Therapy

Chapter 5/ Therapy
Disclaimer in chapter 1


Friday afternoon Buffy is waiting for Dawn at the 'Magic Box' Anya is the only other person there.

The door opens and the bell jingles as Dawn strolls in, " Hey Buffy, you ready to go?"
questions Dawn.

"You seem all eager beaverish, so how was your speech today?"

"What speech?"

"Wil said you had to give a speech today, the one you've been practicing in the bathroom and your room for the last two nights." Buffy answered with a puzzled look on her face.

" Oh, that's not for school. Come on I want to go!" Dawn snapped as she spun and plunged out the door.

With a confused look she waved, "see ya Anya" and followed Dawwn twn the street.

At the Dr's office, as the girls entered the reception area, Jule called to them as they shut the front door, "Come on back. You can help me set up for your session."

Dawn and Buffy looked at each other, shrugged and headed into the office. Jule was moving one if the easy chairs into the middle of the room. She turned and asked, " Can you move another chair over here to the back of this one, please?"

"Color me confused," said Dawn, "But why two chairs back to back?"

"Today I would like you to talk to each other about what is wrong with your individual lives, what worries you have, what the other does that bugs you, what you want to tell each other."

She moved her chair parallel to the others. "I have found that it works better is you cannot see each other. Then you don't get sidetracked by facial expressions you really have to listen to hear the tone of voice and the emotions 'behind' the words."

"Kinda like a confessional I guess." said Dawn.

"What do you know about a confessional?" retorted Buffy with a baffled look on her face.

"Sandy Edwards is my Biology lab partner, and she's catholic. We've talked about it in class." Dawn serenely answered.

Buffy looked surprised, as she murmured, "Oh"

" Shall we have a seat and get started?" Jule asked as she seated herself.

The girls sat and looked to Jule. " Ok, I'd like one of you to tell the other what it is that is bothering you about your life, the other needs to sit be quiet and listen, when the first one is through, the second will speak. After you both have spoken, you will turn face one another and discuss the changes you need to make." Jule cleared her throat.

" There will be no blaming, no name calling. This is to be a dialog. Do you understand?"


Both girls mumbled the agreement. "Who wants to start?" Jules asked.

"I do, I've been practicing" Dawn said.

"Anytime you're ready," Jule replied.

She took a deep breath and started, " Um, well OK here goes. Buffy I am 15 years old chronologically, I know I only came into existence 18 months ago as a human and I am not really your sister. The monks made me from your DNA so I'm more like your daughter. They gave everyone all these memories, but they gave me the experience to go with my life."

She squirmed in her chair, "You have really lived, and you have all your friends and the scoobies are there for you. Yes, they are there for me too, but they are not 'my' friends." Dawn's voice became a little strident.

"I only have deep memories of and with you and Mom. I know we live on the Hellmouth, and it's not safe, and I need to be careful, but PLEASE! I am not a little kid, I mean; I can stay at home alone. Glory is dead and you closed the portal." She bit off the words.

" I don't need a babysitter. You were sitting for other people's kids when you were my age. You were starting to date, not that any guy is interested in me." She sadly murmured.

"I mean I am not into any of the groups or clics at school, mainly because, I'm always being 'guarded' by you and the scoobies. You know if you or Spike would teach me some self-defense stuff then maybe you could relax and I could have a social life of my own." She pleaded.

"Janice is ok for air headed gossipy stuff but I don't have any friends that know anything about me. I'm just Buffy's little sister that moved here instead of staying with Dad in LA.
You and Willow and Xander remember stuff and share private jokes, and I don't." She sighed softly.

"On to my second problem, it's really part of the first one. You and the gang all treat me like a little kid. I'm just as old as you were when you started slaying. I can help with the research end of stuff, and if I knew what was going on, I would be in a whole lot less danger. I would be aware of things that might just help you, and would definitely keep me safer."

