She came back wrong. That was the only feasible explanation for her behavior post-post-mortem. She had come back terribly terribly wrong. That explained it all, I thought. The silence. The glare.

The birds.

The first one... well, I'd assumed it was an accident. A neighbor's cat. A playful dog. Some natural thing that caused the baby bird with the broken neck to choose the front stoop as a final resting place.

The second made me suspicious. Right under her window where the garden was lay a headless sparrow... I never could find the head.

I knew with the third one, though.

No cat could have nailed the bird's wings and feet to the tree in the backyard. Few animals would appreciate the dried blood stigmata on its delicate body. And anyone with a soul would have at least killed it first.

I pulled it down carefully, but it was almost gone anyway. I remember standing near the tree and looking at my bloodied hands, then up at her window. She looked back at me and a shiver ran down my spine screaming evil, evil.

But this was Dawn. Not an evil thing. Little Dawnie who used to cry during thunderstorms...

Oh, she came back wrong...

---------------------------------------------------------------

We didn't comment on her newfound green thumb, nor did we question her choice of belladonna plant. After that we were all careful not to eat anything she gave us.

Buffy's plan to tether her to the real world after her otherworld experience by getting her a pet seemed like nothing but a mistake to me, and frankly, Xander agreed. Buffy and Willow were determined, however, and it was hard to bite back an 'I Told You So' when the puppy went missing.

I didn't tell anyone that I found it. I gave it a proper burial in the backyard--the pieces I could find, anyway.

Even Spike began avoiding her after that.

Willow was stalwart in her belief that Dawn could be made of this world again. That it didn't matter what mystical powers she'd had, maybe still had, nor where she'd been during her death. Willow is a person who cannot admit when they are wrong--or in this case, have brought someone back wrong.

After the puppy incident, I was as reluctant to be around Willow as I was to be around Dawn. I don't know what I wanted her to do to fix our mistake, but I knew that denying the change in Dawn wasn't the answer.

Something had to be done.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I lay stomach-down on the bed, reading through volumes so old the bindings were turning to dust. My head sank slowly down and I was nearly asleep when I heard the door click shut.

I stayed as still as possible.

"I know you're awake, Tara." Her voice oozed over me like honey or molasses... something sickly sweet and ultimately bad for you creeping across my skin. I didn't move a muscle.

Footfalls across the floor told me she was walking along the length of the dresser, circling the bed. She hummed softly under her breath. Hush Little Baby had never raised the hair on the back of my neck the way it did now.

"I bet you're wondering... where it went." Her voice was deeper now. Darker with the slightest hint of amusement. What does she mean?

My question was answered as I looked to the nightstand. There, next to my waterglass, sat the sparrow's head. Staring at me with dead black eyes. Seeming almost alive...

I swallowed hard and bit back a scream. For some reason I thought that if I continued to play at sleeping, she might go away. Leave me alone. Give me a chance to get away.

Then her hands were on me, flipping me onto my back before she straddled my waist. I stared at her, frozen in fear.

"See? I knew you were just pretending. But now that you're awake, we can have some fun together. You like to have fun with girls, right Tara?"

I shook my head slowly. Her eyes burned into mine, so much darker than I remember them being. "I think you're lying. I really hate when people lie to me... don't you?"

God, where was Willow? Buffy? Anyone?

She leaned forward and pushed my hair off my forehead with a touch so gentle that I winced. "They're all out, Tara. All gone. Just you and me for hours and hours... but I think we'll be okay. I think we can have a good time, talking about all kinds of girly stuff. Like why you look at me funny. Like why no one eats anything I cook them anymore. Like why you let my bird go."

She traced my eyes gently with one finger as she continued to speak. "You know, when chickens have their heads cut off... their bodies can still run around for minutes afterwards. They can't scream, though. The heads are dead but not the rest of the body. I guess it takes awhile for it to realize the head is gone.."

She leaned over and nipped my earlobe and I shut my eyes tightly. Her breath seemed to flow into my ear canal and straight down my spine. "Do you think that works on humans too?"

