"No you don't, but thanks for saying it."




Buffy's eyes locked with his, heart pounding in her throat. The ground trembling, large chunks of rock crashing down around them, but neither one of them moved. The words hung between them as heavy in the air as the dust that continued to cascade from the ceiling.




She opened her mouth, for what? To argue with him? Say that he was wrong, though she'd spent years providing evidence to disprove that very fact? It didn't matter.


Before she had the chance to even form words (though she knew not what they would be) he had already spoken again. "Now go!"
The moment had passed. She'd missed her opportunity. It was time to leave. Swallowing hard, she let go of his hand,turned, and ran up the steps that collapsed behind her as she went. Running hard through the ruined building, the stench of blood heavy on the hot air, she thought wildly "But when the school collapses how will we get back to him?"
The idea was ridiculous of course, there was no going back now. And she'd known that the second she released his hand. Still, there was no time to dwell on this.


Her legs screamed in protest as she ran, pushing herself to run faster than she ever had before, as if her life depended on it. And it did. She made it to the bus mere feet before the yawning cavern behind her. Jumping onto the top of the bus knocked all of the air out of her but she held on gasping out "Drive."


And they did, the bus roaring forward with everybody holding on for dear life and begging any deities that came to their minds to grant them mercy. Inside Willow was sitting stock still in her seat, knuckles white and eyes screwed tightly shut. Dawn in contrast, had her eyes opened so wide they looked in danger of simply falling out of her head. Buffy muttered under her breath, "Go. Go. Go." in a sort of desperate chant, as if it were her words alone propelling the bus forward. And then, they were gone, out past the limits of Sunnydale, and the gaping hole had fallen away behind them. The bus screeched to a halt, swaying slightly as it did so.


Mechanically, without thinking about it, Buffy dropped down off the bus and autimatically accepted Dawn's hug when she jumped out of the back. Together they stepped forward. It was one of the most incredible sights she had ever seen. Where Sunnydale had been, right up to the dented city limits sign, there was now a crater miles wide. The earth had literally opened up and swallowed the town whole.


Noise seemed to have gone strangely fuzzy. She was aware of her friends around her, could hear them talking, yet couldn't make sense of the words. She felt numb, as if her very heart had been shot up with Novocaine. "What did this?" Giles's voice, suddenly sharp as if the volume had been turned up. Buffy was silent for a moment. Then simply, "Spike."


That one word suddenly brought everything crashing cruelly back into focus. Oh God. Spike. Buffy walked forward, her stride somehow steady, and looked out over what had been her home, her prison, her duty. She had to go back, to save him. He was a vampire after all, the cascade of rocks would have injured him no doubt, but not kill him. What about the sun? All those rays of light shooting through his body and out of his chest? A snide little voice whispered in her ear. The rocks might not have killed him, but as we well know, the sunlight did. Don't fool yourself Slayer, you're far past being able to save him. But she had to! She couldn't just leave him without even trying! He's a vampire, Slayer. The voice whispered back. Much better off dead, who cares? "I care!" she thought fiercely. "I care!" But why? The voice grew progressively more sinister. You've killed hundreds of vampires, thousands maybe. Why do you care about just one more?


"Because I love him!" She shot back furiously. Stop. A final piece had clicked into place. She loved him. That simple little phrase that she'd choked out in the Hellmouth, it wasn't just a final pity show of affection, a kiss before dying. She meant it, she FELT it. As she realized this, a feeling of bitter irony washed over her. For the past two years Spike had been telling her he loved her, doing everything he could just to be around her. He'd been within her grasp for a long time. Wasted. She'd cared for him for a long time, against her will, repulsed by it. She'd pushed it down so long after those months of baring herself to him in every physical way, that even after he'd made the ultimate sacrifice for her, she still denied it even to herself. His soul, he'd had his soul. Things were changing, she'd grown to depend on him in ways she couldn't even understand. He'd still stood by her when everybody else had turned their backs on her. But it didn't matter anymore. Nothing she felt, nothing that she had waited far too late to say, nothing.


A smile twisted it's way onto her face. It was funny really, for years he had tried to convince her to feel this way and it was only now, after he was gone, that she could begin to grasp it. Laughter bubbled it's way out of her throat. God, or whatever it was up there that orchestrated everything that had happened to her, had a twisted sense of humor after all. Was there some greater purpose that it had? Or was it simply amusing to He/She/It to see how much it could bash her until she broke. The laughter still poured out of her, wild, psychotic. She no more had control over it than she had control over the fact that Spike was now a pile of dust consumed in the bottom of a crater. She was aware of the silence around her, surely everyone was staring as she continued that desperate, insane laugh. She felt concrete pressing against her legs. At some point, without being aware of it, she had sunk to her knees.


"Buffy." A gentle voice spoke close to her, she recognized it vaguely as belonging to Xander. "Buffy we have to go." She looked around wildly, before finally settling on his face. He looked as if he had aged thirty years since the last time she had seen him. His face was weary, it had a sort of defeated look on it that she had never seen on him before. She couldn't process a reason for this right now, her brain didn't seem to be working properly. She finally managed to stop herself laughing. "Xander" she said, her voice seemed to be very small, as if she had done the opposite of aging and regressed into the five year old version of herself. "He's dead, Xander. And I could have saved him." She said this very simply, her voice sounding faintly surprised, it in no way reflected the horror she felt inside. Xander looked at her, his face completely unreadable.