She took a deep breath, "The only person in my life who doesn't hide things from me is Spike. The only time he doesn't answer my questions is if it's something he doesn't want anyone to know about, or he thinks it's not his to tell. You and the gang are always, 'wait till you're older or not now' Spike never is."

She swallowed hard, "I can't blame you if you hate me. If I weren't here you never would have had to die. But since Mom died any time I try to talk with you it's not a conversation, you just yell at me with some new rule, or run off."

Wistfully she continued, "I remember us talking for hours about stuff, just the day to day stuff. I need that, I want us to sit at the table and have a meal and just talk. PLEASE!"

"And don't give me that crap about; it's your job and the hours you need to be slaying. Quit that place. As far as money stuff goes, you could teach self-defense out of the training room. Or better yet, tell the Watchers Council that you are to be paid. You don't have a watcher, and they don't have another slayer. Faith is in jail. You're doing you job and Giles job if they can't pay you, you don't slay any more."

She huffed a little, " If you did either of those we could have an almost normal home again. You'd have regular hours, and maybe I could have friends that could come over."

Dawn wound to a stop with a big sigh.

"Dawn are you finished?" ask Jule gently.

" I think I'm done, for now that is." She meekly replied.

" Wow" Buffy murmured.

" Buffy, before you begin, I want you to think about the things Dawn has said, and very plainly I may add. It is now your turn to not only reply to Dawn but to express your own problems. Begin when you are ready." Jule directed.

Buffy wiggled back into her chair and began to speak, " Dawn, I never thought about how I treat you. I've been seeing you as my little sister, someone I must protect. I am so sorry; I've been suffocating you. --- I have been doing to you what the gang is doing to me."
"Everyone has been so smiley happy, 'we're glad you're back, we needed you, we brought you back, are you happy', but do they really know what they brought me back to, or where I was?"

She shuddered, " When Mom got sick, I didn't have time for frivolous stuff. Then she died and then Glory came after us. Just being a college student, Riley's girlfriend and saving the world from an apocalypse wasn't enough."

"I had to be your 'mom', run the house, and leader of the scoobies. I had to fight the Council. Be Willow's support, and Xander needed me to be his security blanket."

" Do you remember right after mom died, I had Giles take me out to the desert on a vision quest? It was because I wasn't feeling anything; I doubted that I could love. Everyone I loved left, Dad, Angel, Riley, and then Mom. I felt and still feel empty."

She sobbed, " It hurts inside, so much, I just shut it all off. I'm numb, I feel nothing.
I can't, I won't let myself be hurt anymore. I can do rage, rage helps with the slaying. It's a safe thing to feel I don't get hurt."

"I died I was in heaven, I was through." Exhaustion was evident in her voice. " Death is your gift, the first slayer said. I had done all I could. Why didn't they leave me there?"

"I'm trying so hard to be there for you. Dad sure as hell isn't." she paused to gather her thoughts, " When I was your age, my life was normal. Christ, I was a cheerleader; I was in high school, a freshman, and all of a sudden Kablooey! I was 'The Chosen One' and fighting vampires, and causing the divorce, because 'You can tell no one, a slayers life is a secret' huh."


Anger seeped into her words; " Mom and Dad were blaming each other for all my 'violent antisocial behavior'. Mom and I moved to Sunnydale and I thought great new start, now my life can be normal again, Shiiat!"

Resignation seemed to flow from her, "Weirdness just followed me here. Do you know it was almost two years before Mom found out I was the'Slayer'. She whopped Spike in the head with an ax about a year before she found out. She though he was some kid on PCP and that a whole gang of them were trashing the school on Parent Teacher Night."

"Yahh, I've got memories with Willow and Xander. They knew something was strange so they just jumped right on the Buffy the Slayer bandwagon. They became my faithful followers."

" I am so tired of being 'fearless leader' I resent that everyone needs me. I need to -I need help, I can't do it all alone. I can't cure Willow's addiction, I can't be Xander's backbone, I can't be Anya's social guide, and I can be your sister. I need to be your sister. But I need you to help me."

