She was moving fast but not worried...there was that taunt tense warning of fast, faster, fastest, best hurry your butt big time, but not the gut wrenching sickness of worry. Xander had, at best, only a five minute lead and it took about ten minutes to walk to the Magic Box, Xander moving fast and with a purpose could make it there in seven, a Slayer moving faster could make it there in...three...and she was moving very fast...almost too fast to breathe, to suck in the oxygen needed to stay consciousness to fly.
And she reasoned Spike could hold him off, pain or not for at least a minute...maybe...don’t underestimate Xander though, and all this, while she flew...so not worried...exactly...
She was about fifty feet away when she saw Xander's arm go up in a high arc, so high there was a crescendo and then descending pell mell to a kill and still she wasn’t worried, Spike was upright and looked unhurt and would deflect the blow easily and she would be there in time for the second...
...second later, no, it was one tenth of a second later and she was very worried, something was wrong, there was something in the slump and sag of Spike’s body that looked like sadness and that was wrong, she should be seeing his body tensing, muscles bunching ready to deflect--
At second two tenth she was frightened and second three tenth she was screaming--
She had to body slam Xander just right, if she came down on top of him it would simply drive the blow home with greater force...it had to be from the side...
Three things registered as she leapt, irrelevant things, small isolated pictures stuck in her mind to stay:
One: Anya’s face streaked in horror, stretched, pulled down, pulled like that painting, that painting...’The Scream’--art history...college...Riley...Adam...engaged to Spike...ring...skullhead...the scream...
Two: Spike...his head lowered...downcast...waiting...head bowed in listening; his mode...listening...Spike...listening...
Three: The ground, the pavement of Sunnydale as she tucked her chin in and looked down and saw...a mint...a little white breath mint someone had sucked a bit and then thrown away and left there...left there on the pavement--no rain in Sunnydale to wash it down and away...always pleasant weather in Sunnydale...maybe it was a life savor...
She hit Xander from the right...it was perfect, a perfect nail and would roll them clean away from Spike to his right and what the hell was he doing not defending himself?
She felt the vibration of the blow conducted through Xander’s body to hers.
She felt it.
Her mind went desperate. Desperately replaying that feeling, that feeling of impact she knew so well, turning it around in her mind into something else. It was just the impact of her body hitting Xanders, that’s all...it was just...
Some thing, some small word breathed behind her...
It was that feeling of someone calling you but only to give you very bad news and no one wanted that, nobody, nobody and so she didn’t turn around to...say goodbye...
Stillness.
Quiet.
She was aware of Xander moving out from beneath her. Sidling away, leaving her in the lion crouch position. She stayed there on the pavement, poised, ready, willing to take on prey, willing to pray. Now what did it mean that the positions were so similar?
Please God...please no...please...
But she knew from the still somber air it was ‘no.’ The answer to her prayer was: no. Just that: no.
She was aware of her mind like a brightly lit mansion, a steady beacon out into the night on a huge estate...and that feeling of watching from the outside as someone...some steady loyal servant perhaps went from room to room...blinking out the beacon. Room by room she watched the estate fall into quiet and she wondered what would happen if they all went out. What was protocol? Did the servant leave on a night light...something in the hallway perhaps...some small light in the night for midnight visits...what happens if they all go out?
She was standing now. Not sure how that happened. She turned around. Not sure how that happened.
She saw Xander still as stone, replete and solid with the singing sword, a simple stake still in hand...
She saw Anya leaning up against the wall, with that look, that look of horror, the scream still stuck on...and oh god what if it stayed that way?
She saw the empty space where he had been.
She registered it. The details sharp and clear, the color of the brick wall...the play of ochre and burnt umbers...how...how sharp and clear the colors were...she noted not only the colors but the gradations of one to another. How one thing becomes another until it isn’t what it was and what it was, was gone for good.
She bowed her head and breathed and started to walk home.
“Buffy”
It was Xander but she didn’t turn around...she wanted home...
