Comics!fic: Hey There, Blondie Bear (Part 4/5)
Title: Hey There, Blondie Bear (Part 4/5)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: comics!fic
Summary: Being normal doesn’t include having a vampire for a boyfriend, even one with a soul, but Spike’s not willing to be just her friend anymore. Is “normal” all it’s cracked up to be? Is it worth the price? Begins after issue #10 (which will be released 6/13), which is when Spike will temporarily leave S9 for his own miniseries. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
A/N: This section is a little over 5,000 words. Last part will be up later tonight!
Part 4
“You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m going to throw up.”
“No you won’t. You haven’t eaten anything.” Dawn kissed Buffy’s cheek and gave her a gentle push toward an impatient hair-and-makeup artist. “It’ll be fast and easy, and I’ll be right there in the front row the whole time.” She let go and started walking backward. “And hey, when else are you going to be on national TV? Enjoy yourself!”
Buffy narrowed her eyes the way Dawn imagined she usually did at vampires but didn’t protest again as Dawn left backstage. A few hallways and doors later she was settling into her seat between Xander and Anaheed.
“How is she?” asked Xander immediately. Dawn smiled, even as she finally let her stomach swoop with nerves. “She’s going to be fine.” With every passing moment without a commotion, her tension eased a little. After Harmony’s recent Cosmo interview, half the battle had been making sure Buffy didn’t stake Harmony before the show started.
It came as no little relief then when both blondes walked onstage- to the most tumultuous, ear-splitting applause Dawn had ever heard. She winced, stopping just short of covering her ears. Anaheed was not so circumspect. On Xander’s other side, Andrew shrieked like a banshee.
Harmony was waving and blowing kisses, but Dawn had eyes only for her sister. Buffy had looked lovely in a new dark green sheath dress that brought out her eyes, with her hair loose and combed to a shine, but after she was done looking like a deer caught in headlights, it was her nervous, shy smile that made her heartbreakingly beautiful. When a few women on the other side of the audience screamed, “We love you, Joan!”, she gave a small, embarrassed wave. It only made them scream harder. After what seemed an age, Buffy and Harmony took their seats on a pink couch. A coffee table bearing a water bottle and a glass of blood stood in front of them.
“Hi, everyone!” Harmony’s face was alight. Dawn had to admit she looked gorgeous, too, wearing a short, hot pink dress and a 1,000-watt smile. She looked more like an innocent and carefree prom queen than a bloodthirsty creature of the night; fame agreed with her.
“I am so thrilled tonight to finally introduce you to the woman you’ve all been dying to meet. You’ve heard her story, you’ve helped spread her message- ladies and gentlemen, this is Joan!”
Dawn was prepared for the thunderous applause this time, which made it a bit easier to handle. Buffy waved again, blushing prettily. When the noise had died down enough to be heard, she said, “Hi, everyone. It’s great to be here!”
She didn’t sound as perky as she could have, but if Dawn hadn’t known her sister, she wouldn’t have guessed it was a lie.
“And we’re so happy to have you,” said Harmony, angling toward her but maintaining a good profile for the camera. “We all have so many questions about you and Blondie Bear.”
“I’ll do my best to answer them,” said Buffy, exactly as she and Dawn had practiced.
“Great! But first, can you tell everyone a little about yourself? Your fans know you’re slayer and that you’re from Sunnydale and that you love Randy but not much else!”
Dawn crossed her fingers. Buffy had wanted to go straight to the Q&A, but Harmony had insisted- and Dawn had agreed- that they needed some small talk first to warm things up- make Buffy seem affable and like a person rather than just an answer key.
“Well, I was actually born here in LA. We moved to Sunnydale when I was sixteen after my parents divorced.” Her eyes found Dawn, who nodded encouragingly. “I lived there until the earthquake of 2003 that destroyed the town.”
Harmony made a sympathetic sound. Buffy quickly looked down and smoothed her skirt. “Um, I’m a slayer, as everyone knows. That’s always been my main job, but I’ve also worked as a bodyguard, barista, fast food server, and guidance counselor.” She smiled self-deprecatingly at the sounds of surprise. “I know, weird combination. What else? I have a younger sister, Dawn.”
“Yes, you do!” exclaimed Harmony. “In fact, she’s the one who thought of coming to me for help in the first place. And she’s here tonight! Let’s take a look!”
Dawn had known in advance this would happen, but that didn’t make the tilting of half a dozen cameras toward her any less alarming. She smiled at the one she’d been told to, waved one hand while Xander squeezed the other, and tried to ignore the hundreds of faces suddenly turned in her direction.
