her.

"Don't leave me." It's so hard to stay awake.

"I won't."

"You'd be surprised ... how many say that."

Ethan strokes her brow. His cool skin on hers is so soothing. "I'm not them."

No. He's not like anyone.

"Don't fight it. You need to sleep."

She gives herself up to it, to the feel of his hand on her face. As she drifts off, she catches a few murmured words.

Never meant this.... thought you'd break your bonds.... they cut you instead....

Makes no sense.

Doesn't matter.

She sinks down.

When she wakes, Dawn is lying on top of a king bed in a darkened room, a throw spread over her. She breathes quietly, unmoving, testing to see if her head feels better, if the nerves in her skin have calmed.

She doesn't quite feel normal, but she feels good.

Dawn tosses back the throw, sees she's fully dressed, except her shoes. Well, of course. She'd made it abundantly clear he didn't have to roofie her if that was what he wanted. Not to mention it was damn hard work getting him to want her at all. Sitting up, she pauses again to test how she feels. Not at all woozy or ill.

Relieved, she rises and pads in stockinged feet to a door that shows a crack of light below. It leads to the suite's sitting room, where Ethan sits hunched over a book on the sofa, opened texts scattered around him on the cushions, the coffee table and even the floor around him.

"You look like a guy feeding pigeons on a park bench," Dawn says, startling him badly.

"I'm sorry -- what?"

She waves a hand. "The books. They reminded me of birds, crowded all around you." Vaguely she wonders why she came up with this image instead of thinking first of Giles and a million research sessions.

"How do you feel?"

"Good. Nothing hurts. I feel -- kind of cocooned, though. Not like the pain is gone, more like it's muffled. Extremely well muffled."

Reaching up to rub his neck, he offers a bleary smile. "It's a relief to hear that. And you're a very good judge of what's happening in your body. The tea is more a temporary fix than a cure. I'm searching for that." She wonders if the number of books scattered around him is a good sign, or bad.

"How long was I asleep?"

He checks his watch, then rubs a hand over his face. "Over six hours. Are you hungry?"

Dawn stops to consider, then nods. "That's not muffled at all."

"We can order up if you like. Great heaps of pasta, ateak and potatoes, whatever you like."

She has never done room service. It seems so incredibly decadent. "Breakfast. Giant salvers of artery-clogging foods. And gallons of coffee."

Her use of the word salver makes him laugh. He picks up the phone and orders enough for at least the two of them.

By the time she showers and runs a toothpasted finger over her teeth, the salvers have arrived. She's seated crosslegged on the floor, halfway through a scone heaped with double Devon cream when she yelps, "Shit! Val's gonna freak!"

"Val?"

"My friend Valryn. She's been great -- she took me to the clinic and sat with me the whole time, and I'm sure she's going to check up on me. She'll call out the militia if I just disappear."

"We can't have that," Ethan says, and she gets the distinct feeling there's a tickle of alarm under the amused surface.

She digs her cell out of her bag. "Val, it's me."

As predicted, there's freakage.

"I'm fine. Well, I'm much better, anyway. I'm staying with my cousin. I was so freaked I called my father, all crying and hysterical. He called his cousin who lives out here in the burbs, and she came for me."

"You have a cousin in the burbs?"

"Seriously, who knew? Typical Hank. But he said he'd try to get a flight out if he can pry himself from work. Shockerama, huh? Hank steps up."

"You must have put on one hell of a freakout."

"Well, you heard me the other day. Kinda like that, but more. Anyway, I'm swanning around, mostly sleeping. Can you pass the word to my profs? I'll call you when I know more about what I'm doing, and you have my cell."

"Feel better, chica. I'll be in touch."

Dawn flips her phone shut, and Ethan directs a look at her, acute and assessing. "You gave yourself quite a bit of leeway with that tale."

Heat rises in her cheeks. "I don't know. I just rode on instinct. If you don't want me here--"

"I'm perfectly content to have you here, as long as you're content to stay."

Content. It's a word she never thinks about, never applies to herself. But she realizes that she is. "Okay then," she says, and reaches for the jar of cream.

"Who's Hank?" Ethan asks as Dawn starts in on a wedge of frittata.

The question startles her. "What?"

He looks up from the book he's been paging through. "You told your friend 'Hank steps up,'" he reminds her.

"Oh. Yeah, I did. He's my father. Kind of a crappy lie, actually." She pushes a stray potato cube from the home fries around on her plate.

"He's not in the habit of 'stepping up'?"

"Not so much. He didn't even bother to show up at my mom's funeral."

"How long ago did you lose your mother?"

"Six years ago."

"And they were divorced by then?"

She nods. "For about five years. I guess he divorced all of us, not just mom. Guess it never really took. Fatherhood, I mean." Sometimes, when she remembers where she really came from, she thinks it was her that never took. That the monk mojo never really stuck with him, and pulled him away from Buffy, too.

Ethan reaches forward to help himself to one of the scones, affording her a look at the forearm extending from his rolled up sleeve. The first thing she notices is the bold tattoo around his wrist, a tribal-black twist of barbed wire. It curls toward itself at his inner wrist, but does not meet. The second thing she sees is a heavily scarred patch farther up on his inner arm, disappearing under the white cotton shirt sleeve.

She can't stop herself. She reaches out too, brushing her fingers over his wrist. "Ethan, your arm. What happened?"

He doesn't pull away, but he doesn't look at her. "My work has taken me to some of the ... dicier parts of the world. I had a bit of bad luck, and was imprisoned for a time."

"That scar--"

Ethan gives her just a fleeting glance, a flicker of a smile. "It's an old story, and fairly dull."

Dawn's pushed him again, tried to take things too far too fast. She doesn't know why he seems to inspire that in her. She circles the tattoo with her hand. "And this. You got it to symbolize all of it. Imprisonment and freedom both."

Now he turns to her. "Of course you'd understand."

She doesn't quite get that, but it doesn't matter, because he leans in then and kisses her. Her response is urgent, and though she'd like to rein it in, keep from showing him just how greedy she really is, she can't hold back. He doesn't seem to mind, counters with unspoken demands of his own. When he drops a hand to tease one of her nipples through the heavy sweater, she pulls back to yank the sweater off.

"I want skin on skin," she says. "Please." She reaches back to unhook her bra, but he puts a hand on her arm.

"Dawn, we've forgotten ourselves. My priority must be finding a way to help you."

She casts a glance at all the books, apparently rejected. "And when the home medical guide doesn't cough up the answer, we naturally turn to the big pile of grimoires." Why this is only occurring to her now, she's not sure. The cocooned feeling is fading, whether from time passing or the sudden rush of blood and hormones. "I'm presuming these aren't the fake ones."

"Correct on both counts."

"Why? If I need these, somebody did something to me. Made me sick."

Ethan goes very still.

Suddenly the room feels drafty, and Dawn quickly pulls her sweater back on. "What?"

"Something was done to you," he says slowly. The sexy partners-in-crime manner has vanished completely.

"The book."

"The book enters into things, but what was done happened long before that."

She tries to think back. When she first met Ethan? It wasn't that long ago -- but how would he know about anything before that? "Cut the cryptic. How long ago?"

"Six years."

"The tower -- but how would you know that?"

"Not the tower. Before that."

Dawn's voice drops into what Xander calls the red zone (*more menace than you'd think a girl could muster*). "What do you know about before?"

Ethan takes a measured breath, locks his gaze on hers. "I know your history. Where you came from."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Someone who's appalled at what they did to you. Your imprisonment for all these years."

Her stomach does a dive worthy of Magic Mountain. "Imprisonment," she echoes. "I don't understand."

"Don't you think it was cruel to take the kind of force you were and hobble you by forcing you into the body and life they chose for you?"

You. He's talking to Dawn, but he's not.

"The monks, you mean?"

"Is there anyone else so arrogant as true believers?"

She recites the story she's always heard, but her lips feel strangely cold and numb as she speaks. "They had to hide the Key from Glory. Tuck it away in the last place she'd ever look. They put it -- me -- under Buffy's protection."

"Christ, Dawn. You never needed protection. Do you think a pathetic godlet like Glorificus could touch the kind of power you have?"

That's just crazy. "Then why? If I could take care of myself, why hide me?"

"They were afraid of you. They wanted to hobble you."

That word again. It makes her feel sick. Dawn shakes her head, and feels a glimmer of a headache between her brows. "I don't believe this."

"Why? Because they told you all this time you're just a girl, and you believe them. You've come to accept that your prison is all you are. Glorificus' search for you brought you to their attention, and you terrified them. Not because Glorificus wanted you. Because of what you were."

Dawn shivers. "This is creeping me out. You're talking to the Key."

Ethan makes a dismissive sound. "The Key is a mere fraction of what you are, just the way Dawn is. They limit you by saying you exist for one purpose. You're more powerful than that."

No one has ever told her she's powerful. Even when the fate of the world rested on her, she was just a tool, something to be used and cast aside. Cosmic MacGuffin, that's Dawn. Now here's someone who sees her as more. Sees her apart from everyone who's defined her till now: daughter of Joyce and Hank, sister of the Slayer, even the prey of Glory. Ethan's looking beyond all that. It unnervess her a little, feels like he's looking past her. But she knows he's not.

She gets to her feet, but all she can think to do is stand in the middle of the room, sweater cuffs pulled down over her fists, which are clenched at her side.

"What they did was intolerably cruel," he says again. "Trapping you in the body of a child--"

"I was fourteen!" she snaps. Anger flares so strongly it feels almost like it's then, and one of Buffy's friends has dismissed her. "I wasn't a baby."

"No," he says. "But it would have been less heartless to send you here as an infant. Can you think of a worse age to be, even under normal circumstances? Wanting so much that you can't have, aware of how limited you are, how much you depend on others?"

"Stop it! You make it sound like I was aware of everything. I was just me. A fourteen-year-old girl." Why is she insisting on this? Retreating into her cell, resisting the harsh, unaccustomed light.

"You hated it, didn't you?"

Tears spring to her eyes, and the headache worsens. "I'm not talking about this anymore. Just tell me what's happening to me now."

Ethan meets her gaze. "You're outgrowing your prison. But the bonds they created are too strong. They'll crush you."

"Tell me the truth, Ethan. You did this to me -- the outgrowing thing. What's happening to me now, it's your fault."

"Yes," Ethan says, and the admission disarms her. "And you're correct in believing the book started all this. Believe me, Dawn, I didn't mean to harm you."

"No. You just meant to change me back, to end me, the pitiful cage, and let the sparkly green ball of energy out. Thanks for asking me what I want."

"End you? Why would you think that?"

Because Willow threatened to do that. Her eyes fill as she remembers the terror she'd felt. She'd never doubted for a second that Willow would do it without a moment's thought, or that she could. Sure, Willow apologized since then, any number of times, but Dawn has never felt at ease with her.

"You're trembling." Ethan rises to go to her, but she steps back, puts up the cop hand.

"Stop."

But he already has, halted by her gesture. "Did someone try that? To unmake you?"

"Someone threatened. Someone I trusted and liked."

"And now I've come along," Ethan says softly, "betrayed you in the same way."

"Don't flatter yourself. She was a lot more important to me than you." But it rings hollow. He is important to her, has filled her thoughts for so many weeks. "I thought you found me interesting. Maybe even liked who I am. Now I find out you were just playing with the shiny wrapping paper on the package you were just dying to open."

"That isn't true." Ethan steps toward her again, and this time she doesn't retreat. He takes her hand, and she lets him. "It is true I've been pursuing what you were -- and still are, I believe. But I've grown to care about Dawn very much too."

"You mean the cripple the monks made?" The bitterness she'd meant to put in that question doesn't quite come through. So much of her attention is on her hand in his that it's a miracle she can speak at all.

"I mean the young woman I see standing before me. Who's bright and funny and warm-hearted and altogether too attractive for my own good. I admit I didn't expect that."

Her breathing grows ragged. She should pull her hand away. "You're lying."

Ethan smiles. "I'm occasionally careless with the truth, and I'm never sincere. That's why I'm bungling it so badly right now."

Oh. She can think of nothing to say to that. The response that rises in her is all physical, and it overwhelms everything else.

"What can I do to gain your trust?" Ethan asks.

Heat suffuses her skin, and down below her belly. At this moment she doesn't care about trust. She wants the feel of his mouth, his skin, wants to feel his breath tickling her neck as he whispers things that make her feel wild.

"What happens to me when you get what you want?" Her voice sounds so distant, like she's in a dream. Her words could be those of any girl afraid of being seduced and abandoned. "Do I burn away?"

She feels like she's burning now. If she does not have him, she'll turn to ash.

"Your human aspect won't be harmed. What's been locked away will be released. You'll be complete."

She feels a different kind of release gathering in her muscles and her blood. How can he do this to her, bring her to the brink with a simple touch, his gaze and the sound of his voice? He's affected too, she can see that, but not like her. She wants to cry out, let herself fall, but she forces herself to speak once more. "Something's got to be in it for you."

"Yes." He has not lied to her in all of this. This is what he can do to make her trust him, she realizes, and he's already done it. "I've been hobbled too. I want to be made whole again."

Ethan raises her hand and turns it to press a kiss into her palm. She cries out, lost.

Dawn lies curled up on the sofa watching Ethan, who now sits on the floor among his books. She really should care that the pile of rejects is growing, but the sight of his hands, his mouth, makes her think only about what she wants this minute. Desire buzzes through her whole body, pulses in her blood. She wants him, and it pisses her off that he's denying her.

It's the same overwhelming capital-w Want that would sweep through her just before she'd stick some forbidden object in her pocket or her bag. Didn't matter whether it was a lipstick or a cheap ring, a sweater or a charm from the Magic Box. Something would spark this greed in her, the anger that whatever it was was being withheld from her.

Greed has always been her weakness, always been the thing she was scolded for. For stealing, for wanting too much of her mother's attention, for wanting anything at all from her father. Dawn wants too much and expects too much. Everyone who knows her knows that. She's all about the greed.

It makes sense to her now. It's not the pathetic story about the girl with the father who never thought about anyone but himself and the mother who died when Dawn was much too young to deal and the sister whose problems always came first because the fate of the goddamn world rests on her shoulders. There's always been some part of her that knew something vital had been stolen from her, that knew she was caged and wouldn't let her rest. Some deep knowledge had made her greedy, insatiable, and the only response she ever got was to be scolded, lectured -- she even did it to herself.

And here she is, pressing herself into another box to make everyone happy. Studying the ancient languages (though they feed something in her, that part of her that responds to ancient things), preparing for the Watcher's Academy, trying to be everything Giles and Buffy and Xander want her to be. Everything her mom would have wanted. She's tried to please everyone -- except for Hank. She's through jumping through hoops for him.

She's done what they wanted, tamped down the greed (when's the last time she stole something? Not since Sunnydale.), redirected her energies. Been the good little girl.

She makes a small noise, rubs at her forehead.

Ethan looks up. "Is the headache back?"

"Just beginning," she lies.

He gets to his feet. "I'll make some tea."

"You mean that nasty stuff? I don't want to conk out for another six hours."

"You won't. You won't need near the dosage you required when you first got here. It'll relax you a bit, at most."

"All right then." She follows him to the little kitchen alcove, slides her arms around his waist from behind as he fills the kettle. "It's time you took a break anyway."

Dawn half expects him to tell her there's serious work to be done, time is of the essence, but he turns toward her and slips her sweater over her head, dropping it onto the floor. "Oh," she breathes.

She starts to reach back to unhook her bra, but he shoves it upward, releasing her breasts. "Dawn," he murmurs, and brushes his thumbs over her nipples, coaxing a shiver from her. "How responsive you are. How perfect." He takes them in his palms as he kisses her, teasing her with his tongue and his hands. "Tell me what you want." His warm breath on her neck makes her shiver again.

Has any man ever asked her this? "You. I want you inside. Please."

Taking her by the shoulders, Ethan gazes into her eyes. "Never say that."

"Ethan? What did I --"

"I never want to hear you say 'please' again. It's not your place to beg." He works at the button of her jeans, and the feeling of his fingers against the skin of her belly makes her arch her back. He kisses her again as he glides her zipper down, so slowly she feels like she'll die. His fingers stray beneath her panties and she gasps. "Own your desire. Your greed. Take what you want."

She pulls at his shirt, fumbles at his pants, and in the next moment they're skin to skin, Ethan lifting her in surprisingly strong arms and taking her right there against the pantry door.

"Oh," she huffs as he gently sets her down on shaky legs.

Here is the first person in her life who really knows her. Who understands about greed.

Ethan asks if she'd like to take a quick shower while he tends to making the tea.

Dawn grunts. "Showers require standing. Standing requires legs made of something other than jelly."

He catches her around the waist, pulls her close. "They're quite nice looking, even if they're not terribly functional at present."

"You're not helping."

He cups her cheek in his hand and moves in for a kiss.

"Oh," she says yet again.

Releasing her, he says, "Run along. Feel free to use my robe, if you'd like. It's hanging on the door." Then he's quickly gathering his clothes, pulling on his shirt.

Dawn catches a brief glimpse of scars crisscrossing his skin, a flash of the horribly burned place on his arm. She thinks about asking, but decides now is not the time.

She stands under the hot spray, lost in thoughts about Ethan's body. Wiry, not an ounce of fat, but well defined, powerful. But there's a secret history mapped out in his scars. And of course she's greedy for it, intends to know it before she's through.

Dawn washes her hair, which is just going greasy. Ethan has an amazing supply of grooming products for a straight man, all from a British maker she's never heard of, all with a scent that is sexy and deeply mysterious. She laughs as it occurs to her that the two of them will smell alike, and at the same time there's a down-low throb at the idea.

She towels off her hair the best she can and turns to the hook on the door, where she finds a silk robe in dense, dark paisley. It glides over her body, just like her fantasy about his voice, silk against naked skin. Her nipples tighten into hard buds as the robe moves over them while she combs out her hair.

When she emerges, he's looking over his scrawl of notes. He puts them aside and rises, smiling. "Satisfactory?"

"Mm. My hair's not going to dry for about six months."

The smile turns sly. "Well, do you have anywhere else to be?"

School flits across her mind for something like a microsecond. Silk flows over her skin as she reaches for him. "Not really."

She kisses him, offering and demanding. His hand drops and parts the robe below the tie. Trailing over the still-damp skin of her thighs, settling at the warmth between. His teeth nibble lightly at her bottom lip as his fingers set up a slow rhythm. A faint, helpless noise escapes her and he rewards her by increasing the pressure just that slight bit more. "What a beauty you are," he whispers. "How rare and extraordinary."

Dawn finds the hem of his shirt, lets her hand slide upward against his bare skin. He shifts his hand, changes the rhythm until her questing is forgotten, lost in the rising sensation as he brings her to release once more.

She staggers against him and he holds her steady, hand stroking her wet hair. "God, what a beauty you are." Her heart hammers against his chest. He presses a kiss to her temple and says, "Come now. Have your tea before it gets cold."

Dawn sits in his robe and drinks the tea. It's less vile this time, and makes her feel less druggy. It -- or something -- makes her feel bold. "Tell me about prison," she says quietly. She has the right. They've talked about her own captivity.

He goes still for a moment, hand poised over paper, pen hovering in the air. Then he looks up, meets her gaze. "What do you want to know?"

"How did you end up there?"

Ethan lays the pen and pan aside, leans back in the overstuffed chair. "Have you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo?"

"I loved that book. I cried buckets."

"Of course you did." The warmth and empathy in his voice make her tear up now. "Something in you responded to your own story."

"It's yours I want to hear. You were falsely accused?"

"Not precisely. A former friend put me in the path of people who had an interest in discovering what I could do."

"God. Was it jealousy?"

"It would be vanity to believe that, so I choose to, yes." So much pain behind the self-deprecating smile. She sees it as brave, the way she always did with Xander.

"You have the same initials. Edmond Dantes. Ethan Devereaux."

"So we do. I hadn't realized."

"They hurt you. But they damaged you, too. Hobbled you, you said."

He's unconsciously rubbing his hand lightly over the burn scar, through his sleeve. "Yes. They were interested not only in examining my talents, but extinguishing them."

"I'm so sorry."

He gives her his entre nous smile. "They managed to take very little from me. However, it is mine, and I want it back."

"How did you stop them?"

"They were true believers. That's all they understand. They had no hope of comprehending an old paradigm shifter like me, and I kept them from seeing there was more to me than they thought."

"Paradigm shifter," she repeats. She frowns into her tea. "You're a chaos magician."

That startles him. "You're familiar--"

"I've run across a lot in twenty years. Or six. Or an infinity." She leans forward suddenly, and the robe slips open. "Ethan. You're him. Ethan Rayne." She can see the wheels spinning as he tries to summon a response to that, but before he succeeds, she laughs. "Oh my god, how good is this?" She stands, the robe falling completely open, but she doesn't pull it closed as she walks toward him. "How fucking good is this? Mama, I've met my soulmate, and he's Ethan Rayne."

Dawn laughs again. "Guess that means I beat my sister -- and all my friends -- in the Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Sex Partner Sweepstakes. Wow. Ethan Rayne. Heard a lot about you. Can't believe we'd never met."

"Perhaps the monks decided it wasn't worth introducing us." He's very still, wary and watchful. You'd learn that, Dawn imagines, as a guest of the Initiative.

"I bet they were sure they'd thought of everything, too. I admit you're not what I expected. That's probably why it took so long for everything to connect. From what I've heard, you seemed more into the magical equivalent of blowing up people's mailboxes."

Ethan winces. "That's a particularly unflattering way of describing it, but you'd be rght. That is who I used to be, a schoolboy prankster."

"But now you've got more important goals. Something seething with power and danger. Unless you've already accomplished what you meant to, and the rest is just an impressive story to sucker me in. Maybe all you want is to send Giles a naked picture of me on your cellphone with a text saying 'I'm in ur slayer's sister polishing ur key.'"

"It's an amusing thought, but no. My purpose is exactly what I described."

"Was it prison -- and we're talking about the Initiative, right? -- is that what made you more serious about how you use your abilities? Or did you not even have serious power when my sister knew you?"

"You're a very perceptive girl."

The word girl makes Dawn bristle. She pulls the robe closed. "Don't get all condescending on me."

"That's not how I meant it. You're right. My power wasn't that impressive, and I wasted what I did have on trivia. After I escaped from the Initiative, I spent years learning to work around the damage they caused. It's true, I have more power than I did before. But I want what was stolen from me."

Dawn understands this, now more than ever. "Where does Giles fit into all this? I know he let them take you."

He holds her gaze. "Rupert is an afterthought, my dear. I have learned that the longterm goal is usually more important than momentary amusement. I haven't lied to you about my motives. Or my feelings about you. Any impulse to avenge myself is secondary to making sure you're happy."

Dawn stands over him, regarding him. He's relaxed a fraction, seemingly less convinced that she means to do him bodily harm.

"So," Ethan says softly. "What happens next?"

She doesn't know the answer until she hears herself say it. "We have sex again, now that I'm in on the joke.

She hadn't really thought the sex could get hotter, but she was wrong. Now that she knows who he is, there's a transgressiveness that goes beyond the older guy thing and into Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? territory. Beyond hot.

But it's not just that.

Ethan knows some things that none of the college boys she's slept with have even dreamed of.

Like the thing he's doing now. Stroking her skin as they lie together all afterglowy (they've gone traditional this time and used the bed). But it's not so much sleepy and winding down as it is heating her back up, building a slow fire that seems like it will never extingish. Right now, feathering his thumb over the pulse point at her wrist. How can this be so much sexier than the whole freshman year fling with Eric, who'd consumed her thoughts for four whole months? Ethan slows the rhythm of his thumb across her skin, which was hardly a rhythm in the first place.

She emits a soft squeak as she lets the overanalyzing go. She sinks into pure sensation, distantly noticing how the feathery stokes on her wrist create tiny ripples throughout her whole body. How her flesh tightens here and swells there, anticipating, longing.

It's like drifting into a fog, but some small part of her fights it. "If I could think at all, I'd be saying something right now," she says, just to hear her voice. It barely sounds like her.

"The legs are the first to go, then it's the brain."

"And there's nothing medical science can do."

"One hopes not." He changes the pace of what he's doing again, causing her to suck in a breath. "Good sex should take you out of your head. It's one of the things we use to achieve a state beyond conscious thought."

"'We'?"

"Chaos magicians."

"What's beyond? For you, I mean."

"Would you laugh at me if I said the sacred?"

"I thought you guys didn't believe in that."

"Some don't. It's not required. But neither is unbelief. Why not steal from every paradigm man's ever devised, if what you're after is the sacred? Why set out to find the fountain and decide a cocktail straw is the only way to get at it?"

It's the last discourse she'd ever have imagined coming from Ethan Rayne. Actually, she can't imagine anyone she knows talking about such things. The sacred. Willow uses the word sometimes, but Dawn always has the sense that she's playing a part. Usually it feels hollow, but now hearing it makes her chest feel weird. "Jailhouse conversion -- that what this is?"

His smile this time seems very private. She doesn't like the way it shuts her out. "No. It came after." He resumes the slow circling with his thumb and her whole body buzzes with wanting him.

She forces herself to focus. "So tell me -- am I just one more paradigm? Borrow me a while, like your cigar-chomping friend out there, then show me the door when you get what you want, or just get bored?"

"He hardly chomps."

"You shit."

"Dawn, I'm just beginning to realize how constantly surprising you are. There's not a chance of me growing bored with you. There's never been any person -- any paradigm -- like you." His hand and his breathing still. "Christ, I've been an idiot."

"What?"

"No wonder I can't find a way to free you. I'm looking in all the wrong places. You're the force no one's ever imagined, except --"

"Whoever wrote that book."

"Exactly. You brought your satchel. Is it in there?"

Dawn nods. "I couldn't even think of leaving it behind. It felt like death trying to walk away from it."

Ethan throws back the sheet and pulls on his trousers, then bounds toward the sitting room.

Dawn pulls on his robe and follows him. Ethan retrieves her messenger bag from the closet where he'd put it and her coat sometime after she arrived. "May I?"

Instead she reaches out for it, and he hands the bag to her. The moment she lays her hand on the book she feels a surge of power that blends with the sexual buzz shimmering in her limbs. Reeling slightly, she plops ungracefully onto the sofa.

Ethan teases the book from her hand. "It's too much for you right now. That's what we're trying to remedy."

"At least sit here by me," she says.

Ethan settles at one end of the sofa while she curls up by him, her head resting by his hip, a hand on his leg. The longing for him is almost unbearable, but she knows what he's doing is more important.

She loses track of time, drifting as he sits next to her, absorbed in his work. Once he emerges from his concentration enough to ask if she'd like something to eat, but she declines and he goes back to his translating without getting anything for himself.

A while later her phone rings, muffled inside her bag. Dawn wonders how many times it's rung unheard while tucked away in the closet. She groans. "It's Val."

"You should answer it then."

Sometimes he sounds so paternalistic. She scowls, but rises and digs the cell out of her bag. "Valryn, hi."

"Dawn, where the hell have you been? I've been trying to get you."

She sits next to Ethan, slouching down to tip her head against on the sofa back. "Oh, my bag got put in a closet where I couldn't hear."

"I've been worried. How are you?"

Ethan reaches out absently and caresses her leg, trailing a thumbnail lightly along the skin of her thigh.

She shivers, and when she speaks her voice sounds weak, breathy. "Doing a lot of sleeping and cuddling with my cousin's cat. She's only got crappy basic cable, but most of the time I'm too zoned out to care."

"Good girl," Ethan whispers, rewarding her with another caress.

"Do they know what's wrong with you?"

"It's some new strain of mono." Where this comes from so effortlessly, she doesn't know. "The pain thing is a little freakish and new, but that's under control. Now it's just the normal mono trauma."

"I want to come out and visit."

"Sweetie, I'd love that, but not yet. Just eating a bowl of soup and half a sandwich exhausts me enough to make me want to sleep three hours. This is as much conversation as I've managed since I got here."

Another teasing stroke from Ethan, this one higher up.

Her breathing turns ragged. "I have to go. Do not worry. I'll call when I'm ready for company, I promise." She flips the phone shut and drops it onto the sofa.

"Very well played," Ethan says.

"You're wicked."

"So I've been told."

"You can't get me all fired up and leave me like this."

"I don't believe you're helpless. Despite your medical condition."

She considers it, but the idea of bringing herself off while sitting next to Ethan is too out there even for her. Instead she rests her cheek against his shoulder and gazes at the opened book.

It pulls her in.

Her heart beats faster, in a stuttering rhythm. Again there's this flash of -- she won't call it greed, because the book is hers, has been meant for her for millennia, from before its writing. Dawn can feel something shifting and growing inside her as she takes in the black symbols on the pages -- and then its sudden, hard restraint against -- feels like stone walls, iron bars.

The headache seizes her again, and the sexual buzz suffusing her skin fades away and what she feels is like sandpaper against raw nerve endings. A gutteral noise escapes her, and Ethan turns to her.

"Dammit, Dawn." He hastily lays the book on the floor, out of her sight. "Christ, what were you thinking?"

"It's mine."

"It is, but it's too dangerous for you now. Tell me what's happening. Is it your head?"

"My head, my skin. Worse than when I came here." She surges to her feet, unable to sit still. "I only looked for a moment."

"It doesn't matter. You've taken in as much as you can until your bonds are weakened. I'll make some tea."

"I don't want it," she calls after him. "Don't want to sleep."

"You must." She hears him rattling around in the kitchen alcove, filling the kettle, placing it on the burner. The sound is deafening. He emerges and goes to her. "This is very serious." He begins rubbing her temples and the comforting gesture makes her start to cry. He murmurs soothing nothings to her, telling her to be brave, it'll be just a few minutes.

The kettle shrieks and she nearly does too. Ethan hurries to turn off the flame and steep the tea.

"I don't want to sleep. What if I die in my sleep?"

"You won't."

"You promise me?" She knows he can't, not truthfully, but she's not interested in truth right now.

"I promise, Dawn." He strokes her hair.

"You're a wonderful liar," she says. "So talented."

"I'm not lying. In just a bit you'll have some tea, and it will make things better, just the way it did before." He gathers her in his arms, murmuring more assurances. She suspects he's holding her this way so she can't see his expression.

She calms a little by the time he has to leave her to fetch her tea. He brings it the way he had before, with pieces of ice melting into it to cool it faster. "Drink this down, as quickly as you can."

This time she's ready for the horrible taste, so she manages to do as he says. By the time she hands him the empty mug, her head is starting to spin. "I should --" She staggers a little, and Ethan picks her up and carries her into the bedroom. Which might be sexy, if it weren't so Legends of the Fall. "Don't let me die," she tells Ethan, but she's asleep before she hears his answer.

***

When she wakes it's much like before, except the pain isn't quite as well muffled. She pulls on the silk robe, but it doesn't feel as wonderfully liquid against her skin, which is still tender, almost raw.

She wanders through the opened door and finds Ethan at the small desk in the corner of the sitting room. He's poring over some ancient text -- no, writing in some ancient text. She's almost afraid to approach too closely.

He finishes inking something runelike, then looks up. "How are you?"

"Better. But not as comfortable as last time."

He nods. "Time's not on our side, I'm afraid. But I found what I needed. I have to get some supplies for the rite, but I didn't want to leave you until you woke."

"I don't want you to leave at all." She feels like she's nine again, afraid of her parents leaving, even if Buffy is there.

He rises, strokes her face. "I know. But it's necessary. I'll be as quick as I can. Why don't I call for room service, and I'll go once they've come. You are hungry, aren't you?"

"Ravenous. But don't I need to ... I dunno, fast or something?"

"You'll need your strength."

That makes her nerves twitch, but she agrees to his plan. This time she asks for steak and potatoes, and while they wait she goes again to clean up. The hot water irritates her skin rather than soothes it, so she takes probably the shortest shower of her entire life. Same story with combing out her hair; her scalp is so sore -- tenderheaded, as her friend Carlene says -- that she abandons that attempt too. She brushes her teeth and slips into the robe and emerges. "I think we'd better hurry this up."

Ethan nods. "We'll be able to begin as soon as I return."

"What are you working on? Is it safe for me to see?"

"Completely. Come take a look."

Still, her approach is hesitant. The text reminds her of half a million research sessions with her sister and the Scoobies. Old, crabbed, writing, except it stops in mid-sentence in the middle of a page. Dawn touches the blank paper in the margin. "It's dead."

"Totally. Except it won't seem so when I've finished with it."

Catching his eye, she grins. "You're not just studying fake grimoires."

He enfolds her in the entre nous. "You're looking at the means by which I maintain my lifestyle."

"Oh, this is just delicious. How long does--" She's interrupted by a knock from the room service waiter. He sets up her tray on the coffee table, asks her if there's anything else she needs.

"No thanks. This is wonderful."

Ethan closes the door behind the waiter and strokes her cheek. "I'm heading out now. I'll gather everything we need. It shouldn't take more than an hour." He favors her with a kiss that makes her half dizzy. "Now have your dinner so we can start as soon as I return."

It takes longer than he said. Maybe this is just an elaborate ploy, and he's never coming back. He has no ritual, she's going to die, and he's going to let her do it alone. Why shouldn't he leave her? Everyone else does.

She tells herself no, don't be ridiculous -- he's been straight with her through this whole thing. He's found a way to fix her, but whatever he needs for the rite is harder to find than he expected.

Should she let him do it? As sexy and exciting as he is, he's Ethan Rayne for god's sake. She should call Giles, ask him for help. He's infinitely more trustworthy than Ethan.

Except -- when has Giles ever talked with her about what she is and what she can do? Not once since Glory was out of the picture. Dawn had just morphed into a fourteen-year-old girl as far as everyone was concerned. And Giles decided she wasn't his job. Her grief was too much for him. His own was much more important, and he couldn't attend to it properly with a sobbing, sniffling, moping teenager in the way. He stayed the summer, then it was See ya, wouldn't want to be ya.

So what in the fucking hell does she need with Giles now?

As if to reinforce this conclusion, the electronic key card snicks in the lock, and Ethan appears, his leather satchel bulging, and a couple of paper shopping bags in his other hand. When he sees her he looks as relieved as she feels.

He puts on water for yet another tea that looks more like dried bug legs than leaves, then begins to set out candles in a precise pattern. Once the pot is steeping, Ethan draws her to the sofa. "I think things will be a little less complicated if you'd allow me to pull your hair back in a loose plait."

"Of course."

Ethan nods. "While I'm doing that, I'll take you through what we're about to do."

Even though she'd abandoned her own attempt, she finds it comforting as he combs her hair. His attentions make her feel relaxed, almost trancy. As he works, he tells her how this will work.

There are three parts. First the rite. She'll drink the tea he's making, then they'll start the ritual. One of the things he brought back with him is some kind of special clay, which he'll use to mark protective symbols on her body. Once the rite is done, they will attempt to enter a state that's beyond thought.

"You mean sex," Dawn says.

"That's one way it's done. And since the hotel management takes a dim view of drumming..."

"So do I."

He laughs and focuses on braiding her hair for a moment. Dawn hasn't had someone else braid her hair since she was a child. This remembered sensation, more than anything else, makes her feel like everything will be all right.

"So what comes next?"

"We begin to dissolve the bonds that are hurting you. We'll take it slow and easy. I'll be with you the whole time."

"And then ... I'll be free?"

"Dawn, I think it's wise to take things slowly. I'd like to do this in three sessions."

"Sessions. What's that mean, the whole ritual and everything?"

"Yes. The restraints the monks created are extraordinarily strong. I don't want to go mucking about and doing you more harm."

Tears spring to her eyes. "I thought I'd be okay. That we'd do this and I'd be okay."

"You will be. The greatest danger will be past once we've completed the first session." He finishes the braid and wraps a cord of some kind several times around the end. "There. We're just about ready to begin." He offers his hand to help her rise, then caresses her cheek. "Two more things. You must be naked, and you must be blindfolded."

She's been naked or close to it for a good part of the time she's been here, but the two conditions freak her out a little, and the tears start in earnest. "I'm sorry. It's just -- I'm scared."

"Of course you are." He strokes her cheeks, gently thumbs away her tears. "But you're also braver than you know. And I'll be with you the whole time."

Dawn unties the robe's sash and lets the silk puddle at her feet. "Let's start this thing."

Ethan settles the blindfold in place before he tends to anything else. It feels like silk, hardly any weight to it at all, and lets in no light whatsoever. She hears the scratch of matches as he lights the candles, then he places a bowl of tea in her palms and tells her to drink.

It tastes like bug legs, too, but she refrains from commenting or making a face. As soon as she finishes the last of it, Ethan takes the bowl from her hands. She stands, waiting for direction, but he offers none, just smears something cold against her chest, making her gasp.

His fingers keep moving, skipping across the canvas of her skin, pausing only to dip into the cold wetness. The clay he told her about. He begins chanting as he marks her skin, in a language unknown to her. Once he finishes the runes, he hangs a delicate chain around her neck, with a pendant that falls between her breasts. Dawn reaches up to finger it, exploring its facets and sharp downward point. A crystal of some kind.

Without pausing in the chanting, he indicates by touch that she should kneel, and there's a cushion at her feet to settle on. He takes her hand, turning it palm downward, then passes a candle beneath, close enough that she can feel the heat but not enough to burn.

