Sometimes she thought about leaving. Just up and walking out, bringing nothing but her backpack and the memories. Once, she even got as far as the Greyhound station. Sat on the bench for a few hours before it hit her; no one was coming.

No one was left.

So she hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder and went home. Home, incidentally, was a hotel slightly less abandoned than the bus terminal had been. There were a few other survivors there; squatters, they would have been called once upon a time. But there was no one left to call them that, and Dawn didn't especially appreciate the term. She wasn't 'squatting' anywhere. She lived in Faith's old room at the motel.

She entered the room, slamming the door shut behind her angrily. He was ironically squatting in the corner, and it only served to piss her off more.

"Don't you do anything besides smoke?" she bit off accusingly, throwing her bag onto the ratty double bed.

Oz didn't even glance up. "For example?"

Fuck you, she thought. She hated when he was right, when he reminded her of the futility of it all. How pointless their existence on this ruined earth was. "Give me one," she snapped. Obediently, he handed her a joint and she lit up, laying back on the bed next to her tattered bag.

Dawn crossed one leg over the other, shutting her eyes and letting the scent soak into her, surround her. Like everything else, it made her remember. She had an unusually clear memory of Buffy and her mother getting into an argument about a hemp bracelet Buffy had come home with.

You're not a pothead, are you?
Mom! Of course not! It's a fashion thing.
Well, no daughter of mine is going to be running around with tha--

"Thought you were going." Oz's calm voice jarred her from her thoughts.

She considered snapping at him again, but there didn't seem to be a point. She couldn't remember why she was mad at him anyway. She shrugged. "No fuel, no money, no drivers." He nodded understandingly, as though he hadn't known that before she even stormed out. "Come up here," she said softly.

Oz finished off his joint quickly and slid into bed next to her. They lay on their backs, heads pressed together as they stared through a hole in the ceiling.

"You know," he said after awhile. "Most of those stars up there are already dead now."

She frowned, glancing across the sky. "How come we can see them?"

"They burn out before they reach us.. so it's kind of like we're seeing a memory of them. In a weird way."

Dawn turned her gaze to him, taken aback by the amount of words he'd used. He hadn't talked that much in one shot since.. well.

He continued. "Ghosts. Star ghosts."

"You believe in ghosts?"

"I believe in star ghosts. You?"

"Yeah. Just star ghosts. Buffy's not here."

"No." A pause that lasted almost twenty minutes. "We'd know if they were here."

They're not here, Dawn thought as she fell asleep. They never will be.

But we keep waiting for them anyway