“That’s just great,” said Harmony, when the attention was back on her. “It must be such a relief to have her support during this trying time. So! Speaking of Blondie Bear, tell us something we’re all desperate to know- how did you two meet?”
Buffy didn’t answer immediately, and an embarrassed, almost impish smile stole across her face. Her hesitation was as fake as her smile, though; she had pre-approved every question Harmony was slated to ask. Just remembering the hours she’d spent mediating between the two blondes on what was and was not too personal threatened to give Dawn a headache.
“Honestly?” Buffy glanced at the audience and then back at Harmony. She gave a small shrug. “He was tying to kill me.”
“No!” gasped Harmony, as did quite a few fans. There were a few incredulous giggles, too, but those quickly died out as Buffy’s expression didn’t change.
“Wait, really?” whispered Tumble, from Anaheed’s other side.
“He didn’t!” cried Harmony.
“He did,” said Buffy, grinning now. “Cause I’m a slayer.”
“Blondie Bear!” Harmony’s tone was scolding as she looked at the camera. “You’re giving vampires a bad name! Shame on you! What happened? How did you escape?”
“What makes you think I didn’t kick his ass?” Buffy demanded. “Maybe he had to escape me!”
Harmony blinked, wide-eyed and innocent. “Oh! Of course- absolutely! So you kicked his ass?”
“Well- no,” Buffy admitted. Dawn was pretty sure her fond smile was genuine now. “I wasn’t as experience a slayer back then, and he kind of got me in a tight spot. He probably would have killed me if not for my mom. She hit him on the head with an axe and told him to get the hell away from her daughter.”
Peals of astonished laughter came from the crowd.
“So badassery runs in the family,” said Harmony approvingly.
“Most definitely.”
“What happened next? How did you go from mortal enemies to lovers?”
“It didn’t happen over night,” Buffy assured her. “We fought a few more times, but we were pretty evenly matched. And then it turned out we had a mutual enemy, so he offered a truce. We cooperated to defeat it, and he left town promising never to return.”
“Good thing he didn’t keep that promise!”
Buffy smiled. “Yeah. So he came back to Sunnydale, and this time he was captured by, uh, mad scientists. They put a chip in his head so he couldn’t hurt humans. He came to me for help, and, well.” Buffy shrugged. “I helped.”
“So you had a soft spot for him even then!”
Dawn saw a flash of a frown on Buffy’s face before it was hidden by a thoughtful look; she and Harmony had argued extensively on this point. Harmony insisted that saying she and Spike had always secretly loved each other and that was why they hadn’t killed each other would be romantic; Buffy insisted that would be disingenuous, simplistic, and dangerous.
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I just…” Buffy took a deep breath, her eyes seeking Dawn again. “I don’t slay vampires that don’t kill humans.”
Dawn exhaled slowly; Buffy had viewed it as a concession to say even that much, as though non-murderous vampires were common; if slayers were going to be respected, though, she had to seem reasonable.
“This chip-thing sounds awful,” commented Harmony. “Putting stuff in vampires’ brains? Euch! That needs to be illegal.” She glowered righteously at the cameras, as though lawmakers were watching and awaiting her orders.
“Mm,” said Buffy non-committally. “On the other hand, I’m grateful for it in Sp- Randy’s case, because if he hadn’t stopped hurting people, I never would have-”
She blinked, faltered. Dawn tried herself to think about what life would be like if Spike had never gotten the chip and integrated into their lives. It made her stomach a little queasy, so she could only imagine how Buffy felt.
“To know him,” said Buffy finally. She picked at her dress for a moment before clearing her throat and saying, “He started helping me slay monsters, and eventually…eventually we became friends and then lovers.”
Beside Dawn, Xander let out a quiet snort. “Glossing over of the century.”
“He loved you first,” said Harmony.
Buffy nodded. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“Why definitely?”
“Oh…” For the first time Buffy looked genuinely disconcerted; they had rehearsed the questions in advance but not all the wording and segues Harmony might take. “I just mean…it took me a long time to…to love him back. Because he’d been evil, and I’m a slayer and…he changed a lot before I loved him. He changed everything about himself.”
“Aw, so it’s like Beauty and the Beast! Loving you made him a better person.”