Ethan finishes the chant, then she feels a puff of breath against her arm, smells the pungent smoke of an extinguished flame.

"You did beautifully," Ethan whispers, stroking her jawline and leaning in for a kiss.

"It's over?" She reaches up to push the blindfold off, but he catches her wrists gently.

"The first part is finished. But the blindfold stays for all three." Deftly he wraps another length of silk around her wrists. "Relax and I think you'll come to enjoy it."

The sharp smell makes her wrinkle her nose as he puts out the rest of the candles. Then he helps her to her feet and leads her into the bedroom.

"Would you like your wrists free, or shall I leave them bound?" he asks her. His voice is like the silk that covers her eyes, entwines her wrists.

She's never thought of such a thing. Not in relation to herself, not as anything other than a joke about other people. "Bound," she whispers, and the admission makes her shiver.

Ethan raises her arms above her head and ties the silk to the bedpost. Her heart thumps as she finds herself in such uncharted territory.

The sex is so much more intense with the blindfold and the restraints. Just feathering his fingertips across her belly is enough to make her cry out, and when he teases her thighs apart and bends to taste her, she calls his name over and over until it sounds like meaningless babble.

***

Once her heart slows down to its usual rhythm and her legs stop quivering, Dawn can't say if she touched the sacred, but she knows she did leave conscious thought behind. Ethan spoons her from behind, his hand stroking her head. "Tell me a story," he says softly, his breath rustling the loose hairs at the nape of her neck.

"I can't think of a story."

"Something simple. A memory. From when you were a girl."

As he strokes her hair, she thinks about earlier, when he was weaving the long rope of braid. "My mom used to braid my hair like you did. I loved that so much. We'd talk about things that were going on. I could say things I couldn't when we were face to face."

"Like what?"

"Things that scared me. Or when I was mad at my dad sometimes I could talk about how much he disappointed me. I couldn't stand to do that when I could see her face." She drifts into the memory, the pleasure of the soft-bristled brush against her scalp. "It felt so good, so calming. Except, ow, when she was in a big rush. Stop talking, Dawn, stop moving around, we're late. It hurt." She reaches toward her head to finger her tender scalp, encountering Ethan's hand instead. The contact calms her.

"Tell me another. Your first day at school."

"I was so nervous. I'd been so jealous of Buffy because she got to go, but when it was my turn, I got all scared. Mom was teary, and that made it worse, and Buffy had some kind of school thing she had to go to, so Mom took her and Hank took me. The building was so huge, and there was this long, long sidewalk leading up to it." Her stomach flutters, and she concentrates on the hand stroking her hair. She wets her lips. "They all had mothers. The other little kids, I mean. Carrying their lunchboxes or their sweaters, holding their hands."

"What about you?"

"He was in a hurry. Always had somewhere else to be. He just leaned over me and opened the door and said, 'Knock 'em dead, kiddo.' And that sidewalk, it was so long."

"You walked in by yourself?"

"Uh huh. My stomach was all bunched up, and I was wadding up my jacket in my hands, and all these big kids were brushing past me, and all the little ones hanging onto their mothers. I felt like I was gonna cry, you know?" Her throat is tight right now. "But then I saw this little girl at the classroom door, hanging onto her mother's skirts and just sobbing. And I thought, 'Well, I'm not gonna be like that."

"And then you were brave?"

"And then I was brave. And the teacher lady came up and saw me by myself and told me how brave I was." She laughs, feeling lighter.

"And you're still very brave." The mattress dips as Ethan leans over her. He dabs at her forehead and lips with a cool, damp cloth. It smells like cucumbers, light and fresh. "You're such a remarkable girl."

He dabs at her throat and between her breasts, where the crystal rests. "Tell me more. Tell me about pretending to be Henrietta the Spy."

"Harriet the Spy." She nestles back against him as he resumes spooning. And she tells him.

When she wakes the room is flooded with sunlight and Ethan is gone. Dawn feels fuzzy-headed, and when she rises she finds she has wobbly colt legs. There's a glass of water on the bedside table and she drinks it, feeling a little steadier once she does. She pulls on Ethan's robe and shambles into the sitting room, finding him bent over his fake grimoire.

"'Morning," she croaks.

"Not precisely," he says, "but I'll take it as intended."

"What time -- wow, almost three o'clock."

"How do you feel?"

"Fuzzy. Other than that, I don't really know."

"Hungry?"

"Not so much. What'd we do, exactly, in part three? All I remember is talking a lot." It reminded her a little of sleepovers, exchanging confidences in the dark, but for two things. When she was young, the dark seemed to insulate her, distance her from the secrets she whispered. Last night her emotions had seemed so close to the surface. And the secrets -- she didn't really remember which stories she'd told, but it had been a one-way street, that much she does recall.

Ethan sets down his quill pen. "Why don't we get you cleaned up, then you can have something to eat."

But she just told him she wasn't hungry. She feels too passive to argue, though, just follows him and watches him start running a bath, carefully adjusting the temperature and pouring in something foamy. She smiles, remembering her realization about them smelling alike.

He helps her into the bath and then instead of leaving her there, he kneels beside her and begins to sponge off her skin. Most of the clay smears are gone already, but he wipes away the remaining traces.

"It's like I'm ill or something, the way you're acting," she mumbles.

"You are ill. But you're on the road to getting better."

"Why do I feel so woozy?"

"I told you you'd need your strength. It's an arduous rite."

She tips her head back and drifts, letting him tend to her. The long, heavy braid hangs outside the clawfoot tub. Too much trouble to let it get wet and then wait for it to dry. "Ethan."

"Yes, Dawn?"

"After this can I have something to eat?"

"Of course you can."

After a bit he helps her up and dries her off, and she gazes in the mirror at the crystal around her neck. It's clear, with a mysterious dark thread twisting down the center. Beautiful.

Ethan bundles her onto the sofa and feeds her soup.

"Are we doing all this again tonight?"

"Not tonight. You need to rest at least another day."

"'Kay," she says. She pushes away the bowl and curls up on the sofa, sinking back into sleep.

***

When she wakes again she no longer feels like a convalescent. "Is there a hotel gym or pool or something?" she asks Ethan, who's still working on the grimoire. Energy flows through her, leaving her just at the threshold of antsy.

"I think it's best if you stay out of the more public areas," he says. "Your department chair is very fond of meeting friends for drinks here. It would be difficult to explain why you're recovering from a mutant strain of mono in my hotel suite. Besides --" He reaches for her hand and presses a kiss into her palm. "Your lack of a bathing costume would no doubt cause a stir."

The low belly flutter makes her draw in a breath. "'Bathing costume.' You Brits. You might've noticed I lack any sort of costume at all." There's the sweater and jeans she wore here, but she hasn't seen them since she appropriated Ethan's robe.

"You're perfectly attired for one form of exercise I can think of." He rises and stands before her, rubbing an ink-stained thumb over her lower lip in a way that makes her knees go weak.

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?" His innocent air is tinged with amusement as he traces a tiny circle with his thumb.

"That," she whispers raggedly. "Make me wild just by touching my hand, or my lips."

"The body's like any other text," he murmurs. "You can content yourself with engaging it on a superficial level. Or you can seek to know it on the deepest possible level, study every line until it reveals itself to you completely."

Her breath flutters against his hand as she releases a sigh.

"Would you like me to share some of my studies?" he asks. "Shall I read you my favorite passages?"

"Yes, Ethan, please," she says, and this time he doesn't scold her for pleading. 

It's easier when she knows what to expect. The dark, the chanting, the cold, wet clay. The powerful eroticism of the things they do when the sharp scent of snuffed candles hangs in the air. He opens the text of her body to her yet again, revealing new passages, shedding new light on old favorites. Somehow these are easier to see in the velvety darkness of the blindfold.

And then there's more talking as they lie together after, limbs entwined. He coaxes stories from her as he strokes her hair and her face. Family vacations when Hank was still around and they could afford them. Her favorite childhood food. Her favorite game when she was small. Which leads to a string of stories about her best friend back when they lived in the city, Ligea. "I always thought that was the prettiest name, lee-he-ya.When I got to high school and we got to studying Poe, I never could get used to the way people pronounced Ligeia. It sounded like a skin disease or something. I'd totally lost touch with her by then. Funny how the people who are so important in your life at one stage just drift away. You think you'll stay in touch forever because you shared everything, and all it takes is a couple of months of school, and boom, they've evaporated. Well. Maybe not boom. Poof. Fizzle. Ssst. Your basic evaporation noise. I should run her through Google sometime, maybe I could find her again."

"That's a fine idea," he says, then he teases another story from her. Dawn enjoys this, his exploration of her body and her past, but soon she wants to drift further into the dark, into sleep, and he won't let her go. He prods her with his voice and dabs at her face with the cool cloth. Its fresh scent makes her feel relaxed yet focused.

Dawn tells him about learning to make seahorses, baking chocolate chip cookies with her mother, playing Parcheesi, which she never really liked but everyone she knew had it, and that's what you did. She tells him about deciding to be helpful and doing the laundry on her own, and turning Hank's underwear pink, which was actually more intentional than not.

"Tell me one of yours," Dawn finally says. "I'm tired of talking about myself."

"All right then." Ethan tells her about one Christmas at his grandmum's. Yorkshire pudding and Christmas crackers and the Queen on television, pretty much the classic story she'd gotten from Giles way back when.

"He brought us Christmas crackers one year," she blurts. "I'd forgotten that."

"Who, your dad?"

"No, it was Giles. The first or second Christmas we were in Sunnydale. Hank had made some promise he couldn't keep, as usual, and I was really crushed. Must've been our first winter, because I got progressively less crushed every year. Anyway, Mom invited Giles, and he announced he'd brought crackers, and I kept waiting for him to put them out, because I thought it was the kind you eat, y'know? But it was fun, and we all put on the paper crowns, and Buffy felt like a big dork which irritated me because she always had to be such a pain about everything."

"Siblings."

"Word. You have any? Oh, of course you do. The niece. You have that brother you hadn't spoken to for years."

"And the less said the better."

"I'm sorry." She reaches around and rubs a hand on his arm. "Even when Buffy's the world's biggest pain, which she still is sometimes, I'm always glad she's my sister. Maybe the present will smooth the path with the two of you. Most people are really soft-hearted about their kids. Make your niece happy, maybe he'll come around."

"You are very soft-hearted, Dawn Summers. I'm sure you took in all the neighborhood strays."

"Oh god. There was this time--" She stops, surprised at the way emotion clogs her throat after all these years.

He strokes her hair and she basks in his touch like a cat.

"I found this bird in the backyard. It fell out of its nest, and something must have gotten it. Its wing was all messed up. I picked it up in both hands and ran into the house, and Mom got a shoebox and some soft rags. We dragged in a desk lamp to shine on it and try and keep it warm. We tried for days to save that baby bird." Her voice wobbles as she continues. "Xander was so tender with it. I think that's when I developed my big crush on him."

"What happened? Did you save it?"

Dawn's breath hitches. "We called Giles, because all those books, y'know, he'd have to know how to save it. And we thought we would."

"How old were you then?"

"Eleven, I think." She wants to stop this. There's an ache in her chest so fierce she doesn't even think she can even speak. She fights to get herself under control. "Let's stop."

Ethan rubs her temple through the silk masking her eyes. "Just finish this one story. You're doing so well, Dawn. Just tell me the rest of this one." He presses a kiss on her shoulder.

She bursts into sobs instead.

Gathering her into his arms, Ethan caresses her, murmuring comfort. Tells her she's strong and brave, but it only makes her cry harder.

"Tell me the rest. You'll feel better."

"I can't." The blindfold is sticking to her face, and she raises a hand to push it up. "I don't want to wear this."

He catches her wrist, not so gently as the other night. "Dawn, you must follow this exactly as it was set down."

"Why? It's not doing anything."

"It is working. The fact that this is so difficult means you've reached the framework of your prison. This is the memory that binds them all."

She gets what Ethan's saying on one level, but it makes her head ache. She's been telling these memories as if they're real -- they are real to her as she tells them. It brings her up short to be reminded that they're a careful edifice built by the monks. "It's not a real story," she says, and her voice sounds so very small.

"No," he says gently.

"They're all fake. The one about -- about --" She can't think of any of the stories she told him. "Everything, before --" Before what point? It's so seamless, what they did. She can't say there's a moment when she wasn't there, and then suddenly she was, like a light flipping on. Earlier things, they're smudgier, less distinct, but the year that Glory was after her doesn't seem any different than the time that came just before. "Who I am is based on all these memories, the way Buffy is who she is because of all the things that have happened to her. Only half of mine -- two thirds of mine, actually -- are fake. If none of that is real, what am I?"

Ethan pulls her closer to him, trying to soothe her agitation. "You're far realer than most of the people on this planet. You just don't remember all that you are because it's been hidden from you. That's what we're doing now. Finding the heart of yet another text."

"I can't. I can't." She scrambles out of bed and yanks off the blindfold before Ethan can stop her. "I can't take the dark anymore, I'm so scared."

He's by her side in a heartbeat, and to her surprise he doesn't insist on replacing the blindfold. Wrapping her in the robe, he draws her back to the bed and holds her while sobs overtake her again.

She can't stop crying. That's how she'd been when it first happened, finding the bird stiff and cold in his box after they'd finally thought he was going to make it. Dawn had heard her mom on the phone to someone saying, "I'm afraid she's going to make herself sick." She'd thought then that she didn't care if she made herself sick, didn't care if she died (yeah, she was a drama queen at eleven, who isn't?).

Ethan tends to her, smoothing her hair, coaxing her to eat, trying to persuade her to tell the rest of the story.

"Just make it stop," she pleads.

"I never meant to cause you suffering, Dawn," he says.

"Then fix it. Because I'm going to die if you don't."

"Tell me the rest."

"Isn't that like dying?"

He dabs at her forehead with the cool cloth. "I know you're frightened. But believe me, there's more to you than the memories you're afraid of leaving behind. You'll regain who you were."

"You keep saying that." She pushes him away, and he leaves the room. She sinks back into weeping until he returns with another cup of that fucking tea. "No."

"If this continues, you will die," Ethan says. "You must sleep. While you do I'll attempt another ritual. Something different."

"I don't want it," she says, but at the same time she reaches for the cup. Her breath hitches with the force of her sobs, making it difficult to drink. Ethan helps her steady the cup until it's emptied. "I should call my sister," she says as she settles back onto the pillows. "I should say--" But then she's asleep.

***

The tears start again even before she's fully awake. He's sitting in a chair in the shadows by her bed.

"Go away," she says. "You said you were going to help."

"I thought I could," he says. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it," she snarls. One of her dad's favorite expressions when he's in a real mood. "Just get out."

But he doesn't move.

"Mom! Make him get out!"

"She's gone out," he says. "Let it all out, Dawn. Say whatever you like. It'll do you good." Giles's voice sounds a little strange, a near whisper.

"I hate you. You said you'd save it."

"I said I would try."

"You didn't try hard enough! We kept thinking it would die, and it kept pulling through. I stayed up so many nights feeding it mashed-up worms and water in an eyedropper."

"I know, Dawn." He reaches out to stroke her hair, but she bats his hand away.

"And then we thought it was going to make it. It started cheeping and moving around a little and eating more, and it really looked like it would be okay. You and Mom talked me into going to bed, and when I got up it was dead."

She sobs so hard it makes her cough.

"I'm sorry," he says again.

"You don't care! Not really!" But she lets him stroke her hair when he tries again. "Oh, god," she says when the tears subside enough that she can speak. "Why did they do that?"

"Do what?"

"Why did they make me remember that?" She looks at him, and of course, it's Ethan, not Giles. She clutches his hand and he puts his other one on hers. "Why such a terrible memory?"

"It seems to be the underpinnings of who you became. Your friendship with Xander. Your closeness with your mother. Your soft-heartedness."

"I never felt the same about Giles again. I loved him, but I kept some part of my heart from him. He was just another man who disappointed me. Why would they do that?"

Ethan ponders for a moment. "Perhaps they meant it as protection. If it came to light what you truly were -- which of course it did -- they might have suspected Rupert would take whatever action he thought necessary to fulfill his duty. Perhaps they wanted to sow that seed of mistrust in you."

"No. He wouldn't have. Though I remember him watching me, when Glory was after me, after we found out. He had this calculating -- No. That was just me projecting that mistrust. He would never have hurt me."

Ethan doesn't respond. He draws her hand toward him and presses a gentle kiss on her fingers. "I can't say how honored I am by the trust you've placed in me. Given your history with your father and with Rupert. 'Everyone leaves' -- you said that earlier."

"That was me being emo."

"It seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction to the losses you've endured." He settles her hand back onto the comforter and gently thumbs away her tears. "Tell me how you're feeling."

"It doesn't feel like I'm dying anymore. But I'm wiped out."

"You should sleep."

Dawn shudders. "No more of that nasty tea."

"No. You don't need that now. But you've been through a difficult trial. Rest."

Ethan rearranges the comforter over her, and she sinks deep into sleep before he finishes.

When she wakes, she's alone, and feeling worlds better. A little wobbly, but she trusts that it'll fade as it did before. She pulls the robe around her and steps out into the sitting room to find Ethan sprawled on the sofa, fully clothed and asleep. A half-eaten sandwich on a room service tray sits on the coffee table, along with an empty Guinness bottle.

He must have been so tired. Dawn's fairly certain he sat awake and on watch for some time. He also must have spent a few hours on the grimoire, from the look of his ink-stained fingers. There's a faint smudge by the corner of his mouth, too, where he inadvertently rubbed his face.

She kneels beside him, lets her hand hover over his. The black smudges on his fingers, the deeper black of the tattoo almost circling his wrist. After a moment's hesitation, she lays her hand on his, but the first tentative touch brings him awake, jerking away from the contact.

"I'm sorry, it's me, I'm sorry, Ethan, I should have thought."

"Don't apologize." He sits up, making space for her on the sofa and reaching for her. "I startle rather more easily than I used to, that's all."

"It should have occurred to me. I knew someone else who was grabbed by the Initiative." She lays her hand on his chest, feels his heart thudding wildly.

"You look much better."

"Not so steady yet, but much better. I remember crying and crying. It felt like days."

"It was days."

Dawn makes a face and looks away. "That must've been a drag for you. I'm sorry."

Ethan touches her face, gently turning it back toward him. "It was worse than 'a drag.' It was like watching a beautiful songbird hurling itself against the bars of its cage. I was afraid for you."

Songbird. Something about the image stirs an echo of grief in her, faint and then gone. "But I'm safe now?"

"The worst is over. One more ritual will release you completely."

Dawn trails her fingers along the ink stains on his hand. "I'm like your grimoire. An elaborately constructed fake."

"No. It's been a long time since I've met anyone as genuine as you." He turns her hand, strokes her palm with his thumb.

Her breathing turns ragged.

"Would a fake person be so responsive? Or kindle such desire in me at the simplest touch?"

"Do I?"

He answers that without a word, making her shiver with a feathery touch, then setting about warming her. Kindle is the word; Ethan builds a fire in her that rages so hot it seems it'll consume her, then banks it so that it burns slowly but feels like it will never extinguish. She loses track of the number of times she cries out in ecstasy, the different ways he brings her to release.

After the latest time, she lies in his arms while the little tremors in her legs subside. "Wow," she breathes. "Have I used that one?"

"Once or twice, I believe."

"You'd think all this deep study of the text would build my vocabulary, not shrink it to five words and a range of moans, screams and squeaks."

"You've rather expanded that range, don't you think?" He glides his hand over her hip, teasing a gasp from her. "And no less expressive than language."

The sexual buzz builds in her again. She draws Ethan toward her for a kiss when her cellphone rings.

"Damn."

"There." He kisses her. "That's six words." Another kiss that sparks her back into flame, and she so does not want to leave this bed.

"I should get that."

"Who is it?"

"It's the general ring. Could be anyone, maybe an overseas call."

He releases her, and she gropes for the phone. "Hello," she says, a little breathless. Her caller identifies himself, and she sits straight up, pulling the sheet up over her. "Xander."

"Xander, sweetie, where are you?"

"I'm back in Bamako. I've been wanting to call for a couple of days, but I just got here. Dawnie, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. You went into the city just to call me?"

"Sadly, no." His voice sounds a little strange, but that could just be the sat phone. "Everything's good?"

"Seriously, I'm doing great. Why, what's wrong?"

"I just--" There's a pause long enough to make her wonder if the connection's been lost. "I had some -- I guess you'd call them breakthrough memories."

"Did you shout Eureka! in them?"

"Funny," Xander says, in a tone that means Not. "What I mean is, I was remembering things the way they-- I remembered things happening differently."

"Like what?"

"Y'know, times in high school, and you weren't there."

She curls in closer to Ethan, who presses a kiss to the nape of her neck. "Well, I wasn't there. I didn't start high school till after you graduated."

"That's not what I mean. That era, that's what I'm talking about."

"Huh. Well, maybe it's some wild mojo you happened across over there. Everything's normal here."

"You're sure? I had this really strong impression of you being really upset. Impossible-to-comfort upset. Like back when--" There's another pause. "Back in the day."

"You felt that? I had a bad case of the blues for a day or two. Completely hormonal, responded to time and chocolate."

"You're okay now?"

Ethan begins massaging her neck muscles, and it's all she can do not to ooooohh into the phone. "Right as rain." She runs her hand down Ethan's bare leg to let him in on the joke.

"Good, then." He sounds distracted, like there's something still bothering him.

"What about you, are you okay?"

"Sure."

"That sounded sincere. What's up? Are you headed back into the bush soon?"

"No. I'm going back to London." He sounds so old and tired. Xander never sounds that way.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, really. There's an outbreak of river blindness a couple of villages down, and I -- well, the word blind gives me the wig these days."

"I don't blame you. Look, you'll be in civilization. The land of good beer and great theater."

"Sure, yeah. Be fun." Something in his voice makes her feel like she's missed some crucial point. "Well, listen," he says before she can recover and come up with a better response, "I'm on a borrowed phone, so I should go. I just got worried and wanted to hear your voice."

"I'm glad you called. I miss you."

"Same here. I'll see you, all right?" Obviously it's a rhetorical question, because he's gone before she can answer.

Dawn drops her cell onto the bedspread and wraps her arms around her knees.

"What's wrong?" Ethan's breath rustles the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck.

"Xander. I think he's --" she borrows a word from their conversation -- "blue, I guess. I feel like I dropped the ball on that conversation."

"Not from what I heard." He slides his hands off her shoulders, slipping one arm around her waist, coaxing her to lie back against him. "You were concerned and encouraging."

"He's abandoning his work because he's afraid for his safety. You can't know how much that goes against his grain. I should have said -- I don't know. Nothing would make him feel better under those circumstances."

"You listened. It sounds like that's the best thing you could do."

"It wasn't enough."

He raises his hands to her temples, makes lazy circles against her skin. "It will turn out all right, love," he murmurs.

It's the first time he's used an endearment instead of her name.

She sighs and closes her eyes.

"So open-hearted," he continues. "You do want to save the world, don't you?"

Surrendering to the gentle movement of his fingers, she hears her voice, dreamy and distant. "I've helped. Save the world, you know."

"I know."

"No one else does. Ohhh, this is so nice."

"No one knows you like I do."

"That's true."

"Not Professor Roberts or Valryn, the people you surround yourself with."

Those people might as well be on some faraway planet.

"You've held yourself back from them."

She draws in a breath, lets it out. "I guess I have."

"Not Rupert or your sister. Even Xander. They've held themselves back from you."

She frowns. "No."

His fingers keep up their slow rhythm on her temples. "They have. They've chosen not to remember your origins. Chosen to limit who you can be with them."

Dawn doesn't want to believe this, but how can she argue his point? "They just -- They wanted me to have a normal life."

"As the sister of the slayer." There's the faintest hint of mockery in his tone.

She doesn't like it directed at her. "Don't make fun of me."

"Never that, my love. I have nothing but admiration for the way you've endured the things you have. You are the phoenix, and nothing will stop your rise."

Reaching up to draw one of his hands away from her temple, she parts her legs.

When they finally finish exploring one another, Dawn falls into a deep sleep. She remembers only fragments when she wakes. Swimming through warm sea-green waters. A bird whose iridescent emerald feathers flash in the sun. A faint green light winking across a bay in the gathering dark.

She's alone in the bed. Ethan, she's sure, is in the next room working on the creation of his elaborate fake. She has no urge to go to him just now, happy to luxuriate in the feel of the expensive cotton sheets against her skin.

Watery winter sunlight seeps in around the edges of the curtains. It occurs to her she hasn't left this suite since she arrived, hasn't even looked out the window. The thought doesn't impel her to do so now; it seems like a fitting irony that confining herself to this small, intense world will bring about her liberation from prison.

It took a man who'd known imprisonment to recognize her for who she is. And if you want irony, try this on for size: It's Giles who set it all in motion. He let the Initiative take Ethan, forgot him the minute those soldiers took him away. Was willing, knowing what they'd done to Spike, to give them a human, someone who'd been a friend.

Is Giles really that hard a man, that vengeful? Or was it the true believer in him that thought turning in Ethan was the right thing to do, that crippling his power (and maybe the man himself) would make the world safer?

She remembers his eyes on her, back when things with Glory got really bad. Maybe it wasn't a projection of her own lack of trust. Perhaps he'd been weighing his options, considering how he might prevent Glory from tearing down the curtain between earth and hell. It all came down to her -- could he have believed the world would be safer if Dawn wasn't in it?

True believers. That was Giles, priest of his one paradigm, unshakable in his faith. If Buffy hadn't been there to protect Dawn, would he have sacrificed her to his idea of the greater good?

She shudders. Reaching for the robe, she hurries out to the sitting room.

Ethan distantly takes note of her entrance, but his attention's still on his careful lettering. "I'll be going out in a short while," he says absently. "Sebastian's found a buyer for the grimoire."

"You're not even finished."

"Well, there are many channels to go through in buying such an object." He sets down his pen and looks up at her, rubbing at his neck. "Contacts in faraway lands, bribes to pay. It could take weeks." He finally notices her agitation. "Dawn, what is it?"

"I was just thinking. About Giles. Would he have done it? Sacriificed me to stop Glory?"

Ethan rises, resting his hands on her shoulders as he gazes at her. "Dawn, you mustn't, there's no use in--"

"I think what he did to you, letting the Initiative have you. He knew what they were like. If not then, not fully, he knew later. He left you there. I thought I knew him, but when I think of that--"

He strokes the side of her face. "Sweet, you and I mean very different things to Rupert."

"If he could be that coldhearted to anyone--"

"He saw me as a threat, love."

"I could have brought about the end of the world. I think I win on that front."

That teases a grin from him. "Granted." After a pause, he says, "He can be a hard man when he believes it's warranted. I especially brought out that tendency because of our history. But he would never have hurt you."

"How can you know that?"

"He loves you."

"How do you know? Our paths never crossed before now. You have no way of knowing." Her lip is trembling and tears swim in her eyes.

"I know he loves you because how could he not?" He brushes away a tear that escapes and rolls down her cheek.

She holds his gaze, searching. He has just declared himself in the process of defending Giles. "You're getting slightly better at sincere," she tells him, which prompts a soft laugh. "But it's wrapped in a lie. Giles does what he feels he has to. Period."

He pulls her close to him, enfolding her in his arms. "It's long past. There's no need to dwell on it."

She can't stop. He has to leave, though, so when he finally steps back and regards her, she tells him she's fine. Ethan bestows a kiss on her, then heads for the shower to get ready for his appointment. "Make sure you scrub off the ink," she reminds him. "Dead giveaway."

Once he's in the shower she sits on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her, dwelling. Thinking about Giles. Remembering a long-forgotten argument between Anya and Xander, in that horrible summer after Buffy made her dive off the tower. They hadn't realized she was around, and she'd heard Anya whisper, "Maybe we should have done it Giles's way, that's all I'm saying."

Xander's hand had flown up as if he was going to slap Anya, then he'd frozen, a sickened look on his face. "I never want to hear you say that again," he'd said, then he'd rushed out of the Magic Box, disappearing for hours.

They knew. Giles had wanted to kill her, and they'd all known.

Dawn feels a terrible hollowness sweeping through her, like her heart has been scooped out. She feels this awful urge to hurl herself through the suite's French doors, to hold her hand over a candleflame until her flesh burns. Jumping up, she goes to Ethan's desk and opens the beautiful Chinese box that holds his inks and pens. She finds a nib that looks like it gets little use and drags its edge along the skin of her forearm, watching blood well up in its wake like dark red ink.

She releases a breath, almost dizzy from the sense of relief she feels. She cuts herself a second time, and is about to make a third line when Ethan emerges from the bathroom on a gust of steam and aftershave.

"I think I -- Dawn!" He rushes to her and wrests the pen nib from her fingers. "What in Christ's name are you doing?"

"I just -- I felt --"

"Do you have any idea what could happen if your blood mixed with the ink and went into the grimoire?"

"No, what?" Her voice sounds very small.

He hurls the nib into the corner of the room farthest from his desk. "I -- I haven't the faintest notion, but it could be a disaster. Even an average person's blood -- it's not something that can ever be allowed."

"I didn't think." A sob bursts from her. "I just couldn't stand feeling that way. All hollow."

"I know." Ethan takes her face in his hands, locking his gaze on hers. "I can help you."

"You can?" she quavers.

"You need to feel something."

"God, yes."

"Wait here." After he disappears for a few moments, he returns bearing another case. Dark wood, with an elaborate inlaid pattern. It's larger than the other. "Don't be afraid," he says, and opens the case to her.

"You have a collection of whips," she says. Crops. Maybe that's the word. They're short, some with more than one lash. Her lips -- her whole face -- feel strangely numb.

"They can be useful for ritual purposes. For attaining an altered state."

"Quieter than drumming?"

He gives her a smile, the one that first drew her to him. "For the most part. You can touch them if you like."

Her fingers skim over the handles of a couple of them. "Who do you use them on?"

"Myself."

Jesus, this is too weird. So DaVinci Code.

But what about her and the blood welling on her arm? So Secretary. "You have to be somewhere."

"I can call and delay my meeting." He turns away with the case, setting it down on the coffee table, opened away from her, and she breathes a little easier. "It helps with the hollowness, I promise."

"You know what that's like?"

"Intimately." He bends to reach into the case, producing a thick-handled crop dangling several strips of rabbit fur. "It hurts less than slicing yourself. Go on. Hold it, if you want."

Dawn takes it, feels its weight.

"The second you say stop, it ends," Ethan tells her, "no questions asked. Anytime, from this moment on."

"No special safe word?"

He smiles. Not the wicked one. This is warm and encouraging. "Safe words are for games. When you want No, please stop to mean More, I beg you. Do you understand? We're not playing now. Stop means stop."

She blinks, then nods after a moment.

"Do you feel safe?"

After a pause, she says, "I do." She would never have imagined herself considering this. Like letting her hands be bound, it seemed like something other people do. Perverts, not normal people.

He slides another compartment of the case open, removes a length of silk.

Anxiety spears through her. "You're not going to blindfold me?"

"No. I thought I'd wrap those cuts." He takes the forearm she offers and binds it with a neatly wrapped bandage. "Now. Remove the robe." Laying it aside, he draws an ottoman into the center of the room and sets a pillow on the floor beside it. "Kneel there, and pull your hair around to the front."

She gathers her hair in her left hand and pulls it around to fall over her heart, which beats wildly.

"Put your elbows on the pouf, together, and your hands together. Just like those figurines of praying children."

She laces her fingers together, and he corrects their position so her palms are flat together, fingers pointing skyward.Then he winds another length of silk around her wrists, binding them together, tucking the ends between her palms.

"You see? You're only bound if you wish to be."

She nods.

"Are you certain you want this?"

After a second's hesitation, she nods again.

"Deep, steady breaths," he instructs.

She braces herself, but he steps away, picking up the phone. He tells Sebastian he'll be an hour later than agreed. "Tell the buyer I'm having difficulties with a go-between in Nicosia, if you like, or let him cool his heels and wonder."

Returning, he positions himself behind her, out of her sightline. "Deep breaths."

"I'm trying."

"At first it will be a bit vigorous, to bring the circulation up. Then I'll change the intensity and rhythm as seems required. I won't hurt you."

"Okay."

There's a kind of low whistle as the lash whips through the air, then it strikes her back, causing her to suck in a breath.

"Are you all right?"

Dawn doesn't know. She's not hurt, but she can't say if she's all right. "Keep going."

The lash strikes her again and another time, and that same relief wells up in her that came from the cutting. Her breath drops into the slow, deep rhythm she'd tried to find before. Her skin heats under the lash. A few more strokes, and the next thing to touch her back is silk, another scarf which he trails along her skin from ass to shoulder, wrenching a guttural cry from her.

"Are you all right?" His voice is just like silk.

She nods emphatically.

"You can stop anytime you like. You have only to say."

"More, I beg you," she whispers.

He gives her more. Adjusting the rhythm and intensity so she never knows what to expect, sometimes abandoning the whip to stroke her skin with silk or a square of fur, sometimes his bare hand, which feels so cool against her hot skin.

She feels herself opening to him as she never has before, responding to his deep knowledge of what she needs at each moment before she even realizes what it is herself. He writes himself on her skin and her heart and soul, the sound of his murmurs as he works indistinguishable from the feel of soft fabric on her reddened back.

Solace. That's what he offers her, with his voice and the silk and the lash. She presses her palms together as if in prayer, and she feels in fact as if that's what she's doing.

He takes her to a place where all the boundaries of her self disappear, then slowly brings her back to herself, smoothing the square of fur over her back and her ass and the soles of her feet. As he does he tells her how exquisite she is, how humbled he feels that she allowed him to care for her this way.

Ethan gently touches the top of her head. "You may rise, if you wish."

She shakes her head, content to stay where she is. She remains kneeling as he finishes his preparations for his meeting.

"Dawn," he says once he's put on his coat. It takes a moment to penetrate the cocoon that envelops her. "Dawn, I must go. I'll be awhile. The meeting will take some time, then I want to be certain I'm not followed. Call room service if you'd like anything."

She nods, still reluctant to rise.

"Do you understand me?"

She fights irritation at his insistence. "Yes, Ethan. Good luck."

He flashes a grin. "Here's hoping I don't need luck."

Dawn waits for the door to close, then brings her breathing back to that slow, deep flow.

She reluctantly emerges from her altered state as the heat fades from her back, leaving her chilled, her knees aching. Unspooling the binding from her wrists, she reaches for the robe. She gasps as the cool silk glides across her skin, still exquisitely sensitive.

Dawn can't think of the last time she felt so cared for. It was as if she were the only person on the earth besides Ethan. As if time had stopped as Ethan opened this new world to her.

The seed of an idea comes to her. This cocooned state she's in speeds its growth until it blossoms into action. Dawn rises and raids Ethan's ink box again, sliding open its bottom drawer to find the sheets of vellum stored there. She removes one, then opens the top of the case to find inks in green and black. Mindful of Ethan's warning about her blood mingling with the inks in the grimoire, she pours some of both into teacups and replaces the bottles in their case.

She searches the corner of the room until she finds the nib Ethan had thrown away, and fits it into a handle. Using the case of whips as her desktop, Dawn settles on the floor and begins drawing. Things that came from her dreams, things that rise unbidden, flowing through her pen. She sinks into a place as timeless as the one she recently left, forgetting everything but the scratch of pen on paper.

Once she's finished she gazes at her handiwork. It makes her feel the way Sebastian's bookstore did, and the rare books closet at the Magic Box. But there's not even the faintest glimmer of a headache. She feels energy surge through her, feels her self unfurling like a bud to greet the desert rain.

This is what Ethan set in motion, begging her patience and her trust through the terror and the pain of battering herself against her prison. This, though, is just the beginning. There's another rite yet to perform before she finds her full freedom.

She hears the card key slip in and out of the door slot, and Ethan enters, cheeks flushed. His sense of mischief is beaming from him in a way that it hasn't since her situation became so desperate.

"The meeting was good?"

"Brilliant."

"So what constitutes brilliant in the fake-grimoire world?"

Ethan pulls a banded stack of bills from his inside coat pocket. "An eight-thousand dollar advance."

"So what next? You don't just disappear with the money."

"God, no. That would poison the well. The secret is creating a fake so perfect no one ever realizes they've been buggered. The payoff is much greater, and there's always another buyer."

"Doessn't the magic have to work, then? If it's a perfect fake?"

"Most of the genuine ones are so obscure that no one can work the magicks inside. They're almost always held by collectors." He notices the elaborate drawing where she left it on the ottoman. "Where did this come from?" Abandoning the packet of bills, he picks it up carefully by the edges to take a closer look.

"I made it." Dawn can tell he hasn't heard. By the way his breath quickens, she's sure it's having the same effect on him as it did on her. There's power there, and she brought it into being.

With an effort, he looks up. "Where?"

"I made it. I was still kneeling here, still in that place, however you call it, when I had this impulse. I drew it."

"Jesus," he murmurs. She can't tell if he's pleased or the opposite.

"I guess I should tell you. I used that same nib. I made sure to keep the ink separate from the stuff you use. But it seemed -- well, right. It's for the ritual. Don't ask me how I know, but I do."

