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She stared at the wall for a long time. It was white, with a few little scuff marks in it from when she was younger and thought doing headstands against the wall in Mary Janes was a fun thing to do.

She was contemplating switching her rapt attention from the wall to the ceiling when she heard the door slam: her mother was home.

The shouting started almost immediately. She knew it would continue for some time. If Dawn grew some courage and told their mother what her father had said, the yelling might keep going for days with almost no rest.

Buffy’s eyes strayed to the window. There had been a huge branch that went almost right up to the sill, but after her mom had discovered Buffy was using the branch to get to late night parties, she’d had it cut off.

But the tree was still there, and Buffy was starting to get desperate enough to think about using it. She really couldn’t stand being in here much longer, not with the words her father had said replaying in her ears constantly and the shouting going on downstairs.

She opened the window and leaned out, looking around. If she wanted to get to the tree, she’d have to jump a good six feet. She wasn’t sure she could do it without falling and breaking her neck.

Then again, if she stayed in her house much longer, she might all of a sudden get an urge to hang herself from a ceiling beam. Keeping that in mind, she quickly changed into jeans, a baby tee, and sneakers. She put one foot on the window sill and, grabbing the top of the window, eased herself half out of the frame.

That was when she made the mistake of looking down. The ground was kind of far away, and from two stories up, it looked very, very hard. If she fell on it, she’d never be able to kiss Spike again.

It was kind of disgusting how much that thought motivated her to just jump and get it over with.

So she braced her other foot on the windowsill. Now she was standing precariously on the edge of her window. It felt like just a strong breeze might blow her off. She bent her knees, bit her lip, aimed for a wide branch about six feet away, hoped she didn’t fall—and jumped.

She flew forward and a little down, wailing inside, thinking, I am so gonna die!

Fortunately for her, her feet hit bark, and her arms came up to wrap around the tree trunk, almost of their own accord. For a few seconds Buffy just clutched the trunk and kept her eyes shut tight. She was breathing rapidly, almost panting.

Then it began to slowly dawn upon her that she wasn’t dead—far from it, actually. She was alive and grabbing a tree and kind of afraid.

But also curious, so she cracked her eyes open—first her right, then her left. She peeked around, gazing curiously at the tree. She’d never been in the tree during the daytime. The sunlight was filtered by the leaves, making it pale green. It tinted everything, from the bark to the backs of her hands.

For a second she managed to forget that she was two stories up in a tree, and that the only reason she was there was that her father was the biggest asshole ever born. All she thought about was the sheer beauty, the sheer freedom, in knowing that she’d survived her clandestine little jump, and in simply being in the tree.

Her serenity was shattered when Dawn poked her head out the window. “Are you gonna get out of here, or what?” Her face was peevish, yet her expression lacked the pure malice it normally had.

“How’d you know I was up here?” Buffy demanded, surprised.

Dawn rolled her eyes, very much the younger sister. “You squealed.”

A blush crept up into her cheeks. “Oh.” Then suddenly it occurred to her just exactly who she was talking to. She scowled. “If you tell Mom or D-Dad, I swear to God I’ll chop you up into tiny pieces!”

Dawn just raised her eyebrows. “What-ever,” she said. “I’m not going to tell, okay?”

Was that a peace offering? She really wasn’t in the mood for peace offerings. “Yeah. Good.”

Dawn nodded and closed the window. Buffy watched her lock it—there was a rule in their house that windows had to be locked, and Buffy knew her parents would find out she’d gone much more quickly if Dawn hadn’t locked the window—and leave the room.

Okay. Now the question was, where should she go? She would’ve liked to go to Spike’s house, but after all that had happened, and all she didn’t know, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to face him just yet.

Not that she wasn’t sure how she felt. Well, okay, she wasn’t sure, but she knew what she wanted as far as he was concerned. She wanted to keep going. She wanted to be able to introduce him to people as her boyfriend. But after the fight she’d had with her dad—or, to be more exact, after the way her dad had screamed at her—she wasn’t sure how he felt. For one thing, she didn’t know how much he’d heard. And if he had heard the whole thing, she wasn’t sure he’d want to get involved. She’d had lots of friends whose love interests hadn’t wanted to ‘go out’ officially because of parent issues.

