Three months on and it's still my fault. They all tell me it's not, but I know they're wrong. They tell me I'm just a kid and none of this was my doing.
And I bite back the retort that I'm not a kid, I'm a manufactured thing, a former blob of energy, a now useless key.
And I have to take responsibility.
I'm the oldest one left.
It's funny, you know, at the same I feel both fourteen going on fifteen and several million zillion going on infinity. My little made up shoulders don't bear the burden well of so many millennia.
Hell, they don't bear the nearly fifteen years either, or even the eleven months I've physically been on this plane in this body.
Buffy always bore the burden so easily, at least it seemed to me that she did. Even after mom's death, she carried on. Sometimes I wondered if she was on automatic or something, but things got done. Laundry, housework, patrolling, nagging.
Nothing gets done now.
I've never been a neat-freak and now I just can't find the energy or desire to clean. I wash dishes when I have nothing left to eat off of, ditto with my clothes. I never make my bed. The vacuum hasn't been run in nearly two weeks and I think something's growing in the cheese drawer.
It's not like I've had tons of activities to keep me busy or anything, I just haven't been able to find the point to keeping a neat and tidy house. I'm sure there's one somewhere, and my mom or Buffy would know it, but it's beyond my grasp.
Beyond Giles', too.
He moved in with me--not in a dirty way! I mean, he's like grandpa age! Anyway, he moved in to look after me. It was decided--not by me--that I needed a guardian and he was the most responsible adult around.
No one asked me if I wanted a guardian. Actually, I wouldn't have minded Spike moving in, but no one mentioned him as a possibility. And, if I'd suggested Spike, they all would have given me these horrified looks--probably even Spike would have--and gone on deciding my life for me.
I don't mind Giles being here, and I know I wouldn't have understood paying bills or handling insurance money and all that, but sometimes I wonder why a blob of energy needs a guardian.
I guess it's kind of sad that I see myself that way these days, without my mom and Buffy to affirm my humanity. Giles and the others do their best, but it's not the same. It's not family.
It's not Summers.
My body is definitely Summers' material or Buffy's sacrifice wouldn't have stopped the dimensions collapsing, but my mind is more and more something else. Late at night, when I can't sleep, I find myself thinking about why I am as I am. Why is my personality the way it is? Why did the monks think I would behave this way or say these things? Who came up with the character flaws? The temper? The intense love of N'Sync?
When Buffy was alive, I could just be Dawn. I accepted that Dawn was who I was and that the whole package was me. But, now that Buffy's gone, I find it hard to do that.
Sometimes I think I'm like that little boy in the cartoon who blames everything on the ghost of 'not me'. But, I've placed everything on 'not me' except the physical form. 'Not me' is fourteen years old, has a crush on Spike, loves pop music, cherry popsicles, banana flavored bubble gum, sneaking cigarettes behind the gym, sketching horses, swinging on the swing set like a little kid, riding a bike through rain puddles, and writing in journals.
The physical body of me doesn't seem to like doing much of anything these days.
School starts in a couple weeks. High School. I should be thrilled, nervous, scared to death. I remember last Fall, before the key, before mom and Buffy died, how my friends and I would sit in the cafeteria over tamale surprise and giggle about everything we were going to do once we got to high school. Everything was going to be different, better. We'd be glamorous, adult, beautiful. We'd have boyfriends who would take us out on real dates in their own cars, not guys we met at the school dances who had to go home with their dads.
I haven't seen any of my friends since Buffy's funeral. The school district let me finish the semester at home--the one thing Giles did make me do were my homework assignments and attend the year end tests. Since then, I've pretty much stayed at home or gone to the magic shop.
You would think that with Buffy gone the evil would be gone, but, nope. The Scooby Gang still fights the good fight, with Spike in the lead now, not Buffy. There are even more demons here now than before, which really sucks, but Spike is one hundred times more ferocious than Buffy at annihilating them.
I asked Giles if the new Slayer would show up, but he said there wouldn't be one. I hadn't realized that.
Faith's the only Slayer and she's in jail in L.A. That's not good.
For a while, I wondered if I would be a Slayer. If it was in my blood and everything, but I guess not. For all my other- worldliness, I'm physically a nearly fifteen year old with the upper body strength of a kitten.
Nobody would let me patrol anyway.
They still treat me like a delicate little flower or something, and try to shelter me from the nastiness.
I *am* the nastiness, but no one seems to get that but me.
Three months on and Buffy's dead and I'm responsible, but I'm not really living. I'm...
Existing?
Not living the life she wanted for me, not yet at least. I just can't seem to do it. Can't seem to find any enjoyment in anything, and every time I try, it just gets harder. Every time I hear her words in my head about living, all I feel is guilt and sorrow and loss.
I miss her so much. I thought that nothing would hurt as badly as mom dying, but losing Buffy is even worse. She was my last tie to humanity. Without her I just don't know what to be.
Dawn? Key? Blob of energy? I was all that combined for eight months or so. Why is it so hard to be that without my sister?
End