Thanksgiving
Dawn had chopped off a half a foot of her hair, and no one noticed.
She died it a deep shade of cobalt, with a shockingly bright violet stripe down the left side. And no one noticed.
She had taken to painting her eyelids black with kohl. She made her face white as a kabuki mask. She was
considering a tattoo; she just hadn’t decided the what or where.
But no one noticed, so what was the big?
Not that she was doing it for attention, anyway. Not their attention.
She’d run into Brodie at Watkin’s Esoteric Bookshop. Her Brodie, who had then been Mickey’s Brodie, until Mickey
hadn’t survived the whole vamp cleansing and didn’t Dawn just enjoy the hell out of that irony. Mickey - who had
been her best friend until she found out about the witchy ways of Willow and all of Buffy’s and Spike’s freakishness
and then turned on her like the duplicitous little fembitch she was – had been turned just in time for all vampkind to
bite major dust.
Dawn stopped her internal ranting long enough to assess her reflection in the mirror. She smeared her lips with a
coat of lipstick so shiny and dark it looked like patent leather. She ran her hands down the lacings of a leather
corset she’d found in Buffy’s things. It was too short and kinda tight on Dawn’s long torso, but she had squeezed
and molded the rigid leather around her body, managing to optimize her midriff, her hip bones and her breasts.
She looked down. Yep. Breasts. She had ’em. She shimmied a little and liked the way her body shimmied back.
Dawn was already up on two counts of Buffy-would-kill-her, and she hadn’t even left the house. Dawn glared at her
reflection. But Buffy wasn’t here, was she?
After a moment’s sinking stillness, Dawn looped belly chain around her waist.
She was beginning to think that Buffy was gone this time. Gone for really real. It wasn’t like before, when Buffy had
died. At least then, they’d had a body to put in the ground and a gravestone around which they could gather
flowers and cheery stuffed bears. Dawn despised the word closure, but couldn’t deny that they’d once had it.
Closure.
Dawn slipped into Spike’s room. He was never home, and the bed was still unmade. When he did come home, he
collapsed in the chair by the bed and did what passed for rest. Not that she could blame a guy. She had her own
consuming habits now to keep her occupied.
Dawn didn’t linger. She hated it in here. She saw what she came for on the dresser beside the bathroom door. Little
teakwood jewelry box Giles had given to Buffy for her 24th birthday. Dawn opened it and took out a pair of crystal
earrings. They didn’t go with Cybergoth, but she wanted them nonetheless.
As she put them on, Dawn forced herself to turn her thoughts to Brodie. About how torn up he was about Mickey.
He’d said that nothing he could do helped fill up the hole she left, but he kept trying. Magic was his latest thing.
Dawn could relate and did. She told him about how her sister had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed everyone
they knew had someone who was gone. Dawn and Brodie had spent the evening strolling through the vacant city
streets, snuggled up close against the chill, not talking about Mickey or Buffy or anyone at all.
Dawn hadn’t realized Brodie was so deep. Maybe the last few months had done the deepening. In the end, it didn’t
really matter. It had been surprisingly easy to coax him into an empty tube station bathroom so that she could get
his hands on her.
And, well, turned out Brodie had a magic touch.
Brodie with the bright orange hair and pierced tongue. Brodie with the luminous eyes which he lined with a swath of
electric blue. Brodie who could do things she never even dreamed of with just his fingers and – so far – a little bit of
that holey tongue. Gave Dawn the shivers just thinking about it.
Afterward, she could sketch for hours and hours. They were all demons still, but some of them did move. At least for
a little while. Like once, when she’d drawn a Gatnar beast, its spines quivered on the page for two hours before
finally winding down to still life.
That was what Dawn was looking forward to. Not the Rave or the music or the Indie kids and their cosplay. She was
up for the after party, when she could draw out all of the poison in her heart.
Dawn went into the sitting room to pull on her Zodiac knee boots. While she fussed over the buckle clasp, Andrew
wandered by the open suite door, eating sweet potato pie filling from the can with a wooden spoon.
He paused in the doorway and gawked at her as if perhaps his Dawn had been traded in for the Blade Runner version
of herself.
“Um, what are you doing?” she asked, hoping to head off his questions.
Andrew blinked. She gestured angrily at the spoon and the can, which he cradled in the bend of his arm.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said, sounding flat and un-Andrewlike in his misery.
“Not here,” Dawn said. Which reminded her that Xander hadn’t returned her call. Two weeks, and no call back. He
didn’t even know that Buffy was gone. Guess the bliss that was Maya was enough to make him forget all about them.
