Their jovial laughter filled the room, as they talked about unimportant things, designed to distract from the truth.

But she knew. Despite their attempts to prevent her from discovering, which they had been terrible at anyway.

If they had acted normal, she might never have suspected. She imagined it must be hard though to act normal around someone who so clearly wasn’t.

The knife dug into her skin, red droplets trailing from her arm and down its length. Distantly, she heard their laughter again and she envied them their place in this world.

A world where she wasn’t even real.

The world is fuzzy. Everything blurry and thick. Feels like molasses draped itself about her, slowing her down. Makes her senses ache.

It’s all so very dim…

Her eyes catch sight of the wobbly tower in the distance, and mechanically her feet drag her there and up to the top. The wind slaps her harshly in the face when she reaches her destination, but she barely notices.

She ignores the noise of something behind her, and instead skirts closer to the edge. With only one thought flittering through her mind, Buffy plummets from the tower.

Time to be a ghost.

Spike was a contradiction, black leather and bravado seated on a sarcophagus, reading poetry. Buffy knew about his penchant for pretty words; his voice when he whispered in her ear could send her over the edge.

She’d never admit, of course, that hearing his heated ‘love you’ sent a ripple of unequaled pleasure through her.

Buffy pulled him on top of her, the book falling unnoticed to the ground, and wondered how it’d feel if he’d recite one of those poems to her; not that he’d never tried before.

But, maybe today she’d stick around long enough to let him.

It seemed like a dream.

Soft caresses.

Smooth skin.

She’d roll over, watching the beauty by her side and wonder how she’d gotten something so right.

Losing Oz had burned her, but having Tara soothed all wounds.

Eventually her vigil ended and she slept.

Morning came, crisp and crackling with possibilities.

She was greeted with a voice her dream-addled brain didn’t recognize.

“Morning baby,” Kennedy murmured.

Reality washed back, bringing with it blood spilt by her hands.

Tara was dead.

She’d brought back a slayer, but not her world.

She was a failure.

And it had only been a dream…

Buffy sighed as she sat beside Spike on the porch; cigarette smoke danced about his face. “Ever think about quitting?”

“What the bleeding hell is that supposed to mean?”

“What it sounds like – do you?”

Indignant and hurt, Spike began to pace at the foot of the steps. “How can you ask me that? I’ve been here, right through the thick of it. Thought we’d passed all that? Told you, I’m not leaving you.”

Buffy smiled, “Good to know, but Spike?”

“Hmm?”

“I meant smoking.”

“Oh, right, well…huh.” Thoughtful, Spike took a drag and smiled. “Nope, can’t say I have.”

She didn’t understand.

One minute they’d been fooling around, wrestling on the carpet over the remote. She was doing well too, actually managed to get him in a headlock, when she felt something snap.

“Bobby?” His head was twisted at an odd angle, and as she bent down to look, her hand gently touching his shoulder, she saw his eyes staring up, unblinking.

Her hand fell with a gasp. Tears coming unbidden as the eight year old ran to the kitchen, crying out as she collapsed onto the linoleum, her voice chocked with sobs.

“Mommy, I think I broke Bobby.”

The silence echoed on the roof of the porch, a floorboard creaking softly as the golden girl lowered her body to the step, hugging her arms as she tilted her chin to the sky.

Two warm bodies, one redhead and one brunette, joined her in her silent starlight vigil, all of them wishing for who they couldn’t have:

I hope she’s proud.

I hope she’s safe.

I hope he’s warm.

The cold blue moonlight seeped into their skin and they leaned together for support, as the three souls they mourned for wished for just one thing:

Let them be happy…

The canals of Venice were beautiful, Buffy wouldn’t deny that. There was just something about the soft breath of air on your cheek as you glided along; something about the way the sun glinted off the water.

Something enchanting.

She couldn’t help the heavy sigh that escaped her as she leaned back into The Immortal’s embrace. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend:

The moon is shining; the arms around her are cool, the chest beneath her silent, and the softly spoken words against her ear, richly accented.

But then the ride end’s, and with it, the sweet enchantment.

Angel had just received an angry call from Buffy, he'd been so happy to hear her voice he hadn't bothered to interrupt her. After a good five minutes of her yelling, and him holding the phone ten inches from his ear, she'd hung up. Not the best way to start the day.

