fic: growing you and me
fic: growing you and me
fandom: btvs
pairing: dawn/Illyria
recipient: for snickfic who wanted the pairing and "growing things" for fem-feb ((sorry this is so late but RL has been a little nuts!))
setting: LA post-NFA
[peter dont you know what a kiss is]Sunnydale was a hole in the ground.
Los Angeles was a burning wreckage.
She supposed that maybe the world didn’t revolve around Southern California and that the disasters that her blood wrought were only a very small problem in comparison with worldwide hunger and disease and (if the talking heads Wesley found so fascinating these days were anything to go by) political corruption.
She also supposed that maybe her blood hadn’t decimated her only known world - like Spike kept whispering to her over and over and over and over and over and …
I need a change of scenery, she had said it like a command like a plea like a little girl begging for a toy please please please listen listen listen
h e a r m e
Buffy had blinked, Sure? Where do you want to go?
Fred called a few days later, and it was decided decided decided. Like all it would take is a new war zone to make her feel like a human being again.
The country the planet the universe the infinite was a war zone there was no where to find peace and anyway, what would she do with something so fragile?
Didn’t take long for it all to come crashing down. For Fred to not be Fred for Spike to get delusions of grandeur and forget about her for Harmony to betray everyone for the world to turn to smoke and ashes and a little girl in the middle laughing and laughing and laughing because thank god this feels normal.
“You are too green,” she said like it didn’t mean far too much.
“You are too blue,” Dawn had sassed back. She was a teen. She was allowed to be sassy even in the aftermath of tragedy. Everything was the aftermath of a tragedy, there was no reprieve, this was the one thing she was certain of.
This wasn’t their first conversation or the most important or one that meant more than any other. It wasn’t even a conversation, it was a passing of insults between two creatures too old and too young and too fresh and cracking with their age that had learned at some indeterminate point that words were slippery, nebulous things they wanted no affiliation with.
“Dennis says things are weird,” she offered to Angel and the team, sometime after the entire world crashed around their ears.
“No shit?” Gunn spit out. Immortality was an ill-fitting suit on him. “I saw a dragon fly past my window this morning. I think things are a bit more than just fucking weird.”
Dawn squinted at him and then left.
She had nothing to fear from anything outside the crumbled remains of the Hyperion. She kept house in Cordy’s old apartment because otherwise Dennis would be lonely and she had feelings about ghosts feeling lonely.
There was too much on everyone’s mind to notice that she wasn’t as afraid as someone her size and age should be. She didn’t blame them. They had turned the known world into hell, that kind of guilt could blind even the best kind of people.
And they weren’t the best kind of people.
“You are too green,” she said from the doorway, head cocked to one side.
“Go to hell,” Dawn called from her kitchen.
“The others think we are already there.” She paused, stepping into the living room delicately. “You do not.”
“It’s just an expression, and you know that,” Dawn had very little patience for immortal gods that pretended they didn’t understand humanity. It was stale. It tasted like a game on her tongue and she was too young to be interested in games.
“But that’s not why you said it.”
Dawn handed her a beer from the fridge and didn’t respond.
It was interesting being seen, if only for a moment, and by something not-quite human.
Who was human these days anyway? Humanity was fucking overrated.
Things were weird, Dennis didn’t lie. The world was adjusting. The harder the Hyperion Team fought to get things back the way they were, the more the earth welcomed the changes with open arms.
She didn’t say anything. She selfishly didn’t want to them to know she wasn’t interested in fighting. She relied on their good opinion of her.
“You like it this way,” they sat on her balcony and watched a group of winged beasts dance through the night sky.
“Don’t you?” Dawn replied.
Illyria blinked at her,”I like you this way.”
And that felt like nothing at all.
“Things are getting better!” Angel’s eyes were a little manic. “We’re winning!”
Spike warned her with his eyes not to laugh, and so she disappeared out the door. Something with a bloody snout begged for food and she smiled at it because it belonged to her.
They were losing and knew it.
She skipped all the way back to her apartment.
“Nothing grows here,” Gunn whined.
And that wasn’t strictly true. Things were beginning to grow. Small infants were blossoming into monsters. Steam was building into volcanoes. The world was shifting and growing and changing all around them. Everything was black and red and grey and purple and metallic.
What he meant was: nothing that I know grows here. I cannot recognize the world outside my window.
What he meant was: this fruit is wrong this sky is wrong this ground is wrong.
What he meant was: I don’t fit here.
“She does,” Illyria said, glancing at Dawn.
No one noticed. She was prone to say things they didn’t want to understand.
Ignorance is bliss.
