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Banner by KnifeEdge


Author's Chapter Notes:
I owe a huge debt of thanks to KnifeEdge for her assistance with this chapter.

Sorry for the huge delay between chapters. I'm honestly trying to keep to weekly updates. I know where this story is going, it's mostly just a matter of finding the time to write. RL has been a little crazy.

Thanks again to all who reviewed. Comments are always appreciated!
Dawn had intended to get to work unpacking, really she had. She wanted to avoid another fight with Buffy if at all possible. But when she walked into the living room and saw Kokopelli standing on the coffee table, it was all she could do to make her legs move her across the room. She sank to the floor and pulled the statue into her arms.



It was several minutes before Dawn heard Buffy enter the room. “You got him back,” Dawn said softly. She kept her eyes fixed on the little figurine.



Buffy came to sit next to her on the floor. “I should have asked if there was anything special you wanted to keep.”



Dawn set the figure down and threw her arms around her sister. “I'm so sorry!” she sobbed. “I didn't mean it, Buffy.”



Buffy stroked Dawn's hair. “I know.” She took a deep breath. “I don't want us to be fighting all the time, Dawnie. It's just us, now. Not much of a family if we can't even be in the same room without blowing up at each other.



Dawn looked down at her lap, traced the outline of one fluffy sheep on her pajama pants. “We aren't much of a family,” she mumbled. She was taken by surprise when Buffy placed a firm hand under her chin, forcing Dawn to meet her eyes.



“I love you, Dawn. And I know things have been … hard. I'm not trying to make you mad at me. I just don't know … I don't know what to do to make things better.”



Dawn stared at Buffy, startled by the naked emotion on her sister's face. “I miss her so much,” she whispered. “And now … now I don't have anyone.”



Buffy's cheeks burned with sudden color. Dawn hoped she hadn't said the wrong thing. She didn't want to make Buffy mad; she just wanted everything to go back to how it used to be. But she had to open her stupid big mouth, and now there was going to be another fight.



“How can you say that?” Buffy’s voice, so serious and low and sounding like she wanted to cry, made Dawn's stomach hurt. “You have me!”



Dawn pulled away from Buffy and wrapped her arms tightly around her middle. That didn't make her stomach feel any better. “I don't, though. You don't—” Dawn dared a glance up and bit her lip before continuing. “You don't want me around. You've barely even looked at me since Mom died. You don't tell me anything, or ask me what I want, you just … make all the decisions and … and those stupid to-do lists every day.” Dawn's voice was rising, and she was all too aware of the stormy expression in Buffy's eyes. “I feel like I'm just one more thing you have to cross off your list. 'Do the laundry—check, pay the bills—check, put up with bratty little sister—check.'”



“Dawn, I … there are things that I have to do, and I don't know what they all are. I'm trying, but I don't even know what I'm doing. Mom … Mom always knew—”



“You don't have to be Mom.”



“But I do,” Buffy said. She was crying freely now, and Dawn instinctively scooted closer to her. “I have to, Dawn, because who else is going to take care of us?”



Dawn hesitantly put an arm around Buffy's shoulders. Buffy turned into her sister's embrace, her body wracked with tears. Dawn swallowed hard. “We can … we can take care of each other. I'm not a baby. I can help. I want to help.” Something Buffy had said earlier came back to her, and her eyes widened in horror. “Do we have enough money for groceries and stuff? Do you want me to get a job?”



Buffy laughed through her tears and sat up. “No, I don't want you to get a job. You need to concentrate on school.”



“I could babysit.”



Buffy rolled her eyes. “Yes, because you love little kids so much. Have you forgotten the last family reunion?”



Dawn flushed at the memory. “That's not fair! Jacob was being completely obnoxious!”



“Jacob was being two.” Buffy smiled at Dawn. “But we're okay. Selling the house and the gallery helped a lot. I know you didn't want to move, but we really had no other choice.”



“Why didn't you tell me?”



Buffy sighed. “I didn't want you to worry,” she said with a shrug. “And it's not like you made it very easy to sit down and have a talk about finances.”



Dawn blushed again. “I'm sorry.”



“I'm sorry, too.” Dawn looked up at Buffy's apology. “I shouldn't have hit you, sweetie.” She stroked Dawn's cheek very gently before pulling her in to a tight hug. “I love you, Dawn,” Buffy whispered fiercely.



Dawn swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I love you, too.” She put her arms around Buffy and returned the hug with all her might. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Dawn felt safe and loved, felt like the weight she'd been carrying around was lifted. Her eyes slipped shut, and she snuggled into Buffy's side.