*
Dawn was waiting for her at the front door, expectant, almost jubilant at being the ‘one in the know’ of being the one to know about Buffy and Spike and wanting to talk but not in front of Willow...who didn’t know but maybe suspected and also wanted to talk.
When they saw Buffy’s lowered head and wide shocked eyes they backed away from their questions at the front door and let her walk by...she seemed oblivious to them and once inside she stood still at the entrance of the living room more than a little puzzled as to how she got here...had she forgotten something? Then she saw the open trunk, the lid of her weapons chest, the chest Xander had made for her lid popped up and...and remembered...oh...
There was the sound of vomiting from behind her and that roused her enough to turn around to see Dawn on her knees vomiting her dinner, her favorite pizza (don’t want it now) onto Mom’s Navaho throw rug.
Buffy looked at her, puzzled, brows pulled together...she looked to Willow for an explanation.
Willow’s face; whiter than white, made her lips, the crimson color shockingly vibrant almost like blood...
She was about to say ‘Willow you have something on your mouth...'yeah...right there’ when Willow whispered.
“Buffy...give...me your coat...”
Buffy looked at Willow, perplexed and then down to Dawn who was stifling a sob.
“Honey...”
And now Willow came up to her gently as if to help her out of her jacket. And over Buffy's shoulder she breathed, she whispered, she said;
“Honey, you have ashes all over the back...”
Dawn was dry heaving now and crying too...and then...and then...it started to sink in.
All the bits of information came together in her mind...and the feeling of the ash came burning into her back.
“Let me help you take it off.”
But Buffy brushed Willow aside and without a word walked up the stairs and into her room and locked it from the inside. She sat down on the edge of the bed, and then lay down, leaving her clothes on, letting it burn.
*
She woke up the next morning more that a little surprised that she had. She had fairly expected, even hoped for some kind of catatonia to keep this mad insane world away from her. Just keep it all away.
Now she was awake and stared at the ceiling. Now she was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the pink slippers peeking out from beneath the bed at her. Pink slippers, white bows.
She got up, went to the closet...there...that box there...she pulled it down and a stuffed animal, a penguin plopped down onto the floor and she watched it fall, a little curious and then dumped the box upside down--stuffed animals everywhere.
Stuffed. Animals.
She kicked a path through them and put the box on the bed and then slowly, carefully, she took her jacket off tucking the ends neatly in toward the center, holding the ash in place and put it at the bottom of the box. In went every bit of clothing on her body. Now naked, she moved the box to the floor and carefully folded the bedspread...and she realized...with the strangeness of shock, she realized, that this was the first time he had been on her bed; the first time on her bed except in her dreams and now she did choke a bit and now she did start to cry.
Coughing up hard tears she folded the bedspread in and in on itself and then away into the box. Box back up on the shelf in the closet, she turned and kicked the stuffed animals, kicked her childhood under the bed.
Finished with that, she went in to take a shower. She showered until she was sore and then combed and dried her hair, got dressed into her Doublemeat Palace uniform and went to work.
Perfect place to stay numb.
*
And dumb too it seemed. She just didn’t want to talk anymore. Didn’t enjoy sound. It hurt having to search for...for a word...needless to say she did a lot of fryer duty at work. A lot of kitchen prep but the Manager was happy to have a steady worker and so let this, quiet, this, the newest of Buffy’s eccentricities slip.
Or maybe someone (Dawn) had talked to Alice the Manager and had told her that Buffy’s boyfriend had been killed...because somewhere around day three after the second double shift in a row she was beginning to perceive, ‘the sad look’...’the sad look’ followed with the downcast eyes of her fellows who were just a little less numb than she.
It’s the thing teenagers do when faced with death, or tragedy...they, fascinated with pain, take it in close, take it in as their own, even someone they barely knew, they take it in and grieve for the fallen, relieved for the pain, because it explained, at least for a little while, why they felt so bad in this miserable world.
In a way, Buffy was quieted by her fellow employees’ coming out of their stupor. And this quiet was grief of a kind, and grief was goodbye of a kind and it plagued her now...it played back again and again in her mind--that small whispered word she had heard behind her that was him calling her.