Buffy flushed. “Um, yes. But it’s not like-” She turned toward the audience, seeming suddenly anxious. “Don’t think you can change any vampire into a good person. I mean-” She glanced at Harmony, whose eyes had narrowed. “Not that vampires can’t be good. I just mean-”
She sighed, and suddenly she was in teaching mode, the kind Dawn hadn’t seen in quite a while; she was surprised by how comforting it was. “You know what, this applies to any man, human or vampire. Ladies, don’t start a relationship thinking you can change a bad boy into a good boy. That was never my intent with Randy. I just got lucky.” She eyeballed the audience sternly, and looking around, Dawn was gratified to see as many nodding heads as there were simpering, love-struck expressions.
“So what was the turning point for you?” asked Harmony. “What made you realize you loved him?”
Dawn held her breath. Even she wasn’t sure of the answer, the real one or the TV-appropriate one. Buffy had been very vague during all their practicing and refused to dwell on it, even though it would be difficult to answer because they couldn’t bring up souls.
Sure enough, the deer-in-headlights look was back. Her voice came out steady, though, if a little quiet. “It was gradual. He was there for me during a- during a really rough patch of my life, and he kind of- just- became integral to my life without me even realizing it. He tried so hard to be good for me-” Buffy swallowed, and Dawn knew she was thinking of his soul.
“And he was good, and he was sweet and gentle and funny-”
“Funny,” Dawn could imagine, but “sweet” and “gentle” were a bit harder to fathom. She could distantly remember him being gentle during that summer, the only time she had ever been the most important Summers girl, but those days seemed so far away now, like a good but very clearly imagined dream; after he’d left Sunnydale, she’d tried so hard to erase any good memories of him.
She didn’t doubt Buffy, though; her sister had always seen something in him that the other Scoobies hadn’t. And maybe it wasn’t willful blindness at fault; maybe he had reserved those qualities for only her sister. That thought stung; it was yet another uncomfortable reminder that she really hadn’t known him at all his last year in Sunnydale.
“And he always believed in me.” Buffy looked down at her lap, hiding eyes that were suspiciously bright. Harmony had told her multiple times that she should feel free to cry onstage whenever she wanted- had even urged her to; she said it would endear her to the audience and make her story all the more tragic. For once Buffy had simply nodded politely- more-or-less- instead of putting up a fuss, but Dawn guessed that was only because she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep from crying; from the flint in her eyes during that conversation, Dawn guess that Harmony’s words had only hardened Buffy’s resolve to not weep.
After a few seconds, when it was clear the slayer was not going to have an emotional meltdown, Harmony dabbed at her eye. “Oh, that’s so romantic.” She turned to the audience, face grave. “When we come back, we’ll talk about what went wrong.”
A cameraman signaled they were off, and Harmony’s serious expression disappeared. She reached for her glass of blood. Buffy was already glugging her water, downing it like she wished it were something much stronger.
Dawn breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Xander.
“It’s going well,” he said, sounding not a little surprised.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
Andrew bounced up and down his seat. “This is so great! It’s so romantic! How could it all go wrong? Gah, I can’t wait to find out!”
“Andrew, you were practically there,” said Xander. “You lived through it.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t make any sense.” His face lit up. “Did I ever tell you guys that Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie?”
The cameras were ready to roll again a few minutes later, after Buffy and Harmony had been freshened up by a horde of make-up artists. If Buffy had been about to cry, she didn’t look like it anymore. As before the show started, though, no amount of blush could hide her pallor; she practically looked more like a vampire than Harmony did (Dawn just knew the vampire frequented a tanning salon).
“If you’re just tuning in now,” said Harmony, “we’re here tonight with a very special guest: Joan! So far we’ve talked about how she and Blondie Bear met and fell in love. Unfortunately, as you all know, they’ve hit a few bumps in the road over the years. The most recent one was seven months ago, when Joan told Randy she didn’t want to be with him. He left on a road trip, and she hasn’t heard from him since. Can you tell us about that decision of yours, Joan? If you loved him, why didn’t you want to be with Randy?”
The pain that swept across Buffy’s face was all too genuine for Dawn’s comfort; this was the question she had most dreaded. She answered haltingly. “The short answer is denial. I was in denial about the idea that I could have a lasting, functional, healthy relationship with a vampire.”
Disgruntled murmurs sounded from the audience. It took all of Dawn’s willpower not to turn and glare at them all.
“You have to understand,” said Buffy. “We’d been separated for a while because of external circumstances having to do with- with the Sunnydale earthquake. I thought he…I thought he died, and he…well, it turned out he was alive, but I didn’t know that, and he didn’t know how to find me.”
