Drawn to You
Dawn had never drawn him.
She sketched everything else under the sun, and then she sketched the sun. Why had she not drawn him?
The answer seemed as uncomplicated as a nose or a wedge of cheese. It was Andrew.
Now she sat across from him at the dining room table. Piles of pages yanked from newspapers, journals and
magazines lay strewn like leaves across its dusty surface, collecting around the edges of books, threatening to blow
away with one forceful swoosh of the front door. Beside his chair, a stack of moldering volumes tottered. On the
other side, an umbilicus of cables connected them and Willow’s laptop and the world outside.
She watched him reading. Her eyes fixated on his lips as they soundlessly formed syllables of languages long dead.
She watched the triangle of negative space formed by the bend of his elbow resting on the table, his head resting on
the bandaged nub where his hand used to be.
Dawn continued to inspect him. Her fingers itched for her pencils. Since her disastrous night with Brodie, she
hadn’t touched them. Three nights. Didn’t exactly make her a paragon of self-restraint, she knew, but Dawn had
not felt even the temptation to doodle in the margins of her notebook since that night.
Not until now.
Dawn lifted the top page of her steno pad. She stared down at the blank page beneath her hand. She felt a flush
spread into her face. So what if she wanted to draw him? It wouldn’t be like the Jack-draws-Rose scene in Titanic.
Which was still one of her favorite scenes in any movie ever, no matter what anyone said. Even though the original
memory of watching Titanic had been implanted by the monks, which was an odd detail for them to include…
Dawn raked a hand through her hair. Andrew had jumped full-body into Spike-revival potion research now that the
continental Slayers had taken up their posts around London. Dawn envied his tenacity. She should be studying too,
but every time she tried to focus on the Rasmus’s Theurgical Treatise of Healing Potions, a suffocating sense of
inadequacy filled her. I’m not Willow. He’s not Giles.
But Andrew didn’t listen to that. He never did. Part of him thought he was Giles. Part thought he was Spike. She’d
seen him sneak Spike’s coat and strut around… Why couldn’t she be like that?
Dawn continued to watch him with an artist’s eye. She noted the dashes of shadow beneath his eyes, the way the
pale winter light fell through the mullioned windows, brushing the tips of his unkempt hair to gold. She followed the
shadows into the creases and folds of his oft-laundered Trogdor shirt. This led her to recall with another disquieting
jolt how soft his skin felt under the heel of her hand.
Enough. She had to draw something. It may as well be Andrew. There was no harm in it; it was Andrew for God’s
sake!
With hesitant fingers, Dawn twitched a fan of pen strokes onto the page. She concealed her work under the top
page, feeling like a student cheating on an Algebra test. She lengthened the stroke, filling in the lines of his arm, his
shoulder, up the sweep of his neck to the place where his shaggy hair fell behind his ear.
Andrew scrubbed at the stubble on his cheek. He made notations on his pad, scratched through them, tried again.
Dawn held her breath, waiting for him to return to read-only mode.
He settled. Dawn traced, slowly at first, the pen moving clumsily in her hand. She felt like a doll, her limbs stuffed
with leaves. Her fingers were rusty from three days disuse. She felt guilty for the lack of practice, and guilty again
for sketching. The last time – with Brodie – it had been so raw and visceral and…
It wouldn’t be that way, Dawn thought. It was Andrew. Safe. Abnormal. Andrew.
She drew a jagged arcing line for the top of his head and his tousled hair. She had no urge to smooth the snarls, not
like she did in real life. She preferred the challenge of capturing the scraggly texture that framed his lined forehead.
Therein lay another test – portraying the creases on his brow without making him look like a codger. The Andrew
she knew and tolerated was naïve and noisome – again, he was no Giles.
Dawn drew a bordering line downward, setting his jaw and tackling his lips. She looked up long enough to measure
the breadth of his nose. Her fingers were flying now, drawing from memory as much as anything. She completed the
contour, finishing the neck and shoulder in a series of clean, fluid lines.
Then came her favorite part: the detail. She started with the shadows that dipped and swung in diagonals across his
chest. Andrew’s torso was narrow like Brodie’s, but he lacked at least half a foot of the latter’s height. She
deepened the shadows, crosshatching to the place where he leaned against the table, obscuring the letters of
The Burninator beneath its edge.
Dawn was smiling now, but dimly aware of it. She rounded his shoulders, caressing them with chiaroscuro. After a
reverent pause, she plunged into the shading of his skin.
She discovered a pleasant mixture of textures in his face – the smooth, even tone of the skin beneath his eyes; the
funny, flat shape of his nose that didn’t quite match with the rest of his face; the scratchy prickles of a five-day
shadow on his chin; the faded and never-before-noticed indention of a chicken pox scar under the cusp of his jaw.
Dawn committed the flaw to the page along with a dozen other scarcely noted minutiae before zeroing in on the
eyes.
Her hands trembled. Her throat felt like it was lined with slate. She hunkered close to the paper to get a better view
of his eyes before returning to work.
Andrew’s eyes, hooded and downcast, flitted over the text he was reading. Dawn took great pains to record the
shape of the iris with its variegations of blue and green and grey. She turned the pen in her hand to lightly cast the
play of shadow and light along the eyelids.
As Dawn worked in the delicate, precise details of Andrew’s eyes, a peculiar whirring noise like television static
droned in her head. She dismissed it, preferring the near-floating sensation of pure, unwavering focus.