And then he said softly "I know." That was all it took. As suddenly as the laughter had started, now were the tears. It was like a giant damn had burst in her chest and before she knew what was happening she was pressed with her eyes against his shoulder, great sobs wracking her body as he held his arms wrapped tightly around her. "My fault." she choked out. "My fault. My fault. My fault."


Buffy jerked upright in bed. Sheets wrapped around her like a straightjacket, sweat soaking her body. "Just a dream." She chanted in her head. "Just a dream." Except it wasn't. For months after the day the Hellmouth collapsed and too many people she cared about died, she had been waking up in cold sweat after being forced to relieve it one more time. Even now over a year later, when she thought she'd finally allowed herself to move on, one would wake her up in the early hours of the morning leaving her shaking and wishing she still had her mother's bed to crawl into like she had when she was small and had a nightmare.


She untangled herself from her sheets and got up to walk to the window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass and watched the cars and people move around in the streets in the city that never seemed to sleep. She was in London, in her small apartment that she and Dawn had lived in for the past four months. They had moved around a lot in the months following the activation of dozens of slayers all across the world. They had been kept very busy, it wasn't simple setting up an entire new slayer organization from scratch, with dozens of girls varying in age who had no idea what had happened to them.


It was an exhausting process moving from town to town, country to country, informing the new slayers of what was going on and trying to set up areas of control with newly appointed watchers. The hardest part was trying to establish some chain of command among all of the madness. But after long and hard work, aided by the original Watcher's council's considerable money reserves and the funding they had somehow established with the London government in years past (not to mention the fact that Willow could sense out each slayer) they were able to finally achieve a semblance of structure among the newly awakened slayer community.


It was still a uniquely strange position to be in. While Giles was the one handling the planning and money aspect of the enterprise, Buffy had somehow been thrust into position as leader of the Slayers everywhere. Seemingly overnight, she had become the stuff of legends, the girls were always awed to meet her, a situation that tended to make her uncomfortable. She supposed it made sense, after all to them she was the first slayer, the one to blaze the path before them, at least the first of them that was still living. She had expected this spotlight to be shared with Faith at least, but it was a position that Faith had quickly sidestepped. She put it very matter of factly that she had done far to many things not to be proud of as a slayer to desire being the face of inspiration to all of the fresh new ones. She still remained firmly in position as one of the head leaders of their organization, but she shied away from the personal aspect of it.


Buffy had thought that after the last slayer had been found, after she and Dawn were able to resume as close as they could get to a normal life, that maybe the dreams would go away. But every time she thought they had, she would get a few weeks, maybe a month. One would then come back with crashing clarity, sharper and more painful than ever before.


She and Xander had gotten closer than they had been in years in those weeks following Spike's death, he was the only one who could understand precisely what she was going through. It was another example of irony how Xander, who had perhaps hated Spike most of all, was now the one Buffy could rely on to understand why him being gone grieved her so. The sorrow, mixed with guilt, and just a hint of self loathing, was exactly what Xander was experiencing. They had both lost people they loved that day, people they had pushed away and had waited too long to tell how much they cared for. For a long while Xander was the only one Buffy would speak to about it. Clamming up whenever anyone else tried to broach the subject with her. It was especially awkward when people realized that the the time old cliché of "They're in a better place now." wouldn't work here. Because honestly, she knew he wasn't. She didn't like to think of it because it made her feel nauseous, but she knew very well that Spike had done truly terrible things in his life, and she knew where he was likely to go. Anya too for that matter. She had spent over a thousand years tormenting and killing men, without even the excuse of soullessness. Would the fact that she had been doing it out of self-righteousness coupled with the few years at the end of being human be enough to spare her? Buffy was unsure, and that was one subject that she never breached even with Xander.


But now enough time had passed that she had discussed it with the rest of the people closest to her, she had put her life back on track and was moving forward. She stroked the small ridge on her left hand where she had suffered extensive burns form grasping Spike's even as he caught flame. There was only the smallest section of scarring left on the back of her thumb, and even that she knew would eventually fade away completely. She wished it wouldn't, it was one small thing from him she had left.


It was strange to think it had already been over a year, the week leading up to the anniversary of the day she had been increasingly tense. She avoided cotact with everybody for days. The morning that marked exactly a year she did not get out of bed until well past noon, she just lay there, watching shadows dance on her wall. She eventually got up and dressed, but she did not go out that day. She moped around her apartment, (or flat as Giles had instructed her to call it) until finally, around six o'clock Xander showed up on her doorstep with two bags of liquor and the promise that they were going to get "Wasted enough that we don't know where we are, much less what day it is."


That night they'd drank enough that by eleven they were laughing until they cried about why Anya might have been afraid of bunnies and the time that Spike had built the Buffybot. It had been the first time they had been able to look back at things in a positive light. And the next morning when Xander left, he seemed happier, although very hungover.


She remained at the window, the glass soothing against her flushed skin. Watching the people of London start their days she promised herself, as she had every time she woke up from this same dream, that this time she was putting it in her past and was once and for all letting go.