This is Me, Being Brave
Author Anviloverheaven
Title This Is Me, Being Brave
Rating PG
Prompt First Dance
Setting Post Series. A dozen years after Chosen
Warning Character Death
A/N Dawn’s getting married, and nobody is terribly happy about it.
This is Me, Being Brave
“We finally picked out the number for our first dance. Pete’s making me practise these weird and wacky moves. He’s still hung up about us going all viral.”
Buffy nodded silently. For split second Dawn allowed herself the luxury of hope, until she noticed the way her sister was clutching her coffee cup. She braced herself for the impending shattering.
“Just say it,” she sighed wearily. “And don’t try and dress it all up.”
Buffy blinked incredulously. “There’s no possible way of dressing this up.”
“Sure there is. You could tell me that I’m too young, like Giles did, or that it’s too soon. That one came from Willow.”
“Well, it is pretty sudden.”
“I’ve known him for five years. There’s nothing sudden about it!”
Well there wasn’t, Dawn reasoned. Two people shared a strong friendship, that over time had developed into something more. It happened all the time. Only now that it had happened to her, there was a giant rush to board the “Are You Sure?” express. Giles, Xander, Willow, even Andrew.
It was easy to shrug off disguised concern with the steadfast knowledge that your sister was in your corner. Dawn had been tied to the tracks before, and Buffy had saved her. Only this time, Buffy was driving the train.
“He’s a demon, Dawnie! My little sister is marrying a demon. Exactly what part of this am I supposed to be okay with?”
And there it was. What it all came down to.
It didn’t matter that Pete was only half demon, or that he’d worked alongside Slayers for a decade, and helped out during at least a dozen apocalypses. It didn’t even matter that he was GQ hot and then some.
All that mattered was the part-demon inside him. The part he’d never attempted to hide, or disguise. The part that Dawn loved because he was a good man in spite of it, or maybe even because of it.
“How about you be okay with the fact that your little sister is almost thirty.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing Dawn.”
“I think I know my own mind. It’s made up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” So there. She fought the urge to poke her tongue out.
“What kind of life would you have? For a start, you couldn’t have children.”
Dawn hadn’t heard that one before, but kids weren’t even on the cards anyway. She’d decided that long before Pete, and Buffy knew it. Which was probably why her sister chose that moment to bring out the big guns.
“Look Dawnie, Pete’s a great guy. I know that. But you both deserve so much more. If you really loved him, you’d let him go.”
“Well that makes a whole bunch of no sense.”
“Think about it. You’re both out there, almost getting killed every other week. How is that fair to either of you?” Buffy stood, and started pacing the kitchen. “And you don’t even know how much of his father he has in him. He could outlive you by decades, Dawn, centuries even. He gets to watch you waste away, and die. He’ll put you in the ground, and live the rest of his life without you. Could you really ask that much from someone you love?”
“We’ve actually had this talk, Buffy. We’ll deal.”
As she watched her sister’s frustrated pacing, Dawn experienced a moment of perfect clarity.
“Oh my god,” she breathed almost silently, meeting Buffy’s eyes. “This isn’t even about me, is it?”
“What?”
“This is about you. It’s always about you. I just wonder whose notes you borrowed. Who it was that gave you the very same speech you’re giving me. Was it Giles, maybe Angel?”
“This isn’t about Spike!”
“I didn’t say it was.”
They both knew better.
“Dawn, I just want you to be happy.”
“Sure you do. Cause giving up on Pete would make me super happy. I could date normal men, maybe even marry an accountant someday. I mean, I can see how happy you are, what with all those normal guys you’re not dating.”
“Don’t,” Buffy slammed her fist down on the table. “Even start!”
There was the sound of wood splintering, then silence. Then Buffy staring blankly at the broken table between them. Dawn felt for her then, so much.
She remembered them running off together when he’d first come back. All giddy and glowing. Then coming home again, poles apart, stilted and raw. Okay, so someone had whispered their doubts in her ear, but Buffy had listened, and wasn’t that just her sister all over. Always a coward when it came to her heart.
“Wow. Way to make the table hurt.”
And then he’d left. With a shrug that lied when it said ‘sometimes things just don’t work out’ and a telling promise to keep in touch with her, and not Buffy. Then weekly emails from across the globe, full of undoubtedly exaggerated recounts of fights, intermixed with travel hints ‘for when you’re done with all that schooling’.
She remembered the last hurried email from him four years ago, on the eve of big battle insert horrifically large number here. She’d never again be able to tease him about not taking his own advice to heart.
It still hurt.
“If you think it’s right, Dawn, and you believe in it, you fight.”
Buffy would always be Buffy, and in her heart, Spike would stay Spike. Though shaped by both, Dawn was neither. There was one thing she was willing to do, that neither of them had.
She stood up slowly, with determination.
“I’m not you Buffy.” Silence still, from across the ruins. “Happiness is precious, especially in our world. None of us ever seem to get enough. That’s why when it comes, we have to grab it and fight for it. Even if that means we end up fighting the people we love. You once told me to be brave, Buffy. So this is me, being brave.”