Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy & Co. Joss Whedon and the WB do. No copyright infringement intended.
Author’s Note: This takes place in the second season after “When She Was Bad” but before “Reptile Boy”. It also splits off here from Buffy’s brief drinking incident in that ep.
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Part One
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“Well now, I know we’ve come a long way.
We’re changing day to day.
So tell me, where do the children play?”
-Cat Stevens
* * *
The water leapt into the air and slammed forcefully against the red flames that licked at the crumbling wall of the DeBranch warehouse. A lot of money had been lost that night and someone was bound to be upset about it. Something far more valuable had been lost however.
"Buffy?" Rupert Giles murmured, crossing over to where she was sitting. Her back was to a wood crate and she had her knees up against her chest. As he moved towards her, he could see that she was shaking. "Buffy?"
Buffy Summers glanced up at him with weariness and an infinite amount of sadness in her eyes. Her beautiful face was smudged with dirt and tears. A long ragged and not very nice looking cut ran over her left eyebrow and dipped downwards towards her cheekbone. It dripped blood; a now thinning stream of crimson fluid, down into the mess of dirt, make-up and tears that marred her complexion but she didn't even seem to notice.
He sat down next to her and offered her a cup of water which she took without saying a word. Watching her closely, he draped a blanket over her shoulders. Her mouth opened to speak but all that came out was a tiny sob so she shut it quickly. Her body's language betrayed her however as he could very plainly see how fiercely she trembled. "Let me take you over to see the EMT. You may need stitches."
She opened her mouth to speak again but instead settled on simply shaking her head in the negative. She brought a trembling balled fist to her face and rubbed a tear from her eye. The very motion made her look like a small distraught child."I..I need to see her."
"Buffy, the fire..I'm not sure there is anything to see." Giles said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged him away, "She's alive, Giles. She can't...she can't."
"No one could have survived.."God, he wanted to say so much more but there really wasn't anything he could say at the moment that would have meant anything to the young Slayer.
"Giles!" A voice called out behind them. Giles turned to see the newcomer but Buffy didn't even move. Her eyes stayed locked on the flames which were just now beginning to die down.
"Xander. Jenny." Giles said softly as Xander Harris and Jenny Calendar pushed through the crowds of on-lookers that had gathered to watch the fire be put out.
"We heard about the fire on the library radio. I guess this means you took care of Lord Dathon." Calendar said with a smile. She looked over at Buffy and her expression immediately sombered. "You did take care of Dathon, right? Oh God..what happened?"She moved to Buffy's side and kneeled down to check the bleeding cut. She noticed that Buffy was gripping Giles handkerchief in her fist. It had spots of blood on it . Calendar reached down and took it from Buffy and pressed it to the girls' wound.
"Where's Will?" Xander asked, readjusting his crutches. He'd sprained his ankle playing basketball two days earlier and was still using the crutches..more for sympathy than anything else.
Buffy looked up at him and her lip began to tremble. "She..she's gone."She put her hand over Calendars' and pulled the blood soaked cloth away. She looked frightfully pale and disorientated and yet somehow she found the strength to rise.
Xander shook his head as if to suggest that he didn't understand or didn't want to. "Gone? As in..went home..to..take a shower?"
Buffy crossed over to him and shakily put a hand on each of Xander's shoulders. Taking a deep breath, she called forth all the inner strength she could. "She's dead, Xander."
His reaction was immediate. He threw her hands off of him and shoved her backwards. "No!" He looked at her with disgust and hatred in his eyes, "That's sick..that's really sick. How could you say something like that?"
"Xander.." Buffy pleaded, tears running down her face. "Please..."
He shoved her again and this time she offered no resistance as she fell backwards into the crate. The pain that crashed through her was almost a welcome feeling. Calendar was at her side instantly. "I don't know what game you're playing but it's over. You hear me, it's over!" Xander yelled at her.
"That's enough." Giles said, grabbing Xanders's shoulder and spinning him around. "Enough. She's telling you the truth, Xander."
"No, no..."
"Willow died in the fire." Giles stared directly at the boy, hoping to break through the shield of denial and anger.
"No.." Xander shrunk away from him and put his head in his hands. Calendar and Giles both watched with a growing sense of their own sorrow but it was the Slayer who pushed herself off the ground and moved towards him to offer comfort.
