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Childish Things, Part Thirteen

No one even noticed the ring on the doorbell. Dawn was hiding in her room when she heard it but everyone was busy in the kitchen mourning the loss of the children or else no longer being children in another room. Whenever she thought about Gunn as he was now she felt a hot white flame of shame sear her from her toes to the very top of her head; then spread downwards again in a slow red tide of humiliation before flaring up once more as it reached the soles of her feet again. The last thing she wanted to do was go downstairs at all for any reason, but there was the vague possibility that the ring on the door could be Craig Thornton come to ask her to go to the Fair with him, which would be the only thing that could possibly salvage today. Liz McDonald had been all over him for a week while all Dawn could do was sigh at him hopelessly from a distance. She didn’t know why Liz had it in for her so much, but she did, always making comments about how Dawn was going to end up being taken into care as her flake of a sister couldn’t look after her properly, how she was going to flunk every subject there was, how her whole family was weird.

 

You have no idea just how weird, Dawn thought bitterly. The only normal thing that had ever happened to her in her entire life was her mother dying of an aneurism. That was how much her life utterly sucked.

 

Hearing the ring again, Dawn slipped downstairs quietly, keeping her head lowered so as not to meet anyone’s eye. If she could just get out of the house it wouldn’t be so bad, and perhaps when she got back from the Fair the people from LA would be gone and no one would ever have to mention them or her behaviour again. In five years or so she might even be able to think about bathing the little boy everyone had warned her wasn’t a little boy really without wanting to die of shame.

 

Dawn opened the door and almost fell over in amazement when she saw that it really was Craig Thornton on her doorstep, just as she’d imagined him a thousand times in various classroom fantasies. He looked like a million dollars. He also looked a little bored, and next to him was Liz, beaming at Dawn in malicious triumph.

 

“Hi, Dawn!” She gave her a wide false smile. “We wondered if you wanted to come to the Fair with us?”

 

Dawn almost felt detached from her own misery; it was so extreme and so acute, but she had already been in a place where there seemed to be no light at the end of any tunnel, where she wasn’t really human, just a cosmic joke played on the people around her, didn’t really have the right to grieve for the mother she’d never had whose loss was ripping her apart, and the only good things that had helped her to keep her head above the water of her own misery had been the thought that Craig might ask her out, and the fun she’d had playing with Gunn. It had been impossible to feel so sad when Craig was in the classroom with her, looking so handsome, and the possibility had still existed that he might be secretly in love with her. It had been even more impossible to feel down when there had been Gunn to cuddle and tell stories to and who giggled at her jokes and looked up at her as if she were not just cool and funny but a place of safety he could come home to. He’d made her feel not just better but necessary. Someone who could make someone else’s life better for a change, instead of just making it a dangerous lie.

 

“Oh, thanks.” She felt so faint with misery she couldn’t even find the necessary anguish to react as Liz wanted. That was the only saving grace. That she hadn’t curled up and died on the doorstep the way Liz had obviously been hoping. “But we have company.”

 

“Oh really?” On any other day Liz’s smug little smile of disbelief and triumph would have stabbed straight through her. Today she felt almost too numb to care. “That’s a pity. Oh well, if you change your mind you know where we’ll be.”

 

“Thanks for the offer.” Dawn closed the door and her eyes, tears leeching out from under her lids before she could stop them. She heard Craig say ‘What did you want her to come for anyway? I thought it was going to be me and you?’ Dawn snatched a breath, trying to inhale around the lump of misery in her chest but everything hurt too much, even breathing. I just want to be dead, she thought. And although she knew that if there had been anyone around to hear her they would have told her that things always felt so intense when you were fourteen, and it passed, and blah blah blah, but that didn’t help her now. She was living now and she was living this life. And this life sucked beyond all bearing sometimes.

 

Hearing footsteps in the hall and knowing anyone who saw her would see at once that she’d been crying and would want to know why and be kind to her and she just couldn’t bear it right now, she bolted for the yard and some privacy away from the crowd.

