But when they strike, they strike hard, and she can lose entire eras of her existence: a moment, a month, a year. Sometimes she forgets that she was ever born at all, and disappears into the visions and lives the disjointed memories of Slayers past, and sometimes with the other kinds of no-longer-living things that came in contact with them in their brief lives. Her unsteady mind houses an ever expanding cast of the long dead and buried (and sometimes risen again) that walk inside her head day and night, pushing out the thin, bloody shreds of who she really was, or might have been. If she was ever just Dana at all...

They speak through her, and sometimes, she thinks she wouldn’t Be at all if the Shadows didn’t fill her Shell.

"You must be so ashamed of me," she tells Dawn in the hall one morning in her elder sister's voice. She reaches out to brush the soft, fair skin on her friend's shoulder, and comes in close enough to feel the sweetwarm of her befuddled face. Dana's shriek explodes so unexpectedly from the heavy silence, Dawn jumps straight in the air. "I'm not REAL!"

The younger Summers jerks away, horrified to hear that echo of herself, and Dana realizes with a pang of regret that she has failed again. Dawn is her only Real friend, and it's more important with her than anyone else that Dana keep her *true* head on and not start seeing or being...

All the others.

"You're not Angel," she cries in her own defense, again Dawn's tender voice from years ago, "You're that other thing! You killed Miss Calendar!"

The Dawn of Then didn’t understand that she wasn’t Real. The Dawn of Now's skin goes white like a dead thing shivering in live girl clothes, but her cheeks flush living, breathing red. Dana is fascinated by the pulsing crimson, and can't draw her eyes away from it. She knows, somewhere deep down, that Red means Danger, but… the contrast of alabaster and roses is too mesmerizing to do anything about it but take it in.

"You're not my sister," Dana recalls in Buffy's tone once again, and Dawn slaps her across the face before she runs away sobbing. She tries so hard to pretend that Dana is okay. She treats her like a person, like another sister human, not like the seething storm of ghostly messages that she is.

"I'm sorry," she calls after her, and she's not sure who is speaking then.

All the people inside her have been deeply sorry at one time or another.

~

Dawn tells Dana that her illness doesn't matter. Her hands are small and warm on Dana's face. She says she’s sorry she hit her.

"I don't care if you're sick. Of course the things you say to me hurt, but... I know it's not you saying them. I can keep you separate from that."

Dana kisses her, because she wants to believe it. She tries not to think of all the times she sees What's Wrong With Her reflected in Dawn's blue eyes.

Schizo para mala multi something or other – she can never remember exactly what her doctors call it. Dissociative. Broken. Disordered. They have a hundred names for how she's damaged, but with everything else inside her, she just doesn't have room for anything more. So she doesn't give The Shadows another name. They're just... the other her. All the other hers: Abigail and Jennifer and Helene and Chan Li and Zelia and Athena. Buffy and Kendra and Marie and Christina...

And some of their monsters, too.

"I love you," Dawn whispers, and kisses her ear. Dana hears a squeak like a mouse singing as the air forces through the tiny space between Dawn's lips. Her only friend's lips.

"I love you, too," she whispers back, and it's one of those moments when she's everyone inside her, including herself.

She hopes.

~

Dawn trembles beneath her touch, and Dana is lucid enough to know that She Is, for once. She tries to hold the moment, tries to memorize the curve of Dawn's breast and the cherry scent of her breath. Her freckled skin tastes like baby powder, and everywhere she is warm in ways that Dana has never felt inside herself. She carries the pieces of her friend in her pocket to put together when she's feeling lost, like a shield of How She Should Be to hide behind so people don't know. Then she'll be right. Angel will look her in the eye, and Giles' smile in her direction will be Real and Kennedy won't make faces when she thinks Dana's not looking and Buffy will finally understand...

"I love you, Dawnie," Dana murmurs to her, her tongue flicking fine hairs on her smooth stomach to emphasize each word, "More than all the stars in the sky, and all the fish in the sea." She plunges her tongue into Dawn's belly button, tastes more clean. "Your belly tastes like breezes and butterflies."

Dawn tangles her long fingers in Dana's thick hair, caresses her scalp in encouragement, gets lost in the shivering whisper of bliss enveloping her skin from head to toe as the Slayer moves downward.

"Yes," she hisses. Dana's fingers part her, revealing her hot center, all pink and wet and beckoning. Pulsing.

"Taste," Dana breathes, and dips her tongue inside. "Like moonlight and absinthe."

