mhalachai | Dawning Light 11: Christmas Is The Longest Day, Part II (AB/BtVS) PG

Dawning Light
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Anita Blake crossover
Chapter Eleven: Christmas Is The Longest Day, Part II
by Mhalachai

Read Part I here

~~~~~

With butterflies running laps in her stomach and Nathaniel's suggestion echoing in her head, Dawn let Anita guide her between many parked cars towards a big house. Every window was lit, with a flurry of activity as they approached, and without meaning to, Dawn listened.

There were a lot of people in the house.

"Be careful of what happens, okay?" Nathaniel had told her while he watched her button up her coat. "I know that you try to figure out what's going on around you--"

"Hey!" Dawn exclaimed, frustrated by one stupid button and unresponsive tiny fingers. "I'm not going to eavesdrop on other people's minds!"

Nathaniel helped with the button. "I know you don't mean to, but sometimes you can't help it." He handed Dawn her scarf. "That's one thing with everyone in this house, but--"

"But what?" Dawn narrowed her eyes. "What's going to be so different about going over to Richard's mom's house?"

Nathaniel opened his mouth, then closed it. Dawn waited, eyebrows up. "You should be careful, that's all," Nathaniel finally said. "I want you to have a good time."

The smile he gave her made her smile back shyly. He had a really nice smile.

Anita erupted into the hallway, hair and scarf ends flying. "Come on, let's go!"

Dawn looked at Nathaniel. She was the one going to a strange house. So why was Anita upset?

"Ready to go inside?" Anita asked.

Dawn gave her a look. "No, I'd rather stand out here in the freezing cold and stare all day."

Anita didn't move.

"That was sarcasm!" Dawn exclaimed. "I'm freezing to death!" She pulled Anita along with her. "They'd better have cookies."

All of Dawn's bravado vanished as Anita rang the front doorbell. She opened her mouth to suggest that it was time to head home when the door opened and someone's grandmother beamed down at her. "Hello, Anita! This must be Dawn."

"Hi Charlotte," Anita said with a smile. Dawn chose not to point out that Anita's grip on her hand had tightened as soon as the door opened. "Yes, this is Dawn Summers. Dawn, this is Mrs. Zeeman."

Dawn had to work hard to not let her gaze drop. She wasn't shy, for heaven's sake. "It's nice to meet you," Dawn said.

"Please, come in," Mrs. Zeeman said, standing aside. The front hall was full of winter boots, jackets and scarves and hats and baby carriers. "Why don't you take off your coat and boots and join us in the living room?"

A crash sounded in another room, followed by a deep masculine voice calling, "Uh, Mom?"

Charlotte sighed. "Come on in when you're ready," she said to Anita, then headed down the hall.

Anita shook her head. "I wonder what Daniel did now," she said as she knelt down to help Dawn remove her coat.

Dawn batted away Anita's hands. Undoing buttons was much easier than doing them up. "Who's Daniel?"

"Daniel is Richard's younger brother."

"Oh." Dawn slid her coat off her shoulders and handed it to Anita. "Are there more?"

"Yes, there's a whole family of Zeemans." Anita's smile didn't reach her eyes. The fact that Anita wanted to pretend that things were fine, when she was clearly not fine, sent a shiver of worry through Dawn. "And their spouses, and kids, too."

Dawn threw her scarf in the direction of the coat. Her little arms failed to make the grade, and the bright red fabric landed on the floor. Anita picked it up and placed it on the coat without a word. "Does he still not like me?" Dawn asked.

Anita frowned. "Who?"

Dawn looked down at the shiny sliver locket resting on her pretty dress. "Richard."

"What are you talking about?" Anita lifted Dawn's chin with gentle fingers. "Richard likes you."

The memory of snowmen and Richard being mean to Nathaniel and the burning sensation hard against the palm of her hand hovered just out of reach. Dawn shook her head.

Anita put her arm around Dawn's shoulders, drew her into a hug. Dawn let her head rest against Anita's shoulder. "We can go home if you want," Anita whispered against Dawn's hair. "It's totally up to you. You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

In the next room, loud merry voices rose up, laughing and joking, with the faint shrillness of children's voices overlaying the noise. It was so close, but for all Dawn felt, it could have been a million miles away, as far as Buffy and Sunnydale and home. Anita brought her here, right? The woman must have wanted to come. "We should stay," Dawn whispered.

"Dawn--"

"We should stay," Dawn repeated, voice stronger this time. She made herself pull away from Anita. She had to be strong all on here own, even if this was scary, like being alone at the Zerbrowski house. "Maybe there's cookies."

Anita stared at her. "All right," she finally said. "Let's go see what's happening."

Dawn caught Anita's hand as she stood. "But we'll be home in time for Nathaniel's Christmas dinner, right?" she asked.

"Of course we will."

Dawn didn't let go. "And we'll have real turkey and pie and stuff?"

"Yes, all the things Nathaniel talked about at breakfast."

Dawn turned Anita's hand over. The sight of the pink cross-shaped scar on Anita's palm made Dawn even more apprehensive, and she didn't know why.