 

 

Gunn approached the girl slowly, trying to think. He’d heard her come downstairs and slipped out into the hallway to talk to her, then when he saw her friends on the doorstep had moved out of sight so as to not leave her with any embarrassing introductions she might have to make. That was when he’d realized that these people weren’t friends at all, just some girl displaying her catch of the day to the person who hadn’t got it. He wondered how teenagers here had the energy to be this petty and spiteful when their town was continually on the brink of being sucked into hell; he also wondered why anyone would want to pick on a girl whose mother had just died and who was as nice a person as Dawn.

 

He had gathered from overheard conversations between other adults, passing him from hip to hip, that Dawn was not perceived by others the way he perceived her. Buffy loved her; that was clear; loved her more than anything on the planet probably, even Angel, even Willow, Xander or Giles, but she still thought of her as something that had to be protected; something that was a danger to herself, whose judgement couldn’t be trusted. But he’d met Dawn as his four year old self, and to him she’d been warmth and comfort and protection and kindness. He’d felt absolutely safe when he was with her, despite the way the world had spiralled away from him, leaving him at hip height while everything else became a skyscraper. It had been a terrible shock to him to be confronted with the reality that she was just a teenage girl and at first his own feelings of disquiet about the intimacy they had shared had overwhelmed any other consideration. But overhearing that conversation on the doorstep had made his older brother instincts kick in; made him think about Alonna and how he would have hated someone to come and rub her nose in the fact that they had evidently stolen a guy she had been interested in.

 

That was the moment when he realized that Cordelia was right and this was a problem that he had to make the first move to solving. If he thought of Dawn as a younger sister, it immediately became a much easier problem to deal with.

 

Moving out into the yard, he approached her slowly, trying to step on a few fallen twigs so she would hear him coming. Going by the tension in her shoulders he guessed that he had succeeded, just as the hastily wiped eyes told him that she had been crying.

 

“Hello,” he said quietly.

 

She turned around, eyes still a little bright. “Hello.”

 

He held out a hand. “I'm Charles Gunn.”

 

She only hesitated for a second before taking it. “Dawn Summers.”

 

He shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

 

She glanced up at him a little shyly. “You too.”

 

He leant on the fence next to her so they wouldn’t have to keep gazing into each other’s eyes while talking, especially as he knew – from Cordelia frequently telling him so – that people as tall as him gave women persistent neck aches if they insisted on holding conversations while standing upright.

 

“Nice to be in Sunnydale at last,” he observed conversationally. “Heard a lot about it from Angel, Wes, and Cordy.”

 

She winced. “I don’t suppose Wesley gave you a very good impression of us.”

 

“Actually, he said the Council had a lot to learn from the teenagers of Sunnydale.”

 

“That was gracious of him. We didn’t treat him very well.” She glanced up at Gunn tentatively.

 

He nodded. “Yeah, I heard that too. Not from him. From Cordy. Although she missed out the part about her having a girly crush on him. Angel told me that. Wes said his contribution to events was to scream and fall over then whimper about how much everything hurt. I find that kind of impossible to believe though.”

 

Dawn grimaced. “Well, I suppose… It was brave of him to go against the Council. And they did sort of throw him in at the deep end.”

 

“Poor Wes.” Gunn shook his head. “The guy I know puts his life on the line every day. He took a bullet for me and never said squat about how much it hurt. He never ducks a fight. I would have said he didn’t have it in him.”

 

Dawn said tentatively: “Are you going to think badly of him now that you know he wasn’t always like that?”

 

“No. I'm probably going to buy him a drink. It takes courage to change from who you are. I'm having to do that myself. Cordy made me see I had a death wish after my sister died. That I went out looking for trouble just so I wouldn’t have to go on living with the guilt. That’s what we’re all about in LA, you see.” He inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Living with the guilt. Living with who we used to be and didn’t much like. Not just Angel, all of us.”