“If you're serious about helping,” Buffy said a little while later, “there's an entire kitchen that needs to be unpacked.”



Dawn groaned, but it was a good natured sound. She sat up and looked at her sister, feeling suddenly shy. “I can do that,” she said with a smile as she scrambled up off the floor.







***





“Can I come in?” Buffy asked from her position very carefully just outside Dawn's room. She tapped one 'pretty-in-pink' fingernail against the door jamb. “I want to talk about some stuff.”



Dawn glanced up from where she lay sprawled across her bed. She pulled her notebook closer to her, but not before Buffy caught a glimpse of the glossy teen magazine Dawn had been drooling over in lieu of homework.



She decided to let it pass without comment. They'd managed to get through the rest of the day without fighting, and Buffy didn't want to start one now.



Dawn sat up and gathered her books, making room on her bed for Buffy to sit. “Sure,” she said quietly.



Buffy perched on the edge of the bed. “I'm starting work tomorrow, you know.”



Dawn nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”



“So, I'm not going to be here when you get home. Can I trust you to—”



Dawn groaned. “Come on, Buffy! I'm not a baby, remember? I'll be fine.”



“I'm sure you will, just … Use your head, okay? No friends over when I'm not home, get your homework done, don't eat your weight in Cheetos—”



“All right!” Dawn snapped. “It's not like I've never been home alone before. Mom used to work late sometimes, remember?” She bent to retrieve her back pack and started shoving her books and notebooks into it.



Buffy laid a hand on Dawn's arm, halting her angry movements. “Dawn. I'm just trying to look out for you, okay?”



Dawn stared at Buffy for a moment before relenting. “Yeah, I know.”



Buffy smiled. Maybe she was getting the hang of this parenting-a-teenager thing. “Good.” She stood up and moved to the doorway. She paused, then added, “And stay away from Spike, okay?”



Dawn's bookbag hit the floor with a thud. “What? Why?”



“Because I'm telling you to. I don't know what all you told him today, but I … I don't like him, and I don't want you going over there. Besides, he's gotta be, what? Thirty? Why does he want to hang out with a kid?”



Dawn scowled and folded her arms across her chest. “He's twenty-nine,” she said. “And maybe he thinks I'm cool.”



Buffy laughed disbelievingly. “Sure. Just do what I ask, all right, Dawn?”



“You're not the boss of me.” Dawn stuck her lower lip out.



“Yes, Dawn, I am,” Buffy sighed. “That's what all those papers I had to sign mean: 'Buffy is the boss of Dawn.' So get used to it, little sister.”



Dawn's scowl grew more pronounced. “Get out.” She flopped down on her bed and reached for her magazine again. She looked over at Buffy, who still stood in the doorway. “I said, get out!”



Buffy stepped into the hallway and pulled Dawn's door closed behind her. Okay, maybe she wasn't quite in the parenting groove yet. She leaned against the wall and exhaled heavily. She tried to think what her mother would do and sudden sorrow hammered through her chest. She gasped for air and her hands shook by her sides. She spared a silent promise to Dawn that they'd make it up in the morning and headed for the sanctuary of her room. It was a close thing, but she managed to hold back her sobs until the door was closed tightly behind her.







***





Dawn let herself into the house and promptly dropped her back pack and keys on the floor next to the front door. She plopped on the couch and reached for the remote control before remembering that zoning out in front of the TV was no longer an option. She let out a beleaguered sigh, then headed for the kitchen.



A quick rummage through the cupboards failed to turn up anything good. “I couldn't eat my weight in Cheetos even if I wanted to,” she complained. She settled for a peach and a glass of milk and slumped at the kitchen table to eat her snack. She eyed the phone, but knew that Janice wouldn't be home yet; she got to do whatever she wanted after school and that usually meant going to the mall or window-shopping downtown.



Dawn drummed her fingers on the table in an idle rhythm, her head propped up by the other hand. She would never tell Buffy, but she hated being home alone. Her mom had known that and always tried her best to arrange her schedule so she'd be home when Dawn got out of school. There was no way Buffy could do that, Dawn knew. She wasn’t stupid, so she wouldn’t even mention it. Besides, she didn't want Buffy to think she was a little kid who was scared to be alone. Anyway she wasn't scared, she just … didn't like the quiet.



With another sigh, Dawn went to the living room to retrieve her back pack. No TV meant no distraction from the pile of homework awaiting her attention. She'd slacked off on completing her assignments in the past couple months. While her teachers had been understanding at first, some of them were beginning to lose that understanding look when they asked about her missing work.