" The money problems are huge. That check Giles gave us is all but gone. That excuses for a paycheck I get from DMP will not cover our basic expenses. I don't know what we're going to do. You are going to have to help watch the budget."

"Please Dawn, I don't want to be angry at you all the time. I want to trust you, but as inappropriate as Anya can be, she was right. After the stunt you pulled Halloween, and the shoplifting, ---it's really hard to trust you."

She sighed, "I know it was a way for you to get attention but Social Services is watching everything, and if you had been caught by a merchant, you would be in foster care. And we would be seeing a court officer now, and not Jule."

"You are really going to have to prove to me that I can trust you, and I'll be willing to give you some more freedom."

"You don't talk to me you either yell, scream, run off crying or go all silent. I remember our gabfests, I want them back too. But I need help. I am so afraid to feel any emotions but rage. I 'm afraid I'll drown if I let them go, all my feelings are being held back by a big old dam, and if I start to let them out. It's going to wash me away."

Buffy exhaled and shuddered to a stop.

"Are you through or just changing gears?" quizzed Dawn.

"I think I'm stopping for now."

"Excellent work ladies. Now it is time to turn your chairs and face each other."
Directed Jule, "take a few minutes and think about you have said and heard, then I want you engage in a dialogue."

The girls turned their chairs and each bashfully eyed the other.

Dawn looked wistfully at her sister, "Are you really afraid to face your feelings?"

A lone tear slipped down Buffy's face, "Yeah, I've kept them locked up for so long, it's like a dam, if I even start to face them, to let them out, I'm going to drown in them."

A soft smile graced Dawn lips, "Maybe I can help, I swim pretty well, And I've been splashing around in some awful big feelings myself for a long time now. I feel guilty for not seeing your pain, I was way too focused on my own."

"My running from everyone sure didn't help. "

" Maybe we should just be us at home, without all of the gang for a while. I mean it's not like Willow's renting her room or anything." Dawn said.
She stammered, "She's paid for her dorm room till the end of the year, she's got someplace else to stay."

"Dawn I can't just tell her to leave, she's my best friend."

" Some friend, she almost killed your only sister, but I guess she's more important to you then I am."

"I am so sorry. You're right; she's not as valuable to me as you are. I don't have what it takes to see her through this addiction, but I do have what you and I both need."

"Buffy what I said was petty and childish, If you need Willow to stay, ..."

"No Dawn you're right, you just didn't say it all that well, kinda like Spike all truth, no finesse."

"See we need to work together, I need to learn Finesse from you, and you need to learn to feel from me."

"I think maybe I need to listen to you more often, What you said about the council made more sense then DMP, I need to run it by Giles first I think." Buffy chewed the inside of her lip, "And we need to have a household meeting tonight."

"Household meeting? Like a budget and stuff?" Dawn whined.

"Stop whining! It bugs me no end."

" I'm not the only one, Willow is either whining or sicky sticky sweet, or zombiefied."

" I know, I just ... it bugs me too. Yes you and I need to go over the money stuff."
Buffy sighed, " Mom never included me in it and that's the one thing I really needed from her."

"Ladies I am impressed with the steps you have taken. I am glad you are finally sharing your burdens, you both need to learn to say plainly to the people in your lives what you are feeling, and what you NEED." Jule said.

"What? Tell people what?" Buffy asked.

" Yes. Use positive statements, 'I need time and space to be with Dawn' or 'I Need to handle my problem now.' Are good positive statements." Jule replied.

"I can do that." Said Buffy.

" Well our time is up, and you both have come so far today. Remember, Positive statements, and do not take others problem as your own, they have to handle them."
Jule stood up, " I'll see you on Tuesday Buffy, and you again on Wednesday Dawn. Have a good weekend."

They all moved out to the reception area, and the girls bade Jule goodbye as they left.

************************************************************************