…symbol looks a little like something from a Julie Taymor play. Pretty sure that one’s mistranslated. Guh, fourth
century monks were such shiftless scholars. I wonder why that is? Probably substandard diet of rotten potatoes and
the company of slovenly men.
Let’s see. Fourth book down. I’ll take Byzantium for $400, Alex.
Andrew bent sideways in his chair, thumbed through the stack and drew out a crusty volume. Dawn stared,
trancelike, waiting for him to return to his reading. She had stopped drawing, her back rigid, her pen poised above
the sketch.
The crackling TV buzz filled her again. This time, she felt it in her spine and in her molars. It tremored through her
body, riveting her to her chair. Part of her recognized that she had delved beneath the surface; that part did not
wish to be reigned in. It was intrusive and she knew it, but had gone past the point of being able to pull away.
…what I thought. Naughty, bad translation. Symbol’s flipped. Means… to gather the crop. Useless unless we want
Spike the Golem to plant barley. Which we don’t. If I turn it the right way it means… to bind in honey. Hmmm.
Intriguing. But still no meshy with the context.
Dawn felt the undercurrent of frustration in Andrew’s head.
It’s been 76 hours since I watched an episode of Doctor Who. That’s gotta be a personal record, he thought.
Why can’t we find anything? The Astragothian transmogrify translation is kicking my ass. I wonder if we have any
more of that weird Laughing Cow cheese Lorne brought. He giggled inwardly. Laughing Cow. That made Dawn smile.
She hasn’t smiled much since… I could bake éclairs. That would get a Dawnie smile…
She felt a flurry of unfettered emotions, followed by a confuddled flipbook of images. One was a blurred wanna-be
Glamour Shot of Dawn from when her hair was long and full of faux-naturalle highlights. There were others, all of
them nebulous and indefinable, until his mind settled on a brief but startling memory.
Dawn witnessed from Andrew’s point of view: him, up against a fence, his fingers laced into the chain link, his
plaintive cries echoing in his ears. Two pairs of hands shot out, seized his shoulders, wrenched him around. Dawn
tasted the bile of his dread as he faced his attackers. One was a young Warren. The other was like a darker, taller
version of Andrew.
And then, quick as it had come to him, the memory disappeared. Andrew mentally clamped a lid down over it,
snuffing out the images in her voyeuristic teleplay.
His thoughts resumed, unruffled.
…don’t even miss my brother. Don’t even know where he is. Dawn’s managed all of this like a brave little toaster.
We have to find Buffy. We have to wake up Spike. Where was I? Right. Transmogrify…
“Your brother…” Dawn whispered.
Andrew shuddered like a puppy shaking water from its fur. “That was… kinda weird. Did you just say something?”
Dawn glanced from him to the astoundingly lifelike sketch on her notepad. She leapt from her chair and backed away.
I could bake éclairs. That would make her smile,” she muttered, her mouth scarcely moving to let the words escape.
Andrew craned his head to the side, eyes narrowed. “Hey, how did you…?”
“You thought it. You thought it. And then you thought about your brother…”
Andrew blinked. “Dawn?”
“I did it again,” she said. She wiped sweat from her lip. “I… violated you.”
Andrew got up. “No, you didn’t. I’m an open book. Really. Ask anyone.”
Dawn’s retreat was halted by the closed French doors that led to the TV room. “I saw your thoughts,” she said.
Andrew rounded the table swiftly. He gripped her arm just above her elbow. Dawn was shaking her head.
“There’s something very, very wrong with me, Andrew,” she said, in a voice that sounded thick and drowned. Her
teeth ground against the struggle to hold back her tears. “I drew you, and I walked right into your thoughts.”
“Yeah, but…” Andrew began. Then he stopped. “You drew me?”
Dawn pointed accusingly at the tablet on the table.
Andrew flipped the cover page over to reveal Dawn’s sketch. What he saw there paralyzed him mid-step. She had
captured him – right down to the smallest detail. The sketch bordered on photographic quality, and laid bare
aspects of him she never dared to see before. It was by far the best sketch she’d done. Still, it had to be
dangerous. The magic she used was as baffling as it was volatile.
“Don’t touch it,” she warned.
“It’s okay,” he told her as he reached for the drawing. “It’s just me.”
Dawn wasn’t fast enough. She didn’t catch him. Andrew’s fingers made contact with the page and his body
stiffened.
“Oh God…” Dawn muttered. She put a cautious hand out to touch him.
Andrew turned to her, beaming. “Holy potatoes,” he exclaimed. “You did this in pen?”
Dawn’s body slackened with relief. “Andrew,” she whispered.
“What?”
Dawn stared for a brief-yet-taut moment into his eyes, seeing in them what her artist’s eye had already pledged to
the page. There was something deeper in him than she had imagined. She couldn’t unsee it now, couldn’t deny its
existence. Whatever it was. She felt it.
Andrew’s expression rolled from flattered to concerned. “You’re kinda flushed and sweaty.”
“I need help,” Dawn said quietly. “Can I talk? With you? I did something. And, I think I have a… something. I don’t
know what it is yet. But,” Dawn trailed off, her attention settling on the image of Andrew she had made. “Will you
help me?”
Andrew seemed to get that she was looking at him. Really looking at him. Dawn felt a lightness in her belly; a
wobbliness in her legs. If he said ‘no’ right now, she didn’t know if she could take it.