He has a hard time taking his eyes off it. "The ritual?"

"The third one. It's not just a repeat of the others."

Frowning, he studies her. "You haven't found that in the book I gave you."

"No. Just as you didn't find your ritual there."

Ethan sits on the sofa next to her, taking his hand. "I couldn't tell you then. I needed your trust for it to work at all. The books gave no instructions on how to help you, only hints. I read them as best I could and used my experience to cobble a ritual together."

"You thought you were alone. Unguided." She lays a hand over his heart. "I don't believe that for a minute. Something told you, but the fear was so thick that part didn't register. All that came through is what you needed to know."

"I -- I don't even know how to answer that. I was desperate, I--"

Dawn lays a finger to his lips. "You opened yourself. Trust me."

He stops his protesting.

"There are preparations I have to make before the third ritual," she says. "It'll take money, I don't know how much."

"What I have is yours."

"It'll also require bringing someone up here. If there's anything you want to keep out of sight, do it now. He'll have to be here a while."

"He?" Ethan echoes.

"There's a tattoo artist who works near the campus." Dawn taps two fingers on the vellum. "This is merely a template. It has to be written on flesh."

Monterey Mike gives her shit when she calls. "Honey, it takes six weeks to get an appointment to talk about what you want. I don't take drop-ins."

"Sugarpuss, I don't want to drop in. I want an outcall."

"I don't do those, either. My shop is cleaner than most doctors' offices, and I've got all the different chairs I need."

"That argument would fly a whole lot better if I hadn't come with a friend to Motorcycle Mania last year and watched you give him a tattoo in a fucking mechanic's garage."

"Make an appointment, I'm full up today."

"Three thousand," Dawn says.

"Say what?"

"You come to me, and do it today, and I'll pay you three grand."

"Sweetpea, you don't sound like a girl who's old enough to have three grand."

"Sunny Jim, just try me and see." Dawn gives him the hotel name and room number. "Clear some time -- I want a half sleeve. Greens and greys, the color of money." She hangs up.

"He said he'll come?" Ethan asks.

"He'll come."

"Is there anything else you require for the ritual?"

"I'll let you know." She settles herself back on the sofa cushions. "I suppose we need a hideous Ren Faire dress and a tower--" But the joke turns to ashes in her mouth. Her hand flies up, pressing against her lips, trying to reign in emotion.

"What is it, Dawn?"

"She made me put on that dress."

"She--?"

"Glory. All satin and brocade, a dress-up party for the end of the world. I couldn't believe how much it weighed." Dawn looks up at him. "This one won't go away? If I tell it. It's a true one."

Ethan sits by her, takes her hand in his. "It won't. We're finished with that. And the true memories, they're bound to you, part of who you are."

She tightens her grip on his hand. "She was so frightened. So alone. They made her put on the dress, and she folded her clothes so neatly. Arranged her shoes so precisely, even though it was the end of the world and no one would ever know. She never told anybody."

"Is she frightened now?"

"She doesn't want to burn away. I don't want her to burn away. I want to keep her bravery and her feistiness. She's protected me well, even without knowing how." She touches Ethan's face. "You don't want her to burn away, either."

"No."

"I should get dressed. In the clothes I wore when I came here. He'll be here soon."

Monterey Mike hasn't lost the condescending attitude by the time he arrives, but it's been dampened a little by the long walk through expensively-appointed hallways. "You must be Eloise," he says as she opens the suite door.

"That's me." She swings the door wider and steps back; if he was unnaturally pale she'd never know -- almost every inch of skin is covered in ink or beard.

"Sleeve, huh? If you were walking in for a consult, I'd figure you for a little butterfly on the ankle, or a rose on the shoulder."

"Shows what you can tell from looks."

"Ninety-eight percent of the time I'm right." He catches sight of Ethan. "You her daddy? You on board with this?"

"That would be none of your fucking concern," Ethan says mildly. "And hers is the opinion that matters."

"Got ID?"

Dawn rummages in her bag for her drivers license, which Mike tilts until the light catches its watermark. He passes it back.

"And the money?"

She hands over a hotel stationery envelope with the cash inside. "Can I get you something? A Guinness, maybe?"

"I don't drink when I'm working."

"Coke?"

"Don't do caffeine or fizzy, either. Regular water's fine. Let's talk about the piece first. You've got some ideas? Something in a book?"

"I've got this." She picks the ink drawing off the coffee table.

He lets out a low whistle. "Shit, where'd you find this?"

"I made it."

"No, seriously."

"No, seriously. I did this. You can do an exact freehand copy, right? That's why I chose you."

"Yeah, that's not a problem. This is beautiful work, it's seamless. How long did it take you to work out the measurements?"

"I didn't. I just drew it."

"But it's going to be an exact fit to your arm."

"I know."

Mike rubs his knuckles along his beard. "You know it's going to take more than one session. Outline first, then color. You'll have to heal between."

"Let's see how it goes," Dawn says.

"That's how it goes. I'll go down and get my equipment."

"One more thing," Dawn says. "Ethan has a small piece. A length of barbed wire around his wrist. There's a gap; you'll be closing that."

Startled, Ethan looks toward her. She holds his gaze.

"That right?" Mike asks.

"That's right," Ethan says, his tone carefully neutral.

Monterey Mike leaves to collect his tools, and Dawn reaches for Ethan's hand. She turns it palm up, circling her own hand around the tattoo, her palm covering the small gap. "You'll find some things are so much more rewarding than freedom." She's aware of his pulse throbbing beneath her hand.

She skips her thumb up and across his palm, and his breath hitches.

He keeps his eyes on hers. "I have no doubt of that."

Dawn closes her eyes, drifting. The buzz of the tattoo gun is a constant, though the pain, to her surprise, isn't. Most of the time it's no worse than plucking her eyebrows, but now and again it feels like he's drilling for oil. In its way it's like the rhythm of the lash: Mike works the ink into her skin, pauses to wipe away the blood and ink, applies the needle again. It has the same effect, slowing her breath, dropping her into an altered state. Now and then Mike tells her how well she's doing, what a beautiful canvas she makes, but she doesn't really care what he thinks.

In the other room Ethan also works with ink, trying to speed progress on the grimoire. Dawn drifts and allows herself to imagine it's Ethan's quill penetrating her skin. Inking the truth for a change, instead of what's false. Allowing what's inside her to manifest.

Mike rouses her every so often to change her position in his portable chair. "You tired?" he asks each time. "You need a break?"

Dawn shakes her head, feeling the weight of the thick rope of her braided hair, biting back her irritation. "Keep going."

Time gets swallowed by the rhythm: needle to flesh, soft strokes of cloth, then a quick return of the needle. Finally the buzz stops and Mike sits back, flexing his hand. "I don't know about you, but I need that break." He gently wipes her skin again, then scoots back and starts peeling off his latex gloves. "I don't know how I got so caught up in this one. Usually I break way earlier."

"Give me your hand," Dawn says.

Mike frowns, but offers his hand when she reaches for it. Dawn massages his hand, rubbing her thumb into the fleshy parts, gently stretching his fingers. He wants to break the contact at first, she suspects, resisting the shift in intimacy, but there's an energy that begins to flow between them, and he surrenders to it.

"That should be better," she tells him.

Mike shakes his head in amazement. "I could find a place for you in my shop. Between this and the design work..."

"I have a place." She settles back into position in the chair as if he never called a break, and Mike pulls his gloves on and resumes work without protest.

The pain is sharper now after this brief rest, but she gives herself to it. Penetration. Pain. The buzz of the needle. She lets herself imagine. Ethan and his quill. Not placing ink beneath her skin -- piercing it to let out what is already there, but hidden. Letting her true self shine forth, one prick at a time.

Why has it taken her so long to want this?

Why was she content all these years to accept what was forced upon her?

Giles might say something about the fullness of time, if he were speaking of any other subject. But she doubts he'd willingly concede the inevitability of this.

He'll have to, though. The day will come when he has no choice.

As she drifts, memories float toward her, then away. True memories. Her mother and Buffy learning the truth about her, how they'd been duped (all of them, Dawn included). How they'd chosen her, made her a real daughter and sister by knowingly accepting the lie.

Tara, and how good she was to Dawn during that horrible summer. How Dawn had grieved when she was murdered. They'd all tried to shield her from the knowledge of what Willow had done to the asshole who killed her, but she knew. A good sneak thief can steal information as well as trinkets; she'd snatched those stories out of the air, slipped them into her pocket. She knew Willow had flayed him alive, and she didn't blame her one bit. Not for that.

How important both Xander and Spike were to her that summer, and how they couldn't stop competing over it.

She remembers being on that tower. The air was was so cold up there, whether from the height or the rip in the fabric of the universe. Or maybe it was terror that made her shiver uncontrollably.

She couldn't bear looking at the hole below her, so she searched for the people she loved. Spike, bloodied but moving. Giles, kneeling beside Ben. Poor Ben. He'd tried to protect her, as long as he could hold out. She was glad he didn't have to die alone.

Dawn lets herself step into the moment, be herself outside the terror and the sting of the knife cuts and the odd smell of Doc. He smelled like the inside of some of the jars in the Magic Box, all earthy and dehydrated and nose-wrinkly. She makes him fade away and watches Ben's last moments. All broken as Glory had fled to leave him to her suffering, trying to draw in a breath.

Giles so still and calm, kneeling beside him. She watches him reach toward Ben, offering comfort, laying a hand on his --

God. It wasn't comfort he gave at all. He planted his hand over Ben's mouth and nose, pressing down, pinching, cutting off his breath.

Dawn's own breath catches as she watches. Ben's eyes widen as he twitches and flails, but his broken body betrays him. Giles bears down, though he barely has to put any strength into it.

She watches as he kneels by Ben, nothing in his posture giving away the fact that he's committing murder.

He could be a priest giving last rites.

Priest, true believer.

She watches Ben's final agonies, each spasm costing him terrible pain. His body like a bagful of broken glass.

"Christ!" she cries out.

Mike pauses, needle hovering over her skin. "This hurting you now? We're almost done, but I can stop."

"Keep going." Her voice sounds thick, even to her ears.

Ethan appears in the doorway. "Dawn?"

"It's all right."

He comes to her, though, taking her free hand in his ink-smudged one as Mike turns her arm to work at the delicate skin of her inner wrist.

"She's almost finished," Mike says. "Then I'll finish that wrist piece for you."

She favors Ethan with a smile. "You hear that, Ethan? I'm almost finished."

The silence seems alive when Mike finally shuts off the tattoo machine. He gusts an exhausted breath. "I've never done that before. Installed a piece that large in one sitting. Next thing I'll do is clean it off, then slather it good with A&D ointment and cover it." He wets down some gauze with alcohol, then wipes at her skin, starting at the shoulder. "It'll be four weeks before -- fuck me cross-eyed!" he yelps.

"What's wrong?" Ethan steps in closer.

"That can't happen."

"What?"

"It's healed."

"I want the rest tomorrow," Dawn says. "You should get some sleep, but be here by two."

"Now hang on a minute. I've got a full--"

Dawn turns her gaze on him. "Cancel them. Leave your equipment here, there's no point carrying it away and back again."

There's a pause of barely more than a heartbeat in his movements as he wipes her arm. "Sure."

She holds out her other hand. "Let me finish that. You take care of Ethan. Don't bother changing needles."

"Look, Eloise. There are some things that aren't negotiable. I don't screw around with used needles. If you want to bond, there's the old spit-in-your-palms-and-rub-'em-together routine."

Dawn gently lays a hand on Mike's forearm, a gaudy dragon with scales rendered in different greens. "This is not for you to worry about," she says softly.

His eyes go unfocused for a second, then he blinks and turns to Ethan. "Ready?"

Releasing him, she leaves the chair and walks away to the renewed buzz of the needle. In the bathroom she cleans up and inspects their half-finished collaboration. Like Ethan's grimoire, it's beautiful work but it's lifeless. Its empty outlines give off nothing. But its completion will be a different story. Its power won't be illusory at all.

She pulls her sweater on and looses her hair from its braid. By the time she returns to the sitting room, Mike has finished bridging the gap in Ethan's tattoo. He hasn't merely filled in the missing line, but added a new barb to the entwined strands of wire. It's indistinguishable from the others, except its prong points outward, not toward Ethan. Mike wipes away the blood and ink.

"It's better," Dawn says, "with that missing piece filled in."

Ethan meets her gaze. "More than I'd imagined, yes."

After Mike finishes his cleanup and goes, Ethan turns to her. "You must be starving."

"Ravenous," Dawn says, and reaches for him. Opening the buttons of his shirt, she traces a finger along one of the old scars she finds there. "I opened myself to you. Layer after layer, all there for you to read and rewrite. I let you make me helpless with desire at a mere touch." She leans in to flick her tongue at the scar, drawing a gasp from him. "Are you willing to do the same before me?"

"Of course," he murmurs, and steps back to lead her toward the bedroom.

Laughing, she plants her feet. "You're willing to be helpless, as long as you're in control. You're not the lover of chaos you pretend to be. You refuse to surrender yourself."

"I've kept myself guarded, it's true. But it's no pretense--"

She takes him by the hand, tracing tiny circles in his palm with her thumb, as he's done to hers so many times. "Is he charming company, your guard? So much fun that you've believed yourself free all this time?"

Ethan's breath quickens and his skin flushes.

"I made myself shameless for you," she says. "Let you tease me until I came, standing right in this very spot." She moves toward him as if for a kiss, but stops short, whispering so her breath flutters against his lips. "That's just for girls, is it?"

His breath is ragged. "And fifteen-year-old lads."

Releasing his hand, she takes a step back. "You forget. A fifteen-year-old is a helluva lot more appropriate for Dawn than you." She turns away, making her voice brisk. "So, what do you think? Should we order up some room service?"

"Dawn."

"Mmm?" She waits a moment, then tears her attention away from the menu. "What?"

"Please."

"You're worse at that than you are at sincerity."

A flicker of a smile. "I've had less practice."

Dawn drops the menu on the sofa. "Then we'll have to make sure you get some in." Approaching him, she stops within two steps of him. "Let's hear it again. Let's try working it and the sincerity at the same time."

"I beg you."

She takes a step closer. "I find sincerity works much better with understatement. A please would have worked just fine."

He draws in a breath to speak, but Dawn lays two fingers over his lips. "We'll work on that later."

Her fingertips sketch over the scar on his chest, skip over to circle an areola, flick the nipple at its center.

She can feel how close he is to falling, and how much he wants to break away and seize control over his own release. Grabbing him by the waist, she moves in to whisper in his ear. Be a good lad.

A shuddering breath signals his capitulation.

"How responsive you are," she murmurs, rewarding him with a deep kiss that promises more. "How very beautiful."

She takes him by the hand. Takes him into her bed.

She teaches him the many nuances of the word please.

Teasing him until he begs for release. Riding him, pinning his shoulders to the luxurious cotton sheets. Sensitizing his skin by lightly raking it with her nails, brushing it with her hair, streaming her breath along its surface until his muscles tremble.

At last Ethan is sprawled across the bed, cheek pressed into a pillow as he pants, wrung out.

"I'd say that was a very successful practice session." Dawn feathers her fingers down his back, skin so sensitive now that he quivers slightly under her touch. "So remarkable," she croons. "Such history written on your flesh. You'll have to read it to me sometime." She leans in, presses her lips to the nape of his neck. "Would you like that?"

"Mm, yes," he murmurs, seconds from slipping into sleep.

"Tell me some of it. A bedtime story."

"Bedtime," he repeats, drifting.

Dawn traces a fingernail lightly along his spine, and the overstimulated nerves bring him awake, gasping. "Tell me a bedtime story about Giles."

"Rupert was a long time ago." His guard has awakened too, watchful, wary.

"Yet you couldn't stop coming around him. Not until the Initiative got you."

"The hellmouth was a diverting playground, that's all."

"Bollocks." Another feathery stroke from his shoulder blade down to his ass. "That's what you Brits say. Spike would. Giles, maybe, under duress." She rises up and takes his shoulders, pressing her thumbs into the muscles as if beginning a massage. His breath hisses through his teeth. "You two fucked each other, didn't you?"

"Dawn--"

She eases off, leaning over him, her hair spilling on the pillow bunched beneath his head. "It's so obvious," she whispers. "The way you circle around him, can't leave him alone."

"It's been years since I approached him."

"Mmm-hmm." She shifts to let her hair flow across his skin. "And what brought you around to researching me? Sure, you found something bigger than you meant to, but I'm betting your first thought was tweaking Giles." She leans in again, whispers into his ear. "What was he like?"

A secret smile. "He worked so very hard at rebellion. So earnest about it. I can only imagine how he was once he scuttled back to the safety of Oxford and his destiny."

"That's not what I meant." She massages his shoulders again, digging in, and he groans. "What was he like to shag?"

"This is not the most wholesome topic to be discussing with you."

She laughs. "Wholesome. That's cute, coming from you." She switches again to long, feathery strokes. "Tell me."

"Brilliant kisser. Demanding. Verging on brutal. Likes a bit of the rough trade. Or he did with me. We ... brought things out in each other."

"Mmm. The way we do. Did you like what he brought out in you?" She presses a kiss to his shoulder, feels the soft flutter of exhausted muscle.

"God, yes. It was all bound up in the magicks. We were consumed with them, with one another. We burned for each other."

"And for Eyghon."

"Yes."

"But you walked away, and eventually it came back and bit you on the ass. Was Eyghon the first paradigm you cast aside?"

He smirks. "That would probably be the C of E. Not that I got a terribly large dose of it in the first place."

"And when, precisely, do you think you'll grow bored with this paradigm?" Dawn adds just a hint of fingernail to her strokes.

"Never."

She bends over him again, her hair cascading around them. "I won't waste my time on dabblers, Ethan. I want a true believer."

"I am that."

"Oh come on." She trails a finger from behind his ear, down his neck. "You've done nothing but mock Giles for his belief."

"I've changed. You've changed me. I'm yours alone."

"Then you'll need to clear away a few gods and ends you've left lying around."

"Of course."

She settles down next to him, skin to skin, twining one of her legs with his. "Aren't you pretty," she breathes into his ear. "Tell me about the two of you. The things you liked to do to each other."

Ethan closes his eyes and begins to speak.

She undresses as Ethan goes to retrieve the case.

Folds her clothes neatly on the sofa and waits naked for him, standing in a patch of sunlight cast through the French doors and their filmy curtains.

Striding back into the sitting room, he stops dead as he catches sight of her. A breath gusts from him. "If you could see yourself."

"What?"

"All your questions, all your fears would be laid to rest." His expression, for once, has nothing cool and knowing about it. It is the look of a true believer.

Dawn steps toward the ottoman, but Ethan raises a hand.

"Stay where you are. There, in the light." Ethan sets the case down and moves the ottoman toward her, then places a pillow at its base.

She kneels, gathering her hair in front to bare her back. She places her elbows and palms together as she did before, but Ethan crouches beside her to correct her position. Without speaking, he moves her bare arm back to her side, and extends the other in front of her, curled before her on the ottoman as if she's a schoolgirl hiding a test paper from prying eyes. He wraps a length of silk around her wrist and passes it down to the ottoman's leg, but instead of bringing the ends up to tuck in her hand, he ties them around the base.

Dawn's stomach does a slow flip.

He moves around behind her. "Are you all right?"

She turns her head toward him. "You didn't tie me last time."

Gently he turns her face forward. "Keep your eyes on the design." He kneels beside her. "Are you frightened?"

"No," she lies. "I just--" She lets it trail off.

He puts his hand on her back. "Breathe in." He's made his voice all silky and comforting, and she takes a shaky breath. "Slowly, my love. Breathe out." She tries slowing it down, but it comes out in a rush. He stays with her, skin on skin. "Now in." This time she manages slower and deeper. "We can stop anytime," he reminds her.

He's not offering the option to be bound or not. Her choice is to be bound or stop altogether. The thought of stopping creates an ache in her.

"No. Let's go on."

"Once you relax into it, you'll be surprised how freeing it is. A new level of surrender, opening yourself, receiving." He takes her free hand, presses a kiss on the inside of her wrist. "Are you all right?"

She nods.

He tucks her bare arm against the small of her back, binding it and anchoring it with another silk scarf. Moving around in front of her, he places a hand on hers. "Don't look at me. Keep your eyes here." He slides his hand up her arm, over the intricate, grey-lined design. "Breathe. You feel the sunlight warming your back?"

She nods again. Speaking, she feels, would break whatever slow, trancey state she's yearning toward. All she wants is to give in to the rhythm of Ethan stroking her arm, of her deepening breath. The warmth of the sun on her skin, and the hypnotic glide of his skin on hers.

"I have never seen such beauty as this," he murmurs, "and it's merely a fraction of what you really are."

She breathes into all of it: the sight of the design on her flesh, the sensations of heat and soft stroking, the silky murmurings, even the minor tickle of fear at the thought of being bound. She breathes deeper and sinks into all these sensations until they all seem to blur together.

"Are you ready?" he whispers, and this time she does want to hear her own voice.

"I am."

The rabbit fur lash snaps against her back.

***

He works in silence this time, withholding the silky sound of his voice, the murmured reassurances. There is nothing but the sound of the lash, her own soft grunts in response.

He teaches her new aspects of trust. That trust can live alongside that tickle of fear, that it is meaningless if it's never tested. After an extended session with the lash followed by a long, delicious period of stroking with the fur, he shows her another crop from his case. Presents it to her like a wine steward showing a bottle to a diner in some fancy restaurant. It's thin and supple; he shows it to her doubled in a loop. Her breath catches. A new level of surrender.

She reminds herself how deeply she was rewarded the last time. She wants that now, but she's so scared. Ethan waits. We can stop anytime.

She doesn't want to stop. She doesn't want new levels, either. All she wants is to go on the way they had.

Ethan places a hand on her back. Breathe.

Dawn breathes, trains her eyes back on the tattoo. She nods.

It's not at all what she expected. She braces for the whirr and snap of the whip, the slice of the lash into her skin, but it doesn't come. Ethan leaves the whip doubled, tapping the loop gently against her back, again and again and again. A thin groan escapes her as her muscles quiver with released tension. He keeps up this light tapping until her nerve endings are exhausted with it, and past that point. By the time he abandons the whip, her skin burns.

He takes up the square of fur, caressing the expanse of her back, and she cries out as if he struck her. Though he doesn't say a word, the soft strokes of fur against her skin mix in her head with he murmurs he'd offered up during their first session. How exquisite you are, how beautiful.

She bursts into sobs.

Still, he doesn't speak. He looses the silk binding her bare arm behind her, pressing a kiss into her palm as he releases her.

He kneels before her and she waits for him to untether her other wrist. Instead he strokes the length of her arm as he had before. Gradually the rhythm of her breath slows and deepens again, and finally he unbinds her other wrist, kisses her palm.

He touches the top of her head and rises, disappearing into the bathroom. Dawn remains kneeling, clutching the edge of the ottoman. Distantly she hears the low murmur of water as the bathtub fills in the next room.

Closing her eyes, she tries to take in what just happened. Who is she? Has she taken another step toward before-Dawn, burned away or buried the part that clings to school and friends and watching American Idol like there's nothing more?

This time she doesn't feel a huge shift.

Not some personal alchemy this time, but an object lesson. Turning back won't take her past the fear. Neither will staying on the same level. She can only go forward, just as Ethan said.

Though the sun feels much too strong on her back, she stays on her knees at the ottoman until Ethan emerges and takes her by the hands, helping her to her feet. She lets him lead her to the bath as if she's a small child. He helps her in, where she kneels instead of leaning back into the warm water.

"This will help," he says, as he dips a bath sponge into the water. He raises it and squeezes it over her back, and she bites back a cry. But a moment later the stinging dulls, and she relaxes, leaning forward and grasping the foot of the tub.

"What a remarkable creature you are," he tells her.

Creature. She snaps her head toward him, eyes blazing. Dawn burns to dress him down, read him the riot act, all those Giles phrases (rip him a new one, Xander would say), but something deep within her tells her it's not the time to break her silence.

Ethan puts up a hand. "Figure of speech, I meant nothing by it. You see, though, how strong and certain your instincts are? You understand you're meant to give up speech until you're ready for the ritual. Just as you've known you should fast."

Dawn thinks back, trying to remember when she last ate. Before Mike began the tattoo. Ethan had offered her a chance to eat when Mike left, but she hadn't had the slightest interest.

"Your true self is guiding you, even when you're afraid."

She realizes the truth of it as he says the words.

Surrender.

She has no problem letting someone else drive when they know the route better than her. This is the same. Dawn got scared and sad, and it made her try to wrest control from her true self, but that's just going to leave her feeling alone and more frightened than before.

She doesn't know where she's headed. But that other part of her does. Dawn uncurls her hands from the lip of the bathtub and sinks back into the warm waters.

Mike returns at two o'clock sharp, bearing Starbucks' tallest coffee. The smell of it almost drives her to speak, just to beg a sip. All she's had since she got here is teas of varying degrees of nastiness.

Instead she steps aside and lets him enter, raising a brow.

"I know, Eloise. I said I don't. It's medicinal. Didn't really sleep last night."

He looks less like an insomniac than some mad monk. As long as his hand is steady.

"Any concerns about the work I did yesterday? Let's take a look."

As Dawn pulls her sweater over her head, Ethan says, "Don't expect her to answer. She's observing a vow of silence for the day."

Mike eyes her for a heartbeat, then gives an I've seen weirder shrug. Setting his coffee aside, he turns his attention to the tattoo. "Not a sign this was done only yesterday. If they could bottle whatever it is you got, Eloise, you'd be richer'n Oprah." Turning her arm this way and that to examine his work, he says, "I'm not bragging when I say this is the most amazing piece I've ever done. I couldn't get this design out of my head last night." He releases her with what seems to be some effort. "Go powder whatever's shiny, and I'll get set up to work. No marathon session this time. I'm too fuckin' old."

She walks off without even a gesture, but Mike reads her right.

"I mean it," he calls after her.

She closes the bathroom door with a thump. She pees, rinses her face, weaves her hair into a loose braid. When she comes out, Mike is still setting up. Ethan is changing his shirt. His tattoo is unbandaged now, fresh black ink on reddened skin. Dawn taps two fingers at her own inner wrist and smiles at him.

"I'm delighted that you're pleased," he says. He slips his arms around her waist. "There are things I need to obtain for the ritual. You'll be all right here?"

She rolls her eyes at the notion that Mike is in any way threatening.

Ethan kisses her forehead and disappears to finish dressing.

She turns toward Mike, who's holding the vellum with her design, lost in its inricacies. Dawn clears her throat.

"Well, let's go then," he says, as if she's been holding things up.

She sits in his chair, lets him adjust her position, and they both fall into the rhythm of his work. The stop-start of the needle's buzz, the ebb and flow of pain. She opens herself to it just as she did Ethan's attentions, sinking into a deep stillness.

Mike doesn't disturb her trance, just bends to his work without uttering a word. When he wants her to change her position so he can reach a spot, he uses gesture and touch, just as Ethan did.

At some point she's dimly aware of Ethan's return, bearing a number of bags. She notes his presence and his retreat to the other room to work, then she drifts downward again.

She's not sure if minutes have gone by or hours when the sound of the phone tears her out of her trance. Luckily Mike had lifted the needle from her forearm to wipe away the ink.

All she can catch from the next room are murmurs, but they sound urgent. Mike turns on his tattoo gun again, but she gestures him to quiet it. Though she strains to hear, she can't make out what the trouble is.

"Christ," she hears Ethan mutter over the clatter of the phone. He emerges from the bedroom. "Why don't you take a break now?" he suggests to Mike.

Mike lays the needle aside and flexes his hand.

"Elsewhere," Ethan adds in his soft and persuasive tone.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. Maybe some fresh air." He's like a sleepwalker as he moves toward the French doors.

Once he's gone, Ethan spits, "Sod it! That was Sebastian. The buyer's backed out. Arrested, actually, for certain of his other activities. Sebastian has another lined up, he has a list of those who are interested in such rarities. But I don't like it."

Dawn rubs her thumbs over her fingertips and raises her brows.

"We keep that," he answers. "It's understood. The down payment is good faith money, to cover certain costs. I can meet the new buyer today, he's in town for a symposium."

She shakes her head.

"I don't like it either. But there's no way around it. These things can often take months, and I spent almost all the cushion I had on preparing for the ritual. I can't walk away from this kind of money. Sebastian said he'd ring. In the meantime, I'll work some protective magic." He caresses her face. "It'll be fine. I'm frustrated, that's all. I've been working with Sebastian for years. I trust him completely, and he's very careful." He takes her by her right wrist, rubbing his thumb over the intricate grey pattern over the branching blue veins. "You concentrate on your work here."

He leaves her with a kiss and goes to summon Mike back to his needle.

Mike returns from the balcony looking like a graffiti'd scarecrow. "Look. Eloise. I'm done for the day. Mainly because it's night. I've been at this so long I can't see straight, which is not what you want." He starts to fuss with his equipment, preparing to put it away.

She rises and moves toward him, touching a hand to his face.

"Sweetpea, you're not the first who's tried that. Though usually it's the underaged ones who want ink. My rules are my rules."

Dawn rolls her eyes to let him know this was not the plan. Placing a hand on each of his temples, she rubs lazy circles the way Ethan had done to soothe her headaches.

"Oh," he says. Though he closes his eyes, she sees him regaining his focus, drawing energy from her. After a long moment, his eyes open. "Whoo. Like I said. You should bottle that."

The low sound of chanting in the other room is swallowed by the buzz of the tattoo machine as Mike resumes his work.

Dawn tries to settle back into the altered state the needle produces, but threads of anxiety keep her tethered to thoughts about the call and what's happening in the next room.

No more than half an hour passes before the phone shrills again, but it seems much longer. Her whole body tenses as she waits for Ethan to emerge from the bedroom. It doesn't take long. He bustles into the room, drags his coat from the closet and shoulders into it.

She extends a hand toward him, and Ethan approaches. "I'll be careful, I promise." He moves to take her hand, but she takes his instead, checking for ink stains on his fingers and thumb. He smiles. "Whatever would I do without you?"

Dawn squeezes his hand and lets him go.

***

She knows it will take a while. First the meeting, whatever it takes to convince the buyer to part with thousands of dollars. Then the circuitous route home so Ethan's certain he hasn't been tailed. Dawn tries to relax, but the sound of the needle that had soothed her before now sets her teeth on edge.

It's much too early when the phone rings. Dawn's breath catches, her heart thumping. Mike shuts off the tattoo machine. "Want me to get it?" he asks.

She shakes her head. She waits through another ring, then rises and goes to the phone. If it's Ethan, he'll know why she doesn't speak when she picks up. If it's not him, it's no one she wants to talk to anyway. She lifts the handset.

There's silence on the other end, too, for a long moment. Then comes a rattling cough that makes goosebumps rise on her arms. "Ethan."

Another horrible cough and then a breath which sounds worse. "Run. Take everything that's yours."

"Ethan, where are you?"

"You have to go. I'll find you."

"No. I'm coming for you. You're at Sebastian's?"

"There's no time." A coughing fit this time, and a rattling gasp. "Christ," he mutters. "Go. Far. Take my robe too, leave nothing behind." Another scraping breath. "Go now."

He breaks the connection and she drops the phone, dashing for the closet where her messenger bag is stashed. "We're done for now," she tells Mike. "Pack up and go. I'll call you when I'm ready to finish, but I have to leave." She snatches up the Sumerian text Sebastian gave her, the vellum with the tattoo design and the silk robe, stuffing them into the bag.

Mike blinks stupidly, sagging against the portable chair she just vacated.

"I mean it," she snaps. "Get your things and let yourself out. I don't have time for this shit." She runs into the bedroom and rummages in the bedside table, among the lube and toys. The packet of money is there, thinner than it had been, just as Ethan had told her. She stuffs the envelope into her bag as well.

Mike is hunched on elbows and knees on the carpet as she strides back out into the sitting room. She crouches by him to pick up her sweater, yanks it on, then bundles herself into her coat. When she jerks the door to the hallway open (her first venture outside this suite since -- what, weeks? More than a month?), she's met with the shock of an upraised fist. Fortunately it freezes in midair.

It belongs to Giles, who greets her with a gusty exhale. "Dawn. Thank Christ you're safe."

Safe. She's not that. Not for him. She smiles. "Ripper."

That gives him a moment's pause, but he moves into brisk mode. "I see you're ready to leave. Good. I don't know how much time we have."

"You didn't leave him to die, then. You didn't take it that far." Dawn grabs him by the lapels and slams him back against the wall where Ethan's altar had been. She leans into him, close enough that he surely feels the heat of her body. "Tell me you didn't go that far."

He takes her by the shoulders, but his no-nonsense expression turns to puzzlement. Leaning in closer, he takes in her scent. Ethan's scent.

"He brings that out in you, doesn't he?" she says in a low voice. "The desire to go too far." Dawn drops her voice to a whisper. "I heard all about that."

Giles recovers himself just enough to push at her shoulders. She lets herself be backed off an inch or two. "Dawn, whatever he said--"

"Oh, he said a lot."

"He wants to drive a wedge between us. You see that, don't you?"

"What I see is that he doesn't treat me like an idiot child. If you've hurt him, I swear I'll make you pay."

"Dawn, I understand your attachment to him. You've depended on him these last weeks in captivity. We'll sort it all out, I promise."

"This isn't Stockholm. I came here of my own free will. I stayed because I wanted to."

"I'm sure it seemed so then." He takes her by the arm, steers her back as he steps away from the wall. "Dawn. We must go now."

She shoves him, driving him back into the wall again. "You arrogant fuck. Killer of gods. Defender of this crappy little world. You believe you don't answer to anyone."

Suddenly Giles looks so weary. "You sound like him. Trust me, Dawn. Things will seem much clearer when you're away from here."

"Trust me, Dawn. Come with me, Dawn. He's brainwashed you, Dawn. That's supposed to work on me? It's an old salesman's trick. It's cheesy, Giles."

"Perhaps this will work. Your sister is worried about you. Your friends."

"My sister." Dawn smiles. "You don't know me like you think you do."

Giles moves into exasperated mode. "That's enough of this. We haven't time." He grabs her arm again, fingers like steel this time. "We'll talk about this later."

Dawn seizes his wrist, and sees surprise flash across his face at her own steel. "You know, I was never all that fond of my sister, but you should answer for what you did to her."

"To Buffy? Dawn, I--" His attention is suddenly pulled away by a loud rattling sigh from the man on the floor. Pulling free, Giles pushes past her and kneels beside him. "Dawn, this man is dead. What in god's--" He looks up toward her just in time to see the lamp she swings at his head. He collapses in a heap next to Mike.

She cradles the lamp in her hands, weighing the idea of finishing him now. Her memories -- real ones -- tug at her. He meant something to her mother. To her sister and her friends.

She wipes her own fingerprints off the lamp, then molds Mike's lifeless hands around it. He's barely more than a husk, an empty cicada shell clinging to a tree.

Dawn slips out the door and heads down the hallway. When she encounters a man with a briefcase fumbling with his card key, she clutches him by the arm. "I just walked by 512 and heard a really loud argument, and a lot of crashing around. I'd better call security."

The man doesn't acknowledge her, but looks suddenly alarmed and bustles on to his room.

Getting discovered practically on top of a corpse should keep Giles too busy to chase after her.

Ethan would love it.

Dawn's on the sidewalk just outside the hotel when the shakes hit. Ethan's hurt, god only knows how badly, and Mike -- what the hell happened to Mike? She arranged the setup as if she was on cruise control, but Jesus -- she made someone die.

She's halfway to the bookstore without even thinking about it when she stops dead at a streetcorner. Ethan had said no. Giles is going to have his hands full for a good while, but she doesn't know for sure that he's here alone. Even if he is, all he has to do is make his one phone call to Willow and she could teleport here. And she doesn't trust Sebastian now. He either betrayed Ethan or he was stupid enough to let him walk into a trap. It doesn't matter which; she can't count on him.

So what now?

Her fake ID is only good enough for a drink, not a rental car. She'd have to use her credit card anyway, and the discrepancy in names would put a halt to the whole transaction. Not to mention she'd prefer nothing as traceable as a credit card, so that also lets out flying anywhere.

Which leaves Amtrak and Greyhound. Greyhound, just -- no. The train station isn't far, and there are the commuter lines, too. If the commuters are still running at this hour, she can probably get out of the city within half an hour, and figure out her next move from there.

Dawn reads the big board when she gets to Union Station. Very few trains are still running, and they're not going far. So much for the suburbanites who want a big night in Chicago. She feeds money into the ticket machine three different times, headed three different directions, just in case there's any way someone (Willow? The police?) can match a surveillance photo with a ticket purchase.

There's no question which train she'll take. She feels a pull to the west that's so strong she can do nothing but give in. Even though she'll be lucky to get thirty miles tonight. Even though she'll have to circle back in the morning to catch an Amtrak that'll take her any distance. Something in her knows she needs to be moving west.

She needs to finish becoming, and the place she needs to be is where she was put on earth.

Sunnydale -- or what's left of it.

***

The windows show her nothing but the reflection of the inside of the train. Rows of seats with a few heads visible above -- mostly in pairs at this hour. Big night.

