The Departed

In the beginning, she’d been certain that Buffy would come for her. Every day she expected to see her, or Willow, or maybe both, come stomping out of the woods sniping at Haldir. She’d cried herself to sleep every night for weeks when her sister failed to appear. Galadriel had let her come to terms with it on her own. Eventually, Dawn had resigned herself- she had become a creature of Arda.

On anniversaries of her arrival in Lothlorien, she remembered her sister. After a while, she wondered what, if anything, Whistler had told Buffy. Or if the memory of her had faded, her sister and her friends magically forgetting her as they had once magically remembered.

Tonight was the fiftieth anniversary.

“They didn’t forget you, kid.”

“Whistler!”

“Shush, I had to argue long and hard to get both the Powers and the Valar to allow this, and I have to make it quick. But I thought you’d want to know- she thought about you every day, right up to her last.”

“Buffy’s-“

“Time’s…different there. It’s been longer a lot longer than it has for you.”

“She didn’t forget?”

“None of them did. And they never gave up on you.”