“Yeah, of course,” Andrew said. He brightened slightly and said, “Wanna bake?”
Spike awoke to find the house dark, the room cold.
He sat up in the bed. He rubbed feeling back into his stiff arms. He looked about, assessing his surroundings.
“Why in the name of Bruce am I in Dawn’s room?” he said to walls. His voice sounded weak and alien. He rubbed his
throat before slipping from the bed.
Prickles raced down his arms. A century of well-honed instincts told him that something was wrong here.
Dead wrong.
Spike entered the sitting room, conscious of the volume of his breathing against the solitude of the old house.
“That’s the way with these old places,” he muttered to himself. “Drafty old girls.”
He scanned this room, too. Scraps of paper littered the floor. Oily jumbles of clothes piled in the corners, and a rat
gnawed on something near the baseboards behind the laundry hamper.
“Hang on,” Spike wondered aloud. “How long was I out?”
At that, he heard the bare whisper of a voice, the same sound that must have roused him. Spike went to the door of
the room he shared with Buffy, put his hand against the wood and froze.
She wasn’t there. He had lost her.
“Spike –”
There it was: A whisper in the dark.
He turned. It was a real voice he was hearing. Someone here, in the house.
Spike bolted in the direction of the voice, into the hallway to find the stairs and half of the landing blasted to
splinters. He teetered, arms wind-milling to keep from tumbling over the edge.
A giggle, delicate as a wind chime, devious as the devil, floated into the devastated hallway. He turned in the
direction of the sound. It had come from the room on the left. Andrew’s room.
Spike had to shoulder his way into the boy’s room. When it gave, he shoved past the bed and dresser which had
been thrown there to block the entrance. He picked over the debris that had been all of Andrew’s accumulated
wealth – a Mbamu fish; a scale-model replica of the Millennium Falcon; a cardboard standee of that military wank
from Stargate Atlantis; thousands, literally thousands, of Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
A blur of movement caught his eye. In the corner of the room, where the window glass had blown in, a figure
crouched in the cover of shadow. Spike hesitated, perched on the balls of his feet, while his eyes adjusted to the
semi-dark. Something was in the room with him, and it was moving.
Spike paused then to reconsider his status as Big Bad. He felt weak, which was not good, but also scared, which was
worse. However, he was not one to let fear stop him. Once he’d called it best friend. Therefore, following well-
established horror movie protocol, Spike took a step in the direction of the thing.
The figure moved again. That sinister laughter filled the room.
A knowing smile quirked into the corner of his lips. Thinking it was the Succubus he’d tangled with earlier, he said:
“I know you, Beastie.” He peered about for a weapon. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong boy.”
Spike found nothing bash-worthy within reach and quietly cursed Andrew for wasting time on idle toys. However,
the giggle monster seemed not to take any notice of Spike’s approach and he had no tosh breaking her neck with
his bare hands. Come to think of it, he rather liked that plan.
Yet when his hands hovered a foot over where her neck ought to be, a cloak slid back to reveal Dawn astride
Andrew, her hands fisted in his hair, her mouth grazing his chin and his neck with kisses.
The scene produced a strange sensation in Spike. The desire to strangle someone remained, but he thought perhaps
Dawn shouldn’t be his target. Yet something in the way she moved and Andrew did not…
“Dawn,” Spike said in a puzzled voice. “What have you done with the boy?”
She sprung up to fly at Spike, her face contorted in a vampire’s mask, blood streaming from her yellow fangs. He
braced, ready for the full force of vampire strength, but when he caught her she disintegrated to ash in his hands.
Spike was off balance and he fell, straight through the floor and into the kitchen where he slammed into the
breakfast table, turning it to kindling.
He lay in pain on the shattered table, staring up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. He felt the powder of ash on his
fingertips. He tasted blood in his mouth. Above him dark motes swirled on stale air.
“It’s a dream,” he told himself. Dust caked in his throat and he coughed.
“It’s not a dream, pretty Spoike,” she sang. He craned only his head to stare at her in the entry hall. She – dressed
in a gown of green and gold – stood before a round table. On it sat a wire cage full of vivid blue butterflies. She ran
her gloved fingers over the glimmering bars, cooing to them softly.
Drusilla turned to him, bouncing on her toes as she always did when she was delighted. “Do you like my pretty
posies, Willy? They’re made of wishes. Come here and blow them out.”
Spike sat up slowly. “You’re not here, Dru. I know what this is. It’s a dream, because you can’t be here.”
Dru wilted. “But I am here, sweet Willy. Had an invitation. Lovely ribbon, all gold and silk. I wore it over my eyes
when the Angel came.”
“Angel,” Spike croaked. He got to his feet and crossed to her. “He’s dead, Dru.”
Drusilla cringed. Her hands fluttered over her heart.
“You’re all dead, yeah? All of you.”
“Oooh, not all of us, not all,” Drusilla sang. “There are other worlds and other parties. A girl’s work is never done.
She has to dance, even if her shoes are too dainty for a waltz…”
Spike grabbed Drusilla by the shoulders and shook her. “What’s this about pish other parties?” he growled.
Drusilla’s laughter poured from her throat like a song. In a motion that appeared playful, she pushed him away, but
there was real force behind it. He stumbled to keep his balance.