She's barely been alone these last weeks. Just a few occasions when Ethan left her to get supplies for a rite or attend to other business. Her world had narrowed down to a very small one, and it revolved around Ethan. Her sun. Now that world is dark and barren, and there's nowhere to take shelter.

Where is Ethan, how badly hurt is he? He said he would find her, and she trusts that. Her blood has mingled with his, and she believes the urge to head west will tug at him, too.

If he's conscious enough to feel it.

***

It's almost midnight when the train dumps her off at the last stop. The suburbs give you nothing if you don't live here. The tiny ticket office is closed up tight; there are no hotels within walking distance, not even an all-night diner. Across the parking lot she sees a donut shop, a dry cleaner and a liquor store, all shuttered. There's a harshly lit plexiglas box on the platform with a couple of metal benches, enough shelter to cut the wind, but not warm or comfortable. She'll be on display to anyone who's awake, like a Faberge egg in a museum

She rummages in her messenger bag and finds the long-forgotten stake she keeps there, then goes to sit inside the shelter. It smells like cigarette smoke and piss, and the ridged aluminum bench chills her instantly.

As she snugs her arms around her body, the sleeve of her sweater pulls at the skin of her tattoo'd arm. The blood and ink have dried in the fibers of the sweater, gluing it to her. She'll have to soak the thing off, when she gets a chance to change -- when she gets something to change into.

Poor Monterey Mike. She'd liked him, with his attitude and the Eloise, and she thinks he liked the way she gave as good as she got. In her drive to be ready for the ritual, she'd used him up. It wasn't malicious, wasn't even conscious. She took what she needed, without thought to the cost.

Dawn wonders if she'd do the same to Ethan -- if she already has. Ethan, at least, made the choice to be part of her transformation.

Leaning back against the clear wall of the shelter, she closes her eyes and calls to him with her whole being.

She realizes she's been doing this for a very, very long time.

She sees it now. That she'd called the song-and-dance demon to her (despite Xander's gallant attempt to take the blame -- and he'd puke if she used the word gallant to his face, but it's true). That she'd called Halfrek, though she'd wasted her wish on fifteen-year-old emo stupidity. The thing that came the night she saw her mother (and the thing that pretended to be her mother).

She'd called them to her, with her unfocused power and her desperation.

Then it had seemed like she stopped drawing things to her. But maybe not. The Immortal had spent his nights with Buffy, but he'd also asked Dawn plenty of probing questions when he'd come to pick her up for their dates. She'd just thought he was overselling the I care about you and yours, but maybe he was another being Dawn had drawn to herself.

None of them had read her right, not until Ethan. Or else they'd wanted to use her, or destroy her. Ethan, forced by his imprisonment to bide his time, had studied her, come to know her. He'd identified with her, too, wrapping her cause up in his own. That's what had made them respond to each other, heat and mutual recognition and hunger.

He has to be all right. She doesn't know how to do this without him. And she wants to give him back what was taken from him, set him at her right hand.

As if she's summoned it there, a car turns into the parking lot of the train station. Ethan. She knew he'd find her. It pulls around so its headlights are beaming into the shelter, casting a weird halo from the minute scratches in the plexiglas, pinning her in a spotlight and blinding her. She gets to her feet, heart thudding.

She hears the car door open, though the engine doesn't cut off. The warning bell pings to remind the driver the keys are in the ignition.

A figure approaches, thrown into silhouette by the headlights. Dawn tries to shield her eyes to make out who it is, but the light is too strong. "Ethan?" Her voice sounds more quavery than she wants it to. She tightens her fingers around the stake in her pocket.

"Kind of late to be out, isn't it miss?" As he steps closer she can see he's far too bulky to be Ethan, though some of it comes from what the man wears. A holster with both a gun and the kind of nightstick that has a handle sticking out. A bulky jacket with bulletproof vest underneath.

He steps into the entrance of the shelter, and she's suddenly sorry she let herself be cornered this way. Why hadn't she stepped outside the second she realized she wasn't alone?

"Can I see some ID?"

Dawn's heart pounds. Has Giles talked his way out of his predicament this soon? She doubts that. This is just random. A cop checking on a girl huddled in a train shelter in the middle of the night.

Reluctantly she lets go of the stake so she can rummage in her bag, taking a nervous step back as she does so. "Anything wrong, officer?"

"What are you doing out here?"

"I had a fight with my boyfriend, so I jumped on the first train out of the city. I thought it would go farther. And that there'd be someplace here when I got here."

"There won't be another train till after 5 a.m. The Greyhound stops at the Jewel around 3:30, but that's going west."

"The Jewel?"

"Grocery store. About a mile that way." The officer jerks his head in Dawn's direction. She still can't see his face, just the outline of his head and body.

She finds the fake ID in its usual place. Just in case there has been word from Chicago, she wishes it didn't have the name Dawn on it. She hadn't bought it for running from the police, just for going to bars, where friends might be shouting her name at her within hearing of the bartender.

"Dawn Lavelle," the cop reads. "Pennylvania. You're a college girl, then."

"Yes." She stammers out where.

He hands back the ID, singing in an off-key falsetto. Dawn, go away, I'm no good for you.

"Ha ha," she says nervously. Like she's never heard that before.

"No, really," he says, and though Dawn can't see it, she hears the sound of his true face emerging.

Dawn yanks the stake from her pocket and drives it home, but she'd forgotten the bulletproof vest. The impact sends a painful shockwave up her arm, and her weapon slips out of her grasp.

"Well, aren't you a surprise." He grabs her by the arm, yanking her close. She yells and brings her knee up hard into his groin, just the way they taught her in that self-defense class.

The vamp cop yowls and doubles over, and she knees him in the head. It's a little harder aiming for a head that isn't encased in a helmet the size of a yoga ball. Her first attempt is a glancing blow, but she grabs his head and the next try connects solidly.

He snarls and staggers to his knees. Dawn steps over him toward the shelter opening, but he grabs her ankle and sends her sprawling. Her shoulder slams into the shelter wall as she falls, and the coppery taste of blood wells in her mouth.

What else works? Beheading, fire, sunlight...

The vamp scrambles over to her, tearing her coat open, sending down flying. "Not smart, bitch." He claws at the waistband of her jeans.

"No!" She tries to roll onto her hip, get into position to launch a good hard kick, but he keeps pulling at her, climbing onto her. "Stop!"

"That's what I like to hear."

She gropes on the cold concrete for her bag, but it's not in reach. Her fingers encounter nothing but bits of trash. An empty cigarette pack. A disposable lighter. Dawn closes her fist around it, flicking the lever, willing it to work. Two useless flicks, then on the third she gets a high yellow flame. She touches it to his hair, then scuttles back toward the far corner of the shelter.

He shrieks and lurches toward her, then falls into ash.

Dawn falls back against the plexiglas, shaking. Bringing up her stinging hand to take a look, she sees that the green plastic of the lighter has melted onto her skin. The yellow flame, sputtering out now, seems to be coming from her finger.

Bits of down fluff waft in the overheated air as she settles into a seat on the bus. Funny how quick the no-buses resolve disappeared. All it took was the word west. Dawn paid for a ticket as far as her own money will take her, not wanting to flash the large bills in the envelope from Ethan's buyer.

She wonders now if the buyer was a fiction of Giles's all along, or if he scared off the real buyer so he could step in. Scared off, killed. Giles does what he feels he needs to.

Buffy would swear he'd never hurt an innocent -- unless, of course, you count Ben. And Dawn pretty much does count him an innocent, despite everything. Just the poor bastard who'd been fashioned as a prison for a god.

Dawn knows what that's like, sort of.

Thinking you have free will, your own destiny, but ultimately your destiny turns out to be a prelude to something bigger, harsher, implacable -- something that doesn't belong to you at all.

It's right that Dawn give herself up to it, she realizes that. It's just so hard to realize she's just a bit player in the story that's about to unfold. Harder still without Ethan here to guide her. He made her feel so sure.

Dawn pulls her messenger bag into her lap and curls her arms around it, then tips her head against the window, letting her eyes drift closed. As the movement of the bus lulls her, she drops into a dream of her sister.

Crimson and gold, shimmering with power. Power she was never meant to claim, that she took on herself.

One betrayal trips another and another and another, and then there is the tower, swaying sickeningly beneath her feet.

Her sister should be up here with her, but she's down there, fighting for her life.

And then: a man kneeling, pretending to offer comfort.

She watches. Swaying.

Lets him do it.

Crimson and gold, snuffed out.

He'll come after her next. He pretends to be her ally, but she knows he will. After all, look what he's already done to her.

By the time she wakes up, the landscape's becoming more urban again. Dirty streets, rundown buildings, brokendown cars, wornout people. The bus rumbles by check-cashing stores, pawnshops, travel agencies with big ads for international phone cards, bodegas and botanicas. The botanicas make her think of Ethan and the god he'd willingly given up for her. Its name was Elegua, he told her later, when she asked, but it was identified also with the Catholic St. Barbara. Santeria was the way Yoruba traditions survived into the new world, cloaked in a veneer of European religion.

Trust Ethan to pick a paradigm that was about subverting the will of your captors, prevailing to hold onto what you value.

He'll do that for her, she knows that. He'll find some way to get to her.

As the bus lumbers on, the neighborhood starts to gentrify a little. Tattoo shops, used book stores, indie coffee shops. When she spots a thrift shop, she decides to get off here instead of ride as far as her ticket will take her. She needs new clothes, a chance to take off her ruined sweater and now-grimy jeans, to ditch her coat, which is too much for the waning winter anyway.

She notes each turn and landmark, and when the bus lets her off at the station, she finds her way back to the thrift shop. It feels strange to be walking city streets again after such a long time cocooned in Ethan's suite. She gets a few weird glances, and she wonders if she looks like she's homeless. The tear in her coat is still bleeding feathers and down, and there are streaks of dirt and ash on it from her fight with the vamp. Stopping to eye herself in a store window, she realizes there are smudges of dirt and a little dried blood on her face. She palms it away with a little spit. That helps a little, but she still looks a little crazy, she suspects.

When she steps into the thrift shop she makes an effort to greet the woman behind the counter in a relatively normal way. Apparently she at least partly succeeds, because no one stops her from browsing the store. She grabs a coat, some jeans and a few tees and sweaters, along with a carry-on bag to stuff them inside. The clerk gives her the eye when she hands over a crisp hundred dollar bill, but she shrugs. "Absentee father. Birthday card. You know how they are when they're trying to buy a year's worth of love."

The clerk smiles sympathetically and slides the bill under the money tray, then counts out Dawn's change. Dawn asks her to cut the tag off the coat, then she slips into it, feeling slightly less disreputable looking.

After she leaves, she hits a drugstore for makeup, toiletries, cheap underwear and a few other items, then sets out to find a hotel.

***

The bath water runs, sending curls of steam toward the mirror. She's sorry to be washing off the scent of Ethan's bath oil and shampoo, trading it for the generic smell of cheap hotel shampoo. Dawn reaches upward to deal with her hair, but the sleeve of the sweater is still stuck to her arm, pulling painfully at her skin. Abandoning the attempt for now, she removes everything but the sweater, then settles herself into the hot bath.

Weird to be half clothed in the tub. The wet wool grows heavy, and she imagines herself cast overboard in an impossibly warm sea, while those who threw her into the water watch her struggle and drown. One second it's a man who's standing at the railing of a ship, watching, the next it's a man and a woman. Really, what else did you expect? they say.

She slides down further, letting the water close over her face. Her hair floats up around her, waving in front of her face like tendrils of seaweed. Dawn combs it out with her fingers, pushing more of it to float before her face. She used to take forever in the tub when she was small, imagining just -- no. That's one of the false memories. Ethan missed that one.

She slides up to a sitting position again, her hair steaming water down her face. Gently she picks at the sweater sleeve, and it lifts off her skin without resistance. She peels off the whole sweater and drops it onto the floor without wringing it out. She glides beneath the water again, gazing through her hair at the tattooed arm she raises up out of the water. Green and grey, except the final few inches near her wrist, where Mike's work was interrupted.

She'll have to see to that.

Dawn's warmed the water at least two more times when she finally steps out of the bath. It takes two towels to get her hair halfway dry, and then she combs out the tangles. The tattoo swims in her vision whenever her comb encounters a knot. She's not sure why she's bothering with this. As soon as she's finished combing out her hair, she takes a fistful of it and chops it off with the scissors she bought.

After she finishes cutting it off just beneath the ears, Dawn dyes it black. There's a good chance her sister and/or friends have been flashing her picture or description around the train station, airport, and various points around the city. "Waist-length chestnut hair" is a little too easy to spot, a little too memorable. She lays the makeup on thicker than normal, too, and paints her lips crimson. Once she's dressed in tight black denims and a red shirt, she looks nothing like the girl they'll be describing.

She pulls on her boots, slips on her coat and hits the street again to find a tattoo parlor that feels right. Almost anyone could do the work that's left unfinished, Dawn suspects, but she wouldn't dream of letting just anyone touch the design or her flesh.

There are several she noticed in her wanderings from the bus station to the hotel, so she drifts into them all, sometimes turning to leave immediately, sometimes browsing the flash on the walls and looking through the books of custom. Anyone who points her to the flash of roses or butterflies, she spurns immediately. The other places are harder to leave. The buzz of the tattoo machines from behind curtains or doors goes straight to some deep place in her that wants to find that altered state she and Mike shared before they were both wrenched out of it by Ethan's warning call.

"Anything particular you're looking for?" asks a young guy behind the counter of the latest place, a living display of brow rings, lip studs, labrets and other hardware. There's a stainless steel bar through his nose, curving slightly like a carved bone.

"I need to have some color filled in on a piece I got a while back." She shoves up her sleeve just enough to show him her lower forearm. "From here to here." She maps out an area circling her arm, just barely more than an inch wide. "Same colors as above."

"Why don't you just finish it. We could do that in one sitting, no problem."

"No, I just want this much today." She's not risking sucking the life out of someone else.

"How far up does this go?"

Dawn taps her own shoulder.

"You can't be worried about pain. Is it the money?"

"What it is is that's what I want," she snarls. "Is that too hard to understand?"

"Uh, no. Let me see who's free."

She waits for a moment until he ushers her into one of the private rooms, where she undergoes the same argument. "If you can't do what I want, I can go somewhere else," she says, and that closes the subject. She settles into the chair and the tattoo artist begins to work.

A second bus, a second tattoo shop, and a new band of color next to the previous one, which has already healed. Two more sessions should complete the sleeve, and she knows, the way she's known so much else, that she needs to have it finished by the time she reaches Sunnydale.

Maybe Ethan is there already. As close as they've become, maybe he's homed in on the place that's calling out to her instead of following a moving target. After all, her blood now mingles with his.

On the bus she closes her eyes and tips her head back against the headrest, opening herself to him the way she did the first time she knelt and submitted to the lash.

Dawn feels him, off somewhere in the distance. All black and silver. He was her shelter, always. He reminded her how alike they were, assured her that no one would ever understand her the way he did. "It's true," she whispers. He'd do anything for her, he told her that, but that's not how things had worked out.

She misses him so much, misses the world they'd made together, small and cocooned, containing just the two of them.

Dawn opens that to him as well. Her yearning and grief, her trust that he'll find her.

Tears dry on her face as she drifts into sleep.
 

Dawn wakes as the bus downshifts on an exit ramp. For the first time in her days on buses, she feels queasy from the movement and the hot, stagnant air. Groggily, she reaches up to pull her hair forward over her shoulder, startled as she's reminded it's no longer there.

It's one of her small comforts, she realizes, to fuss with her hair when she feels sick or low or nervous. In school she used to pull it over her shoulder and pet it – a habit she picked up again after her mom died, so she knows it's a true memory. One more thing she's lost.

She decides to get off the bus for a while – which will almost inevitably mean a day, unless she finds another mode of travel. The view from the end of the ramp shows her there's not much of a town. The landscape is bleak, western wintery -- huge drifts of windblown snow, piles of heavy grey clouds above. Dawn shivers in the hot, stale air and rises to take her coat and bag from the overhead compartment. The bus makes a wide turn onto the main road, cranking the dial on her nausea.

The main street's almost like an outdoor set in an old Western: just a row of false fronts. While there are actual buildings lining the street, there doesn't seem to be much of a town surrounding them. It feels unreal, somehow.

Like Dawn.

The bus deposits her on the sidewalk outside a drugstore, and she takes great gulps of cold air as she looks around to get her bearings. She spots a little cafe with a couple of beat-up pickup trucks parked outside, a tack shop, a tiny library and a coffee house.

She assumes there'll be tea at the coffee house, which might help settle her stomach. Shouldering her bag, she crosses the street on the diagonal, against the light. Nothing's coming except a truck a block down.

The smell of coffee hits her as she opens the door, almost enough to prop her up by placebo effect alone. Just inside the door there's a bulletin board covered in flyers and business cards. Immediately her eye is drawn to an intricately-designed card advertising a tattoo parlor. No name, just Tattoo. Dawn wonders if it could possibly be in a town this small and quiet.

She goes to the counter to order her tea, and realizes she'll get her answer -- the girl running the espresso machine is wearing a baby doll tee that shows dark tribal designs on both her arms. She's never seen designs quite like these, but they speak to her in some unnameable way.

"Wow, those are really beautiful," Dawn says when the person ahead of her pays and leaves. "Did you get those done around here?"

"Just upstairs. My husband did them." She looks much too young to be married, but along with all her other silver jewelry is a wide wedding band with an elaborate pattern.

"He's really good."

"I wouldn't let anyone else near me. Are you here to see him, or can I get you something?"

"Some tea, thanks. I've been on the bus, and started feeling fairly gross."

The girl grins. "I hear that a lot. I have some nice chai that works wonders."

"I don't know. I've got a serious jones for some caffeine, too."

She starts reaching for a cup and a clear jar of dark leaves. "I've got caffeinated chai."

"Okay, sure, I'll try it." She pays and takes her tea to a table by the window, cradling the cup in her hands. It's nice just breathing it in. The spiciness of the scent takes it just far enough from memories of Giles to settle her without the thread of distrust he produces.

She closes her eyes, listening to the world beat music that's playing and the low murmur of nearby conversations, nothing she can pick out beyond a word or two. Dawn hasn't even realized she's finished her tea when the girl comes over and asks if she'd like a refill, and maybe a scone or a sandwich.

She declines the food, but agrees to another chai, and when the girl brings it she sits at the table with Dawn.

"I dunno," the girl says. "I got a strong sense that you might be looking for a tattoo artist. I checked with my husband, and he's got an opening in an hour, if you want to run upstairs and talk to him then. If you're still gonna be around."

"I'm here till the next bus. That's tomorrow, right?"

"Two days, actually. Unless you're wanting the eastbound."

"Oh. Is there a hotel? I should probably make sure I can get a room."

The girl scoots back her chair. "Stay and have your chai. I'll make a call. There's just the one place in town, and I'd recommend them even if they weren't. Two nights?"

Dawn nods and takes a sip of her tea. She realizes the nausea's gone, though she's not quite sure when it dissipated. She feels safe and content for the moment. Cocooned.

It's more than an hour before she's called upstairs, but she doesn't mind staying in her calm, settled state a while longer. It gives her a chance to see the cloud cover breaking up, allowing the setting sun to color the buildings on main street with gold and pink.

She climbs the narrow wooden stairs when she's called, surprised at what she finds when she reaches the top. The slanting roof holds an enormous skylight, reflecting the room below it. She catches a slight whiff of burnt sage that she'd find unexpected in other tattoo parlors, but the burnt umber of the walls and the scattering of Navajo rugs make it seem completely natural.

The man who enters from a curtained doorway couldn't be more different from Monterey Mike. Slight in build, wearing a black button-down shirts, black jeans and pointy black boots with silver tips -- there's not even a sign that he sports any ink of his own. Dawn feels instantly at ease with him, as if she's known him as long as she has Val, or Xander.

"Hey, I'm Rio." He offers his hand. Dawn expects him to shake hers, but instead he holds it, yet it doesn't feel weird.

"Dawn."

"You wanted some work done."

"I have this piece that hasn't been finished. I'd like you to complete it." She'd been planning on splitting it into two sessions, but she likes the feel of this place. The artists who've worked on the color so far haven't been affected at all. Dawn pulls up the sleeve of her sweater to show several inches.

Rio draws in a breath. "I'd like to see the rest of it, if I could."

Without hesitation Dawn pulls off her sweater.

"This is beautiful work, remarkable. Who did this?"

She doesn't know what fallout has come from Mike's death. To be on the safe side, she avoids naming him, using instead a name she's heard at school. "Marguerite, out on the island."

"She does great work. Did she design this, too?"

This time she tells the truth. "I did."

"What you're looking for is to have the green extended all the way to the wrist."

"Yes."

Rio nods. "Have a seat there and relax a bit. I'll blend the color and we'll get started." Once she's settled he hits the dimmer switch and turns up the music, the same world beat that was piped in downstairs.

With the lights lowered to a bare glimmer, she can see through the skylight, the night sky now completely black and absolutely stuffed with stars. She hasn't seen this many stars since those camping trips with -- with -- The memory disappears like smoke as she tries to capture it. Her throat tightens.

Breathe. Breathe. Once you've completed the ritual it won't matter.

She breathes and looks up at the black and silver sky, and by the time Rio returns she's relaxed again, letting the chair cradle her.

Leaving the room lights low, he switches on a work light directly above Dawn's wrist. "Just keep looking up at the sky," he suggests.

It doesn't take long for the sound of the needle, the ebb and flow of the pain to drop her into the altered state she finds so comforting. It's even easier here, as she lets herself blend into the black and silver sky.

After a while, though, it's not so comforting. Tension builds in her chest. "Can we take a break now?"

"Just one minute," Rio says. "Breathe. You're doing great."

Breathe.

She tries, but her chest grows tighter. "There's something wrong." Dawn tries to turn her head to look at what he's doing, but a deep lassitude has crept over her without her realizing it, keeping her inert in the chair. "What are you doing?"

"I guess there's no harm in letting you watch," Rio says, and suddenly she's able to turn her head to see.

He's just closing the gap on a solid band of black encircling her wrist.

"No! What the fuck have you done?" She tries to push herself out of the chair, but she's still held there, unable to move. Like when she'd been paralyzed by Gnarl, but her muscles are slack as if she were still in her dreamy state.

"You can't be allowed to finish this." Rio's voice is still warm and pleasant, though with a tone of firmness she associates with Giles. "You can't be loosed here, and there's no room for you where you came from."

"Stop! Stop this now!" She tries to roll over his will the way she had with Mike, but he's impervious, and he keeps to his work as she watches, unable to intervene.

Once he finishes the black band, he begins overwriting the remainder of Mike's grey outline with an intricate pattern of symbols or runes.

"What is that?"

"It's a spell to keep you bound to this body. To prevent your transformation. It won't harm you."

No. Just keep her caught between selves, unable to shed the false one and assume the true, but unable to retrieve the parts of Dawn that she already let go. She knows this, though she's not certain how.

"Are you with the Council? Did Giles make this happen?"

He lifts the needle from her skin, wipes away blood and ink. "I have nothing to do with them."

"Then who are you?"

Rio takes her hand, rubbing his thumb over its back in a comforting gesture. "Your brother has his priests too."

"I don't have a brother," Dawn snaps.

"You don't remember him." Rio brushes her hair back from her face, his hand stroking her temple down to her cheek. "He's sorry about that."

His touch, intimate even for a man who spends his days touching the skin of strangers, seems to awaken her memories, though they're shadowy, fragmented.

Black and silver.

How close they were. Her ideal world was one that contained only the two of them. He said it was his only desire as well.

Rio switches on the tattoo machine again, taking her limp hand in his.

The pain from the needle, sharper than before, makes her whimper. "Please. Stop this."

"You should have been content with the life you were given."

"Fuck you! What do you know about my life?"

"More than you'd guess." He still sounds sympathetic, friendly. "You have work that engages you, friends you love. A sister."

"The sister I betrayed?" Dawn's not sure where that came from.

"She had to be stopped. You know that."

"The way I have to be stopped."

"You're not her. But you don't realize what you set in motion."

"You have your world. You kicked out all your rivals. What do you care what I do in mine?"

He's finished covering the grey outlines, but he keeps the needle moving, down onto the back of her hand. "I'm not your brother. I'm just his priest. But it's not just your world. You'll bleed into other worlds, there'll be no stopping it once you've come into your full power."

"I did everything you asked. Everything. I betrayed her for you, and you turned on me."

"I'm not him," Rio says again, but she doesn't give a shit about his denials. "Look up now," he says gently. "Back up at the stars."

Dawn doesn't particularly want to, but she doesn't seem able to stop herself.

"Breathe."

"I can't. My chest hurts."

"This won't harm you," he says again. "Just breathe. Look at the sky."

Black and silver.

She breathes into it, and feels herself opening just a bit.

"That's the way," Rio encourages.

She takes the sky into herself, or lets herself be taken into the sky -- she's not sure which. The way they used to melt into each other, before he sent her into exile. She's in danger of slipping away, losing herself, when Rio shuts off the needle. "Just one more sigil. This one's on the palm. Prepare yourself, it's going to hurt." He turns her palm upward and starts the needle.

She yelps with the pain, so much more intense than all the work that's been done so far.

"Not much longer," he says softly. "You're doing well."

That's what they all tell her when she's accepting pain without protest. Her face feels hot with shame as tears slip down her cheeks.

It seems like an eternity before he turns off the tattoo gun one last time and sets it aside. "All done," he says, as if she's a child swallowing some noxious medicine. Gently he wipes the blood and ink from her palm. "It's likely to fade in a fairly short time," he tells her. "It's why we normally don't work on the palm. That and the pain. But the fading doesn't matter. It accomplished what it needed to."

"How could you do this to me?"

"It's the only way," Rio says.

Dawn tries to hold back her tears, but his sympathy breaks her. He holds her hand so tenderly as she cries.

"Your brother does love you."

"Right. He's branded me and thrown me back into exile."

"He's letting you live." He sits beside her for a moment without speaking. "Sometimes I'm possessed by him. For rituals. So he can walk in the world."

"Like the orishas," Dawn says. Ethan told her about them. The spirits of Elegua and the other god-saints, who sometimes ride their priests during rituals.

"Yes." After a pause, he says, "He would come and say goodbye, if you'd permit it."

"He does what he wants," she says bitterly.

"Not this time. Only if you agree."

Dawn knows what he means by say goodbye. The thought of being with him again nearly cracks her open with grief.

"You've taken your priest as your lover," Rio says. "That's as it should be. If you--"

"My priest -- where is Ethan? Is he alive?"

"He's alive and mending. The watcher gave him a severe beating. He's free to come to you now, if he wishes."

If he wishes. He's always been a paradigm jumper, and now that his phoenix has had her wings clipped --

"It's your choice," Rio says again.

She chooses heartbreak. "I want to see my brother again."

"I want to see him," she repeats. "But not like this."

"Of course not. You'll want to sleep off the effects of the spell and the tea. And it will take a while to summon your brother. He's close by, of course. He's been guiding me. But the transformation has to be done gradually."

"Your wife was going to get me a room at the hotel."

Rio shakes his head. "We have a room prepared." He calls downstairs to his wife, and by the time chai girl clomps up the stairs in her (black and silver) Harley Davidson boots, Dawn's body is back under her control again, though a little shaky.

She allows herself to be led through two curtained doorways into another room with a skylight. In the center of the room is an enormous bed with a black coverlet shot through with silver (of course) threads. Dawn doesn't see how she can sleep after everything she's endured, but the moment she sits on the featherbed, exhaustion overtakes her.

"Sleep will do you good," chai girl tells her. "Is there anything you need first?"

"What I need," she snarls, "is never to have come here to begin with."

Like Rio, his wife responds mildly. "It was necessary. It's ordained."

Dawn turns away from her. "Just get out." She wants to scream at her, just as she did when she was a fourteen-year-old filled with pain: Getoutgetoutgetout! Instead she sinks back onto the bed and pretends chai girl isn't there.

Once she hears Rio's wife leave, it doesn't take long before she's drifting. When she wakes she feels like she's been asleep for hours, maybe days, but the sky above the bed is still dark and moonless, filled with stars. There's a tray of food on the bedside table, which Dawn spurns. Drinking the offerings of these people is what brought her to this.

Chai girl pushes the curtain aside and enters with two wooden boxes, one atop the other. "It's beautiful," she says without preamble.

"What is?"

"The tattoo."

Dawn flips the sheet up around her. "The last thing I want is to hear you gush over what your fucking husband did to me. It's like telling an amputee what a pretty stump she has. It's an abomination, and you're disgusting." The girl struggles to hide her hurt feelings, which angers Dawn even more. "What do you want?"

"He'll be here soon," chai girl stammers. "Your brother. He sent gifts for you." She sets the two boxes on the bed, opening the larger one and taking out a silver bracelet. Offering it to Dawn with both hands, she waits, holding her breath.

Dawn wants to hurl it across the room, but its beauty softens her heart. She takes it from the girl, examining its elaborate inlay. Silver and gold and copper in softened geometrics, with a strange sense of both harmony and discord. "It's --" Dawn refuses to say beautiful after the girl's idiot remark about the ruined tattoo. "It's stunning."

"It represents the three of you."

Dawn remembers her fragments of dreams. Silver and black. Gold and crimson. "Copper--"

"That's you."

Copper and green.

"He'd like it if you wore that."

"Why? As a reminder of what we destroyed? And I'm giving myself way too much credit by saying we. What happened to our sister, he engineered all of it. Is he that cruel?" She sets it on the coverlet, pushes it away from her.

"Okay," chai girl says. She seems to be taking this personally. "There's more." She opens the larger box again and turns it toward Dawn. Inside are more silver cuffs, bangles, armbands, some rings and earrings. "They're all for you."

She wants to resist, but she's drawn in. "They're amazing." Each blends its materials so remarkably, with sinuous patterns that seem laden with meaning. As if these are scripture that can be worn. "Who made these?"

"I did. I'm a silversmith. It's my calling, what I do to honor him."

Dawn looks up at her. "Why do you worship a hellgod? He has nothing to do with your world."

"He's bound to this world, in a way. Because you are. Put these on. He'll be here soon."

"Does it bother you? It's your husband he's riding."

"I begrudge the god nothing."

"It seems very human to me, to give our gods as little as we can. The ones who don't we think are crazy."

Rio's wife laughs. "Maybe you're right." She takes the smaller box and sets it on a low chest. "I'm going now. He'll be here any moment." She disappears through the curtained door.

Dawn sheds her clothes, folding them neatly on a chair. Wearing nothing but the gifts he sent, she turns back toward the bed and spots the bracelet she'd disdained.

She slips it on and waits for him.

Dawn hears his tread in the next room, boots on bare wood, then muffled on Navajo rugs. It sounds completely different from Rio's normal gait, and when he pushes the curtain aside to enter, he looks like Rio in the gross details, but it's not Rio who's inhabiting this body. He's still wearing the black shirt and jeans, and Dawn feels grateful that he hasn't changed into some ludicrously dramatic costume.

Tears shimmer in her eyes.

He takes her in for a moment without speaking, then makes a soft noise of regret. "Your beautiful hair," he says, and suddenly rage sweeps through her.

"My hair? You've just destroyed me, and you're worried about my fucking hair?" She flings her arms outward. "So are you enjoying your chance to gloat?"

He shakes his head. "I never planned to appear. But you cried out to me and I couldn't bear it."

"I never called to you."

"You haven't ceased, since you were separated from your priest."

"But I didn't--" She realizes that he's speaking the truth. She'd been certain it was Ethan she called to, but she'd been none too careful about containing her yearning.

Black and silver.

He reaches for her hand, and she reluctantly lets him take it. Immediately she feels the sexual buzz she didn't feel from Rio's touch.

"Oh," she says. She sees it all now. How she'd been so susceptible to Ethan from the very start. The sexual heat he kindled in her. The way the world was a secret joke only the two of them shared. His declaration that no one knew or understood her -- or loved her -- the way he did.

Dawn's heart races, and all she wants is to give herself to him, melt into him. She tugs her hand free of his. "So how are things in the old home hell dimension? You'll forgive me if I can't remember names of anyone to ask after. I've had some memory issues the last twenty years -- six years -- whatever."

"Sister--"

"Or my own real name, too, thanks for the reminder. Or yours."

"Human speech can't even approximate them."

"Too bad big sister already snagged Glorificus. A little over-the-top, but so was she. Though I have to say, you're doing way better in the minion department."

"Sister," he says again, and takes her hand again, the one covered with his priest's markings.

This time she doesn't -- or can't -- resist.

He draws her toward him and she lets him fold her in his arms.

How well they fit together, even after all this time, even in bodies that have never come together before. She pulls him toward the bed.

She lies on the coverlet, under the skylight, and lets herself melt into the silver and black.

"There's something I don't get," Dawn says. She's lying stretched out on her belly across the Navajo rug as he feathers his hand along the skin of her back. The rhythm of it is hypnotic.

"Don't ask questions."

She ignores this. "This dimension is where you exiled the both of us. The one we ruled belongs to you alone. What are you doing slumming here? I know this isn't the first time you've ridden Rio."

"You never could leave well enough alone."

"And you don't just break through into this world in your true form. You choose to wear a human body. To squeeze yourself into the same prison you chose for us. Are you obsessed, maybe, with what you made us?"

"You're never satisfied."

She turns her head toward him, resting it on her crossed arms. "What do I have to be satisfied with?"

"Your questions just make this worse."

"My questions just make you feel guilty."

He makes an annoyed sound and looks away.

Dawn turns on her side, propping herself up on an elbow. "Have you ever been in Rio's body for this long?"

"I don't know." This question exasperates him no less than the others.

"You can't use them that hard. They're more fragile than you'd think."

Without answering, he reaches for her.

Her own greed rises up to meet his. Casting her concern aside, she drinks in his scent, the feel of his skin against hers, the sharpness of his hunger. She feeds her energy to him as she arches beneath him, then leans over him stroking his brow in the lull after their coupling.

"You're feverish. You should leave this body. We can have this again, but you need to release him now."

"I have one more gift for you first."

"It can wait," she says.

"No." He rises and picks up the smaller of the wooden boxes. Inside is a cloth covered with smudges of rust and black.

"What is that?" she asks, but he doesn't answer. He gestures for her to join him, and she does his bidding. She always has.

He unwraps the cloth, and inside is yet another bracelet, a hinged cuff covered with exquisitely wrought symbols. It makes her feel the way Giles's book closet did, and the text Ethan gave her. It floods her with desire for its beauty and power.

Dawn extends her unmarked arm, but he reaches for the other. He closes the bracelet around her arm, then draws her hand upward to press his lips against her palm.

"It's beautiful," she says.

He closes his hand around the cuff and begins to chant.

"What are you doing?" she demands.

Heat sears her forearm, and she tries to tug it from his grip, but he holds fast, his voice rising.

"Stop. Right now, I mean it."

Pain flares in her arm as the chant reaches its climax, and at last he releases her, stumbling back toward the bed. Dawn cradles her tattooed arm in the other for a moment, hissing with pain. When she looks down at it, she sees the cuff's hinges have disappeared, leaving a solid band of silver and copper circling her arm, wide enough to bridge the tattooed black runes, the black band, and the green.

The metal has melded into her skin.

"What the fuck have you done to me?"

"What have you done?" she demands again.

"Nothing that will harm you."

"Why is it I always hear that just when someone's done me some terrible damage?" The pain is beginning to fade, but in its place is a growing sense that something is wrong. "Tell me what you did to me."

He passes his hand over his face. "This will confine your cries to this realm alone. I can't bear it when you call out to me. I can't ignore you. But I can't do this."

"What's stopping you from doing this? You seem to be enjoying it enough. You're having a hard time letting go."

He won't look at her. "I can't be torn this way."

"So you're silencing me."

"No. I'm just closing a window so I won't hear."

"You're heartless. Not that this should be a surprise to me." She crawls across the bed toward the chair holding her clothes. "You say you love me and you betray me in the same breath. That's how you've always been. Why should now be any different?" She snatches up her bra and fastens its hooks and eyes, then slides it around to pull up, her back turned to him.

"No. You mustn't think that."

"You can't fucking stop me. Unless that's the next thing you plan to do to me. Implant a sunny, happy opinion of you, no matter what you do? Better get your crack team of monks on it, or whoever you had make your fake Dawn in the first place." She slips on her cotton drugstore panties, then her jeans.

"Sister--"

"Don't try that on me," she tosses over her shoulder. "You've disowned me, cast me out, cut me off. I don't answer to you now." She yanks on her sweater and feels her hair snap and raise with static energy. Reaching beneath the bed to fumble for a stray sock, she sees him sitting on the end of the bed, slumped with a hand to his head. "You have to go back now. You're killing him."

"I need to make you understand."

Boots in her hand, she comes around to the end of the bed to stand over him. "Here's what I understand: You create suffering, but you can't bear to see it or hear from those you've hurt. You're cruel and arrogant and weak and cowardly. If that's the way you rule your realm, I'm glad I'm banished. You can't change my mind, so you might as well let Rio go. You have to ease out, don't wrench away."

He reaches up toward her face, and she sees how much effort it requires.

