simplestgift | Twenty Bells: [Action/Voice]

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Twenty Bells: [Action/Voice]

[He'd won her a stuffed penguin. She'd been hanging on his arm and squeezing it with a giant grin on her face. Everything felt, finally, like it was going to be okay. Like this trouble between them since sleeping together was just a little thing.

He turns away to grab a strawberry daiquiri for her, still holding her hand. When he turns back, she's gone.

He wanders Lucetiland for a while, looking for her, shaking, still holding the drink, but he knows what's happened. When someone dematerializes while you are touching them...

She was just there, grinning, cheeks rosy. The warmth of her hand hasn't quite faded yet.

He sits on a bench in the middle of the park, staring into space, and nothing in the world draws his attention until, mechanically, he draws out his journal. He's shaking too badly to write, so he has to voice it, and he sounds weak.]

Dawn Summers was sent home.

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...I'm sorry, Archie.

[ hoarse. she's been crying. ]

[His voice is low and cracks a little when he speaks.] So am I.

For what it's worth...[ she actually doesn't know how to finish that sentence. her mouth hangs open -- lost, stricken beyond her own comprehension. there is nothing in this world or any world so precious to her as dawn summers. losing her is very literally like losing a part of herself.

so she simply renews her hug and falls silent once again. ]

I love her. [He squeezes her gently.] I never had that before.

...Not many of us get to be so lucky. [ she says it rather ironically; she understands the parallel to that evening in the woods after jack's disappearance. better to have loved and lost... ]

I could tell, you know. A big sister always knows. She loves you right back. [ no past tense allowed. ]

I know. [She'd said as much. Except he'd never quite believed she could love someone like him. Maybe she wanted to pretend everything was okay, but in the end, that had only saved time, hadn't it? They were happy together.

But she's forgotten him now.]

Not anymore.

...It doesn't happen like that. Not -- Jack, Archie. [ she seizes upon the example with particular ferocity. ] He forgot but then he remembered. And it was like years of love hitting him all at once. It's -- it's possible.

She could come back. She's done it before. This was her second time here.

[ delusional, her. sometimes. ]

And she didn't remember this time, did she?

...She wasn't even here a month, last time.

[A deep breath.] I hope you're right. [A dozen little Kennedys. It was like a nursery rhyme.]

...Me, too.

[Now he can't stop thinking about the images Jack gave him of those dozen little Kennedys. He'd started thinking of names, even knowing Dawn surely had all her kids' names picked out already.

He gestures toward a strawberry daiquiri on the coffee table.]

It's hers. Would you like it?

Don't you think that's a little...[ macabre? ]

N-no. I couldn't.

[A sigh.] I suppose I should throw it away.

Archie...

[ buffy frowns. ] That daiquiri isn't her. I get the association; I do. But it's just a drink. And she's...she's Dawnie.

I know, but it's hers She wants it. Wanted it. [Throwing it away would mean she really isn't there to claim it anymore.]

...Say she comes back, Archie. The whole drink'll have spoiled by then anyway.

What if she didn't leave? [Then he snaps his mouth shut and looks ashamed of himself. He knows better than to talk like that.]

...And you think for a second that even if she wanted anyone else to think that she was gone...that she'd let me believe it? For even a second?

[He shakes his head softly.] No.

You've got all of my sympathy, Archie. All of it. But don't even think about suggesting that again.

[He only said it because he didn't want her to be gone.]

Don't wait, you said.

...I said it for a reason.

[ she doesn't know if archie is recognizing the wisdom in what she had said or...or something else? ]

[There is a slight exhalation.]

It still wasn't enough.

[ with a matching sigh, buffy thinks as objectively as she can on the mountainous amount of loss she's been on the receiving end for. almost affectionately -- and certainly as if she were somehow older than archie -- she cups the side of his cheek with one hand. just for a moment before her hand drops. ]

It never is.

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