She wanted these feelings to go away, to concentrate on the real things, like Christmas and pretty dresses and the smell of holiday baking in the house. Gripping Anita's fingers tight, Dawn pulled the woman down the hall towards the noise.

The din quieted slightly as Anita and Dawn appeared in the doorway. Anita put a smile on her face. "Hi, everyone."

The responses to her greeting varied from enthusiastic by the young man by the window talking to Charlotte, to muted from the woman and man on the couch, to non-existent from the pair of men near the fireplace.

The young man made his way across the room. "Long time no see, Anita," the man said with a grin. He looked so much like Richard that Dawn had to stare. "Who's the munchkin?"

"Can it, Daniel," Anita said, but she was still smiling. "This is Dawn."

"Hey Dawn, nice to meet you." Daniel gave Dawn a flashing smile. "How's your Christmas been? Get a lot of presents?"

Dawn tried desperately to answer, but her throat closed up and she stepped closer to Anita, pressing her shoulder against Anita's leg.

Daniel's smile lost of bit of its luster. "Is that good or bad?" he asked Anita.

"Christmas has been fine so far," Anita said. Her hand rested on Dawn's head, comforting. "This is a new place, that's all."

"As long as I'm not the scary one," Daniel joked. Dawn managed to shake her head at that.

"You're the scary one?" Another, slightly deeper voice interrupted the conversation. Dawn shrank back as Richard appeared beside Daniel, taller than his younger brother and oh-so-much taller than Anita. From Dawn's vantage point, he was almost a giant. Had he been this big the last time she saw him at Anita's house? Then, she'd been with Nathaniel, and Richard hadn't seemed quite so tall.

Anita's hand stilled on Dawn's head, and Dawn didn't have to be a mind reader to feel how tense Anita had become. "Merry Christmas, Richard," Anita said.

"Merry Christmas, Anita." Richard glanced down at Dawn, almost hidden behind Anita at this point. "Hi, Dawn. How was your Christmas?"

"You're scaring her," Daniel murmured.

"Daniel--" Anita began, but Richard ignored her and crouched down so he was on eye-level with Dawn.

"Did you have a nice morning?" Richard asked, his voice softer and unthreatening.

He was less... not scary, as Dawn refused to admit that she had been scared, but intimidating. That was it. Less intimidating. She nodded.

"Did you get any good presents?" Richard pointed at the locket around Dawn's neck. "Is that new?"

Dawn nodded again. Since he seemed so interested, she held out the locket with both hands for Richard to get a better glance.

"It's very nice," Richard said as he reached out towards the locket.

"Richard, don't," Anita said sharply, pulling Dawn back.

Richard jerked his hand back and shot to his feet, the stirrings of anger marring his features. "I wasn't going to--"

"It's silver," Anita bit out. Her fingers dug into Dawn's shoulder, but Dawn didn't say a word, just clenched her lips around the pain.

Richard just stared at the woman, anger giving way to an emotion Dawn couldn't identify by simply looking at the man.

Daniel cleared his throat. "Dawn, do you want to go see what the kids are doing?"

Dawn wasn't planning on going anywhere, not until she figured out why Anita and Richard were so upset, and why Anita didn't want Richard touching the locket, and why she'd felt the need to point out to Richard that the locket was made of silver--

Stupid! Dawn felt like kicking herself. It was so obvious! Why Richard couldn't touch the silver locket! Or how Jason, a werewolf, knew Richard! Richard had to be a lycanthrope!

"We should both go," Anita said, loosening her grip on Dawn's shoulder.

Dawn didn't move. Anita had to know that Richard was a lycanthrope, but did the others in the room? Was he a wereleopard like Nathaniel and Micah? Or was he a werewolf like Jason? Or maybe he was a whole different kind of lycanthrope, like a weretiger or a werebear. How could Dawn find out without saying something she shouldn't? She'd have to ask Anita.

"Dawn, come on," Anita prodded. Reluctantly, Dawn let Anita pull her along, out of the living room and deeper into the house. In what was probably the dining room, a lot of kids were gathered around the plastic-covered table.

Charlotte was supervising the children. "Has Dawn come to decorate a cookie?" she asked.

"Sure thing," Anita said. Something in the way Anita's voice wavered made Dawn give her a hard look. Did Anita even want to be there? Yes, the whole venture had been her suggestion, but the certainty that surrounded her in the car had vanished. Maybe it was Richard.

"Come on over here, then," Charlotte ordered, pulling another chair up to the table. Dawn wiggled out from under Anita's hand and walked slowly to the table, wedging her way in between a boy about her "age" and a sullen-looking teenager. "Everyone, this is Dawn."

The greeting was lost in the controlled chaos of a sugar high. At the end of the table, a baby in a highchair gummed on a drooly cookie, while the toddler in the next chair had blue icing in her hair and crumbs all over her shirt.

The teenager at Dawn's side stirred. "You want a gingerbread man or a Christmas tree?" he asked, sounding incredibly bored.

