Willow's POV

      I sat in the Hyperion Hotel.  I can't believe I'm here in
L.A. after all this time that they have been gone, I haven't come to
visit once.  I should have.  I shouldn't have let my insecurities get
in the way of friendship.  I realize that now, a little late in the
game.  I know Buffy knew I cared, I know she knew I loved her.   But
lately I hadn't shown it much.  We were drifting apart at home.  Why
did she have to go when we were drifting apart.  It made it seem so
much more painful to lose her when I know that we could have been so
much closer.  So many things could have been different and maybe that
could have changed everything.  I tried to accept that it wasn't my
fault that there wasn't anything that I could have done.  Buffy knew
what she was doing, it was her destiny, just as it was her destiny to
be a Slayer.

But now I sit here at Angel investigations, the bearer of bad news.
How do I say it?  How can I make it less painful for them? Why did I
have to be the one to come?  I guess the others just aren't strong
enough right now.  And the news of the demise of the greatest slayer
ever to live was great enough to give in person.  No one deserved to
hear it over the phone.  I  had to be the one to come.  Things
between Cordelia, Angel, Wesley and I were unfinished.  Maybe they
didn't need closure, but I did.  Any one of us could die at any
moment and I still would have that rift between Cordy and I.  Angel
still would have left Sunnydale without saying goodbye, and not
knowing it was me who restored his soul.   Wesley would never see my
respect for him.  And as I sat there lost in my thoughts I saw them
enter .  They were so happy, about what I can't imagine.

I know I must look run down. I see it in their faces the moment they
see me.  Angel rarely smiled, and he was just fully joyful, and I had
to be the one to steal that moment from him.  I stepped forward
hating this moment not being able to foretell how it would effect the
lives of the ones here.  New faces that I had never seen, never heard
of and I had to break the news of the death of a stranger to them.
It just didn't seem right that they wouldn't shed a tear, they
wouldn't know what a wonderful creature they had missed out on
meeting.  They wouldn't know how empty the world was without her;
they couldn't understand that she had saved them time and time
again.  But when I look into Angel's eyes I know he knows.

"It's Buffy."

      At first I couldn't speak, not because I knew it would hurt
them too much, but because I knew it would hurt me.  I had never said
the words aloud.  Never made it real. I didn't need to say anything,
they already knew, at least Angel did.  My heart broke all over
again. As it has so many times already. It broke when my first love
betrayed me with my enemy. It broke when my childhood was lost in the
death of a best friend, Jesse. It broke when my "true love" found
another, then again when he left me.  It broke when I lost the mother
that meant more to me then my own.  It broke when my new love had
been lost to me.  It broke when I lost my best friend to the world I
still live in. It broke when I saw Spike his love, his hope
destroyed.  And again it broke as I see Angel the one usually so
stoic had bared the weight of the world and decided now that it was
just too heavy.  I saw in his eyes the moment his world shattered.
The same moment my heart did.  I could see into his soul.  I could
see that he had lost his will, his strength, his hope.  Now my heart
lay bleeding and broken on the floor, millions of pieces I could
never reassemble.  And at the moment, I didn't see the see the need
to.

Angel's POV

      Buffy was gone, and at the moment I didn't want to know how.
I stormed into the office that used t be mine brushing past the
bearer of bad news.  Don't kill the messenger they always said.  But
I almost felt a hatred for her, just because I wanted for a moment to
believe she was lying to me.  I knew she wasn't, she hadn't even
spoken a word. The eyes are the windows to the soul and hers was
battered and broken just as mine is now.  There was no innocence left
in this young girl at all.  She had an old soul with the wisdoms of
the world, complete with all its sorrows.

      I knew Buffy and I could never have been together.  But she
was the love of my life.  Even if she hadn't been I would have been
depressed to lose her.  She was my strength she was the strength of
the world and only us few lucky people knew it.  I sat and wondered
how I could have changed things, falling so deeply into myself I knew
that I would probably never find my way out, and now that didn't seem
to bad.  I had built my own personal hell, worse then the one I had
really been in before. I couldn't even cry, I wasn't strong enough
too.  I felt I needed to punish myself, and not indulge in the luxury
of tears.  I was so unaware of the things around me, it was as if
nothing but me existed me and this tormenting soul of mine, that I
knew from this moment I must be destined to spend the rest of
eternity in.  I fell apart, my heart was now shattered.  There was
not a soul in all the world, that could bring me comfort.
 

Willow's POV
 

      I knew Angel had retreated into his-self just because of what
the look in my eyes had told him.  It was the way he was.  Everything
wrong in the world to him was his fault.  I wanted to yell at him and
say it wasn't, but how could I when sometimes I felt just the same.
I knew for him it had to be worse. He had experienced so much more
than I could ever imagine.  Something deep inside me buried under
everything I could sense him.  It was like some untapped power.
Before I had spoken to Spike in his mind, but I hadn't seen anything
past the surface, nothing he didn't show too all the world.  But this
thing I was feeling it was different.  It was overwhelming.  It was
emotions that were crushing my insides.  I felt like I was turning
inside out, like some one had discovered the broken pieces of my
heart and pulled them together only to rip them apart more than they
had been.  I felt like some one was dancing and stomping on what
little I had left of sanity.  And in that brief moment of clarity and
confusion, I knew I had felt Angel within me.  I could reach so far
into him. Past the walls he had built and reinforced himself.

      In some distant part of my mind I noticed every one had left
I was alone in the room.  I could faintly hear Cordelia sobbing in
the distance.  It was too much.  My world, my life, it was too much.
I just wanted it to stop.  I could feel him spiraling out of control,
and it was hurting me, I just wanted it to stop. And so I slowly
thought, "Stop, it isn't worth it, this isn't how it should be, this
isn't how she would want it." And that only seemed to be causing more
pain, like adding fuel to the fire. Everything I had been through
became too much.  To much magic, too much pain, too much heartache,
too much power to fast and I let out an earth shattering scream that
resonated in my mind and slowly I could feel life fade away.

Angel's POV

      "Stop, it isn't worth it, this isn't how it should be. This
isn't how she would want it." I could hear the words in my head in
what little consciousness had left  It was true.  I knew it she
wouldn't have wanted it this way.  This ending would have only caused
her more pain. And yet I couldn't stop it only pushed me further that
in death I still betrayed her.  I couldn't stop I only retreated
further and faster.  Then I heard it. A scream I heard it within my
mind, and not with my ears.  No I didn't just hear it, I felt it and
every emotion it conveyed.  It was filled with love, honesty,
despair, hopelessness, guilt, tragedy, and so many desperate emotions
I couldn't even begin to comprehend.  The scream was so soul
shattering it was enough to shock me out of wherever I had been
heading.  It seemed so final.  The scream held a sense of ending.  It
felt like a souls last cry before the darkness could swallow it
whole.  Willow.  Somehow I knew.   It hadn't come from me but from
her and I rushed to the lobby to see what had happened.

      I opened the door and saw her pale form ungracefully crumbled
on the cold unfeeling floor.  She was nearly glowing with the
passions of her being.  I rushed to her, for a moment forgetting.  I
collapsed near her and dragged her body against mine in an embrace of
something beyond description. I was holding on, some how I knew I had
too, if not for me, then for her.  I crushed her beneath me and some
how found it in me to draw her soul fully into this body.  Her
heartbeat, slow but steady, echoed in my mind.  I grasped her and
could feel the warmth of her glow surrounding me engulfing me.  And
as I lost consciousness with her I knew when we awoke that the lives
that just ended would somehow, live again.  And if some one felt the
need to save these two battered souls, there must be a reason. They
must live on. They would once again save the world.

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