I can reason to myself that I did the best I could; but I know that to be incorrect. Had I given her the best I had to offer, I very much doubt either of us would be where we are today.
I can reason that she was strong enough even without my guidance, but even then I know I am fooling myself.
None of us are quite the same without her. It's like we've all lost part of our belief in this world and in the fight of good versus evil. Worse, we feel as if we've lost a part of ourselves.
She took us with her when she jumped from that height. We felt a different sort of pain in her crushing blow, a different kind of death for each of us in the end.
Whatever the feeling and however I can attempt to define it, we are not the same without her. Nor do I believe we will ever be again.
I have not been to her grave since the funeral, and even then I had to walk away during the ceremony. I would like to think I am stronger, but I am not. I would like to think that I would have been able to honor her enough to stay through her final moments before being committed to the ground, but I could not.
Once more, I failed my slayer. In the last way I could prove myself to her, I failed.
A day does not pass, nor an hour or a minute, in which I don't think of her and the sacrifice she made for all of us. Every breath I take is because of her. Each time I wake up in the morning to face a new day, I realize it exists because of her.
Everything is in a peculiar state of flux at the moment. With Buffy gone and Faith in prison, we are left without an active slayer. Perhaps if Quentin Travers and his bloody Council were to surface again, strings could be pulled. Faith could be free and aiding us in the fight none of us have the strength for anymore. But the Council hasn't been heard from in months. They didn't even send flowers. Bastards.
Telling Faith had been something none of us had wanted to do. We all lowered our eyes or looked away when the subject came up and, in the end, it was Angel who went to her.
He said she knew. He walked in and, staring at her through that glass, he could see she already knew somehow. He relayed to me later how badly he wanted to hold her in that moment- how broken and withdrawn she looked as their eyes met and she sunk into the chair, lifting the phone to her ear.
"She is, isn't she?" was all she had said and, as Angel nodded his assent, she collapsed into tears and sobs; a state only Angel and I had ever seen her in. What before could have been passed off as a horrible feeling was now a horrible reality.
They had pressed their hands to the same spot of the glass on opposite sides, the only form of contact they could achieve. He watched her as she continued to let out her grief, watched her as she lowered her head into her hands. He watched as the guards came and took her away. He watched as a woman Faith passed handed her a tissue. He watched as she walked back into the prison, not even looking back.
I couldn't have done it. Hearing it and feeling it on my own was bad enough. To see another go through it anew was something I knew I wouldn't have been able to handle.
I may be a man, and I may be British, but I am not made of stone, or anything of the sort.
She was my slayer, and I was proud. I try to find comfort in concentrating on the small ways that I perhaps touched her life, which, of course, means I find little comfort at all.
Giles will always be the one she'll remember wherever she is now, and I will always be the one that replaced him. I will always be the one that could have done better, and I will never be the one to prove I could.
The End.