The murmurs changed to ones of sympathy. Looking around, Dawn saw a number of tightly clutched tissues.
“I had to learn to live without him,” continued Buffy. “So when he finally came back, things were- we weren’t as close as we had been. There had been a lot of misunderstandings, and I wasn’t ready to jump into a relationship. And then-” She paused, growing even paler. “I had a pregnancy scare.”
Audible gasps sounded throughout the room.
Buffy continued as though she hadn’t heard them. “I thought I’d been date-raped at a party.”
Anaheed went rigid. “She doesn’t mean our party?” she whispered, turning to Dawn with wide, horrified eyes.
“It turned out I wasn’t, thankfully,” said Buffy. Her voice had gone flat. Out of the corner of her eye, Dawn saw Xander glower at Andrew.
“But thinking I might be pregnant made me think about the future and how if I did want children someday- under different circumstances, obviously- I couldn’t have any with a vampire. I thought I needed someone normal.” She looked out toward the audience, although Dawn had a feeling that wasn’t whom she was really seeing. “He left, and by the time I realized I was wrong, it was too late.”
“And what made you realize that?” asked Harmony, sounding far more sympathetic than Dawn would have thought possible.
“I missed him,” said Buffy. “I tried being normal- normal boyfriend, normal job, normal activities; I didn’t feel complete. And I realized- well, came to grips with- I’m not normal. I’m a slayer.” She smiled a little, and for the first time Dawn could remember when discussing this subject, it wasn’t sardonic. “I’m never going to be normal. So I should be with someone as weird as I am, and we can make our own version of normal together. And-” Her expression turned wistful. “When I thought about having children, Randy was the only father I wanted them to have.”
A collective “aww” sounded. Dawn tried not to sniff. She was not going to cry. She was not going to cry.
“There’s always adoption!” said Harmony encouragingly.
“Yeah,” agreed Buffy. “We’ve got lots of options if we want to go down that route.”
“You said you tried having a normal boyfriend,” said Harmony. “What can you tell us about him?”
Buffy lost the faraway look in her eyes, and they narrowed dangerously. Dawn winced. They had told Harmony multiple times that Robert was off the table.
“Nothing,” said Buffy in a tone that brooked no argument. “I’m not going to discuss him. He’s a wonderful man, and he doesn’t deserve any scrutiny. I never meant to hurt him, and I am so-” She looked at the camera. “If you’re watching this, I am so sorry that I did.”
She looked like she wanted to say more but closed her mouth, which Dawn thought was for the best. They were still on shaky ground with Robert, although things had gotten remarkably more comfortable of late. He’d cut off all contact with them immediately after the break-up, and Dawn had thought they’d seen the last of him. But then a few weeks ago, shortly after Harmony confirmed that Joan was from Sunnydale, he had called out of the blue, demanding to know if Buffy and Spike were Joan and Randy. When he accused her of rebounding with him and hung up angry, Dawn had thought that was the end of things. However, a few days later he had emailed Buffy saying he hoped she found Spike and that he would ask his friends in other departments around the country to keep an eye out for a bleached blond vigilante.
Dawn wasn’t sure if he’d ever be their friend again, but she was grateful for his apparent graciousness, especially since it was probably more than they deserved. It couldn’t be easy watching Buffy conduct a national campaign to find her previous boyfriend.
Harmony didn’t look fazed by the slayer’s ire. “Here’s hoping he finds his own special someone,” she said brightly. “Another question fans have is, why are you here tonight? You’ve said for weeks that you didn’t want to appear. What made you change your mind?”
Buffy hesitated, but Dawn knew it was an act; this question had never been avoidable. “I just didn’t think I had a choice anymore,” she said, with a small, could-have-been embarrassed shrug. “I resisted for so long because I- I was shy. I’m kind of a homebody. I didn’t want to be famous or for this to be about me; I never expected it to be about me.” She paused. “But my sister reminded me, and so did some friends-” she whipped toward the camera, suddenly grinning. “Hi, Chloe! I told your parents they should let you watch tonight, so I hope you are!”
She whipped back toward Harmony. “They reminded me that what I expected mattered less than what had happened. Considering everything that your fans have done to help me, coming here and saying thank you personally was the least I could do.” She looked out at the audience, wearing such a sweet, lovely smile that Dawn’s breath caught. “Thank you so much for all of your support.”
She turned back to Harmony. “And thank you for keeping this going. Really.”
Dawn was too far away to see if there was any warmth in her eyes, but she sounded sincere, and she and Harmony looked at each other for a short, silent moment. For once the vampire was plain-faced, which told Dawn more than any simpering words.
