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Author: -Andy-
Rated: FR15
Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon, Fox Television, etc. Highlander belongs to Panzer/Davis and a bunch of others. Ginny belongs to JK Rowling. Prue Halliwell probably belongs to Aaron Spelling and Co. Julie-san and Mr. Miyagi belong to someone other than me.
Prompt: #002, Death.
Wordcount: 1,530 (12 of 100)
Note: This is set in the universe of my ficlet Gone, and occurs directly after Prompt #24.
Not ready to answer Buffy's question just yet, Dawn leaned back and asked one of her own. "How many times have you died now?"
Buffy shrugged. "I'm not sure. Twice for sure. Maybe more. A lot of very close calls over the years."
"At least three." Ginny corrected quietly. She turned to Dawn. "The first time was when the Master drowned her. The second was when she sacrificed herself for you. The most recent was when Faith died. We almost lost Buffy at the same time."
"It wasn't even close." Buffy protested. "I didn't get a scratch. I was completely death free."
"Slayers may be many things but they aren't immune to curses, Buffy." Ginny admonished. "If Prue hadn't been owed a favor she wouldn't have gotten to you in time and we would have buried you also."
"I'm sorry." Buffy said, her face buried in Ginny's hair as she hugged her tightly. "It should have been me, not her."
"Don't you dare!" Ginny said fiercely. "Don't you dare let Prue hear you say that. It shouldn't have been either of you. But being a slayer is dangerous. I knew from the beginning that I would out-live her. Sometimes even the minutes without her hurt so much I can barely breath but I wouldn't wish that on anyone else."
Both women seemed to have forgotten they were not alone, lost in their own world for the moment. Dawn, embarrassed at witnessing such a private moment, was extremely grateful for her apparent invisibility.
"You never forget your first death." Dawn said, returning to her attempt to answer her sister's earlier question. "It's always the most painful, the most terrifying."
One of the curses of an immortal life seemed to be the inability to forget certain things. Like your first brush with death. Even now, looking back at it, she wasn't sure how to put it, her feelings, and the events preceding it into some context that would make sense to anyone else.
That year before her first death had been rougher than most. She'd almost lost her sister again in the annual apocalypse the previous spring. Faith and several of her friends had been seriously injured, even for slayers, rescuing her from the latest attempt by an evil overlord wanna-be to destroy the Council and oldest surviving slayer. The injuries that had been inflicted on her by her kidnappers during her month long captivity had felt like they would never heal.
She'd just wanted to be left alone. Even Xander's presence, normally very soothing in its familiarity, grated on her nerves. She'd convinced her sister and Giles to let her delay starting college. She could still start Oxford in the spring. It wasn't going anywhere.
She'd been sitting on the edge of the roof, looking out across the small Council training center, towards London in the distance. There were times that spring when she'd thought she would never see the sky again but she'd promised herself that if she survived she would spend as much time outside as possible.
Think back, Dawn couldn't remember hearing Julie approach until she was sitting down next to her. She wasn't the typical former potential. She'd joined them the fall after Sunnydale while they were still in LA trying to decide what to do next. She'd later followed Buffy's small entourage to Rome. She'd been with the small group of slayers gathered up by Faith and Buffy when they'd rescued Angel and had gone back to London the following year.
There was something mysterious about Julie Pierce, a history that only Buffy and Giles seemed to be aware of. Few of the former potentials talked about their pasts but no one else seemed to know where she came from or who she really was and they weren't sharing her history.
Dawn could clearly remember her showing up one day at the Hyperion, with all of the confidence and skills that until then she'd only seen the oldest of the Council trained potentials display. But none of the arrogance she remembered from Kennedy. Tall and gangly, there was a subtle elegance to the way she fought, a rare economy of movement as she trained with the other new slayers.
And every year in late fall, around the same time, she disappeared for several weeks, returning looking a little sadder but more centered than when she'd left.