Maybe he just couldn’t get away quick enough.
Dawn stood up, tottering on the extra four inches of wedge heel.
Andrew started at ground floor and looked her all the way up.
“You can’t go outside like that,” he decided.
“Whatever, Captain America. Don’t you have a Mayflower to catch?” She sauntered past him into the hallway,
leather and vinyl squeaking softly as she went. Below them, the front door opened. Spike was home.
Andrew squinted at her.
“I’m telling,” he said.
“Telling? Are you six?” Dawn rolled her eyes. She tried to sidestep him. He got in front of her.
“Move, Andrew…”
And move he did. Andrew dashed down the stairs, knowing full well she couldn’t pursue in those shoes. He practically
collided with William in the kitchen archway.
“Steady on!” William yelled, pushing Andrew away. “What the bloody hell…?”
Dawn appeared in the entry hall behind Andrew.
William gaped at Dawn, his disapproval stamped all over his face.
“What the bloody hell!” he hissed. “Dawn? What are you…?”
“I’m going out,” she announced with a toss of her shorn hair.
“Not dressed like that, you aren’t,” he said hoarsely.
“What, you choose now to go all parental?” Dawn asked. She draped her arms around her bare waist. “So nice to
know you care.”
“You look like the chick from Underworld,” Andrew marveled.
“Shut up,” Dawn and William yelled simultaneously.
Andrew stuffed a spoonful of sweet potato into his mouth and shuffled off to the TV room.
William shook his head. “Dawn,” he said. “You… you look like a common trollop. You… I can’t let you outside this
house like that. Go upstairs and change.”
“No. I like it. And I’m leaving,” Dawn growled.
William got rather quickly around her.
“Like. Hell,” he said, all tense.
“You can’t stop me, Spike. I have a date, and besides there are no vampires so you’re completely off the hook,”
Dawn said. She backed toward the door.
He followed, shouting now. “Off the hook? There are more dangers than vampires, Dawn. And that tragedy of an
outfit will have every sick freak and bugger… Hey, those are Buffy’s earrings.”
Dawn froze. And then her anger re-focused. “Don’t see why you care,” she said coolly. “They were from him.” She
hated herself for the hurt look that flashed on his face.
His blue eyes blazed. “Yeah, well they’re hers. Take them off.”
“Make me.” She turned smoothly and stepped toward the door. He clamped a hand over her wrist, squeezed it and
jerked her around to face him.
“You are not leaving,” William shouted.
“I so am!”
William twisted her arm. “You’re staying. That’s final.” She flailed. He held fast.
“Let go of me, dammit! You’re hurting me,” She pulled free and stumbled back into the coat rack. Eyes wide and
brimming with tears, she screamed at him: “You are not my father!”
“That’s right, Princess Thinkspace,” he yelled at her retreating form. “Big difference: I’m here. I’M HERE!”
Dawn fled, slamming the door between them.
William’s whole body quaked with rage. The tremor wracked him so badly he had to clench his teeth to stop them
from chattering. All of the anger, all of it he’d been struggling to keep down…
He turned to find his almost unrecognizable reflection glaring back at him in the hallway mirror. All that fury skewed
his features, hollowing his razor-blade cheekbones and ridging his blotchy forehead.
No, it wasn’t so unfamiliar after all. William stared for a second longer before putting his fist through the glass.
Andrew swept up the glass in the entry hall. Which was no easy chore one-handed, thank you very much.
But he managed quite well and was pleased. He saw himself as the Professor X of the group; he was the glue. All of his
friends were running around, acting crazy, doing weird stuff with their hair and putting on skankalicious outfits…
All of his friends being, well, Dawn. But he, Andrew, stayed put, stayed calm, remained rational in the face of
surmounting odds.
So they had both run off after their mirror shattering outburst? Andrew could hold the house together in their
absence. When they returned, he would be there for one or both of them. There could be cocoa involved…
Professor X must be really lonely, Andrew thought with a sigh.
He dumped the last of mirror shrapnel into the trash bin. He returned to the hall, wondering why they bothered to
replace the darn thing when all it ever did was get broken. Then he pondered absently, over whether there was a
metaphor in that.
Beyond the entry hall was the figurative brick wall of his research spread out across the dining room table. He had
been so sure that it was all connected - that some unseen force was guiding him - but it turned out that he didn’t
have the mitichlorians to solve it.
Andrew could feel the pull of the pages. It was drawing him in and he could lose himself – yea, his very sanity, if he
was not careful.
