And the Rest of My Life: Chapter 4
by Stephanie Loss
Buffy was still huddled in the corner of the dining room. She could only see her mother’s hand and knee from her position. Tears streamed openly down her face as she willed her mother to move. Why wouldn’t she move?

“Buffy?” Giles entered the Summers’s home cautiously. In the entryway, his gaze swept the room, and fixating on the sight of Joyce sprawled on the couch. He slowly approached the living room. Joyce. Had she suffered before she died? Her eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling.

“She won’t move.” A young, tear stained voice called softly from the dimly lit dining room. Giles quickly turned, finally seeing Buffy. She barely resembled the powerful and self assured woman he knew. “I’ve been so good, but she won’t move. Is she mad at me?” Her voice sounded much younger than her twenty years.

“Oh, Buffy.” Giles kneeled in front of her, and wrapped his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder and a new onslaught of tears ran rivers down her red cheeks.

“Dawn!” Buffy’s head jerked up at the sound of her younger sister’s name being yelled outside. She shakingly found her feet as her little sister flung the front door open.

“Buffy! Where’s Mom?” The fourteen year old didn’t miss the minute glance her older sister made towards the front room. Dawn lurched toward the front room.

“Dawn, don’t.” Buffy said reaching for Dawn.

Xander took Buffy’s outstretched hand. “She needs this, Buff.”

Buffy walked toward her sister, almost fascinated with her reactions. Dawn’s hand had crept up to her mouth, her other arm was clasped around her stomach. She slowly approached her mother. Dawn made it to the end of the couch closest to the door before her legs gave out from under her.

Buffy sat down next to her sister, put one arm around her shoulder, and moved her sister’s gaze away from their mother, then moved her sister’s head to her shoulder. “Shush, Dawn. I’ll make everything okay. I promise.”

The paramedics arrived. Giles pulled Xander aside. “I thought you were going to take Dawn to my apartment.”

Xander touched his still slightly red cheek and kept his eyes glued to the girls.. “I tried. You can’t tell either of them a lie or ‘no’.”

The paramedics came and went. Giles thought the couch looked... wrong, as if it should look completely different now that it had supported Death. It was something Giles was somewhat accustomed to. When, as a soulless monster, Angelus left Giles a gift of the body of Jenny Calendar, a woman Giles was greatly in love with, in his bed. Giles had shunned his bedroom for weeks, entering only for clothing. He finally had the bed replaced and the entire room rearranged.

Giles put a comforting hand on his Slayer’s shoulder. He knew this was going to be harder for her than anything she ever had to deal with. If the paramedic’s initial conjecture in that Joyce’s death had been a result of delayed complication to the brain surgery Joyce had undergone a few months go, and there were no supernatural forces at work, Buffy would have nothing physical to fight. Buffy had come to rely on having a supernatural villain to blame for great deal of “real life” problems.

When she contracted a flu that was killing children in the same hospital as she. She became aware of, fought, and killed the demon Der Kinderstod, Child death, while still heavily ill with the flu.

Yet this time, there was no chance of a supernatural cause, and Giles had no idea how his charge would react. True, she had matured greatly in the past few months, and she now had to care for and protect Dawn.

Buffy led Dawn upstairs and into her room, when she came back downstairs, Buffy stood in front of Giles. “We want to be alone for awhile.” Her voice was slow and deliberate.

“All right, I’ll go to the hospital and take care of everything I can.”

“Thank you.”

Giles nodded, and headed toward the door. Xander stepped forward, hugged Buffy, then followed the Watcher out the door. Buffy turned and sat down at the dining room table for a moment, trying to fully accept what happened. She then slowly got up, walked back up the stairs to her room, and started packing some clothes into a bag. “Dawn. Put some clothes in a bag. We’re going to L.A.”

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