A/N: The title comes from the song, "My, My, My" by Rob Thomas.

Chapter 1

When Dawn first woke up, she didn’t know where she was.

She was starting to get used to the feeling. It seemed like lately, every time she woke up she was in an unfamiliar place – the RV, that abandoned convenience store, Glory’s apartment.

As she sat up in bed to take in her surroundings, the flare of pain from the matching cuts on her abdomen refreshed her memory. Suddenly, she was conscious of the IV in her arm and the machinery next to her bed that beeped out her steady heartbeat.

The hospital room was sterile-looking, like all hospitals seemed to be. Was there some sort of interior decorating rule that made them all as cold and un-homey as possible? A picture hung across from her bed - sailboats in pale pastels, so as not to disturb the monotony of the off-white walls.

Dawn wrinkled her nose. Someone could be lying here dying and the last thing they’d see would be that washed-out print. How depressing. But then, was there really any appropriate thing to see before you died? What was the last thing Buffy had seen? The portal, or the ground below her, or maybe she just closed her eyes, or –

Stop. Don’t think about it.

Dawn continued her inventory of the room. Faded blue and yellow curtains framed a window on the opposite wall, but the angle of her bed only allowed her to see a stretch of gray sky. There was a vase of daisies on a table next to the chair where Tara was curled up into what looked like a horribly uncomfortable position.

Tara had been the first to recover from the shock. Maybe because of her practicality, or her mothering instinct, or the simple fact that she wasn’t as close to Buffy as the others were, but she was the first to notice when Dawn made her way down from the platform, dazed, her hands pressed against her still-bleeding wounds. They’d all been standing there staring at where Buffy’s body lay, trying to comprehend the awfulness of it, when Tara snapped them out of it by saying, “She needs a doctor.”

It took them a moment to realize she meant Dawn.

Half operating on autopilot, Xander said that Anya probably should get checked out, too. He was still carrying her, but his mind was so scattered that the weight of her in his arms barely even registered.

It was at that point that Giles took charge again, visibly shifting from a parent who’d lost a child to the Watcher who’d lost a Slayer – professional, detached, British. He dispatched them all to the hospital, and when they asked about Buffy, he said only, “I’ll take care of it.”

“How are you feeling, Dawnie?” Tara was awake now, and bending towards Dawn’s bed.

“Okay, I guess,” Dawn replied. “It hurts a little bit.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Dawn nodded. “Buffy jumped. Instead of me.” She saw Tara sigh, and she wasn’t sure if Tara was relieved she didn’t have to deliver the news, or saddened by the reminder of Buffy’s death. Probably a little of both.

“What about the others?”

“Anya’s in the hospital, too,” said Tara. “She had a concussion and a couple broken ribs, but she’ll be fine. Xander’s with her now.” She stroked Dawn’s hair. “Giles is at home… making arrangements.”

“Willow?”

“She went to L.A.”

“To tell Angel?”

Tara nodded. They’d tried calling but no one picked up at Angel Investigations. Willow was bent on driving down there, and Tara suspected that this was her way of coping. Willow needed a task, she needed to be doing something, no matter how peripheral, because if she just sat still the way Tara was, she’d just absolutely break down and never stop crying.

“Where’s Spike?”

Tara furrowed her brow. They’d all rushed off to the hospital without really taking notice of the vampire who’d fought by their side. “I’m not sure, sweetie.” She glanced out the window. “It’s daytime, he’s probably laying low until dark.”

*****

In fact, Spike was right where they’d left him. Trapped by the rising sun, he cowered in the rubble of the construction site, but he didn’t care that they’d left him for dust. If possible, he’d taken even less notice of them than they had of him. Once he saw Buffy lying there, when it hit him that she’d jumped because he’d failed, the rest of the world faded into background noise.

The wave of pain hit him as though he’d run full speed into a brick wall – which, in a sense, he had. But the physical beating he’d taken was nothing compared to the searing realization that Buffy was dead.

Every so often it would hit him again and his suffering would be renewed, raw, fresh, his chest tightening, his head pounding, his muscles seizing up until he lost control over his limbs. His throat constricted and his eyes burned as his grief sought release. He sat there, hidden in the shadows, and sobbed until there was nothing left, until he was utterly empty. More than once, he considered ending it, walking into the light and letting the sunshine crumble his battered body to ashes. He might have done it, too, in those first few hours, except that he lacked the strength or the coordination to stand.

But at some point during the day, he remembered what she’d said to him.

What she asked him to do.

Protect her sister, until the end of the world. Well, the world hadn’t ended, had it? Thanks to her sacrifice, a nagging voice in his head pointed out, and he fought a hard-won battle to stop himself from descending back into despair at the thought. He couldn’t sit here and wallow in his misery until the shadows shifted and the sun claimed him. Whether her death was his fault or not, he’d made a promise, and that meant he still had a job to do.

*****

Dawn was released from the hospital later the same day, her injuries bandaged but not deemed serious. Anya was being kept overnight for observation because of the concussion, so of course Xander insisted on staying with her, completely disregarding the nurses who tried to tell him visiting hours were over.

With Willow in Los Angeles, that left Giles and Tara to care for a teenager who suddenly found herself alone in the world. They considered trying to contact her father, but they both remembered the utter lack of concern Hank Summers had shown for his daughters when Joyce died. It was unlikely he’d be any more helpful now.

After some disagreement – all conducted in hushed tones so that Dawn wouldn’t overhear and feel unwanted, even though she did anyway – both Tara and Giles decided to stay at the Summers house that first night, with assurances that it was only a temporary arrangement. Neither one knew what the permanent solution would be, but with Buffy’s loss still weighing heavily on them, the matter of Dawn’s guardianship could wait a few days. Surely Social Services could give them until after the funeral to make the appropriate arrangements.