"A ginger man, please," Dawn replied. She glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough Anita had remained, leaning against the wall. The woman gave Dawn an encouraging smile.

The teen reached a long arm to the center of the table and retrieved the appropriate cookie. "Icing's in those bowls," he said before he resumed his sulk.

Dawn reached for the knife stuck in the bowl of white icing. Turning away from the yammering little boy on her other side, she set to work.

So intent on her work, Dawn ignored the tantrums, the screaming, the general noise that a room full of related children generated. No one tried to talk to her, but she didn't really care. The two girls on the other side of the table, both about ten years old, pointed and whispered, but Dawn paid them no mind. They were just little kids who'd had too much sugar. They didn't matter.

About half an hour later, Dawn had finally finished her masterpiece. Licking a stray smear of icing off her finger, she shimmied down from the chair and carried her cookie over to Anita, who hadn't moved. "Here you go."

Anita unfolded her arms. "What's this?"

"Christmas vampire cookie," Dawn explained, even though that should have been obvious. "To go with your cup."

Anita looked at the cookie. "Thank... you?"

Dawn giggled. "You're welcome." She went up on her tip-toes to peer over Anita's arm at the cookie. "Hey, have Nathaniel take a picture and send it to Jean-Claude."

Anita gave the cookie a second-take. "You made a Jean-Claude cookie?"

"Uh huh." Dawn grinned. "Vampires have Christmas, right?"

Anita shook her head. "Vampire Christmas cookies. I think you've got a new market there."

"I'll start small, gingerbread-vampires," Dawn agreed. "Then I'll expand, vampire cakes, vampire candy floss. Red, of course."

Anita smiled finally, a soft expression that warmed Dawn down to her toes. "What do you want to do now? I think Charlotte said the television in the rec room was playing Christmas movies."

Dawn shook her head. "Let's go home and watch movies there." She cast a glance over her shoulder. "I'm not..." How could she tell Anita that she felt like an outsider in this family setting? She wasn't part of this. "This was an interesting experiment, but I want to go home."

She waited for Anita to argue, to force more socialization, but the woman nodded. "Sure thing."

"But first we need to go thank Mrs. Zeeman," Dawn continued. She held up her sticky hands. "And I need some soap."

"Good idea." Anita frowned. "I'm not letting you in my car with all that goop on your hands."

"Hey!" Dawn protested as they left the loud dining room behind.

Halfway down the hall, their progress was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Richard. The man shifted from one foot to the other, looking remarkably ill at ease. "Are you leaving?"

Anita nodded. "This may not have been a good idea."

"Is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Maybe we'll try having Dawn meet new people in less of a crowded environment." Anita shifted the cookie to her left hand. "But everyone was fine."

"Good." Richard glanced at the cookie, and his spine stiffened. "Who did that?"

"I did," Dawn interrupted the adult conversation. "Why? Is it 'cause it's a vampire cookie? So what?"

"Is that really appropriate?" Richard asked Anita.

"It's a cookie, Richard," Anita snapped. "Not some kind of call for help, so leave it alone!"

There was so much going on in the air around her, words she couldn't hear and meanings just out of reach. It was so frustrating, not knowing what was going on, so close but so far away, that Dawn did something she shouldn't have. She dropped the paltry mental barriers she'd held up since she left Anita's house, and concentrated hard.

She listened to Richard's thoughts.

Frustrated anger, loathing, hate and fear and pain, all swirled over Dawn and crashed down on her. Richard's thoughts were darker than anything Dawn had ever felt, and they smothered her, covered her nose and mouth like tar, left her choking under the weight of hate, at Anita, at the family he'd never have, at not being normal.

In that instant, she knew things about Anita that should have remained secret, things that weren't for her to know at all. Things... Dawn's mind skittered to the side, refusing to acknowledge what she'd seen, things too adult and twisted for her to deal with, and she pushed away, but that pushed her deeper into the maze of Richard's mind.

The snickety-snack of teeth, hot bloody breath, gnashed at Dawn's mind. The animal caged in Richard’s head raged at the world, wanting Anita and hating her, hating what she'd taken over him, first Jean-Claude, then Nathaniel, then Micah, and so many others.

Richard knew, Dawn knew, that Anita didn't want a child, not Richard's child, not an abnormal child. Now there was Dawn, and Dawn was everything Anita never wanted, a normal helpless little child. She wasn't supposed to be the one Anita would sacrifice her life for, her lovers, her career for. Yet there she was, pushing her old life away.

The animal snarled at her, wanting to drive her away from Anita forever.

Distantly, she heard Anita call her name, but she had to get away. Richard's pain was her own, and Anita didn't want her.

Dawn ran. As fast and as hard as she could, she ran away from Anita.

