Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns BtVS and everything that entails. I'm just playing in the offal.
Distribution: Yep. Sure, just send me an addy.
Author's Notes: Due to the extremely annoying closure of buffymail.com , I've acquired myself a bored.com email. Just thought I'd let you know.
Author's Notes 2: This is pretty rambling and contradictory. Sorry. Just seemed to take that route. If it's confusing, I'm sorry. This is unbeta'd. Buffy POV, mostly angst. Threw a little hope in there so I wouldn't have to go off and kill myself.
Timeline: Future, end of days. Spoilers very vague. up to about mid s5.
Feedback: God, yes. Everything I write lately is depressing. What's up with that?

I walk through the streets, my eyes fluttering over the torn remains of a society I once treasured, and I feel...absolutely nothing. All around me is a world of shattered love and hope and pain and death, and I just...I don't care. I can't care. I just can't.

Mechanically, I walk to the centre of town, and collapse, wrapping my arms around my knees and leaning against the side of the fountain, as I've done a hundred times - a million times - in the decade and a half in which I've inhabited this town. I've sat here, with Willow, and Xander, laughing, and joking - //neverlaughagainneverjokeagain// - and being young, and alive, and carefree for a moment, just for a moment, basking in the sun, letting all my worries - //sacred duty, yada, yada, yada// - drip away liked melted honey...slow, sticky, saccarine sweet paths which I know will come back to haunt me later.

I used to wait here, for my mother, sometimes, rolling my eyes at her tardiness, complaining, bitching and moaning and being generally obnoxious, because I knew she'd love me anyway. I thought she'd always be there, always excited about some new artist, always paying more attention to the gallery than she did to me. Of all the things in my life, I foolishly believed she was my constant. I believed she'd never leave.

Everyone leaves. Everyone. No matter how much they love you, no matter how much you give to them, it's never enough. You'll part ways eventually. You'll leave, or they will, or you both will...but nothing is forever. Everything has to end sometimes - //It's never over!// - or else we'd just dwindle on, slipping in and out of drama, perpetually stuck in a cycle of misery.

Until we feel nothing. Like me. It's just the way human kind were invented, I suppose.

Oh, I have no illusions that this icy numbness will last forever. I know it's only shock shielding me from the misery of - //losspainhurtachescreamshriekhell// - the past couple of days. I know what's coming. I know the grief will come for me - //huntmedownscentmeout// - and swallow me whole.

This nothingness, though...It comes for me a lot, lately. Taunts me with its calm peace, then slips away, leaving me exhausted, the emotions speeding - //slippingslidingslicing// - through my body, cutting ragged, stinging paths in my conciousness. It flirts with me, then rejects me, seduces me, then throws me away like - //What? Fireworks? Bells Ringing? A dulcet choir of pretty little birdies?// - a forgotten toy, leaving me crumpled and despairing.

I love the nothingness as much as I hate it.

I let my hand drop into the - //trickledriptrickle// - fountain, feeling the water gliding around my hands, coating my finger in cool liquid silk. I remember a time, so many years ago, when my blood mingled with the water of this beloved fountain, the heady metallic tang of my blood permeating the air as I lay against the stone, my face, my hands, my chest, bleeding from wounds inflicted by a girl I considered to be my - //Look at you, all dressed up in big sister's clothes!// - friend, my ally, my - //family// - fellow Slayer. My blood, and my tears, and my energy, had seeped into that cold, unforgiving stone, but even as I thought I was dying - //One dies, the next is chosen// - I loved her.

Now, she's dead. They're all - //Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven? // - gone, all left me here - //In the end, you're all you got// - alone.

I think of three men who I kissed, who loved me, who cherished me, whom laughed and played with me in this very place. The first, dark, and sad, and old, brimming with pain and a - //darkness// - loneliness so like my own... He needed me, and I needed him, and we were punished - //damned// - for it. He was my always, my lover, my enemy, and he changed - //crushed//- me. Irrevocably.

The next, so vibrant, so young, so - //innocent// - hopeful, hugging me, making me feel - //normal// - wanted again, giving me his all, wanting so much back, and I destroyed him, and all his wide-eyed youth. What was once stalwart and true became bitter and misguided, all because of me.

The third, so simple. We were simple, and I loved him, if not with the firey passion of the first. He was a ... friend. I needed a friend. I loved him.

He's gone, too.

See? I told you the numbness would fall away, allowing the pain, the sweeping, crushing grief, to cascade over me once more, into my flesh, into my bones, settling, simmering, in for the long haul.

I feel movement, sense it, in my bones, and I wonder - //hope// - briefly, if maybe I was wrong in my immediate decision that I was the only one left, the last warrior standing. I'd give anything for just one of them, just one, to hug and kiss and make this victory against darkness *feel* like a battle fought and won, rather than an auction with the final price too high. I want just one of them. Two of them. All of them.

Okay, this hope thing is really getting out of hand.

I feel the movement again, but don't dare to try and determine the source - I'm tired, and if it turns out to be another villain, another demon to be fought, I don't think I can handle it - so instead I just sit...and wait for it to come to me.

Then, there's a hand on my shoulder, and I turn my head, and find myself looking into chocolate eyes, searching, tired, more triumphant than I've seen them in a long time.

He blinks, and smiles, a little. "I've been looking for you," he says, before collapsing like a raggedy-andy doll in my lap.

"Angel," I whisper, my heart surging with a long-forgotten love and need for him, and I start to cry, hugging him tightly, eliciting a whimper of pain from him, but ignoring it as I sob over his living - undead - body, leaning my forehead against his as I let it all out.

When I finally look up, into the firelit street, I see a flash of movement, as someone stumbles towards us. Two someones.

Tara and Xander fall against us, and I hug them as I did Angel, loving them, needing them.

We'll get each other through this.

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