starlit_desires | FIC: Dreams & Nightmares (Reply)

I wrote this one awhile ago when I was thinking about what happened during the summer inbetween the end of Season Five and the start of Season Six.

Title: Dreams and Nightmares

Author: Sweetness (aaronlisa@gmail.com)

Pairing: None

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: It all belongs to Joss Whedon and company.

Notes: Set during the summer between BTVS Season Five and Season Six.

            Dawn dreams of her sister every night since she told her that the hardest thing to do was to live. And every night she loses her sister once again, as Buffy jumps off of the platform into the portal. The others have all lost count of how many times they’ve run into Dawn’s room to comfort her when she wakes up screaming. The sounds of Dawn’s screams break up their own painful dreams that started with the loss of their friend. Giles often dreams of what might have happened if Buffy hadn’t been such a successful Slayer, and hadn’t saved the world so many times. He knows that he would have lost her but at least she wouldn’t have had the burden that the Monks placed on her. Not that he sees Dawn as a burden but he has a hard time looking at her despite the fact that he cherishes her like he would a daughter. His other dreams are also full of Buffy sacrificing her sister instead of jumping into the abyss that took her life. Despite staying awake as long as he can, he ultimately falls asleep and part of him is thankful for Dawn’s screams that wake him up every night.
            Likewise Dawn’s screams usually pierce through Spike’s dreams of failure and blood. In his dreams, he often sees Drusilla sink her fangs into the whiteness of Buffy’s neck, spilling Buffy’s blood all over her white sweater. And he is chained to the wall, unable to save Buffy. The screams also shattered Xander’s dreams of happier times when it had just been the three of them against the world. Sometimes the third is Buffy and other times it is Jesse. Anya sleeping beside him is pulled from dreams of another realm, a world much like the one she is but dangerously different. She shudders as Dawn screams and she wishes that Buffy were there to save them from whatever evil is out there. She often sighs as Xander pulls himself out of her arms to go to Dawn. She is not one of the ones allowed near Dawn at night.
            Tara dreams of Willow falling prey to her insatiable thirst to know. She sees her lover broken and she is unable to help her. In her dreams, she sees Buffy and Xander next to Willow trying to stop her but she herself is missing in these dreams. And Willow dreams of how she could have saved her best friend then and now. She dreams of using magic to defeat Glory and of using magic to bring Buffy back from the dead. Dawn’s screams pierce through her magic soaked dreams and Tara hugs her before they go to Dawn’s room.
            Finally Dawn’s dreams are the darkest of them all. The ones that wake up the household with her screams are the ones where she is kneeling at her sister’s grave and she can see Buffy as corpse in the ground, breaking through her grave to stand beside her equally dead mother. The two decaying women leer at Dawn and tell her to join them to prove that she is really one of them. That she isn’t an imposter, or a changeling put in their nest. And as she steps towards them, ready to give her life to prove to them that she is really one of them, the girl in her bed starts screaming.

**END**