Luckily for him, the phone rang. Andrew put the dust pan down, and with a feeling of great import, answered the
call.
Xander dragged the door to the phone booth closed and shook rain from his hair like the dog he felt he was. He
turned out his pockets, finding only his ID and credit card. He’d left everything else behind.
He dialed the operator with shaking fingers, somehow managed to form words from syllables and put across his
intent. He placed the call and waited. After a few moments straining to hear the tinselly connections between
Galveston and London, the line started to ring.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Xander muttered softly. The rain pelted down on the booth, great sogging sheets of it. They did
things bigger in Texas; Xander guessed that went double for storms.
Someone picked up on the other end.
“Summers, Giles, Rosenberg, Harris, Pratt and Wells…” Dramatic pause “…residence.”
“Andrew?” Xander shouted over the line. “Andrew, is that you?”
“Xander. Hey, happy Thanksgiving.” Andrew answered casually. “How’s Maya?”
Xander heard someone speaking, and only Andrew could sound that annoying without comprehensible dialog.
“Andrew?” Xander called into the phone. “I need to talk to Buffy. Is Buffy there?”
Xander looked at the receiver, then bashed himself squarely in the forehead with it. Could he be less useful? If he
couldn’t hear Andrew, how the hell did he think he’d be able to understand Buffy?
Lightning fried a utility pole very nearby. Flash and thunder struck simultaneously, followed by the briny scent of
sizzling ozone. The phone connection whirred and spat. Xander hung up the phone and plunged from the booth,
damned sure that it was the least of all safe places to be in the middle of a raging thunderstorm.
Xander ducked and ran, sliding through gathering puddles across the quiet street. More lightning lanced down along
the seawall; none of it as close as that last Zeus-like strike.
He found shelter under the striped awning of Gaido’s Restaurant. He discovered that if he huddled in the backmost
corner, the slanting rain would almost miss him. Rainwater seeped into his supposed all-weather footwear and
trickled under the band of his collar. The whole place smelled of trash and fish. Or, adventurously thinking: trash-
fish.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and blew on his fingers for warmth. The phone call had been the frosting-like
badness that was the fitting end to an abysmally bad day.
“Swell, Harris,” he whispered as he watched the storm. “Just… swell.”
Dawn had chopped off a half a foot of her hair, and no one noticed.
She died it a deep shade of cobalt, with a shockingly bright violet stripe down the left side. And no one noticed.
She had taken to painting her eyelids black with kohl. She made her face white as a kabuki mask. She was
considering a tattoo; she just hadn’t decided the what or where.
But no one noticed, so what was the big?
Not that she was doing it for attention, anyway. Not their attention.
She’d run into Brodie at Watkin’s Esoteric Bookshop. Her Brodie, who had then been Mickey’s Brodie, until Mickey
hadn’t survived the whole vamp cleansing and didn’t Dawn just enjoy the hell out of that irony. Mickey - who had
been her best friend until she found out about the witchy ways of Willow and all of Buffy’s and Spike’s freakishness
and then turned on her like the duplicitous little fembitch she was – had been turned just in time for all vampkind to
bite major dust.
Dawn stopped her internal ranting long enough to assess her reflection in the mirror. She smeared her lips with a
coat of lipstick so shiny and dark it looked like patent leather. She ran her hands down the lacings of a leather
corset she’d found in Buffy’s things. It was too short and kinda tight on Dawn’s long torso, but she had squeezed
and molded the rigid leather around her body, managing to optimize her midriff, her hip bones and her breasts.
She looked down. Yep. Breasts. She had ’em. She shimmied a little and liked the way her body shimmied back.
Dawn was already up on two counts of Buffy-would-kill-her, and she hadn’t even left the house. Dawn glared at her
reflection. But Buffy wasn’t here, was she?
After a moment’s sinking stillness, Dawn looped belly chain around her waist.
She was beginning to think that Buffy was gone this time. Gone for really real. It wasn’t like before, when Buffy had
died. At least then, they’d had a body to put in the ground and a gravestone around which they could gather
flowers and cheery stuffed bears. Dawn despised the word closure, but couldn’t deny that they’d once had it.
Closure.
Dawn slipped into Spike’s room. He was never home, and the bed was still unmade. When he did come home, he
collapsed in the chair by the bed and did what passed for rest. Not that she could blame a guy. She had her own
consuming habits now to keep her occupied.
