still_grrr | 129 Ficlet: Alive

Title: Alive
Author:

peroxidepirate
Rating: PG
Word Count: 370
Prompt: 129, free-for-all ("Alive" by Pearl Jam)
Characters/Pairing: Dawn
Summary: There's a reason Dawn has a thing for grunge rock.

Note: This was going to be the beginning of a longer story, but that never materialized. I think it stands alone, though. Lyrics belong to Pearl Jam, Dawn belongs to Joss Whedon, I'm just playing.

She said, have I got a little story for you.

Dawn listens to music pretty much all the time. Her taste in music -- unlike her journal, the "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" feeling her sister sometimes inspires, and her former crush on Xander -- is something that's completely hers. Not something the monks put there.

The fact that she likes music at all is pretty new. In Sunnydale, she never thought about it much. Buffy and her friends used to hang out at the Bronze, but by the time Dawn was actually around, it was steeped in painful memories and anyway, the whole town was getting more and more dangerous. They still went, once in a while, but the music was just background. Lyrics didn't stick in your head, the beat didn't resonate in your heart, and nobody's boyfriend (or girlfriend) was ever in the band.

Being possessed and nearly kidnapped by a singing, dancing demon hadn't helped things, either.

Then she met Susan.

I can't remember anything to this very day
'Cept the look, the look...
Oh, you know where, now I can't see, I just stare...

Dawn was seventeen, living with a couple dozen slayers in Cleveland because Buffy couldn't take her out of the country without Dad's permission, and just waiting for her next birthday so she could get away already. Susan was fourteen, but she'd actually lived all those years, and she had a cultural awareness Dawn seriously -- but privately -- envied.

Susan also had an iPod stuffed with literally thousands of songs, including almost everything from the entire history of rock and roll. The first day in Cleveland, Susan was playing a Pearl Jam mix through the computer speakers she'd bought along the way, and Dawn walked in just in time to hear what was -- instantly and eternally -- her very favorite song.

Is something wrong, she said
Well of course there is
You're still alive, she said
Oh, and do I deserve to be
Is that the question
And if so...if so...who answers...who answers...
I, oh, I'm still alive.

Dawn froze, transfixed, and by the time the song ended, tears were streaming down her face.

Whether she deserves it or not, here she is.