“I need you to stay calm Dawn.” Buffy said, raising her hands up to show that she didn’t mean her any harm. She wasn’t a threat. “And I need you to listen.”
“Buffy, where’ve you– -”
She stopped mid-turn with her smile frozen in place. It doesn’t take long for it to start to fade at the sight of the look on Buffy’s face.
“One way to stay on top of the game, though it’s nothing like chess or Monopoly.”
“Well, maybe it is a bit like those - since this town sure has the whole ‘us vs. them’ mentality down perfectly. Plus, monopoly can get pretty brutal if you play with Anya.“
“Complete with too sugary drinks and pretzels the size of our heads.”
Not quite that large but they were still a good size. She made a mental note to put aside a day just for this outing. Willow fiddled with the remote for a moment before handing it over to Dawn to let her do the honors.
“Pretzels the size of our heads, huh? How many of those do you think you could eat before getting stuffed? …Or throwing up, I guess.”
She shuddered, putting aside the mental image of eating that many giant pretzels for the moment being. Taking the remote from Willow, she didn’t even look at the TV as she turned it on, instead opting to rifle through the movies Willow had put aside for their choice instead.
“Alright. I’ll tell you. There was this demon once, dead now …. but alive at the time. It attacked me & was super strong. That’s pretty much it. Wouldn’t have gotten it if I would have been paying attention.”
“That sounds like the sort of explanation Buffy would’ve given me when I was fourteen– - but sure, I’ll buy it for now. Why weren’t you paying attention?“
“Puts everything in a whole new perspective, huh?”
“Just a little bit, yeah. It’s kinda fitting, though– - y’know, like, supernatural town, supernatural school; WHY NOT throw in a vampire-fighting principal, too?”
headcanon. when buffy was fifteen years old, she was given the responsibility of babysitting dawn alone for the first time. hank and joyce had mutually decided that she was old enough to take care of things, and after giving her a set of detailed instructions and a list of phone numbers, the left the summers daughters alone to head off to a dinner meeting with some corporate big shot. though the sun was dipping below the horizon, the girls ventured to the backyard where dawn demanded buffy push her on the swing. (and buffy was incapable of saying ‘no’ to those big doe eyes of hers.) however, buffy didn’t know yet that she was the chosen one; didn’t know that she possessed super human strength. when dawn requested to go higher, buffy pushed harder – too hard. her little sister flew from the swing, falling face first and landing on her arm. though dawn was the one with the broken arm, it didn’t compare to the pain buffy felt from hurting the one person she cared most about in the world. buffy stayed up all night at the emergency room with her, and dawn even allowed her to sign her cast the next day:
dawnie, i’ll never let you fall again. love buffy. xo ♥
dawn’s arm healed, but the pain from the most prominent memory the monks gave buffy never did heal.
