Unnatural by biggerstaffbunch
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own whatever ME and Twentieth Century Fox and Joss do not.
Chapter One
*~*~*
“So, we didn’t really get to chit-chat yesterday Miss Summers,” Connor said amiably the next day at lunch, “Tell me about yourself.”
Cheese dripped from his mouth, hot and greasy. Dawn just sat, rigid and unflinching, across from him, her arms folded into a makeshift barrier between her and the table. It was as if she were a mime and there were an invisible box around her. I’m a box, Dawn mused. A little tiny box of personal space.
Connor had not seemed to yet receive this message. The pizza folded into a soggy mess in his hand, sauce and greasy pools of cheese draped over the long, pale fingers, he reached over the table and tapped her forehead. Dawn squinted and moved her head back.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” she said evenly. “I’m your regular Joe-“ puzzlement flickered over her face, “-er, Jill. Or Mary. What is the female equivalent for Joe, anyway?”
“Hmm. Josephine. Like Little Women.”
Dawn raised an eyebrow. “You’ve read Little Women?”
“Beth was my favorite. I thought Amy was a brat.” Connor’s mouth quirked up at the corners and he gave a mock-sorrowful look. Dawn reluctantly, and sorta not of her own accord, smiled. That was twice in one day. Odd.
Her eyes danced from Connor’s hands to his face to his mouth. He wasn’t anything special- skinny, with angular features and a bow-shaped mouth of unnatural pinkness. Sharp Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed the meal at Tino’s Pizzeria that he had paid for. Piercing blue eyes. Long, silky brown hair, definitely girly too.
“You know, you look kinda gay.”
Again with the blunt. Dawn was a frank kinda girl nowadays, so she supposed she wasn’t surprised at herself. But she wondered again why this stranger would subject himself to company like hers when she obviously, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t do that to even herself. Not that her life, Dawn reminded herself, was a series of normal circumstances.
Connor choked on his pizza. After a moment or two, he raised those strangely blue eyes to Dawn’s face, fastening their gaze to hers. She sat, her back against the cool plush of the seats, and stared right back. It felt like her mouth was quirking up at the corners- oh, yes. A smile. She was smiling. Again. Weird how new it felt, even though this was the third in a row. Precious little to smile over, and all that.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” Connor finally spluttered, flashing a smile too, once he saw the grin touch Dawn’s mouth. He ran a hand self-consciously through his hair and shook his head. “You’re not normal, Dawn Summers.”
Dawn felt a vague chill of panic grip her heart. “Normal is a relative term,” she said calmly. “Normal is pretty overrated.”
Connor smirked. Digging his finger into the plate of garlic sauce next to her elbow, he brought it up to his lips. “It is that,” he agreed. “But then, we freaks stick together.” He licked the garlic sauce off his finger with an impish wink.
“Freak.” Dawn murmured. “Well, that’s nice.” She relaxed for a moment, letting her arms unclench and rest on the checkered table. There was still a tic near her left eye.
“Mhffmf. Wellf,” Connor gulped, “No offense, but you haven’t been that nice, either. I mean, I dunno what your deal is, but you need to chill. Enjoy life.”
Dawn just sighed. “No one made you hang out with me,” she said with a long-suffering sigh. She wondered again why the hell she was here with some guy she just met and who was kind of creepy to boot.
“True.” Connor cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know. I guess there’s just something weird about you that draws me in.” He laughed. “Are you a witch? That’d be cool- I only ever hung out with the geeks and nerds in high school.” Again with the winkage. Deprecating, but definite winkage.
A witch…887, 886, 885, 884, gheimrmhahaosem… “No. Not a witch.” Dawn breathed. “Geek. Nerd, maybe. Loner. Yes.”
“I couldn’t tell.” Connor laughed sarcastically, and Dawn noticed, loudly. She cringed. In the, oh, hour that she had known him, Dawn already had a bead on him. She wasn’t sure she liked the said bead. Connor Evans: acerbic wit, scruffy good looks, arrogant intelligence, and an odd ease with moody, monosyllabic teenage girls.
“What a weirdo.”
Dawn’s assessment went either unrecognized or uncommented upon, as neither teen was quite sure whom she was speaking of.
*~*~*
Walking back to campus after Connor had eaten his fill and she had smiled no less than five times in one day, Dawn stopped to enjoy the evening. There was a small bench outside of her dormitory building, surrounded by trees and overlooking a small pond. Dawn slid into the wooden seat. Tucking her legs up and under her chin, she scooted over for Connor to sit.
“It’s quiet here,” Connor said pensively after a moment. “It’s nice. Not like home.”
Dawn kept her silence. By now, she was secure with the pattern of dialogue that would occur between her and Connor: He talked, she listened, anything to keep his incessant questions away. Dawn supposed if he was that set on being her friend, she might as well just try and keep her past out of it.
“Home was…” he trailed off, propping his chin on the palm of his hand. “Home was limbo for me. I mean, I have this nice little family, y’know? Two sisters, a mom and dad who love me. They’re all really sweet and supportive and just family…but it feels wrong. It felt wrong. This feels right. Is that wrong?”
He turned to Dawn and she shrugged. She didn’t, couldn’t really empathize. She sometimes wished her whole life away just so there could still be a family named Summers in Sunnydale, California.
Abgheflidtusv…1232354…
“Hey, are you okay?” Connor’s face shone with a strange alarmed paleness, the moonlight shadowing his eyes and illuminating his bony collarbone, his hollow cheeks. “You look like you’ve got a major case of gas.”
