"No More Kisses"
Author: Amy
Contact: Slvrbttn@aol.com
Notes: This is short and kinda sucks, but at least it's done. < g > I
thought I ought to warn you.
The last time I saw Buffy, she kissed me, I think as I see Willow sitting on the couch. As her eyes meet mine, I know that there'll be no more kisses. No more of the small amount of comfort I was allowed to take from this world, because the only person able to give me that comfort is now gone. No more warmth. No more of the sunlight I could see reflecting out of her even on the darkest of nights.
Willow stands and meets my eyes and there are tears in her gaze; I know that because I can smell them, not see them-- my eyes are filling with tears too, and blurring my vision.
I want to take back so much in that shred of a moment before I look ahead to the future without Buffy in this world. I want to take back every glance, every smile, every word and touch that passed between us. I want us to have never met, because then I wouldn't be feeling this pain under my ribs, over my unbeating heart. But then I hate myself for wanting those things to have never happened because she's gone and those are the only things I have left of her; the memories.
"It's Buffy," I say, and feel myself blinking slowly. Too slowly for it to be real.
She has the sweetest scent in the world. She bathes with perfumed oils to get that scent. And then she has lotions and shampoos and all sorts of girly things that make her smell that way, things I tease her about when I tease her, which isn't often. She likes it when I tease her, though. She says I'm too dark; that she loves it when I laugh.
Had. Did. Liked. Loved. Past tense. Not has and do and like and love. Those words have to be gone now, because she's gone.
For the rest of my life, I won't be able to call her to hear her voice. There were so many times when I could have but didn't, and now I can't and want to so badly that my knees and hands are shaking. I hear Cordelia murmur something at my side, and Wesley gently takes my elbow, leading me over to the couch but I don't feel it. How could I?
She was the reason I felt anything at all in the first place.
It doesn't seem right, or even possible, that I feel anything now. I don't want Buffy to be dead. I did everything I did so that she could live. I left her so that she could have a normal life. I took back the day so that she wouldn't die. But they lied.
They lied.
They said that she wouldn't die if I took back the day. If I became a vampire again, if she didn't remember any of it, if I stopped the demon before it made me mortal, she wouldn't die.
"Who lied?" Willow whispers, and I look up at her-- she has tears slipping steadily down her cheeks, as do I-- and realize that I've been talking out loud.
Yelling, maybe, I don't know.
Buffy wasn't supposed to die.
She was only twenty years old.
And as I think that, I realize that she was never that young to me. One thing I loved was that she understood what it was like to feel old. To have responsibilities you couldn't escape. But she was. Just twenty. Too young to be dead and in the ground and alone forever.
I existed in this world for two-hundred and thirty-nine years before I knew her name and face and voice and smile. I knew her for five. And now I don't see myself being able to go another year, another month or week or day or second without her. I was without her for these past two years, but not really. Not a forever kind of without.
This is forever.
It's so hard to find your soulmate; how am I expected to live in a world without mine when I'd finally found her?
Things are on the periphery of my vision now. Cloudy and faint but the world moves on. The earth still rotated on its axis, though it shouldn't. People still breathe and walk, though it's not fair because they do so at her expense and at mine because I've lost her. The sun still shines, which I don't think should be possible since Buffy gave her life for the day. For the night, too.
The night was ours, once. And I've kissed her under the sun.
No more of her laugh. No more of her eyes, so blue when she was happy and so green when she was mad. No more of her smile. No more of her touch. No more fighting side by side with her. No more comforting her or feeling her near me even before I see her. No more of any of the only things that were special to me.
The last time I saw Buffy, she kissed me. Deeply, loving me in the way that only she could. Letting me love her again, at last, when it had been so long and from so far away. Giving me her breath, giving me her heart. Passion and adoration and affection and bliss and, always, the small tinge of sadness underneath. She kissed me with everything that was in her, every shred of feeling that she could muster, she did for me. She amazed me, filled me with wonder everytime she kissed me because it was then that I knew how much she loved me and I still don't know how it was possible.
I love the way she... Used to kiss me. I loved the way we kissed.
But now there's nothing.
No more love and wonder and bliss and sweetness in the world.
And no more kisses.
The End