‘Buffy.’
It’s true...she had heard it...and she had not turned around.
It didn’t matter if the sight of him falling away would have undone something inside her in a permanent way, didn’t matter that she stayed there to pray for it not to be true.
He had called out to her...and she had not turned around.
The timer binged. Time to flip the burgers.
One repetitive thought replaced with a repetitive action.
*
She was slipping backwards. She knew it. The deep silence, the comfort of not thinking...except for, you know...her inability to give him the grace of her gaze...you know, besides that...she worked at numb.
Dawn wanted to talk. She didn’t. Buffy said she was fine and to the world she looked well...numb...but fine. But. Did. Not. Want. To. Talk.
Willow didn’t want to talk but felt compelled to fill the empty space in the room with pleasant chatter. She found it hard to address Buffy directly and so she gave her information via talking a little too loud to Dawn. Let things slip out sideways.
Anya had closed the magic shop. No one knew where she was.
Xander was working hard; putting in a lot of overtime as if that would explain why they hadn’t seen him for a few days.
Dawn wanted to go to Spikes crypt.
That got through the Buffy brain.
“I...want...I need something of his...for me...you know...” Dawn’s voice trailed off at Buffy’s stony expression. But Dawn’s back went up and she spoke from her heart.
“He was so good to me last summer...you don’t know...none of you know...” and now her voice cracked and she was stuck, she had this whole speech in her head and now it was stuck somewhere lodged in the terrible tearing in her throat.
Buffy’s solid stony face broke the damn but damn it if what came out was what she expected. Dawn burst out:
“Spike told me once if he wasn’t in his crypt something else would take it within a couple of days...I...I can’t go by myself, not unless you want me dead too!”
She had started the speech slow, barely warranting Buffy’s attention but finished big.
Because now Buffy’s eyes had widened almost to a pop and when she advanced on her sister her voice was raw and shocked.
“What? What did you just say?”
“It’s so much easier to have no one around, we are all just so inconvenient...well, he’s dead...and that’s just great isn’t it? Cuz now no one needs to know, about you two, you know...and you can forget about it all, forget all about him but I can’t, I don’t want to...he saved my life that summer...he saved...he saved my heart, Buffy...he helped me to laugh and cry at the same time and make it o.k....he...saved my heart and I want something of his to keep.”
By the time Dawn had finished Buffy’s anger had nearly deflated and Dawn was crying again and when Buffy spoke she was a little shocked at hearing the sound of her own voice, and this slowed her temper all the rest of the way down to dim.
“Da...Dawn...I...I can’t go there...” and here Buffy paused as if she had to go deep sea diving to find the words and snatch them from the well within her mind to bring them up and out into the cold, cold air.
“It...it’s good you want something...it’s good...maybe Xander can take you...”
“XANDER!” Dawn shrieked the name. Her voice cawing at her sister’s cluelessness. “XANDER! Are you crazy? I mean really, are you? Should I be worried? Xander murdered Spike and you think I would go ANYWHERE with him?”
Buffy stared at her sister
“Anya told me what happened...I found her at the magic box as she was packing away some of the valuable things...she was on the phone talking to Giles, telling him why she was closing up...telling him what happened...going ‘on record’ she said in case some one, some person wanted to rewrite history. She saw me come in and looking me right in the eye she kept on talking and raised her voice too so she knew I would hear and told me and Giles that Spike never tried to defend himself and that Xander murdered him. That was the word she used. Murder.”
Buffy drew a breath and Dawn went on:
“She said something like she knew Giles didn’t care--but she wanted to go on record for the sake of history. There was nothing noble, no final fight for William the Bloody, just murder...”
Dawn looked down and gathered herself.
“I never want to see Xander again. Not unless you tell me it happened in a different way. Was Anya right?”
Buffy thought back but it didn’t take much to remember every, every moment.
“Yes.”
Silence.
Dawn studied her sister, her small face, her eyes looking so lost...and she asked her softly.
“What’s the matter Buffy...what’s wrong with you?" (Why aren’t you pummeling Xander?)
