She forgets exactly when things started to change. It was after Tara, she's almost certain, and probably it was after the potential Slayers started staying in their house but before they cut out the 'potential' part for all of them. She wasn't jealous of them, at that point, not even after they all got to be Slayers and she was still just Dawn, Key girl but otherwise normal. The only one she was jealous of was Kennedy, and she couldn't figure out why until she got to college. There, she started dating. And then she started dating women, instead, because she realized that clearly the monks did not know everything if she was supposed to have had a crush on Xander.

It took her even longer to realize that none of her relationships lasted for a reason, and not because she's got serious issues - although she does. No, the reason was a few years older than her, with red hair that stubbornly refused to leave her brain. She came out to her family and friends, hoping that maybe Willow would have been harboring the same secret longing, but she was still blissfully happy with Kennedy and Dawn was still just her best friend's little sister. Dawn wishes, now, that things could have stayed that way, with her perpetually longing after Willow the unattainable, Willow the beautiful, Willow who haunted her dreams.

Not long after Dawn graduated from college, Kennedy broke it off with Willow, who was heartbroken and lost and desperately in need of consoling. Dawn tried to be the shoulder to cry on, and succeeded, but spent the entire time wishing fruitlessly that Willow would take what was right in front of her. Instead, she was used as a pillow and then patted on the head while Willow started a two-year stint of bed-hopping. She changed partners at whim, and never got attached to any of them, and never erased the memory of Kennedy or Tara or Oz, and Dawn spent the whole time watching and hoping that maybe this time, Willow would notice her and at long last, they could be together.

Then, seven years after she found Kennedy and two and a half after she lost her again, Willow finally turned to Dawn for physical consolation. Willow was half-drunk and exhausted and broken when she showed up on Dawn's doorstep, and that first night Dawn showed her to the bed and curled up on the couch, assuming this time would be like all the last and the witch would be gone in the morning. But she was still there when Dawn woke up, and in the middle of a full-day movie marathon they went from sitting like friends to cuddled almost uncomfortably close and awkward, and Dawn sweated and sat and twitched while Willow held her hand and rubbed her shoulders and finally, slowly, kissed her in a stop-motion meeting of lips and tongues and teeth that took them both back to their high school days. But Willow didn't say anything, so Dawn stayed quiet and wondered if this was, in fact, what she had always wanted while she was fondled and hugged and slowly, carefully, neatly stripped.

It wasn't their first time, except together, but it was so hesitant it might have been. Willow took the lead, doing everything in absolute silence, kissing and nibbling and licking her way down Dawn's body to between her thighs. It was good, almost fantastic, and Dawn screamed with pleasure and then felt sorry for disrupting the orchestration of breathing and hissing and rustled fabric with her vulgarity. So when she came down, she gave in and did the same thing to Willow, but sweeter and softer and just as desperate, and she tried not to be hurt that all she could summon from her brand-new lover was a few whimpers and one subdued moan.

They've worked out the rules, since, for how these things work. They keep their separate apartments and separate friends, and they never officially say that they're dating, because that would be ruining the memory of Willow's past loves. But every night they come together, in that same hushed, placid arrangement, and Dawn wonders sometimes if this is, in fact, everything she wanted. She was so sure, for so long, and she wouldn't give it up because any of Willow is better than none, even if she knows that Willow never means it when she says "I love you." Dawn always says "I love you too," even though she knows Willow doesn't see it as anything more than a formality, because appearances have to be maintained and sometimes Dawn can delude herself into thinking that maybe this will save the world from a second shot at oblivion.