 

Dawn smiled faintly. “Not so much roasting marshmallows and Christmas carols then?”

 

“No, we pretty much have the brooding down to a fine art though. And on occasion I do get to kick Wes’s ass at Risk. Sometimes Cordy even gets a date that doesn’t end up with her being knocked up with demon spawn – ” Remembering Dawn’s age he clapped a hand to his mouth. “Sorry.”

 

She actually grinned. “It’s okay. I won’t tell.” She glanced at him sideways then said carefully: “I'm not sure I was as careful with my language as I should have been around the small children we recently had in the house.”

 

“You had kids here?” Gunn said in mock surprise. “That must have been a real drag.”

 

“They were very nice children,” she assured him. “One in particular was quite adorable.”

 

She darted him a quick look as she said it, testing the quicksand between them. He shook his head. “Yeah, Wes was okay as a kid. A bit on the quiet side. Cordy was kinda spoilt though, didn’t you think?”

 

“Maybe a little.”

 

“The worst one had to be that bratty noisy little kid though. God, he was a pain.”

 

“He was not!” Dawn spoke with what seemed to be genuine warmth. “He was the cutest thing ever.”

 

“Well, he was lucky that he had such a patient person to take care of him.” Gunn looked at her gently. “He never really got much of that Winnie the Pooh and Disney movies the first time around. It made for some nice memories.”

 

“For me too.” Dawn looked up at him quickly. “Real ones as well.”

 

He frowned. “As opposed to…?”

 

“Never mind. I just mean… it was nice for me too. Even though I miss him. I'm glad I got to spend some time with him.”

 

“He’s glad he got to spend some time with you too.”

 

After another pause she said, “I'm sorry about your sister. That must have been awful. I couldn’t bear it if I lost Buffy.”

 

“It was the worst.” Gunn nodded. “It was one of those things that was so bad I knew if it ever happened I’d never be able to survive it. But here I am.” He looked at her. “You’d make it too. You’re strong. I can tell.”

 

“Me?” Dawn looked at him incredulously. “I'm the weakest person I know.”

 

He shook his head. “No, you’re strong. I can tell. I hang around with a superhero too. Can make you feel like you’re less than you are sometimes. To be honest, I liked it when Angel was away. I was scared when Wes got shot that we were going to lose him, but once I knew he was okay, I looked around the office and I realized that I was it now, I was the guy who had to take care of him and Cordy. I'm not saying it didn’t scare me, but there was a part of me glad I didn’t have to keep competing with a vampire any more.”

 

Dawn nodded. “I know what you mean. I love Buffy. I really do. But there are days when I can’t help wishing she was just an ordinary girl – that I didn’t always have to be the sister of the Slayer.”

 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind Angel shanshuing his ass over to normalville either.”

 

Dawn gave him a sideways look. “So… were you saying that you and Angel fight over Wesley?”

 

“No! Not like that.” Seeing her grin he said, “I'm just saying that I didn’t hate being the big strong guy who got to protect the rest of my crew. Of course, those two never really got that we should have changed the name to the Gunn Agency for some reason. I don’t know why not. And I’ve got to tell you, Angel – when he got all Epiphanied up and came crawling back to us with his tail between his legs – not too happy about Wes and I having bonded.”

 

“Sounds to me like you fight over who gets to be best friends with Wesley.” Dawn grinned secretively. “Do you have arguments about who gets to sit with him at lunch?”

 

“No, we…” He returned her grin. “Hey, I don’t even care. Growing up, Wes never had too many friends as far as I can tell so maybe Angel and I should fight over him a little bit more.”

 

“Sounds like maybe you should. As long as you let the rest of us make suggestive comments about it, of course…”

 

“I’d forgotten how bratty little sisters can be.” But he was grinning at her. “Hey, talking of bratty – and just tell me to butt out if I'm overstepping the mark – but that girl who called for you today – would I be right in thinking she’s not exactly a bosom pal?”