There were strange plants on her balcony, in her bathroom, in her kitchen, clinging to the walls of the living room. Plants that nipped at her heels with affection as she walked by, with brilliant neon blooms, with intoxicating and possibly poisonous scents, bearing fruit that looked like a challenge more than a food.
She ate more than any of them, was the strongest, she was flourishing as they died slowly.
Illyria liked to stand in her living room, still as a statue, arms and legs outstretched, letting the vines reach and reach and reach towards her like she belonged to them. She wanted to belong to them. She wanted to belong there. She never said it outloud because words didn’t mean enough.
“You kiss like a child,” she said with a scowl.
“I am a child!” Dawn laughed. “What is childish about my kissing?”
“You are too eager, too hungry,” she said these things as if they were the most precious things in the whole world. She was very bad at insults these days.
Dawn’s eyes flashed, and she preceded to show Illyria just how hungry she was.
They stopped checking in at the Hyperion. Stopped going out on campaigns to kill the demon hordes.
They spent a lot of time wrapped around each other, naked and eager.
“These bodies,” Illyria marveled. “They are truly superior.”
Dawn nodded sagely, “To be woman is to be divine.”
They didn’t laugh. They were divine.
They only laughed at lies.
“I found you something today,” she was holding something behind her back and Dawn jumped in her eagerness. Sometimes she was still the smallest, smallest, smallest baby that had ever been born. Probably because she had never experienced birth. Something about the pressure and pain and stress of birth makes adults of us all. She didn’t have this reality pressing on her bones.
She held out a plant, something like a tree, it’s long black roots already twinning between her fingers.
It was their first sign that the world was moving on, growing and learning and adapting. Dawn put it on her balcony and smiled.
“We should name her,” she said excitedly.
“A plant does not need a name,” Illyria scolded.
“Everything that grows needs a name,” Dawn countered, wrapping her arm around Illyria’s waist. Something immortal stiffened in fear and something desperately human melted. Or the reverse.
Dawn pressed a chaste kiss on Illyria’s lips, “I will name her kiss.”
Illyria brought her a thousand plants, searched the whole desiccated city for anything growing, bringing them back in her small hands.
For each she received a kiss.
And it was the start of something or nothing.
They stopped going to the Hyperion, let the memories of their bodies die and became something new.
Maybe they grew.
fandom: btvs
pairing: dawn/Illyria
recipient: for snickfic who wanted the pairing and "growing things" for fem-feb ((sorry this is so late but RL has been a little nuts!))
setting: LA post-NFA
[peter dont you know what a kiss is]Sunnydale was a hole in the ground.
Los Angeles was a burning wreckage.
She supposed that maybe the world didn’t revolve around Southern California and that the disasters that her blood wrought were only a very small problem in comparison with worldwide hunger and disease and (if the talking heads Wesley found so fascinating these days were anything to go by) political corruption.
She also supposed that maybe her blood hadn’t decimated her only known world - like Spike kept whispering to her over and over and over and over and over and …
I need a change of scenery, she had said it like a command like a plea like a little girl begging for a toy please please please listen listen listen
h e a r m e
Buffy had blinked, Sure? Where do you want to go?
Fred called a few days later, and it was decided decided decided. Like all it would take is a new war zone to make her feel like a human being again.
The country the planet the universe the infinite was a war zone there was no where to find peace and anyway, what would she do with something so fragile?
Didn’t take long for it all to come crashing down. For Fred to not be Fred for Spike to get delusions of grandeur and forget about her for Harmony to betray everyone for the world to turn to smoke and ashes and a little girl in the middle laughing and laughing and laughing because thank god this feels normal.
“You are too green,” she said like it didn’t mean far too much.
“You are too blue,” Dawn had sassed back. She was a teen. She was allowed to be sassy even in the aftermath of tragedy. Everything was the aftermath of a tragedy, there was no reprieve, this was the one thing she was certain of.
This wasn’t their first conversation or the most important or one that meant more than any other. It wasn’t even a conversation, it was a passing of insults between two creatures too old and too young and too fresh and cracking with their age that had learned at some indeterminate point that words were slippery, nebulous things they wanted no affiliation with.
“Dennis says things are weird,” she offered to Angel and the team, sometime after the entire world crashed around their ears.
“No shit?” Gunn spit out. Immortality was an ill-fitting suit on him. “I saw a dragon fly past my window this morning. I think things are a bit more than just fucking weird.”
Dawn squinted at him and then left.
She had nothing to fear from anything outside the crumbled remains of the Hyperion. She kept house in Cordy’s old apartment because otherwise Dennis would be lonely and she had feelings about ghosts feeling lonely.