Dawn climaxes instantly, and keeps on coming as that hot tongue strokes her, penetrates her, tastes every millimeter of every screaming nerve. A night lost in one continuous orgasm.

Dana remembers every moment of those nights. Every cry, every breath, every fingernail gouging paths of passion into the flesh of her back. She's never felt so... Real.

"Do you think Mummy will let me have a puppy?" she purrs in her lover's ear, hand still nestled between Dawn's firm thighs. "Daddy won't reply. He only sees dirt and the girl with the green eyes."

Dawn goes rigid for a moment, then forces herself to relax and put her arm around Dana's shoulder as her lover becomes Drusilla for the second time that week. "It's okay, sweetie. I'll let you have a puppy. Just go to sleep now."

It’s a journey no one understands, and Spike lists it as yet another reason for him to stay far away from her.

"No rest for the wicked. Not when there are weasels in the henhouse," Dana croons, nuzzling her neck. "Eyes like needles. Like pins. Like snakes in the—"

"Shhhh." Dawn quiets her with a kiss. She knows what it feels like not to be Real. She never lets Dana just drift away. She would be lost without her.

"I would die for you, don't you know that?" Dana murmurs when they ascend for breath.

She's not sure if she says it, or if she only dreamed. But Dawn stays by her side, arms and hearts and lives entwined, either way.

~

She can't remember how it began. Only that one day they kissed, and two years later, they're making love under the skylight in their bedroom. Dana feels like she had been kidnapped to The Land of Nightmares, and only now is she waking up to her life again after Dawn rescued her.

The princess awakened with a kiss. Only... Dana is never sure when she is awake. When she's lucid, or when the spirits take her and sing their bloody songs. Turn her head back to the shadows where the dead walk, and she loses the daytime world.

They're talking about a future. About a family. Neither are things she can ever remember having... or wanting. What would she do if there were people who depended on her? Would she stay solid, or would she always slide in and out of the dust the way she does...

"They can take our DNA and mix them together. The baby can be both of ours," Dawn is telling her, "I read about it in Scientific American."

Dana shakes her head, tries to ignore the creeping sensation on her skin. Like ants marching or leaves flickering silvergreen in a storm wind. She tries to be Okay for a change. "That's not a good idea."

"Why not?"

She turns and looks at her mate, long and slow, like a predator always must. She looks for the weakness by instinct, but tells Dawn the most coherent truth she has. "Because I could eat you alive. And you don't want to pass that sort of thing on, do you? Just what the Hell would I do with a rugrat anyway?"

If she hurts her, maybe Dawn will leave. Save herself from the darkness that still comes and claims her lover two years later. Even after she's "better".

Better than before... but still not good enough. She knows that Darla smelled like essence of poppy and lavender. She knows the First Slayer preferred grubs over dog meat. She knows so many things that no one should remember. She is filled with Something Strong and Wicked that she can never escape.

It's something that will crush Dawn. Dana doesn't fully understand what the Shadows are, or why they're inside her, but she knows she has to get Dawn to go. She has to stop what's happening. A baby?

"Any child of mine would be a monster, don't you get it? I can't care for a child! I still can't care for myself!"

Dawn sits up in their bed, a nymph floating in a sea of rumpled silk. Dana likes the feel of the fine material against her skin. It's softer than anything she's ever felt. Except Dawn's flesh, and the two together are Temptation Incarnate. In an instant, she forgets what she was fighting about, and gives in to the need to slither closer to her lover's sweet flesh. Being too far away makes her feel disconnected.

"You taste like morning," she tells Dawn, sliding close so she can kiss her folded hip. Because Dawn takes care of her. She always has. "I love to taste the sunshine from your mouth."

When Dawn descends and kisses her, the staying and the leaving just don't matter.

~

She can walk the walk, now. Keep her chin up, speak in complete sentences, sit in a chair for hours at a time without slipping through the floor into another reality. She can take classes, and spends half her days at the school with the other Slayers. She has even learned to interact directly with them instead of watching from corners the way she did the first time they brought her here.

She can pretend she's normal.

Unless Buffy talks to her. Or Angel turns away, unable to look Dana in the eye when they pass in the hall. Sometimes when Giles wears a certain tie or Spike hooks his thumb in the belt loop of his black jeans...

She comes undone. The Real explodes before her eyes and she is fighting for her life against a thing she could swear is a dragon. She can see bodies everywhere, and smell blood and hear someone sobbing. She can't see anything through the blood and sweat in her eyes.

"Is it dead?" she asks, and pokes the dead thing with a sword.