Her voice was venemous and seemed to snake its way around my body, seeping under my skin and raising goosebumps. Her hand slid around my throat and tightened slowly, cutting off my air. Freezing my lungs. I felt as thought I were chained to the bed, weighted down with my own fear.

Her hips were grinding into mine, bone on bone and I felt my skin bruising with the force. Her eyes were dark, almost black, and her lips curled back in an expression that made my heart stop. Then I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe.

And the blackness spread from her eyes, clouding my vision until I couldn't see anything. The world was dark, and I was floating somewhere far away from it.

My last thought was whether this would convince Buffy and Willow.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I woke up and the dead sparrow still stared at me. I should have been dead. I vaguely remembered being pulled out of my body at some point... how had I gotten back in it?

I raised a hand and looked through it at the dresser. That explained so much.

She was waiting.

"You are mine now. Bound to me. You will... do things for me. Take orders. Kill things if necessary. You have no choice, of course." The thing speaking to me from Dawn's body was not the girl I knew. It was something beyond evil. Something that shouldn't have ever been allowed to walk this earth.

And I found myself unable to disobey it.

"No one can see you or hear you but me, naturally. You can only touch what I want you to. Think of yourself as my... slave. My servant."

Her voice chilled me to the core.

"Dawni--" My jaw slammed shut.

"You only talk when I say you can. Your first task is to gather sacrifices. I want them alive and unharmed. Birds, squirrels... maybe a cat or two. You will bring me five by tonight. Do you understand? Nod your head."

My head nods. My stomach drops.

"Dismissed." She waves me away like an annoying child. My feet find their way out to the yard. My arms carry an old-fashioned birdcage from the basement.

I use magic to harness three birds and a squirrel, and I tuck them away in the cage. The squirrel chitters angrily and the birds squawk and flutter. An unlucky stray cat crosses my path. It is grey and white and purrs into my ear when I pick it up. A tear trickles down my cheek and I carry the cat and cage back to the house, wondering where Buffy and Willow are and why they aren't here to stop this.

I shudder and enter her bedroom.

"Good kittie," she purrs, petting my head. I cringe in disgust, unable to believe that I once loved this girl. I set the cage on the bed and let the cat loose. The Thing That Was Dawn studies me. "It's only your first day... and I'm in a good mood. Skinning cats does that to me. Funny, isn't it? There really is more than one way to. You're excused. Go play somewhere like a good girl."

I sit in mine and Willow's room. I wonder where my body is, what she'd done with it. I wonder if they even realized I was gone yet. How much time had passed.

If they were still alive.

I fall into an uneasy state of unconsciousness.

---------------------------------------------------------------

When I wake, my body is back and I am in it. I am sore and dirty. I may have been buried somewhere. A thin leather collar is around my neck and there is a small bell on it. When I try to take it off, my hands feel as though they are burning.

She enters the room.

"Do you like your new toy?" Her hands are bloodstained. "I've got to have some way to control you while you're all... tangible."

I realize that the sacrifices... were for me. The selfishness of the act horrifies me and my stomach turns.

She continues talking. "Now go wash up. It's dinner time. Buffy made spaghetti and you are to sit next to me and opposite Buffy. I don't want you near her just yet."

The 'yet' rattles my bones even as my body lifts itself up and heads for the shower. Somehow, I will find a way out of this. Even if I have to die again, this time at my own hand. I will never hurt Willow.

Never.

Willow gives me hurt puppy dog looks throughout dinner as I choke my way through spaghetti and meatballs. I haven't eaten meat in years. I hallucinate during the meal--spiders crawling up my legs, the sparrow's head replacing a meatball as I cut into it. My mind retreats further and further back allowing The Thing That Was Dawn more and more control, but I can't stop it.

I slice into the sparrow's head meatball and put it into my mouth against my will. Bile rises in my throat and is forced back down and all the while it doesn't help that the meatballs taste... strange. When asked about the collar, my mouth lies and says it was Miss Kittie's before she... disappeared. Dawn smirks knowingly and takes a big bite of a meatball.

A million things run through my mind as I try to figure out what's going to happen to me, to all of us... And the whole time I am fading farther, farther away. Dawn sits there, her eyes deep... dark... empty.

Oh, she came back wrong...