~~~

She had no idea how she got there or how she knew where she was, but the third door at the end of the upstairs hall opened under her hand, and she burst into a room that she didn't know.

The room was dark, with none of the bright cheer of the downstairs hallways. Dawn had some confused idea of hiding, of safety, but Anita was right behind her and there was nowhere to go.

"Dawn, what's wrong?" Anita demanded. She tried to take Dawn in her arms, but Dawn kicked and pushed, fighting until her back hit the wall.

"Let me go!" Dawn shouted as her foot hit something unyielding. "Go away and leave me alone! You don't want me!"

"What are you talking about?" Anita grabbed Dawn's hands, tried to stop the flailing, but Dawn didn't give in. "Dawn, stop it! What happened?"

"You don't want me!" Dawn screeched, animal anger giving way to the pain in her head, and she started to shake. Anita had never wanted a child, hadn't wanted to be saddled with Dawn, had only taken her because there was nowhere else for Dawn to go. "You never wanted me!"

"Dawn, stop it!"

Dawn's fist hit something both fleshy and sharp, and the bite of hard pain in her hand helped her concentrate, pull away from Anita and slam into a wall.

Over Anita's shoulder, Dawn spotted a glimpse of a shadowy figure, big and tall, and her mind screamed danger. Deeply buried panic and terror erupted in Dawn's head, and she tried to burrow backwards, but the wall was solid and there was nowhere to hide.

"What's happening?" Richard demanded, coming into the light. "Anita? You're bleeding!"

"She's--" Anita looked over her shoulder. "Damn it, Richard, put your mental shields up!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"She's telepathic!" The horrible word, the one Dawn had refused to say out loud, fell like a bomb in the room. "Put your damned shields up!"

The sudden mental silence was overwhelming. Dawn curled up in a ball around her injured hand, but the memories didn't go away. She may no longer be reading Richard's mind, but she still knew what he knew. The anger, the rage. That Anita hadn't ever wanted a child.

Anita hadn't wanted Dawn.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Richard asked. There was accusation in his voice. "If I'd known, I'd never have--"

"Shut up!" Anita exclaimed. She crawled over to where Dawn still huddled against the wall. "Dawn?"

Dawn shook her head hard, not able to focus on anything. "You don't want me," she whispered again. "You don't want me."

"Of course I want you, Dawn, don't say that." Anita carefully lifted Dawn into her arms.

Part of Dawn's mind screamed that Anita was lying, that she'd never choose Dawn, that she'd never want Dawn, but Dawn didn't know how much of that was her, was truth, and how much was from Richard's intrusion in her mind.

She wasn't real, Dawn remembered. She wasn't anything but a supernatural energy construct in the shape of a girl. Anita didn't want a child, let alone a creature that wasn't human, no matter how normal that creature looked.

She wasn't normal, and she hated herself for that.

Anita stood up, holding Dawn. "We're going to go home now," the woman murmured in Dawn's ear. "How does that sound?"

Dawn didn't respond.

"Anita, your lip--"

"Move, Richard, I'll be fine."

Dawn let the words pass her by. She didn't know what was going on, didn't care, because all she could think about was that Anita had lied to her. Anita had said she wanted to keep Dawn, but that was lies, had to be lies. Anita hadn't wanted a child. Just two months before, before Dawn fell into St. Louis, she'd told Richard she didn't want a child.

There was more behind that raw pain of Richard's, but it hurt too much and Dawn pushed it away.

Anita hadn't wanted Dawn any more than Buffy had wanted Dawn. Both times, Dawn had been shoved into whole families, into lives already complete without her. She was the problem, the intruder. Not just in the Zeeman house, but wherever she went.

There wasn't a place for her.

Dawn closed her eyes on the realization. No one had ever wanted her, they only protected her out of some sense of duty. Everyone who tried to help her got hurt, or worse -- Tara, Giles, Spike, Buffy... Mom.