"Xander." Buffy said, wrapping her arms around him. And for a long moment, he let her and then something clicked in his head and he pushed her away again. She whimpered in pain and frustration and stared up at him uncomprehending.
"This is your fault," Xander yelled, his eyes small and angry. He pointed at her with a trembling hand. "If we'd never met you, none of this would have ever happened. You brought death into our lives."
"Xander," Calendar said sharply. Giles started to move towards him again but the boy held up a hand.
"We trusted you when you promised you'd never let anything happen to us but it was a lie wasn't it?" Xander said harshly, his eyes never leaving Buffy's shell-shocked face. Somehow though, he wasn't seeing her. He stared right past her and into the darkness. "This is your fault..you led her here, you let her die. It should have been you and her death is on your head."
"Xander." Calendar said grabbing his shoulder.
"I'm not done.."
"Yes, you are." Giles said firmly.
"Fine. I'm done." With a disgusted shake of his head, he turned away from her and then ran, the pain in his heart far overwhelming that of his injured ankle. Buffy watched him for a moment and then the energy drained out of her and she collapsed to the ground in a boneless faint. Giles caught her before she hit the the black dirt. He stared up at Calendar, "Things just got worse, didn't they?"
* * *
The girl paced about for a moment before turning and staring at the Slayer. "You know he's right, don't you? It's your fault that I'm dead."
"Will.." Buffy pleaded, her eyes wide. She knew it was a dream but that only made it that much worse. Even her own subconscious was blaming her.
"If you hadn't fallen, then I'd still be alive. If you hadn't come..come between Xander and I..then I'd still be alive and he and I would be together."
Buffy fell to the floor which in her dream was nothing more than a great blackness and began to sob. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."
"Sorry don't cut it," Willow replied evenly. She moved towards Buffy, her very walk out of character. "It should have been you." She reached down and grabbed Buffy by the hair and pulled her face upwards.
Buffy looked up at her friend through bleary eyes and couldn't help but blanche when she saw what stared back at her. It was Willow only it wasn't. What she saw was a corpse. A hollowed out, soulless creature in Willow's clothing.
"No........."
* * *
She wrenched forward in her bed and immediately regretted her decision. Stumbling from her bed, she crawled to the bathroom and hunched over the toilet seat. She felt someone's cool hands touch her neck and pull her hair away from her face as the nausea overtook her. After a few minutes however, it occurred to her that she was simply dry-heaving. But she couldn't seem to stop.
"Shh, baby." Joyce Summers whispered, half-holding her daughter. She stroked the girls' back and tried to calm her but she pretty much figured that her distraught daughter was inconsolable. Buffy shook violently in her arms, tears spilling down her cheeks and on to the collar of her white night-shirt.
It'd been three days since the fire at the warehouse. The police had been around often to find out why she and Willow had even been at the destroyed building. Buffy hadn't been much help in answering their questions so Mr. Giles and Ms. Calendar had also been hovering about. The detective in charge had left only hours earlier, finally satisfied that Buffy hadn't started the fire.
The fire itself was the least of Buffy's problems. She'd apparently had the same nightmare over and over for three days. It always ended up with her screaming out the word "no" and then being hit by a savage fit of nausea which was often accompanied by a brief fever. And then there were the tears. Nothing anyone said or did could stop her from breaking down into uncontrollable crying jags where often the only intelligible word was Willow's name.
Willow. No body had been found but the police and the fire department were reasonably sure that the young girl had been killed in the flame. The building hadn't been completely torn through but the structural damage had been severe enough to make any chance of Willow surviving practically nil. The exactitude of the words had been something to the point of, "Not even the devil himself could have survived that."
And so there was Buffy. She'd been unable to keep down what little she'd eaten and it showed in her ashy complexion. And sleep, now more than ever, seemed like a terrible punishment. And so instead she simply lay on her bed, sometimes crying, sometimes shaking but always looking like she was on the verge of a complete breakdown.
Joyce had spoken to both the Rosenbergs and the Harris'. In fact, she'd been over at the Rosenbergs' house helping them to make funeral arrangements as had Stefanie Harris. Willows' parents were in a bad way and yet they were still coping far better than either of the children.
