Her arms were trembling with the force she'd used. She swallowed convulsively, and her throat was dry. She didn't want to open her eyes. Didn't want to see what she'd done. What she'd become.

She looked at her hand first. The knuckles were raw, the skin torn and bleeding. Her blood, mixing with his. There was more blood on the front of his shirt, more on the ground beside him. So much blood.

She finally raised her eyes to his face, and the moan escaped her lips before she could stop it. His face, the face that, in her most private of moments, she thought so beautiful, was almost unrecognisable. Cut, torn, swollen and bloodied into something from a nightmare. I did this, she thought, and for a second the world went grey around her. No. No. A monster did this. A terrible, unfeeling, inhuman monster. She couldn't have done this, couldn't have been responsible for this – this carnage. She was one of the good guys.

Wasn't she?

She got up, swaying on her feet, and tried to form words. They wouldn't come, and eventually she realised she was glad. What could she say? She thought about ‘I'm sorry,' but she knew that wouldn't work. What she'd done to him – and it wasn't just this, she knew that – was something that sorry was never going to fix. The tears began to form in her eyes, and part of her despised herself for the fact that the tears were less for him than they were for her. She didn't want to become one of the monsters.

She began to run, before Spike's broken body told her that it might already be too late.

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Dawn closed her eyes and mentally kicked herself. The tags. Why didn't she think of the tags earlier? They always removed them in the shops. When you'd actually paid for the things, of course. Now, it was too late. The look on Buffy's face, the growing realisation – the growing disgust - twisted in her stomach and made her feel like she was going to throw up. The jewellery from the Magic Box was bad, and Anya's words stung, but she thought she could survive that. She liked Anya, sort of, but she wasn't – well, she wasn't Buffy. Buffy's disappointment scraped her insides out like sandpaper.

She should at least have taken the tag off the jacket. They'd probably have been suspicious, especially if she couldn't produce a receipt, but she could have swung it. If she'd said she didn't steal it – got it in a sale, maybe, or even swapped it with someone at school – Buffy would have wanted to believe her. Buffy wanted to believe the best of her. Buffy had faith in her. Or at least, she used to.

Hot tears began to spill out from under her closed lashes. Stupid, why was she so stupid? She wanted to say that she'd pay for the stuff, take it back, whatever. She wanted to say sorry. But she knew that wouldn't help. She could see their faces. It was too late for sorry to make it okay.

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Xander's chest was aching, his eyes were stinging and his throat was closing up around the words that were trying to escape. It's too late, his brain screamed at him. You're here. Everyone is here. Buffy and Willow, managing to look gorgeous even in dresses that looked like an accident in a nuclear reactor, are here. Could have been blood larvae and burlap his helpful brain reminded him, and he laughed. It sounded like a scream.

The minister is here, it continued. The fiendishly expensive musicians are here, just itching to play Here Comes The Bride. And she's here, looking more beautiful than he's ever seen her, in her wedding dress. Anya. His love. His bride to be. His wife. In about two minutes.

His brain was getting seriously pissed off with him. Two minutes, it said. Did you hear that, you big oaf? Two minutes. You're getting married. Now. It's way, way too late to be having doubts.

He knew that, but it didn't help. Those pesky little doubts were persistent creatures, they harried and gnawed at him until there was nothing but a huge gaping whole where his heart should have been.

His brain tried one last assault. It doesn't have to happen, it told him. It doesn't have to turn out that way. Now that you've seen it, you know to avoid it. This is a good thing. Forewarned is forearmed, right? So you can stop it from ever getting that far. You can make sure that Buffy doesn't get killed, that you don't turn yourself into an invalid and that you don't end up the kind of man whose thirty years' worth of hatred for himself and his life explodes into killing violence. You don't have to let it happen.

He looked out over the hall full of people. Friends, demons, family. Family. That, of course, was the kicker. It always was. He watched his father, visibly and nastily drunk already, arguing viciously with anyone who came close enough. He shut his eyes and saw Anya, his Anya, so old and worn and unhappy. Maybe you were just born to be an angry, bitter old man.

He moved quietly out of the hall, slipping away before anyone, even Willow, realised what he was doing. Yes, he could stop that happening. Stop himself from ruining her life, even if meant ruining her wedding. It wasn't too late to save her. He stepped out into the rain, and was gone.

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Anya realised that this was a really, really bad idea - that Jack Daniels' and revenge sex wasn't going to solve anyone's problems, but she realised it when she was already half-naked in Spike's arms, and by that time it was way too late to stop. She knew it was stupid and pointless and just a victory of lust over reason, but the bourbon was hot in her stomach and Spike's hands were cool on her skin and his lips tasted like sex and danger and the promise of forgetting. She buried her hands in his hair and pulled him closer, feeling the hardness of his body and the shocking gentleness of his touch. Reason was overrated, anyway. Who needed reason when you had sex like this? She gave herself over to it, to the kisses and the hardness and the head-spinning sensation of it. And why shouldn't she? She was a free woman, after all. Single. Unmarried. Jilted. She shook her head slightly. She didn't like that word. She let it dissolve in the smoothness of Spike's skin. He'd been sweet, really. Sweet and sympathetic and supportive, and she liked all those things. But most of all she liked that he was there. In her arms, in her head, taking her away from the questions and the memories that otherwise looped themselves round and round her mind and drove her half-crazy. What should she have done differently? Why couldn't she make it work? Why did she simply not understand love?

She opened her eyes and lost herself in Spike's, and all words disappeared. That was good. It was too late for those questions, now. Maybe it always had been.

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Willow cradled Tara's body in her arms and screamed.

Body. The word echoed round her skull like a bullet, like the rogue bullet that had come crashing through the window and ended the world. Body. The thing in her arms was a body, it wasn't Tara. Wasn't her lover her sweetheart her best friend her life. It was just a body. Just meat and flesh and blood and nothing else. She screamed and cursed and raised magic that rocked the earth, but it was too late. Too late to save her, too late to stop it, too late to change it. Too late to kiss her, make it up to her, love her. Too late to do anything but cry bitter tears that felt like they were raking the humanity from her soul and leaving nothing but a shell filled with rage and pain and the desire for death. Death for the one who did this. Death for those who helped him. Death for anyone who stood in her way. Death, then, for herself. There would be no coming back from where she intended to go, but that was okay. She knew that it was too late for her, too.

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Spike paced up and down the stone floor of his crypt until he even made himself dizzy. "It wasn't supposed to be this way," he said. He should never have started any of this in the first place. Should never have come to Sunnydale, should have just kept Dru by his side and carried on driving. He shook his head and threw the bottle of Jack against the wall. Yes, great insight. Just a bit too fucking late.

Clem fluttered helplessly in the background, and if he hadn't been so distracted it would actually have been quite funny so see a demon of Clem's size fluttering.

But he was distracted. Distracted and sick and sorry and angry and so completely crazed that he didn't know what to do with himself.

Except that, of course, he did. He knew what he had to do.

Vampires and Slayers, the relationship was supposed to be simple. One kills the other. That was it, period, over. Vampires and Slayers were only supposed to be about death, not love. Or whatever twisted thing it was that bound him to this Slayer. He knew now that it wasn't love. Could never be love. Not with him.

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He couldn't go on like this any more. It was killing her, it was killing him. Something had to give. Something had to change. And since even dying didn't seem to phase this Slayer, the something had to be him.

There were ways, if you knew who to ask. Where to go. He didn't know if those ways would even work, because hey, not exactly been done before. Vampires weren't really known for wanting their souls back.

But he had to try. It was too late for the monster. But maybe not for the man.