It was all dauntingly complicated.

So, who could she talk to? Buffy hugged the tree trunk as she considered her options. Anya would just tell her that she was insane and instruct her to go over to Spike’s house to receive many orgasms. Oz wouldn’t say anything at all—and anyway, she barely knew Oz. Xander would go off on a tangent about how horrible her dad was, and Faith—Faith wasn’t too talented when it came to sensitive stuff. Buffy felt a twinge of guilt when she even thought of Tara. She couldn’t burden Tara when the poor girl’s grandmother was in the hospital.

That left Willow. Buffy frowned as she thought of the redhead. She wasn’t really feeling too warm and snuggly towards Wills at the moment because of the whole Tara thing...but then, she had seemed sorry, and she and Buffy were friends, right? Friends forgave each other.

Buffy slithered down from the tree, trying frantically to remember where Willow lived. She’d never actually been over to the girl’s house, but she’d passed it a few times...maybe...

She started off, intent on getting to her friend’s house. What she failed to notice was that the black DeSoto had never left her driveway.

*

Dawn watched her sister go, wondering if Buffy even knew that Spike had never left the house. Probably not. You could have heard her crying in China—not that Dawn was blaming her, or anything. If Dad had called her a slut she’d have set him on fire.

After watched her sister walk off at a surprising speed for an emotionally damaged dumb blonde, Dawn turned away from the window and crept downstairs. When she was a few stairs down she stopped, listening to her parents bicker.

“I walked in and she was on the couch with some boy on top of her, acting like the biggest slut I’ve ever seen—“

“Hank! Don’t talk about your daughter that way!”

“Don’t you talk to me like you think I’m a child! She’s your daughter too, Joyce, and if you think for one second that I’m going to let her grow up into a stupid, ill-educated little whore, then you’re—“

“Hank! I swear to God if you say one more awful thing about Buffy I will—“

“Oh, please.” Now their father sounded scornful. “It’s not like I said it to her face—and you’ve said it yourself enough times.”

Dawn’s mouth fell open at that. Her father was lying to her mother—and about calling Buffy names that he should never have said to his kid, too!

She should interfere. Common sense, plus also the stuff they always taught you in kindergarten about sharing and niceness and everything, said that she should go downstairs and tell her mother what had really happened. But the thing was that if she did, she was pretty sure she’d get yelled at. Yeah, her parents liked her, but they didn’t like her that much.

But then she remembered the sobbing she’d heard, and the look on her sister’s face when Dawn had gone into her room. What their father had said had been unforgivable. The fact that he was lying to their mother made it more so.

She’d made her decision. Setting her jaw stubbornly, she clomped down the stairs and practically ran into the living room. “He’s lying!” she announced as soon as they saw her. “He called Buffy a slut and a whore and said that she would spread her legs for any dick that came wandering by and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember and maybe I should go now,” she blurted out, seeing the horrified look on Joyce’s face and the infuriated glare Hank was giving her.

Before she even left the room, Joyce was screaming again. “You said that? To Buffy? Hank, you inconsiderate, nasty, lying, low-down asshole!”

“Hey! Bitch had it coming to her, fucking some guy on our couch...”

Dawn darted out the front door, but not before she heard her mother’s hand connect with her father’s face. This should be fun, she thought bitterly.

It didn’t surprise her to see Spike leaning against the side of their house, smoking. What did surprise her was when he didn’t glance at her like he wanted to kill her, or something. Hadn’t Buffy complained about how awful she was?

“So, think your mum’ll mind ‘f I kill your da?” Spike asked conversationally.

“Mom’s almost as mean as he is,” Dawn answered sullenly. “She’s never called Buffy names like that, but...”

Spike sighed. “No need to explain, Bit,” he told her. “I get it. ‘s far as I know, you were just as bad as the ‘rents.”

Dawn stared into space, remembering. “Yeah,” she finally admitted quietly, “I was.”

“And what, you’re all better now?”