Dawn curled her lips in disgust. “Nice,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No gas. Just…nothing.” She let her chin fall and burrowed her face in her knees. “Remembering. What it’s like to have a family.”
…
“Buffy, Willow’s teaching me how to play Anywhere but Here!”
“Will, you like my sister better than me!”
“No way, Buff. It’s just- well, she’s so cute!”
“Yeah, wait till she hits puberty. Com’n, we gotta go patrol. Dawnie, stay here and don’t wake Mommy up, okay? I’ll be back before light.”
…
“Have you ever played Anywhere But Here?” she asked suddenly, turning to Connor. The boy seemed startled, but he smiled and tilted his head back against his shoulders.
“Yup. My mom used to use it to get rid of me- she’d say ‘Okay, now pretend you’re in Disneyland’ or wherever it was I’d rather have been at that moment.”
Dawn sighed again, resting her cheek against her knees. “And did it work? Pretending?” The night air was cold and windy. The park was deathly silent. It felt like a tomb, and Dawn felt a prickling on her neck.
“Yeah. Yeah, sometimes.”
“I wonder if…” Dawn took a breath and turned to look at Connor, swinging her legs down to the ground. “If you wish hard enough for something to happen, for something to be, does it work? I mean, who controls things up there? If you want to forget your life, or forget a life that existed and caused you pain…will it work?”
Connor looked stunned. “Wow,” he managed. “You really did hate your life.” He ducked his head and rubbed his neck. “I dunno, Dawn. I…. I can’t really imagine a whole existence being wiped out..being completely forgotten. There’s no logistic to that.”
Dawn leaned back. “What about the other way around? If someone was just- blinked into existence one day? Like you had your life, and you knew where you stood, and then one day you find out you’re not real? That life isn’t real with you in it?”
Connor looked as if he had been struck. He took a moment before speaking. “You- well, that’s just crazy. It’s loco. Loco in the head. It’s twisted. If you’re living life, then you exist. If you’re in the world, then life, the life you’re living, is real! It has to be! There’s no other way!”
Dawn tugged a piece of her hair. “Sometimes I wonder,” she said listlessly. “I mean, what if the world did go all “It’s a Wonderful Life” on you? And you were never born? Is the world with you in it the right one, or the one where you were never born? Did your existence screw up everything?”
Connor’s knuckled were white. “Who are you?” he asked, his voice unusually tight. “Who the hell are you?”
Dawn just flicked her gaze to Connor and gave a small smile. “That’s what I came here to find out.”
Patting Connor on the shoulder, Dawn unfolded her legs and got up to go. Connor gripped her hand before she could turn to leave.
He turned her palm over and cocked his head. Dawn felt the lazy, almost-drugged calm that had surrounded her flee. She bit her lip as Connor’s ice-blue eyes surveyed the flesh of her hand.
“Is this scar a part of you?” he asked in a low voice. He traced a finger over the thin, pink line on the palm of Dawn’s hand. He flipped her palm over and tugged her sweater’s sleeve up. “What about these?” Twin lines on her wrists, jagged and faded, slightly puckered.
Remnants of memories floated around in Dawn’s head.
“It’s our blood, Dawnie. Summer’s blood.”
“Yes,” Dawn said with difficulty. “Yeah, they’re a part of me.”
Connor gave a wry, slightly haunted smile. “Then you’re real. Fake people don’t bleed, Dawn.”
Dawn bit her lip and tensed. She seemed to debate something for a second. She relaxed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “You’re right.” More confidently. “Of course. You’re…right.”
“Always am, Summers. You’ll learn.”
Dawn took her hand from Connor and bent down. Touching his cheek, she nodded seriously. “I think maybe I might.”
And then she had turned and walked up the stairs to her dormitory, leaving a much shaken, very confused boy with questions that hadn’t resurfaced in his mind for a very long time. The leaves rustled and owls hooted as Connor Evans walked home and a vampire named Angel watched from the shadows.
*~*~*
In her dorm, Dawn sat down on her bed, careful not to wake her roommate up. She gazed at the picture she had sitting on her bedside table, face-down most of the time, but today she was feeling extra-sentimental for some reason. She traced the faces of the people in it: there she was in her favorite yellow sundress, her hair braided. And next to her was Willow, her hair a vibrant red and eyes bright. Tara, when she was alive, with her pretty face and kind smile. Xander and Anya, even in pictures able to make her laugh, with the dark glares but loving smiles. Giles, looking lost and out of place in a casual shirt and khaki pants. And Buffy, caught mid-action, as she was reaching over to pull Dawn’s dress a little lower on her thighs. The picture made Dawn smile, because it caught Buffy doing what Buffy somehow did best. Be a sister.
Dawn knew she never asked for it, knew that in reality, it was the one duty that wasn’t a birthright for her. But she still did it- and she did it well. Buffy looked after her, she cared for her, she died for her. And Dawn missed her. She missed all of them. But there was a reason she was here in California again, while the rest of them were rebuilding their lives. She didn’t belong there, rebuilding a life. She was…building from scratch. Away from the distractions of a life that never really was meant to be, a life that deserved a chance to be lived without her in it.
Even so…
Dial the numbers. Put the phone to your ear. Do it, Dawn.
Ring. Ring. Rinnngg- “Hello?”
Dawn inhaled sharply. “Hello? Hello? Look, real mature, creepazoid, prank calls. Perv somewhere else.” SLAM!
Shaking, Dawn put the phone on the cradle.
Not now. Not yet.
Not yet.
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