She didn't cry. She didn't have any right to cry. She wasn't real, and only real things were allowed to cry.

~~~

She had no idea how they made it back to Anita's house. The next thing she knew, the jeep had stopped and Anita was opening the rear door and undoing Dawn's seatbelt. "Why don't we go inside?"

Dawn stared at Anita. The woman had blood on her chin, her lip split against her teeth. Something about blood twisted in her gut, but Dawn shoved that away, would not be like that. She remembered the sharp pain in her hand. She must have hit Anita.

She couldn't make herself feel sorry.

"Dawn?"

Dawn kept staring. What did Anita want?

Anita lifted Dawn out of the car and carried her into the house. With each step Anita took, Dawn felt worse. She didn't belong in that house. The house... the family, belonged to Nathaniel and Micah and Anita, not to her. She didn't fit there.

The door opened before Anita made it up the steps. Micah came outside, looking worried. "What happened?"

"Bit of a problem," Anita said shortly, maneuvering around Micah and into the house. Micah closed the door behind them.

"What happened to your face?" he asked as he followed Anita into the living room. "Nathaniel wasn't clear, he only knew that there was a problem with Dawn."

"That's what happened." Anita set Dawn on the couch.

The conversation between the adults continued, but Dawn tuned them out. They didn't want her, and so she didn't want them.

In the few hours she'd been gone, someone had cleaned the living room. The place was spotless, with the mountain of her presents having been shifted to the side of the room, all arranged artfully.

All presents for someone they didn't want.

Dawn slid off the couch, ignoring everything around her. The voices broke off as she walked over to the pile of presents.

This morning, she had been so happy. Now, when she looked at the gifts, all she could think was, What a lie. People didn't buy things like this for people they didn't want, and Dawn couldn't think of a single reason that Anita and Micah and Nathaniel had bought them for her.

She couldn't stay here. She would not stay with people who didn't want her, no matter what lies came out of their mouths... but where could she go? Visions of the Walkers' house danced in her head, overlain with the glimpses of Nathaniel's shadowy, painful memories of childhood.

She couldn't stay, but she didn't have anywhere to go.

The memories of cold, of falling into the graveyard, pushed at her. That was just like this, without Buffy, without anyone, and she didn't know anyone.

She needed her coat. If she was going to have to leave, Dawn needed her coat, and her boots, and even if Anita had bought them for her, that would have to do.

Giving the presents one last look, Dawn turned and walked toward the hall.

"What are you doing?" demanded a voice from behind her.

Dawn ignored Anita. She pushed open the heavy closet door, not making any sound when she pinched her finger in the hinge.

"Dawn?" Anita pulled Dawn's hands away from the closet and slid the door closed. "Tell me what you're doing!"

Dawn struggled to open the door again, but Anita was holding it closed and she was so much stronger than Dawn. The frustration built up, until Dawn blurted out, "I'm going away!"

"No you are not!" Anita tried to turn Dawn around, but Dawn wriggled out of Anita's grasp and darted across the hall to the stairs. "Dawn, come back here!"

"Anita, stop shouting at her." Micah's calm voice didn't lower the tension in the room the way it usually did.

"You don't want me and I'm not staying!" Dawn shouted, putting her back defensively against the wall. "No one ever wants me!"

Warm arms, not Anita's, guided Dawn away from the wall and settled her on the second step. "Dawn, I need you to sit down here and calm down," Micah instructed. He held Dawn loosely in place, not letting her half-hearted struggles loose his hold. "Calm down."

"You calm down!"

"Dawn, try to breathe." Micah's expression was so serious that Dawn didn't know what to do. "Breathe in and out, in and out."

Dawn couldn't bring herself to disobey the quiet command. She breathed slowly, the frustration and anger simmering down in her chest and in her head.

She gradually became aware that Nathaniel was in the hall too, and she didn't know when he'd arrived. Why hadn't she listened to him? Why had she tried to hear Richard's thoughts?

"Dawn?" Micah asked softly. "Can I ask you a question?"

After a minute, Dawn nodded. She didn't want to answer any questions, she wanted to go far away, but... but she had nowhere to go.

"What did you mean when you said that we didn't want you?"

Dawn squirmed, looking anywhere but at the adults. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do."

Dawn felt a lump rising in her throat. Why was Micah making her say this out loud? "Anita didn't want a baby, not ever," she whispered, feeling ten times worse at hearing the words out loud.

"What are you talking about?" Micah asked. "Of course she wants you. How did this come up?"

He turned to look at Anita, who was staring out the window beside the front door, hunched in on herself. From the other side of the room, Dawn heard Nathaniel say, "Dawn heard something in Richard's mind. Right?"

Micah let out a sound that wasn't quite a sigh. Dawn pulled her legs up to her chest. She was wrecking her dress, but she really didn't care.

"You were going to have a baby and then you weren't because you didn't want it!" Dawn said accusingly, Richard's confused thoughts still within easy reach in her head. "You didn't want a baby then and you didn't want me!"

Nathaniel sat on the bottom step. "Dawn, that's not true," he said quietly. "Anita wants you here, and so do Micah and myself."

"But--"

"I know what it's like when people pretend to want you but they really don't," Nathaniel continued. "We all want you here, that's the truth. Richard doesn't know what's happening with us, only we do. You know that."