Another dead thing, this one beloved, stands close beside her ready to lend his strength if she wavers. Which they both know she never will. "It's dead. Are you hurt?"

Slowly, she follows the compulsion to look up... so far up into dark, endless eyes. He's smiling. There's blood and bruises and tears on his face too, but she can barely see them through the love and relief shining there.

"I'm fine. So. Are you busy for dinner?" she asks.

The dark eyes smile, and then Dana is aware again.

Angel can't even face her directly, let alone smile like that at her. She knows she's Buffy then, during that last battle in Los Angeles. It happens less often now, the wandering. Especially since she's known Dawn. Dawn is like her anchor. A beautiful place for her to hang onto when the winds try to take her away. Her happy place.

Breathe. Count to ten. One. Two. Three...

I wish I could wish you dead. I don't. I can't.

Dana sees more Buffy than anyone else inside herself. She wonders how much Buffy Dawn sees in her.

Her watcher Damian says more than is healthy. It's understandable, he says, all cool and thirty-something sexy in his ungeeky turtleneck. (Or so Dawn tells her. Watchers weren't always so hot, she says. Giles and Wesley (rest his soul) started out as the tightest stick up their butt tweed-heads in the universe.)

"It's possible Dawn fixates on you because you're a symbol of the woman she wants to possess, but can't because of cultural taboos against incest. It's freshman psych stuff, Dana." His hands are smooth and pale, and he keeps them folded all the time like they'll escape if he doesn't.

He doesn't flinch when she screams at him anymore, like the First Slayer’s Shadow taught her to do. He ran away the first time Dana tried it on him. He didn't come back to the rehab center for three weeks after, and when he did, he sat on the opposite side of the room for several weeks until he was sure she wouldn't snap again.

And he calls himself a doctor.

But that was a long time ago, and things are more... quiet between them now.

She notices that his eyes are green like Chemlawn grass. She squints, searching for contact lenses. Damian gives her a bland look. "They're real."

"Mother Nature doesn't make eyes that green," she points out, and smiles, unsure if she said it aloud. Sometimes she forgets that part. "Dawn loves me," she reminds him, though she's said it a million times and he still never hears her. "She's the only person in this world I trust."

Moments like this... the scent of old incense, the rays of sunshine touching the dull industrial carpet, the sound of cheerleaders in the distance... she wishes she could keep these in her pocket with Dawn's smile. It doesn't matter if the others can't understand. They do, and that's all that matters. This place is the only home she's ever known. The only one she would recognize even without the haze of the visions.

"I don't want to tell you what to do with your love life. You're a grown woman."

"Yes, I am." That much, at least, she can be sure of. Twenty... five? Seven? Nine.

March 1st. Wednesday's child. 1977. The day Charlie Chaplin's coffin was stolen from the Vevey cemetery in Switzerland and his wife refused to pay the ransom, because she said his spirit was already with her. What did she care where his remains lay?

"But I'm not the only one who wonders if a relationship – any romantic relationship -- is wise at this point in your..."

Insanity?

"...recovery. You're changing a great deal very quickly. It's not good to invest in major life decisions at a transitional time like this."

"I'm not a drunk. It's not twelve steps."

"You cut a man's hands off."

She flinches. She knows it's true, but she's never been able to sort the Real pictures from the Shadows. "He wasn't a man. He was a monster."

Damian's eyes disappear when he frowns, so Dana doesn't really know what color they are when he's angry.

"He was a creature with a soul, Dana. Something an active Slayer should be able to discern. If you would speak with Buffy, she could..."

"I don't have anything to say to her. She hates me." Dana folds up, folds in, and she becomes Buffy or Dawn or one watching the other.

"Sorry. Look, Dana. Dawn isn't... she's not old enough, or experienced enough, to understand what being with you really means. I've known you for two years. Dealing with your dissociative episodes isn't just above and beyond the call of duty. It's..."

More than a woman should take. She knows. She's told Dawn a million times.

Damian stands like a wall of bubbles between herself and her heart. She steps through his objections easily, but the arguments leave a slimy film of doubt on her skin.

She knows a thousand words for Dawn in hundreds of different languages. She can scan the Shadows if she concentrates hard enough, and sometimes she picks up how to say her favorite word: dageraad in Dutch, aube in French, dämmerung in German, alba in Italian...

Damian says not to do it. It freaks him out. "It's bad enough that you can tell me things before they happen. I can't deal with you speaking in twenty different languages."

"You're getting a ticket. Right now," she warns him.

"Damn it!"

