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“Let me see,” Buffy says.
The fall from the monkey bars made both of her knees bright red and dimpled, weeping blood around the embedded wood chips.
Dawn’s seven and too big to have to have her big sister carry her off the playground. She knows she’s too big to still be sobbing out loud. Big kids cry quietly or they don’t cry at all.
Buffy’s twelve now and when she cries she keeps her mouth firmly shut and her mouth all scrunched up so it’s mostly just her eyes that get wet and maybe a little snot sometimes.
Dawn knows that’s what she’s supposed to do too.
But it hurts.
“Let me see,” Buffy says.
Dawn pulls off the white glove of her Pink Ranger Halloween costume. It sticks to the blood on the back of her knuckles and pulls off some of her skin with it as it goes. “Ow!” She’s big enough not to cry but she does kind of whimper a little bit.
Buffy takes Dawn’s hand in hers and looks it over with a little frown.
“I don’t even know how it happened,” Dawn says.
One minute she was plotting with Janice about how to ditch their appointed, chaperone because anyone old enough to know how to spell chaperone shouldn’t need a chaperone, and then bam! she was over in the park surrounded by a bunch of even littler kids dressed as monsters and dinosaurs and Janice, whose mom did let her be Posh Spice, was totally elsewhere.
Buffy pulls Dawn’s fingers so she uncurls her fist and Dawn lets out another whimper.
“Ow, Buffy!”
“Sorry, sorry! Split knuckles are a whole no-funathon, huh?” She wraps the ruined glove back around Dawn’s hand and ties it into place.
“I lost all my candy too…”
“Aw,” says Buffy. She wraps her arm around Dawn’s shoulder and leads them away from the school. “I guess we’ll have to resupply on the way home.”
“Let me see,” Buffy says.
“Do you think I’m going to turn into a zombie now?” Dawn forgets for a minute how mad she is at Buffy and rolls up her pant legto show off where the extra crispy zombie had chomped her on the ankle during her rush to the closet with Oz and Cordelia.
The bite isn’t too deep, but it’s bleeding a little and when she runs her fingers over it, she can feel the indentations of the dead guy’s teeth. That could be useful if they need to identify the body with his dental records!
“Um,” says Buffy and she looks like she hadn’t even thought of that! “Giles?”
“I very much doubt it,” Giles says, all calm and British.
Cordelia picks up her ski pole from where she’d set it against the side table and points it at Dawn’s throat and Buffy snatches it out of her hand.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” says Buffy. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” says Dawn, before she remembers how mad she is and pulls back away.
She’s not even crying at all. She got attacked by a zombie and she’s totally fine so, like, how big a deal even is it that Buffy’s fighting these guys all the time? She destroyed a mask! Dawn could so do that.
“We’ll clean it and disinfect it,” says Mom. Her voice is way less grouchy about Buffy now too. “So, is this a… typical day at the office?”
“No,” says Buffy. “This was nothing.”
Yeah, see? Like that. So Buffy’s got superpowers. Big whoop.
Really, it’s just kinda stupid that Buffy had been all secret-keeping about it. If Dawn was the Slayer, she’d make sure everyone knew. And then no one would be mean to her or leave her again.
“’Nothing?’” says Cordelia. “When Oz got bit, he transformed.” She’s still holding on to her ski pole like she might stab Dawn with it.
“Cordelia, put that down. Now.” Buffy steps in between them and puts her hands on her hips in a Wonder Woman pose and, yeah, even with her Little Miss Perfect pink dress, she does look like she’s actually cool for once.
“I know I’m not the expert guy,” says Oz. “But I’m thinking… zombies and werewolves? Kinda different.”
“I think I heard that,” says Xander.
“Um, yes, that is correct.” Giles pushes his glasses up on his nose even though they’re already as on there as they can get. “You would have to be killed and then raised by a-a zombie master of some sort. In this case, the demon Ovu Mobani.”
“So if you die from an infection!” says Cordelia.
“If she died three minutes ago, maybe,” says Willow.
“I suppose if you had succombed to an infection in the time before Buffy destroyed the mask…” says Giles.
Buffy puts her arm around Dawn. “Wasn’t gonna happen.”
“I liked that mask,” says Dawn.
“Something you and the dead guys had in common,” says Oz.
The only thing they had in common, at least.
“Let me see,” Buffy says.
She’s abandoned her stupid birthday party to follow Dawn and Mom up to Dawn’s room with the first aid kit. Like keys even need first aid.
Dawn pulls her arm back and folds it into her chest. If she gets her shirt ruined, who cares? Besides, it’s probably not real either. Just made up by those stupid monks whenever they decided to pretend like she was actually some kind of person.