 

Dawn nodded. “Not exactly a pal at all. Just someone who wanted to show me that she’s got the guy I had a crush on and yah boo sucks to me.”

 

“That’s kind of what I figured. Guy must need a seeing-eye dog choosing a skanky looking girl like that over you, but that just means you’re better off without him.”

 

“And give it a few tubs of ice cream and I may be able to say that with some conviction myself.”

 

Gunn rubbed his chin. “I don’t know if it’s just having recently been a kid or if I was always this immature, but I have a kind of childish suggestion to make.”

 

“I'm all for childish suggestions. Kind of a part of the whole still being a child deal.”

 

“You and me – we could go to the Fair too. That would show wonderboy that you don’t need him to have a good time and it would probably drive your not-pal crazy wondering how come there’s a new guy in town she doesn’t know about. Would that be really immature?”

 

“Totally.” Dawn’s eyes widened. “Let’s do it.”

 

“Okay. Let me go and glam myself up for you.”

 

She grinned. “I’ll do the same. You’re sure you don’t mind?”

 

Gunn shrugged. “Hey, I figure after all that chocolate and those bedtime stories, it’s the least I can do.”

 

As they went back into the house, he found Buffy waiting for him in the kitchen. She beckoned to him as Dawn scampered up the stairs.

 

“You okay with this?” Gunn asked her quietly.

 

“We all need to go. Dawn has…enemies. It’s complicated but to be honest with you I think something normal is exactly what she needs right now. And thank you for what you said to her. It was nice. I get so hung up on how sucky it is being a Slayer that I don’t always remember that not being a Slayer can also have its share of the suck.” Buffy called up the stairs. “Dawnie? If we promise not to crowd your pretend date with Gunn is it okay if the rest of us tag along too?”

 

“As long as you walk at least ten paces behind us and don’t say anything embarrassing,” Dawn called back.

 

“What, you mean I can’t ask you loudly about birth control in public places?”

 

Dawn looked down at her from over the stairs. “That depends on whether or not you want to live to see another day.”

 

Buffy saluted. “I can be good. And non-smothering. And not embarrassing. Really.”

 

“Hah!” Dawn went back into her room, humming as she did so.

 

“Is everything okay now?” Cordelia asked Gunn sotto voce.

 

He looked at her levelly. “You do know that you trying to talk quietly actually carries louder than a fog horn, right, Cordy?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “I'm an actress. We naturally have good projection. Now answer the question before I'm forced to hurt Wesley again.”

 

“Why me?” Wesley demanded.

 

“I can’t reach his ears.”

 

Wesley nudged Gunn. “Answer the woman, quickly.”

 

“Everything’s fine. Dawn and I are going to the Fair. Buffy’s going to tag along because she’s even more paranoid than Angel, and if you two want to come along you can as long as you don’t embarrass me in public.”

 

“You cradle snatcher, you,” Cordelia said in outrage.

 

“Relax. It’s a pretend date to piss off Dawn’s nasty non-friend and her not worth her time anyway non-boyfriend.”

 

“Oh now that is a cause I can get behind.” Cordelia nodded. “I remember how spiteful and bitchy some people can be in High School.”

 

“Do you indeed, Cordy?” Buffy said drily.

 

“That reminds me.” Cordelia looked around. “I need to talk to Willow.”

 

Wesley frowned in confusion as Cordelia went off. “Willow was spiteful and bitchy at High School? But she always seemed like such a nice girl.”

 

***

 

She found Willow in her bedroom, the slender redhead had laid out the child Cordelia’s new clothes on the bed and was wistfully straightening out the creases. Cordelia knocked on the door gently before going in.

 

“Hey, Willow.”

 

“Hey, Cordy.” Willow sighed again as she began to collect up the clothing.

 

“Where’s Tara?”

