Summary: Dawn's pov after The Gift.
Spoilers: The Gift.
Disclaimer: They're Joss's people, but he kills them all anyway. Mean Joss.
Rating: PG
Thanks to Tracy, for betaing, 'cause she's wonderful at that. :)

The Same
By Amy
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They don't look at me anymore. Not directly at least. It's more like
they'll look at my shoulder or my forehead or my hair. But not my face. Not
my eyes.

It's because they blame me.

Oh, I know they love me. And I know that they know that I couldn't have
stopped Buffy from doing what she did. But then again, she never would have
done what she did if I had done it first. If I hadn't have hesitated just
for a second before turning and jumping into the pool of lights, Buffy would
still be here. And I wouldn't feel this aching all the time, under my
ribcage. This pressure building into something awful that makes me cry every
night.

I hate to think about it. I'm the only Summers' girl left, and I'm not even
real.

My sister died for someone who wasn't real.

I shouldn't have let her die.

They all know it. They try to comfort me, try to be there in anyway they can
be. I'm living with Giles temporarily. Amazingly, I still haven't been able
to get contact my dad-- he either doesn't know that Buffy's dead, or he
doesn't care. It's been over a month and nothing. But Giles takes care of
me, in the only way he knows how I guess.

He does it without looking at me.

Tara does. She cared about Buffy, but not in the same way as the rest of us
I think. As them. She still looks me in the eyes. She's still happy to see
me. And I love Tara; I think she's great.

But I want them. I want the people she loved the most.

I got one of them, if only for a single night. Angel came down as soon as
Willow told him. He came down to be with me. I never thought I liked Angel
until that moment, because I remembered how often Buffy would cry over him.
He hugged me for a long time. He told me that he loved her and that he
would always love me. I was a part of her. The only part left, and he would
be there for me. He would protect me.

After that, I knew why Buffy had loved him so much. I finally saw in him
what she had, what hardly anyone else could.

Although, I have to admit that I was surprised that he was so open about what
he was feeling. He even cried.

And he looked at me that night. He looked at me and held me every time I
cried and comforted me in a way that no one else could. Because he'd loved
her, as much as I loved her. And he shared that with me.

Willow comes to Giles's a lot. So does Xander. They want to be around me, I
guess, because I link them to her. Which is really okay with me. I don't
mind it. I like their company. Only it's different now. Now I'm scared
when I'm with them.

Oh, they'd never let anything happen to me; that's not what I mean.

But I'm scared of what they're thinking. I'm scared because I see it in
their eyes, even if maybe they refuse to admit to themselves that it's there.
They blame me. They think, "If it weren't for Dawn, Buffy would be here
now," and I know it's true. Buffy would be here now if it weren't for me.

I don't think they'd ever say it. But I'm terrified that one day they'll
prove me wrong. I'm scared that the people who loved her most in the world
will end up hating me because I took Buffy away from them. I don't want them
to hate me.

It's tiring enough, hating myself all day.

God, I miss Buffy.

I miss her every single second. I think it's weird how sometimes I thought I
hated her when she was alive... I can remember instances but now I feel so
stupid over the reasons. Mom loved her. Yeah, that was horrible of Buffy,
that our mom loved her and gave her a special set of rules. Especially
considering that she had a job that could kill her at anytime and finally
did. And she was sometimes mean to me. We were sisters, though; was it
supposed to be happiness and light all of the time?

I could never hate her now. I love her too much. I miss her too much.

I'm older now.

I feel so old. I lost my whole family in the span of a few months. Mom,
Buffy... Xander and Willow and Giles. I feel like I was the one who died. I
wish I was. I could never tell anyone how badly I wish that.

Buffy told me to live. For her. I'm trying. I'm doing the best I can to
get through every day without... Just to get through every day. I try to
smile when I see something funny, but I think that piece of me was buried
with her. That hope of amusement and joy. That feeling of connection.

I'm dying in my own way, I suppose.

She should have let me jump.

School starts again soon. I don't know how I'll go. My friends have started
calling me again... At first it was a flood of calls, from everyone-- even
people I didn't know, people who Buffy had saved once and changed their lives
forever-- and then the calls dwindled, and everyone left me alone. But last
week it was like, boom. It's okay to call again. It's been a couple of
months. Of course she's fine. She's normal again. It doesn't hurt as bad;
how could it? She's done the whole, 'giving it time' thing. She's healed.

But I'm not. I don't think I ever will be. How does someone heal from a
blow like this? It's too much, too fast.

Maybe not too fast. Maybe just too much.

The sky seems darker now, even in the middle of the day. Things seem
blurred-- although I don't know, maybe that could just be because I always
have tears in my eyes-- and I can't concentrate very well. The world without
Buffy is duller, dimmer, boring and gray.

Riley wrote Buffy a letter two weeks ago. He's coming back tomorrow. He
couldn't write before because he was deep undercover or something like
that... I don't really understand it. But I'm going to have to tell him that
she's gone. I'm going to have to see that look in his eyes when he realizes
that she's dead, after he'd written her that he still loved her so much.

I cried when I read that letter.

Every time I read that letter, in fact. I've read it sort of obsessively.
There's something about reading something from someone who doesn't know she's
gone, who still loves her and has no idea that I killed her, that her love
for me killed her. Someone who wants to see her again.

That's how he put it. "I want to see you again. I miss your smile. I still
love you..."

I miss her smile and still love her too.

I'm trying to not remember so much. I'm trying to remember what I was like
before all of this, but forget what Buffy was like so that I won't hurt so
much. It doesn't work, though. It doesn't work because I dream about her
constantly, think about her constantly. Sometimes I see someone with the
color of hair that she had, or who walks like her, and I think it *is* her
and for a second I'm so unbelievably happy. And then it's not her and my
world falls apart again.

I hear people say things about how it stops hurting. About how one day I'll
be doing something and I'll realize that for a second, I wasn't thinking
about her. But it's not true. It couldn't be, because now my heart revolves
around my memories of her.

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, they called her.

But she was just my big sister.

I can't stop the hurt. Sometimes I don't think I want to stop the hurt. It
makes me feel whole, like if I'm hurting because she's gone then maybe she's
not really... If I'm always thinking about her, she'll never really be gone.

But that's a lie, too. Because she is gone.

And nothing's ever going to be the same.


The End

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