She seizes his wrist before he touches her. "If you burn up this body while you're inside, you'll die too."

He shakes his head.

"You think you'll wake up on the mother ship, like a Cylon? You'll die. Like our sister did when Ben was murdered. Did you know that I watched?"

Drawing in an unsteady breath, he says, "Let me make you understand."

"That's how you operate. You make people behave the way you want. I'm using the word 'people' in the loosest possible sense, of course." Releasing him, she sits on a low chest along the wall, pulling on her socks. "What do we call demoted hellgods, anyway? Am I just a minor demon now? If I have a child, what would it be called?"

"You won't have a child."

She looks up from lacing her boot. "You sound so sure."

"I made sure. Your body is barren."

The desire to seize a weapon that sweeps through her is so strong it's physical. Snatching up the other boot, she stands, ready to hurl it at him, but she notices at last how ashen his color has become and lets her arm drop. "Stop this. Let him go before you destroy him." It's already too late, she suspects.

That doesn't even get a refusal. His breath whistles in and out. She moves to him, planting a knee on the bed beside him.

"Lie down, at least." She has to push him down onto the mattress. "Stop clutching. Slowly."

He fights for breath, and she realizes he'll burn Rio up waiting for absolution. It enrages her to think a few words from her are so important, yet he's willing to cut her voice off forever after he has them.

She whispers into his ear. "I will never ever forgive you. For any of this." She puts her palm over his mouth, pinches his nose closed. Just the way Giles did to Ben. She waits to see if her brother will flee, letting Rio emerge for his final moments, but it's him she sees entreating her with his eyes.

Like Ben, he struggles weakly, but she bears down. It's not hard to overpower him. "You won't hear me calling out to you. I won't have to think about you reigning in the home I can't even imagine. It's a win-win."

She leans into him until she's sure he's dead, then she shoves her other foot into the unlaced boot and pulls at her clothes until it looks like she's just thrown them on in a panic. Plunging down the stairs, she finds Rio's wife behind the counter looking worried, half distraught. The girl knows it's been too long.

"Call the rescue squad," Dawn says urgently. "We both lost track -- he wouldn't let go."

She snatches up the phone. "Is he--"

"I think he might die."

During the chaos that follows, Dawn finds her carry-on bag behind the counter and slips out. She finds the car of one of the volunteer paramedics with the keys still inside, and takes it. She switches plates three towns west, switches cars in Missoula and again in Spokane. She doesn't stop for sleep until she reaches Seattle.

She feels curiously blank for most of the drive west. Pushing away thoughts about what she's done, about what happens next.

She avoids looking in the mirror as she brushes her teeth. Who she is now -- or what -- is another topic she'd prefer to leave until later.

Dawn's dreams, however, don't take her preferences into account. They take her to the tower, shivering in that ridiculous gown, staring down at the portal. It undulates in a way that feels obscene -- it knows what she is and invites her into it. Buffy fights her way to the top of the tower, slices through the ropes that hold her fast. "Go back where you came from." Then she seizes Dawn and throws her off the edge, down into the chaos.

Back where you came from. The dreams take her there, too. There's nothing left even in her subconscious to supply details of the place, so everything is dark, as if she's blindfolded. Her brother is there with her, making her shiver with desire, teasing her with his touch, all the time whispering to her about their plans. "It's us or her," he tells her. "She grows stronger every day. We must move now, before it's too late."

"Yes, all right," she whispers, and he gives her release that rolls through her in waves as though it will never stop.

Then she's back in Sunnydale, in her house. Buffy is there, and Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara. And Giles. He bends beside her, making sure the knots are tight. Though she smells alcohol on his breath, his movements are controlled, precise. She begs the others to stop this, but no one makes a move.

"It's the only way," Anya says. "Buffy can't possibly beat Glory. If she gets you in time to open the way to her dimension, we're all screwed."

Tara nods brightly. "We'll make it quick."

Giles rises and nods to Buffy, who picks up a glittering sword covered with gems and runes.

"Wait!" calls out an urgent voice from another room. Her mom bustles in from the kitchen in her apron. "Stop." She rushes to Dawn's side and brushes the hair away from her neck. Her fingers hurriedly work at the clasp of Dawn's necklace. "This belonged to my mother, I'd hate to lose it."

The chain slithers away from Dawn's neck and her mom lets it puddle in her palm. She steps back. "All right now, Buffy."

The sword whistles through the air as Buffy swings with all her might.

Dawn wakes sitting bolt upright in bed, crying out.

After an hour or two Dawn falls asleep once more, and the second time she wakes, she's ravenous. She can't remember the last time she ate. She calls room service and orders half the menu. Once she's full she sleeps again and doesn't awaken until she hears the maids knocking at doors all along the hallway, calling out Housekeeping!

The compulsion to drive west is still strong in her. There's no ritual to be performed, no reason to claw her way to Sunnydale, but the urge to be there wells inside her until it pushes out everything else.

Maybe she's meant to die there, in the place where she first came to this world. Briefly she considers the option of resisting the impulse, getting on the next eastbound bus and making her way somewhere she can disappear, like New York City. But who is she to argue with Fate? She's been nothing but a pawn in any of this.

In any case, the compulsion won't be denied. Even contemplating changing direction creates an overwhelming dread that grips her physically. Maybe this has nothing to do with Fate or fulfilment of dark prophecies after all. What if this obsession is a side-effect of all the damage that's been done to her since this began? By her brother and his priest, clipping her wings and stilling her voice. By Ethan, picking apart the cage which held her. Picking apart Dawn. She thinks about the legion of crazy people Glory made, all focused in their damaged way on one thing. Perhaps that's all she is now, a shambling shell of who she'd been. Whatever. She feels no more desire to resist craziness than Fate.

Stuffing her things in her bag, she checks out of the hotel and finds her way to the bus station. She counts out more of Ethan's money, aware that her supply is dwindling. Using her credit card or ATM card will expose her Even if the police aren't tracking her, she's pretty sure Willow is.

A fresh-faced girl sits next to her on the bus, despite the glare Dawn levels at her. She chatters about her favorite bands, none of which Dawn recognizes, though some of the names make her suspect they're religious rockers.

Dawn reaches up to shove a lock of her hair behind her ear, flashing a good several inches of tattoo, which causes the girl to stammer her way to a stop.

"Wow," she says after a pause. "What are all those symbols?"

"Do you know what a grimoire is?"

The girl shakes her head, her fingers picking nervously at her knit scarf.

"It's a book of spells and dark incantations and stuff. That's where I got these designs."

"Oh." She definitely looks unsettled. "Do you know what they're for?"

Dawn shrugs. "It's all bullshit. I picked the ones I liked the look of."

Her new best friend comes up with a sudden need to be in another seat, and Dawn watches her go, then settles in against the window and drowses. It shouldn't surprise her when the bus crosses into California and the landscape starts kicking up Dawn's memories, but it does. She's been so far from home for so long, swimming through this weird ocean of memory -- the hazy, barely-there ones from before she was the Key, the fake Dawn ones -- she'd almost forgotten that there were three years of true memories centered around this area.

The closest bus stop to Sunnydale is the next town over, seven miles away. Her memories stir here, too. She and Janice used to come here to shop while her mom got her hair done with the hairdresser she liked. One of the smart ones, who'd gotten the hell out of Sunnydale.

Dawn walks through town, backtracking toward the highway. There's the ice cream store she and Janice would hang out in. There's the gift shop where Dawn shoplifted a necklace. It had been nowhere near as satisfying to steal from a stranger as taking something from the Magic Box. That's a realization she should mull over with a shrink someday -- if there's anything left of her but a drooling wreck.

She won't have this when she gets to Sunnydale. The streets that remind her of who she was, what she did. All that's been swallowed whole, as surely as Dawn's childhood memories. In a way she'd like to linger, but the compulsion won't let her.

Dawn stops at a gas station for a pee and a bottle of water, then positions herself at the ramp onto the highway, hitching as close to Sunnydale as someone will take her.

"I can only take you as far as the bypass," says the middle-aged woman who stops at the onramp to give Dawn a ride.

"Bypass?"

"The new highway they put in. Around there."

"That'll be okay," Dawn tells her. "However far you can take me is good."
Bypass. That's what the doctors do to a failing heart. It seems appropriate somehow.

"There's nothing there," the woman says. "At all."

"I know," Dawn says softly. "I kinda need to see, though."

The woman looks dubious, but Dawn doesn't feel the need to justify herself any further. She rides in silence for the five miles to the bypass. The woman drops her at a gas station before the ramp. It used to be Sunnydale MiniMart, now it's called Last Chance Gas. As if it's 100 miles to the next gas station. Maybe it is. Maybe the towns south of Sunnydale have all scooted away to avoid being tainted with its supernatural cooties.

She sets out on foot to cover the last two miles. It's better this way, she thinks. She feels the landscape more, senses a resonance from the earth (or maybe from the hellmouth) that seems to reset her pulse according to its rhythm.

She's glad to be out of the bitter winter in the northern plains, grateful too not to be walking under a scorching summer sun.

The closer she gets, the more she hurries, and at last she's standing on the edge of the crater. Its energy is nothing like it used to be. Stifled. Blocked. Just like her.

Hellmouth. Hellgod. Something more they have in common.

That's not all this place is. Her mom's in there. Tara. Anya. Every one a woman who shaped who she became in some way, and every one swallowed by this place. She looks down in the pit and sees nothing of her town, no identifiable rubble. It's all just faceless rock that gives her nothing. Did all that was recognizable about Sunnydale get sucked into hell before the opening got corked up? Did her mom? Tara? Somehow the idea of Tara there bothers her most, though that makes her feel guilty. Tara was so soft and gentle, like a nervous doe. Her mom was feisty, but Tara -- how could she survive a hell dimension?

Trying to shake off these thoughts, she lifts her gaze from the crater to the landscape above and spots some kind of structure in the distance, near the ragged edge of the hole. Dawn slings her bag over her shoulder and sets out to see what's there.

Whether it's a trick of the light or typical Sunnydale weirdness, it seems she gets no closer, no matter how long she walks. Her heels are blistered by the time she comes close enough to realize what the building is.

The robin's egg blue paint is what gives it away. She'd forgotten this place after all these years, but whenever her mom drove past it, Dawn and Buffy would beg (though they never had to plead very hard) her to slow so they could gawk. The vivid blue house was nearly overwhelmed with the outdoor decor. Not the usual gazing balls, but a bare dirt yard that was completely planted with plastic flowers (stolen from cemeteries, so went the stories), and trees that dangled teddy bears and dollbabies and even a tricycle. Dawn supposes now the whole place would be considered outsider art by the hipsters, but back then there were rumors that the woman who lived there had lost a baby -- or half a dozen -- to crib death, or had murdered it (them) herself, all depending on who told the story.

How strange that this is the one building that still stands on the lip of the hellmouth. Maybe whatever ate Sunnydale choked on such raw emotion as the house embodied.

Despite the blisters, she picks up her pace once she recognizes the house. Was its owner still there, perched on the vast hole that was Sunnydale, or had she left? Or had she been swallowed when the hellmouth collapsed?

Hard to imagine anyone who'd made such a shrine to grief being willing to leave it behind. Harder still to imagine someone living so close to the crater for these past three years.

She'll have her answer soon enough.

As she comes closer to the house, she sees that the bright blue paint is peeling, which had never been the case when Sunnydale was Sunnydale. Though there are still curtains and she can see large furniture shapes inside, there's a blankness to the windows, the look of an abandoned house.

The plastic flowers still poke up out of the earth, but now they're fighting with scrubby grass for the real estate, and dirt obscures the colors. Dawn remembers them always being bright, like the house, and she wonders if the woman used to hose them off or clean them some other way. Time has had its way with the tree, too. Storms have taken a couple of branches, dumping the trike and a handful of dolls onto the ground. One of the storms must have been recent -- there's a big, pale strip where the bark peeled away with the falling branch.

What would a storm be like out here, she wonders. Exhilarating, or terrifying? Living in the midwest, Dawn has grown to like thunderstorms, especially the nighttime ones, but thinking of lightning and thunder and wild winds out here on the edge of the hellhole makes her shiver.

She steps up onto the big porch, her boots sounding abnormally loud in the quiet out here. There isn't even birdsong, or the whirr of insects. Nature's rejected this whole area. Though Dawn's certain the house is abandoned, she feels she should knock on the door before she barges in. Squelching the impulse, she tries the door and finds it unlocked.

She takes a deep breath and steps inside.

To her surprise, the door leads into the kitchen, not the living room. There's a brown paper grocery bag sitting on the table, with a pair of soup cans sitting next to it. As if someone had been unpacking the groceries when they had to flee the house.

Why a panicked evacuation when most of the town had been hitting the road for days? Most residents, she guesses, had gone by the main highway rather than the little-used two-lane that runs out here. It had been bad enough getting out even then. The woman who lived here might have just come in from her grocery run -- to the little IGA along this road and not the big supermarkets in town -- when Sunnydale got sucked into the hellmouth. She must have heard or seen enough to send her racing for her car with no advance preparation.

Dawn drifts into the living room. The curtains are pulled mostly closed, making it much darker than the kitchen. Though she doesn't expect anything to happen, she flips the wall switch, and gets just the result she expected. Pushing the drapes apart brings a little more light, but the windows are coated with dust and it doesn't help much.

There's a plastic bag with knitting by a chair, beneath the theoretical shine of a three-way lamp. A basket tucked under the end table is filled to overflowing with baby booties. It makes the hair on her neck stand on end. Also by the chair are reading glasses and a magazine with inspirational stories. Unthinkingly, she trails her finger in the dust on the end table as she moves toward the next room.

This one's a bedroom. Small and spare, like a nun's cell. A single bed with a metal headboard. A hand-pieced quilt, not much thicker than a sheet, spread on top. Its Easter-egg colors have faded with age. Nothing decorating the walls, which she suddenly realizes is true of the rest of the house, too. The despair in this room is palpable.

It feels like home.

Dawn sits on the bed, smoothing her hand over the threadbare quilt. She's some weird Sunnydale version of Goldilocks, breaking into a house that doesn't belong to her, trying everything on for size.

This amount of despair is juuuuust riiiiight.

She pulls off her sweater and stretches out her tattooed arm. The intricate green design meant to uncage her, the dense black intended to imprison her again. Both ending in the sacrifice of the artist who placed it there.

She is broken, caged, silenced.

This, she realizes, is the perfect home for her. A shrine to loss, a tomb for the living.

Pulling the quilt over and around her, she curls up on the bed.

After tending to her blisters, Dawn takes stock of the house. Though there's no electricity, the water runs (although it's rusty brown at first) and the gas is still connected, though only one burner of the stove works.

Dawn sorts through the cupboards, throwing out the boxes of crackers and cereals, leaving the cans, except a few rusty and bulging ones. She's not sure what to do with the bags of trash this generates -- there's no trash pick-up anymore, and she doesn't have a car to haul it anywhere. Of course, she's got the world's largest landfill just waiting outside her back door, but that would be throwing garbage onto her mom and Tara and Anya. She drags it outside behind a prefabricated shed that looks like a red barn.

The shed has a padlock on it. She'll look for a key once she's got the house sorted out -- or when she can't make any more progress on that without something that might be in a shed.

Returning to the kitchen, she puts away the groceries in the IGA bag, so fragile now that it tears as she reaches inside. Cans and jars roll across the table top.

Little of it is stuff she'd pick off a grocery shelf for herself -- canned peaches and pears were a favorite, or else on sale -- but it'll keep her fed for a couple of days while the blisters heal, then she can walk to the store for fresher supplies. She wonders how long the survivalists keep their canned goods in their secret bunkers. One year? Two? At this point she's not sure she cares if she dies by canned peach.

At the bottom of the bag she finds a curl of white paper, and she can't resist looking at the date printed in pale purple. May 20. 9:46 a.m. Such a bright and sunny morning. About an hour later, Dawn had been staring out the back window of a school bus, willing Buffy to outrun the collapse of the streets and buildings. At the same time the woman who'd lived here must have frowned and gone to her kitchen window, then turned and run full speed for her car. Both got out with little but the clothes they wore. The woman had a car, Dawn had friends and a sister. She wonders who came out better in the long run. It depends, she guesses, on whether the woman still has her car.

She shakes off her thoughts and sets about cleaning her new home. The refrigerator, she decides, can wait, possibly till the next doomsday. No smells are making it past its door gasket, but once it's opened, she'll be hit with three years of slime and mold and rot. It's not like she has anything to put in there, or that it would keep anything cold if she did.

Rummaging under the sink, she finds all the cleaning stuff, and fills a bucket to wash the kitchen floor. She runs the hot tap a long time before it occurs to her the water heater probably runs on electricity. She'll use cold on the floors, but if she wants a bath later she'll have to heat a stock pot on the range.

Dawn finds a mop along with the broom she uses to get the loose dirt, but scrubbing on her hands and knees suits her mood. The tattoo and silver cuff move rhythmically in her field of vision as she works. After a while she focuses only on the pitted linoleum before her.

In all the years Dawn had been passing by this house (three? seven?), the exterior had always been bright and neat. But inside everything was faded and worn, as if its inhabitant deserved less than those speeding past on the old state road.

Maybe she'll brighten things up. Scrub and paint and patch what's broken. After all, she has nothing but time.

When she's finished with the kitchen floor the daylight is fading. Dawn cooks some spaghetti and covers it with room temperature canned sauce. No cheese, not even from a shaker can. If there is any, it's likely in the fridge, and she's so not going there.

There's more light outside, so she eats her pasta sitting on the porch with her legs dangling off the edge. Once she's washed her plate and the pots, it's completely dark.

She feels her way to the bedroom and sleeps beneath the old quilt.

She confines her efforts to the inside of the house, not just because it's been neglected but to avoid calling attention to her presence here. Not that she expects witnesses -- the road out here doesn't connect to the bypass, it just trails into nothing. There's little reason for anyone to come this way. Still, it seems wisest. If Ethan makes it this far, he'll find her even without any visible sign.

Dawn wonders if he's trying.

Pushing that thought aside, she scours the kitchen sink and stove, managing to unclog another of the burners, and chisels god knows what crust off the oven walls. She tackles the windows and the bathroom fixtures, then sits out on the porch steps in the sunlight, with a can of peaches and a spoon.

The question of Ethan floats up again, and she shoves it back by hunting up some paper and a pen and starting a list of food and supplies.

Half the staples she thinks of need refrigeration, and another huge percentage is heavy. Unless she finds some means of trarnsporting supplies, she'll be making trips almost daily. Not exactly the best way to fly under the radar.

She writes down candles, peanut buttter, bread. There's that disgusting powdered nonfat milk her freshman roommate drank. Dawn supposes the tap water's cold enough here that it might be tolerable. Ramen has a shelf life designed to last through an apocalypse or two, it's cheap and it weighs nothing. She's certainly used to it, after all these years in college.

Living on powdered, processed food isn't the most self-sufficient life she can imagine. Then again, she can't see herself raising vegetables and chickens on the edge of the hellmouth, corked or not. If anything would thrive at all where birds and bugs won't even go, it would probably turn into a 200-pound mutant demon chicken that sucks souls. Not her number one choice for dinner, even without the problem of leftovers.

Dawn finishes the peaches and abandons the list for the moment, heading back into the house to explore the closets. It takes little effort to create some space for her own clothing -- not surprisingly, her unwitting host had pared down her wardrobe along with the rest of her life. She'd left jeans and tees and tank tops, worn and faded, giving off the air of work clothes, not casual wear. A few dresses hang in the closet, drab, shapeless shifts of natural fabrics. Dawn remembers gallery friends of her mom's who favored these loose dresses, worn as backdrops to some chunky ethnic jewelry or artisan piece.

Moving to the dresser, she searches idly for a jewelry box or drawer with a few pieces tucked inside. But there's nothing, which doesn't surprise her. This woman wore those dresses because they were drab, and adding some bit of subtle glitter would destroy the effect.

In another closet, Dawn turns up a weathered backpack, large and sturdy enough for a respectable hike. If she loads it carefully and doesn't get too ambitious, it might work for carrying groceries. Rummaging through the pockets and compartments to make sure it's empty, she encounters a battered wallet with fourteen twenties inside. No drivers license, library card or other ID in there. Dawn suspects she's found her host's banking system, abandoned along with everything else. The tension in her chest loosens just a bit. For a while longer she won't have to panic about money, or worry about exposing herself to find more.

Dawn decides to make her first trip into town tomorrow. Buy supplies, maybe cruise the library and see if she can find something on living off the grid. Though a more accurate term for what she's doing is squatting. If she can't find that, at least she can look for something mindlessly entertaining to read. Paperback. Lightweight. If she can spare the backpack space.

In the morning she rises and has a freezing shower, then dresses for town. Dawn pulls on a long-sleeved tee from her thrift store run, and layers a black flax dress from the closet on top. It falls to her calves without touching much but her shoulders. She laces up her boots, then pulls her black hair into a stubby ponytail and regards herself in the mirror.

She looks little like the girl who fled the chaos surrounding Rio's death. Even less like the Dawn who bolted from Ethan's suite. Shouldering the empty backpack, she finds the crumbling end of the asphalt and starts her hike toward town.

As she walks along the old state route, Dawn realizes she's never actually been to the little town she's headed for. Whenever her mom drove them on this route, they were just setting out on a drive of an hour or two. Just slowing down to the 25 mph speed limit through town made her mom mutter and fume.

Dawn had never so much as wondered what was there, what little shops or funky old houses. Nothing much new had been built there since the main highway came through Sunnydale and siphoned off ninety percent of the traffic.

It's a long walk without much to distract her. It's maybe five miles before houses start to line the roadside, and they're strung out at first, and it looks like half are vacant. Then she starts hearing dogs and kids and lawn mowers, though no traffic. It's not until she's almost in town that she starts seeing cars on the move.

As tiny as this place was even six years ago, it looks now like it's on its way to becoming a ghost town. Some of the houses have For Sale signs edged in rust, and the others look like they're crumbling toward the same kind of depression suffered by Dawn's new home. Not many of the residents seem to be trying anymore.

Once she passes the city limits sign, she wanders along the main road, looking at the businesses that are left. A sad-looking laundromat that sells used books. A sandwich shop that sells second-hand furniture and rents videos. All the businesses are collapsing into each other, like they're being sucked into black holes. The quick-lube place probably rents tuxedos.

Finally she finds the IGA, its windows papered over with advertised specials. A handful of cars sit outside. They all look weatherbeaten, a few years past their prime. Digging her list out of her pocket, Dawn enters. She takes one of the hand baskets and fills it.

At the checkout she packs her purchases directly into the backpack and shoulders into the straps. She heads for the little library next, in search of some resources on roughing it. She shakes off the librarian's offer of help -- if there's one thing Giles has taught her, it's how to use a card catalog. Besides, she's calling enough attention to herself just turning up mysteriously. If she starts asking about living off the grid, she might as well print up some cards reading Dawn Summers, Squatter. She decides to get her fluff reading at the second-hand bookstore, where she won't have to give a name or address.

At the laundromat she browses the books, the humid, bleach-scented air and the monotonous churning sound of the machines comforting her in some weird way. She finds a battered copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and snatches it up.

I loved that book, she'd told Ethan..I cried buckets.

Such warmth and empathy in his voice. Of course you did. Something in you responded to your own story.

Might as well find The Man in the Iron Mask too. That's her story now. Exiled, imprisoned -- not for anything she's done, but what she is.

She pays for the book and goes, intending to start on her journey home, but she spots an ice cream stand. This is something she can't take back and store; it wouldn't even last the trip. She stops and buys herself a cone and reads the first couple of pages of her book as she eats.

Settling her pack back onto her shoulders, she walks back toward Sunnydale. Sweat trickles down her spine and the cans in the back thump her on the back. She ignores these things as best she can, listening instead for dogs and voices and birdsong and the snap and whirr of startled insects. She won't have these when she gets back to her blue house. She'll be alone.

As she's walking along the last stretch of occupied (mostly) houses, she hears the rattle and squeak of an old pickup truck approaching from behind. It's moving at a fair clip, and a wariness descends over her.

There's little reason for anyone to be driving out this far. The last turnoff was a long block back. The road goes straight from here, out to Sunnydale. There's no reason for Dawn to be on that road, either, and that's going to attract the driver's attention. She turns abruptly at the next driveway, bending to open the mailbox and peer inside, then marching up the drive as if she lives here.

The truck rattles past.

She releases a breath, watching from the corner of her eye as it disappears over a rise. Red with patches of primer gray. She'll keep an eye out for it next time she's in town.

Slowing her pace to let the truck get well out of range, she resumes her walk back to the house.

Back at the house, she decides it's best to lay low for a while. When the groceries are unpacked, she settles in with her book inside instead of on the porch. She makes a nest of pillows on the floor in a trapezoid of late afternoon sunlight, shifting as the light does. At last it's too murky to read, so she heads into the kitchen to make her dinner.

As she cooks her peppers and pasta, her mind worries at the appearance of the truck. Much as she wants to believe Ethan's on his way to her, she can't imagine him in a rattletrap old pickup. Not just because the suspension is clearly shot to shit and Giles no doubt broke some ribs for him, but because it just doesn't suit Ethan. He's a cashmere scarf type of man, whose shoes were impeccably shined, even in filthy weather. She can't even picture him in a shiny new pickup straight from a Dodge commercial.

Maybe someone's traced her out here. One of Rio's friends. Or one of her brother's priests, which could be one and the same thing. She has no idea how often he crossed into this world, how many worshippers he has. Worshippers don't turn loose of a god just because he happens to be dead.

She refrains from lighting the candles she bought, though the night is as silent now as the last few. Dawn remembers the feeling of being trapped out in the middle of nowhere, out at that old gas station barricaded inside by magic while those knights surrounded them, demanding her blood. Everyone had wanted her blood, for one reason or another.

They'd been so trapped, Willow struggling so hard to keep them shielded (Willow was on Dawn's side then). Giles bleeding, possibly dying. Spike bleeding, making light of it when he was around her. Xander being kind to him. Poor Tara, babbling and playing with her hair. And Buffy, though the whole mess, trying to hold everything together.

Dawn had been so terrified then, but she hadn't been alone. Now there's no one here to help her, but she's oddly less scared.

Maybe because deep down inside Dawn's convinced there's nothing worse anyone can do to her.

The next day Dawn decides this pioneer living -- at least the part that involves going to bed when the sun goes down -- is for shit.

Blocking the windows will create too obvious a change in the house, at least if anyone's paying close attention. She decides to set up a space within the interior of the house where light won't leak out.

She should think about weapons, too. She wishes she had a gun, but getting one would expose her a hell of a lot more than getting a library card. A crossbow, on the other hand, just requires a trip to the sporting goods store, and she has experience using one.

Assuming there's a sporting goods store in town -- or a sporting goods/landscaping/espresso stand.

It's time to explore the red shed, she decides. See if there are any weapons stored there, or anything she can press into service as one.

In her investigation of the kitchen, Dawn uncovered a junk drawer with a handful of loose keys. She rummages until she finds them all, and takes them outside to see if one fits the padlock. At last one produces the satisfying snap of the mechanism opening, and the shackle drops open. It's pitch black inside, and she's greeted by the smell of dirt and gasoline and spiders -- she's absolutely certain she smells spiders.

Retreating into the house, she changes out of her own clothes -- it's not like she has many to spare -- and into worn jeans and a tee from her host's wardrobe, cinching the baggy pants around her hips with her own belt. She finds a baseball cap by the kitchen door, and dons that over her stubby ponytail. Ugly, but better than wearing spiders in her hair.

She heads back out to face the gloom of the little red barn, standing in the doorway and blinking in the dark. As spare as everything was in the house, that's how messy and chaotic things are in the tiny red barn.

An ancient gas-powered lawnmower takes up most of the space, though Dawn's not sure why. She'd never seen anything but plastic flowers covering the lawn until she rediscovered this place. Next to it, handlebars tangled in the mower handles, is an old bike. That'll make her next trip into town less of an all-day affair, if it's usable.

Wooden shelves line the inner walls, jumbled with jars and boxes whose contents she has no hope of identifying in the gloom. She'll bring in a flashlight, or haul everything out into the open to see what's usable and what should be pitched (and maybe eventually figure out where).

But first she wants to check out the bike. She can pull it out and roll it around to the back of the house to examine it. Reaching in for the bike, she shrieks at the brush of cobwebs along her forearm. "You're such a girl, Summers," she mutters. But she's not a Summers, isn't even a girl. Sadness balls in the pit of her stomach at the thought, and anger at herself chases it, prompting her to grab the handlebars, yanking violently at the bike. As she tries to wrestle it free of the mower, she backs into the shelves, and one of the shelves tips completely off its framework, dumping a row of paint and solvent cans onto the dirt floor around her. A couple of the bigger cans strike her on the shoulder and back on their way down.

"Son of a bitch!" she cries out, tears springing to her eyes. "Fuck!"

She seizes the bike again and tugs, producing a chain effect with rakes and hoes and everything else that's hooked up within the bike and mower, and the noise everything makes is hellacious. At last she jerks the bike free, backing out of the shed with it.

Dawn realizes as she does that there's a sound she hadn't heard under all the racket she's been making. Turning, blinking in the light, she sees the battered red pickup in the drive, its nose aimed straight at her.

Dawn lets go of the bike, letting it totter to the ground. "Fuck off!" she shouts.

A hand appears out of the driver's window, palm out, placating, and then the door begins to open.

Dawn ducks back into the shed, grabbing one of the fallen paint cans, and lets it fly toward the intruder. It bounces off the hood with a loud, hollow sound, leaving a dent behind.

"Hey!" A male voice. She sees jeans-clad legs taking shelter behind the truck door.

She scoops up another can and fires it, bashing one of the headlights in.

"I just want to talk!"

Her breath saws harshly in her ears as she grabs another can and throws it. This one pops open, decorating his piebald truck with robin's egg blue.

The legs slither back inside the truck and the door slams shut.

Dawn hurls a fourth can, and then another, which also spills its contents. "Leave me the fuck alone!"

No head pops up behind the windshield, but the engine fires up.

"That's right! Fuck off! Next time I'll shoot you!" Her voice has taken on that shrill, shrieky quality she hates in herself, prompting her to seize another can and throw it.

The driver's head finally appears, but instead of looking over his shoulder to back out and flee, he's staring toward Dawn. She's run out of cans close enough to reach, and letting herself get cornered inside the shed would be insanity. So she bolts instead, running over rough terrain toward the crater, baseball cap flying off.

She hears the tortured screech of the pickup's door and the driver shouting after her, giving chase.

She's fast. He has a hard time keeping up with her. Dawn is coming fast on the lip of the crater, and she's not sure what she'll do when she reaches it. It's too far to jump, and she doesn't want to be down there. She runs full on, and she's got crazy momentum, and once she gets near the edge she's going too fast to stop.

"Dawn!" the man screams behind her.

She stumbles and sprawls flat, one hand splayed out in empty air past the crater's lip. Her breath catches. Footsteps pound, growing nearer, but she can't look away from the hole. Then her pursuer falls to his knees by her. "I've got you, you won't fall." She knows his voice, but she still can't look back. Hands close around her ankles and start tugging her back. "Inch back. Slow and careful."

She scrabbles back with her hands, helping him pull her away from the edge.

"Jesus," he breathes, and the voice finally filters into her consciousness.

"Xander."

"You're all right, you're safe." As she sits up and looks toward him, she sees him take her in: the chopped black hair, the tattoo and silver band. "Jesus, Dawn," he repeats. "What have you done to yourself?"

"You have two eyes," she says. "Did Willow--"

"God, no," he blurts. "It's a prosthesis."

"Oh." Her voice sounds dreamy and strange to her. "I'm surprised to see you."

"We've been looking for you, hon. We've been crazy with worry."

"Well yeah. It's just -- I didn't think it would be you."

Xander extends a hand toward her. "Why don't we go in the house? You are living there now, aren't you?"

"Africa must have changed you," Dawn says, and she sees the truth of that flicker across his face. "You're the last one I thought they'd send to kill me."

Xander blinks. "Kill you?" He's so quick normally, but he sputters a moment, trying to formulate a response. "What, are you hopped up on goofballs?" he finally manages. A pale Chief Wiggum -- a pretty pale Xander, for that matter.

"I don't mind," she says. "I'm glad it's you." She's so very tired.

"There's no killing! Zero. Zip. What makes you think there would be?" He sounds more like himself, with a little extra outrage.

"I'm the sort of thing we killed all the time."

"Thing? What the hell kind of talk is this?" Xander gets to his feet and reaches again for her hand. "Let's get back to the house."

This time she takes his hand and lets him help her rise.

"If I wanted to kill you, I could have just let you go all Wile E. Coyote off the edge."

"You'd never want me in the hellmouth, even if it is sealed."

"Earth to Dawn -- I like you just the way -- just as alive as you are. I speak for the whole Buffy-Giles-Scooby axis when I say that."

She doesn't answer.

"And I think I'm owed some cred here for figuring out where to find you. Will couldn't get a read on you at all, something really weird with your energy. And I came all this way thinking I'd at least get a hug out of the deal."

"Just ... say something true." She's so tired of people pretending to love her and then using her or betraying her.

"Dawnie, you're scaring me."

This is true, she knows, so she rewards this by allowing him his hug. It's been so long since she's been touched this way by someone who didn't turn on her.

If he admits to her why he's really here, it won't be a betrayal.

He enfolds her as if she's really safe, and holds her for a long moment. "C'mon to the house. Let me make you some tea, or fix a bath or something."

"You'd have to heat a million gallons of water for a bath. There's no power."

"Then we'll do that." Xander kisses her on the top of her head and releases her. "C'mon," he says again, walking her, arm around her.

As they approach the house he eyes the truck. "I can't exactly say it looks worse."

"Sorry. I thought maybe someone followed me out here."

"I've been out here a while. Staying nearby, doing the circuit of the crater every few days. I don't know, I just had a strong sense you'd come."

So it's Xander who's tuned in to her desperate transmissions since Rio -- no, her brother -- all but stilled her voice. She wonders if Ethan feels any stirrings at all.

His hand at her elbow, Xander guides her up the porch steps as if she's an invalid, and she lets him. Pioneer girl one day, frail and delicate flower the next -- Dawn wonders at this, but has no particular will to change it. She misses being taken care of, enjoys being the center of someone's world for however short a time she has.

"Sit here at the table," Xander says. "I'll get the water going."

"Pots are in the bottom cabinet, to the right of the sink," she tells him. "Get the two biggest. There's only two burners that work."

He finds a deep pot and puts it in the old sink, opening the tap. "I want to hear about all this," he says over the sound of water hitting metal. "But I think maybe we should do that after you've had a nice hot bath. I know how you Summers women are about those things. It'll change your whole outlook."

Dawn's whole outlook has changed on an average of every other day. She'd kind of like something that would leave her outlook the hell alone, but she doesn't say so. She watches him lug the first pot of water to the stovetop, then a second.

"I'll see if I can get those other two fixed. So no tea for now, but maybe --"

Dawn stands up and shouts, "No!" but he's already wrapped his hand around the fridge handle, pulling even as he looks around to see why she's yelling.

"Jesus!" At least she thinks that's what he says -- it's half cough, half gag. The sweet, gross smell of long-rancid things fills the kitchen.

Her eyes water. "Shut it, quick!"

Xander slams the door and spins, grabbing Dawn's arm and dragging her out to the front yard, the two of them stumbling over plastic flowers.

"What the fuck?!" Xander coughs.

"Are you a moron? There hasn't been any power for years!"

"Oh god, that's bad." He trips over a clump of plastic roses and lands on his knees in their midst.

Dawn begins to laugh, just a little hysterically, and before long she steps back on a flower and lands on her ass in the fake-flower patch. That sets Xander off, and the two of them shriek until tears stream down their faces.

"Are you a moron?" Xander quotes, then laughs himself breathless.

They laugh for a long time, involving honks and snorts and graceless noises, and as soon as one of them begins to calm down, the other starts cackling and sets off the whole thing again.

"Oh god, the house is contaminated now," Dawn finally gasps.

"It'll be okay." Xander wipes his eyes. "We'll just open all the windows and drag out some fans."

"Electric fans, you mean?"

"Shit."

"Moron."

He snorts. "Well, what were you planning to do, just leave it there?"

"Yes! The seal was fine! It's not like I have garbage pickup, or a way to haul stuff elsewhere."

He heaves a sigh, which is still at least 33% laughter. "Okay. I'll figure something. At least there's the truck." He hoists himself off the ground. "Water's probably boiling. I'll see if there's an atmosphere capable of supporting life in there."

"Don't forget your tricorder."

Xander turns at the top of the steps and gives her a relieved grin, as if he believes things are like they used to be. As if either of them remembers things like they used to be -- either version.

She grins back.

With the door shut and several candles burning, the smell in the bathroom isn't too strong. The water is warm and silky and scented, and Dawn closes her eyes, imagining that she's back in Ethan's suite. Waiting to become who she's always been meant to be.

It doesn't work. The bathtub is small and its back is uncomfortably vertical instead of gently sloping. Besides, too much has changed. She's changed. She washes her body and her hair, still not accustomed to how short it is. The water is just beginning to chill unpleasantly when Xander knocks lightly at the door.

