Disclaimer: Evil, rotting, no-good Joss owns them. I HATE HIM SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!!!
Rating: PG 15
Author's Notes: I just saw "Into the Woods". I hate Joss and Marti so much it consumes me at the moment. I hate to write a fic in retaliation. It takes place after this ep
Spoilers: "Into the Woods" and everything else
Dedication: to.whoever gave me the strength to write this fic. I think its anger driving me
Category: Buffy's POV
Song: "Round here" Counting Crows

As I'm walking home, my heart pounds and I feel a little sick. He left me. Once more, I'm Buffy Summers, dumped girl.

The front door looks huge and I don't want to walk through it. Mostly I just want to lie down and take all this in, and I only get as far as the stairs before I crumple and sit down.

I'm not sure what I would have done if I'd been able to stop him. Would I have run into his arms, kissed him, told him I loved him? But I don't love him so I couldn't lie. Maybe I would have told him that someday I might love him.Maybe.

Xander really railed into me. I don't blame him, but in some ways I'm angry. What right did he have to wake me up? I was living quite happily in my dreams. I liked what I had with Riley. It was so safe. He was so.dependable. I could count on him to fight the bad guys for me, and to ram the stakes. Riley.he was a comfort on cold nights. And I can't forget about the sex. We made love last night actually. I want to throw up.

Leaning against the wall, I press my cheek to the cracking paint and think of Riley. The guy who has been my boyfriend for a year. The guy who just left me. Who paid a vampire to suck on him because he felt like I didn't need him. What more did he want? I gave him everything that I had left to give. I gave him everything that wasn't already gone. What the fuck did he want?

I press a hand to my stomach and remember the last time someone left me. Angel. That name brings more pain then I want at the moment. He left me more times than Riley has. He left me when I killed him. He left me to go to LA. He left me when he became Angelus.

Angelus. That time is dark for me. It's like I turned out the light on the memories. Jenny Calendar's ghost still haunts me. If only.if only I could have killed him sooner. Spared Giles having to go through that. I know what he felt. And I wouldn't wish that insane pain on anyone.

Sometimes in my deepest nightmares, I dream that Angelus kills me. And I like it when he does. He thrusts a sword into my chest, and cuts open my heart. It's so thinly veiled that it breaks and splits immediately. Blood spurts from my flesh like a macabre fountain and Angelus laughs, leaning down to lap it up. As I lie there, in the dreams, my former lover turned monster licking the blood from my heart, I die a thousand times. But I like it, because the pain's over. The waiting is over.

You know, sometimes I wish he had killed me back then. Taken my stake and plunged it into my heart. Then I could escape the emptiness that is my life now. It's been so cold, so gray since he left me. And I don't mean Riley. Riley was my golden boy. That guy that every girl goes out with to escape the truth.

The truth is Angel. It always has been, and I don't care what Xander tells me. To open up to someone else, care for someone else.give him my soul? I can't do that. How can I when it's in LA with my Angel? Xander said I got 'burned' by him. Does he know anything? Does he know what the fuck he's talking about?

I didn't get burned by Angel. I got extinguished. That night when he turned his back, and our gazes were ripped from each other's, I ceased being Buffy. I became this shell of my former self. I just wasn't me anymore. I don't even know why. Something just.died. And I'm pretty sure it was a big something.

Riley's gone and I'm crying. I didn't cry for Angel. There was no tears for that. No tears that could ever measure up to what I was feeling. Nothing could. So when Angel left I didn't scream, or weep, or throw up or...anything. But I guess I did do something. I died...inside.

But for Riley.I'm crying. As I lie there I wonder when I'll feel all right again.

I hope no one asks me that. No one asks me if I'm all right. Cause I'll have to tell them I'm great. Invincible Buffy, that's me. Everyone would be shocked if I acted any differently. No one even mentions Angel sensitively anymore. I assume they think I should be over him.

Maybe I should be. But I'm not. He walks the night in LA and I walk the night in Sunnydale and each night I scream louder. I hope he'll hear me. I suspect he does but he just blocks it out.

He's a ghost from my past now. A man who crowds my dreams and fills my thoughts with memories. It's sad, that's all we have now. Times past, not times in the future.

I sit on the stairs and want to scream. But I'm Buffy. I can't. So I just sit and stare. And think of nothing. I wish I could drift away and be nothing, no one. Cause if I was nothing, I wouldn't feel this way, would I?

My boyfriend left me. But I'm not really thinking of him. I'm thinking of my heart. How it was already broken when he got there and how he was never able to fix it.

No one can.

No one.

~~ but the girl on the car in the parking lot says 'man, you should take a shot'
can't you see my walls are crumbling?'
and she looks up at the building
says she's thinking of jumping
says shes tired of life
she must be tired of something
round here~~

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