Xanders' mother had told her that he'd become as depressed and closed-off as Buffy. He wouldn't cry though but it was obvious that he'd been deeply hurt. And not just by Willow's death. He'd muttered something to her about talking to Buffy afterwards and then he would get some odd contemplative gaze in his eyes. Stefanie was as deeply worried about Xander as Joyce was about Buffy.
Buffy fell back against her mother, barely aware that she was being held. "Will.." she whispered,the tears continuing to flow down her cheeks. Joyce brushed a wet strand of hair away from the girls' sweaty forehead and then helped her to her feet. She moved Buffy back to the bed and placed a sheet over her.
After the fire, she had apparently collapsed so the EMT's had taken her to the hospital where she'd remained overnight with the option to stay or go home. Joyce had decided that Buffy could benefit from being around familiar faces but now she wasn't so sure.
"Joyce?" Hank Summers asked, stepping into the room. She nodded to him and he approached the bed. "How is she?" He put his hand over her forehead.
"I'm worried about her. I'm worried about them both."
"It's not easy to lose someone you love." Hank said. "And I would say that the relationship those three kids had was about as close to love as you get."
"She's already lost so much," Joyce replied sadly. "Now she's lost Willow and she doesn't even have Xander to help her through this because he's as closed off as she is."
Hank placed a hand on her shoulder, "When she's ready, when they're both ready..they'll go to each other. Until then, all we can do as parents is be here for her now."
* * *
Xander stared down at the tears on his pillow. He hadn't meant to cry. Dammit, he didn't want to cry. But everytime he closed his eyes, he saw her. Grinning up at him with that impish smile and a twinkle in her eyes. She always knew what he was thinking, even when he didn't. It was like she was the other part of him.
"Was.." Xander murmured, pressing the pillow against his face.It shouldn't have happened. All three of them were supposed to have gone to the warehouse but he'd stayed behind with Ms. Calendar at the library because of his ankle. Which didn't hurt that much.
And she'd died. He didn't know the hows of it but when the pain in his soul became too much, the hows hardly mattered. All that did was the what and the what was death. Both she and Buffy had gone into the warehouse. Only Buffy had come out alive. Buffy was the Slayer.
Xander threw the pillow across the room. That wasn't fair and he knew it but he didn't want to think about fair. He needed someone to blame, someone to hate. Lord Dathon, the propaganda vampire as Giles called him, was dead. Xander needed something he could lash out at. "This wasn't supposed to happen. Damn you..
"Buffy? You're damning Buffy, right?" a voice said from his window. He looked up and saw Angel standing just outside the window. "Mind if I, uh?" he indicated towards the room. Xander flipped his hand nonchalantly.
"What do you want, Angel?" Xander said tensely.
"I want to help you." Angel replied.
"Help me?" Xander laughed bitterly. "Turn back time. Make Will live. Can you do that?" His voice turned serious, "Can you? Otherwise you're wasting your time."
"You're hurting."
"What? Were you a psych major before you died?" Xander shot back.
"No, I don't need a degree to see what you're doing."
"Oh and please, do tell me what I'm doing."
"You're pushing everyone away including the one person that you need the most and the one person who needs you the most."
"And who pray tell would that be?"
"Buffy."
Xander laughed cruelly. "I don't need her. And if she needed me, she could have called."
"Oh come on," Angel said, anger creeping into his voice, "She's so sick with guilt and depression, she can't eat, sleep or talk. And tell me, Xander, would you go to someone who'd said the kind of things you said to her?"
"What do you want from me?" Xander cried out, stepping up to Angel. "You want me to feel for her? Do you know what I've lost?"
"Do you know what she's lost?" Angel replied evenly.
"Will and I have been friends since we were both babes. We've been through everything together. I lost more than just my bestfriend. How can whatever loss she has compare to that?"
"She lost both of hers. Willow and you." Angel said. He shook his head. "You know Xander, you and I don't really like each other but I respect you. Right now however, you disgust me. I know you're hurting and I'm sorry for you, I truly am but you're way out of line."
"What?" Xander asked, truly baffled.
"What right do you have to say that only you can hurt right now. And only you can suffer? She would have blamed herself for Willow's death no matter what.."
"I don't need to hear this." Xander said, turning away."I think you should leave."
