simplestgift | Four Bells: [Voice] Somewhat Unwell

Good, because it's a Summers tradition and if I get sick, I fully expect you to make cheesecake runs.

[ give her a second, archie, you just fried something in her brain. ] Um. [ she clears her throat and looks down at the books and spreads them out to give herself something to do until she can talk without sounding like an idiot. ] Mostly basic big name stuff to start. Faulkner, some Hemingway... and then Gatsby and Grapes of Wrath because those are both can't misses.

[He notices she's acting a little awkward, and worries about how many different bad ways she could have taken his sudden departure the other night. Or he might be completely off the mark, but her tense flustering is making him worry. He wants to ask her what's wrong, so he begins with her name.] Dawn.

[That's when it occurs to him--of all his new female friends, he probably knows the least about her, and has told her the least about himself. There's been pressure to court her, but he is closer to Buffy or Jilly, neither of whom are potential romances. This superfluous mutual interest in books can't be all there is.]

Archie?

[ dawn looks up, and while she's still a little red the 'oh god he called me beautiful' flailing is largely under wraps, now, and she just looks inquisitive. ]

[He hesitates, trying to think of how to approach this. He gestures toward the chair by the bed, from which Jilly had read to him.] Sit down. I'd like it if we... [Had a conversation? He gives a helpless shrug.] If you talked to me a little.

[ dawn's smile is pretty much edging in on radiant, and she abandons the books to come sit, tucking one leg underneath her and bringing the other up to rest her chin on her knee. ] It's a deal, but only if you talk back too.

Aye-aye, sir. [It's spoken with a gigantic grin. He coughs a little.] Tell me a story about Dawn Summers. A true one.

Something nautical, sailor. [ dawn considers stories for a second. most of the really interesting ones are also horrifying, but that's par for the course. and he asked for true, which means by the letter of the law no memories created via monk. (she's dreading explaining that one.) ] Okay, so. Once upon a time, there was a junior in high school named Dawn Summers. She lived in a house that used to seem pretty big, but once you filled it with really noisy teenage girls it got ridiculously small and suddenly barren of all the mochi-- it's a kind of ice cream-- said high school junior bought with her own money and stuck in the freezer to enjoy at an undecided later date.

[ she stops and grins, wryly. ]

...Just so you know there's no moral or happy ending here, they were always eating my food.

Edited 2011-02-09 04:28 (UTC)

Was this the so-called army of Slayers?

The soon to be super powered locusts, yup. [ she shifts position a little, stretching. ] What about you? I want to hear a true story about Archie Kennedy.

Archie Kennedy. [He pretends to think hard.] I believe I've heard the name somewhere. Isn't he that devilishly handsome lieutenant who proposed like a fool to the prettiest woman in Luceti?

[ dawn is starting to wonder if archie has a pavlovian type need make her turn bright red and tongue tied. she doesn't do lack of words-- she actually does surplus of words, ask anyone-- so it's a new and weird place to be.

...but buffy (and spike, admittedly) didn't teach her to stay quiet, so despite the red face she'll tease back. ]

I knew he was a serial proposer. You tell a guy you'll be his Cleopatra and he still asks other random hot girls to marry him. [ she's not debating his hotness, here. ]

[Or his foolishness, for the matter. He doesn't press the matter that she has the only proposal he's given here. Instead, he breathes out a thoughtful sigh.] A true story about him. Well. [Most of his true stories are about Horatio. That, or stories about him and Horatio getting drunk and doing stupid things, and she doesn't need more cause to think he's a drunkard.]

What sort of true story?

[ dawn is actually of the opinion archie is both the niftiest thing since sliced bread and not at all foolish, but that's neither here nor there. ] How about... one from when you were a kid.

[ she pauses, fiddles with the hem of her pants. in for a penny... ] I could tell you one, too. If you don't mind a looser, more philosophical version of truth.

Philosophical truth? [He grins.] What does that mean?

Um. [ saying anything at all was an impulse, and dawn shrugs helplessly. how do you explain 'oh, and then monks made me so all my memories before i was fourteen are fake' to someone without saying the actual words? ] So, my world's all magic-y, right? Well. Me as a kid is... I mean. Memories are real because you believe them, and they're subjective anyway so if a bunch of people remember something, it becomes the truth in a more philosophical way.

[ hopefully archie can read between the babble lines, because he's actually the first person she's told herself about this, and it's not the easiest thing ever. ]

[He watches her carefully, his fevered brain trying to piece it together.] You remember things that didn't happen?

[He doesn't make the leap to "artificially created," of course, but he gets what she's hinting at. It sounds like madness, but he can hardly leap to conclusions about that sort of thing. He's seen things that don't exist, and isn't mad (anymore), so why couldn't she remember things that didn't happen? Wait, she said a lot of people remembered...and now he looks confused.]

[ she nods, still fiddling with her hem. ] Like... fourteen years of things. It's complicated and I should probably explain when you're not all grody and sick.

[ right, looking at the person you're talking to. dawn looks up and offers a tiny smile. ] Sorry, I've never actually told anyone this myself. People either already knew or I didn't talk about it, so... it's a little weird.

Fourteen years? On top of your other memories? [She can't bring this up and then just let it go.]

I don't actually have any other memories. Just those ones. [ and now back to the fiddling. ]

[He sits up, propping himself up on his elbows.] What happened to your real memories?

[ she shakes her head. ] That's why I said a looser definition. Those are the only ones I have because they're the only ones that actually exist.

[He...has no idea what to do with that. Fourteen years of fake memories.] What...what happened? If-if I may ask.

[He is not assuming the fourteen years were the first ones of her life. He tries very hard to assume nothing, whenever he can, even if he does so anyway.]

You can, I wouldn't have said anything if it wasn't okay to ask. Just, um. This is... kind of a secret, kind of not. Especially with the timeline thing, Glory-- [ she breaks off, looking a little sick. glory could show up, and all of a sudden warren seems so much less scary. ] It's not something a lot of people know. So... welcome to the club, I guess.

[ right, enough stalling. ] Long story made very short? I was kind of... made. Out of magic.

[Made out of magic. Then she's not real? But when he took her hand the other night, there was the very tangible slide of skin over breakable bone. She's clearly flesh and blood, however she got to be that way. Was she lying? He always disliked assuming people to be liars. She could be lying, though, to try to seem more special, but he's already accepted Buffy's insane story, hasn't he? More or less, anyway. Without passing judgment either way, he nods for her to go on.]

Right, okay. Short story not filled with enough expository goodness. Um...

[ she picks at a cuticle, then sighs. ] This is going to get even more crazy really fast but my sister can bend a gun barrel in half so... you know, it's less unbelievable than that. Sometimes.

So, okay. Storytime. [ it should be easier to tell it like a story, right? ] Basically, there were these monks. And the monks needed to protect a Key, which was this apparently glowy ancient power. Someone really, really really dangerous wanted the Key, so they decided to give it to the Slayer-- [ she pauses, looks up. ] That would be Buffy, for the record. Anyway, they gave it to the Slayer to protect.

Anyway, they wanted to make sure she would do anything to take care of the Key, so they made it into a person. A little sister shaped person, to be specific. And then they made memories for everyone, so that they'd think the Key had always been there, and wasn't a Key, so Gl-- [ she almost chokes on the name, but swallows and continues. ] So Glory, the thing that wanted to use the Key wouldn't be able to tell something new had arrived. And, you know. So that the Slayer wouldn't just hand the Key over.

...That's kind of it. Minus the more horrifying parts and I'm just going to silently freak out a little because now you're totally going to think I'm a crazy liar, aren't you?

Edited 2011-02-10 01:12 (UTC)

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