Buffy braced her palms on the countertop of the kitchen island and breathed.
What was wrong with her?
Nothing. The nothing of nothing.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong with me Dawn, it’s...the world. There are plenty of things wrong with. This. World.”
Silence. What could Dawn say to that? It seemed true. She didn’t have the life experience Buffy did...but it seemed truer every day.
“There is nothing wrong with Xander either...good people put down here...in mud...we...we are all good intentions in mud...”
And Buffy stopped speaking and Dawn knew she was finished as if that said it all and damn it if it didn’t.
*
In the end Willow took Dawn in the late afternoon, sun up mojo on but no close encounters and Dawn got what she needed but never told Buffy what it was and Buffy didn’t ask either...but it had dropped an idea into Buffy’s mind and once there, she knew that she needed something too and as soon as she knew that; she knew what it was and she started running, afraid it would be too late.
God please, please let it be there, not swept away, not melted down the drain and here her prayer was answered because this was Sunnydale of the fine days and days and...
She stooped down to pick up the little slip of mint she had seen that night, the thing that looked like a life savor but...wasn’t
It was a certs...flat and used and thrown away...just right. She wrapped it in a piece of paper, an old receipt for something from her pocket and then tucked it into her blue jeans coat jacket.
She walked to the space where he had been, the last sighting of him and prepared to sit. As she bowed her body to sit, the large wooden cross she often wore dangled loose and she stayed there for a moment watching it sway in a wide arc.
She remembered how it had swung down and banged him on the nose more than once and his eyes sparkling and cracking at the pleasure pain and his voice saying something like:
“Trying to reform me pet? You gonna baptize me and why is it always my nose by the by and save my soul?”
She had swung the cross around so it lay flat on her back and had gently kissed his nose, she had kissed him so gently she had felt his body tremble and then she had kissed his breast where it had burned. Her body pressed up against his so tight, her flesh kissing where her crossed bits of wood had blessed him with a Buffyburn. She kissed the mark of her calling that was lightly singed on his flesh. Spike had trembled beneath her lips, beneath her very rare display of affection. She had made love to him that night. No other choice, baptized as he was with her brand and willing to be so and she had wanted to love him for that.
She loved him for loving her.
She was so grateful for him loving her it had flowed back easily in gentle kisses and the hot taunt grip of her sweet body holding his.
He wept as they finished and then buried his face in the crook of her neck and held on. He wouldn’t let go and so she lay down next to him, holding him into sleep, dozing lightly as she waited for his arms to fall slack around her.
By morning the marks had faded from his flesh and she had too.
Gone again.
'Oh god'...she thought now, 'oh god,' she thought, sitting here on the curb...days later in the place he had disappeared, she thought almost irrelevantly--(he must have thought everything had changed that night...did he think I would be there in the morning?) Why didn’t he go crazy?
Pain. He was used to it...to variations on it...and...and now...where was he?
Where was he?
Terrible...terrible...terrible...
No one, nothing deserved to be in pain for all eternity...God please...no...have some mercy for Spike....
She was crying again, couldn’t help it, just big fat tears escaping a skinny mortal body. But water was forever. Tears fell into the ground, or evaporated into the air...human water going to hell or heaven...
She sat there playing with the wooden cross and started to think.
*
It started as research, became an obsession.
It started with what she could remember about heaven. She wrote it down. Bits, pieces, sense memory at first--everything she could remember about how it felt...complete...finished...job well done even...she wanted to think she remembered Mom, seeing her, holding her...or maybe it was Mother love. The whole of heaven as Mother love. So it was Mom. She was there and every, everyone she ever knew. Everyone?
She drew a sacred circle of sand taken from the desert, from the holy place for slayers. She sat in contemplation and went inside herself as Giles had taught her to do. To find the center of herself that contained every memory.
She looked into her memories of heaven.
Buffy looked to see who had been there, who had been there when she was there.
Jenny...Kendra...Mom and here she smiled at the memory of them, at the scent of their souls.
Now for the hard stuff...she looked for someone who had been turned...
Had Jessie been there?
