She's cried as much as she can cry, and now she just feels hollow -- not just hollow, but scraped out, turned inside out. There's a mild April breeze rustling in the trees in the backyard, and it makes her skin hurt.

He's going to live, that's the important thing. Some didn't make it out alive, so he's lucky. Somebody or other said that. Everyone's had some piece of bullshit wisdom to give her. Everyone has to tell Dawn what to feel. She expected the potentials to say pointless crap to her -- the ones who could bring themselves to say anything to her at all -- but she'd never thought Giles --

She'd screamed at him to shut up and leave her alone.

Doesn't feel any better alone, though.

Weird. She's cried as much, she thinks, as the night Buffy died. Is one eye weighted the same as a whole person, a sister?

The sister thing is complicated, just on a generic level. And Buffy -- way more complicated.

Sometimes things got confusing with Xander -- especially when he treated her like a kid sister all the time she was helpless with love for him. Especially when he was all about Cordelia (never noticing how much Dawn was there for him when Cordelia refused to forgive him) or Anya. Confusing, yeah. But not complicated like things were -- are -- with Buffy.

She knows, yeah. Not True Love 4Ever. Just a crush.

But she loves him. She knows this is true.

And his beautiful, expressive eyes --

She was wrong. She's not remotely cried out yet.

The sky is just turning light when the kitchen door opens and the mingled smells of wine and cinnamon wash over her. Two heavy footfalls and Faith's clunky boots come into view as she seats herself on the top step of the porch.

"Fuck off," Dawn says. She always feels she has to put on that extra toughness with Faith.

Faith says nothing, just passes her one of the two clamshells she's got.

Dawn makes no move to take it. "What's that?"

"Freedom."

"What?" That makes her take the styrofoam box, peek inside. "It's a Cinnabon."

Faith flips open her box, lifts the pastry to her mouth. She closes her eyes as her teeth tear into it. She makes a tiny, animal noise of satisfaction, polishes off half the roll before she licks her fingers, then wipes them on her jeans.

Dawn can't stand not knowing. "What's free about a Cinnabon?"

"We only got cinnamon rolls on Sundays. Bacon and eggs, too. Kind of helps you mark the days, having something to look forward to." She tears off another large bite. "That's assuming a hundred or so didn't mysteriously walk off so some guard could pay off a few cronies, buy a little cheap loyalty. Anyway, I saw the store a block from the hospital, and it occurred to me I can have a cinnamon roll any fuckin' day of the week."

This jolts Dawn, makes her feel the reality of Faith's life in prison for the first time. The fact that it's a big deal to choose what you eat and when. The matter-of-fact way Faith talks about it.

She doesn't want to feel it. Wants no sense of empathy with Faith. "You smell like a distillery."

"No I don't. I smell like a winery. Don't think I'll be drinking that shit for a long long time to come. Probably none of us will."

The cinnamon smell's driving her crazy. She takes a bite, frosting smearing the tip of her nose.

"Did you see it? What happened to Xander?"

"See it actually happen? No. Saw him after." She close the clamshell on the remains of the roll, sets it on the step by her feet.

"Tell me." Dawn's voice is hard. She puts down her pastry too.

"He's hurt bad," she says softly. "He was in shock. They got him stabilized now. When I left the hospital, he was asleep." She raises a shoulder in a half-shrug. "Well. Doped up."

"Like you care." Dawn pitches the clamshell into the yard, the cinnamon bun tumbling out early in its flight. "I remember what you did to him." She launches herself off the step, stalks into the yard. "How you hurt him."

"Yeah," Faith says. There's a long silence. "I hurt all of you."

Dawn whirls to face her. "Don't you dare say you're sorry. Don't tell me you've thought a lot about what you did all this time in prison. If you give me some bullshit psychological insight about trying to kill Xander and Buffy and tormenting my mom and me, I'll fucking kill you." She's sorry the instant she says it, only because it sounds hollow and stupid. Faith could snap her in half, and they both know it.

Faith slowly rises to her feet, and it takes an effort for Dawn not to step back.

"What you did to our mom was the worst. Buffy, she's at least got the strength to match you. She kicked your ass. Even Xander -- he came to you as a friend, but at least he'd made the choice years before to be a warrior. But Mom -- she fed you and treated you like a person instead of the piece of shit you are. All you saw was a civilian you could take hostage." Dawn's hands jerk into fists. "They should have let the Council kill you."

"What about you?"

"What?"

"You were an innocent too. Just a kid. I terrorized you just as much."

"Shut up! Go try that fake penitent crap on someone else. There's a whole houseful of girls who might fall for it."

"It's not them I hurt." Her voice is so calm and patient that Dawn wants to smash her face in. "I know I have a long way to go before I can even ask--"

"Go to hell!" She lashes out, pummeling and cursing, fists and slaps raining on Faith's body. Faith stands her ground, absorbing the blows. Her passive acceptance brings Dawn to a halt, appalled and disgusted with herself. "God, I--"

"I know," Faith says. "Sometimes you just feel like you need to hit something." She reaches a hand toward Dawn, who slaps it away.

"No!" She spits in Faith's face. "I am nothing like you."

She turns and runs into the house.

She can't stop picturing it.

She'd walked in on a couple of the potentials talking about what this Caleb did to Xander, and she made them tell her all of it. Now Dawn is sitting on the kitchen counter, mindlessly shoveling saltines in her mouth and listening to the girls train in the backyard. Running that image in her head in a loop.

Blood.

You don't really think of there being so much blood in someone's eye. Stupid. Of course there is.

There's audio too. His scream.

"Squished it like a grape," Kennedy said. He'd stopped to save her, that's how Caleb managed to catch him.