Dawn sniffled, clutching her legs even harder. The pain, a raw ache around her heart, eased slightly. "But the baby--"

Anita turned away from the window. "I was never going to have a baby," she said, sounding so tired and angry. At Richard? At Dawn? "Whatever you saw in Richard's head, Dawn, that's not what happened, and that has nothing to do with you, nothing at all."

"But if you didn't want a baby then why did you take me in?"

The house was so quiet that Dawn could almost hear her heart pounding in her chest.

Anita took a deep breath and walked over to the steps. She knelt beside Micah, clenching her hands together so hard that her knuckles were white. "When I met you..." She stopped, and tried again. "You're a strong, brave little girl, Dawn, who has lost a lot on her life but keeps on going, and I-- you needed someone to watch out for you."

Dawn wanted to be contrary, to ask Anita if she'd have taken in any old kid who needed help, but a fragment of a long-ago conversation came to mind. Was Anita describing Dawn as the lost girl who needed help?

Or was Anita describing herself?

A horrible idea came to Dawn. Anita saw herself in the lost little girl Dawn appeared to be, and had decided to protect her, to take care of her when she had no need to do so.

Just like Buffy had wanted to protect and care for a little sister?

Goosebumps broke out over Dawn's skin. She'd changed when she'd fallen though Glory's portal. Had she changed so she'd be safe? Would Anita have wanted to take care of a teenager as much as she did a little girl?

Would Anita have kept her safe if she'd been a teenager?

"Dawn?" Anita said after a minute. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

What else had changed about her? What if instead of merely looking five, she was five?

When Dawn didn't react, still stunned by her revelation, Anita shifted closer and pulled the girl onto her lap. "You're the best surprise I ever had," she said softly.

Dawn let Anita rock her back and forth, the tension slowly leaving her limbs. She should be fighting, angry that she'd changed to have Anita keep her safe, angry that she'd lost one family, angry that she'd had to change to something she was not in order to keep her safe.

But then, she'd changed once before, from energy to girl, from Key to Dawn, to keep her safe.

Dawn's introspection was interrupted by the faint ring of a cell phone. She looked up to see Nathaniel pulling his mobile from his pocket. "It's Cherry," he said.

Micah leaned back, the faintest hint of a frown on his lips. "You should answer it."

Nathaniel looked at Anita for a moment before flipping open the phone. "Hi, Cherry." He paused. "Hold on, I'll ask." Nathaniel took the phone away from his mouth and covered the microphone. "She wants to know if she can come over earlier than arranged for dinner, their oven isn't working and she wants to put the pie in here to bake."

Anita stopped rocking. "I forgot about dinner," she said. She probably didn't see the hurt expression that crossed Nathaniel's features, but Dawn did. He had been planning the Christmas dinner for days, had invited a lot of people over for the meal, and had been almost as excited about that as he had been for Christmas morning.

Now, he only asked, "What should I tell her?"

Anita and Micah exchanged a glance. They weren't going to cancel Christmas dinner, were they? After all the planning Nathaniel had done, all the people he had invited? Dawn remembered her last Christmas dinner, her only real Christmas dinner, with Mom and Buffy and Giles and Xander and Willow and Tara and Anya. It had been an amazing day, one that Dawn would always remember.

"Are we still going to have dinner?" Dawn asked, twisting in Anita's arms. "With everyone over?"

"Dawn--" Anita began.

Dawn shook her head. "We have to have dinner!" she pleaded. "With everyone here and all that. It's all arranged."

"Anita," Micah said. He laid his hand on her knee. "Nathaniel, please tell Cherry she can come over whenever she wants."

Nathaniel didn't move. To Dawn's surprise, instead of looking at Anita the way he always did, this time he looked at Dawn. "Would you like to have people over for dinner? You've met most of them before, remember?"

Dawn nodded. "I'm okay with that," she said quickly, and as she said the words, it felt like the truth.

Nathaniel brought the phone back to his ear and invited Cherry over early, then rang off. Dawn stayed cuddled against Anita, wishing she had some answers, wishing she knew what to do in this situation.

After a minute, Anita kissed Dawn's forehead. "What do you want to do now?" she asked.

"Help Nathaniel with dinner," Dawn replied quickly.

Anita frowned, then winced as the movement pulled at her split lip. "Are you sure you're up for that? It's been a bit nuts today."

Dawn nodded. "Did you mean it? When you said you wanted me, for real?"

Anita's frown was replaced by something that was too much like worry for Dawn's tastes. "Of course I did," she said with feeling.

"Then I want to help Nathaniel," Dawn continued. "Because people are coming and he's got a lot to do."

After a brief hesitation, Anita let Dawn slip off her lap. "If you need to take a break, you let me know, okay?" Anita said, reaching one hand after Dawn. "If you need anything at all."

"I will." Dawn paused. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

"It's okay," Anita said immediately. "It was an accident."

That wasn't entirely what Dawn meant, but there wasn't another way for her to say what she wanted to. She edged back towards Anita. "Thank you."

Now Anita appeared confused. "For what?"

Dawn wanted to say, for keeping me, but that wasn't entirely it either. "For wanting me here."

Anita's eyes grew wide. Micah put his hand on her back while she tried to speak. It took two attempts before Anita could say, voice thick with the edge of tears, "Of course we want you here." She touched Dawn's cheek gently.

Micah cleared his throat. "Nathaniel, can you take Dawn into the kitchen and get things going for dinner? I need to speak with Anita for a few minutes."