"How would you like to do something different for a few days?" Dawn remembered her asking.
"Like what?" Dawn asked.
Julie seemed to look deep into her soul, sending a shiver down Dawn's spine. "I'm going to visit an old friend or two next week. How would you like to come along?"
"Where?" Dawn asked.
Buffy's reaction to the idea hadn't helped her mood. She'd felt as if Buffy was glad to see her go. They'd parted on slightly strained terms. Over the years, she'd tried to second-guess her actions, wondering if things might have turned out differently if she hadn't gone with Julie. Even Cassandra, the one time Dawn had cornered her and asked, had been unable to provide anything solid, claiming that immortality didn't mix well with fate.
Once she'd gotten over her surprise at their destination, the two weeks she'd spent with Julie at the monastery had provided her with the space and peace she'd needed to start feeling like she was in control of her life again. Something that had been missing while living at the Council surrounded by the chaos that seemed to follow slayers around. Just being around the peaceful monks she'd been able to feel some of the horrors of the last few months draining away.
She hadn't been required to do anything while there. All she had to do was just be. Walking in the fields. Contemplating how the monks seemed to be so in harmony with the world around them. Watching Julie going through the movements of the martial art she called Shorin-Ryu. She could see why Julie spent time with them every year.
It was a refuge she'd been reluctant to leave when their stay came to an end. They'd made one stop on the way to the airport, at a small cemetery outside of Boston where Julie paid her respects to her mentor, Mr. Miyagi. She'd spoken about him occasionally during their stay with the monks.
Julie had spoken wistfully of how he'd rescued an angry teenager from herself and taught her the skills that had enabled her to survive her first encounters with the First's minions. How he would occasionally spout corny aphorisms that never really meant anything. And how he'd taught her that when it did become necessary to fight, to win. Even two decades later, Dawn could recall Julie's voice as she repeated his advice: "Julie-san, fighting not good. But if must fight... win."
Dawn had envied her at the time. Envied the chance to stay connected with those she'd lost. The graves of her mother, and Tara, and even her sister were long gone, drowned with the rest of Sunnydale. But now, twenty years later, she would often wonder if there was anyone who visited her own empty grave.
The actual hours leading up to her first death eluded her memory. They had split up at the end. Like so many others, Dawn had never seen Julie again. She'd taken a plane west to LA, and Dawn had quickly fallen asleep on her own flight to London.
She remembered the horror and confusion of waking up to the screams of the other passengers, quickly followed by the sensation of falling as the plane seemed to dive straight towards the ground. There'd been an explosion of some sort and she'd blacked out from the pain.
The next thing she remembered was waking up in the rain in a small stand of trees, freezing in her wet, tattered clothes. The smell of burning rubber and plastic and charred flesh seemed to inundate the area. She'd stumbled out onto a dimly lit road, not sure what was going on. Much later, she'd realized the plane must have come apart in mid-air. She didn't think even an immortal could have survived the impact and explosive forces generated by a large plane hitting the ground at high speed.
She'd been found by Amanda, wandering along a back road near the crash, obviously in shock. The older immortal had taken pity on her and had taken her under her wing. With hindsight and experience with other immortals she knew she'd been very lucky.
"Dawn?" She hear a voice calling her, dragging her back to the present.
"Yes?" She looked over at Amanda, shaking her head to clear it. "Sorry. Just thinking." Amanda gave her a knowing look.
"Well?" Buffy said, this time in a much calmer tone of voice. "And why does it matter how many times anyone has died?"
Dawn sighed. "If I'm really going to explain I'm going to need a stiff drink." she muttered. "You wouldn't happen to have something stronger than water around here? I know Giles always kept something in his desk." she asked, raising her voice.
The title comes from W.H. Auden's poem In Memory of W.B. Yeats. The idea for this ficlet originally came to me when I heard that Pat Morita had just died. This isn't quite how I'd originally envisioned this but it'll have to do for now.
My Prompt Table