“You think she can take off her party dress now the rehearsal’s done?” Drusilla said. She slapped her thighs and
made a whip-crack sound with her tongue. “Ch! Naughty Slayer. Her life is not her own.”
“Not her own…” Spike echoed.
Drusilla held up one bony black-gloved forefinger. “Shhhhhh,” she said. “You should know this by now. Should have
listened. Now the sheep have lost their shepherd and have all run away.”
Spike shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it can’t go down like this. I have to find her.”
Dru turned her attention once more to her butterflies. She hummed lullabies to them in her child-like voice, but each
note felt like a wasp’s sting in his head. Spike clapped his hands over his ears.
“Stop… singing!” he shouted. “Stop your bloody singing!”
Drusilla gave him a beatific smile. “Hush now, darling Willy,” she whispered. “Shhh. You’ll wake the baby.”
Then Drusilla and her butterflies faded, leaving him to darkness.
Dawn stirred cookie dough in a large metal bowl. Actually, it looked more like cookie soup. She was waiting for
Andrew to finish sifting, but Andrew had busied himself with sifting the flour ever since she’d shared the details of
her indiscretion with Brodie. Andrew had sifted the same cup of flour five times now. He seemed to want the
World’s Record for the finest sifted flour in the land.
“Um, Andrew…” she said.
“Did you use a condom?” he asked without looking up.
Dawn stared into the bowl. A curtain of hair shielded her eyes. “No,” she said. “I didn’t… give him a chance.”
Andrew banged the sifter on the counter. He crossed the kitchen to the pantry, where he made a lot of noise
getting down the cinnamon, the vanilla, and the nutmeg.
Dawn made a perturbed sound. “That’s what you take issue with from all of this? That Brodie didn’t wear a condom?”
“A fireman never goes in without his slicker!” Andrew splurted in one breath.
She stabbed at the batter with her spoon. “I hurt him, Andrew,” she said. “I may have damaged him.”
Andrew spun to face her. “That flash git may have damaged you when he neglected to put a robe on Friar Tuck.”
“What? You sound like Giles…”
Andrew returned to his sifting.
After a few moments, he spoke again. He said, “If Brodie cared about you even in the tiniest, he would’ve slipped on
a dunky like a good Captain Kirk.”
“That’s enough,” Dawn said, tossing her spoon into the bowl with a clang. “You’re telling me you wore a condom
every time you were with Nighna?”
Andrew squared off with her. “See above RE: Condoms.”
“You were together seven months,” she countered.
“Yeah, well. Turns out, she’s a three thousand year old Kimaris demon. We’re talking, like, STDs from Hell,” Andrew
said. “That’s… way worse than space herpes.”
Dawn did her best to glower in indignation at him, but she couldn’t. She returned to her bowl of goo. Andrew was
missing the point, probably on purpose. He wasn’t seeing like she needed him to see. He was mad, but at the wrong
thing.
Dawn rounded the bar. She took Andrew and bodily turned him to face her.
“Look, Andrew,” she said. “Just now when I drew you, I did something. I walked right in on your thoughts and
memories. See? And when I was… with… Brodie, I saw something happening. That’s the bad part. The other part is
just regular life stuff. And… He tried to stop me!”
Andrew put his hands on his hips. “If he’d really tried, he’d have stopped you.”
Dawn flounced. “I held him down.”
“Yeah?” Andrew said. He took a step toward her, so that they were toe to toe like they had been before, in her
bedroom, the night that Spike collapsed. “He’s bigger than me. Hold me down.”
Dawn stepped back. Andrew closed the distance.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“You’re Dax. I’m Quark,” he said. “Hold me down.”
Before she knew it she was against the counter, and Andrew was continuing with this weirdo macho crap.
“Stop it,” Dawn said. “I’m serious.”
“Me too. Do it. You’re Aeryn Sun. I’m Rygel. You’re Gabrielle. I’m Joxer. I’m… Jean-Luc Piccard. You’re the Borg…”
Dawn brought her mouth to his and she kissed him as hard as she could.
A long, long moment of silence passed before her heartbeat leapt back into business. She backpedaled, found the
counter still there, and paused while she waited for him to open his eyes.
Breathless, Andrew said, “Point taken; I concede…”
Immediately, Dawn began to backtrack to the place where her thoughts had so catastrophically derailed. She
remembered that if Andrew was playing by the same rules she laid down, she could expect a slap across the face any
second.
Andrew’s eyelids fluttered open.
Dawn said, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
Andrew cupped his hand at the base of her neck, drew her close and kissed her right back.
In that moment, when nothing in Dawn’s surreal world felt that it would ever make any sense, this one thing felt
right. It was simple thing, really. On a cosmic scale, a kiss is but a kiss, but to Dawn for those seconds the world
stopped for her. And it was just Andrew. Her Andrew.
When they parted, he gave her a bashful laugh.
“Hey, do you hear that?” he asked. “I hear bells?”
Dawn listened, her forehead resting lightly against his. “Yeah. So do I. Bells…”
Then a rattle of keys in the lock as someone opened the front door.
“Buffy? Dawn?” It was Xander. He said, “I don’t know, Maya. I don’t think anyone’s home.”
Ten seconds later, Dawn and Andrew tackled Xander in a back-breaking hug and Maya, not wanting to be left out,
jumped in to make the reunion complete.
Dawn had never drawn him.
She sketched everything else under the sun, and then she sketched the sun. Why had she not drawn him?
