Until one night, almost a year later, she seemed to revert back to the grief stricken, scared young woman she was shortly after our escape. And on that night, something happened, something I could never have imagined. Something that brought forth a chain of events that would change Buffy for the rest of her life.

I took a shower and when I came out she was staring out the window, watching the cold wind twirl the branches.

I came to stand behind her, looking over her head at the frozen view. She sounded so sad...

"It's warm in Sunnydale now."

"It's always warm in Sunnydale. Warmer than this, at least."

"I wonder how Faith's doing with that new watcher. Think he's watching her back?"

"I hope so."

"We'll never know, will we?"

"What?"

"We'll never know. We'll never ask her. Cause we'll never see her, any of them, again. Will we? We can't ever go back."

"No. We can't."

Buffy turned to face me. "I want to see them. I miss Will so much...I miss Xander, Oz. Even Cordy. How pathetic is that?"

"It's not. I miss them too. All of them. It's hard...knowing that we'll never see them..."

She raised a hand to touch my cheek. Tears were glistering in her eyes. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"This. I should have taken the test..."

"No. You would have died."

"But you'd have a normal life now, with them or back in London with your family..."

"You are my family, Buffy. There's nowhere I'd rather be if it meant that you weren't there, that you were dead. I want you to live, Buffy. I worked too hard to keep you safe for you to give up now."

"I want you safe. If they find us, they'll kill us both."

"They won't find us. I promise you that."

"How can you?"

"I don't know. Do you believe me?"

She nodded quietly. "Good. You should go to bed Buffy, you don't look very well."

"You'll keep me safe?"

"You know I will."

She went to bed. I thought she was asleep when I joined her. "Do you think, maybe some day, the council will give up? They don't even know that my death will bring another slayer... Do you think I'll ever be able to see them?"

"We talked about this, Buffy."

"I want... I liked my room in your house. Did you know that? Your house, it's always dark, no matter what. My room seemed to have light in it. Why do you think that was?"

"I don't know."

She moved my arms around her and snuggled closer. "I liked it anyway. Think we can find another place like that?"

"We can't stay in one place more than a few days. You know that. What's gotten into you tonight?"

"Have you listened to the news?"

"No, why?"

"Do." I looked at the clock. Eleven o-one. I turned the radio on.

"...As Hank Summers, resident of Los Angeles. Mr. Summers was found outside his apartment with a wooden stake driven through hi…" I turned the radio off and turned to my now crying slayer.

"They killed him because of me Giles. They..."

I hugged her and shushed her. She cried like she never had, I think. Not even when her mother died. "My daddy... Giles my daddy..."

She worried. We both did, only I didn't let her know about it. We feared the Council might come after everybody we knew.

We were on the bus to another little nowhere. Buffy was exhausted and made no effort to hide it, sleeping snugly under my coat. I guess we were lucky her face was turned away from the door and the aisle.

A councilman got on the bus. There was no mistaking him. And I think I actually knew him on a personal basis. I tucked Buffy further under my arm, covering her face with my coat. Buffy hadn't dyed her hair since we left, and so it returned to it's light - brown, which was all that was showing of her. Hiding my face in her hair, I was left with nothing more to do than pray.

Our luck continued. He did not recognize us. But I doubted our luck would run forever. Something would have to be done about him.

On our next stop, Buffy and I separated to use the washrooms. While she went to freshen up, I spotted the council man and followed him around the building to the soda machine. The only two other passengers of the bus were no where to be seen.

"Council."

He turned to me. "Well, well. If it isn't the watcher. And where might your slayer be, if you don't mind my asking?"

Buffy didn't even know I had it. I don't suppose he thought about it either. But a gun seemed appropriate at the time, and I'd actually had it since my Ripper days. It was ready, loaded. And right then and there, it was pointed at a very surprised member of the Watcher"s council.

"You can't have her."

"We don't want her, my friend. We want the next one."

I was about to pull the trigger, willing to do what ever it took to protect Buffy. But I never got the chance.

Buffy jumped him. We didn't notice her as she came to look for me. But she was upset, enraged actually, and he was there: The only member of the council available to her.

She beat him into a bloody pulp, screaming at him about her father, using words I didn't think she knew.

She killed him. She killed a human. At first, it took all my strength to drag her away and get her on the bus. She shivered for a while, from the adrenaline more than anything else I suspect.

And than it hit her. She had killed a human. Not a vampire, not a demon. She whimpered as realization dawned. I wanted to comfort her but she began to cry so hard I knew she wasn't listening. I did the only thing I could. The only thing I"d been doing since the whole bloody business started. I held her and let her cry into my chest.

She got so quiet after that. She saw herself as a murderer. She talked herself into believing that he was innocent. That at the time she had no proof that he had anything to do with her father's murder. Nothing I said or did could change her mind.

Until one night, about a month after the deaths. The filthy little motel room we were staying in had a television, at which Buffy was staring with a blank look in her eyes, sitting all curled up in a chair. I turned the television off and brought my own chair to face hers. "Buffy, can we talk?"

"What about?"

"I think you know."

She tried to get up "I don't want to talk about that."

I grabbed her arm and pulled her down until she was sitting again. "You have to"

"Why?"

"Because this is killing you inside. You have to let it out. And I'm not just talking about crying. You've been doing that for a month now. It's doing you no good."