Which is why, when he made it to the office and the smell of chocolate-chip cookies assaulted his nose, his somber mood hit a record low. Worse was the sight of Spike sitting on his desk, cookie in one hand a letter in the other.

"Looky-looky, Pops. Someone got word that ol' Spike was alive and kickin' and sent a nice little welcome package."

Spike leaned back and took another bite of his cookie, before handing the letter to Angel. The creases in Angel's forehead became even more pronounced when he noticed the postmark…

Rome.

Spike merely smirked.

"Andrew, guess what’s on TV."

"The new collector’s edition ‘Sam’ figurine! So life-like you can see individual hairs on his feet!”

"No…although – disturbing. The LA Wolfram & Hart imploded. Again.”

“Oh…”

“Guess what else."

"What?"

"Angel, a blue-haired woman, and a bleach-blonde man flew past the reporter riding a dragon."

"Huh."

"Anything you should tell me?"

“There’s a sale on Prada?”

“Anything else?”

“Spike’s back?”

“Wallet.”

“You going to LA?”

“Nah, they’re doing fine.”

“What’s my wallet for then?”

“You mentioned ‘Prada’ and ‘sale’.”

“Oh.”

“And, Andrew?”

“Yeah?”

“Clean the living room, there’s little bits of television everywhere.”

“Yes, Buffy.”

Loneliness. It crept up inside of her one night, squeezing her chest until she thought she’d pop. Pretty crimson would dot the room, then, a tantalizing reminder of days long past.

The backs of her eyes swarm with blue, she knows it’s not his, not her precious boy’s. It belongs to the other, the one in the empty blueberry shell.

In a blistering flash of brilliant light, she hears him scream. It’s tangible and delicious, like warm butter-cream, and a smile blooms across her face, before the aftershock brings her to her knees.

Her Spike is well and truly gone.

She’d told him once. About the snowy morning she’d shared with Angel. He’d scoffed and tried to chalk it up to the Powers way of making sure Angel’s shadow would always be around to properly pester Spike.

After that last year at Sunnydale, he’d often wondered why Angel’d gotten off so easy from his little run in with the First, whereas Spike had been beaten, broken, and drained from his ordeal. In his more downtrodden moments, he believed it was because Buffy had loved Angel more. Or, at all, really.

But right now, watching Buffy frolic around in the snow like a kid, hurling snowballs at her sister – he was finding it hard to be even the tiniest bit bitter.

Maybe it was the sunlight glinting off the snowflakes in Buffy’s hair that had something to do with it. He’d have to remember to compose some particularly bad poetry for Angel regarding that sight in the next “Thanks for the Shanshu” letter he sent. After all, Angel did so enjoy Spike’s poetry…

Of course, that’d have to wait until after he taught a lesson to the Slayer who’d just pelted him in the back of the head with a snowball.

The bitter words soaked his torn skin, bathing him in hatred.

“There is nothing good or clean in you”

“I could never be your girl!”

Over and over again the mantra continued and Spike’s aching soul cried out at the pain they inflicted.

But his mind knew despite the perfect inflections in the voice, the exquisite shape of the mouth, that this was but a poor representation of his Buffy.

He knew because the memory of her last words to him was still so strong.

“I believe in you, Spike.”

He withstood the torture, because he knew it was true.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the lock finally gave, excited that watching so much McGuyver had come in handy.

He couldn’t believe it had been that easy to get them out of the building. He smiled to himself. Yep, still got it…

He reached for his prize, eyes twinkling as he caressed the binding.

“XANDER! What are doing in my room!?”

He turned around quickly, meekly meeting Willow’s gaze.

She looked at her friend, hands on hips: “Love spells, Xander? I thought you learned your lesson the first time.”

Her only reply was the pinking of his cheeks.

He had little experience with parties.

His father had never really approved. Believed it detracted from the mission.

He wanted to make his father proud, but he longed to go out with the other boys. See what made the gatherings draw them in like moths.

They returned, hours past curfew, faces flushed, sweat stained clothes, with self-satisfied smiles.

No one bothered asking him along. No one wanted the Head Boy to spoil the fun.

So he was rather surprised when Cordelia had shown up at his desk:

“Wes, I’m having a party. You’re coming.”

