(no subject)

[holli]

I really should learn to finish a fic before a new plot bunny escapes from the hutch. Because I just got a really weird idea for a story, and I think I'm gonna have to write it. At least, until the next bunny comes along.

****

Connor shifted uneasily. He'd been sitting cross-legged for so long his legs were starting to go numb, and he was pretty sure all this magic stuff was a crock anyway. "So when is this supposed to start working?"

Dawn shushed him. "Listen, Buffy said it takes a really long time for the trance to kick in, and you talking will not make it happen any sooner."

It did work, eventually and much to Connor's surprise. He started to feel sort of like that one time he let his stoner freshman roommate talk him into going to a party with his stoner friends, and he got high just from being in the same room as that many bongs. He opened his eyes, and saw that Dawn had apparently gotten trance-y before him-- her eyes were distant and kinda glazed, and she was looked around the room with an intent expression. She also, he noticed, seemed to be blinking in and out of existence.

"Dawn, why are you--"

She cut him off. "I'll explain that later. Look at that." He looked at the shelf where she was pointing, and saw his tenth-grade jujitsu trophy. It was blinking too, as if it were only real half the time.

"Dawn, why is it doing that?"

"I have a few ideas about that. But you're not-- blinking, that is-- which is encouraging, and not all your stuff is-- that picture from your high school graduation isn't, and neither is most of the room. Just stuff from before you graduated. And, well, me, which is a weird feeling, let me tell you."

She blew out the candle, and carefully brushed away a section of the sand circle. Reality reasserted itself. "Okay. I think I know what's going on."

"At least one of us does, even if spells make that person flicker like a damn strobe light! What the hell is this?"

She sighed. "knew I was gonna have to tell you this eventually, but it still kinda sucks." She paused for a second, to stare at the floor and wring her hands. "Okay. The thing is, I don't exist. In a technical sense."

Connor didn't really know how to respond to that. "Dawn, I don't really know how to respond to that."

"Yeah, I didn't either, when I first found out. See, I'm sort of like this magical construct, and before I was thirteen I was just this glowy energy thing. Then I got made into a human, and everyone's memories-- mine included-- got tinkered with so we all thought I'd been there the whole time. But I hadn't, and the spell lets you see that. I don't think that's what's wrong with you, though. Not exactly."

"Okay, leaving the theoretical physics of that aside for a moment, what *is* wrong with me?"

Dawn frowned. "I can't know for sure, but I think the same thing happened with the memory-changing as it did with me. Only you must have existed before then, because you weren't blinking. So sometime before you graduated high school, you were someone else. But now you're you, and I don't kmow how to find out who you were before, or who had the kind of power to change things this much."

"Oh. I mean... oh. Um."

Dawn grinned at him, wry and a little sad. "Yeah. I know how it feels."

Comments

[septembergrrl.livejournal.com]

I do not think this is badfic. It's a sketch now, but it's a great idea.