The answer seemed as uncomplicated as a nose or a wedge of cheese. It was Andrew.
Now she sat across from him at the dining room table. Piles of pages yanked from newspapers, journals and
magazines lay strewn like leaves across its dusty surface, collecting around the edges of books, threatening to blow
away with one forceful swoosh of the front door. Beside his chair, a stack of moldering volumes tottered. On the
other side, an umbilicus of cables connected them and Willow’s laptop and the world outside.
She watched him reading. Her eyes fixated on his lips as they soundlessly formed syllables of languages long dead.
She watched the triangle of negative space formed by the bend of his elbow resting on the table, his head resting on
the bandaged nub where his hand used to be.
Dawn continued to inspect him. Her fingers itched for her pencils. Since her disastrous night with Brodie, she
hadn’t touched them. Three nights. Didn’t exactly make her a paragon of self-restraint, she knew, but Dawn had
not felt even the temptation to doodle in the margins of her notebook since that night.
Not until now.
Dawn lifted the top page of her steno pad. She stared down at the blank page beneath her hand. She felt a flush
spread into her face. So what if she wanted to draw him? It wouldn’t be like the Jack-draws-Rose scene in Titanic.
Which was still one of her favorite scenes in any movie ever, no matter what anyone said. Even though the original
memory of watching Titanic had been implanted by the monks, which was an odd detail for them to include…
Dawn raked a hand through her hair. Andrew had jumped full-body into Spike-revival potion research now that the
continental Slayers had taken up their posts around London. Dawn envied his tenacity. She should be studying too,
but every time she tried to focus on the Rasmus’s Theurgical Treatise of Healing Potions, a suffocating sense of
inadequacy filled her. I’m not Willow. He’s not Giles.
But Andrew didn’t listen to that. He never did. Part of him thought he was Giles. Part thought he was Spike. She’d
seen him sneak Spike’s coat and strut around… Why couldn’t she be like that?
Dawn continued to watch him with an artist’s eye. She noted the dashes of shadow beneath his eyes, the way the
pale winter light fell through the mullioned windows, brushing the tips of his unkempt hair to gold. She followed the
shadows into the creases and folds of his oft-laundered Trogdor shirt. This led her to recall with another disquieting
jolt how soft his skin felt under the heel of her hand.
Enough. She had to draw something. It may as well be Andrew. There was no harm in it; it was Andrew for God’s
sake!
With hesitant fingers, Dawn twitched a fan of pen strokes onto the page. She concealed her work under the top
page, feeling like a student cheating on an Algebra test. She lengthened the stroke, filling in the lines of his arm, his
shoulder, up the sweep of his neck to the place where his shaggy hair fell behind his ear.
Andrew scrubbed at the stubble on his cheek. He made notations on his pad, scratched through them, tried again.
Dawn held her breath, waiting for him to return to read-only mode.
He settled. Dawn traced, slowly at first, the pen moving clumsily in her hand. She felt like a doll, her limbs stuffed
with leaves. Her fingers were rusty from three days disuse. She felt guilty for the lack of practice, and guilty again
for sketching. The last time – with Brodie – it had been so raw and visceral and…
It wouldn’t be that way, Dawn thought. It was Andrew. Safe. Abnormal. Andrew.
She drew a jagged arcing line for the top of his head and his tousled hair. She had no urge to smooth the snarls, not
like she did in real life. She preferred the challenge of capturing the scraggly texture that framed his lined forehead.
Therein lay another test – portraying the creases on his brow without making him look like a codger. The Andrew
she knew and tolerated was naïve and noisome – again, he was no Giles.
Dawn drew a bordering line downward, setting his jaw and tackling his lips. She looked up long enough to measure
the breadth of his nose. Her fingers were flying now, drawing from memory as much as anything. She completed the
contour, finishing the neck and shoulder in a series of clean, fluid lines.
Then came her favorite part: the detail. She started with the shadows that dipped and swung in diagonals across his
chest. Andrew’s torso was narrow like Brodie’s, but he lacked at least half a foot of the latter’s height. She
deepened the shadows, crosshatching to the place where he leaned against the table, obscuring the letters of
The Burninator beneath its edge.
Dawn was smiling now, but dimly aware of it. She rounded his shoulders, caressing them with chiaroscuro. After a
reverent pause, she plunged into the shading of his skin.
She discovered a pleasant mixture of textures in his face – the smooth, even tone of the skin beneath his eyes; the
funny, flat shape of his nose that didn’t quite match with the rest of his face; the scratchy prickles of a five-day
shadow on his chin; the faded and never-before-noticed indention of a chicken pox scar under the cusp of his jaw.
Dawn committed the flaw to the page along with a dozen other scarcely noted minutiae before zeroing in on the
eyes.
Her hands trembled. Her throat felt like it was lined with slate. She hunkered close to the paper to get a better view
of his eyes before returning to work.
Andrew’s eyes, hooded and downcast, flitted over the text he was reading. Dawn took great pains to record the
shape of the iris with its variegations of blue and green and grey. She turned the pen in her hand to lightly cast the
play of shadow and light along the eyelids.
As Dawn worked in the delicate, precise details of Andrew’s eyes, a peculiar whirring noise like television static
droned in her head. She dismissed it, preferring the near-floating sensation of pure, unwavering focus.