Some version of Jesse before or after he was turned? Her eyes were still closed to the world as she looked deeper inside. She sat in her sacred circle and called for Jesse but there was nothing. No thing. She could not find his soul...o.k. so...try someone else who had been turned...school mates, old friends, fallen down in the fight and turned and they should all be in heaven...shouldn’t they?
She took a breath and looked in heaven for William.
He wasn’t Spike, he wasn’t, she told herself, but it could be a clue...it would be the thing that cast the line to Spike, the soul that cast the shadow.
She looked through the records of heaven, the heaven she still held in her heart and he wasn’t there. William’s soul wasn’t there.
She finally had to give up and pull out of the mediation.
Once out, she stretched her legs out from the lotus position slowly letting the blood come back, as she stretched her legs out and leaned up against the dresser to think.
Her idea had been to go in and try to understand the heavenly dimension better and so provide her with a few clues about it’s opposite. If you see white, understand white you learn about black but here she was back at the beginning and with more questions than answers and a terrible mystery she hadn’t understood to begin with.
Where the people who had been turned? Why weren’t their souls in heaven? It wasn’t their fault...was it? And if they weren’t in heaven...where were they?
She had been taught by Giles that a soul could not be destroyed. But if that were true, than surely she should have found Jessie in heaven. He had been a good friend, Xander had loved him. He deserved to be in heaven. So where was he?
Time to expand the research, Buffy went on the internet.
She couldn’t say why, but she was reluctant to ask Willow or Giles for help, as if they could see through her to the thing beneath and this was her business, hers and Spikes...and so she wouldn’t say anything unless she got really stumped.
She spent hours reading about heaven, near death experience and visions of heaven, of the life review and that all felt real, that all felt right and so now she read about hell dimensions...and some near death experiences that went there too...but there was some contention in those cases as to wether the person involved had been to an actual hell or a hell of their own making. That is, what if their state of mind expected hell and so created a private hell of a hello after ta rah?
She read about the hell of Hades, where all the dead go--but that didn’t feel right. She looked at classic paintings of twisted suffering and that looked bad but...felt closer.
When she had been with Spike she had seen into the dark of his demon center. Exchanging energy as they had in the sex act was bound to leave traces of each other on each other.
And she had...felt...a hollowness in him carved from...pain. And she had the insight, the notion, that the demon’s rage came from...pain.
She thought about that and yes, that was true for humans too.
If someone stomps on your foot...pain...then anger...expression of anger. Oversimplification...but yeah....so rage comes from pain and pain comes from....from what?
She sat there, still at her desk, swiveled her chair around and listened to the sound of the house. of Dawn and Willow chatting downstairs, the TV on, life going on without her. Without him.
The world going on without you.
She fingered the wooden cross and had an epiphany.
What was the cause of her pain?
Separation.
The pain came from...separation...from...heaven...
And Spike? My god, Spike with the hole is his heart craving, fairly crying out for her love, to touch the heaven still left in her. And he had...he had found the place where he had wanted to be and had given heaven back to her with his love. And so Spike had been the one to help her stay sane in the days after coming back. And why she had needed to be near only him.
And consider Drusiclla; Buffy could see now how his century plus devotion to a mad woman was all part of his pattern. He dealt with the pain, he dealt with this separation from heaven with earthly love.
Buffy swiveled the chair to look out the window at the night sky. Dark, night, bright half moon. Half here half gone and now she had to ask herself:
Was she any different? And so there you have it...they were alike after all.
Refueled now, excited now, excited by something she couldn’t name she turned back to the research and concentrated on the material about the cross. The symbol, the real connection to white magic, the Celtic cross, the symbol of the master guardian of the planet Earth and somewhere around 2:00 a.m. she read about purgatory.
And she knew it. She knew...well...something...maybe it wasn’t the truth in total but something about souls being trapped while the world figured stuff out felt...true...something about some souls who needed a caucus, a lobbyist, whatever, some kinda little extra boost from the outside to cross all the way over.
Too excited to sleep...she listened to the quiet house and then opened the window and climbed down the tree.