 

“She thought it would be less upsetting if she took the shoes back to the store.” Willow looked up wide-eyed and apologetic. “Not that we’re upset that you’re all big again. We’re really not. It’s great that you’re you again and…”

 

“It’s okay, Willow.” Cordelia sat down on the bed and picked up the blue and green dress with the silk patches and fashionably ragged edge. “I’ve never loved any item of clothing in my wardrobe as much as I loved this dress. And happy as I am to be my real size again there is a part of me that’s gutted that I can’t ever wear it again.”

 

“Really?” Willow lit up. “You’re not just saying that?”

 

Cordelia snorted. “Remember who you’re talking to? When did you know me employ tact in any shape or form?” She put the dress back down reluctantly. “Or basic human kindness.”

 

“Oh, Cordy.” Willow sat down next to her and tentatively patted her hand.

 

Cordelia sighed. “I’ve been thinking so much about what you were like as a little girl. And my god you were adorable. You were like a little elf, with those big green eyes and that little snub nose and that incredible hair – this isn’t a come-on by the way, you know that, right?”

 

Willow laughed. “I know.”

 

“Because I would never do that to Tara.” Cordelia took a deep breath. “My point is that you were a really nice little girl, Willow. You were always kind to people – even total losers like Xander. You didn’t judge them on how much their father earned or how big their house was or what kind of a car their mother drove or whether or not they were a member of the tennis club. You treated everyone the same just because they were human. And you were so smart and you never showed off about it, not once, but it made you so happy when you got something right. And all I ever did was try to make you feel bad about yourself because you had prettier hair than I did.”

 

Willow gasped as if Cordelia had said something blasphemous. “But, you… You said that if you’d been born with red hair you’d have drowned yourself!”

 

“Yeah. I was full of life-affirming little speeches back then, wasn’t I? Gee, you must have been so happy to grow up with me. You have beautiful hair, Willow. I used to sit there in class when it was raining and we were all so bored and the only bright spot of colour in the whole damned room used to be your hair. And you had this capacity for happiness that I really wished I possessed, because all I seemed to be back then was discontented. I was always worrying my position might slip a notch or I might be perceived as uncool or some new girl would turn up with more money and more designer labels than me.” Cordelia sighed and shook back her hair. “And maybe Tara wasn’t around then but you were. You remember what I was like. You remember all the times I picked on you and tried to humiliate you in front of other people or make you feel bad about yourself.”

 

“It was a long time ago,” Willow said hastily.

 

Cordelia gave her a level look. “Come on, Willow, it was about two years ago.”

 

“Well, there was that whole business with Xander. And I'm so sorry about that. I was trying to do a spell to stop us and then Xander got hit on the head and I thought he was dying and we knew we were trapped there and we thought we’d never get out and then… And there’s no excuse, because it was a terrible bad thing we did and you were nearly killed and I'm so sorry.”

 

Cordelia put her head on one side. “You have the strangest speech patterns, do you know that? You just breathe in all the wrong places. Have you ever thought about taking drama lessons because that would probably fix that and make you appear less, you know – out there…” She collected herself quickly. “What I mean to say is that I was a bitch to you when you were a little kid. When I was turned into a little kid you had a chance for payback and you were the sweetest person in the world to me and I wanted to thank you and I wanted to say sorry for how I treated you before.”

 

Willow gaped at her open mouthed for a minute. “Okay. Except, Cordy… It’s not the same. When I was a little kid you were a little kid. All little kids do mean things.”

 

“You never did.”

 

“Yes, I did. I…” Willow thought hard, clearly trying to recollect something. “Well, anyway, I know that I did, and I don’t think I should be held responsible for it now. I refuse accountability for any mean actions of mine when I was a small child and I think you should do the same.”

 

Cordelia leant across and kissed her on the forehead before straightening back up. “Still not a come on, by the way. I just wanted to say ‘thank you’. Being a kid again could have been a nightmare. You made it happy and fun and…safe. I was so scared about how big the world had suddenly gotten and you and Tara made me feel safe every single minute I was with you. I’d forgotten what that feels like. It’s been so long.”