“It’s been my pleasure,” said Harmony, and if she didn’t mean it, Dawn couldn’t tell. A few sappy seconds later she turned to the camera. “Don’t go away! When we return, we have a special surprise. Let’s just say, with Joan’s help, we’re finally going to get a better picture of Randy!”
Her smile blinked off when the cameras did, and the make-up team descended again. Technicians hurried around changing the lighting, and a man in his early forties wearing slacks and a button-down shirt walked onstage, a small briefcase in hand. Assistants hurried after him with a chair.
“Who’s Chloe?” asked Xander.
Dawn shrugged. “No idea.” Everything else about the contrite speech had been familiar, though, if not nearly the whole truth. Buffy had neglected to mention that while her resistance had been crumbling recently, the final straw motivating her appearance had been Harmony’s recent Cosmo cover: “What Blondie Bear’s Really Like in Bed!”
“I didn’t think it was worth asking you if you wanted to do it! You’ve never wanted to do any other interviews!” had been Harmony’s defense during a rather heated telephone conversation Dawn had been forced to moderate.
She has a point, Dawn had been brave enough to say to Buffy’s face. Two days later Buffy had agreed to go on the show.
Dawn watched the sketch artist, Jim, greet Harmony and Buffy. The Summers sisters had already met him backstage before the show began. He was a sketch artist, the best the LAPD had on retainer, according to Harmony; for once, Dawn believed her hyperbole. Given that the show had flown all six of them out to LA and was putting them up in the Ritz Carlton, Harmony seemed the type to insist on only the best of anything.
Though Jim had indicated earlier that this was just as surreal for him as it was for them, he looked a lot less nervous than Buffy as he set up his pad and pencils. The degree to which Buffy had blanched made Dawn’s heart hurt. They were in the home stretch now, and the false niceties and twisted half-truths were out of the way. This last segment should have been easy, but Dawn knew it wouldn’t be; this part was nothing but truth.
“As you know, we unfortunately don’t have any pictures of Blondie Bear,” began Harmony. “Tonight, however, we have something almost as good. This nice man here is Jim Callaway. He’s worked as a sketch artist for the LAPD for fifteen years, and tonight he’s going to draw Blondie Bear!”
Gasps and a few whoops of delight sounded in response. Jim gave a polite wave.
“We won’t have time to finish it tonight, but we’ll start it, and tomorrow night, we’ll show you the finished portrait.” Harmony sat back against the cushions and gestured grandly at Buffy. “Take it away, Joan!”
For a long, dreadful moment- it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds, Dawn knew, and yet it felt like so much more- Buffy seemed paralyzed. She didn’t betray any overt signs of anxiety, but her eyes were wide and glazed; Dawn hoped the audience would assume she was just concentrating really hard on what Spike looked like.
“He-“ she finally began. “He-”
This was the one part even Dawn hadn’t really tried to rehearse. Oh, they’d tossed around words and phrases she could use- round jaw, dark eyebrows, cheekbones so sharp you wanted to touch them and see if you cut yourself- and looked through a box of crayons to figure out his eye color (one blue had seemed as good as any other to Dawn, but Buffy had favored ‘cerulean’ most), but Buffy had half-assed any flat-out practice.
It was Jim who saved her from her stutters. “How about we start with the shape of his face?” He handed her a sheaf of paper with examples.
“Yes,” she said, sounding relieved. This time Dawn could actually see the wheels turning as she looked at the papers. “Inverted triangle fits him best. He has curly hair, but he almost always gels it flat, and it’s bleached blond.”
“Low hairline? High? Receding?” asked Jim.
“Um, high, I think? It’s not the other two.” She paused for a few seconds while he drew. “Uh, his chin is- it- it juts. I’m not sure how else to say it. It’s kind of rounded in profile.”
Jim seemed to be stifling a smile. “All right, what else can you tell me about the structure of his face, his nose and lips and eyes?”
“Um, his eyes are normal?” Having been told what to expect didn’t make Buffy any less flustered. “I mean, they’re, they’re really pretty, but that’s their color, like cerulean.”
Jim was definitely smiling now, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Shape-wise, I Think they’re just- just normal? Not too big, not too small.”
They continued in this vein for about four more minutes, Buffy babbling out every detail she could remember and Jim’s pencil flying across his pad in response. He prompted her whenever she seemed lost but otherwise interrupted only to clarify something, such as, “Is the scar on his left or our left?”