"There's more hot water. If you want, I'll bring it in."

"Sure."

The door doesn't open right away. "I'm not shutting my eyes and walking in with a pot of boiling water."

"That's okay, I'll shut mine."

"Funny." He opens the door and Dawn draws her legs up close, wrapping her arms around them, to give him space at the end of the tub to pour in water. "I'll go slow. Slosh it around and tell me when I've got it warm enough."

He kicks the door closed behind him to keep the drafty air out, and pours water in a thin stream at the foot of the tub.

"You seem practiced at this."

"I am. Instant hot water's a luxury I no longer take for granted. Mix that around some."

Dawn waves her hand through the water. It's so strange to be with Xander like this, the intimacy of it so unlike anything they've experienced in all the years they've known each other.

"Unlike refrigerators."

"Ha ha."

"What was it like there?"

"Nothing I can describe in a few words."

"Is that all the time I've got?"

"What? Jesus, Dawn, enough with the jokes. Hot enough?"

"Keep going. What makes you think I'd want the Cliff Notes? When have I ever wanted the short-and-to-the-point from you?"

"It was amazing and terrifying and hard and rewarding."

"But nothing you could describe in a few words."

"I'll tell you stories all night, I promise. But right now you're naked and I feel highly weird."

"Think of me as a Degas." She swishes her hand back and forth in the water.

"A naked ballerina?"

"You are too cute. So it's this blindness that was going around that made you decide to come home?"

He slops in a little too much water. "I lost my nerve."

"You made a decision to keep your remaining eye safe. That's good, that's warm enough."

He steps back with the pot. "The bracelet -- don't you want it off? While you're bathing, I mean."

Dawn laughs, and for a heartbeat she wonders if she'll be able to stop. "I'm fine, Xander. Thanks."

He can't leave quickly enough. As the door clicks shut behind him she sinks back in the tub, sliding under the surface to watch her black hair fan out in the water.

Dawn towels off her hair, fluffing the damp strands with her fingers when she's finished. She's not quite the Dawn he's used to, but at least she looks fairly normal. She's put on her own clothes, which are a little too big, but she doesn't look like a scarecrow. A gray heather hoodie covers the tattoo, which should lower Xander's freakout level a bit.

She puts on a wristload of silver bracelets to remind her that love won't keep her safe.

When she emerges, Xander's relief is visible. "Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"You look more like Dawn now. Except, well--" He gestures toward her hair.

Dawn nods. "I didn't want to wear my own stuff in that shed. God knows what kind of grease or spider spooge I'd have gotten on them."

"Thanks for that image."

She jerks her chin toward the kitchen. "Am I hallucinating, or does something smell good in there?"

"I burned a bunch of your candles to take care of the stink, then I started a stew with some of your supplies. I hope you don't mind."

"Why would I mind? Since when do you cook?"

"I learned a few things in Africa."

"Are you making a traditional thing for me?"

"Not traditional. That would involve about a cup of palm oil. I settled for a tablespoon of vegetable oil instead. Otherwise, fairly traditional with what I had at hand, yeah. But it'll be a while." Xander pats the sofa next to him. "So sit."

Dawn sits on the chair by the basket of baby booties instead. She tucks her legs beneath her and stuffs her hands into the kangaroo pocket of her jacket.

Xander takes a breath. "So what's all this crazy talk about me going all Jack Bauer on your ass?"

Dawn shrugs.

"Forgetting the whole question of why anyone would pick me to assassinate anything more wily than a feral chipmunk. Why would your family and friends want to hurt you?"

"They might not see me as family or friend." She scowls. "You know this already."

"Dawnie, you can seldom go wrong by assuming I know nothing."

She pulls her hands from her pocket and laces her fingers together over her knee. "You're telling me Giles hasn't found out all about me."

"Giles has been busy lately," Xander counters. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"No. What's going on with him?"

"Funny thing. He was found in a hotel room with a dead body. Shortly after you cracked him over the skull with a lamp."

"Is he in jail, then?"

"He's out. It was ruled natural causes, though I think it's got the whiff of something supernatural. So what do you think Giles knows about you? Or should know?"

"Why are you so determined to make me tell it? Just do what you came here for."

Xander shoves his hands through his hair, which has grown shaggy since she saw him off on his trip to Africa. "We're back to that shit again? Me killing you?"

"Just tell me. I'm so sick of being lied to."

"Dawn, there's nothing to tell."

She slaps her leg. "Then how can I trust you?" She rises. "I'm going to take a nap. Call me when it's time. Or when dinner's ready."

Xander calls her name in frustration, but she ignores him, heading for the bedroom to wrap herself in the threadbare quilt.

He doesn't knock on her door until it's nearly dark. "I had an idea," he tells her once she comes out. "I thought we could build a fire and eat outside and tell stories in the dark."

"Are you insane? Lounging around after dark is bad enough, but lighting a big ol' beacon fire?"

"I've been making this circuit for a while, Dawn. There's nothing here. There's nothing that wants to come here. Haven't you noticed there's not even bugs and animals out here?"

"Yeah," she says softly. "I noticed."

"The hellmouth is still corked."

"Then why do I feel it? Why did I have this powerful urge to come here -- and apparently you did too."

"I came to wait for you. I'm not sure about you. Except, this was your home. You've been on some kind of walkabout, and maybe it's natural it ends here."

Dawn laughs shortly. "Walkabout. That's one way of putting it."

"Why don't I go out and light the fire. It's ready and waiting."

Shrugging, she follows him out, sitting on the porch steps to watch him light the kindling and nurse its wispy flame into a campfire.

"Are we gonna sing 'Kumbaya' too?"

"Nope, because somebody who bought supplies failed to get the s'mores ingredients."

"I guess I fail at Hellmouth Scouts."

"You do. Why don't you get the stew ladled up?"

When Dawn brings out the bowls Xander is just sitting beside the fire, his skin burnished by the glow of the fire, shadows and light flickering across his face. she hands him his bowl and settles in beside him.

How strange to be sitting with him this way, eating food he's cooked for her. Not that they haven't eaten together hundreds of times in the time they've known each other. But this time, knowing why he's here -- it's oddly intimate. Then again, she's shared something deeply intimate with the last few men who've done her terrible harm.

"This is really good," she tells him.

"I'd have made it spicier, but I couldn't find anything. Some places I went, the food would take the top of your head off."

"This is fine. I look better with the whole head, I think."

Xander sets his bowl at his feet. "Would you tell me about all this? The walkabout?"

Dawn looks into the fire. One thing she learned from Ethan and the silk blindfold: It's so much easier to talk in the dark.

"Once upon a time, there was a princess in a tower. It was a really nice tower, full of wondrous diversions, so most of the time she forgot she was even imprisoned. But then a prince came along -- well, he wasn't so much a prince as a wizard. But he was appalled that she was closed away in the tower, and that she didn't even remember how to be free."

"So what is this prison? School? You could always take a term off, Dawn. Nobody would fault you for that."

"Not school. Dawn. This body, this existence."

There's a pause. She can see his face in the flickering light, but she can't read it. "You're locked in a prison that happens to be you."

"Of course it sounds crazy to you. To you I'm Dawn, that's the only way you've ever known me. You know I was the Key, but that's all very abstract. 'This is Dawn. She used to be this ancient energy.' What if you look at it the other way around?"

"I'm not sure I'm following you."

"'Behold. She once was an ancient energy. Now she's a twenty-year-old college student.' You see? I'm ten pounds of mystical shit in a five-pound sack."

"Dawn."

"Well, yeah, that's an inelegant way of saying it. But it gets my point across, I think. This shell isn't who I am."

Xander pokes a stick into the fire. "I don't like 'shell' any more than I like 'ten pounds of shit.' You're my friend. You're an interesting, complex woman."

"Dawn's those things. She was made up. I'm pretty sure now it wasn't by monks, but I'll never get the whole story."

"Jesus. Jesus." He throws his stick into the flames.

"You tell me a story. Something about Africa. You said you would."

"Tell me about this wizard first. He's important enough that you mentioned him two sentences into your story. Who's the wizard?"

"I don't believe for a second that Giles didn't tell you. Go ahead and play dumb, but now you're losing credibility."

Sigh isn't the word for the noise Xander makes. It's more a disgusted huff of breath. "Giles told me he found you in Ethan Rayne's hotel suite, yeah. Is that your wizard? The guy who helped you realize you were stuck in a prison?"

"He was."

"Now we're getting to the first person in this story I could cheerfully kill. Your friend Valryn said you had a big crush on a visiting professor named Ethan. Did he take advantage of--"

"Oh, please. I'm not fourteen anymore. Anything I did -- and don't ask for any details that you don't want to know -- was totally of my own free will."

"Dawnie, for god's sake. You know what Ethan Rayne is. He lives to stir up shit. Not to mention that he likes it even better when he's making Giles's life difficult."

"I remember all that. Do you remember what became of him? Did you ever think about him after Giles sicced the Initiative on him? He let Ethan be unjustly imprisoned. Experimented on. If I remember right, that idea disgusted you. You didn't even wish that on Spike. Ethan's human. He came out of that different. Sure, he's not going to win Citizen of the Year anytime soon, but I believe he wanted to help me."

"Help you shed this shell. That I happen to love. Is that what happened to my memories of you? Did he actually chip away at that whole structure the monks built?"

"They were hurting me, Xander. I can't describe it, it was like they were cutting into me. I thought I was going to die."

He gestures toward her right side. "Did he do that to you? The tattoo? I remember he seemed awfully handy with a tattoo gun."

"That was wholly my idea. Well, except the last six inches or so, but that was someone else entirely."

"You and Ethan Rayne. I can't begin to tell you how much that grosses me out."

"Yeah, well. Call me a cradle robber, but it's hard to find someone my own age."

"You?"

"I'm not Dawn. She's part of me, yes. But that girl you cling to, she's not there."

"Then tell me who you are." There's a hardness and a grief in his voice, all at the same time.

"Now we get down to it. You need justification. And that's fine. I want someone to know who I really am at the very last."

"Humor me," Xander says. "Knock off the condemned prisoner remarks."

"It's important to you. The pretense."

"It's not a fucking pretense, goddammit! I have risked my life for you, and I'd do it again right this minute, so give me some damn credit."

"You risked your life for Dawn."

"And you can knock off the third person, too. I don't give up on people I love, Dawn. Even when they go off the deep end and leave school and become tattooed goth queens. I thought you'd know that about me."

"Are you up for a test?"

Big, angry sigh. "Sure. Test me. What do you want me to do?"

"Just listen. This all goes back to Glory. You remember her story?"

"You think I could forget? Slutbomb hellgod gets booted out of her hell dimension and lands here. You're the mystical key she needs to go home. But that portal is closed, you're not the key anymore. It's ancient history."

Dawn laughs. "Truer words. But that's not the story I'm talking about, or the whole story. Don't you remember? Gregor told us."

"Gregor?"

"The Knights of Byzantium, their leader. When we had him captured at that old gas station, he told us -- that's right, you weren't there. You were off taking care of something. He told us more of Glory's history."

"Okay."

The wind is picking up a bit, and the flames dip and quiver. "There were three hellgods ruling over her dimension, originally. Glory kept growing in power, and the other two got very nervous. So they joined forces against her, cast her out and stuck her on earth, as Ben."

"This isn't really new information, Dawnie."

"Ultimately, the problem with being allied in treachery is you find your closest ally is a betrayer. The other two, they had a long reign together, but y'know, there's trust issues. Even if they're all in the head of one partner. So eventually god number two meets the same fate as Glory, more or less. And the third has his cozy little hell dimension of pain and eternal torment all to himself. And I got my own private hell, too, which was being fourteen. The difference being I didn't get to rule squat."

"Wait just a damn minute. Are you telling me you're a hellgod? That's crazy talk. You had the mystical energy thing going, I'm not denying that. You were the key. But that's long past."

"Glory didn't recognize me for what I truly was. She was right, together we would have torn open the portal. But she thought that's all there was to it."

"And who taught you different? Ethan Rayne? You know what he does. You know he lives to rattle Giles's cage. He'd say anything."

"I know, he's spent a lot of energy on stupid stuff in his day. But being a captive of the Initiative changed him. And let's be honest, he knows a hell of a lot about magic and religions. By now, possibly as much as Giles. He showed me a text."

Xander pokes at the fire, and red sparks fly into the night. "Giles said he makes a living faking things like that."

"Not that one. It sang in my blood, Xander. I knew it belonged to me, or I belonged to it. I knew."

"He did that somehow."

"I can tell a faked text. This was real. I used to feel the same thing off Giles's books, the ones he hid away. Only this was so much more powerful."

He sends more sparks flaring up into the air. "Stop this. You are not a hellgod."

"Maybe you should consult Giles about that."

"I know what I know." The hardness of his voice masks bottomless grief. He thinks she's crazy.

I know what I know. So does Dawn, but she doesn't say so.

Dawn pulls her knees close to her chest and snugs her arms around them, staring into the fire. Her eyes burn. She wishes now she'd evaded his questions, just sat out here sharing the dark with him. Maybe he'd have even started talking about Africa.

Much as she goaded him about the pretense that things were the same, she wishes she'd wrapped herself in that same fantasy. She finds herself longing for her adolescence, despite her dismissal of it as hellish. Dawn wants that Xander, the big brother. Always dependable, ready to fight for her at the first sign of a threat.

Her big brother.

Her shelter.

Her true brother and now Xander. Both lost to her, pushed away from her. The one betrayed her twice, the other--

Well, she doesn't know anymore.

A sob rips through her, surprising her with its sudden force.

"Dawnie--"

She doesn't answer, can't answer. She presses her forehead to her knees and gives way to her grief.

A moment later she feels his arms around her, but it makes her feel the terrible hollowness even more acutely. She wails, but it sounds pitiful and thin to her (of course it does; her voice has been choked off).

"I'm here," he murmurs. "I'm right here." He doesn't lie and say it's all right, or it's going to be all right. I'm here.

For a good long while, she lets that be enough.

When she's finally emptied of tears, she finds herself curled on the ground before the dying fire, her head in Xander's lap. His rough hand strokes her hair in a slow rhythm, like you'd absently pet a cat you'd forgotten was there.

She shifts, and he remembers her. "Your hair's still black," he murmurs.

"I'm sorry. It's dye."

"I'm getting used to it. Don't forget, I spent several years with a woman whose hair color could change at any time."

"I miss Anya."

"Yeah, me too," Xander says, almost in a whisper.

"I always--" Dawn stops herself abruptly.

"What?" he prompts. Hungry for anything someone will say about his dead girl. That's the worst about grief, she knows. When people stop talking about the person you miss, because they fear it will make things worse. Almost always, it's the not talking that's the worst.

"I always knew where I stood with her," Dawn says. "She was so honest most of the time. So amazingly bad at lying the other times. Except that once--"

"When?"

"That summer." None of her friends ever have to qualify that. They all know what summer. "I heard you two have a fight. She said maybe you all should have listened to Giles. He wanted to kill me before the appointed time."

His hand stops stroking. "Nobody wanted to kill you."

"He put it out there. I know what I heard."

"You know what those sessions are like. Every possibility is covered. It doesn't mean they're seriously considered. We all shot that down right away."

"But Anya wondered later if maybe you shouldn't have." She gazes into the red glow of the embers. It brightens and dims, a pulsing almost like breathing. "So did I, actually."

"Dawn, no." His voice is rough as the surface of his hand.

"It's okay. I was fourteen. Emo, thy name is fourteen-year-old-girl."

That produces a chuckle. "True."

"He gave it some serious thought." Switching back on him while Xander's off guard. "He killed Ben, you know. I saw it from the tower."

"What? Ben wasn't there."

"He was. Glory was beaten and broken, and she left, fled to let Ben face death instead. He was probably dying already, but Giles made sure." She reaches her hand toward the fire, silhouetted indistinctly against the dying light. She closes her thumb and forefinger together as Giles did to pinch Ben's nose shut. (Just as she'd done to Rio.) "Just like that. Giles knelt there with him, like a priest giving last rites, and he stopped his breath."

"That couldn't be what you saw."

"Giles is Council, Xander. Everyone forgets that when it's convenient, but he was trained to make the hard choice, and be ruthless in it. Don't ever follow him blindly, especially not when it means some terrible sacrifice. That's not always the last option with him."

"Dawn, I can't listen to this." His voice is harsh with an emotion she can't quite fathom.

She sits up, facing the dark red embers. They breathe in and out. "Your loyalties are your big strength. I shouldn't pull at them."

"We're both tired," he says. "You go on in to bed, and I'll take care of the fire."

Dawn thinks there's something she should say, but it won't come to her. She looks at him, silhouetted against the red glow, then she goes into the dark house.

Dawn falls asleep to the sound of Xander shoveling dirt over the fire, the metallic scraping noise of small rocks against the shovel blade. It echoes in her dreams through the night. She dreams that she's the one who took the dive off the tower, that the others buried her at its foot, where she'd fallen. They thought she was dead, and she couldn't tell them they were wrong, and the sound of the shoveling kept up through the night. Or maybe she really was dead, but was just aware. Like being awake during an operation. At last Anya declared the grave deep enough, they lowered Dawn into it, then began shoveling dirt onto her.

There are other dreams too. Giles kneeling beside her, pinching her nose shut, his smooth librarian's palm (so unlike Xander's) pressing onto her mouth so hard her teeth cut into her lips. "It's for your own good," he said. He called her by her true name, the one Rio told her humans can't pronounce. It frustrated him that he couldn't make her die, but the embers outside were breathing for her. Their red glow filtered into the room, growing brighter, then fainter, then brighter again. "Fire is your element," Giles said, "but you can still be extinguished."

She wakes still in her clothes in the watery grey light before sunrise, headachy and stinking of campfire smoke. Shambling into the bathroom, she brushes her teeth and washes her face, deciding to make biscuits and jam for breakfast. She'd had to buy a mix, since she has no way of keeping milk and eggs.

Dawn barefoots quietly into the living room, where she'd left a blanket and pillow on the sofa for Xander. She finds him on the floor, though, fast asleep on the threadbare carpet, the blanket wadded in a heap around him. Instead of the pillow, which is still on the sofa, his head rests on what looks like a block of wood. His t-shirt sleeve is hiked up, revealing a pink scar on his upper arm that's at least an inch thick and five inches long. That's a story she never got told, and anger flares up in her at the realization. Protect little Dawnie at all costs.

She stands in the doorway for a moment, watching him sleep. She's barely had time to take him in, beyond noticing the new eye. It looks just like the other with his eyes closed, other than a silvery trace of moisture on the skin below. A tear shimmers in those crazy, girly lashes of his -- she wonders if he's dreaming of something sad (Anya?), or if the fake eye just waters more.

There's a furrow between his eyebrows that Dawn doesn't remember. It reminds her of Faith, who had one ever since Dawn had known her -- how old had Faith been, sixteen? It's a jolt, a moment later, when she realizes that she's actually spent very little time with Faith at all. She wonders why those memories remain when so many others are gone. Just random luck, perhaps, a matter of which memories Ethan found easiest to tease out of her. As if all the memories that formed Dawn were a jumble of pickup sticks scattered on the floor.

Deciding to head for the kitchen, she steps forward. Her bare foot lands on a board that emits a loud creak. It's short and sharp, almost a crack. Xander's sitting up in a heartbeat, the wooden block skittering across the floor as he comes up, hands free and ready to grab a weapon.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Dawn cries. She shows her hands, palm out. "I thought I'd make biscuits. I was trying to be quiet."

"No, listen, I'm sorry," Xander responds. "Didn't mean to go all commando guy."

Her heart slows its wild thudding, just a bit. "Hey, what you wear is your own business."

The joke teases a grin and a blush from him. "Dawnie."

"Go back to sleep. There'll be biscuits and coffee when you wake up."

At first she thinks he'll protest, but then he nods and reaches for the wooden block.

Dawn continues to the kitchen and gets the biscuits in the oven and puts the coffee water on, measures ground coffee into the French press. She sets the kitchen timer and takes it with her out onto the porch.

The smoke smell lingers in the air, a scent like old coffee that is pleasant at first but outstays its welcome. Dawn thinks of the dream. Fire is your element.

Standing here near the remains of Xander's fire, she wonders.

She's caught between realms. There is no element that's hers.

Except ashes.

The timer buzzes in her hand, and she turns back toward the house to take the biscuits out.

She hears the water running in the bathroom and then the whoosh of the toilet before Xander appears in the kitchen. He's pulled on a new t-shirt from his pack. "Smells good in here."

"Be even better in a minute." She lifts the kettle from the stove and pours it into the French press. "I didn't want to make coffee till you were awake. The French press stuff tastes good, but it goes cold fast. How do you take it? Black, black, or with a little bit of black in it?"

"Black's fine." He sits at the table by one of the mugs she's set out.

She watches the battery-run kitchen clock, its second hand jerking the time away. "I didn't realize the sofa's that dire," she says.

"It's not. Well, I mean, I didn't try it. I got used to sleeping on the ground or the floor. It's actually better than a bad bed."

"But you sleep with your head on a block of wood. What's that, some kind of weird penance?"

"Look who's talking, it's Laura Ingalls Wilder in her Little House on the Hellmouth."

"Let's make it Sarah Connor."

"Because you're being pursued by implacable killers?" That same angry grief of yesterday colors his voice.

"Because I'm not giving up the flush toilets." The second hand marks two minutes, and she presses the plunger on the pot. "Or pillows."

"It's just a different kind of pillow. People in Africa have used them for centuries. Some peoples believe they bring prophetic dreams."

"Maybe yours told you where to find me."

"It was a gift," he says, and there's a touch of hardness to his voice. "There are parts of the world where you don't spurn that."

She pours her coffee and sits down across from him. "Tell me."

But the expression on her face tells her in no uncertain terms that the subject is closed. "I thought there were biscuits."

She nudges the biscuits off the baking pan and onto a large plate, which she sets between them, and puts out a couple of different kinds of jam that she'd found still sealed in the cupboards. She's not sure what's safe to say.

"I'm sorry," Dawn says, though she's not. "I didn't mean to push."

"It's not a problem." Xander takes a biscuit and slathers it with jam.

She reaches for a biscuit too, tipping her head down as she splits it open and spreads on jam, so he won't see her eyes have gotten teary. It's just so hard, and she doesn't know how to fix it. Dawn desperately wishes she had access to the memories Ethan took -- surely there's something in them that would smooth things over. The comfort of long history together, some running joke that might soften him.

"I'm surprised you haven't called in the troops by now," she says.

"Troops," he repeats.

"Buffy. Giles. Willow."

"I know who you meant. That's how you think of them? Of us?" He gives his head a hard shake. "Of course you do. We're all out to kill you."

"It's an expression."

"I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. When I know what to say, I'll call and tell them."

"You already did, didn't you? When I was in the bath, or sleeping. If they're so crazy worried about me, you'd have let them know I'm okay."

He slams his heavy mug down on the table. "I don't know if you're okay, all right? I'm thinking not, and I don't know how I'm gonna say that."

She picks at her biscuit until it crumbles in her hands, and the tears spill over. "I'm not crazy. I'm fucked up, but not crazy."

"The difference is a little subtle for me. You know I was never good with subtle."

He's always put himself down, minimized his importance, his abilities. Ever since she's known him.

"I can't be what I was, the girl you knew. And I can't finish what I was becoming. I burned my bridge, but someone blocked me from going forward. So I'm just standing here on a burning bridge. That's what separates crazy from fucked up."

"Who did it? Ethan?"

Dawn shakes her head. "He coaxed me out onto the bridge. He would have led me to the other side, if it hadn't been for Giles. Have you heard anything about him? Do you know where he is?"

"Giles?"

She scowls. He's just playing dumb. "Ethan. Giles set up a trap for him, and beat the shit out of him. Ethan called to warn me, and that's the last I heard from him. My brother's followers had him for a while, but they'd said they would let him go."

"Ethan got you into this whole fucking mess, and you're pining for him?"

"He's my priest, Xander. And 'this whole fucking mess' -- you can't begin to comprehend how long ago I got into it. Thousands of years. Do you know where he is?"

"No. I don't know where Ethan Rayne is. And let's not forget What the hell do you mean, your brother?"

"Ruler of his dimension, Mr. Cheese Stands Alone."

"King Hellgod, you mean? He's your brother?"

"Among other things."

"He has followers? Here? Is this something we're gonna have to take care of?"

"No. He's--" Dawn's not ready to say why the world's safe from her brother. "He already has his kingdom. He used to come here slumming, tasting human life, but I think he's over that."

"He's the one who put you here. As Dawn."

"Who exiled me. Yes."

The word exile makes him sit back in his chair, eying her balefully.

"If you didn't get so pissed off at every third word I said, you might get the story you supposedly want."

"Did you ever stop and think this is hard for me to hear? That it was some hellgod who cooked up this kid who used to tag along behind me everywhere I went? It was hard enough handling all that when I thought it was monks."

"Well, boo fricken hoo." She stands abruptly, her chair screeching on the linoleum as it scoots back. "I'm sorry it's difficult for you to find out you had something icky crushing on you ten years ago. I'm busy dealing with the whole I Was a Teenage Cthulu thing." She snatches a couple of biscuits and one of the jam jars and stalks out to the porch.

Dawn steps down into the yard and sits with her back against the tricycle tree, facing away from the house. She slathers a bicuit with jam and eats it, gazing out into the blank nothingness where Sunnydale used to be.

Ethan's not coming. Why would an old paradigm shifter, used to jumping whenever it suits him, stay with a broken god? Especially since he'd found her in hopes of curing his own brokenness. What good can she do him now? And what can he do for her? She wonders if this has damaged him more -- knowing her brother, his priests could have done something to him as well. They could have decided he was a danger, made sure he could never find a way to break the bonds that held her now.

Her chest aches, and she wishes she had something sharp to drag across her skin. Something she could use to scratch out the dark runes Rio had made on her wrist and hand. The impulse makes her think of the day she'd taken Ethan's pen nib to her forearm, and how he'd introduced her to the lash instead. She misses his attentions, the clear-headedness they produced. The way she'd felt so taken care of, paradoxical as that seemed.

Now Xander's here, and though he's cooked for her and helped her bathe, she feels all alone. Bereft.

Drawing her knees up, she tips her head to rest there and tries to cry, but she's empty. She sits there a long while, listening to the soft metallic creak of the trike in the breeze. Eventually she hears the sound of feet picking a tentative path through the plastic flowers.

"I have this crazy idea that I can keep the people I love safe," he says when he reaches her. "And a lot of times I can't, and the only thing I can think of to do is get angry."

Dawn raises her head enough to prop her chin on her knee. "You were halfway around the world for most of this."

"Not that I did much good there, either." He settles on the ground beside her.

She's almost afraid to press for more, but his sitting next to her seems like a sign. "The person who gave you the wooden pillow. Was it a slayer?"

"No." There's a long pause. "Her father carved that for me. Her name was Beya."

Afraid if she turns to look at him Xander will stop talking, she looks out at the broken land. "She was a slayer."

"Yeah."

"And something got her. Vamps?"

"People. There are rumors about the guy in power. That he'd killed people he suspected of practicing witchcraft. Long ago in his career, of course. There's nothing anyone can pin on him now."

"Oh god, Xander. And you were hurt. I saw the scar."

"That was nothing. I guess they thought I wasn't worth an international incident."

Dawn shoves her hand through her hair, and catches a flash of silver from the corner of her eye, the bracelet her brother had bonded to her flesh. "Why is the world so horrible? Glory said this thing -- when she'd kidnapped me she launched into this rant about humans and how fucking crazy they are. Six billion lunatics looking for the fastest ride out, that's what she said. And that everyone's a slave to their hormones and their emotions. How fucked up is it that Glory makes more sense than anybody? Of course she wanted to go home, at least things made sense there."

"You remember? There?"

"What? No, no. It's just -- hell is supposed to be hellish and random and fucked up."

"I'd just like to interject here that your language has gone straight into the toilet, missy."

"Don't. Don't lighten the mood. Don't make me feel not horrible."

Xander pulls a flower from the ground, strokes its plastic petals, gone almost white from the sun. "Glory," he says, almost in a whisper. "What was she to you?"

"My sister. I don't remember that, not really. Just vague impressions. I feel a little sorry for her now, the way she was when living here was making her insane. I guess I did even then, just a tiny little bit." She shakes her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to hijack your story. Tell me about Beya."

"She was beautiful and fierce and god, she was so young."

"Did you have a terrible time convincing her? About the slayer thing?"

Xander shakes his head. "She was totally on board, from the get-go. Her people, they believe that women have a huge spiritual role in their society. That they're protectors."

"Wow."

"Yeah. I kept wondering if the first slayer came from her people."

"It's not your fault. The world is a terrible place, when people are more savage than vampires."

"It was my job to keep her safe."

She shoots him a sidelong glance. "As her watcher? Your job is to train her and do your best, but it's also to use her until she she's killed."

"Dawn, Jesus!"

Dawn looks directly at him now. "That was Giles's job. I'm not saying you don't pay a terrible price, or that he didn't. A watcher is ground beneath the Council's wheels just as the slayer is. He's just left alive at the end with the knowledge of what he's done."

"That's unbelievably harsh."

Looking away, back toward the crater that used to be Sunnydale, she murmurs, "Well. Maybe I have some Giles issues. And my world view's gone pretty harsh. I'm sorry about Beya. Sorry it hurts so much. It's a cruel business for a man like you."

"A man like me. Someone who should go back to building bookcases?"

Turning to him, she gently touches his face. "Someone who has such a huge heart. Someone who feels so much. And maybe you do need to build bookcases, at least for a little while. Make something beautiful. Do something that feeds you, instead of tears your heart out."

Xander's silent for a moment. "So what do you do now? That feeds you instead of hurts you?"

"Honest to god, Xander, I don't know."

Dawn leans back against the tree. "I'd think about becoming a crazy cat lady, but there's no life out here but you and me. I don't think a cat would stay."

Xander gestures with the plastic flower at the tricycle hanging above them. "I don't think you even need cats. You live in a crazy lady shrine."

"Yeah, but I didn't make it. I don't think it counts."

"Believe me, it counts. No electricity and a fridge full of atomic rottenness counts."

"But the flush toilets."

"So you said." This all has the air of semi-serious banter, until Xander extracts the semi. "You've got weird mystic tattoos covering your hand. That kind of literally marks you as nutso."

"Yeah, well. That one wasn't my idea."

"Tell me about all this. Last I heard from you, you were emailing me and finishing with 'Gotta run, Val's here for American Idol.' Then you were gone, and now you're here, where tricycles grow on trees but not much else does."

"It's a thrill-ride of a tale."

"So thrill me."

Dawn slithers away from the tree trunk then stretches out on her back, gazing up through the branches with their blank-eyed babydolls and perky-breasted Barbies. They creep her out, but it's easier than looking at Xander.

"I was buried under schoolwork. Restless, I guess. I met this man at Starbucks. I'd been seeing him there for weeks, I think, before we spoke."

"Ethan Rayne."

"That's how you want it told? Okay, Ethan Rayne, I dropped out, got sort of goddessy, got all fucked up, the end. Now go on and do whatever it is you're in such a hurry to do."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to rush you through it."

"He was calling himself Ethan Devereaux. He told me he was on sabbatical from Oxford. I was bored, stressed, and he was exotic and interesting. A little wicked, very sexy."

"Oh god," Xander blurts. "Let's be leaving that word out of it."

"I worked up a crush."

"Which he totally took advantage of."

"Which languished for-fucking-ever because he was maddeningly gentlemanly. He took me to a bookstore, eventually. Rare editions, that kind of thing. I got such a sense of power from the minute I stepped inside. They had business -- the whole counterfeit grimoire thing, I found out later -- and so I sat a while looking at some texts in Sumerian they'd handed to me. I got this surge, that's the only way I can explain it. I got kind of manic and sleepless for a while, then I got really sick."

"Val said you told her you had some weird variant of mono. Of course she also told us you said you were staying with some cousin of your dad's who Buffy said doesn't exist."

"I went to Ethan."

"Because he's a well-known specialist in mono variants."

"Because I was obsessed with him and wanted him and he shoved me away. I went to yell at him for being so stupid and arrogant, and I pretty much collapsed. He took care of me."

"Mother Teresa's got nothing on him."

She glances at him, but now he's doing the stare-at-it-hard-enough-and-Sunnydale-mi

ght-rise-from-the-crater thing. "I would have died, if not for him. Something awoke in me and it grew and grew and slammed up hard against the cage that had been made for it."

"Which I'm thinking never would have happened, if not for him."

Dawn ignores this. "I'll say one thing for big brother, he learned from his mistakes with Glory. He made Dawn a hell of a lot stronger than the Ben model. Almost escape-proof. I would have died, if Ethan hadn't discovered a way to dismantle this prison."

"Dismantle." His voice has gone brittle again. "Is that what happened to my memories? They're different, I can tell, but I don't know what's gone. In some of my memories, Buffy's an only child, in some you're there. It's not always in chronological order. There's patches of memory. I remember you catching me kissing Cordy before anyone else knew about us. I remember trying to keep you from finding out -- some of the things Faith did. But there's a long stretch of time in the middle that you're gone, and it wasn't Dawn's living with her father, there was just no Dawn."

"I know," she says softly. "Those memories are gone for me, too."

"What was the plan, to erase you completely?"

"It was more like ... knocking down the load-bearing walls. Everything would fall away and let my true self emerge. It was starting -- I could feel her flexing, preparing to break free."

"Your true self. I feel kind of like an ass for loving your fake self."

"Do you? Love me, I mean. Even with big holes in your memory?"

Exasperation gusts from him. "What the hell do you think I'm doing here at Chez Cuckoo? Oh wait, I forgot, I'm here to kill you."

The dolls tremble in the breeze. Dawn sits up. "I can't do this anymore. Not right now." She cannot face talking about what was done to her. "Can we go into town?"

"Town?"

"L.A." The decision comes at the same moment as the words. "I would kill for some Thai food and a movie."

"Speaking as the closest person to you, I vote for Thai food and a movie."

Dawn changes into the outfit she has that least conveys crazy lady then meets Xander back on the porch. He's washed up and changed into a clean shirt, a little creased from his pack.

"We might as well have not bothered," Xander says as they head for his truck. "We're still going to be hillbillies to everyone in L.A."

She'd forgotten. The red-and-primer truck now has dried splashes of paint all over its hood -- robin's egg blue, soft peach and sun yellow from the kitchen. The yellow has splattered the driver's side front tire as well. "Ooh. sorry."

"Yeah, it really lowers the cool quotient of my ride. You have to get in through the driver's side."

"What?"

"The passenger door won't open." The driver's door barely does. Xander reaches the truck before her and wrenches the door open to a protesting shriek of metal. "Your chariot awaits."

Dawn climbs up and scoots beneath the wheel and over by the other window. Silver bracelets jangle as she makes her ungraceful crossing. Xander hoists himself in and coaxes the engine until it catches.

"Chariots of the gods," Dawn says, the joke prompting Xander to glance at her sharply.

"So why--" Xander cuts off what he was about to say.

"What?" He still hesitates and she prompts, "Go ahead."

"Why aren't you all godlike?"

"This little excursion was supposed to be a big distraction from that part. It's hard to tell."

"And you have such a good record with big distractions."

"Asshole."

"Sorry." But he can't suppress a grin. "I didn't mean to blow your escape. But I would like to hear sometime."

Dawn just looks out the window at the landscape slipping by, and Xander leaves her to her silence. After he's made the turnoff onto the freeway, she turns toward him. "What about Buffy? And Giles," she adds, although grudgingly.

"They're both fine. Or did you mean something else?"

"Did they lose memories?"

"They did. Buffy's been frantic. She tried to call you dozens of times when it started happening. Were you dodging her? You answered when I called."

"Just dumb luck," she tells him. "When I first got to Ethan's, my bag got shoved in a closet somewhere."

"It's worse for her. She's got holes from the time you were born. Again with the random -- there are parts of her childhood with you there, parts where you never existed, and they're both in her head now, making her aware that there's this twin track of her history. One's true and one's not, but it carries this huge gift."

"Gift," she echoes, confused.

"You, birdbrain." He shoots her a glance, then adds, "That's a direct quote."

"She didn't come. Is there an apocalypse?"

"There's always one of those. She'd come anyway, you should know that. But Willow hasn't been able to get a read on you, and I haven't told her yet that I found you. I'm thinking it's time we did that, though."

"We," she repeats.

"Yes, we. She needs to hear your voice, Dawnie. She needs to know she hasn't lost you completely."

Her stomach flips at the thought. "So you --" She turns to look at him. "You don't think I'm crazy anymore."

"No. I think you've been damaged and you're trying your best to find a way to deal with that. Though I keep thinking of Glory, and it occurs to me we should get everyone on the case to see how we can keep you not crazy."

Everyone. Including Willow and Giles.

"Like you said," Xander goes on, "your brother made a nice, strong box for you, but it's all battered to hell and gone."

She looks out at the shimmering pulse of the traffic, lanes and lanes now as they near L.A. "So you want to build me a new box. Really, I'd rather be killed."

Xander heaves a dramatic sigh. "First she doesn't want to be killed, now she wants to be killed. I really wish you'd make up your mind."

