My heart is pierced by cupid; I disdain all glittering gold

[simplestgift]

Who: tothelibrary and noprevaricating.
What: Stretching Dawn's legs after her mallynap.
When: July 11, early morning, before it gets hot.
Where: The forest path, not far from town.
Summary: Archie wants to make sure Dawn has lots of sensory experiences after being kept in a cell for a few weeks. And by "sensory experiences," we mean "intentions here are totally chaste please Buffy do not kill me."
Rating: It's flipping Dawn and Archie. Inevitably it will end up so disgustingly sweet your teeth will rot just from reading this form.


Archie wants Dawn to see the morning the way he sees it.

She was bleary-eyed and sleepy when he came by her apartment to pick her up, holding a bouquet of brightly-colored daisies, but it's the perfect time of day for this. Right now, the sun is barely up, not quite hot enough to burn off the mist but bright enough to turn it to gold, and to edge the leaves of the forest in gold, and cause the dew to glimmer. The air is damp but a perfect temperature, with the promise of heat later in the day. It's nothing like morning on a ship, with voices slowly building up and the seventh bell ringing and that last moment of warmth before swinging out to begin a new day. Still, it doesn't have to be--he loves everything about morning, wherever it takes place. This one is a bit more like mornings on his family's estate in Lanarkshire, misty and green and gold before the sky turned blue and the sunlight turned silver. All bright, all fresh, shedding the shadows of night for long shadows of its own, deepening the woods and making the leaves shimmer.

He carries a bag with breakfast in it, along with a rolled-up blanket they can spread out in the woods somewhere to keep off the dew.

Comments

[simplestgift]

A pang as she mentions it. He brushes back her hair and kisses her forehead comfortingly, then moves to wrap his arms around her, holding her to his chest, saying nothing. He'll let her speak, if she wants to. If she would rather not, he will not make her.

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"I don't-- I'm okay, though, you know?" The first hint of anxiety creeps into her voice, there, and Dawn sighs. "Really, it's not like I'm freaking out. I just-- after Glory, the whole kidnapping and experiment thing is not a favorite."

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"What did Glory do?" It's a gentle question.

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"She wanted to go home. Back to whatever gross hell dimension she was from, anyway." Dawn worries at the hem of her shirt, tugging and rearranging and just trying to keep her hands occupied. "Key blood was the only way to do it. So, you know. I got kidnapped. Again."

If she approaches it like it's not still terrifying, maybe it won't be terrifying.

[simplestgift]

His fingers tangle in her hair. Thinking about someone cutting up his Dawn makes him queasy. So he holds her, pretending he can take the blows for her as long as he is close enough.

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

Dawn just lays there for a while, letting Archie hold her. Then, staring hard at the sky until her eyes water, she swallows hard. "Don't tell Buffy because she'll get weid, but I might be a little more freaked by the whole snatching thing than I told her. There was this thing back home, called the Initiative? They liked to capture non-humans and like, experiment on them. They did it to Spike. Anyway, after I found out what I was, I used to have nightmares they had like... done a Key-test and figured it out, and they took me." She breaks off, inhaling a little too fast and then trying to relax. "I'm okay and everything, it's just-- you know. Old scary stuff doesn't get that much less scary, sometimes."

[simplestgift]

"No. It doesn't." He presses his cheek against her hair. "Do you remember when I grew melancholy, after Jack died?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

Talking about things she usually just locks in a mental drawer and ignores isn't easy for Dawn, but honesty is another one of those things she's fairly certain grownup relationships are supposed to have. She nods at Archie's question. "Mmm-hmm."

[simplestgift]

He hesitates. He's talking about this for two reasons. First of all, because maybe it'll make Dawn feel less lonely in this. Second of all, because he himself acknowledged to Jilly that Dawn should know more about him, even the bad things.

"It happens every year round that time, just from remembering something that happened when I was a mid. I thought it was getting better, but this year was the hardest of all. I think...I think these things lie in wait, sometimes, until something happens to recall them. Maybe it has nothing to do with strength, or time."

Jilly is one of the strongest people he's ever known, and if she's still troubled by the past... This is a fairly new concept, for him.

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"Like little mind traps of sadness." Dawn is quiet for a while, then she sighs. "They-- back home, there's this thing called PTSD? Post traumatic stress disorder. Where when something really, really awful happens your brain just... freaks out, and keeps bringing it up in weird places. A lot of soldiers get it." Or people who were abused, but Dawn still doesn't know how to say that right. "Like, panic attacks and stuff? Or nightmares, or just freaking out." Not the most textbook of definitions, but she's had the words rattling around for a while now. "I don't have it, I don't think, but just-- sometimes, when things remind me of stuff? I get weird."

She leaves that one open, trailing off.

[simplestgift]

"I don't think it needs to have a name. It simply is. What you do or do not call it does not change it, or whether or not you should...'get weird' when you're reminded of things that happen." He feels like the last person who should be talking about this, so he speaks quietly and hesitantly, but his voice is steady.

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"It's normal. Brains are like... little tiny cities, I guess. If one part starts acting weird, everything gets affected." She taps her fingers against her thigh, a nervous tattoo. "I get a little sick when I see guns. Not-- I mean, I can deal. But I think about Tara."

[simplestgift]

"What happened to her?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"She died." 'Warren shot her'. But that, Dawn can't say. "No one was home, because Buffy was hurt too so I stayed with her."

[simplestgift]

The thought of blaming guns, the tool, for death, is alien to Archie. Men use guns and swords and whatever else they please to kill each other. But babysitting the body of a dear friend isn't something Archie wants to think about Dawn doing, no matter what weird issues Archie has about the sort of thing he's heard about Tara.

"For how long?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

Guns hold a special sort of significance for Dawn. Getting Jack to shoot with her after Grell took a lot, in ways that are a little frightening.

"I'm not actually sure. I got home and no one was there, and I just... stayed."

[simplestgift]

His arms tighten around her. It's one thing for this to happen in battle, but at home, to a young woman? It's horrifying.

"How long ago?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"I was fifteen." She sighs, shakily, then swallows. "Anyway, so. Things. You were talking and I derailed."

[simplestgift]

A beat. "I wasn't...Dawn, are you sure you don't need...?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

There's selfishness mixed in with wanting to know what Archie was going to tell her. Talking about Tara is hard; that she's willing to bring her up to Archie at all is a mark of how much she trusts him. "I'm okay."

[simplestgift]

He holds her still, warming her. "If you're certain. I...I don't remember what we were talking about."

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

"Annual sadness, and this year being hard."

[simplestgift]

He hadn't meant to finish that story. He only wanted to let her know she wasn't alone. Annual sadness. All right. She's asked, she'll know.

"Did I ever tell you I was a prisoner, for a time?"

[tothelibrary.livejournal.com]

Dawn shakes her head slowly, brushing against Archie's chest. "You hadn't."

[simplestgift]

"For two years, in Spain. I tried to escape--" a pause to remember "--five times. The last time, they...locked me away. It was the beginning of March when they put me in. I don't know why I remember that. Most of the time I didn't know what month it was. The seasons are all different in Spain."

He's dodging telling her how bad it was--how cramped the hole was, how damp and how little light there was, and the fact that they left him there for a month. He knows he shouldn't cushion this, but doesn't feel right telling it all. Not to someone who isn't a sailor or a soldier or...or Jilly, who's been through horrible things herself. He doesn't know the word "trauma," but that's what it is.