"Of course," Nathaniel murmured. He held out his hand for Dawn, and very carefully walked with her down the hall. In the doorframe, Dawn turned back to see Micah with his arm around a fragile-looking Anita. She wasn't sure how much of this was her fault; after all, she'd only been reading Richard's mind. And they'd sorted everything out, right?

Dawn decided that after she helped Nathaniel, she was going to find Anita and they'd do something together before dinner, like play a game or make fun of the doll or something. In the meantime, Micah would be with Anita and that would be okay.

It wasn't until Nathaniel was tying an apron over Dawn's fancy dress that she could ask him an important question. "Do I act like I'm five?"

Nathaniel pulled a stool over to the sink so Dawn could climb up. "What do you think?"

Dawn shrugged. "Like, I've got the attention span of a honey-roasted peanut, but I'm not throwing tantrums, and I can read. Does that mean I'm acting older than five?" She washed her hands under Nathaniel's watchful eye. "Maybe I'm older than I look?"

Nathaniel turned off the tap and handed Dawn a tea towel. "I think that it doesn't matter how old you are, it's how you act." He smiled at the disappointed expression on Dawn's face. "It matters who you are, not anything else."

Dawn followed Nathaniel around the kitchen for a few minutes, silently watching him take things out of the fridge, move things around on the counter. The turkey and the ham were already in the oven, pots boiled away merrily on the stove. However, she hadn't seen any sign of dessert.

"What kind of pie is Cherry bringing?"

Nathaniel turned a knob on the stove. "Apple pie. Everyone's bringing a dessert for tonight."

"And there's going to be a million people?"

"Not a million." He drained the water from a pot into the sink. "You've met Vivian and Gregory and Stephen and Jason, and Merle. Cherry and Zane are Pard, too, and so are Gina and Noah and Violet."

Dawn wrinkled her nose. "How are we going to fit thirteen people around the table?"

"Jason and Stephen are bringing a folding table from the Circus." Nathaniel dumped the drained potatoes into a big bowl on the counter. "Do you want to help with this?"

"Okay!" Dawn danced around until Nathaniel lifted her to the counter. "Nathaniel?"

"Yes?"

"Did you mean what you said?"

"What did I say?" Nathaniel asked.

"That you know when people pretend to want you but they really don't?"

"Yes. Why?" he asked, handing her the masher.

Dawn pushed the masher into the bowl, watching the cooked potatoes squish under its prongs. "What does it feel like?" It never occurred to her that Nathaniel would lie.

Nathaniel ran the water in the sink, staring at the flow from the faucet. "It's one of the worst things in the world," he said in the general direction of the tap. "And you always know."

Dawn mashed a little harder. "Always?"

"Always."

If Nathaniel knew, then Dawn figured that she would know, too. It might not be much, but it was all she had.

She left the masher sticking handle-up in the potatoes. "We need butter and milk," she ordered. "And salt, but you have to put that in because I can never tell how much to use."

"Of course," Nathaniel said with a smile. He set a bowl in the sink under the flow of the water before reaching across the counter for the butter. "Let me know if your arms get tired."

"I will." Dawn lifted the masher up high with both hands, then slammed it down hard as she made a loud crashing sound. "Last Christmas, Mom let me make the stuffing. I got to mix it by hand and everything."

Most of Nathaniel's attention was on the pile of raw yams piled by the sink, but he still said, "That sounds like fun."

"It was." Dawn put a bit of stir action into the mashing. The last time she had mashed potatoes, or at least remembered it, was the Thanksgiving at Giles' house, when Mom was out of town and they had Spike tied up to a chair and ghost Indians attacked. The most annoying part of the day was that no one explained to her what syphilis was, or how Xander had gotten it. Buffy had given her the potatoes to mash as a way to distract from annoying questions.

Under her breath, Dawn began to sing the Monster Mash, slamming down the masher on every 'mash' and 'smash'. "Nathaniel," she interrupted herself after a while, "When you were with those people who pretended they wanted you but they really didn't, did you ever feel like you were two separate people?"

Nathaniel's knife stopped on the yam in mid-peel. "What do you mean?"

"Like the person that was you," she said, holding the masher aloft, "Was a different person than was doing what the other people wanted?" She smushed the masher into the potatoes and stirred. "Like you were two people and no one else knew it?"

Nathaniel hesitated before responding. "Sometimes it feels like there were two sides of my life," he said carefully. "But not that I was two people."

"Not like two actual people," Dawn clarified. "But that you were a person and everyone saw you but no one else understood the real you."

Some of the tension in Nathaniel's shoulders eased. "I think everyone feels like that at times." He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and took the masher from Dawn. "If you ever feel like we don't understand you, you can talk to us, okay? If not to me or Micah, then to Anita."

Dawn pouted a little at having her toy taken away, but she didn't protest. "But do you know what I mean about no one understanding you?"

Nathaniel rinsed off the masher and put it in the dishwasher before he responded. "I think so." He cleared his throat. "But if the person matters to you, then you keep on trying."

"Okay." Dawn held out her arms. "Down, please!"

Obediently, Nathaniel swung Dawn to the ground. He took hold of her hand before she bolted to the fridge. "Dawn, we meant what we said about wanting you here," he said, voice more intense than she had heard from him in a long time. "No matter what happens, no matter how much work it is, we want you."

