"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."