Wesley’s face warmed with a smile.

Buffy felt like she was freezing and burning up all at once every time her fingers glided over his skin or his lips pressed down on hers. The feeling was exquisite pain.

Now as her fists pounded on him, she felt justified. She knew she was hurting him. But she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind that he deserved it. Deserved every hurtful thing she said, every bruise she left behind.

Because while her friends were responsible for ripping her out of heaven. He was responsible for making her live, feel again.

When she wanted to be numb.

Closing the door behind her, Dawn made her way to her desk. Setting her bag down, she began to dig through it until she got the ring she had snagged from the mall.

She turned the silver and gold piece over in her hands, before she slipped it on, admiring how it looked on her slender finger.

She opened her drawer and placed the ring inside. Amazed at how much she had collected. Sure, there was more jewelry in their then she could ever need. Some of it she didn’t even like, but it was hers. When nothing else was.

With a heavy sigh, Buffy breathed the sweet smell of pine, marveling at how easy it was being here. How, for once in longer then she could remember, it didn’t hurt to breathe, to think, to feel. She felt centered. Her quintessence at peace, lost amongst the aether.

Lazily, her toes drew patterns in the surface of the lake. She watched the ripples shimmer further and further away, growing endlessly in size, only for them to slow in intensity until the lake was a sheet of glass once more. Void of all, but the reflection of the purple sky overhead.

Buffy heard the trees rustling to the west and lifted her head to smile as her mother approached. The shining sun overhead reflected brilliantly off of her, bathing her in white light.

She sat by her daughter, a sad twinkle in her eye. It made Buffy tremble. Constricted her heart. She should have known that peace like this wouldn’t last.

“You have to go now, sweetie.” Joyce tried to mask the pain in her own voice. “You can’t stay here any longer.”

Buffy turned from her mother, already lamenting the loss of a peace she had barely begun to know.

The pair sat in silence. The only thing they heard, or cared to listen to, was the even breathing of each other. Buffy felt a sense of knowledge, of wisdom, suffuse her as she met her mother’s sad eyes.

Joyce reached out, skating one hand across the surface of the water, letting her other hand rest on Buffy’s back. She gave a light shove and watched her daughter fall through the mirrored water, splitting it like cracked glass.

Joyce gingerly dipped her toes into the cool blue liquid. Bidding her daughter goodbye as she watched the ripples still once more.

Buffy’s eyes opened as her lungs desperately dragged in air. A panic settled over as she tried to focus in the dark.

The air was hot and damp, tainted with the taste of death and rotting flesh. The reflex to gag was so strong the bile rose in her throat and she was forced to swallow the acidic fluid. Minutes passed before she felt her chest ache, reminding her to breathe. She gulped in stale air, desperate to alleviate the sensation of drowning.

But with each passing second, the suffocation only got worse, a plea caught in her throat:

“Mommy?”

Buffy began scraping at the silk that lined the box, her muscles groaning in protest. Blood that hadn’t fully warmed, dripped down her fingers as splinters lodged in the flesh beneath her nails.

She broke free, only to have a torrent of dry earth pour over her. She gasped, inadvertently taking some of it into her still aching lungs.

She had no choice but to dig, or drown, in the earth that was quickly caving in.

Tears mingled with the dirt, streaking her face. She had taken her mother on good faith and wondered who would damn her to hell.

A cloud of confusion settled over her as she finally pulled herself to the surface. Her lungs kept working, kept forcing her to breathe in. But the air here was too thick, too heated. She began to shiver as the liquid air filled her lungs. Burning her body from the inside, only to be replaced with a chill that sank into every fiber and cell.

Her eyes caught sight of the stone that marked her grave and reality began to sink in and with it the memories of where she had been, faded away. Bitterly she thought:

Must be Tuesday.

She had awoken on autopilot. No sense of slayer or girl. Her body remembered action. Knew to protect. So she did.

The first time she wrapped her small hand around a stake, she felt her calling return. Memories filled her, giving her soul a purpose.

She had never loathed something so much as that whittled piece of wood.

Her friends’ benevolence left a sour taste in her mouth. They marveled at the fortune of their success, not bothering to notice her pain.

Perhaps that was why she preferred the countenance of a demon to those of her supposed loved ones.