[fic] i'd howl to the moon if i thought you'd hear me
fic: i'd howl to the moon if i thought you'd hear me
fandom: btvs
characters: dawn, buffy, (joyce)
word count: 1338
prompt: for lynzie914 who prompted dawn, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
summary: dawn and buffy come to a crossroads and think back on their relationship and what words have done to both keep them together and drive them a part. allusions to diamonds and toads by charles perrault. joyce's bedtime story inspired by Toad Words (because if the toad sister doesn't remind you of dawn and a dragon being born from a drop of her blood, then you need to reexamine your devotion to fairy tale allusions).
[this is a sad story of princesses and sisters and silences and words and heroes and girls who spit out diamonds and toads]
When she thinks of her sister, she thinks of the sound of her voice rising and falling in the back seat as she swung her legs from side to side as if to the beat of the lights that passed on the highway, flash flash flash the lights and swing swing swing her legs and under all that the steady hum of a thin, child’s voice.
She never sang along to the radio with them. Buffy and their mom in the front seat dancing and singing their heads off and laughing at the cars that passed and stared. And they never cared, just tossed their heads back and forth and sang badly and in the backs seat little sister just smiled and nodded her head and swing swing swung her legs.
It’s funny that the first thing she learns about her sister is that she’s made of words.
And the first thing her sister does is destroy the words that are no longer hers.
And she can no longer remember anything that Dawn ever said, just remembers the hum of her voice in the backseat. She thinks if there was such a thing as time travel and she could go sit in that car again, all she’d hear is the sound of a voice rising and falling and no words at all. They wasted all her words on pages and pages that she burned. They put all their words in her long, silky, dynamic hair, in her perfect legs, in her nose that freckles in the summer time, in her eyes that glint green when she’s angry.
When she thinks of her sister, she ought to think of puns and wrinkled noses and laughing in the kitchen at a joke that was probably bad but still made them feel good somehow. When she thinks of her sister she should think of words.
Buffy is Slayer comma the and she takes words to make them her own. You always feel like she’s better at the words you give her than anyone ever has been. Right there, on her feet, she’s witty and funny and self-exposing and sad without you even noticing.
These are the things that she should think of when she thinks of her sister.
But Dawn doesn’t like to think of other people’s words.
They are the silences.
Walking away down a hallway and not saying goodbye or good luck or anything meaningful or hollow because they are and that’s what matters.
Standing at the bottom of the stairwell kicking each other out of the way so they can stand tall and not really saying anything at all.
Sitting on the floor of the morgue staring up at the cloth that covers their mother and all the words leave the room.
Watching the words that define one of them and tie the other one down to the earth plume up in smoke and there’s no words for that either.
Which is why she feels so guilty when she stands at the bottom of the stairs and opens her mouth.
When she thinks of her sister being, in the space after the moment when she became, Buffy remembers silence stretching out and filling up all the space in the Universe. Sitting with her books at the table, cleaning the kitchen after it was a makeshift hospital, watching television and barely moving and when she laughs there’s no sound.
Dawn made words tumble out and fall like a song, like they belonged to the world and not to her and she had to give them back.
(Buffy twists the words the world gives her and gives them back different, changed, beautiful, sad. She breaks the hearts of words with her lips and tongues.)
Dawn made words part of the world again, she makes silence a religion.
Silence that fills up empty voids of space with liquid green gold. It isn’t peaceful or destructive - it’s longing.
Like a shadow made physical.
If you can imagine that.
Which is why it breaks her heart when her sister stands at the bottom of the stairs and says the one thing they secretly vowed never to say to each other.
There is a story that their mother used to tell them, one curled up into each side of her - one light and one a shadow (isn’t that funny? then you haven’t been listening) - about sisters that made magic when they spoke. One made toads and frogs and snakes appear with her words. The other made diamonds and rubies and long strings of pearls.
The story their mother told was different than any version Dawn was ever able to find. She poured through books and manuscripts and raised ghosts and screamed at demons, but they all just smiled at the being with a human mother who made a story that wasn’t anything but a story.
In every version it is a curse, the evil sister speaks foul words and spits up foul things and the beautiful sister speaks lovely words and gives the world an extra shine. In the story the sisters hate each other. In this story one sister is a villain and one is a hero. (Clearly the madman who wrote this story had never met a pair of sisters in his pathetic life.)