“Honey, you’re bleeding,” says Mom.
“Am I?”
“You know that you are,” says Buffy. She’s using her stupid Big Sister voice like she expects Dawn to just listen to her because she’s the oldest.
Which she isn’t, because she’s not even Dawn’s sister.
“Then I guess I didn’t get programmed to care.”
Buffy sighs but she hands the first aid kit to Mom, turns back to the stairs, and leaves Dawn to bleed.
“Let me see,” Buffy says. Her face is shiny from tears, her eyes are puffy and red. Her voice is rough and deep with regret, almost like a croaking frog, and she turns Dawn’s face with her hands to look at where she slapped her with a gentleness Dawn hasn’t felt before.
“It’s okay,” says Dawn. Her throat is so raw and her tongue feels too heavy in her mouth. The words come out muted and coarse.
“Oh, God. Oh, Dawnie, I’m so sorry.” She’s still crying, but not as hard, and as much as Dawn wanted to see Buffy cry, scream, something, it hurts seeing her like this. She’s panting a little, out of breath from the sobbing they’ve shared. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I really don’t.”
“Join the club,” Dawn says.
The laugh that comes out of Buffy makes her soul hurt, she thinks. It’s sandpaper rough, painful to hear on her ears and on her heart.
The world beyond the open front door is huge and dark, full of beasts familiar and not, and she and Buffy are still wrapped around each other in a big snotty sister pile.
“Maybe… we can take care of each other,” says Dawn.
Buffy nods into her shoulder.
“Let me see,” Dawn says.
Buffy shakes out her wrist and holds up her hand from where she’s still squatted on the ground in front of Spike’s couch.
There are two parallel scratches down the back of her hand that are just deep enough to draw blood, bracketed by two lighter scratches that barely break the skin. The blood isn’t even pouring, just welling slowly to the surface.
“You should probably wash that,” she says.
“I will, I will, I just wanna get her in the crate first. Then I can sterilize all of my war wounds at once.” Buffy drops back onto all-fours to peer back under the couch and Dawn is again way grateful to have passed this particular buck to her sister because she is so too pregnant right now to be doing the same puppy pose.
“Seliiiiina!” calls Buffy.
“C’mon, sweetie.” Dawn clucks her tongue but Xander’s black cat stays resolutely beneath the couch.
Buffy drums her fingers under the couch and Dawn only gets out half of the warning that she’s going to get scratched again before the very thing happens.
“Ow,” Buffy says flatly. “I’m starting to think the reason she isn’t coming is because she doesn’t want to come.” This time she doesn’t rise back up and stays on her hands and knees with her ass in the air.
Which is the view Spike gets as he stumbles out of his nasty little hoarder mancave behind them, still dressed in his boxers. “Well, that’s one sight to wake up to, isn’t it?”
“Ew,” says Dawn.
Buffy just shakes her butt a little.
“Ew,” says Dawn. “If you make me nauseous, I’m just gonna barf. And I am barfing for two right now.”
The other two cats follow Spike from his bedroom and trot off for the kitchen. After a moment, Selina squeezes out from the side of the couch and follows them, narrowly escaping Buffy’s grasping hand.
Spike catches her before she can find another hiding spot and gives her a cuddle before bringing her back to Dawn. “Doesn’t wanna leave me, does she?” he asks with a grin, clearly already aware of the answer. Selina’s been more Xander’s since the beginning, it only made sense when they divided up the household who would get custody.
“Doesn’t wanna leave her siblings, I think.” Buffy rolls back to her feet and wipes the blood off of her hand.
“Empathizing, are we?” Spike asks.
Dawn reaches out and gives Selina a gentle scritchy-scratch between the ears and glances back to her sister.
“No, I’m happily tunnel-visioning about how much nicer my microwave is going to smell from now on.” Buffy manages to hold her cool, nonchalant Slayer expression for a moment before it melts into something pouty. “Because if I think about it more, I will probably go full cry-mode.”
Just about everything other thing is making Dawn cry right now so she focuses on cheering Selina up instead of formulating any kind of response. “You’re gonna be so happy when you see Xander there. And there’s gonna be so much space in the new house.”
Buffy holds out the carrier and Spike slides the grumbling cat in with no further bloodshed.
“And Lady Feline Fantastica will be your new sister,” Dawn says through the bars, gesturing to her calico in her own carrier. “That’s pretty good, right?”
Buffy wraps her arms around Dawn from behind, squishing her cheek into her shoulder blades and resting her hands over Dawn’s comical beachball belly. “It’s not the same though, is it?”
“No,” Dawn admits. “But we won’t be far.”
Buffy nods into her back. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ll be seeing you.”