Dawn replays this in her mind, over and over. She's got all the technological advances: slo-mo, stop-action, zoom. She's even got the reality-override feature -- sometimes Spike doesn't get there fast enough to help, and Xander's blinded in both eyes. Future-Cam shows him in dark glasses working at a newsstand, counting out change by feel.

Sometimes she replays other things.

The spark of mischief as he teased her when she was just a kid. The light in his eyes when he fell in love with Anya, and how dead they seemed after he left her at the altar. She remembers the sorrow they reflected the summer after Buffy's death, and how hard he worked to distract her from her own grief.

Dawn's friends don't get why she doesn't swoon so much over the blue-eyed sex gods on MTV, in the movies. To her, it's dark, long-lashed eyes that will always mean beauty to her, always seem more soulful and expressive than any others. She's been imprinted.

But now --

Thanks to Buffy's stupid storm-the-castle plan --

She stuffs that thought down with a cracker. They have to stick together if they're going to beat this thing.

That's what people keep saying.

The back door opens and Dawn's shaken out of her fugue and suddenly realizes she's eaten an entire stack of saltines. She feels gross.

Clomp clomp clomp -- she knows it's Faith before she even looks up. Faith grabs the dish towel and wipes the sweat off her face, then throws it down on the counter.

"How incredibly disgusting is that?"

"What? It's the same one I used earlier today." Faith gets a glass, holds it under the tap.

It takes Dawn a minute to decipher that. Earlier --

The spit.

"God. Jeez. That is so horrifying." Did she use it? Did she touch it? She tries to remember.

Faith finishes her glass of water, grins at her. "You really think that's the most disgusting thing someone can throw at you? I'd advise you to stay out of prison."

That's another glimpse into Faith's recent past that Dawn slams the lid on. "And what makes you think I'd ever be in danger of that? So not like you." But she is. She thinks of the whole stash of stuff she's stolen. Not just from strangers, from big chain stores where it's not even missed, but from her friends. Anya and Giles.

Faith's the one who taught her to shoplift. They'd gone into Walgreens back when Faith first came to town, and Dawn had taken a Wet 'n' Wild lipstick. #110, because that was the shade Janice told her you could put over any lipstick color -- say, some shade that was great in the tube but looked like ass when you wore it -- and it would mellow out the color and make it okay.

Dawn wasn't even old enough to wear lipstick then. And #110 didn't do squat.

"So you said before," Faith says. "That's a good thing, you keep it that way."

"Why'd you come here?"

"Thought I could help."

"Willow said you helped Angel."

She shrugs. "I owe him."

"You owe a lot of people. Well, you were too damn slow to pay your debt to Xander."

A look crosses her dark eyes that Dawn can't read. Faith moseys along the breakfast bar, trailing a hand on its surface, all casual -- until she surreptitiously brushes the toast crumbs off her hand. Nobody ever wipes off the counter.

"All I've been able to think about," Dawn says, "all last night and today, is how pretty his eyes were. Did you ever notice that? I mean, I know you fucked him and all, but did you ever really see him?"

Faith glances sharply at her.

"You thought I didn't know? Or is it that I'm not supposed to say the truth so bluntly?"

"Can't argue there. That's pretty much how it went. I did notice his eyes, though. They scared the piss out of me."

"Xander's? What are you talking about?"

"He wanted a piece of me. Part of my soul. I didn't know what to do with that. It's so much easier to screw 'em and then walk away."

"Maybe he wanted to give you something, not take it."

"Whatever. That was just as hard, in those days."

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to get some kind of insight into your psyche, realize all the damage you've done is just a cry for understanding? Cause boo fucking hoo."

"I don't expect anything from you, Dawn."

"Can we just lose the whole Zen Master Faith trip? It really makes me want to puke."

Faith's chin goes up. It's kind of a guy chin. Not many girls have cleft chins. How weird that Dawn never noticed this before. "What do you want me to be, then?"

"Oh please. Like you could change, for any person or reason." She slips down from the counter, steps in close to Faith, who does not retreat. Of course she doesn't. "Okay, here's a suggestion. You could be gone. Or you could just be anyone else. Someone who hasn't had her disgusting mouth on Xander's. If you knew how sick that makes me--" In a flash she realizes she's given up way too much of herself. Dawn's hand flies to the back of Faith's sweat-damp neck, and she presses her own lips against said disgusting mouth. Flicks at it with her tongue, like Justin that one time they necked.

Faith breaks the contact, stepping back. "What the fuck, Pipsqueak." Her old nickname.

Good question. What the fuck was she trying to do? Find something of Xander there? Find herself? Dawn has no idea. "Don't worry about it," she says. "Never happened. I'm not even real."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I guess there's a lot nobody bothered to tell you while you were having your weekly Cinnabons in the slammer. The short version? I'm Trappist cheese."

"Aw, later for this shit." Faith wheels, starts to walk away.

Dawn grabs her by the forearm, hauls her back around to face her. "I'm cheesy goodness, made by monks. A couple of years ago now, Faith. Before that, glowy green energy. Ask Buffy. Or Giles. Any memories you have of me from before? Swiping stuff at Walgreens, waving that knife in my face in front of Mom? All courtesy of a little mind-rape from these monk guys. It was for the greater good, of course. I was the key to the apocalypse, so they made little-sister cheese, just so Buffy would keep me out of the hands of this hellgod, Glorificus. That was before Buffy died. You do know about that, don't you? She was dead a whole 147 days. Oh. Guess nobody thought it was important enough to tell you."

She watches a whole range of emotion flicker in Faith's dark eyes.

Pissed off, puzzled, confused, outraged, shocked, stricken.

Like she always thought -- brown eyes are so much more expressive than watery blues and washed-out greens. Dawn loves unlocking all this feeling. Power surges deep within her (green, glowy).

She's still the key.