…symbol looks a little like something from a Julie Taymor play. Pretty sure that one’s mistranslated. Guh, fourth
century monks were such shiftless scholars. I wonder why that is? Probably substandard diet of rotten potatoes and
the company of slovenly men.
Let’s see. Fourth book down. I’ll take Byzantium for $400, Alex.
Andrew bent sideways in his chair, thumbed through the stack and drew out a crusty volume. Dawn stared,
trancelike, waiting for him to return to his reading. She had stopped drawing, her back rigid, her pen poised above
the sketch.
The crackling TV buzz filled her again. This time, she felt it in her spine and in her molars. It tremored through her
body, riveting her to her chair. Part of her recognized that she had delved beneath the surface; that part did not
wish to be reigned in. It was intrusive and she knew it, but had gone past the point of being able to pull away.
…what I thought. Naughty, bad translation. Symbol’s flipped. Means… to gather the crop. Useless unless we want
Spike the Golem to plant barley. Which we don’t. If I turn it the right way it means… to bind in honey. Hmmm.
Intriguing. But still no meshy with the context.
Dawn felt the undercurrent of frustration in Andrew’s head.
It’s been 76 hours since I watched an episode of Doctor Who. That’s gotta be a personal record, he thought.
Why can’t we find anything? The Astragothian transmogrify translation is kicking my ass. I wonder if we have any
more of that weird Laughing Cow cheese Lorne brought. He giggled inwardly. Laughing Cow. That made Dawn smile.
She hasn’t smiled much since… I could bake éclairs. That would get a Dawnie smile…
She felt a flurry of unfettered emotions, followed by a confuddled flipbook of images. One was a blurred wanna-be
Glamour Shot of Dawn from when her hair was long and full of faux-naturalle highlights. There were others, all of
them nebulous and indefinable, until his mind settled on a brief but startling memory.
Dawn witnessed from Andrew’s point of view: him, up against a fence, his fingers laced into the chain link, his
plaintive cries echoing in his ears. Two pairs of hands shot out, seized his shoulders, wrenched him around. Dawn
tasted the bile of his dread as he faced his attackers. One was a young Warren. The other was like a darker, taller
version of Andrew.
And then, quick as it had come to him, the memory disappeared. Andrew mentally clamped a lid down over it,
snuffing out the images in her voyeuristic teleplay.
His thoughts resumed, unruffled.
…don’t even miss my brother. Don’t even know where he is. Dawn’s managed all of this like a brave little toaster.
We have to find Buffy. We have to wake up Spike. Where was I? Right. Transmogrify…
“Your brother…” Dawn whispered.
Andrew shuddered like a puppy shaking water from its fur. “That was… kinda weird. Did you just say something?”
Dawn glanced from him to the astoundingly lifelike sketch on her notepad. She leapt from her chair and backed away.
I could bake éclairs. That would make her smile,” she muttered, her mouth scarcely moving to let the words escape.
Andrew craned his head to the side, eyes narrowed. “Hey, how did you…?”
“You thought it. You thought it. And then you thought about your brother…”
Andrew blinked. “Dawn?”
“I did it again,” she said. She wiped sweat from her lip. “I… violated you.”
Andrew got up. “No, you didn’t. I’m an open book. Really. Ask anyone.”
Dawn’s retreat was halted by the closed French doors that led to the TV room. “I saw your thoughts,” she said.
Andrew rounded the table swiftly. He gripped her arm just above her elbow. Dawn was shaking her head.
“There’s something very, very wrong with me, Andrew,” she said, in a voice that sounded thick and drowned. Her
teeth ground against the struggle to hold back her tears. “I drew you, and I walked right into your thoughts.”
“Yeah, but…” Andrew began. Then he stopped. “You drew me?”
Dawn pointed accusingly at the tablet on the table.
Andrew flipped the cover page over to reveal Dawn’s sketch. What he saw there paralyzed him mid-step. She had
captured him – right down to the smallest detail. The sketch bordered on photographic quality, and laid bare
aspects of him she never dared to see before. It was by far the best sketch she’d done. Still, it had to be
dangerous. The magic she used was as baffling as it was volatile.
“Don’t touch it,” she warned.
“It’s okay,” he told her as he reached for the drawing. “It’s just me.”
Dawn wasn’t fast enough. She didn’t catch him. Andrew’s fingers made contact with the page and his body
stiffened.
“Oh God…” Dawn muttered. She put a cautious hand out to touch him.
Andrew turned to her, beaming. “Holy potatoes,” he exclaimed. “You did this in pen?”
Dawn’s body slackened with relief. “Andrew,” she whispered.
“What?”
Dawn stared for a brief-yet-taut moment into his eyes, seeing in them what her artist’s eye had already pledged to
the page. There was something deeper in him than she had imagined. She couldn’t unsee it now, couldn’t deny its
existence. Whatever it was. She felt it.
Andrew’s expression rolled from flattered to concerned. “You’re kinda flushed and sweaty.”
“I need help,” Dawn said quietly. “Can I talk? With you? I did something. And, I think I have a… something. I don’t
know what it is yet. But,” Dawn trailed off, her attention settling on the image of Andrew she had made. “Will you
help me?”
Andrew seemed to get that she was looking at him. Really looking at him. Dawn felt a lightness in her belly; a
wobbliness in her legs. If he said ‘no’ right now, she didn’t know if she could take it.
“Yeah, of course,” Andrew said. He brightened slightly and said, “Wanna bake?”