"Maybe this is funny to you."

"No, honey, it's not. It's just ... you missed the point of what I was saying. I don't want to stuff you in a box. I just meant, it seems like you had a lot of protection that Glory didn't have, and now it's gone. Having seen what happened to her, we should probably be thinking about what can be done to keep you safe."

"What about Ethan?"

"Yeah, well, keeping you out of his path might be a good idea."

"That's so not what I meant. He's powerful. He knows more than anyone in the world about what I am and how I was made."

He flicks a glance toward her. "Dawn, I can hardly think of a guy I trust less. That includes pretty much the entire administration. I mean, don't you remember the stuff --- wait. Do you remember?"

"I never met him." Which is true She wants to hear what Xander has to say.

"Appearance number one: He opens a costume shop in town. Everything's enchanted, so just like Cinderella, everyone magically turns into the costume they're wearing. And let's not forget the amnesia fun. Weeks later he turns up again, which is when we find out he and Giles used to dabble in the old black arts, back in the day. There was a demon after them both, which technically wasn't any more his fault than Giles's, but there were distinctly ungentlemanly actions wherein he tried to get the thing to eat Buffy instead of him."

This part they'd kept largely hidden from Dawn, she supposes to save her the knowledge of Giles's misspent youth.

"Then there's the enchanted band candy, about which the less said the better. We're talking psychic scars. That he did as a mercenary. I'm not sure if that mitigates things, or makes them worse. And lastly, he turned Giles into a demon and nearly got him killed. No, lastly, he seduced a girl who's like a sister to me, and have I mentioned that I'd cheerfully kill him?"

"It wasn't like that."

"Like what?"

"A seduction. It was my idea long before it was his."

"Are you so sure about that? He's pretty fond of slipping things into people's food and drink."

A carload of teenagers zooms past, leaning on the horn and shouting mockery at the truck.

"I was interested in him for weeks before he took much notice."

"Who knows how long the mystical roofies last?"

Anger surges through her. This is exactly the sort of argument you could never win. No matter how much you protest that it was your own idea, that's passed off as part of the enchantment. It's maddening. Dawn flicks up her hand in dismissal, the bracelets jangling softly.

"Were those a present from Ethan?"

She laughs. "No. The gifts he gave me were mostly intangible." Time when he allowed her to feel she was the very center of the universe. The lash and the clarity it brought her. Her awakening.

"I've never seen those."

"They were a parting gift from big brother. Who fucks and leaves like many mortal men, but makes with the great presents."

Xander muscles the truck into the next lane of traffic, angling toward the coming exit ramp. "Wait. I am not hearing the words 'brother' and 'fuck' in the same sentence."

"Technically, they were two. Sentences."

"God, I do not -- pass me the brain bleach."

"I have mentioned the dating pool is small, if you're me."

"Was he hellgodly? Were you? I mean, wouldn't you have to -- Forget it, forget I asked I do not want to know."

"He possessed one of his priests. We were both--"

"Not listening, la la la." He lays on the horn and bullies his way onto the offramp.

She's not sure why she's doing this, saying such provocative things. Perhaps she was testing him, seeing if he'd leave the way they all did. Of course he would.

"I have to ask one thing," Xander says. "You weren't -- you said 'dating pool.' He didn't hurt you?"

She looks over at him. "He damaged me. But no, not the way you mean. It wasn't rape."

He gusts a breath, tension released. "Okay then." Flicking a glance at her, he adds, "After Okay then I've got nothin'. I just want you to know that."

Dawn lets out a breath of her own. "Okay then will do, I think."

Things are pretty quiet until they reach the Thai restaurant. Dawn had pulled the name seemingly from thin air. It's not until they walk in that she remembers why. Her family used to eat here -- back when they were a family, two girls, a mom and a dad.

Abruptly, she realizes this place is the only connection she has to her father at all, that these dinners are all that's left of him in her memory.

The hostess, the mother of the family that runs the restaurant, approaches with menus and a smile. "Two for dinner?" Suddenly her face transforms with recognition. "Dawnie? Joyce and Hank's little girl? So grown up! You changed your hair."

"Mrs. Chamroon, wow. I can't believe you remember. It's been maybe ten years."

She offers a sly smile, flicking a glance at Xander. "You have a husband now?"

"No, not yet. This is Xander. He's been one of my best friends since we moved from L.A."

Mrs. Chamroon leads them to an out-of-the-way corner booth, but hangs onto the menus. "I'll order for you, something special. You have any allergies?"

"Not at--"

"Eels," Dawn blurts. "He's terribly allergic to eels."

Mrs. Chamroon winks at her. "Oh, you have that in common." She laughs and departs.

"Wow," Xander says. "I've never met anyone who knew you before Sunnydale. So your family used to-- Dawnie, are you okay?"

"This is so weird, Xander."

"You're shaking."

"This restaurant? It's the only thing I remember about my father. Ethan picked those memories clean, except he missed the family dinners here."

"Do you want to leave?"

"No. I think I'll be okay." She shuts up as Mrs. Chamroon approaches with spring rolls and sate.

"How is your family, Dawnie? Your father used to come for takeout, but I haven't seen your mother in a long time."

"She, um, died. About six years ago."

She gasps. "I'm so sorry. Such a nice lady. You knew her too?" she asks Xander.

"I did. She was one of the nicest."

"What happened?"

Dawn fiddles with the cloth napkin wrapping her utensils. "She had an aneurism. In her brain. It was fast, the doctors said she didn't feel anything at all."

Mrs. Chamroon puts a hand to her breast. "I'm so sorry. You live with your father now?"

Batting a thousand with the bad questions, the poor woman. "No. He's -- no. I've been at school."

Mrs. Chamroon's eyes narrow, and Dawn gets the feeling she's suddenly getting the picture. "Your sister is good? Buffy?"

"She's doing great. She's doing work in London that she's excited about, and she's really thriving."

"I'm glad. Tell her I said hello. You two eat -- I'll leave you alone."

"Wow," Xander says softly after she departs. "That's gotta feel strange."

"You know the way I am for you now? Sometimes there, sometimes gone/never was? That's the way Hank is for me. This place, those dinners, they're like an island, and that's the only place on earth where he exists. Not exactly an island, because there were bunches of them. An archipelago. Buffy, she's got a land mass. A continent. Even with me gone, Hank is there for, like, fifteen years of her life."

Xander slides closer to her in the booth, slipping an arm around her. She tilts her head against his shoulder.

"I don't know who I am anymore. What I am."

"You're Buffy's sister and my friend. That never changes, no matter what. We're fierce that way."

"I know," she whispers.

"You be fierce too. We need you." He kisses her temple and releases her. "Now eat your spring roll. They're known for producing fierceness."

For a while Dawn just revels in the food, forgotten old favorites that she hasn't had in forever. "Oh my god, I love this so much," she says more than once. After a mouthful of chili basil beef, she says, "How can they remember this is one of my favorites when I had forgotten?"

"If they've ever seen you happy, how can they not want to please you? Of course they'd remember."

Dawn feels heat rush to her face. "Why?"

"Because of who you are."

"But I wasn't. You see what I mean? None of those dinners happened -- well, they probably did, but it was just Mom, Dad and Buffy. I don't get it. Someone made this woman -- her whole family -- have these fond memories of me. Was my fake life that full of people I hardly knew who have such kind feelings toward me? Who would arrange all that?"

Xander's face is kind too, and sad. "Seems like, someone who loved you."

"Someone. Take a wild stab at that."

"Last hellgod standing?"

"Exactly. He arranged this life where I was cocooned, loved -- as much as you can be in this world."

"Where do the monks come in?"

"I don't know. I'm beginning to think they're another fake memory." Tears slip down her face. "This is destroying me, Xander. I could handle it better when it was all about betrayal."

"I wish I knew what to tell you." He pulls her against him again and lets her cry.

She indulges herself for a moment or two, then leans away, mopping her face with her napkin. "He did this to me." She tugs at her sleeve so the black tattoos and silver band show.

"What precisely is 'this'?"

Dawn shoves her sleeve up higher, runs her fingers over the green design she and Mike had created. "This was part of the rite. It had to be completed before the last ritual, the one that would make me what I used to be. But it wasn't finished. Mike -- the dead man in Ethan's hotel room -- he did the whole design, but he collapsed in the middle of doing the color. Then Giles came and I had to run. I was afraid to let anyone work on it too long, so I was finishing it a bit at a time. The final artist I went to, he was my brother's priest."

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you walk into his."

"I was led there. I thought I was following instinct, but --" She shakes her head. "He did this, all the 'nutso' stuff, as you called it, from this band down over my hand. He stopped my becoming."

"And, um, stopped the world from ending?"

"Ah, fuck, I suppose so," and the jaded tone of her voice suddenly makes her laugh, and Xander too.

"And what about this?" He seems about to touch the silver band on her arm, but doesn't, letting his fingertips hover an inch or so away.

"Last little present from my brother. He came. Possessed Rio, his priest. To see me one last time, because he couldn't bear hearing me call out to him, he said. He had his last farewell, which I'm thinking you don't want to hear about, then he put this on me, made it part of me. It keeps him from hearing me in his hell dimension. It keeps me silenced. That's probably why Willow couldn't find me. It scrambles my energy, I guess."

"Look, between Will and Giles, there must be something--"

"No. I'm sure there's some mojo that comes with it. They'll get hurt. It won't help anything. He's -- I don't have any reason to call out for him."

He takes her hand -- the nutso hand -- in both his. "I'm sorry all this happened. I wish you'd come to us when it was happening, but I think I see why you didn't."

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Hang with me a while. Rumor has it I'm a good friend to have if you happen to be a demoted supernatural being."

She puts her naked hand on his. "Okay. I'll hang."

Mrs. Chamroon brings more rice and another dish, announcing its name as she sets it down. She hovers a moment. "I hope I didn't upset you by asking about Joyce," she says. "I saw tears."

"Please, don't be sorry. I'm always happy when someone remembers my mom. I miss her every day. I like thinking other people think of her too."

"Something's making you sad?"

"School worries. Xander's helping me talk through them. The food -- oh my god, Mrs. Chamroon, I can't tell you how good everything is. Brings back a lot of nice memories."

She beams, then leaves them to their dinner.

Dawn scrapes a ridiculous amount of food onto her plate, and heaps some rice next to it. "I have completely had it with talking about myself," she says. "Tell me something about yourself. When did you get your eye done?"

"I had the implant put in back when I got Calebated, I don't know if you remember that. Standard part of the repair. And they gave me a temporary shell to put in when things healed, but I was in a weird place about being seen with it, since it looked fake, so I used the eyepatch too. I ditched the patch in Africa, though, since it created one more hot, sweaty part when I was a walking mass of hot, sweaty parts. Anyway, I was pretty much Sore Thumb Guy wherever I went, so I figured the fake eye wouldn't make a difference. When the whole river blindness thing got me freaked, I came back and Giles arranged an appointment with the people who made this. It was time -- things had changed in there--" he's too delicate to say "eye socket" over lunch -- "and mildly irritated, which is why I couldn't stop thinking about my eye all the time."

"Can I stare for a minute?"

"Sure."

She leans in close to him, taking in both eyes. "This is really amazing. It's got all the little flecks and there are even tiny little veins. If I didn't know, I'd have a really hard time telling."

Xander nods. "It's a beautiful piece of work."

She sits back. "It isn't just that. You don't act like a man who's blind in one eye."

He shrugs. "It's an adjustment. The hardest thing is the depth perception."

"And it tracks just like the other one."

"That's the implant." He tucks back into his food.

"It's this, it's that. It's never your efforts."

"Okay, so I practiced. It gave me something to do in the motel room while I've been out here looking for you. But it's still very cool. It's the new tech. There are magnets in the prosthesis. There's less friction, because -- Am I turning into a geek here?"

"Are you turning into a geek? No."

"Funny. The upshot is, there's a greater range of motion. Now I can roll my eyes at Dawn Summers crazy talk like nothing ever happened." He demonstrates.

"I'm glad. Xander Harris eyerolls are sorely lacking in my life. You do this sometimes." She wipes the skin beneath her own eye, from the outer corner in toward her nose. Actually, he does it a lot.

"I know. The eye waters more than my real eye. That's normal. Everything's normal."

"It bothers you, though, that you didn't stay. I think you did the smart thing. Especially now that I know you were having irritation in your eye. The last thing you'd need would be a raging infection where you couldn't get attention."

"I know."

"But."

"But I still feel like I lost my nerve."

"You lost heart. Because of Beya. That's normal too."

Xander turns to her, startled. He makes the movement she just imitated, though he hesitates halfway through, self-conscious now. "Yeah. I think you're right."

"It's different when you think of it that way, isn't it?"

"It is. Y'know, for a catless crazy cat lady, you make a certain amount of sense." He pulls her close again, and she feels a little more tethered to her old self, in a good way. "Hey, what about giving a call to your sister?"

"I'm up for it, I think, but I'd like to see the movie first. Lighten my mood a little before we go all heavy again."

"That's fair." He snugs her closer and kisses her temple again. "Thanks. I feel better."

"If that's the only superpower I have left from the whole hellgod package, I'll take it."

They go to a comedy, working on that light mood. It's actually fairly funny, but there are some references Dawn doesn't get, and she wonders if it's because of a hole in her memory, some TV show or movie riff that got sucked down the drain along with a family memory.

She doesn't let on, but laughs when Xander does.

Heading for the truck, they ride on a gust of post-movie chatter. When that finally runs dry, she shoots Xander a nervous glance. "So where should we call from? I guess you have a cellphone, but we don't have anywhere private. Call me abnormal, but I don't think I'm up for walking down the street yammering about my hellgod adventures at the top of my lungs."

"Could get you a movie deal, if I took you to the right bar and you yammered."

"Oh, well, a movie deal."

Xander digs his keys out of his pocket and wrenches the door open for her. She climbs in, slithering behind the wheel and on to the passenger side.

"It's a ways off," Xander says, "but I've got a base, you know. You'd have a private place to talk. I'll even take off, if you'd rather."

"No," Dawn says quickly. "I want you there."

"You could stay all night if you want. Hot showers 24/7, comfortable bed all to yourself, hot breakfast including perishables, all mod cons, as Giles would say."

"Okay," she says. "For the phone call, at least." Now that the call seems a reality, she falls silent, chewing on her lips, picking at her nails.

Xander attempts to start the conversation again, but every time he lobs the ball to her, it bounces at her feet and dribbles away. Finally he gives up and they ride in silence.

At the motel she extracts herself from the truck, and he lets her into the room. It's a modest place, but not bad. It clearly has been his base camp: His suitcase is tucked in a corner of the room, and a few books and a box of microwave popcorn sit on the bedside table. It's all so neat and contained that it breaks her heart a little. She doesn't think it's just the chambermaid.

"This is your base?"

Nodding, he drops his keys on the table. "Make yourself at home. All my base are belong to you."

Dawn perches on the edge of the bed, arms clasped around her body. "She'll probably be in bed by now. Buffy."

"Don't start up with that. She doesn't care how late it is, she wants to know you're okay." He pulls up the desk chair and sits facing her. Slips his cell phone from his pocket and offers it to her.

She stays still, arms wrapped tight.

"This isn't nerves," he says.

"No. I'm really scared."

"I could give you the speech, but you don't need it. You're just delaying." His voice, despite his words, is warm and affectionate.

"I'm not at all who she thinks I am."

"That's the most human thing you've said since I found you." Xander reaches for her, gently tugs her hand from under her opposite elbow, holds it. "We all feel that way at one time or another. If I had an Angel-style moment of perfect happiness, it would probably involve not feeling that way."

"I can't."

"What if I call first, tell her you're okay? Then you talk to her."

"What if we go to bed now and call tomorrow?"

"Right, and then the whole procrastination process starts up all over again. You don't have to tell her the whole story now. She'll want to come out -- have the big sisterly reunion. All you need to do now is tell her where to find you."

"Which feels like sending an engraved invitation to my executioner."

"Executioner? Dawn, I thought we were past this whole thing."

She hears a faint, frantic noise near her head, and realizes it's the sound of a moth battering itself against the lampshade from inside. Her stolen home by the crater has no such sounds. "I'm the sort of thing she kills for a living. I haven't been spending all this time just navel-gazing." She watches the shadow of the moth ricochet around the inside of the lampshade. It might seem like it wants a way out, but it wants the light more. Even if it's dying already from the intense heat of the lamp.

Dawn looks back at Xander. "I've killed people."

Xander blinks. "You mean the man in Ethan's room? Honey, just because he collapsed, doesn't mean you caused it."

"I sucked him dry. He needed to stop working and I made him go on."

"That is not killing him."

"I fed energy into him to keep him going. Then Ethan called to warn me Giles was coming and I had to get out right away. So I cut off the bond. He didn't survive it."

"Okay, then. But it was an accident." His hands are moving emphatically. Choppy yet graceful, it's a movement that's so very Xander. "It sounds like you had so much crazy mystic energy surging in you and around you that there was no way you could know what that would do. It was an accident."

Dawn fingers the hem of her shirt. "That's important to you. That it was an accident."

"Of course that's important. You had no intention of hurting the guy."

She gazes down at her nervous fingers. "What if I murdered somebody?"

"What if I got a job wrestling alligators in the Everglades? Dawnie, there's no sense beating yourself up about what ifs."

"I didn't say I killed a guy. I said people. There was nothing hypothetical about it. I murdered Rio, my brother's priest. The both of them, since the god was riding him when I did it."

"Not murder. I don't believe that. It had to be self defense. He was threatening your life."

"He was insisting I think well of him, and I was so enraged I wanted him dead."

He gestures. "Back up. Tell this from the beginning. This guy did the thing he did with the tattoo."

"That was Rio."

"Then he did the thing he did with the bracelet."

"That was my brother."

"The next step was bound to be killing you."

"The next step was getting me to say I understood. That I didn't hate him. He was going to go back and shut me out forever, but he refused to go until I absolved him. He was burning up his priest, the way I burned up Mike. But he wouldn't go, because I wouldn't forgive him."

"Okay, that doesn't constitute murder, either. He overstayed his welcome, he sucked the guy dry, but that was the god. Dawn, you're too hard on yourself."

"I snuffed him out." She stares at her hands, lost in memory. "He was faltering, and he fell back on the bed. I told him to let Rio go, and he refused. Said he had to know I understood. I took my hand, like this." She demonstrates. "Like Giles did when he snuffed Ben and destroyed Glory with him. I covered his mouth and pinched his nose shut. He struggled, but Rio's body had no strength left. I felt his breath against my palm. Like a moth hurling itself against a lampshade. Fighting and subsiding and then gone." At last Dawn looks up at him. He looks so much older now, and so very tired.

She says it, though she doesn't really need to. "I'd say that counts as murder."

Xander turns the cell phone over in his hands. Their size makes it look so small, almost like a matchbook. "What about Willow, then? Buffy hasn't killed her, and she's taken human life. Faith's killed more than one. Even Buffy's killed humans, people who in other circumstances might've been on our side."

"Buffy killed them in battle. It's not the same." Though Dawn might as well rack them up on her own ledger, because Buffy killed them to protect her. And maybe she shouldn't have.

"But Willow and Faith--"

"They're human. I'm not."

"Well, we haven't killed Andrew. Much as--"

"Don't turn this into a joke!" she cries.

"I'm sorry, Dawn, I'm sorry." Xander reaches out and strokes the side of her face. "I just don't know how to do this. I know this much: Buffy would never try to hurt you, no matter what."

"She stuck a sword--" Dawn bites it off, but it's too late. Xander looks even more defeated than before. "I'm sorry. It feels cruel to bring her up. But it's relevant."

"I know," he whispers. "But this is still different."

"Why? I'm not human."

"You're not what you were, either. You're more human than hellgod. Look, we've all made mistakes, sometimes willfully. There's not a one of us who hasn't killed another human being."

"Not you. I know what you said when Sweet went back to hell, but I never believed it. It was me who drew him here. Now I know why."

"I'm not talking about then. I'm talking about things that happened after you saw me last."

She takes a not-so-wild guess. "You were defending your slayer. Beya."

He doesn't answer, and she knows she's right.

She gusts a deep breath. "I'm so tired. Go on and call her."

Xander echoes her sigh and flips open the phone. "Wait. This isn't 'I'm so tired, kill me now,' is it?"

"I'm tired of talking about my drama." Evading his question. "I wasn't this self-absorbed when I was fourteen."

"You're going through something huge, and you've been doing it alone. Of course it's going to eat your brain. Doesn't mean you won't move past that. But right now that's normal."

Dawn laughs bitterly. "Normal."

"It's a totally normal response to a wildly abnormal situation. Luckily, you've fallen back in with the people who know all there is to know about wildly abnormal." Smiling, he brushes his knuckles lightly along her face. "Not to mention the fact that we all love you."

"Do you? This whole framework of memory, so much of it's gone now."

"I remember enough to love you. Just give us a chance, Dawnie. I know we can help you."

She nods. "Let's call her."

Xander flips the phone open, starts scrolling through its directory. Pausing with his thumb on the "call" button, he flicks a glance at her

She's wrapped her arms tightly around herself again, hunched on the edge of the bed. She knows she projects total misery.

"What if I sat on the bed with you while we called? Would that feel better, or would it just be weird?"

"Not weird." Dawn moves into the center of the bed to give him room. She pulls the pillows up against the headboard for back support as he joins her on the bed.

Xander settles an arm around her. "Is this okay? We're not getting into creepy uncle territory?"

"This is more than okay."

"Are you ready?"

"No," she says, but after a pause she adds, "but go ahead."

Xander thumbs the "call" button. He grows so very still as he waits through two rings.

"You are going to talk to her first?" Dawn blurts. "You won't just hand--" She hears the tiny click of connection and shuts up.

An faint, indistinct voice, then Xander says, "Buffy, it's Xander. I found Dawn. She's safe."

More insect buzz, then: "Out by the crater, like I thought.... No, no creeps. She was by herself.... She was perfectly safe there, Buff. There is no mystical stuff happening there at all, and even the animals stay clear.... Well, that's the last thing you should say to her right now. I mean that." A hint of steel in his voice. "I know, but do not use those words, or anything like them. Listen, she's safe, but she's not exactly okay. She's been through some things.... No, I don't think -- I don't know. It's complicated. Go easy, okay? Don't expect every single answer this minute. I'm putting her on now."

Her hand -- all of her -- feels strange and floaty as she reaches for the phone. The only thing that has any solidity at all is Xander's arm over her shoulders.

She takes the phone and stares into the blank face of the motel TV. "Buffy," she says. "It's me."

Buffy releases a breath; it sounds like she's been holding it for days. "Dawnie, how are you, are you all right?"

How can she possibly answer this? She doesn't even really know. "Like Xander said. Physically, fine. The rest I'm not sure about."

"What do you mean? Did somebody-- Did Ethan-- God, I don't even know how to ask this."

"Was I raped or roofied? No. I can't explain, it would take too long. It's all -- it's about what I am."

"If things were bothering you, Dawnie, why didn't you tell me? I get that things get to be too much sometimes, and being homesick when there's literally not a home anymore, believe me, I understand that, too. But to disappear without a word to anyone -- we've been out of our minds with worry."

Dawn opens her mouth to protest that this wasn't some kind of nervous breakdown, but the energy required to explain what really happened is beyond her. "I'm sorry I freaked everyone out. I needed to think about things."

"For god's sake, why Ethan Rayne? You know what he's like, you've heard enough stories. How could you be so stupi--"

Dawn cuts her off. "I know what he's like. Better than you do. I didn't realize who he was, not right away. Which gave me a chance to know him without that whole layer of --"

"-- reality?"

Dawn's fingernails cut into her palm. "You haven't seen him since Giles and Riley had him thrown in the Initiative's dungeon. He's changed since then."

"Dungeon?" Buffy hoots.

Her voice goes steely. "If he's so terrible, why is he the only person who's ever talked to me about my origins? Nobody else has, not since we saw the last of the Knights of Byzantium."

"He knew that was a way to get to you. And by the way, I was busy being dead right after that."

"God, Buffy. I can't -- god."

Xander gently takes the phone from her, and she slides down to curl up on the mattress.

"Buff? I'm using my amazing powers of deduction to determine things aren't going so well. I think you should come out here, there's no way this can get sorted out over the -- No. Bad idea. Bad, bad idea. Dawn's kinda overloaded right now. Just get here the normal way, and she'll have gotten some sleep, and it will go a whole lot better.... Well, listen to the whole thing before you judge.... Yeah, you were judgy, I could tell from over here. Look, I need to go. Call when you've got your flight info sorted out, and we'll meet you at the airport."

Xander snaps the phone shut and blows out a breath. He pushes back a strand of her hair. "Hey, little fetal Dawnie."

She just pulls her knees up closer as a sob escapes her.

"She's just worried. Freaked out." He strokes her hair. "You know how she gets. She doesn't mean it."

"I can't do this. It was hard enough telling you."

"We'll figure this out, and we'll tell it however it needs to be told. You sleep now. Slide under the covers and forget about everything until morning."

She snuffles. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me. I've got my wooden pillow." He rises and reaches for his pack, which he'd stashed by the door.

"What was she going to do?"

"What?"

"You told her get here the normal way. She was going to come some abnormal way?"

"Teleporting, she said. Willow's been working on it."

"Oh god. I'm glad you talked her out of that."

"You need a little buffer. A Buffy buffer."

"Mmm." She feels herself drifting.

"Go on," he says softly. "You sleep now."

And then she's out.

Dawn doesn't wake until late the next morning, when the door swings open, flooding the room with light. She squints into the brightness, recognizing Xander's broad-shouldered silhouette. She hears the rustle of paper sacks as he quietly closes the door.

Dawn groans sleepily.

"Sorry. Go back to sleep."

"I smell coffee."

"I brought a couple of cups." He reaches into one of the bags and pulls out a cardboard cup, hands it to her, then takes out his own. He tosses the bag onto the bed. "Sugar and half and half, if you want. I walked over to the convenience store and got you a toothbrush and stuff too, since we really didn't plan to stay out when we left the House of Crazy. I could bring breakfast in too, or we could go out. It's up to you."

Dawn pulls herself upright in bed just enough to drink without spilling all over herself. "Let's go out. I feel like I've been cloistered. First Ethan's suite, then the house. I need some air." Staying in the room until Buffy arrives feels a little too much like the condemned prisoner in her cell, but she doesn't say that. "Have you heard from her? When do we need to be at the airport?"

"Tonight around seven. Plenty of time to bask in a hot bath while you've got access, or whatever else."

"Thanks," Dawn says. "I'm glad you're here with me. I couldn't do this otherwise."

"It's the least I can do," he says.

She takes a quick shower, and she does revel in the plentiful hot water. As she finger-combs her towel-dried hair, the sight of herself in the mirror brings her up short. Choppy black hair, green and black tattoo from her shoulder to her fingers -- this is not the little sister Buffy's expecting to see. It's not going to make the big reunion go smoother.

She heaves a sigh, then dresses for breakfast.

"There's a pretty good diner in walking distance," Xander says as they step out into the sunshine.

"What, and miss a ride in the Spin-Artmobile?"

"So, so funny," Xander says, continuing to walk across the motel parking lot.

The breeze tugs faintly at Dawn's damp hair and lift the individual ones that have already dried. She feels a weird joy to be outside, out of her cloister yet not on the run. She pushes up her sleeves to feel the sun on her skin.

In the diner she asks for a seat by the plate glass window and procedes to order breakfast on the salver plan. The waitress brings almost as much food as Dawn had for breakfast in Ethan's suite, but it's more wheat-toast-with-Smuckers than scones-and-lemon-curd.

"I worry you're turning into a waif," Xander says as she crumbles bacon into her over-easy eggs.

"So, so funny," she repeats as she scoops the eggs onto a triangle of toast.

"And might I add, blecch."

"I could discuss some habits of yours involving ketchup and applesauce."

Xander holds up both hands. "I surrender."

They fall silent as they continue eating, and Dawn becomes aware of the country music radio station playing in the diner. Xander grows restless, though it doesn't show in any fidgety way. He seems more inwardly fidgety, and she's not sure how she can tell this.

"What?" Dawn finally says after she waves off her fourth coffee refill.

"What what?"

"There's something on your mind. Let's have it."

"What you said to Buffy, that no one ever talks about where you came from. I never realized that upset you."

"I'm not sure I realized it either. Not right away. As Buffy said, her being dead and all was a big distraction."

Xander winces. "She said that?"

"Well, that's why she wasn't so attentive on the topic."

He sighs. "Buff.... I wish I'd known. I feel like a big clueless ass. I should have been a better friend."

"It's not like I tried to bring it up, either. I don't think I knew how much it affected me until Ethan started talking about it. It's big, Xander. I pretty much win the all-time prize in the existential freakout sweepstakes, except for maybe those guys who turn up with complete amnesia. And half the time I suspect they're fakers. So I'm the queen of existential drama. I wasn't here until six years ago."

"Yeah," he says. "I know." He looks at her helplessly.

Her mouth quirks upward. "After that, you've got nothin'?"

"Sad to say." He strokes the skin of her hand, which rests on the table. It's the nutso hand, and it moves her that he's unafraid to touch it. "So what now?"

"Now? I'd like to take a walk, then go back to your base and lie around watching TV with you. That's all the now I can handle at the moment."

"It's all the now we need, I think."

During an endless commercial break, Dawn murmurs, "This one is true."

"That I could make five thousand dollars a week, like these people with Moonie eyes? Somehow I retain my skepticism."

"This memory," she clarifies. "I remember watching TV with you, all curled up together like this. It was after Mom died, so I know it's true."

"I'm sorry we lost so many of the others. I know they weren't true, but I think a lot of them were good." He strokes her hair absently. "I'm sorry getting back to what you were was so important you had to leave those behind. I can't say I'm sorry it didn't work. Still firmly against world-endage here."

"I guess I'm still against it too, in principle. I kinda slipped up in actual deed."

"We're all still here," he murmurs.

"You got new ones," Dawn says. "Actually, you got the old ones back. I got blank spaces, but you got the real ones."

"True."

"Tell me one."

"Dawnie, I don't think that's the best idea."

"Just one. Not many people get a chance to do the It's a Wonderful Life thing. Just tell me one."

Xander falls silent, gazing off into a corner of the room.

"Are you rejecting the ones where you come off like a dork, or the ones where you're too heroic?"

"There aren't any in the second category."

"Bullshit."

"Dawnie. Language."

Ludicrous as the admonition is, it makes her smile.

"You remember Amy?" he asks.

Dawn wrinkles her nose in distaste. "Of course I do. She and Willow were partners in craziness that awful year."

"Your sister met her a couple of weeks after she transferred to Sunnydale High. Buffy decided she was going to try out for the cheerleading squad. Get back a little of the life she left behind in L.A."

She shifts to look at him. "Buffy was a cheerleader? I don't remember that."

"Yeah," Xander says softly. "She was.. In L.A., not in Sunnydale. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Go on, I'm fine."

He hesitates a moment, then continues. "They met in tryouts. Amy used to be kinda overweight, but she'd lost a lot of weight, and was desperate to get on the squad. Her mom had been a big noise in her cheerleading days, and Amy was getting a lot of pressure. All of a sudden, things start happening to cheerleaders. One sorta caught fire, Cordelia went blind, another girl's mouth disappeared."

"Creepy."

"I confess at the time I wished Cordelia and Miss I-Have-No-Mouth-and-I-Must-Scream would've traded places, but that's another story."

"Cordelia. Didn't you go out with her once or twice?"

"Yeah." Another pause, then he says. "Well, we were kind of an item. For about a year."

"Oh," Dawn says, her voice so quiet she can barely hear it herself. "Keep going."

"Buffy had been an alternate, along with Amy, but she got on the squad when Cordelia lost her spot. Then the next thing we knew, Buffy was acting strange, and then she got really sick. Giles told us it was a vengeance spell, and it would kill her in a few hours. By that time we were already suspecting Amy of being a witch, and Buffy had verified it. Giles and Buffy went to her house while Amy was busy with a pep rally, and confronted her mom. Who turned out to be Amy, because her mom had swiped her body to have another go at cheerleading glory."

"There's nothing like pep to bring the evil."

"So I've always said. Giles managed to find her spellbook and had a big dramatic showdown with Mama Witch, who disappeared. We never found out what happened to her, but Amy got her body back and cheerfully retired from the cheering. I felt really sorry for her. Her mom had taken over her body for months."

"Sounds like she left a little evil behind when she vacated."

"I guess. The cracker crumbs of evil."

"Which are probably all pointy when you roll over them in bed."

"Of course. They're evil."

"I wonder how it really --" Dawn shakes her head. "I wonder how we remembered it before."

Xander snugs his arm around her. "I don't know."

"I guess nobody does."

"Listen," he says after a long quiet spell. "It's getting to be time to head for the airport. You need to get ready?"

"I need to pee. I somehow doubt that'll make me ready." She hates the idea of losing this tenuous connection to the way things were, and dreads the coming confrontation with Buffy, whether it's the slayer or the sister who appears.

Xander squeezes her hand. "It'll be all right. I'll referee."

"Okay," she says, and heads for the bathroom.

They wait beyond customs, watching waves and waves of passengers bustle through the "nothing to declare" line. Buffy's plane has landed; she called Xander's cell while waiting to get off.

Dawn can barely breathe as she waits. Her sleeves are pulled down over her hands, balled into her fists. Xander tried to put his arm around her shoulders a little while ago, but she shrugged it off, certain the sight would make Buffy flip out.

Xander turns toward her again, lightly brushing a knuckle down her cheek. "It'll be okay," he says for the nine thousandth time. "She loves you. She gets that way because she's scared for you."

It doesn't sink in any better than the other 8,999 times. Dawn stiffens. "There she is. Oh god. Giles is with her."

But Xander's already lifted his arm, begun waving them over. She wants to bolt, find somewhere to run.

"Sweetie, there's nothing--"

Then Buffy is there, sweeping her into a crushing hug. "Dawnie, I've been so worried. What were you thinking, going off like that?"

She pushes out of the embrace. "You always do that. Make me feel like I'll always be the dumb little sister. We'll be in our nineties--" Dawn stops dead as a sob bursts from Buffy.

"Always. Funny choice of words."

"Dawn, thank god you're safe." Giles lifts his arms in an invitation to a hug, but Dawn stands her ground and he drops his arms.

"That's why you're here, isn't it? To be sure I'm safe?" She turns a cold eye on Buffy. "That was smart thinking, bringing Giles. He does what needs to be done."

"What are you talking about?" Buffy demands.

"Buffy doesn't know yet?" Dawn offers Giles a cold smile. "Well, that was thoughtful. No need to upset her until action is required."

Xander reaches toward her, but she shrugs him off again. "Dawnie--"

"Dawn, I assure you--" Giles takes a step toward her, and she moves back one.

"What the hell is going on?" Buffy blurts. She's sublimated her tears into anger, something Buffy always did prefer.

People flow on past them, toward waiting family, toward limo drivers with names written on small whiteboards. None of them even glance at their little group.

"It took me days to tell Xander, but let's cut to the chase. You remember Gregor telling us where Glory came from? How there were three hellgods?"

Buffy glances around. "This is totally a conversation we should be having in private."

"She feels safer here, Buffy," Xander says.

"Safer? This is craziness. Giles--"

"Let her speak, Buffy," he says softly. Dawn can't read his expression.

"Gregor got it wrong," Dawn tells her. "Yeah, I was the Key, but that's not all. I'm the third."

"The Third? Is that like some cousin of the First?"

"You're closer than you think. I'm the third hellgod. The only one left alive."

Buffy's lips part, but no words emerge. She looks like she's been sucker-punched.

Dawn gets in another shot. "I'm Glory's sister."

Giles looks as shocked as Buffy, which Dawn hadn't expected.

"Jesus, Xander, why didn't you tell me?" Buffy turns to Giles. "There must be someone who can help her, right? The Council must -- or, or the coven."

"Buffy, I believe her," Xander says simply. "I know what you're thinking, because I thought so too. She convinced me. And by the way, she's not all Glory-hallelujah-let's-end-the-world. She's, uh, she's--"

"I've been neutralized."

"This is craziness," Buffy says again. "Just look at her."

"It's not outside the realm of possibility," Giles says quietly. "We've always known Dawn was more than a young girl, though we've allowed ourselves to forget."

Giles, she's sure, has never forgotten, even if he let everyone think so. He never takes his eye off anything that could be a threat.

"Again I'd like to emphasize," Xander says. "She doesn't pose any kind of threat."

Dawn spots a security guard closing in on their group, possbly close enough already to have heard the last few words. "Right. I wouldn't dream of stealing your boyfriend."

"What?" Buffy blurts.

"You folks waiting for someone?" the guard asks.

"No, we're just sorting out our travel and accommodations," Giles says. Smooth, no trace of a stammer. He's good at this, dealing with the servants of authority.

"Better find another place for that," the guard says, and hovers to be sure they do.

"We've got a logistical problem," Xander tells them. "Wherever we go, someone's got to ride in the back of the truck. Or else we should head to the rental counter."

"I'll happily volunteer to hire a car," Giles says, and they all accompany him to the row of rental desks.