~

Damian's not the only one to say her relationship with Dawn is Wrong. One Friday night, she finds herself at a table with two of the people in this world most bothered by her presence. The third refused to be in the same city with her, let alone eat at the same table.

Not that she blames him, really. Whether someone deserves it or not, having your hands sawed off is probably a disturbing experience.

"Don't talk about her like she's not here, Buffy. She can hear you."

"You'd never know it." A small hand is waved in front of her eyes. Dana stares through it to the blank crème wall behind Her. The Slayer. The Slayer. "Dana, can you hear me?"

Dawn turns, waits, hopes, and Dana can see the silent plea from the corner of her vision. She can also see one of Angel's broad shoulders – how tense he holds it. He's wearing deep midnight blue instead of black, and she wonders why the change.

But she has nothing Real to say to them, and so she says nothing.

"Whether or not she can hear us doesn't matter," the ex-vampire puts in. "She can't indicate her consent, and that makes your relationship not only immoral, but illegal."

"Oh my GOD! You're kidding me, right? YOU are giving ME a lecture about MORAL RELATIONSHIPS? I'm sorry, Buffy, how old were you again when you two..."

"Don't you dare bring that into this! You can't compare your situation to mine! I knew what I was doing! We don't have any idea if Dana understands!"

"Of course she does! She tells me she loves me all the time! Just because she doesn't talk to you...!"

"Are you listening to yourself? Dawn... "

"No. I'm tired of this. Every time, it's the same crap."

"We love you, Dawn. And we care about Dana."

"You don't give a SHIT about Dana! Or me! All you care about is that she throws stuff in your face that YOU CAN’T HANDLE!"

Dana once slipped into the ghost of Angel's small, butchered sister. She'd grabbed his upper arms and smiled beatifically up at him. "I knew you'd never leave me. My own brathair, an angel."

He had gone white – whiter than he ever had been as a vampire. She didn't think he'd ever told anyone about it, but she had told Dawn. Dana tells Dawn everything.

And Dawn tells the others, when they need to know.

Dawn is the foundation of her. The rock where she stands in the tempest of her fragmented Self. Without Dawn, she is nothing. Has nothing. They can't take Dawn away from her, and the terror of the concept rips from Dana’s gut like a volcano erupting.

"You can't keep her from me. You can't keep her from me! YOU CAN'T KEEP HER FROM ME! YOU CAN'T KEEP HER FROM ME!"

That's all Dana remembers before the room exploded and she crawled under the table, howling, and Dawn threw the gravy boat so that it missed Angel's head by mere inches and Buffy was screaming above the din that this was proof of exactly what they were saying...

But she wakes up in their bed, looking up at the moonrise through the skylight in her bedroom.

"It doesn't matter," Dawn tells her, gently combing her fingers through Dana's hair, her touch almost desperate. Resetting a connection that was almost torn apart. "I don't need their permission."

Dana can hear Angel talking to Buffy in her head. 'You don't think about the future?' She manages not to say it aloud, recognizing immediately it's not her voice. The integration is working better than she and Damian ever expected, if she can already tell the sounds of her Shadows from her own.

"No, but you don't want to fight with your sister, either," she whispers. "It's not her fault she can't hear me."

"I can't always hear you either," Dawn sighs, and Dana gently urges her onto her back, watching her long, silky hair unwinding like burnt honey snakes on the pillow.

"But you always listen. That's what Really matters," she tells her.

Dana never lies. She can't remember how, can't keep the lies straight. It's easier just to say what she sees. What she means.

Except here, in their Safe Place. Happy Place. Here she doesn't have to say anything. A small, warm kiss brushes the base of her neck as she turns onto her side. "Sleep," Dawn whispers.

We'll make another one like it tomorrow.

She used to write down all the things she dreamed, and Damian would look them up in the written account of Mr. Giles' tenure on the Hellmouth. She stopped when every line matched up somewhere in the memory of someone close to Dawn's family.

Dana doesn't write those things down anymore. In the morning, the past will be gone again, and she'll be able to stand straight without the weight of it.

Until the next time.

"Just stay still, and it won't hurt as much," she says, scooching back so her rear is cradled in Dawn's hips.

"That's what you always say," Dawn murmurs, and tumbles into sleep with her face buried in Dana's hair.

Dana stays awake to keep watch, and to keep from getting lost in the Shadows. She knows someday they'll get her, and all the pills and the talking and even her Dawn won't be able to bring her back.

She belongs to the Shadows. She's one of them. And that will never change.