sail on, silver girl

She has brothers, but she has no sisters.

Of course, the girls are a good influence on her. They all take care of her, try to distract her with shopping and laughing and taking her to the movies. They nurture her, and she can see it in their eyes when they look at her that they want to think of her as a sister, a daughter, a person they're bound to take care of for however long she needs parenting. She loves them, loves them fiercely and loyally as only a girl who's lost her real family can love those left to her.

They are not, however, her sisters. She had a sister once, and her sister cannot be replaced.

She never had a brother, though, and now she has two. Without a shred of irony, she looks upon these men as exactly that. Where once she indulged schoolgirl crushes on both of them at one point or another during the more innocent days of her adolescence, that's gone now, replaced by a purer sort of a love. Her admiration for them knows no bounds in the face of a world where her most vociferous protector is now dead and buried.

Sometimes, she can tell that they try to fill the void her sister left. Sometimes the results of this are a bit comical, really, while at other times their efforts typify sweetness so acutely that she cries herself to sleep.

It hurts her to be loved as much as they love her. It hurts to be protected by someone who isn't her beautiful, noble - and, at times, irritating - sister.

She worries that she's making a martyr, an idol out of her, and tries to remind herself of the times they quarreled and stole each other's clothes and fought over boys and remote control privileges. She forces herself to remember how their mother would sigh from the dining room table and press fingertips to her temples until she couldn't take the noise of their arguing any longer and yelled at them. But even the fights are precious recollections now, and she can't bring herself to wear her sister's clothes or jewelry, even if she's technically allowed to now.

Once in a while, she dares a whiff of her perfume, growing stale in little glass bottles on her dresser, but that's as far as she goes. Young, heady, innocent scents: Love's Baby Soft and endless variations on vanilla and white musk… they still cling to the clothes in the closet, both the ones that remain untouched and unworn and the few items that have been earmarked for use by the thing that now sleeps in her sister's bed.

She doesn't like to think about that too often, putting up with this perky stranger only as much as is absolutely necessary.

It's the girls she turns to for interaction and happiness, and it's the boys - her brothers - she turns to for protection and pairs of strong shoulders to cry on.

Tonight, there's some sort of dangerous thing going on, and everyone is rushing off to patrol the graveyard, leaving her at home with Tara. And with heartbreaking predictability, Spike is freaking out about leaving her.

Of course, she can't tell him to his face that he's freaking out, and he's making a great show of remaining calm, voicing his concerns casually. He doesn't join the others out at the car as quickly he should, given that there's a heavy sense of doom in the air. Instead, he stops, and he looks at her carefully. His forehead is nearly always creased with worrying furrows these days. If she didn't know better, she'd be half-concerned he'd be left with wrinkles.

"You two gonna be all right alone, niblet?"

She feigns surprise at the question, trying to assure him there's nothing to worry about, even as she wishes one of them would stay. She mumbles something about being content at home, that she and Tara will gorge themselves on junk food and cartoons, and she tries to force a smile. "What more could a girl ask for?"

Then she sees it: he dares a glance at the staircase, and her heart plummets to her stomach.

It's a quick glance, and anyone else seeing it wouldn't think a thing of it, but she knows how much everything hurts him these days, how Spike spends more of his alone time drunk than sober, and how if forced into the same room with the cruel imitation of her sister, he'll claw his way out of the situation as fast as he can.

She sees his Adam's apple bob, and his eyes sparkle a touch more shiny around the edges.

"Lock the door after us…"

Now she has to widen her smile, get him calmed down, because if one of her brothers is hurting, she has to make the pain go away.

"We'll be fine, Spike."

Through the open front door, she can see Xander outside, getting into his car. He looks up briefly, his eyes locking with hers, his expression as worried and tense as Spike's is.

They love her, these two. And Tara is at her side as she shuts and locks the front door, beaming at her peacefully.

She doesn't lack for people loving her, this girl, but it's so hard sometimes, and something inside her shatters. She breaks her rule that she can only cry alone or to one of the boys, because right now everything is suddenly wrong, the world gone harsh and cold. Falling against Tara, she lets herself cry suddenly, sobbing with complete abandon, loud enough to make her chest rattle and her throat go raw.
Tara strokes her hair gently but doesn't say a word, doesn't even utter soft noises urging her to hush.

She just holds Dawn and lets her cry.