"What then?"

"Talk to me?"

She shook her head. "Buffy, please, you have to..."

"NO! No..." Her next words were a whisper. "You'll hate me."

"Never. No matter what you do, Buffy, you know that I love you."

"I... I murdered him..."

"I'm not going to lie to you, Buffy. What you did was wrong. You killed him out of rage; you lost control. But under the circumstances... I was about to kill him, you know..."

"I... I feel dirty... inside, like there's something wrong with every cell in my body. I..." She slid out of her chair to kneel before me, resting her head in my lap. "I feel like I'm dead."

I stroked her head, encircling her shoulders with my other arm. "You're very much alive, Buffy, all the more so for having these feelings. I know what's it like to kill an innocent man - which he wasn't, mind you. At the very least, he's guilty of your attempted murder. I know it hurts, I know you feel terrible. But you have to pull yourself together. You're not doing anybody any good by destroying yourself."

"I destroyed him."

"And what good will it do him if you punish yourself? He won't be brought back to life, Buffy, no matter what you do. You have to let go."

She started crying, for the hundredth time that month. But that time, it was different. That time she was crying for herself, not for him.

She got a little better after that night. But she still seemed to have lost something, something of the self-respect she used to have, the belief that she was one of the good guys, the childish faith in her ability to do no wrong. When she lost that, she lost a part of herself; the part that cared about her. It allowed her, later on, to do things the old Buffy would never have considered. Such as using her body as a means of livelihood...

We walked down the street, on our way to work. We both got jobs at a little bar that operated during the day. Early in the morning, basking in the warmth of the sun after several cold days, we walked hand in hand under the clear skies.

Buffy cried out in alarm as I turned her around suddenly and pushed her into a yard. "What ar..."

I put a hand to her mouth and made her duck behind the fence. Three tweed clad and five very large leather clad men walked past us, not seeing us, headed towards our building.

Buffy"s eyes were wide as we sneaked back out of the yard, heading swiftly down the street, away from our apartment.

We walked for several hours, heading through back streets to the fields, where we bypassed the next town and looked for a bus station far enough for the council to ignore.

On the bus, we looked through my bag. We had left most of our clothes in the apartment, a dear amount of money and my Watcher"s journal, still written in at the end of every patrol. What we had left were the clothes on our back, some personal papers, and less then a hundred dollars. Buffy, thankfully, had her coat.

The cold and the bad nutrition coupled to bring me down with the flu. Unable even to stand steadily, I could not protect myself. Buffy was left to baby-sit me, our small amount of money declining rapidly as she would not go to work until I was feeling myself again.

Despite my insistence that a public shelter was too dangerous, Buffy risked going to one to ask for food as our finance reached an all time low of 17 dollars. She came back with a warm meal and a coat my size, the first we found at any hand out.

The next day was rent day. We were out of money.

I considered robbing a Seven-Eleven, but as Buffy pointed out, any trip to the police station would alert the council as to our whereabouts. Such crimes were too big a risk to take. Buffy decided she had the solution.

I think she did it partially because she no longer thought of herself as anything other than a killing machine. She considered it some sort of redemption - she admitted it later - putting her body through an ordeal, as she had done to the Council man. That night, she had come to a decision - she would pay with her body for our lives. And for his death.

I begged her not to do it. Told her there was another way. She wouldn't listen to me, saying that I needed medicine. She needed shoes. She was hungry. We needed the money. She believed there was only one way to get it. Prostitution.

I wouldn't allow it, not if it meant starving to death. I told her I'd rob somebody, an old woman if need be. We started arguing, losing control with every word.

I guess I too have a line that cannot be crossed. The image of my beautiful slayer with strange men drove me to the brink of insanity. How could I let her do that? I wanted so much to take her home, to make everything better; to at least make her whole again. I couldn't - it was beyond my powers. But I could damn well make sure she didn't go out and...

She wouldn't listen to me. Not to anything I said. Her mind was set on it… the most foolish thought she had ever had, the most dangerous... and she wouldn't listen to a damn word I said!

I blocked the door with my still unsteady body. Determined to go ahead with her plan, Buffy tried to push me out of the way.

The slap rang in the still night. Buffy turned her head back, shock and pain riding out the anger.

But not for long. Soon it flared in her eyes and she tried pushing me again, hitting my chest with an accurate punch and swiping my legs out from under me as I gasped for air. Stepping over me she ran out of the room, leaving me alone with my guilt and fears.

She came back a little before dawn and handed me several hundred dollars. Without a word, she turned to the shower and scrubbed the scent and filth of drunken men off her. Off the body I swore to protect, but instead allowed her to sell.

When she came out of the shower I was crying. She joined me under the covers and wiped my tears away. "It's okay. It didn't hurt. We can get decent food now. It didn't hurt."

I caressed her bruised cheek and gathered her as close as I could.

"It didn't hurt."

Buffy"s birthday present was clean sheets, the first we"ve had in a long time, in a well-heated room. Infected now by my flu, she lay in bed, listening to the music on the crackling radio.

I left to buy some food, ingredients to prepare a healing meal. She was sleeping peacefully, safe from the prying hands of strange men.

When I came back...

My Buffy was dead. My sweet, beautiful slayer... she had found my gun and...

All I had left was Mr. Gordo… and a letter.

The End

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