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“Dawnie, come out of your room please.”
“Go away.”
Tara took a deep breath. “Alright. Just, if you want to talk later, to Willow or to me, we’re here.”
There was no answer. Tara counted to ten, and then went downstairs.
The basket of apples they’d picked that afternoon was still on the counter. Willow probably had planned to magic them clean whenever she got home from her resurrecting-a-slayer research, but Tara had apprehensions about this. She kept meaning to talk to Willow about it, but somehow it kept slipping her mind when Willow was in front of her. She’d speak her mind to her in the morning. She started preparing a vinegar bath for the apples.
“Mom always used baking soda.”
Tara almost jumped, but when she turned around it was just Dawn.
“I’ll help you,” she said, nonchalantly. Tara felt like a skittish animal had approached her, and now she had to prove herself worthy of it. “Sure, I’ll use the blue bowl and you can use the yellow one, and if we divide the apples into four we'll each only have to soak them twice. You can use baking soda instead of vinegar, if you want.”
“I’ll try it your way first, then see.”
A couple minutes into waiting, Dawn spoke again, “I’m sorry for earlier. I know Willow thought that doing normal fall stuff would help me… but it doesn’t.”
“That’s okay, Dawnie. If you want I can try to talk to Willow.”
“I’ll talk to her, eventually. I think part of it is that Buffy and me never did this stuff, the apple picking or the pumpkin spice.. we did go to a haunted house the year before we got to Sunnydale.” Then, she looked pained. “Except that I guess that never happened.”
“If you remember it, then it was real.”
“Did you and your Mom.. sorry.” She started worrying away at her cuticles, a gesture that reminded Tara of when she herself had done that at fifteen. Dawn was a much more confident and outgoing teenager than she’d been, and she hated the idea of what she’d gone through making her feel insecure, like she needed to disappear.
“Were you going to ask if my Mom and I had any fall traditions?”
Dawn nodded.
“We used to make apple milkshakes. With cinnamon in them.”
“Ooh. That sounds so much better than cider.”
“Don’t let Willow hear you say that, she’s nuts for cider. I can shower you how to make them, if you want, once we’re done washing them.”
“Yeah, that would be great!