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The End Of Summer
folder
BtVS AU/AR › FemmeSlash - Female/Female
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
5
Views:
4,193
Reviews:
1
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
1
Category:
BtVS AU/AR › FemmeSlash - Female/Female
Rating:
Adult +
Chapters:
5
Views:
4,193
Reviews:
1
Recommended:
1
Currently Reading:
1
Disclaimer:
I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Part Four
Buffy rose early the next morning and took a quick shower before dressing in tight jeans and a halter top. She wore spiked leather bracelets to cover the scars which were not so beautiful to her anymore and a velvet choker with a dangling Celtic cross. She went into her wallet and pulled out what she would need and wrote Tara a brief note. Buffy hit the street with a light step. The sun was shining and it was the height of summer but not too hot. The streets were littered with people, but if she looked away from their terrified faces she could pretend it was a normal day, that the radiation was not surely coming on the winds to kill them all. She entered the Smoke Shop and came to a dead halt. It couldn't be. She was hallucinating, almost definitely. "Buffy." A voice from the past. A voice she knew too well with penetrating lapis lazuli eyes to match. The remote possibility that she wasn't on drugs at the moment began to prove itself because she could never have made up in even her most fucked-up of times, what stood before her. Or rather, who. Those same eyes, but everything else was different. The hair much longer than she remembered, and black. Those eyes outlined in thick black makeup giving their owner a haunted look. Skin so pale. Limbs long and lanky and impossibly thin, an anorexic image to give her a run for her money. "..Dawn?" she choked out, tears welling in her eyes. Her brain refused to accept the image before her. She had grown in just a few months, taller and thinner than ever. She was dressed in black from head to foot with the same spiked bracelets as Buffy, except they looked much less out of place on her. Her outfit was all velvet and lace with heavy combat boots on her delicate feet. Dawn surprised her by merely narrowing her eyes and turning back to her purchase: a carton of Marlboro Lights. Buffy remained where she was, stunned into paralyzation. This was not the sister she remembered at all, but it was still Dawn. Buffy took a step forward. "Honey, look who it is," Dawn said offhandedly to someone out of sight. Her eyes thinned again as her counterpart stepped into sight, and Buffy's world collapsed around her feet. He too, was thinner than she remembered. His hair was more or less the same, his clothing, the look on his face--nothing had changed. It was all so familiar that Buffy felt herself breaking inside, splintering down the center with the harsh eyes of reality staring at her from beside her sister. Her mouth couldn't begin to form the word that echoed throughout her brain, sliding back and forth and torturing her slowly from the inside out. Xander. It was Dawn, and it was Xander, and they stood in front of her as real as real could be. "Hey, Buffy," he said casually. Offhandedly. No big deal, we see each other all the time except we assumed you were dead.. again. And she had assumed them dead as well. She'd left, though. So the question burning on her mind.. "How?" she finally got out. Dawn kept glaring. Xander answered. "After you and Tara left.. things were escalating.. Dawn and I sort of.. got together. We decided to leave. Here seemed the safest. Away from everything. Far away." Buffy slowly regained use of her basic motor functions and bought her cigarettes--a carton of Ecstacy's and a carton of Newports. She tried desperately to absorb all the new information she'd been given. Dawn still glared. "Good to know you're fine an' all. Living it up here. Without me. After you, y'know, left me there to die with everyone else." Her words hit Buffy like a tranq dart, poisoning her system as it sank in. "I'm sorry," she choked out uselessly, her voice breaking with emotion. It was the truth, of course, but a useless truth. No amount of sorry could ever make up for what she had done; running off in the night with Tara in tow, and leaving her sister behind to die. Dawn just scowled and looked away, as though the sight of her sister was more than she could possibly begin to bear. Xander frowned at his lover, and then at his best friend. "Where are you staying?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood as much as possible. "Tara and I have an apartment on the beach. You.. both of you.. are welcome to stay if you want. We have an extra bedroom. Plenty of pillows to go around." How she hoped they would say yes and come to join their little family where the waves crashed night and day, a reminder that still the earth would survive long after they had gone. Xander put his arms around Dawn and kissed the top of her head, leaning to whisper something in her ear. Dawn turned to face him and the two engaged in a brief kiss while Buffy looked down, giving them a moment of privacy. It hurt too much to watch her baby sister, now a woman of 18, kissing the boy she herself had once been in love with but refused to be with because of her lifestyle. Dawn's face relaxed and she nodded to Xander, signaling her agreement, Xander put his arm around her shoulder and ducked his head to Buffy. "That'd be great." And the three of them headed home, speaking not a word on the way