Dawn cringed at that word. Arrangements. A feeble euphemism for turning her entire world upside down. Funeral arrangements that meant burying the only family she really had. Custody arrangements that meant she’d probably be taken away from the only people who still cared about her and placed in a foster home if her dad couldn’t be persuaded to actually behave like a father. School arrangements that meant she’d have to make up the work she’d missed because of the Glory thing – and all the work she was going to miss, since she wasn’t about to go back to school now. She wasn’t exactly relishing the idea of summer school, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Then, of course, there was the pressing question of the moment – sleeping arrangements. It was funny, in a macabre sort of way, that there were three bedrooms in the house, but Tara and Giles felt uncomfortable using them because two of them belonged to dead people. In the end, Giles slept in Joyce’s room while Tara took the couch.

Dawn lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to make out the places where she used to have those glow-in-the-dark stars and the phosphorescent glue had left a residue. When that failed to occupy her mind, she tried counting sheep but lost count before she ever felt tired. She tossed and turned, her bandages itching and her legs getting tangled in the sheet, which she finally kicked off when the sweat from the hot summer night made her thin cotton pajamas stick to her body.

Her breath caught in her throat and she felt her chest constrict. She flopped over to bury her face in the pillow, tried to work herself up to a sob, but she couldn’t cry, either. The tears dried up before they ever fell from her eyelids.

She hadn’t cried all day. Everyone told her how brave she was, except she didn’t feel brave. She felt empty. And alone.

Listening to the crickets chirp outside her window, she was sure she heard a noise in Buffy’s room. She slipped out of bed and padded into the hallway. Peering into her sister’s bedroom, she recognized the shadow-cloaked figure by the bedside table.

“Spike?”

Her voice was barely a whisper, but his vampire hearing would catch the sound. He looked up, but didn’t seem able to focus on her before his gaze started to drift around the room. His white-blond hair gleamed in the moonlight and his leather duster hung limply off his hunched shoulders, making him look smaller than usual.

“How did you get in?” Dawn crept into the room.

“Climbed through the window.”

“No, I mean, how did - Willow did that de-invite spell.”

“Oh.” He paused, eyes fixed on his hands, which were fiddling with something he’d picked up. “Your sister let me in. Last night.”

She watched as he set down the object – a small, antique porcelain elephant her mother had given Buffy for Christmas one year; Dawn had a matching giraffe on her dresser – and gingerly ran his fingers over a framed picture on the night table. It was a photo of Buffy, Willow, and Xander and, judging by the painfully mid-90s clothes and hairstyles, Dawn guessed it had been taken right after they moved to Sunnydale.

“She was just a girl,” Spike said, looking at the picture. “First time I saw her, she was just a girl.” He glanced in Dawn’s direction. “Promised to kill her then. Would have, too, if your mum hadn’t gotten the better of me.” He turned his lips up into a smile, but the sentiment never reached his eyes. Dawn longed to see their usual twinkle – a sign, no matter how small, that things would be all right again someday. But his eyes remained dull, as if light were no longer reflected in them, but drawn in as to a black hole. They seemed more gray than blue, reminding her of the cloudy sky that had descended on her life since that morning.

“She was a decent lady, your mum,” Spike continued, because even the still-painful topic of Joyce was less gut-wrenching than the thing that was on both their minds. “She raised good girls.” He reached out and pulled Dawn’s head to his chest, more for his comfort, probably, than hers. “You’re a good girl, Niblet.”

Dawn breathed in his familiar scent, all cigarettes and leather and the musty smell that came from living in a crypt. She ached for him to say something real, to rip the band-aid off and talk about Buffy, instead of this talking without really saying anything, this meaningless babble to fill the silence and occupy their thoughts so they wouldn’t have to dwell on the huge gaping hole that Buffy had left in both of them.

He released her and took a good look at her for the first time since she’d come in the room. “You all right, sweet bit? Not hurt too bad, right?”

She shook her head. “Just –” She hiccupped. “Just shallow cuts.” She stiffened at the phrase, remembering the singsong way Doc had sliced her with his knife.

Spike didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were vacant again, darting around Buffy’s room.

Watching him, so lost surrounded by Buffy’s possessions, Dawn felt the swirl of emotions that seemed to radiate off him. Being with him was more intense than anyone else who’d hovered around her all day, fretting and fussing as if she were fragile, all the while keeping themselves composed and detached – a behavior she knew well from watching her sister. But Spike was raw and broken, as though the wounds were too deep to mask or hide. It was the way she knew she should feel, but seemed so out of reach.

She felt a gnawing in her chest as she looked at him, this vampire that she’d idolized and adored. This swaggering, sarcastic, cocksure vampire who was so completely decimated by her sister’s death she almost didn’t recognize him. She reached out one hand to touch him – for comfort, reassurance, she wasn’t sure – and as her fingers brushed his worn leather sleeve, he turned to her. His eyes finally met hers and she saw them cloud over with pain as a hundred different emotions flashed across his face, all of them heart-wrenching.

Dawn collapsed on the floor with a choking sob. Spike was by her side in an instant, her cry seeming to snap him out of the daze he’d been in. It hit him all over again, the guilt soulless vampires weren’t supposed to feel, sharp as a knife in his chest. He held her as all the tears that until now she’d been unable to cry came flooding out, clinging desperately to her, the only piece of Buffy he had left. He rested his cheek against the crown of her head, his own tears dripping silently down his face, and he stroked her hair until she cried herself to sleep.

And when Tara came upstairs the next morning to check on Dawn, that was how she found them, curled up asleep on the floor of Buffy’s bedroom.