There was too much on everyone’s mind to notice that she wasn’t as afraid as someone her size and age should be. She didn’t blame them. They had turned the known world into hell, that kind of guilt could blind even the best kind of people.
And they weren’t the best kind of people.
“You are too green,” she said from the doorway, head cocked to one side.
“Go to hell,” Dawn called from her kitchen.
“The others think we are already there.” She paused, stepping into the living room delicately. “You do not.”
“It’s just an expression, and you know that,” Dawn had very little patience for immortal gods that pretended they didn’t understand humanity. It was stale. It tasted like a game on her tongue and she was too young to be interested in games.
“But that’s not why you said it.”
Dawn handed her a beer from the fridge and didn’t respond.
It was interesting being seen, if only for a moment, and by something not-quite human.
Who was human these days anyway? Humanity was fucking overrated.
Things were weird, Dennis didn’t lie. The world was adjusting. The harder the Hyperion Team fought to get things back the way they were, the more the earth welcomed the changes with open arms.
She didn’t say anything. She selfishly didn’t want to them to know she wasn’t interested in fighting. She relied on their good opinion of her.
“You like it this way,” they sat on her balcony and watched a group of winged beasts dance through the night sky.
“Don’t you?” Dawn replied.
Illyria blinked at her,”I like you this way.”
And that felt like nothing at all.
“Things are getting better!” Angel’s eyes were a little manic. “We’re winning!”
Spike warned her with his eyes not to laugh, and so she disappeared out the door. Something with a bloody snout begged for food and she smiled at it because it belonged to her.
They were losing and knew it.
She skipped all the way back to her apartment.
“Nothing grows here,” Gunn whined.
And that wasn’t strictly true. Things were beginning to grow. Small infants were blossoming into monsters. Steam was building into volcanoes. The world was shifting and growing and changing all around them. Everything was black and red and grey and purple and metallic.
What he meant was: nothing that I know grows here. I cannot recognize the world outside my window.
What he meant was: this fruit is wrong this sky is wrong this ground is wrong.
What he meant was: I don’t fit here.
“She does,” Illyria said, glancing at Dawn.
No one noticed. She was prone to say things they didn’t want to understand.
Ignorance is bliss.
There were strange plants on her balcony, in her bathroom, in her kitchen, clinging to the walls of the living room. Plants that nipped at her heels with affection as she walked by, with brilliant neon blooms, with intoxicating and possibly poisonous scents, bearing fruit that looked like a challenge more than a food.
She ate more than any of them, was the strongest, she was flourishing as they died slowly.
Illyria liked to stand in her living room, still as a statue, arms and legs outstretched, letting the vines reach and reach and reach towards her like she belonged to them. She wanted to belong to them. She wanted to belong there. She never said it outloud because words didn’t mean enough.
“You kiss like a child,” she said with a scowl.
“I am a child!” Dawn laughed. “What is childish about my kissing?”
“You are too eager, too hungry,” she said these things as if they were the most precious things in the whole world. She was very bad at insults these days.
Dawn’s eyes flashed, and she preceded to show Illyria just how hungry she was.
They stopped checking in at the Hyperion. Stopped going out on campaigns to kill the demon hordes.
They spent a lot of time wrapped around each other, naked and eager.
“These bodies,” Illyria marveled. “They are truly superior.”
Dawn nodded sagely, “To be woman is to be divine.”
They didn’t laugh. They were divine.
They only laughed at lies.
“I found you something today,” she was holding something behind her back and Dawn jumped in her eagerness. Sometimes she was still the smallest, smallest, smallest baby that had ever been born. Probably because she had never experienced birth. Something about the pressure and pain and stress of birth makes adults of us all. She didn’t have this reality pressing on her bones.
She held out a plant, something like a tree, it’s long black roots already twinning between her fingers.
It was their first sign that the world was moving on, growing and learning and adapting. Dawn put it on her balcony and smiled.
“We should name her,” she said excitedly.
“A plant does not need a name,” Illyria scolded.
“Everything that grows needs a name,” Dawn countered, wrapping her arm around Illyria’s waist. Something immortal stiffened in fear and something desperately human melted. Or the reverse.
Dawn pressed a chaste kiss on Illyria’s lips, “I will name her kiss.”
Illyria brought her a thousand plants, searched the whole desiccated city for anything growing, bringing them back in her small hands.
For each she received a kiss.
And it was the start of something or nothing.
They stopped going to the Hyperion, let the memories of their bodies die and became something new.
Maybe they grew.