Twice My Burn
By Doyle

It's two years before you see Dawn again.

You walk right past her on the street, because you're still half-flying from last night and you haven't seen Dawn since the day you moved out of Buffy's house (you never did go back for your stuff; you hope she gave the clothes to Goodwill, or had a big old fire) and what's Dawn even doing in London in the middle of the school year? You think it's still the school year, unless you missed a month again.

But she didn't see you and she's already vanished into the crowd, and the sunshine makes your eyes hurt even through the dark glasses, and you just shrug at the coincidence and go home.

Amy pulls you lazily under the covers with her before you can take off your clothes. She cracks her eyes open long enough to show the ink-black irises. "Mm. Where'd you go?"

"Breakfast expedition." There's no food in the apartment. There never is, and Amy doesn't eat a lot these days, so when you get the killer hunger pangs that hit you after a couple of nights of hard magic you have to make a run to the Tesco three streets over. The bags you dumped in the kitchenette are filled with coffee, milk, bread, eggs, the sugar that you sometimes eat right out of the bag with a spoon. Tea for Ethan, who you assume is still asleep in the room beside yours.

"Should just teleport it straight to us," Amy mumbles, snuggling into your shoulder and sliding her hand under your shirt, stroking your tummy in soft circles.

You barely had enough magic this morning to get the stuff without paying for it. You're way too burned out to teleport anything. Amy knows this, but you guess she's too out of it right now to remember.

"I saw Dawn Summers," you say, just as Amy's hand dips lower. Not a good combination, what that hand's doing to you and the picture of the Dawn you saw in the street, eighteen and taller and more grown up than the Dawnie you helped with her math homework. Last time you saw her before today her arm was in a sling. It's a nicely visual reminder about time healing everything. You wonder where Tara is.

You roll so you're almost covering Amy. She's gotten too thin, hard and sharp when you put your hands on your hips, but you can kiss her and pretend.

By the time you hear Ethan moving around in the kitchen, the kettle whistling as it boils, you've come three times and called Amy the wrong name twice. Eyes closed, she hums gently into your skin, happily oblivious.

***

The vendor outside the tube station has the News of the World among his papers, so you guess it's a Sunday. You spend an aimless couple of hours riding the trains. The flow of people in and out of the carriages, the shifting auras, it's good for recharging. Just like a double espresso after an all-night research session, back in the day.

Some of the time you kneel backwards on your seat to stare out the window, remembering the stories Ethan's told you about the things that live in the dark below the city.

As the train pulls into Piccadilly something leaps towards you, grotesque face twisted in a sneer. It's small, maybe the size of the Yorkshire terrier the lady in the apartment below yours keeps, the one Ethan keeps threatening to sacrifice. You gently tap the glass. It snaps its jaws, once, and pads away on its three-toed feet, up the window and out of sight. The other passengers keep reading their books and newspapers, or just staring at nothing.

The first time Ethan taught you to see the things other people don't, you were terrified. You didn't go back to Covent Garden for a month because of the little girl who followed you around, walking through stalls and holding her stumps of arms out to you as if you could make the bleeding stop.

You wait, but the dog-sized thing doesn't come back, and nothing else joins it. The train pulls in at the station and you turn, stand, push your way out of the sliding doors and onto the platform.

Dawn passes you in the other direction.

"Hey!" she yells when you grab her wrist but you're stronger. You pull her with you onto the station as the train eases away, picking up speed and disappearing into the dark tunnel. "Who the hell are… Willow?"

You don't take off the glasses. You're not sure if your eyes are back to normal yet. You always forget what colour they're supposed to be, and Amy doesn't know, and Ethan doesn't understand why you care. Today you're aiming for green. "Hi, Dawn."

She rubs her wrist. "You could have just said hi. You didn't have to drag me."

"The train's going to crash," you say. "You wanna go for coffee?"

***

Dawn's kind of obsessed with this train crashing thing. She wants to know how you know, and when you explain about the gremlin she insists you have to tell somebody. She gets shrill and annoying, and finally you just wave your hand across her eyes and say, "Tabula rasa".

It's actually a far more effective spell once it's internalised, done without the crystal and the Lethe's bramble. No crystal means nothing to break. Dawn's expression goes completely blank for a second and then she gives a big smile and says, "Oh my God, Willow!"

You go for coffee. The worst parts of her memories of you gone, she's happy to tell you about high school, Hank paying for this trip to Europe, how she's starting college in the Fall.