Dawn glared at him. His face was completely expressionless, so there was no way for her to tell what he was thinking. “No. I just don’t know anything anymore. Buffy’s nice,” she began, brow furrowed, trying hard to understand what she was thinking even as she put it into words, “Really nice. I didn’t realize that before. And the only reason our parents like me is because I let them tell me what to do and I never fight them on it. I’m, like, their pet cow, or something.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Pet cow?”

“Cows follow people around and never think for themselves,” Dawn explained.

“You’re a bit skinny to be a cow,” Spike argued.

Dawn threw up her hands in exasperation. “Whatever! The point is that our parents suck and now that I finally know it I want to be friends with Buffy, except she doesn’t even really like me so I don’t think we can be, and it really sucks because she’s cool and she’s dating you and you’re like a legend as far as academics go, and—“

Spike was studying her, head cocked. “Breathin’ really isn’t an issue for you, is it?”

“Um. Yeah. But not when I’m upset.”

“Right, then. First off, we’re not dating.”

Now it was Dawn’s turned to give him the I Wasn’t Born Yesterday look. “Puh-leeze. Being thirteen doesn’t make me automatically stupid, you know.”

“You sure about that?”

“Can we just get to the point? This is ridiculous!” And nonsensical. Dawn didn’t like nonsensical.

“Well, ‘f I knew what the point is, maybe I would.”

“You idiot! The point is—“ Dawn stopped dead when she realized that she, too, didn’t know the point. “Um...” He was smirking. She really hated it when people smirked. Well, unless it was her doing the smirking. Then it was okay.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, face turning bright red.

“A’right, then,” Spike said. Why he was so satisfied with her answer was beyond her.

“Oh! I was gonna say one thing. You can’t kill my dad! I don’t think my mom would like it,” Dawn explained triumphantly, having finally remembered what she was going to say before going off on a tangent.

“Yeah, cuz I never woulda been able to figure that out myself,” Spike said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Well, that’s one thing I was gonna say. The other thing is...Buffy needs you,” Dawn explained quietly. “What our dad said hurt her. She was crying in her room.”

He dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his boot. “Any idea where she’s headed?”

Dawn shook her head. “Probably a friends’ house. That’s what she always used to do when Dad or Mom would yell at her.”

“You mean this has happened before?”

Wow. If looks could kill, he’d blow the whole world up. All of a sudden, Dawn was extremely glad that he wasn’t mad at her, because she kind of wanted to live to see 14. “Um, not so much with the name-calling, but the yelling and stuff...yeah.”

“Do you yell at her?” He was quiet now, but she wasn’t dumb enough to think that meant he was calm.

“Um...no. I just told on her and was mean and nasty and stuff.”

“Was?”

“As of today, I’ve stopped. Our parents suck ass,” Dawn said bluntly.

He gave her another one of those looks that she couldn’t interpret before saying, “Was?”

“My parents can go stuff themselves,” Dawn said firmly. “I’m tired of them.”

“Well, good.” He stood up abruptly, pushing himself off of the wall he’d been leaning on. “Look, Bit, it’s been a great talk and all, but I gotta go find m’ girl, okay?”

Dawn just nodded. She watched him pull out of the driveway with a smile.

The whole world was sorta sucky right now—but Dawn was still a little happy, because as unbelievable as it was, she wanted Buffy to be happy. And with Spike walking around acting all protective and calling Buffy “his girl”...well...who wouldn’t be happy?

She sat on the step for a long time after the DeSoto drove off, staring into space. Buffy was luckier than she knew. She had a boyfriend, and friends. She had somewhere she belonged.

Dawn was starting to realize that she really didn’t.

~*~

A/N: Hm...not much happens in this chapter. I decided to post it anyway, though, just cuz I know you guys love this story soooo much =D Seriously, though, I’m trying to build a little sympathy for Dawn, cuz I don’t want everybody to hate her, and it is sort of important to the plot...now I’m rambling =D There’ll be more Buffy in the next chapter and she won’t be such a wuss, promise! And thanks again for all the wonderful reviews!!! I’ve decided that they’re way better than chocolate, lol.





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