She was going to church.
She staked a couple of vamps along the way but barely noticed until the dust almost fell on her shoes and she had to shove her fist in her mouth to stifle a scream.
She took some breaths to compose herself. She was the Slayer. She was the Slayer with the fight gone out of her. Best to get off the battlefield for a while.
She made it to the church just at the edge of town without further incident.
Well, this was crazy...coming here at the crack of dawn...but the door was unlocked and there was organ music swelling and the sound of a small group of people singing off-key.
Midnight Mass was letting out awfully late or was it a Holiday?
It was summer, nothing happened in summer...
It was a funeral.
Oh dear God please let it be a natural death from a good long life...no more tragedy...not tonight...
She sat down in the pew at the back of the church and listened.
Prayers were said and the people in the pews responded as best they could. It seemed that not everyone assembled was acquainted with the religious tradition being practiced and so there was that hesitation in the response, the stutter echo reply.
A middle aged woman was ascending the podium now and the church grew quiet. She looked down for a moment, her dark brown hair streaked with gray falling in front of her face and then she leaned back and looked out over the assembled with clear solemn eyes. She said this:
“For those of you who knew my Mother these past five years or so...I know...I know it will be hard for you to think of something nice to say about her.”
Stunned silence.
“It’s o.k. I know it. My Mother had the uncanny knack of knowing someone, seeing into them, seeing where she could stick a pin in...and...often did...she hurt so many people these past years and I know most of you are here more for me and Jack, and Cody and Mary than for our Mother...and I...love you for it...because it gives me a chance to go on record about her.”
Buffy’s ears perked up--she had learned long ago serendipity, repeated, remarks, a song, whatever, and a coincidence was never a coincidence...she paid attention...
“I want the history to be done right and to do that you have to remember how she was...before...I was thinking just this morning, for no reason really, of the bathrobes and matching slippers she would get for each of us kids...it sounds so small...but the thought, the care, that went into a thousand small things, bound us all together and helped to grow our characters to be kind. We are kind and you all love us...because she was kind...and that’s God’s truth. If you knew her before the illness, please look back and remember that and if you didn’t then look at us, here, her children crying this morning for that crazy woman who drove us nuts for the last five years and here, we...our grief is your evidence that she was who she was, who she became...because of pain. She was driven to meanness by pain. She was brave at first, for the first two years but who amongst us can say what it would do to us to live in such pain? Who can say?”
And here the woman’s voice broke and she started to cry and Buffy cried with her and with the world as well...Buffy watched her wipe her eyes dry and gather herself to continue--she had something more important to say.
“ Please, please, if you remember her from then...how it was before, please find one of the so many kind things she did and if you don’t remember her then remember someone you love and let it be her, and know it could have been her...and pray...please pray for her soul...please pray her into heaven...”
She nodded and left the podium and was greeted by a slightly younger man who hugged her hard. A brother perhaps.
The brother reached the microphone and said simply, Mags has said it for us all as always and it’s almost sunrise...and I remember how much Mom loved the sunrise--claimed waking us an hour earlier for school was something we’d thank her for later. (chuckling in the church amidst the sound of noses blowing) She was right. Cody and Mary have balloons for you all, we’re gonna go out now and send her off. O.K.”
Murmurs of assent from the gathering and a small smattering of applause.
Buffy watched as the pall bearers bore the dark mahogany casket out of the front doors...no organ playing...just the sound of mourning and...morning.
Birds, the breath of new day...no sound...nothing like a summer morning in Sunnydale and all she could think at this moment was...people are wonderful...people are wonderful...
The mourners filed past her...taking in her tear filled eyes and one or two nodded in her direction...didn’t know her...maybe she worked at the hospital...there were so many nurses...maybe she is a friend of Jacks...but they all filed past until Mags saw her and stopped to ask.
“I’m sorry I don’t remember you...do you work at the hospital?”
Buffy shook her head and said.
“I...I was...(not just passing by)...I came here tonight...for...I don’t know...”
And her voice broke and she bowed her head to hide her tears.