Dawn didn’t linger. She hated it in here. She saw what she came for on the dresser beside the bathroom door. Little
teakwood jewelry box Giles had given to Buffy for her 24th birthday. Dawn opened it and took out a pair of crystal
earrings. They didn’t go with Cybergoth, but she wanted them nonetheless.
As she put them on, Dawn forced herself to turn her thoughts to Brodie. About how torn up he was about Mickey.
He’d said that nothing he could do helped fill up the hole she left, but he kept trying. Magic was his latest thing.
Dawn could relate and did. She told him about how her sister had mysteriously disappeared. It seemed everyone
they knew had someone who was gone. Dawn and Brodie had spent the evening strolling through the vacant city
streets, snuggled up close against the chill, not talking about Mickey or Buffy or anyone at all.
Dawn hadn’t realized Brodie was so deep. Maybe the last few months had done the deepening. In the end, it didn’t
really matter. It had been surprisingly easy to coax him into an empty tube station bathroom so that she could get
his hands on her.
And, well, turned out Brodie had a magic touch.
Brodie with the bright orange hair and pierced tongue. Brodie with the luminous eyes which he lined with a swath of
electric blue. Brodie who could do things she never even dreamed of with just his fingers and – so far – a little bit of
that holey tongue. Gave Dawn the shivers just thinking about it.
Afterward, she could sketch for hours and hours. They were all demons still, but some of them did move. At least for
a little while. Like once, when she’d drawn a Gatnar beast, its spines quivered on the page for two hours before
finally winding down to still life.
That was what Dawn was looking forward to. Not the Rave or the music or the Indie kids and their cosplay. She was
up for the after party, when she could draw out all of the poison in her heart.
Dawn went into the sitting room to pull on her Zodiac knee boots. While she fussed over the buckle clasp, Andrew
wandered by the open suite door, eating sweet potato pie filling from the can with a wooden spoon.
He paused in the doorway and gawked at her as if perhaps his Dawn had been traded in for the Blade Runner version
of herself.
“Um, what are you doing?” she asked, hoping to head off his questions.
Andrew blinked. She gestured angrily at the spoon and the can, which he cradled in the bend of his arm.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” he said, sounding flat and un-Andrewlike in his misery.
“Not here,” Dawn said. Which reminded her that Xander hadn’t returned her call. Two weeks, and no call back. He
didn’t even know that Buffy was gone. Guess the bliss that was Maya was enough to make him forget all about them.
Maybe he just couldn’t get away quick enough.
Dawn stood up, tottering on the extra four inches of wedge heel.
Andrew started at ground floor and looked her all the way up.
“You can’t go outside like that,” he decided.
“Whatever, Captain America. Don’t you have a Mayflower to catch?” She sauntered past him into the hallway,
leather and vinyl squeaking softly as she went. Below them, the front door opened. Spike was home.
Andrew squinted at her.
“I’m telling,” he said.
“Telling? Are you six?” Dawn rolled her eyes. She tried to sidestep him. He got in front of her.
“Move, Andrew…”
And move he did. Andrew dashed down the stairs, knowing full well she couldn’t pursue in those shoes. He practically
collided with William in the kitchen archway.
“Steady on!” William yelled, pushing Andrew away. “What the bloody hell…?”
Dawn appeared in the entry hall behind Andrew.
William gaped at Dawn, his disapproval stamped all over his face.
“What the bloody hell!” he hissed. “Dawn? What are you…?”
“I’m going out,” she announced with a toss of her shorn hair.
“Not dressed like that, you aren’t,” he said hoarsely.
“What, you choose now to go all parental?” Dawn asked. She draped her arms around her bare waist. “So nice to
know you care.”
“You look like the chick from Underworld,” Andrew marveled.
“Shut up,” Dawn and William yelled simultaneously.
Andrew stuffed a spoonful of sweet potato into his mouth and shuffled off to the TV room.
William shook his head. “Dawn,” he said. “You… you look like a common trollop. You… I can’t let you outside this
house like that. Go upstairs and change.”
“No. I like it. And I’m leaving,” Dawn growled.
William got rather quickly around her.
“Like. Hell,” he said, all tense.
“You can’t stop me, Spike. I have a date, and besides there are no vampires so you’re completely off the hook,”
Dawn said. She backed toward the door.
He followed, shouting now. “Off the hook? There are more dangers than vampires, Dawn. And that tragedy of an
outfit will have every sick freak and bugger… Hey, those are Buffy’s earrings.”
Dawn froze. And then her anger re-focused. “Don’t see why you care,” she said coolly. “They were from him.” She
hated herself for the hurt look that flashed on his face.