~~~

After half an hour of continuous work, mostly flipping between tasks every five minutes, Dawn began to wonder. Nathaniel wasn't normally this much of a task master. Usually, he let her take the lead, doing what she wanted, following along with her. Now, it was as if he had something else going on, some reason to keep her occupied--

Dawn froze, elbow-deep in ripped lettuce. "Hey!"

Nathaniel looked up. "What?"

Dawn took her hands out of the salad and scowled at him. "You're trying to keep me busy!" She jumped down from her chair. "What are Anita and Micah doing?"

Nathaniel went back to watching his pot. "They're talking."

"Is it about me?" Dawn ran over and tugged on Nathaniel's pant leg. "Can I go see them? Can I go talk too?"

Nathaniel knelt down. "That might be a good idea," he said after a minute. "On one condition."

"What condition?"

Nathaniel untied Dawn's apron. "If you go in there, you have to give Anita a big hug."

Dawn stared at him. "Of course I will!"

"Good." Nathaniel pulled the apron over Dawn's head. "Go in there, then."

Dawn ran towards the living room, stopped halfway, dashed back and gave Nathaniel a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks!" she said, then bolted back toward the living room.

The room was quiet and dark, the only light coming from the Christmas tree lights. Anita sat alone on the couch. Micah was nowhere to be seen. Dawn ran all the way to the couch, where she jumped up on the cushions beside Anita.

Anita jerked back as if startled. "Dawn, what are you doing?" she asked, wiping at her cheeks.

"Wanted to come see you," Dawn said. Should she point out that she knew Anita had been crying? She knew how much Anita hated that. Instead, she cuddled close to the woman. "Where's Micah? I thought you two were talking."

"We were." Anita brushed the hair back from Dawn's face. "You smell like cloves."

"Oh. I spilled the jar on the counter and my apron, but not my dress," Dawn said hastily. "Nathaniel cleaned it up."

"Good." Anita touched the tip of Dawn's nose. "How are you doing?"

Dawn sighed. Of course, Anita would want to talk about what happened earlier in the day. "I'm fine." She burrowed her face against Anita's arm. "I think I should thank Mrs. Zeeman, for inviting me over," Dawn continued. "'Cause it was really nice even though a lot of the people in the house didn't want to see you."

Anita shook her head. "Did you 'hear' that?"

"Nope." Dawn toyed with the strap of Anita's watch. "I could totally see it. I could be blind and deaf and like a total kid, and I'd have seen it."

"It was nice of her, wasn't it?" Anita said softly. "Richard's mom... she's a great person."

Dawn let herself relax a little. Richard's pain, tied together with her fear of abandonment, faded into the background slightly as she sat in the darkened room with Anita. The woman was sad, Dawn didn't have to be telepathic to know that.

"Anita?"

The tears hadn't left Anita's voice when the woman replied, "Yes?"

Dawn turned over Anita's palm and rubbed at the pink cross scar on her skin. "Thank you, for finding me. In the graveyard." She took a deep breath. "It's like, you were made to find me, right?"

Anita gathered Dawn up into her lap. "I don't know about made to, but I wouldn't have had it worked out any other way."

Because that's the reason I'm so small and not a teenager, Dawn thought, but she didn't say it out loud. She didn't know if she'd ever be able to say it out loud.

Time passed and Dawn's eyelids grew heavy. She'd been up very early and it had been a very draining day. The darkness of the living room, the scent of pine, the regular rhythm of Anita's breathing, all seemed rather dreamlike.

"If you'd had a baby, would you have been happy?" The words didn't seem real coming out of her mouth, part of some unreal bit of the past come back to her in sleep.

Anita covered Dawn's hand with her own, slim adult fingers pale against the tan of Dawn's skin. "I think I may have been," she whispered after a very long time. "Go to sleep, I'll wake you up in time for dinner."

"Okay." Dawn closed her eyes and listened to Anita's breathing, wishing she could tell Anita the truth, wishing she was herself again... wishing she wasn't always so alone, so helpless.

The thoughts of loneliness and family and change ran thought her head until she heard the doorbell ring with Christmas guests.

to be continued

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

From:

sabriel-0405.livejournal.com

Wow. Way wow. This was an awesome chapter. In every way.

From:

mhalachai was here

Dawning Light 11: Christmas Is The Longest Day, Part II (AB/BtVS) PG

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