Buffy remained wan, although once she had started talking, she seemed to have an easier time keeping it up. Her eyes stayed glazed over, though, like she was pretending she was somewhere else. Dawn hadn’t understood at first why this part should be more difficult for her than talking about their break-up, and Buffy had mumbled only that it was more intimate. It made more sense now that Dawn was watching her go through with it; there was no embellishment or story-telling element to this part of the interview, nothing to separate “Joan” from Buffy; this was just her sister describing her lover in as much detail as she could, to thousands of women who were probably projecting their own fantasy onto him.
The audience in question was utterly rapt. It bemused Dawn at first, because watching Jim draw- without even being able to see the page- was hardly scintillating, and yet she couldn’t look away either. Even already knowing what Spike looked like, it was entrancing to watch, to see Buffy’s words and Jim’s pencil bring him to life; it felt like he might actually come on stage at any moment.
When Harmony said, “Unfortunately that’s all we have time for now,” it was like a spell broke; Dawn blinked and rubbed her eyes. Shuffling sounds came from all over the room as people stretched and murmured to their neighbors.
“Let’s see what we have so far!” said Harmony.
Jim held up his pad, and the cameras zoomed in; a screen near the ceiling showed Dawn and her fellow audience members what viewers at home would see. The sketch was simplistic, some lines barely visible and others redrawn so many times they were practically smudges, but even at this early stage, Dawn recognized Spike. Her throat tightened, but she found herself smiling.
“Joan will work more with Jim later tonight, and we’ll show you the finished portrait tomorrow. Thank you so much, Jim!” Harmony led everyone in a round of applause as the artist, smiling and waving, exited the stage.
“How do you feel, Joan?” asked Harmony. “Now that you’ve taken this huge step and joined us? Relieved? Nervous? You’re paler than I am, sweetie!”
Buffy was, but she managed a small smile nevertheless. “Both,” she admitted.
“Aw.” Harmony scooted over and wrapped an arm around Buffy’s shoulders. “It wasn’t that bad, was it? I don’t bite!” She winked at the camera as the audience laughed. “Not my guests anyway. We were so happy to have you,” she continued, not giving Buffy a chance to answer even if she had been so inclined. “Are there any last words you want to say to Randy in case he’s watching?”
The audience went silent, as though someone had flipped a switch. Dawn wanted to roll her eyes at them, but instead she found herself holding her breath, too. Xander grasped her hand again.
“I-” Buffy stared at the camera, and Dawn could see the sheen of tears in her eyes, even if she wouldn’t let them fall. Dawn felt like crying, too, but for Buffy rather than for Spike. Oh, her poor, messed-up, emotionally traumatized sister; was she terrified of the circumstances or the words or both?
“I l-love you,” said Buffy. She tilted her chin up, eyes fixed straight on the camera. “I love you. Please come home?”
There was no collective “awww,” for which Dawn was grateful; it would have seemed blasphemous. She heard a big sniff next to her and turned, expecting to see Andrew. Instead, Xander had his head bent and was digging in his pocket. Without a word, Dawn offered him a tissue from her purse and then swiped at her own eyes. On her other side, Anaheed blew her nose.
“She’s so brave,” whispered Andrew, and for the first time in a while, Dawn wholeheartedly agreed with him.
“I’m sure he will,” said Harmony, and Dawn was amazed to hear her sounding suspiciously croaky. “And we have a special present for you for when he does.” She beckoned toward the wings, and an assistant strode out carrying a large wrapped package.
Dawn sat up straighter, melancholy forgotten; this was not on the approved schedule! Buffy’s panicked eyes flew to her, but Dawn could only stare back helplessly. What was Harmony-
The assistant handed the present to Harmony, who dumped it in Buffy’s lap. “Open it!” she squealed, looking as excited as though she were receiving the surprise.
Buffy slit the taped sides unbearably slowly, like she expected to find a bomb. When the last fold was gone, her eyes widened, and a hand went to her mouth.
“What is it?” demanded Andrew, futilely craning his neck.
“Shut up. Hold it up!” muttered Xander.
“Blackout curtains!” Harmony cried, and impatiently pulled away the wrapping to reveal a plastic package full of blue cloth on Buffy’s lap. “For your bedroom, for when Blondie Bear comes home!”
“Oh,” breathed Xander, and Dawn squeezed his hand tightly. A lump was swelling in her throat; she didn’t trust herself to speak, especially as she watched her sister.
Onstage, tears were streaming steadily down Buffy’s face.