In their mother’s stories, their curse was a gift the sisters used to have fantastic adventures and protect each other. In Dawn’s favorite adventure, a cruel youngest son of a youngest son sought the hand of the girl that spoke in jewels, he wanted her beauty and her gift to bring him wealth. She hated him. And so her sister came to her side and spoke riddles and jokes and poems and sang limericks until the room was full with her slimy bounty. He left screaming. And they spent the rest of the day playing with their new pets and not saying a words.
Because the jewels cut at her throat and made her tongue bleed and the snakes tore at her vocal cords and the frogs left a thick coat of slime in her mouth so they only spoke when it was absolutely necessary.
And they only spoke to each other.
Armageddons come and go. Why are you insisting on throwing yourself into this one?
I’m the Slayer. It’s what I do.
You’ll die.
You don’t know that.
Buffy. I am telling you. No. You can’t do this.
You can’t stop me.
I can’t watch, either.
What are you saying?
When your sister is a hero and you give birth to monsters, there’s something you learn very early on. You learn how to sit silently in the trenches, how to hold your breath, how to pray to a god you don’t believe in. You learn to reach out your hand and squeeze when it’s time to face death and you both aren’t sure what’s on the other end.
You learn to walk into battle regardless of the odds.
You learn to trust their heroic judgment, to nod, to rally the troops.
You learn to be a lieutenant.
You walk through fire because your sister is a hero and you are not.
You never say goodbye and you never walk away.
That’s the deal.
That’s what you were created for.
I’m saying goodbye, Buffy.
Goodbye?
I’m not going with you. I’m not staying. I’m not watching this fucking happen again.
Dawn?
Buff-- …
I love you.
I love you.
Goodbye.
(She doesn’t die. She never dies.
But Dawn has learned that sometimes the alternative is worse.
Sometimes you spit out snakes and frogs to save your sister from a suitor.
And sometimes you lock your lips up tight and say nothing at all and walk away.
Because nothing inside you can save her.
And not trying is better than failing.)
(Either way you only have yourself to blame.
But this way she can’t thank you for the wound in her side that bleeds until all the blood that keeps her alive is on the floor beneath your feet.)
fandom: btvs
characters: dawn, buffy, (joyce)
word count: 1338
prompt: for lynzie914 who prompted dawn, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
summary: dawn and buffy come to a crossroads and think back on their relationship and what words have done to both keep them together and drive them a part. allusions to diamonds and toads by charles perrault. joyce's bedtime story inspired by Toad Words (because if the toad sister doesn't remind you of dawn and a dragon being born from a drop of her blood, then you need to reexamine your devotion to fairy tale allusions).
[this is a sad story of princesses and sisters and silences and words and heroes and girls who spit out diamonds and toads]
When she thinks of her sister, she thinks of the sound of her voice rising and falling in the back seat as she swung her legs from side to side as if to the beat of the lights that passed on the highway, flash flash flash the lights and swing swing swing her legs and under all that the steady hum of a thin, child’s voice.
She never sang along to the radio with them. Buffy and their mom in the front seat dancing and singing their heads off and laughing at the cars that passed and stared. And they never cared, just tossed their heads back and forth and sang badly and in the backs seat little sister just smiled and nodded her head and swing swing swung her legs.
It’s funny that the first thing she learns about her sister is that she’s made of words.
And the first thing her sister does is destroy the words that are no longer hers.
And she can no longer remember anything that Dawn ever said, just remembers the hum of her voice in the backseat. She thinks if there was such a thing as time travel and she could go sit in that car again, all she’d hear is the sound of a voice rising and falling and no words at all. They wasted all her words on pages and pages that she burned. They put all their words in her long, silky, dynamic hair, in her perfect legs, in her nose that freckles in the summer time, in her eyes that glint green when she’s angry.
When she thinks of her sister, she ought to think of puns and wrinkled noses and laughing in the kitchen at a joke that was probably bad but still made them feel good somehow. When she thinks of her sister she should think of words.
Buffy is Slayer comma the and she takes words to make them her own. You always feel like she’s better at the words you give her than anyone ever has been. Right there, on her feet, she’s witty and funny and self-exposing and sad without you even noticing.
These are the things that she should think of when she thinks of her sister.