Mags sat down next to her.
“It’s all right...she’s not in pain anymore...that’s something isn’t it?”
“No...I mean yes...I’m sorry for you...but I’m not...I mean I’m...sorry I lost...someone a few weeks ago...he was...murdered....and it’s still...”
“Oh my dear...I’m so sorry...” And then this stranger was hugging her.
And Buffy felt the presence of the calm sweet spirit of this amazing woman and relaxed into it. When she felt Buffy calm down, Mags released her and they sat together in quiet for a moment. Finally Buffy said.
“He wasn’t a good person in pain...like your Mom...he...he was a bad person...in pain with good moments...with...very, very good moments...would that be true for him too...for someone like him? Could he be prayed into...heaven...can any soul...even if they don’t have one, be prayed into heaven?”
Mags looked her over, knew what she wanted to hear but had to be careful too. Only the truth would resonate with her and transform this into action for her and her departed friend.
“Do you love him?”
Buffy looked at her new friend and felt Mags hands take hers and hold it easy in a clasp. Held easy...light enough if she wanted to pull away, firm enough to know, to know it was him there now. it was Spike holding her hands, just as he had after she had crawled out of her grave.
Holding her hands and opening his eyes wide, so wide and she could look into his eyes and drink her fill of the open naked heart he held out for her.
She loved him for loving her, she loved him for it.
“Yes, I love him. I love him...so much.” She ran out of voice at the end and just barely managed to breathe out those last few words.
Megs sighed and stood up.
“Then if someone like you could love him like that--he can’t be all bad can he? As for soulless--well, I never heard of such a thing. If he loved you, he was on his way, had to be. Love isn't a trick...to break our hearts, it's a brick to break our walls. Anyway, that's what I think. Remember what I said...focus on something beautiful about him and pray that memory into heaven...like draws to like...it’s physics or...something isn’t it?”
They chuckled and smiled. And Mags nodded toward the door. I think there’s a balloon with his name on it. No time like the present for a present”
No there was not.
And again, Buffy had that thought: ‘people are...wonderful, wonderful.’
She thought of Spike, she thought of her best friend holding her cold hands in his and pushed that thought into the balloon and let her first joy prayer (pleaseletSpikeinokStPeter?) float gently up into the sky.
The world was wide and hard and had a will of its own...and well...so did she, didn’t she?
And who knew? Who really knew what one day would bring to the next but she did know this, she would set a little alter up on her dresser, she could see it there already in her minds eye and she would pray things like: ‘remember that time, and that and that.’ And...and, and...she would get Dawn to do it with her, she’d do it, she’d do it gladly, Dawn loved him too...and...and they would stack his best moments everyday so heaven could see nothing but Spike in his pearls and best pants--loving memories stacked so high, obscuring all else and by gum she would pray him into heaven. She would pray for mercy and what did the world matter, what are we doing here if there is no mercy? She would do this, she would...and...and he would be there long before her. So long he would be bored waiting and she smiled at that...she hadn’t said goodbye to him...but she would say hello.
Or...or...she wasn’t going...can you use the blackmail of a child at heaven’s gate? Can she say: ‘I’m not going in, I’m gonna hold my breath unless I see Spike in there first’...and William or William/Spike, whatever that tangle was...and Jessie too...hey, why not the whole crowd from extras holding? All the extra people, all the forgotten.
Why be The Slayer if you couldn’t be ambitious?
And as Buffy stood on the steps of a strange church, next to strange people, it was not so strange that she remembered what she fought for.
*
Epilogue
Heavens gate
*
She was being kissed. She was being kissed breathless.
She had been fighting for her life. Some illness, some fever and somewhere in between ‘no’ and ‘no’ and ‘no’...came...sweet air and 'maybe' and then ...’yes’ and ‘yes’ and ‘yes’...and thirty nine years of life, thirty nine years of living and fighting and seeing death was enough...it was enough for her...enough for now, she was glowing and smiling and said to her friends gathered at her bed...
“Spike...”
And she smiled and passed away to be kissed awake.
*