 

Willow looked up at her wide-eyed. “Is it dangerous what you do, Cordy?”

 

She nodded. “Yes. Sometimes it’s terrifying. And if anything happened to any of them, it would always feel like my fault. I'm the one who gets the visions and sometimes they’re not very clear but even when they are… I'm the one that tells them the danger’s out there and they have to go and stop it. And maybe one day one of them isn’t going to come back and I'm going to wish I’d never told them. I'm going to know I was the one with her hand clutched to her head saying ‘Go’ that sent them off to die.”

 

She didn’t know she was crying until Willow put her arm around her and said, “Shshh. It’s okay. Don’t you think Giles feels like it every day he had to send Buffy out to fight with big scaly things with teeth and claws? She was the Slayer, I know, but she was still just a little girl. And I know Angel is the best fighter in the world – except for Buffy – and I'm sure Gunn is good and maybe even Wesley is…well, okay, too, and you’re all trying to make the world a better place. And that’s good. But they’re also just your friends and you love them, so of course you don’t want them getting hurt.”

 

“I saw all the pain and suffering in the world once. I was cursed to get the visions of not just one person but all people who needed our help, and there were so many of them. And then I woke up in my hospital bed and there was Angel, who’d risked his life to get that scroll back that they needed to reverse the spell, and there was Wesley with cuts and burns all over him, sitting in a wheelchair, still hooked up to an IV, and I remembered him saying ‘Unbind’ and the light and then I was me again. And I knew there was nothing they wouldn’t do for me, that these were the people who were always going to be on my side whatever happened. And that’s the same people I'm sending out into the dark, into danger, to help some stranger who I really want to help but who doesn’t mean a damn to me compared with them.” Cordelia took the tissue that Willow handed her and wiped her eyes carefully so as not to disturb her make up. “It’s not conducive to good mental health. That’s all I'm saying. And it was just plain selfish of Wesley to get himself shot because that was the biggest freak out of all. He needs to lay off with the getting kidnapped and tortured and blown up and shot schtick pretty damned fast.”

 

“Should Wesley really be out there in the field?” Willow asked tentatively. “Wouldn’t it be better maybe if Angel and Gunn did the chopping things up and he did the research?”

 

“Oh, you mean…” Cordelia opened her mouth in comprehension. “Oh, he’s not… You know it’s weird, because I kind of get now why you thought it was odd that I had a thing for him. I mean, I can see now what you could all see then. Because he is a dork. I mean I love him like a brother and I would kill anyone who hurt him stone dead and scrape their innards off my shoes without a twinge of remorse, but he has the coordination of an ostrich wearing roller blades. I couldn’t see the dork part back then when you all could. I could just see the good looks – God, did I just say I thought Wes was good-looking? That is so never leaving this room – and the suit and hear the accent, you know, and rebounds are crazy. Every frog looks like a prince. But…now that I see the stuff that made you all think he was such a total doofus, ironically he’s actually a lot more like my idea of him than your idea of him. Does that make sense?”

 

Willow winced apologetically. “Well, not in this language perhaps, but hey, there could be others where… No, I don’t really get what you’re saying. But that’s okay. You love Wesley because he’s your friend and that’s cool. And you should love your friends. That’s good too. As long as there’s not a formal wear problem whereby a tuxedo can make you do bad things you wouldn’t ever normally do.”

 

Cordelia kissed Willow on the cheek as she got up. “Will, I'm sure you know what you’re talking about and, like you said, as long as one of us does, I think that’s all that matters.”

 

***

Comments

[peachlips.livejournal.com]

“Sounds to me like you fight over who gets to be best friends with Wesley.” Dawn grinned secretively. “Do you have arguments about who gets to sit with him at lunch?”
That was so funny. And sweet!