"So where do we finish this conversation?" Buffy asks. "Maybe there's a shopping mall open, or if that's too secluded--"

"Buffy," Giles chides.

"I don't care," Dawn says. "Drive me out into the desert. Do it there."

"Stop that," Xander says. He lowers his voice, speaking to the others. "We'll go back to where I've been staying. But first you have to promise Dawn--" his voice drops lower-- "you are not going to kill her."

"This is lunacy," Buffy spits. Nice to see she can vary her tune, however slightly.

"Of course we promise," Giles says. "Buffy--"

"I could just--"

"Buffy!"

She summons patience. "You're my sister, Dawn. I'm not here to kill you."

Dawn nods, not certain she believes either of them.

"All right then," Xander says. "Let's Avisize Giles, then head for my base."

Dawn hopes Buffy will drive out with Giles, but she declares her intention to ride with Xander and Dawn.

Xander leads them to the truck, Buffy's carry-on bag slung over his shoulder. He gestures to the space between the truck and a minivan next to it, and Buffy waits by the passenger door of the minivan for him to unlock it.

"Um, no. It's this one. The Spin-Artmobile."

"Hey," Dawn protests.

"You want me to drive?" Buffy asks, incredulous.

"No, that's just the only door that works," Xander says. "Climb in and scoot."

Buffy scrambles in first, leaving Dawn wedged between her and Xander.

"No escape, huh?" Dawn mutters to him.

"Stop that."

With her thigh pressed against Buffy's, Dawn can feel the tension in her sister's whole body. She turns toward her and says, "Whatever happens, I'm really glad you came, Buffy."

"What do you think is going to happen?" She sounds so tired and lost, the way Dawn's been feeling so much of the time.

"I don't know."

"We'll do things how we always have," Xander says. "We'll lay out the situation, we'll hit the books or whatever else there is to hit, and we'll go on from there."

Dawn doesn't point out that in Scooby life "going on from there" almost always meant killing something. Maybe it occurs to Buffy and Xander too, because they're silent for a long while.

Buffy turns toward her, drawing a breath to speak. "Your hair," she says, and Dawn's sure that's not what she originally planned to say. "Mom would die."

Her temper flares. "You make it sound like that time I--" But the memory is gone. "You treat me like a little kid."

"You act--"

"Girls. While there's nothing I love more than a good sister fight -- actually, I lied. I hate a good sister fight. So please to be knocking it the hell off."

"I was afraid there might be people after me," Dawn tells Buffy after a long moment. "My hair was a dead giveaway."

"Oh." Buffy sounds wistful. "I always wished I had your hair."

Always. That word again. "I always wanted yours. Chestnut hair just isn't happening hair in sunny California."

"My hair was brown for a while, do you remember? I was really blonde as a kid, but it started going darker. Then I took matters into my own hands."

"It's weird not to have the curtain of hair, the weight of it. It was security-blanket hair."

Turning to her again, Buffy tentatively reaches up and touches Dawn's hair. "Once you get over the shock, it's really kind of cute."

"The clothes make a difference. Which, hey. Xander, I don't have anything clean. It's all back at the house."

"House?" Buffy asks.

"I found a place to stay before Xander found me. Just an abandoned place on the old highway near Sunnydale."

"I hate thinking of you being so close to the hellmouth."

"The only thing weird about it is it's so quiet there. The birds and the bugs even left."

"Still."

Xander hits the turn signal. "This is our exit."

Dawn's fingers clench as they pull into the motel parking lot and see Giles emerging from his rental car.

Buffy regards her. "Don't be scared. You're my sister -- I'll always take care of you."

Always. Funny how that word has become shifting sand.

As Dawn begins to slide under the wheel, Buffy catches her hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

Dawn squeezes back.

Xander opens the door to his room. "How's everybody? You two had a long trip, should we order a pizza, import some diner food, pop some microcorn? The old standby, donuts?"

"I'm not hungry," Buffy says, and Dawn says she's in the same state.

"I'm fine for the moment," Giles says.

"Okay," Xander says. "We've got the next room too. I'm going to go over and bring chairs." He flips the lock on the double door between rooms and opens this side.

"I'll help," Dawn volunteers.

Xander throws her a look, but doesn't comment.

She follows him outside to the adjoining room and opens the other half of the inside door as he hefts one of the chairs at the little table. "Bring the table over, too?" she asks.

"Maybe later, if we do get hungry."

She lifts the other chair and follows him through the connecting door. It's awkward arranging four chairs in a small motel room, but they manage.

"Circle up," Xander says.

"We are circled," Buffy replies.

"No, Dawn's sitting there, and we're in a semicircle staring at her. Giles, trade seats with me." Xander settles into the chair by her after he scoots it a little closer. "See? Subtle change, but a big difference."

"Okay, we've got the seating arrangements sorted out," Buffy says. "Is there any sort of starting point here? Any way into this that makes sense? How did you get to be a hellgod?"

"I didn't get to be a hellgod, I started out that way. Then I got stuffed into Dawn, the same way Glory got put into Ben, and I forgot everything I was before."

"But Ethan Rayne conveniently knew this, and told you all about it. If I find that sleazy little shit, he's a dead man."

"You think he filled my head with some crazy story. Well, how's this for a crazy story: Your sister's not human, but pure energy, a mystical key to another dimension. You swallowed that story easily enough."

"Possibly because it wasn't told to me by Mr. Liar McLiarpants. Ethan Rayne is the last person you can trust to tell you the truth."

Dawn tugs at the sleeves of her shirt. "He never once said the word hellgod. I'm not sure how much he actually knew. He saw that I had a great deal of power, sure. He was trying to help me regain it."

"He was trying to help himself to as much of it as he could get," Buffy spits.

"He hoped to benefit. He never said he didn't. The Initiative damaged him." Dawn turns a glare on Giles. "He wanted what they took from him, and he believed I could restore him, if I were restored myself. He thought we were a lot alike. Imprisoned. Stunted."

"If that isn't the oldest ploy in the world. Wow, you and me, we're so alike."

"You weren't there. You have no idea what it was like."

"I may have some idea," Giles says quietly. "Ethan is extraordinarily persuasive when he exerts his charm."

"We moved way past charm," Dawn snaps. "We got down to sincerity. Did Ethan ever show you that? As he said, he's bad at it, because he so rarely does it. Maybe he started this whole adventure as the old Ethan Rayne, though I really don't think so. But somewhere along the line, he became a true believer." She sees a flicker of reaction on his face. "That phrase gets to you, doesn't it? He used to taunt you with it, when you knew each other in London. Every time he's seen you since. He's become one, and I don't think he knew what hit him."
 

"No," Giles says. "He wouldn't."

"What's happened to him? Where is he?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since the day I last saw you."

"The Council wouldn't lose track of him again," she insists.

"You forget that I am, essentially, the Council. We concentrated our energies on searching for you, Dawn."

"My brother's priests had him for a time. That's what they told me. But--"

"Whoa," Buffy says. "Your brother?"

"There were three hellgods. He was the third."

"I thought you were the third," Buffy says.

"All right. He was the second. His priest told me there were others, and they had Ethan. He said they would let him go."

"This -- this hellbrother has priests. Giles, we're going to have to deal with this."

"No we're not, Buffy," Xander says.

"I killed him," Dawn elaborates.

"You killed a hellgod," Buffy says dubiously. "Wow. You have learned some chops recently."

"See? She's still firmly on the side of the Scoobies," Xander says.

She answers Buffy as if he hasn't spoken. "Wasn't so hard. I had a lesson from Giles a few years back."

"Giles?" Buffy throws him a confused look.

Giles shakes his head, equally bemused.

"I saw how you did it with Ben. So easy, when you catch them at a vulnerable moment."

"Dawnie," Xander says, "how about you don't speak in your own defense."

"I thought you said this wasn't some kind of tribunal."

"Christ," he mutters. "What I mean is, why don't you tell this in some kind of logical order. Y'know -- New and improved! Now with context!"

"Nobody cares about context," Dawn says.

"Considering that it makes you sound like less of a wackaloon, I personally am fond of context. I'm beginning to think you want to be judged, and the harsher the better. I'm not playing along."

She scowls and waves her hand.

"Dawn," Giles says, preternaturally quiet. "May I see your hand?"

In her irritation with Xander, she'd forgotten to keep her sleeves pulled down to her knuckles. "I think maybe this is one of those times when context is required." She rises and pulls her shirt over her head and off. Buffy yelps Dawn's name in sisterly dismay, then murmurs Oh. My. God. as she sees the tattoo.

Giles seems to be holding his breath as he inspects the intricacies of the designs on her arm. After a long moment he speaks. "The man in Ethan's suite. He did these?"

"He outlined this part, here to here." She touches her shoulder, then her forearm above the silver band. Actually, down to my wrist, but that got covered. He colored in this much before -- before we were interrupted."

"What is it, Giles?" Buffy asks.

"Proof, I believe, that Dawn is who she says she is." He gazes up at her, his face gone papery white. "We'll never know just how close we came to an apocalypse, without knowing." He takes Dawn's wrist in his hand, turning her hand this way and that as he examines the black runes. "Would you tell me about these?"

"I went to a tattoo artist in Montana. To have him finish the color. He turned out to be a pirest of my brother's."

"Do you know their purpose?"

"To stop me. To shove me back in my box."

"Box?" Buffy echoes.

Dawn keeps her gaze bent on the tattoo, letting her hair -- what's left of it -- screen her face from her sister. "The box they made. Dawn."

"You're my sister. I can't stand hearing you talk about yourself like you're a thing."

"I'm a construct. Beautifully put together -- or I was. We all knew that, but we tabled the conversation. Decided it wasn't important."

"I don't think we did Dawn any favors ignoring that, Giles," Xander says. "She needed to have that acknowledged, and we weren't up to the job. She's had this knowledge for six years, and we've done nothing to help her handle it. We got her past the big crisis, mostly because there was a bigger one, and we forgot the whole thing. We played a part in causing this."

"Yes."

"Why am I off the hook?" Buffy asks.

"The natural time to talk about this was after Glory," Xander says. "You were dead, so it was really down to the rest of us."

"Yeah, well I've been back five years, and her need to talk apparently didn't go anywhere. We all get a big fat F. Who gets a shiny A for effort? Ethan frickin' Rayne."

Suddenly Dawn feels tired and sad and entirely too naked. She gathers the shirt in her hands to pull over her head again, but Giles lifts a hand.

"A moment, please. Where did you come by that bracelet?"

Her mouth twists. "It was a gift. From brother dear."

"Could I see?"

She extends her arm. "Sure. It's a little awkward. This doesn't come off."

"Doesn't -- my god, Dawn."

"Somebody's god. He -- what's the word? Melded it to me. By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late."

"Do you know its purpose?"

"To shut me up," Dawn says bitterly. "He said he could hear me calling out in his happy little hell dimension. It bothered him. You wouldn't think hellgods would be big on the guilt, but I guess he felt kinda bad about what he did to his little sister, especially after she helped him cast out Glory." She gestures with the shirt. "Can I--?"

"Of course," Giles stammers. "My apologies, Dawn."

She pulls her shirt on again and sits down.

"Well, if it's hoodoo that put it on there," Buffy says, "we'll find some counter-mojo that can take it off."

"No," Dawn says. "It can't be tampered with. It'll kill anyone who tries. He told me that. He knows you. How tenacious you are. And he knew that would matter to me. More than if I was the one who'd be destroyed. Of course, I already have been."

"Don't say that," Buffy says.

"How would you describe it? I can't be what I was becoming, and I've already lost who I was. Am I a god? Am I human? I can't be either. So what the hell am I?"

"You're my sister," Buffy says.

That was predictable.

"You're my friend," Xander says. "You make me laugh, you slap me around when I need it, you cheer me up when I need that."

"That's cheating," Dawn retorts. "What about now?"

"I am talking about now. Nobody else made me feel okay about leaving Africa. You did that, because you could see things clearer than I could."

She tugs at her sleeve. "You don't have to say anything," she says to Giles. "I know I was the sacrifice you were denied."

"No," Giles says. "You were a tragic mistake I was spared. I'm grateful I don't have to live with that. There are enough that I do. You're also a young woman I've grown very fond of."

She looks down at her hands. "You're saying that because of Buffy."

"I'm saying it because it's true." His voice is so full of patience and warmth.

Her hands twist in her lap. "I never really trusted you. There were memories -- they're gone now, but they were so ingrained, so important that everything else seemed to be built on them. Ethan thought they were put there for that very reason, to make me wary. Then Ben -- I saw that."

"She's got this idea," Xander says, a thread of apology in his voice. "I can't shake it loose. That she saw you kill Ben, and that you want to kill her."

"She trusts Ethan Rayne," Buffy says bitterly, "but--"

"Buffy." His voice still quiet, but holding a glint of steel. There's a long pause, then Giles says, "Dawn's half right. After Glory was defeated, Ben was broken, but still living. I made certain that it was finished. I killed him."

His admission sucks the air out of the room. Xander and Buffy exchange a look.

"I'm not especially proud of that moment," Giles adds. "But I would do it again without a moment's hesitation. It was necessary. Dawn, you said you did the same to your brother."

"I cut off his air." Her hand raises of its own accord, demonstrating. "I put an end to him, with the same hand he used to destroy me."

Xander draws a breath, probaby to argue that last point, but he subsides at a small gesture from Giles.

"He must have been quite vulnerable," Giles says.

"He was riding his priest. Like the orishas," and Giles nods his understanding. "He'd been using him for a long time. He was burning Rio up, the way I burned up Mike. I told him what he was doing, but he was arrogant to the last."

"What happened to Mike, that was an accident."

She nods. "I didn't realize. There was so much power flowing through me. I guess arrogance runs in the family."

"It's a very human trait as well."

Human. Everyone is careful to point out the ways in which she seems to fit her disguise, but it unsettles her more than it calms her.

Xander is keeping watch, gauging her reactions as always. "I'm thinking maybe it's time for a break. Giles and Buffy, you've been traveling for the better part of a day. You must be half dead. Why don't we all get a good night's sleep?"

Giles and Buffy both look toward her.

"What? I'm not the one who's been on a plane all day."

"Are you good with this? As a stopping point, I mean."

Dawn shrugs. "Talking all night won't cure anything. Stopping now won't make it worse."

"Do you feel safe with us?" Giles asks.

"Yes," she says without hesitation, and inexplicably, tears start slipping down her cheeks.

Giles stands and opens his arms to her, even though she rejected him when he'd done so in the airport. This time she steps into the embrace. Her memories of him may be sketchier than they once were, but his arms are solid. He smells faintly sour from travel, not at all the clean soap scent she associates with him. It's this uncharacteristic lapse in fastidiousness, more than anything, that makes her feel his love. He's come all this way for her, bridged the gaps in his memory with affection, weathered her hostility and distrust.

She lets herself weep into his shoulder as he strokes her hair.

"I wish I had your courage," he murmurs.

Courage. That's not how it feels. Once he releases her and she and Buffy move off to their room, Dawn asks her sister something she hasn't asked in many years, not even after their mom's death.

"Can I sleep in your bed?"

Buffy gathers Dawn in her arms. "Of course you can. God, I'm so happy you're safe."

"I'm glad you're here. I'm glad Giles came, too. I wasn't at first."

Buffy releases her and pushes a lock of hair back out of Dawn's eyes. "He's been so worried for you. In some weird way I think he feels personally responsible for everything Ethan ever does, but especially this. Giles thinks he went after you to get to him."

"It was more than that. You keep forgetting I'm not just the helpless little sister. He's sensitive to power. I think he'd have found me even if there wasn't any connection to Giles."

Buffy sits on the bed and digs a hairbrush from her bag, and starts brushing out her hair. "I can't get over how you talk about him. Ethan, I mean."

"How's that?"

"Like there's this ... connection. Like he's someone you know really well, and like. At least you don't get all seethy when you mention him, the way Giles does, and I do. But then, he was before your time, wasn't he?"

"I never met him before, which is why I didn't recognize him. But I remember what was going on all those times, or as much as you guys let me know."

"He didn't erase those memories too?"

Dawn shakes her head.

"God, what an egotist."

Dawn grins crookedly. "Yeah, he is. He totally admits to it." She pulls off her shirt and slips out of her jeans. She used to do this so unselfconsciously, but the tattoo makes her hyperaware of Buffy's gaze. Hurriedly she tugs on the t-shirt Xander loaned her. "So tell me about Dad."

"Dad?" Buffy asks, startled.

"I don't remember much about him at all, just the dinners we had at the Thai place in L.A. Which hey, Xander and I happened to go there, and Mrs. Chamroon totally remembers us. She said to tell you hello."

"Mrs. Who?"

"Chamroon. The family that runs the place."

"I don't think I ever knew their name. Wow." She pauses her brushing. "I haven't thought about those dinners in about a hundred years."

"That's pretty much it. All I have of us as a family together. What was he like?"

"Absent or half-assed, 97% of the time. Perpetual adolescent, though I didn't recognize that until much later. I felt like an afterthought a lot of the time. Mom probably did too, but she never said. She never badmouthed him. Ethan really went after those memories, huh?"

"Seemed like it. Maybe because they made me unhappy."

"Okay, that's just weird." She starts brushing again.

"Huh?"

"Thinking of him considering anyone's feelings but his own. He caused all this damage in you, and all of us with the implanted memories. It's strange thinking he chose the ones that were painful to you for that reason."

"I believe that's what he did. Look," she says abruptly, "if Spike could change so much, why not Ethan? He was imprisoned a long while. It changes people."

"Maybe," Buffy says grudgingly, and Dawn knows that's as good as she's likely to give.

Buffy eyes her as she pulls back the covers and slips beneath. Invoking Spike might not have been the wisest move, reminding Buffy of her own connection with someone most of the others despised. Making her wonder just how well Dawn got to know Ethan.

"Wow." Dawn fakes a yawn. "Suddenly I'm so tired."

Buffy gazes at her a moment before she says, "Yeah. The day's really catching up to me."

She gets under the covers with Dawn and then switches off the light. Her breathing slows and deepens almost instantly, but it's a long time before Dawn finally falls asleep.

Dawn wakes to the hiss of the shower. Groaning, she dives back into sleep. When she emerges again, it's quiet. She listens, rewarded with the small sounds of Buffy rummaging through her makeup bag at the mirror outside the bathroom, and quiet voices from next door.

Dawn gets up and leans against the doorway to the alcove by the bath. "Hey."

"Hey. I thought I'd let you sleep as late as you could."

"Thanks. I'm gonna take a fast shower. I'm going to need some new clothes. This is Day 3 on this outfit, and ecch."

"We'll stop somewhere, but in the meantime, grab whatever you want from my bag. When I'm done here, I'm going out to get coffee and donuts. Just go next door when you're ready."

As she closes the bathroom door behind her and helps herself to a pair of scratchy white towels, the loud whine of a blow dryer starts up. Dawn showers and steps out, wrapped in a skimpy towel, before the sound even dies away.

Buffy shuts off the dryer and eyes her. "Who are you and what have you done with my sister?"

Dawn blinks, her heart thudding.

"The real Dawn has never taken a 'quick shower' in less than 40 minutes."

A joke. "God, Buffy. Don't do--" She stops short.

"What?"

"That was a family joke. With history and everything. And it was true."

"Duh." She reaches out and ruffles Dawn's damp hair.

She's never been more thrilled to get a duh from Buffy in her life. Dawn rummages in Buffy's bag for something to wear. There's a lot of dresses -- Buffy's always been a dress girl, but Dawn's never really swooned for them. Buffy packed slacks and a few tops, too, but they're all short-sleeved or sleeveless. Maybe Giles would lend her one of his button-downs.

Buffy comes out, freshly spritzed with scent. "Okay, I'm heading-- what's wrong?"

"Oh. It's just -- everything's short sleeved."

"You feel conspicuous."

"Understatement of the decade."

"I'd hate to think of you never feeling the sun on your skin. Let's see what Giles has to say. If it doesn't put you in any danger, why should you hide? You are who you are."

"I'm just a little shaky right now on who I am."

"That's not confined to goddess girls, you know. Anyhow, what's your poison? Double-shot latte, isn't it?"

"Triple today."

"I'll go see what the guys want, and meet you all back over there." She raps on the connecting door and disappears.

Dawn retrieves the panties she'd washed out the night before and blow-dries the last bit of dampness from them. She pulls on the least clashy print top she can find in Buffy's bag, finger combs her hair and knocks on Xander's door.

"Hey, sleepyhead."

"Morning." She hears the slap and hiss of water from the bathroom. "Seems like Giles is a slowpoke too."

"We talked pretty late last night."

"Us too." She perches on one of the chairs.

"How did things go with you two?"

"Better than I expected."

"Well yeah. You're not dead."

Dawn ducks her head. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"

"Probably not."

"You're lucky I haven't had any coffee yet." She notices a wooden carving on the nightstand, curved at the top, with two figures. "What is that? Can I see it?"

"You saw that before." He hands it across the bed to her. "It's my pillow."

"I never got a good look. I just thought it was a block of wood. You said Beya's father carved it. This is really wonderful." A male and a female figure stand together, hands and heads holding up the curved top.

"It's us. Beya and me."

"Wow. It's beautiful -- and now I can see, the way he stands, that's you. It's got personality."

He nods. "They're very individual. They're status objects. You don't just sleep on them, you bring them out on ceremonial occasions, to show that you're a big man."

Dawn stokes the curve of the headrest. "So he showed you what he thinks of you. In the language you understand best."

"I hadn't really looked at it that way. But yeah." A delicate swipe at the skin below his eye.

The bathroom door wrenches open and gusts a cloud of steam into the room. Giles favors her with a smile. "Dawn, how are you feeling this morning?"

"Reasonably well. I'll feel a lot better when I can get my hands on some fresh clothing."

Giles nods. "I should--"

He's interrupted by a scuffle and thump at the door to the outside. "It's Buffy," she calls out. "Somebody get the door."

Xander's closest, so he opens the door, hands poised to take a cardboard tray of coffees. Instead, he leaps back to dodge Buffy's captive, whom she catapults through the door. Ethan Rayne stumbles into the room, but regains his balance if not his dignity.

"Lookee what I found," Buffy says.

"I'd've preferred the coffee," Xander comments.

Ethan glares at Giles. "So you didn't do this. Still, you must be delighted. How you love destroying the old gods."

"God, save me from the lectures on lack of proper reverence from Ethan Rayne," Giles says. "Nothing you've done has ever been in service to anyone other than yourself. And no, I'm not delighted at what's happened to Dawn. I will admit to relief. What you started, it would have brought on an apocalypse."

"You do love looking at the world through doom-colored glasses. They've a limitless supply of those at the Council, haven't they? I remember when you were open to more than--"

"I was stupid," Giles snaps. "And we saw where that led. Christ, Ethan. You never learn."

"Boys," Buffy says. "This conversation is taking on a vibe I don't want to think about very hard. I am coffeeless and cranky. Take that as a warning."

"Something's got to be done," Xander says. "Now. And I'm man enough to do it. Buff, you still have the coffee orders?"

She pulls a square of motel logo notepaper from her pocket, and he takes it.

"Hey, Dawnie, want to come?" An invitation he's made to her dozens--hundreds?--of times over the years, in the same casual tone. Out to buy a gallon of ice cream, or plywood and two-by-fours for a window fix, or to help him search for a present for Anya.

He's trying to root her to who she was, but he's miscalculated. She's not a tagalong little sister anymore. She's a stunted godling, and she owes her priest whatever small protection she can give him. She won't abandon him to his enemies.

Dawn shakes her head, and Xander nods, as if that's the outcome he expected.

"Name your poison, Rayne," he says. "Our treat."

Ethan's smile is sardonic.. "Nothing, thank you."

Xander shrugs, unsurprised by that refusal as well, and he leaves the room.

"You're lucky," Buffy says to Ethan.

"And just how am I lucky?" He won't let go of the acid sarcasm, though it's only going to work against him here.

"I won't tear your arms off and beat you to death with them, not in front of Dawn."

"She doesn't need your protection. You wouldn't believe the power I've seen flowing through her."

"But she's been cut off from it," Giles says quietly.

"I don't accept that she belongs in her prison any more than I accepted it before. Any more than I believed I belonged in mine."

"You left him to rot," Dawn accuses. "That was beyond Council high-handedness, Giles."

"I personally have no problem with that," Buffy says. "I'd lock him up again and throw away the key for this latest."

Dawn's mouth twists. "Throw away the key."

"You know what I meant." Buffy bunches her hair into her hands. "This was a mistake, Giles. Bringing him in here. I should have--"

"What, dealt with me somewhere else?" Ethan smirks. "Kept her in the dark, as if she were a child? She's an adult, she's able to choose her own way. As she took pains to tell me any number of times as she pursued me."

Yelping with rage, Buffy takes a menacing step toward Ethan, but Giles catches her by the arm. "It won't help," he tells her.

"He's telling the truth," Dawn says. "I was interested in him long before he paid me any notice."

"Try to imagine how much I don't want to hear this."

"You can date a 240 year old dead guy when you're sixteen. I helped you hide that from Mom, remember? But when it comes to me, I'm not capable of making my own choices at twenty."

"Angel was not--help me out here, Ethan. What the hell are you?"

"Dawn's priest."

There's fumbling at the door, and Buffy mutters, "Thank god. Coffee." She opens the door to Xander, balancing a tray of coffees and a box of donuts.

There's a flurry of activity as Buffy hands around cups and offers the donuts. Dawn cradles the cardboard cup in her hands, but waves off the donut box. Xander stands over Ethan's chair as if to remind him no one's forgotten his presence.

"We've got two big questions right now," Buffy says. "What we do with him, and what Dawn does next. And I'd really like to get him gone before we go into the second problem."

"Well, we can't kill him," Xander says cheerfully. "And an indefinite stay in the gulag maybe wasn't the best--" He winces. "Sorry, Giles."

"No," Giles says quietly. "You're right."

"So we're holding this live grenade," Buffy says. "We can't hang onto him, but if we--"

"Let him go," Dawn says.

"Right, if we let him go we're just -- wait. Are you suggesting that's what we do?"

"Let him go. He's had enough damage done to him in the interests of 'what's best for everyone.' He won't turn up again."

"Dawn, there's no guarantee he'll just go away," Buffy says.

Dawn addresses Ethan. "Stay away. Work on your fakes, sell them to anyone you manage to dupe, though you might think twice about using Sebastian again. He's either careless or willing to sell you out."

"What are you saying?" Ethan asks.

"Move on. Find another paradigm, or three or four. You're good at that, you've had a lifetime of practice. Stay away from my brother's priests, though. You won't be welcomed. Stay away from my family and friends -- and me."

"You're casting me out?"

"You can't waste your life being a priest to a dead god."

"I don't accept that."

Anger flashes through her. "The god you worshipped is dead. I feel it the way I could feel your grimoire was dead." Rising, she approaches him, shows him the dense text covering her hand. She turns her wrist to show him the fading sigil tattooed onto her palm. Raising her hand, she presses her palm to his forehead, then to his chest. His heart thuds beneath her hand. "It's over. Go."

Dawn steps away from him, turning her back on him and the others. The silence in the room thickens until she can't believe it's possible anyone could move.

It's Giles who finally speaks. "Best do as she says," he says softly, but there's steel behind the words.

She hears the rustle of clothing and the soft snick of the door latch as it opens, but no answering click. "Dawn--" His voice isn't silky now, but rough, edged with despair.

She doesn't turn around. "Go."

The door closes softly and Dawn knows by the collective released breath that he's left.

She bolts into the bathroom and bends over the bowl. The coffee burns like acid on its way up.

Because of the peculiar layout of the motel room, Dawn has to stagger out of the bathroom itself to rinse her face at the sink. Buffy gives her a couple of minutes to wash up and brush her teeth before she appears in the alcove doorway.

"You okay?"

Dawn gives her half a shrug and less of a smile. "That was hard."

"Yeah." She hesitates, lowers her voice. "Just now--that was just an emotional reaction, right? You couldn't be--"

"No," she says, louder than the original question. She doesn't want to have to repeat this. "I couldn't possibly be pregnant. The monks -- whoever -- made me barren."

"Oh." She knows Buffy's torn by that answer, however glad she is at the moment.

"Could get awkward, y'know, little godlings running around. My brother thought of a lot of things this time around with the whole exile thing. He almost got it right this time. If it hadn't been for Ethan--"

Buffy pulls Dawn into her arms. Dawn's skin feels raw and tender, and it's hard not to draw back out of the embrace, but she endures it. "God, Dawn," Buffy murmurs.

"Make up your mind," she says, and Buffy snuffles a half laugh.

"You are something, little sister," Buffy says.

Xander and Giles look at her anxiously as she and Buffy emerge into the room, but on Giles it's not quite so naked.

"I'm okay," she says.

"Wow," Xander says. His voice is subdued, so very not wow. "Talk about the last guy I thought I'd ever feel bad for. When he decided to take something seriously, he didn't go halfway."

Dawn sits crosslegged on the bed, hugging a pillow.

"What do you think will happen to him?" Buffy asks. Dawn's not sure if she's asking her or Giles.

"He'll kill himself," Dawn says. "That's what I think. Except it'll look just like he's being Ethan, the old Ethan. It'll look just like his luck ran out on him. But it won't have anything to do with luck."

"I hope to God you're wrong," Giles says.

"You were friends once," she says.

"A very long time ago, yes."

"I'll be the only one who cares, when it happens. It's my fault, but I'll be the only one who's sorry."

"That's crazy talk," Xander says emphatically. "None of this is your fault."

"He's extraordinarily resilient," Giles says. "Vexing as I found that, it's one of his strengths."

"He's like that cat," Buffy says. "In that song. Mom used to sing it when we were kids, remember? The cat came back, the very next day."

"No." Dawn hugs the pillow tighter. "I don't remember that."

Buffy sighs. "Way to make things just a little bit worse, Buffy."

"He's not a cat. He's a complicated man. And I came along and changed him -- made him change -- and now I've abandoned him. Hey, good luck with that."

"He did the same to you," Xander says. "He took more from you than you did from him."

"Believe what you want."

"Can I just say Aarrrrrgggghhh!?" Xander says.

"Arrgghhing to the choir, buddy," Buffy mutters. "I don't know how to help you, Dawn."

"Let her grieve," Giles says. "She's lost a great deal, and it's complicated."

After a while they go out for a real breakfast. Xander acts as point man as they walk over to the diner, keeping an eye out for Ethan.

"He won't be around," Dawn tells him. "There's nothing for him here."

"Humor me," Xander replies. "This wouldn't be the first time we thought we'd seen the last of him."

But he doesn't turn up on the short walk, or at the diner. He's begun his life as an exile.

Once they've handed their menus to the waitress, Buffy says, "We should decide what to do next."

"I thought the plan was giving Dawn lots of time to grieve and then decide what to do next," Xander says.

"Not to be rude," Buffy responds, "but a budget motel room probably isn't the best place for either of those things. Do you want to come back with us, Dawn, or is that too overwhelming?"

Dawn shakes her head emphatically. "I'm not ready for that."

"What I'd really like," Buffy says tentatively, "is for us to be together for a while. If you can handle that. Giles, can the Council spare us?"

"They'll manage," he says. "We can make ourselves available for consultation in case of emergencies."

"Dawn?"

"I'd like that."

"Anyone else you'd like to have here? Will, maybe?"

"No," Dawn says abruptly. "She threatened to unmake me. I can't see her right now."

Buffy rubs her arm. "It's okay. No pressure. Whatever you need. Would you like going somewhere else, though? You said you'd been staying in a house."

"God, no," Xander says. "That's just bleak."

"How bad can it be?"

"Remember the Dangling Baby House?" Dawn says.

Buffy sputters a laugh. "Oh, that place was so trippy." Abruptly she sobers. "You stayed there?" She casts Xander a look, as if to say Bleak is the word. "How long?"

Dawn shrugs. "A few days. I don't know."

"You left things there? Your clothes?"

"They weren't mine. I got them all at a thrift shop. I could leave them there, as long as I get some new stuff. Underwear being the number one priority." She flicks a glance at Giles and flushes.

Apparently that's enough to put Giles off, too; he suggests the three of them take his rental car and shop while he attends to some details. Buffy realizes she needs more than she brought, so it turns into a sisterly event. Xander probably wishes he'd stayed back with Giles, but he tags along graciously, and even veers off a couple of times to pick up some things for himself.

It feels almost normal. Buffying weighing in with her comments on particular outfits, pulling things off the rack to hold against Dawn's shoulders, barging into the dressing room with her. "God," she says in a British accent, "I would kill for that arse. Wouldn't you, Susannah?"

"Say what?"

"I've taken to watching What Not to Wear, the Brit edition. These two completely crazy women, Trinny and Susannah. We'll have to watch it together sometime."

They hit a drug store for regular sized tubes of toothpaste, shampoo and the like. Buffy calls Dawn over to the hair color aisle. "Are you going back to brown, or staying black?"

"I hadn't really thought about it. Am I getting stripey?"

"You will be."

"Do you hate it?"

"Stripey? It's the new black."

"No. The change, I mean."

"Sometimes there are things going on in your life that you can only talk about through hair color. Do what feels right."

Dawn tosses a package of Garnier Black Licorice into their basket and they head for the register.

They arrive back at the motel to discover that Giles has rented a beach house for them for one month with an option to extend. One month seems forever to Dawn, but it also feels like nothing at all.

Once they've moved to the house, Dawn sometimes pretends she's on a cruise ship, lounging on a deck chair in the sun and reading the well-thumbed fluff books that people have left at the house. Other times she falls into the fantasy that she's staying at an elite sanitorium -- sanitarium? She forgets which one was for people with TB and which for crazy people. It doesn't matter, the result is the same. She allows herself complete indolence, appearing at the table when summoned for meals and card or board games, wandering around in between books to search for company.

Buffy's mostly in vacation gear, but she's solicitous of Dawn and takes turns cooking with Xander and Giles. It's a weird mix some days, beans and toast for breakfast, pasta salad for lunch and peanutty African stew for dinner.

Xander, like Dawn, seems to be in some kind of healing mode. He starts off reading comics and battered science fiction anthologies, and once he finds a collection called Kirinyaga at the local used bookstore, books on Africa start filtering into the house.

Giles is Giles. He researches, sometimes helping the London crowd with an urgent question, but mostly on a project that seems to be his own. Books magically appear from time to time, and since she never sees a UPS or DHL van, Dawn suspects it's literal magic. She wonders if Willow teleports in with a delivery when Dawn and Buffy are out swimming or going to a movie. She doesn't love the idea, but she deals by not asking. One day when Giles is out running an errand of his own, Dawn slips the book Ethan gave her onto his pile.

She doesn't even open it. Avoids looking at the title. Dawn feels heat in her hand as she carries it, nothing like the sense of power it gave her before. She hurries with it to his desk, lets go as quickly as she can.

After Giles returns, he seeks her out, the book in hand. He sits on the vacant deck chair next to the one where she reads one of Xander's books. She's sick of fluff.

"Dawn. Does this belong to you?"

"It did." She holds her palm out to his, shows the pink burn covering the sigil on her palm, on her fingertips. "I think this means it doesn't anymore."

"Let me see." He reaches for her hand, concern furrowing his brow.

"It's not bad. Stings, but that's all."

"Would you tell me about the book?" he asks, once he's satisfied himself that she's not underplaying the seriousness of her injury.

"Ethan gave it to me." She's told much of the story by now, letting it trickle in small doses over the weeks. But she hasn't talked about this, hasn't felt like offering up her last link to Ethan and the phoenix that now will never rise. "He took me to Sebastian's bookstore, and I sat down with it and another book while they had some business to talk over. It felt like it was mine, from the first time I touched it." She meets his gaze. "I never told you this, but I used to sneak into your book closet and breathe in the power I could feel there. After the tower, though, I didn't feel anything." She pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around them. "This was like that, only a hundred times as strong."

"It's a remarkable text, I can sense that much. One could make a career of this book alone."

"It awakened something in me. The sleeping god, I guess. But the cage my brother made was too strong, and it hurt me. That's when I took off. I went to Ethan, and he tried to fix it. That's why he dismantled so many of the memories. They were -- cutting into me."

Giles makes a soft noise of sympathy, and it nearly undoes her. She stares out toward the ocean, a soft breeze ruffling her hair.

"I've carried it with me ever since I ran out of Ethan's suite, but I haven't taken it out of my bag since everything happened." She gives him a sidelong glance. "Speaking of that day, I'm sorry. About clocking you and leaving you with a corpse. I was in survival mode. And furious about Ethan being hurt."

"You wouldn't be the first Summers girl who's rendered me unconscious. Thank you for this, Dawn. It's an extraordinary gift."

Dawn resists the impulse to downplay it, say someone may as well get something from it. She nods.

There's a long stretch of silence, but Giles doesn't leave. He doesn't open the book either, but watches the waves with her. After what seems like forever, he asks, "What is it you've been reading?"

"One of Xander's books. He's reading a lot about Africa. I think he's considering going back."

"Yes."

She's not certain whether he means he agrees with her theory, or that Xander has spoken with him about his plans.

"He told me what you said to him. About losing heart, instead of his nerve. It made quite a difference to him."

Dawn turns toward him. "I don't know if I should say anything yet. But I've been toying with -- n