Spike awoke to find the house dark, the room cold.
He sat up in the bed. He rubbed feeling back into his stiff arms. He looked about, assessing his surroundings.
“Why in the name of Bruce am I in Dawn’s room?” he said to walls. His voice sounded weak and alien. He rubbed his
throat before slipping from the bed.
Prickles raced down his arms. A century of well-honed instincts told him that something was wrong here.
Dead wrong.
Spike entered the sitting room, conscious of the volume of his breathing against the solitude of the old house.
“That’s the way with these old places,” he muttered to himself. “Drafty old girls.”
He scanned this room, too. Scraps of paper littered the floor. Oily jumbles of clothes piled in the corners, and a rat
gnawed on something near the baseboards behind the laundry hamper.
“Hang on,” Spike wondered aloud. “How long was I out?”
At that, he heard the bare whisper of a voice, the same sound that must have roused him. Spike went to the door of
the room he shared with Buffy, put his hand against the wood and froze.
She wasn’t there. He had lost her.
“Spike –”
There it was: A whisper in the dark.
He turned. It was a real voice he was hearing. Someone here, in the house.
Spike bolted in the direction of the voice, into the hallway to find the stairs and half of the landing blasted to
splinters. He teetered, arms wind-milling to keep from tumbling over the edge.
A giggle, delicate as a wind chime, devious as the devil, floated into the devastated hallway. He turned in the
direction of the sound. It had come from the room on the left. Andrew’s room.
Spike had to shoulder his way into the boy’s room. When it gave, he shoved past the bed and dresser which had
been thrown there to block the entrance. He picked over the debris that had been all of Andrew’s accumulated
wealth – a Mbamu fish; a scale-model replica of the Millennium Falcon; a cardboard standee of that military wank
from Stargate Atlantis; thousands, literally thousands, of Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
A blur of movement caught his eye. In the corner of the room, where the window glass had blown in, a figure
crouched in the cover of shadow. Spike hesitated, perched on the balls of his feet, while his eyes adjusted to the
semi-dark. Something was in the room with him, and it was moving.
Spike paused then to reconsider his status as Big Bad. He felt weak, which was not good, but also scared, which was
worse. However, he was not one to let fear stop him. Once he’d called it best friend. Therefore, following well-
established horror movie protocol, Spike took a step in the direction of the thing.
The figure moved again. That sinister laughter filled the room.
A knowing smile quirked into the corner of his lips. Thinking it was the Succubus he’d tangled with earlier, he said:
“I know you, Beastie.” He peered about for a weapon. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong boy.”
Spike found nothing bash-worthy within reach and quietly cursed Andrew for wasting time on idle toys. However,
the giggle monster seemed not to take any notice of Spike’s approach and he had no tosh breaking her neck with
his bare hands. Come to think of it, he rather liked that plan.
Yet when his hands hovered a foot over where her neck ought to be, a cloak slid back to reveal Dawn astride
Andrew, her hands fisted in his hair, her mouth grazing his chin and his neck with kisses.
The scene produced a strange sensation in Spike. The desire to strangle someone remained, but he thought perhaps
Dawn shouldn’t be his target. Yet something in the way she moved and Andrew did not…
“Dawn,” Spike said in a puzzled voice. “What have you done with the boy?”
She sprung up to fly at Spike, her face contorted in a vampire’s mask, blood streaming from her yellow fangs. He
braced, ready for the full force of vampire strength, but when he caught her she disintegrated to ash in his hands.
Spike was off balance and he fell, straight through the floor and into the kitchen where he slammed into the
breakfast table, turning it to kindling.
He lay in pain on the shattered table, staring up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. He felt the powder of ash on his
fingertips. He tasted blood in his mouth. Above him dark motes swirled on stale air.
“It’s a dream,” he told himself. Dust caked in his throat and he coughed.
“It’s not a dream, pretty Spoike,” she sang. He craned only his head to stare at her in the entry hall. She – dressed
in a gown of green and gold – stood before a round table. On it sat a wire cage full of vivid blue butterflies. She ran
her gloved fingers over the glimmering bars, cooing to them softly.
Drusilla turned to him, bouncing on her toes as she always did when she was delighted. “Do you like my pretty
posies, Willy? They’re made of wishes. Come here and blow them out.”
Spike sat up slowly. “You’re not here, Dru. I know what this is. It’s a dream, because you can’t be here.”
Dru wilted. “But I am here, sweet Willy. Had an invitation. Lovely ribbon, all gold and silk. I wore it over my eyes
when the Angel came.”
“Angel,” Spike croaked. He got to his feet and crossed to her. “He’s dead, Dru.”
Drusilla cringed. Her hands fluttered over her heart.
“You’re all dead, yeah? All of you.”
“Oooh, not all of us, not all,” Drusilla sang. “There are other worlds and other parties. A girl’s work is never done.
She has to dance, even if her shoes are too dainty for a waltz…”
Spike grabbed Drusilla by the shoulders and shook her. “What’s this about pish other parties?” he growled.
Drusilla’s laughter poured from her throat like a song. In a motion that appeared playful, she pushed him away, but
there was real force behind it. He stumbled to keep his balance.
“You think she can take off her party dress now the rehearsal’s done?” Drusilla said. She slapped her thighs and
made a whip-crack sound with her tongue. “Ch! Naughty Slayer. Her life is not her own.”
“Not her own…” Spike echoed.