His blue eyes blazed. “Yeah, well they’re hers. Take them off.”
“Make me.” She turned smoothly and stepped toward the door. He clamped a hand over her wrist, squeezed it and
jerked her around to face him.
“You are not leaving,” William shouted.
“I so am!”
William twisted her arm. “You’re staying. That’s final.” She flailed. He held fast.
“Let go of me, dammit! You’re hurting me,” She pulled free and stumbled back into the coat rack. Eyes wide and
brimming with tears, she screamed at him: “You are not my father!”
“That’s right, Princess Thinkspace,” he yelled at her retreating form. “Big difference: I’m here. I’M HERE!”
Dawn fled, slamming the door between them.
William’s whole body quaked with rage. The tremor wracked him so badly he had to clench his teeth to stop them
from chattering. All of the anger, all of it he’d been struggling to keep down…
He turned to find his almost unrecognizable reflection glaring back at him in the hallway mirror. All that fury skewed
his features, hollowing his razor-blade cheekbones and ridging his blotchy forehead.
No, it wasn’t so unfamiliar after all. William stared for a second longer before putting his fist through the glass.
Andrew swept up the glass in the entry hall. Which was no easy chore one-handed, thank you very much.
But he managed quite well and was pleased. He saw himself as the Professor X of the group; he was the glue. All of his
friends were running around, acting crazy, doing weird stuff with their hair and putting on skankalicious outfits…
All of his friends being, well, Dawn. But he, Andrew, stayed put, stayed calm, remained rational in the face of
surmounting odds.
So they had both run off after their mirror shattering outburst? Andrew could hold the house together in their
absence. When they returned, he would be there for one or both of them. There could be cocoa involved…
Professor X must be really lonely, Andrew thought with a sigh.
He dumped the last of mirror shrapnel into the trash bin. He returned to the hall, wondering why they bothered to
replace the darn thing when all it ever did was get broken. Then he pondered absently, over whether there was a
metaphor in that.
Beyond the entry hall was the figurative brick wall of his research spread out across the dining room table. He had
been so sure that it was all connected - that some unseen force was guiding him - but it turned out that he didn’t
have the mitichlorians to solve it.
Andrew could feel the pull of the pages. It was drawing him in and he could lose himself – yea, his very sanity, if he
was not careful.
Luckily for him, the phone rang. Andrew put the dust pan down, and with a feeling of great import, answered the
call.
Xander dragged the door to the phone booth closed and shook rain from his hair like the dog he felt he was. He
turned out his pockets, finding only his ID and credit card. He’d left everything else behind.
He dialed the operator with shaking fingers, somehow managed to form words from syllables and put across his
intent. He placed the call and waited. After a few moments straining to hear the tinselly connections between
Galveston and London, the line started to ring.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Xander muttered softly. The rain pelted down on the booth, great sogging sheets of it. They did
things bigger in Texas; Xander guessed that went double for storms.
Someone picked up on the other end.
“Summers, Giles, Rosenberg, Harris, Pratt and Wells…” Dramatic pause “…residence.”
“Andrew?” Xander shouted over the line. “Andrew, is that you?”
“Xander. Hey, happy Thanksgiving.” Andrew answered casually. “How’s Maya?”
Xander heard someone speaking, and only Andrew could sound that annoying without comprehensible dialog.
“Andrew?” Xander called into the phone. “I need to talk to Buffy. Is Buffy there?”
Xander looked at the receiver, then bashed himself squarely in the forehead with it. Could he be less useful? If he
couldn’t hear Andrew, how the hell did he think he’d be able to understand Buffy?
Lightning fried a utility pole very nearby. Flash and thunder struck simultaneously, followed by the briny scent of
sizzling ozone. The phone connection whirred and spat. Xander hung up the phone and plunged from the booth,
damned sure that it was the least of all safe places to be in the middle of a raging thunderstorm.
Xander ducked and ran, sliding through gathering puddles across the quiet street. More lightning lanced down along
the seawall; none of it as close as that last Zeus-like strike.
He found shelter under the striped awning of Gaido’s Restaurant. He discovered that if he huddled in the backmost
corner, the slanting rain would almost miss him. Rainwater seeped into his supposed all-weather footwear and
trickled under the band of his collar. The whole place smelled of trash and fish. Or, adventurously thinking: trash-
fish.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and blew on his fingers for warmth. The phone call had been the frosting-like
badness that was the fitting end to an abysmally bad day.
“Swell, Harris,” he whispered as he watched the storm. “Just… swell.”
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends