Somewhere between Sunnydale and Los Angeles, she lost her soul.

She'd accepted that her heart was no longer with her; that had been buried twice over, and even if it could've been resurrected a second time, she doubted it would have survived the journey from beneath six feet of blood-soaked ground.

Blood of my blood, she thought.  Tucked into the rich, damp earth like children lulled to peaceful slumber by fairytales of a perfect world.  Triumphant heroes and damsels in distress.  She could've told them that both existed, or had existed, but that heroes didn't always triumph and some damsels would forever be in distress, because happy endings were rare, and sometimes simply surviving the tale was more important that surviving wholly intact.  Sacrificing the heart of the damsel in order to reach the end might not have been her idea, but as she lacked the bravery of the hero, it seemed a fitting trade.

For she'd come to discover that having her heart lie like charcoal in her chest didn't mean she wasn't still alive, just that breathing was easier, or would be, if not for the ashes caught at the back of her throat.

She leaned back in her seat and tried to block the thick, cloying scent of loneliness that hung like a cloud over the bus, weighing the mouths of the passengers with every breath taken.  A dim quiet filled the interior and she wondered if this was what death felt like.

Wondered when, if, she'd find out; did Keys ever die, and if they did, where did they go?  Was there a special dimension in Hell for glowing green spheres of energy that brought about the end of worlds, or simply one for girls who watched their sisters commit suicide for the Greater Good?

She shuddered and closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, pretended to dream for long enough that it might have become reality, a truth among the artifice, a very human comfort in her artificial life.  Or maybe it was just another lie.

A trembling began inside her bones, a shivering that settled in her marrow and shot, like adrenaline, like pain, through her system, pumping her heart and clamoring against her nerves until she thought she'd go insane.  Until her skin sensitized and began to vibrate as though it were a different entity altogether.  And, given her true nature, perhaps it was.

She wanted to ignore everything; the low murmurs of her fellow passengers, the buzz and screech of the metal and rubber outside the bus.  But she shook her head to clear the unsteady ripple in her mind, the faint nausea curling around her intestines like dread, like fear, like an insidious snake that crashed through glass and reared at you, waited for the perfect moment to strike.

And she... she waited to be saved, always waited for someone else to do the job that should have fallen to her.  Fallen as blood did, as friends did, as family always would.

Her hands gripped the arms of the seat and she turned her head, stared out into the darkness that was so much more comforting than the brightness of daylight, because at least the dark was constant; evil always was.

The closer they got to Los Angeles, the quicker her breath pushed through her mouth, her nose.  She felt threads of metal loop with increasing frequency, tightness, around her belabored lungs, tauten until they'd squeezed every last vestige of air from within her body.  She struggled to draw in more, couldn't breathe for the long, tense moments it took her to realize.

Panic attack.

Panic, she thought, relieved, and welcomed it for the simple fact that it wasn't anger or hate or love or disgust or guilt.  It was elementary, instinctive, thoroughly normal.  The one thing she'd thought she was, and the one thing she'd never been.

But in Los Angeles she could disappear, she could slip into anonymity, the kind she had never had in Sunnydale (the slayers' sister, the kid whose mother died, the girl who cuts herself...).  Or-

She could follow another path entirely; she could allow herself to be molded into a different form, a different girl.

A different kind of Summers.

A darker Dawn.

She hadn't allowed herself to think about what she was doing, where she was going, until she stood before the door and the decision was already made.  She knocked, her hand so very pale against the dark wood, and she waited.

She'd just raised her hand to knock again when the door was thrown open.

"Dawn," Faith said, and she didn't seem at all surprised to see her standing there, clothes rumpled and damp from travel.

She didn't seem inclined to open the door further, either, simply stood close to the frame, her hand reaching over to grip the doorknob and effectively block the entrance.

"May I- Can I come in?" she asked hesitantly, squirming a little under Faith's assessing stare.  She felt as though she'd been measured, her every secret pulled out and examined, and it unnerved her, because Faith had always been the leap-before-you-look type, and it seemed that that had changed.

Everything had, and the misery that had been folded neatly into the depths of her stomach in the bus unfurled and almost choked her.  She tucked her thumbs into her jeans pocket and stared at the olive green paint cracking like truth and like sticky dark mud on the walls.

Then Faith called, nonchalant, "Are you gonna stand in the hall all day?"

And she saw that the door had been unbarred, and Faith had disappeared inside the apartment.  She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

It was clean, she thought.  Dark and spartan, but that probably made it easier to keep things in place.  Perhaps Faith drew the curtains and kept the minimum of lights on so she could hide everything she didn't want to see, everything she didn't want to remember was there.

She followed the circle of mustard light and found Faith standing behind the counter of a tiny kitchenette, head bent to her task, but the air surrounding her was edgy, tense, as though she knew the exact position of everything in the apartment and was wary of having yet another object inside to keep an eye on.

And she was holding a butchers knife, thick and serrated, with the ease of long-time use and familiarity with what it could do, the dangers it represented.

Her body simply froze.  Shut down and refused to move, to walk forward, to run back through the door and onto the strangely silent streets.  She knew it was an instinctive reaction to the knife, any knife, and in particular to the fact that the wielder of it was Faith.

Then Faith's eyes met hers, took a long slide from Dawn to the sharp blade of the knife.  Her smile was slow and smug and filled with the satisfaction of discovering a secret, though she'd probably view it as a weakness.  It probably was, she acknowledged, seeing as she couldn't so much as lift her foot while the knife was in Faith's hand.  But even if she *had* tried to run, she remembered from way back when that Faith was fast, would've caught her before she'd managed to get more than a foot away.

And why was she thinking of Faith as an adversary?  She and Buffy might have been enemies, but *they* weren't, surely, especially now that Buffy was…

"So, Dawn," Faith said, advancing towards her, knife still in hand.  "Why did you come here?"

"I didn't have anywhere else to go," she answered distractedly, watching the glint of dirty light on vicious steel.

"Bullshit.  What about Angel?  For that matter, what about staying back home in good ol' Sunnydale?"

She wanted to look up at Faith, to meet her eyes, but she couldn't stop staring at the long tan fingers, handling the sharp object as though it were a baton in a twirling contest.  "I- I couldn't stay there.  Not after… And Angel… on the phone he sounded so sad, so *angry*.  I couldn't go there."

"Couldn't stay and had nowhere to go," Faith mused.  "I know the drill."

Me too, she thought, but kept that to herself.  "I didn't plan on coming here, but I found your address in some of Giles's papers, and I…"

"Stole it?"

"No!  I just had a feeling I might need it, so I borrowed it."

"Not really much of a diff if you don't plan on giving it back."

"I was, I am, going to."

Faith said nothing, just tapped the sharp edge of the blade against her palm, so that Dawn winced in time with each rhythmic meeting of knife to flesh.  "If you thought I was going to gut you, why did you come?"

"I told you-"

"Right.  You had nowhere else to go and you just happened to have my address.  Convenient."

"I just had to get away, all right?  Anywhere but there, *anywhere*." And she'd said too much, but apparently honesty worked with Faith nowadays, because she reached behind her and set the knife down on the counter.

"I was cutting bread, not getting ready to slice and dice.  Well, anything human, anyway."

Dawn's gaze flickered over the floor, and she heard the sound of faint scurrying… mice?  She swallowed and hoped it had just been her imagination, working overtime as per usual.

"You were cutting bread, with a, uh, butchers knife?" she said, working to level her voice.

Faith shrugged.  "Only knife I got."

She nodded, and forced herself to take a step toward Faith.  Toward the knife.  "So… bread, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Is that your dinner?" she asked, trying not to sound too eager at the thought of food.

 "Yeah."

"Is there, um, enough for two?"

Faith stared at her, and for a moment Dawn didn't know if she was contemplating killing her or simply kicking her out.

She held her breath, and when Faith laughed, it was the most beautiful sound in the world.

They ate bread with strawberry jelly and just a scraping of margarine, and while Dawn knew she should've been happy just to be eating something, a part of her was a little… dismayed at the simple fare, and thought just a little less of Faith for so readily accepting that that was her lot in life.

After all, she was a slayer, there had to be people who'd be willing to pay for her services.  She tried not to think of exactly what sort of things Faith would have to do, and avoided looking at the crumbed knife that lay in the sink.

She'd just become accustomed to the silence, when Faith pointed with her chin towards the knife and said, conversationally, "Big sis stuck me with one of those once, remember?"

"She didn't mean-"

"Yeah, she did.  Maybe not to kill me or put me in a coma... right then, but she needed me to save her boy-toy."

"She loved Angel.  She would've done anything for him."

At Faith's smirk, Dawn amended, quickly, "Not, not anything.  But she…"

Stumped, she trailed off.

Faith continued, hopping up onto the counter, "And now her one true love, the guy she stabbed me for, is here in LA, cosying up to the cheerleader."

"Wh-what?"

"Brunette, stuck-up, kinda bitchy?"

"Cordelia?" Dawn asked, because she didn't want to seem stupid, and tried to remember who the cheerleaders had been when Faith had stayed in Sunnydale.

"That'd be her," Faith agreed, and Dawn dropped the open-faced sandwich onto the formica and shook her head.

"No, no he wouldn't do that."

Faith tilted her head to the side, sent tangled dark hair spilling over her shoulder.  "No?  Well if you don't think it's possible, then I guess it isn't happening."

"It isn't," she insisted, because she needed for something, for just *one* thing, to be true, to have remained the same.  "He loves Buffy."

"And Buffy's dead."

There was that automatic refusal again, on the tip of her tongue, before the memory of a swan dive into a portal of mystical energy slipped back to her.  "She- don't talk to me about her."

"You can pretend something isn't real, but that doesn't make it go away.  Trust me on that."

"I'm not pretending anything, and you don't have the right to talk about her."

"Why?  Because I tried to kill her?  So did you, only you got the job done."

"I didn't kill her.  She did what she had to do," Dawn said, and her voice quavered, then broke.

"No," Faith disagreed, "she did what *you* had to do.  And you let her."

"I, I didn't do anything," she protested, and Faith's snort seemed to say, Exactly.  Exactly.

She'd stood and watched as the blood that had started it all dripped down her side and ran in rivulets down her toes.  And she'd watched the blood until the whirling colors disappeared and her sister disappeared from sight, and she'd thought of Buffy, and how brave and wonderful and horrible and *selfish* she was to have abandoned Dawn.  But she didn't remember crying.  Not when she'd almost slipped on all that blood coating the metal gangplank, or when she saw Buffy's body lying on the ground, or even at the funeral -- such a *sad* day, and what a waste of so young a girl – because everyone cried at funerals, and to do that have been like saying that her relationship with Buffy was normal and ordinary and… over.

When she thought back to that moment, the exact moment of Buffy's leap, all she could remember doing was watching her own blood pool around her feet and all she could remember feeling was shame for not dying.

"Leave me alone," she whispered, and the light dimmed and swung a circle of dark memory like a lasso round her throat, squeezed and squeezed until she choked and gasped for breath.  Until her lungs burned and itched and a slim line of fear inched its way towards her chest cavity, to where her heart had been.  She pressed a hand to her chest, pressed down hard until she felt bone grate against bone, and felt the line thin itself and slip away, slide upwards into her throat to wisp around her brain and tickle at her eyes.

She looked to Faith, desperately hoping for a distraction, for conversation, a slap, anything that would draw her attention away from the buildup of pressure behind her eyelids

"... came to me, remember?" Faith was saying, and Dawn reached out and grabbed her hand, clasped it tightly with every bit of strength she possessed until Faith fell silent.  She supposed she was lucky that Faith hadn't reacted as she once might have, with violence, anger.  But then again, at least she'd be thinking of something else if that had happened.

But the gleam in those brown eyes was that of suspicion, of doubt, and here, here at last was something that had remained the same.  She felt a stab of relief deep inside her mind, like the sharp burst of a balloon popping, and the tears, when they came, were hot and wild as a Summer storm.

Faith hesitated, then trailed her fingers over Dawn's damp cheeks, said, "Hey, don't do that." as though that would stop it, as though anything could-

And then Faith bent down and pressed her lips to hers, whispered, "Shut up," and kissed her.  Her lips were mobile, her tongue zealous as it speared into Dawn's mouth, explored her as though she had every right to do so, as though Dawn had no say in the matter, and would have agreed to it if she had.

She moaned, because Faith had just nipped at her lip, licked it, was even now thrusting her tongue back into her mouth, and the sensations that produced... The heat was like nothing she'd felt before, and it was a burning so white-hot that it chilled her, made her shiver and quiver and melt.  Faith's free hand dug into her hair, twisted until she whimpered from the ache that produced in her scalp, then released her and hopped off the counter.

"I guess I shouldn't have done that," she said, her eyes hot and dark as burnt chocolate.

Dawn touched a hand to her lips and struggled to form a coherent thought.  The only one circling through her mind at the moment was that she'd just been kissed, for the first time, by a *girl*.  By *Faith*.  And sure, that wasn't normal, and she didn't think she was gay or even bisexual (probably), and yeah, she'd enjoyed it, but it was *Faith*, and who wouldn't have been affected?  She swallowed at that, and tried to tamp down her embarrassment, her, well, arousal, to answer intelligently.

"Why not?" she finally managed.

"Because I'm supposed to be a good girl, now, and kissing a fifteen year old, even if it was just to get her to stop bawling her eyes out, isn't something a good girl like your sis would do."

"And look where being good got her," she said, and fought back the ache.  "Maybe being bad isn't the worst thing in the world.  Maybe it actually makes sense."

Wow, she thought, that actually *did* make sense.  Faith leaned forward, and her lips were swollen and pink, and Dawn tried to forget that the *she* was the reason for that, that they'd actually kissed, and...

"It gave her the choice," Faith said, pushing away from the counter and striding to the sink.

"Of what?"

"When to die," Faith replied, lifting the knife and wiping the crumbs off on her shirt.

"What are you-" she began, then heard a car door shut quietly, too quietly, on the street below.

"You should get outta here," Faith suggested, and moved past Dawn to hide behind the wall separating the entry way from the small bedroom.

"Who are they?" she asked, ignoring that suggestion and running after Faith.

"Council.  They got me out because they needed a slayer asap.  I knew they'd find a better model sooner or later."

They needed to kill Faith, she realized, so that a new slayer could be called.  Oh, God.  Oh, God, no.

Then the door slammed open and Faith shoved Dawn behind the bed and said, "Be a good girl, Dawnie," and she was gone.

She heard the sounds of a fight -- the thud of flesh against a wall, the snap and sickening crunch of broken bones, the slick slurp of something sharp slicing through meat, then finally a low whistle of air being released from lungs that could no longer hold it.

The silence that followed was murky and unnatural, like smog in the countryside, and she bit her lip so she wouldn't scream just to break it.  She didn't want to raise her head, didn't want to see, but she forced herself to, and the first thing she saw was Faith's eyes, brown and blank and so very cold.

She ducked her head down again and heard footsteps, a thump, the door closing.  She waited for
an endless time, face buried in the side of the mattress, and when she at last arose, she knew they were gone, as surely as she knew that Faith was dead and they'd taken her body with them.

She wove to the door like a drunkard, struggled to pull it open, and made her way across the street to the phone booth.  She dialed, then said, slowly, precisely,

"It's Dawn," and gave the address.  Then she sank down to the floor and waited.

The van pulled up and Cordelia opened the door of the phone booth and helped Dawn to her feet.  And she remembered what Faith had said, about Angel and Cordelia, and she blocked that out, because if she thought of it, she'd remember everything else, and so she stared down at her shoes and wondered when her sneakers had gotten so dark.

Not dirt, she realized, gaze catching on the footprints marked so clearly on the tar.  She'd walked through the pool of blood in the apartment, tracked it all the way to the phone booth, and there was just so much of it, over everything now.

Cordelia led her to the car, helped her in, closed the door so that night covered them both, but it didn't mean anything, because she could still see her shoes, shining and glowing like they were coated with fluorescent paint.  But-

There's blood.  There's blood, there's blood, there's blood.  A chanting of it, a spilling of it, and all she wanted to do was take her shoes off and wash them, wash them till they gleamed white again, till there was nothing left to remind her of what had once been.

The van stopped and Dawn recognized dimly that were at the hotel, and then Cordelia got out and wrapped her arm around her and walked her inside.

She saw Angel, and he looked so concerned, and she felt like yelling at him, telling him he couldn't be worried about her because Buffy was dead, and now Faith was dead, too, and he looked down at her shoes and said, quietly,

"Faith."

Cordelia shook her head, but it was too late, and this time the tears were a flood, a torrent of water so cold it seemed to freeze her very bones to little sticks of ice, and this time there was no Faith to kiss or soothe or quiet her.  She heard him cursing, and telling her he was sorry and that it would all be okay, and in between that he muttered that it had been the Council and he should have known, and yes, he should have, and yes, he *should* have protected her, but he hadn't and now she was gone, too, and nothing anyone said would change that.

So she allowed herself to be held by Cordelia, her back stroked like she was precious, like she meant something to someone, and she pulled back and wanted to tell them but she was sobbing too hard to speak coherently and all that came out was, "You cut your hair."

And Cordelia's lips pressed together as though she wanted to cry, too, but she didn't say anything, and eventually the tears slowed and trickled to a stop.

"Do you want to... to clean up?" Cordelia asked, and she nodded.

The bathroom was huge, and after she'd stripped and scrubbed herself beneath the temperamental spray of the shower, she pulled on a shirt and slacks that were a little baggy on her -- either Cordelia's or the other girl's, she thought -- and bundled her clothes into a little ball.

She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her, walked barefoot down the passage to the lounge where the small group talked quietly.

She slipped into the room and clutched the clothes against her chest, waited for someone to notice her presence.

Finally, Cordelia glanced over, said, gently, "Aren't your feet cold?"

And she laid one foot over the other and shook her head.

"I'll get some socks," Angel said, and she wanted to smile, because keeping her feet warm wasn't going to warm *her*, and loaning her socks and clothes wouldn't fill the void that existed within her, wouldn't fill the unquenchable vacuum that people around her seemed to disappear into.

"We're taking you home," Cordelia said softly, but her voice was pained and brittle, like she had swallowed razor blades and couldn't keep them down.

She tried to say Thank you, or maybe, Please, don't, but her voice clogged up and all she could do was nod.

It was only when they were in the van, traveling back to Sunnydale and her feet were curled up under her that she realized why she was wearing borrowed socks.

She'd left her shoes behind.
 

~end~