Drusilla held up one bony black-gloved forefinger. “Shhhhhh,” she said. “You should know this by now. Should have
listened. Now the sheep have lost their shepherd and have all run away.”
Spike shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, it can’t go down like this. I have to find her.”
Dru turned her attention once more to her butterflies. She hummed lullabies to them in her child-like voice, but each
note felt like a wasp’s sting in his head. Spike clapped his hands over his ears.
“Stop… singing!” he shouted. “Stop your bloody singing!”
Drusilla gave him a beatific smile. “Hush now, darling Willy,” she whispered. “Shhh. You’ll wake the baby.”
Then Drusilla and her butterflies faded, leaving him to darkness.
Dawn stirred cookie dough in a large metal bowl. Actually, it looked more like cookie soup. She was waiting for
Andrew to finish sifting, but Andrew had busied himself with sifting the flour ever since she’d shared the details of
her indiscretion with Brodie. Andrew had sifted the same cup of flour five times now. He seemed to want the
World’s Record for the finest sifted flour in the land.
“Um, Andrew…” she said.
“Did you use a condom?” he asked without looking up.
Dawn stared into the bowl. A curtain of hair shielded her eyes. “No,” she said. “I didn’t… give him a chance.”
Andrew banged the sifter on the counter. He crossed the kitchen to the pantry, where he made a lot of noise
getting down the cinnamon, the vanilla, and the nutmeg.
Dawn made a perturbed sound. “That’s what you take issue with from all of this? That Brodie didn’t wear a condom?”
“A fireman never goes in without his slicker!” Andrew splurted in one breath.
She stabbed at the batter with her spoon. “I hurt him, Andrew,” she said. “I may have damaged him.”
Andrew spun to face her. “That flash git may have damaged you when he neglected to put a robe on Friar Tuck.”
“What? You sound like Giles…”
Andrew returned to his sifting.
After a few moments, he spoke again. He said, “If Brodie cared about you even in the tiniest, he would’ve slipped on
a dunky like a good Captain Kirk.”
“That’s enough,” Dawn said, tossing her spoon into the bowl with a clang. “You’re telling me you wore a condom
every time you were with Nighna?”
Andrew squared off with her. “See above RE: Condoms.”
“You were together seven months,” she countered.
“Yeah, well. Turns out, she’s a three thousand year old Kimaris demon. We’re talking, like, STDs from Hell,” Andrew
said. “That’s… way worse than space herpes.”
Dawn did her best to glower in indignation at him, but she couldn’t. She returned to her bowl of goo. Andrew was
missing the point, probably on purpose. He wasn’t seeing like she needed him to see. He was mad, but at the wrong
thing.
Dawn rounded the bar. She took Andrew and bodily turned him to face her.
“Look, Andrew,” she said. “Just now when I drew you, I did something. I walked right in on your thoughts and
memories. See? And when I was… with… Brodie, I saw something happening. That’s the bad part. The other part is
just regular life stuff. And… He tried to stop me!”
Andrew put his hands on his hips. “If he’d really tried, he’d have stopped you.”
Dawn flounced. “I held him down.”
“Yeah?” Andrew said. He took a step toward her, so that they were toe to toe like they had been before, in her
bedroom, the night that Spike collapsed. “He’s bigger than me. Hold me down.”
Dawn stepped back. Andrew closed the distance.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
“You’re Dax. I’m Quark,” he said. “Hold me down.”
Before she knew it she was against the counter, and Andrew was continuing with this weirdo macho crap.
“Stop it,” Dawn said. “I’m serious.”
“Me too. Do it. You’re Aeryn Sun. I’m Rygel. You’re Gabrielle. I’m Joxer. I’m… Jean-Luc Piccard. You’re the Borg…”
Dawn brought her mouth to his and she kissed him as hard as she could.
A long, long moment of silence passed before her heartbeat leapt back into business. She backpedaled, found the
counter still there, and paused while she waited for him to open his eyes.
Breathless, Andrew said, “Point taken; I concede…”
Immediately, Dawn began to backtrack to the place where her thoughts had so catastrophically derailed. She
remembered that if Andrew was playing by the same rules she laid down, she could expect a slap across the face any
second.
Andrew’s eyelids fluttered open.
Dawn said, “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry.”
Andrew cupped his hand at the base of her neck, drew her close and kissed her right back.
In that moment, when nothing in Dawn’s surreal world felt that it would ever make any sense, this one thing felt
right. It was simple thing, really. On a cosmic scale, a kiss is but a kiss, but to Dawn for those seconds the world
stopped for her. And it was just Andrew. Her Andrew.
When they parted, he gave her a bashful laugh.
“Hey, do you hear that?” he asked. “I hear bells?”
Dawn listened, her forehead resting lightly against his. “Yeah. So do I. Bells…”
Then a rattle of keys in the lock as someone opened the front door.
“Buffy? Dawn?” It was Xander. He said, “I don’t know, Maya. I don’t think anyone’s home.”
Ten seconds later, Dawn and Andrew tackled Xander in a back-breaking hug and Maya, not wanting to be left out,
jumped in to make the reunion complete.
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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
We walk through so many myths of
each other and ourselves; we are so
thankful when someone sees us for
who we are and accepts us.
- Natalie Goldberg
each other and ourselves; we are so
thankful when someone sees us for
who we are and accepts us.
- Natalie Goldberg