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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[ she takes the cup in two palms. ]

...Thanks.

You're welcome. [He sits by her again, setting his own cup on the table.]

...Is there anything you want to know?

[ her voice cracks on this next line: ] When Jack left, Norrington told me -- he had stories and things to say. They helped.

[Do not make him cry again, Buffy. Just don't. But for more memories of Dawn, even if they're someone else's, he'll risk it. He nods.]

...Do you know what a taser is, Archie?

[He shakes his head.]

Well? She's a terror with one of those, too.

The final battle was coming, Archie. The one that left the town we're from -- Sunnydale -- nothing but a big old hole in the ground. And I wasn't going to let her fight in it. Not her. I was at the point where I could lose anything. But not her. So I had Xander...she's mentioned Xander, right?

I had Xander trick her into going away with him. She was supposed to go so very far away and be safe.

I should've known better.

[He'd spoken with Xander once. He nods for her to continue.]

...The electricity running through all these buildings? It can hurt a man. It can hurt an anyone. And it can be programmed into a little weapon called a taser. And she tasered him, Archie. He was driving and he only had one eye and she tasered him. And then she drove the whole way back and kicked me in the shin and called me a dumbass.

[It is totally not funny and cool to hurt a man and kick your sister. But Archie gives a sharp exhalation like a laugh anyway, and suddenly finds himself blinking away tears. He turns his face away.]

What else?

...I warned her that if she got killed then I was telling on her. [ a stellar feat to do for two sisters with a dead mother and shiftless, absentee father. ] But she went into the fight and she's not a Slayer, Archie. But she -- again, I stuck her with Xander. [ her knight; her best friend; her right-hand man. steadfast beyond the telling of it. ]

And I think her ubervamp kill-count rivaled mine. She's -- amazing.

[ such a flood of love and pride and desperation. buffy's eyes are also wet. ]

[He remembers fighting with her in his first draft. She really is amazing.

An arm curls around Buffy to pull her close. A tear quietly hits his cheek.]

...And a brat. [ a paradoxical, sharp laugh. ] Amazing and a brat. You know -- without fail -- if an appliance ever broke in the house? She blamed me. Every time.

[He releases a shaky breath.] It's what the youngest ones do.

...In that case, you know she's technically older than me -- right? And older than the planet?

[ dawn's only ever as old as which number is convenient at any given time. ]

I do know. But she doesn't remember that. She remembers you bullying her when you were small, most likely.

[It's not spoken accusingly at all. Archie had older siblings. He knows how this goes.]

Hey, watch it Kennedy. [ a sly, understanding smirk. even through the tears. ]

Why would I bully the apple of my eye, huh? [ yeah they totally bullied each other. ]

It's the way of the world, for brothers and sisters to torment each other until they've grown apart enough to tolerate each other. [Mocking sage wisdom.]

We've always managed to tolerate and torment all at the same time. But after mom died? [ a shrug; they'd grown closer after that. of course. ] More of the former, less of the latter.

[He nods. The stories make it feel like she's less distant. Except...

Except how far away is she, physically? This is a different world altogether. At this moment, how much air and space separates him from Dawn?]

Tell me more.

...She won't eat marshmallows.

[ she wrestles with her pain for any factoid she can rip out of her brain and deliver to this poor boy. use the telling of it to sooth her soul. wallow -- happily, almost -- in those memories. ]

She loves cheesecake. We agreed any time we fought, we would have cheesecake together.

[His voice cracks.]

I mean -- she won't eat them. She can't stand them. My fault, really. I told her they were monkey brains. When she was younger.

But cheesecake...[ she trails off. ]

[A breathy laugh at "monkey brains."]

What about the cheesecake?

...We fought about a lot of things, you know. All the time. Stolen clothing, whether she could come out on patrol, whether she could date Xander. [ dawn was barely a teenager at the time of that crush. buffy's gently rolling eyes should suggest how non-serious that had been. ] But we never fought over the last slice of anything. Cake. Cheesecakes. Squares. Pie.

Summers sisters always split slices.

Twenty Bells: [Action/Voice]

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