Dragging her feet, Dawn made her way back to the kitchen table and sat down. She spread her books out in front of her. It was a cornucopia of subjects, and she was behind in all of them. She decided to go with the least painful first and pulled her history textbook towards her. She had a couple of chapters to read and a set of questions to answer about each one. That didn't seem so hard.



What felt like an eternity later, but was only twenty minutes according to the clock, Dawn sat back with a groan. One chapter down, only … five more to go. Dawn skimmed through the book. The next fifty pages of history looked to be about as dull as the ones she'd just covered. Maybe English would be better? Dawn scrunched up her nose at the thought of reading poetry for the next hour, but happily slammed her history book shut. She had just opened the English text when she glanced outside to see Spike lounging on his back porch. It took Dawn a good three seconds to forget Buffy's rule, and then she was skipping out the back door to lean on the fence separating their yards.



“Hey,” she said, aiming for casual and—judging by Spike's amused grin—missing by about a mile. Dawn flushed, but geez, for being old, he was kind of sexy. She took in his bare feet and messy curls. Scratch that. He was just plain sexy; age had nothing to do with it.



“How's it going, pigeon?” Spike said, his grin growing wider by the second. Great. He totally thought she was crushing on him, which, um, maybe.

“I'm okay,” Dawn said, finally. Cool as a cucumber. “Trying to do lots of lame homework.”



“Oh, yeah? What're they foisting on you kids these days?”



Dawn made her way around the fence and into his yard before answering. “Well, we're reading Shakespeare in English class right now.” She blew out a breath. “It's so boring.”



“What?” Spike's eyebrows darted up, and he scowled. “That just means they're not teaching it right. Go get your book.”



Dawn didn't have to be told twice.





***





“Dawn!” Buffy called from her post at the foot of the stairs. “Come on, Dawnie!”



“I'll be right there!” Dawn emerged from her room and glared at Buffy. “Stop rushing me.”



Buffy gaped at Dawn in disbelief. “You aren't even dressed. What are you doing? We're going to be late.”



Dawn huffed a little, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and stomped into the bathroom without a word. The door closed firmly behind her.



Buffy suppressed the urge to drag Dawn out of the bathroom and send her to school in her pajamas. Instead she took a deep breath and very slowly counted to ten. It helped to remind herself that not all that long ago it had been her dawdling before school while her mother tapped her foot and counted down the minutes.



“Dawn!” Buffy yelled again. “Five minutes, or I'm leaving without you.”



The bathroom door opened, and Dawn strolled out, face shiny and scrubbed and hair plaited into two neat braids. “I'll be down in a minute,” she said, and disappeared into her room.



“I'll be in the car.” Buffy grabbed her bags and headed outside, ignoring Dawn's muffled reply. Letting the little things slide seemed to be the easiest method of maintaining the delicate peace that had sprung up between the sisters over the past two weeks. Dawn had been making an effort to act like a rational human being, with a dramatic decrease in sulks, temper tantrums, and slammed doors. In recognition of that fact, Buffy had resolved to overlook Dawn's occasional reversion to moody teenage behavior.



Buffy started the Land Rover and set the air conditioning to high. Even this early in the morning, the day was promising to be a scorcher. Buffy allowed herself to fantasize briefly about skipping her shift at the Doublemeat and heading for the beach. At this point, Buffy thought, she would settle for a sprinkler in the back yard. Anything was better than facing eight mind-numbing hours of distressingly greasy work Especially when they all too-often stretched into ten, twelve, or—if she got really lucky—sixteen hours.



Buffy looked at the dashboard clock and realized Dawn's five minutes had come and gone. She got out of the car just as Dawn flew out of the house, a paper-bag lunch in one hand, and her book bag in the other.



“I'm ready,” Dawn said cheerfully, climbing into the passenger seat and immediately pulling down the visor mirror. A tube of lip gloss materialized from somewhere. Lip gloss which belonged to Buffy, if she wasn't mistaken. As did the mini-skirt Dawn wore.



“Dawn Louise Summers, you are not going to school looking like that,” she said. She stopped cold upon hearing her mother's words coming out of her own mouth. If memory served, she had heard something quite similar the first—and last—time she ever wore that same article of clothing.



Buffy leaned her head against the car. This was not good.



“Whatever,” Dawn said, completely disinterested in her sister's mental crisis. “We're late. I don't have time to change.” She grinned in such a way that Buffy almost forgot all about their truce.



Buffy moved to join Dawn in the SUV, a sharp answer on her tongue, but paused at the sound of rumbling bass approaching.



Her neighbor's big black boat of a car pulled up to the curb in front of his house, and the door opened, expelling a cloud of cigarette smoke along with a wave of screaming, incomprehensible lyrics. Then the music cut off—much to Buffy's relief—and Spike stepped out of the vehicle.



He looked decidedly rumpled, Buffy observed. His hair, usually carefully arranged into spikes or gelled straight back, was a mass of tangled curls. His boot laces flopped loosely while he walked, as if he'd been in too much of a hurry to tie them before leaving … wherever he had been. He glanced over at Buffy as he strode across the lawn. He looked like a tomcat just back from a good prowl.



“Morning, kitten.” He smirked when he caught her staring at him. “See something you like?” He waggled his eyebrows at her and curled his tongue.



Buffy flushed. She hated it when he did that. “Ego much?” Buffy replied coolly, wrinkling her nose ever so slightly. “Because let me just say: Eww.”



Spike laughed, totally unfazed by her disdain. He waved at Dawn, who bounced a little on her seat and grinned. The traitor.



“Hi, Spike!”



“Morning, Dawn.” Spike turned to Buffy with an evil smirk. “You take care, Bunny.”



Buffy clenched her jaw and ignored him. He was doing it just to get a rise out of her. The sad part was it usually worked. Every time he saw her, he called her some silly name—most often 'Bunny,' but occasionally he'd throw in a 'Bitsy' or a 'Betty.' And due to his habit of arriving home at about the same time Buffy and Dawn were leaving the house, she saw him a lot.



Despite her vow to not let him get to her, Buffy was fuming when she got back behind the wheel and drove away. “He is so icky!



“I don't think he's icky,” Dawn said.



“Well, think again, sister, he's—” Buffy happened to catch the blush and embarrassed smile on Dawn's face. “Oh, my god. You have a crush on Spike!”



“What? No, I don't! I just … he's nice to me, and he has cool hair, and a leather coat, and … and he doesn't talk to me like I'm a kid!”



“What? When was all this being nice and talking going on since you're not allowed to go over there?”



Dawn shifted uneasily in her seat and didn't answer her.



Buffy sighed. “I told you to stay away from him. I don't like you hanging out with him. And he's … Eww, Dawnie, I forbid you to have a crush on him!”



Dawn sank down in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest. “Whatever. You can't tell me what to do.”



Buffy looked at Dawn's mini-skirt and pilfered-lip-gloss enhanced lips. “Yeah. That's becoming pretty clear,” she said, though she pitched her voice too low for Dawn to hear. Then she moved the conversation to safer ground. “What are your plans after school? Xander could probably pick you up if—”



“I'm going to Janice's. We're working on a project for biology. Her brother's gonna drive me home later. We already talked about it.”



Buffy was sure they had, given that the two were on the phone every waking moment that they weren't in each other's presence. What she doubted was the existence of a science project, or the intention to do anything that might result in Dawn getting her homework completed for a change. “Really. What's this project about?”



“We're studying the citric-acid cycle, and we have to make something showing all the steps.” Dawn smiled brightly when Buffy looked at her. “And we have to write a paper about it. It's due in a couple weeks, so I'll probably be going to Janice's, like, every day.”



“Uh-huh.” Buffy nodded, still skeptical. “Would you care to explain this, uh, citrus additive to me?”



Dawn rolled her eyes. “Oh. My. God.” She stuck her tongue out at Buffy before continuing. “It's how your body turns food into energy that your cells can use. See, you eat, all this stuff goes into your cells, gets zapped by the mitochondria, and turned into different stuff. It's really complicated.”



Buffy laughed. “Wow, that's … not at all informative. I expect a better explanation tonight after you study at Janice's.”



“Yeah, all right. Hey, you can let me out right here. I'll walk the rest of the way.”



Buffy pulled over. “Are you sure? I've got time.”



“No, it's fine. Don't want you to be late.”



Buffy put a hand on Dawn's arm to keep her from jumping out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop. “Dawn, I—” Buffy paused, not quite sure what she wanted to say.



Dawn glanced over her shoulder at the cluster of girls standing on the sidewalk. “Buffy, come on.” She hitched her backpack onto one scrawny shoulder. “Everyone's waiting for me.”



“Have a good day,” Buffy said lamely. Dawn smiled at her and darted down the block. Buffy watched for a moment as Dawn was welcomed into the circle of chattering teenagers, but drove off quickly when Dawn turned, spotted her still idling at the curb, and made frantic shooing motions with her hands. She was a full block away before she realized: she had the potential to embarrass Dawn. 'Yup, officially entering mom territory,' Buffy thought. She took a quick glance at her reflection just to reassure herself that, no, her hair was not suddenly morphing into mom hair. Right then and there she decided it was time to call an emergency girls' night out.






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