But Dawn doesn’t like to think of other people’s words.
They are the silences.
Walking away down a hallway and not saying goodbye or good luck or anything meaningful or hollow because they are and that’s what matters.
Standing at the bottom of the stairwell kicking each other out of the way so they can stand tall and not really saying anything at all.
Sitting on the floor of the morgue staring up at the cloth that covers their mother and all the words leave the room.
Watching the words that define one of them and tie the other one down to the earth plume up in smoke and there’s no words for that either.
Which is why she feels so guilty when she stands at the bottom of the stairs and opens her mouth.
When she thinks of her sister being, in the space after the moment when she became, Buffy remembers silence stretching out and filling up all the space in the Universe. Sitting with her books at the table, cleaning the kitchen after it was a makeshift hospital, watching television and barely moving and when she laughs there’s no sound.
Dawn made words tumble out and fall like a song, like they belonged to the world and not to her and she had to give them back.
(Buffy twists the words the world gives her and gives them back different, changed, beautiful, sad. She breaks the hearts of words with her lips and tongues.)
Dawn made words part of the world again, she makes silence a religion.
Silence that fills up empty voids of space with liquid green gold. It isn’t peaceful or destructive - it’s longing.
Like a shadow made physical.
If you can imagine that.
Which is why it breaks her heart when her sister stands at the bottom of the stairs and says the one thing they secretly vowed never to say to each other.
There is a story that their mother used to tell them, one curled up into each side of her - one light and one a shadow (isn’t that funny? then you haven’t been listening) - about sisters that made magic when they spoke. One made toads and frogs and snakes appear with her words. The other made diamonds and rubies and long strings of pearls.
The story their mother told was different than any version Dawn was ever able to find. She poured through books and manuscripts and raised ghosts and screamed at demons, but they all just smiled at the being with a human mother who made a story that wasn’t anything but a story.
In every version it is a curse, the evil sister speaks foul words and spits up foul things and the beautiful sister speaks lovely words and gives the world an extra shine. In the story the sisters hate each other. In this story one sister is a villain and one is a hero. (Clearly the madman who wrote this story had never met a pair of sisters in his pathetic life.)
In their mother’s stories, their curse was a gift the sisters used to have fantastic adventures and protect each other. In Dawn’s favorite adventure, a cruel youngest son of a youngest son sought the hand of the girl that spoke in jewels, he wanted her beauty and her gift to bring him wealth. She hated him. And so her sister came to her side and spoke riddles and jokes and poems and sang limericks until the room was full with her slimy bounty. He left screaming. And they spent the rest of the day playing with their new pets and not saying a words.
Because the jewels cut at her throat and made her tongue bleed and the snakes tore at her vocal cords and the frogs left a thick coat of slime in her mouth so they only spoke when it was absolutely necessary.
And they only spoke to each other.
Armageddons come and go. Why are you insisting on throwing yourself into this one?
I’m the Slayer. It’s what I do.
You’ll die.
You don’t know that.
Buffy. I am telling you. No. You can’t do this.
You can’t stop me.
I can’t watch, either.
What are you saying?
When your sister is a hero and you give birth to monsters, there’s something you learn very early on. You learn how to sit silently in the trenches, how to hold your breath, how to pray to a god you don’t believe in. You learn to reach out your hand and squeeze when it’s time to face death and you both aren’t sure what’s on the other end.
You learn to walk into battle regardless of the odds.
You learn to trust their heroic judgment, to nod, to rally the troops.
You learn to be a lieutenant.
You walk through fire because your sister is a hero and you are not.
You never say goodbye and you never walk away.
That’s the deal.
That’s what you were created for.
I’m saying goodbye, Buffy.
Goodbye?
I’m not going with you. I’m not staying. I’m not watching this fucking happen again.
Dawn?
Buff-- …
I love you.
I love you.
Goodbye.
(She doesn’t die. She never dies.
But Dawn has learned that sometimes the alternative is worse.
Sometimes you spit out snakes and frogs to save your sister from a suitor.
And sometimes you lock your lips up tight and say nothing at all and walk away.
Because nothing inside you can save her.
And not trying is better than failing.)
(Either way you only have yourself to blame.
But this way she can’t thank you for the wound in her side that bleeds until all the blood that keeps her alive is on the floor beneath your feet.)