She drops the news that she has a girlfriend almost defiantly, like it's a statement, a big deal. You wonder how Buffy took it. If she stammered and insisted it was fine, great, and used Dawn's name too much when she was saying it. If she secretly blamed you and Tara.

The owner of the café turns up the radio on the counter. Train crash, a bad one, one of the underground trains going off the tracks at Leicester Square.

There are some things you shouldn't interfere with. Death. Life. Tara should be proud of you for learning that.

"So what have you been doing?" Dawn asks, sipping her moccachino.

"Mostly the finding myself thing. I'm living with some friends." You hope Dawn has friends outside the Scooby circle. You don't know what would have happened two years ago if you hadn't had Amy, and if the two of you hadn't run into Ethan. You would have burned out by now, used all your magic in one supernova flare and disappeared. "How long are you in London?"

"A week." Shy intake of breath before she says, "I guess if you're living here, you must know the good places to go."

"What are you doing tomorrow?" you ask, smiling.

**

The next day your head is clearer and your eyes are green. Amy's sacked out on the couch watching a rerun of Diagnosis: Murder and Ethan's at the table, head over a book. Neither of them look up when you say you're going out.

Dawn bounds up as soon as you come into the café, so happy to see you.

You do the tourist stuff. The IMAX at the science museum isn't all that impressive when you can conjure weirder things coming at you without hardly thinking about it. You take off the 3D glasses and watch Dawn. She's happy and pretty, laughing as she reaches out to try to touch something that's just a projection on a screen.

The Dungeon's always full of ghosts. You smile reassuringly at Polly Nichols, moping at the back of the Jack the Ripper recreation.

Dawn's gone pale, and you wonder if riding the Eye was a good idea after the giant milkshake she had at lunch.

"Spike was in London in 1888," she whispers to you. "He told me the dates when I had a history project on the Victorians. That thing the guide said, how it was maybe two guys working together…"

"Spike and Angelus?"

"A big man, he was," Polly moans, wringing her hands in her blood-drenched skirts. "Dark and vile and fearsome as death itself was Red Jack."

You see the figure coalescing from mist behind her seconds before she begins to scream.

He doesn't look anything like Angel or Spike. You nod, pleased, and tell Dawn not to worry as you lead her away.

**

"So." Dawn toes a line along the pavement. You look at that invisible mark and then up at her hotel.

"So," you echo.

"Okay," she sighs, "do you still just think of me as your friend's little sister? Because this could be so humiliating."

You touch your finger lightly to the tip of her nose. Upper lip. Lower lip. Her mouth drops open just a little and her warm tongue slides over your fingertip.

You don't touch each other in the elevator.

Inside her room, you undress first, glamour instantly covering for the weight you've lost. She shivers when you kiss her, as if she's the one who's naked.

Showing off, you magic the clothes into nothing. She laughs, startled, but you can feel her heart start to race with more than excitement. Dawnie's scared. Not much, not enough to make her tell you to stop or even put doubt in her eyes, but there's a tiny thrill of fear in her. It tastes good on her skin.

You kiss down her body in a zigzagging trail, your hands either side of her on the covers, not touching her except with your mouth. She seems to want to touch you everywhere. Hands in your hair, along your back, skimming your breasts quickly and you work out that she's never done this before, or never done this much and you come back up to kiss her mouth saying, "Shh, Dawn, shh." And you whisper words that you know turn your eyes dark because she starts in surprise beneath you.

It's nothing to be scared of, you reassure her. Just a spell, a little one, to make something good even better.

That's all magic really is.

**

"Wow," she mumbles.

You've lost all track of time, but the sun's rising.

"Is it usually like that?" she asks, the longest sentence either of you have spoken since the spell. It's still lingering. You can see it around the bed, a halo of neon-green sparks.

And they're strongest around Dawn, not you.

"It's not normally so intense." Your throat is dry, terribly dry, but you're too excited to think about getting water. "Did you ever learn magic?"

She shakes her head. Maybe after what happened to you (Willow Rosenberg, the gang's big failure, they must still talk about how low you sank, if they could see you now…) Buffy wouldn't let her practise. That has to be it, because you can't imagine anyone not wanting to know magic.

"You'd be good."

"Nah," she says, but she looks flattered. Interested?

You picture her staying here. The spells you could do together. She's got raw power, she could learn, Ethan would love teaching her. She's warm and soft and she wants you, and the magic's all around her, and this is perfect.

Dawn gives you a sweet, sleepy smile.

"Hey," you whisper, "want to see a trick?"