"Fine. Angel said, moving to the window. "But when you see her at the funeral tomorrow, don't turn your back on her. If you hurt her more than she already is, eventually you'll realize what you've done and you'll never forgive yourself."
Xander blew out a gust of air between his teeth in disgust and threw himself back onto his bed. Angel watched the boy for a minute and then with a sad shake of his head, he disappeared into the night to go stand watch by Buffy's window.
* * *
Joyce slipped quietly into her daughters' room and watched from the doorway as Buffy dressed for the funeral. Her clothes were dark but not black and yet the was she held herself made them seem to droop about her small frame. The girl dressed slowly, her hands shaking as she fixed her blouse. Her face was pale and ashy and dark bags hung under her eyes. There was a bandage covering the cut above her eye but having just cleaned it an hour earlier, Joyce knew that it was still ugly and red. And as if the concussion Buffy had suffered was not bad enough, she was still in pain from spraining her ankle and it showed in the slight wobble in her walk.
"You ready to go, honey?" Joyce asked, moving to Buffy's side. The girl stared up at her uncomprehending for a moment and then, slowly, deliberately, she nodded. Joyce took Buffy's hand and led her out into the hallway where Hank was straightening his tie. He smiled at them warmly. It hadn't taken much persuasion on Joyce's part to get him to drive down from LA to be with his daughter in this time of pain.
Hank moved to Buffy's other side so that in appearance both of her parents were flanking her. She didn't even seem to notice. She walked slowly and without purpose. Neither Joyce nor Hank were absolutely sure that she could make the short walk out to the car so they both hovered close to her in case she wavered.
Yet somehow she did. Joyce shut the car door behind her and looked up at Hank. He nodded slowly in understanding. They'd both known that losing a friend at such a young age would be traumatic for her but they hadn't expected it to be this bad. Her eyes seemed so shallow and empty as if she'd lost her soul.
* * *
Hannah Rosenberg embraced Joyce warmly, a small but brave smile on her face. "Thank you for coming." She smiled at Hank and let him kiss her cheek. She glanced over at Buffy and immediately her eyes became sad. "I see this in Xander too."
Joyce looked over her shoulder and saw Xander standing next to his parents, dark sunglasses over his eyes. He was wearing a black suit that would have made him look very handsome indeed had it not been for the way he held his body. He stood ramrod straight as if he were more a block of wood than a human. His face was neutral and without expression, much like Buffys'.
Buffy stepped away from her parents and over to where the casket sat. She ran her hand over the wood and shivered. No body lay in the casket but that was of little comfort to her. A tear trickled down her cheek and she moved quickly to stop it. As she did, she glanced up at Xander who'd taken off his shades to wipe at his eyes. Their eyes locked and she shivered again at the coldness in his expression. She looked away quickly and missed the ice melting from his gaze. He started to take a step in her direction but a man walked in front of him towards Hannah Rosenberg. By the time the man stepped out of Xanders' line of vision, Buffy had disappeared.
He looked around for her for a moment and was about to start walking about when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Jacob Rosenberg, Willow's older brother standing next to him. "Xander, bro."
"Hey, Jake." Xander said, embracing the older boy. Jake had been away at college for almost three years and yet somehow, even without seeing him everyday, he and Willow had remained close. Intelligence was in the Rosenberg blood and Jake was no different. He was a physiology major at UC Davis in Northern California.
"How ya doing?" Jake asked.
Xander nodded slowly, "I'm hanging tough." He glanced over Jake's shoulder, his eyes still scanning for Buffy. He felt like smacking his forehead when he finally saw her standing next to her mother and father. Joyce had her hand on Buffy's shoulder.
"Shall we begin?" Father Cassady asked, stepping over to the casket.
* * *
Xander looked for her briefly after the ceremony but somehow or another, she'd managed to slip away un-noticed. Quite a feat considering the fact that everyone from Giles to her mother was looking for her.
Truthfully however, he wasn't sure what he would have said to her. He knew in his heart that she wasn't to blame for Willow's death but his mind still needed a scape-goat. After Angel had left, he'd been unable to think about anything except the words he'd said to Buffy the night of the accident. He'd seen the stricken expression on her face and yet it hadn't stopped him from doing the verbal equivalent of slapping her. Punching was probably more accurate.
"Xander?"
He turned. "Cordelia?" He blinked and sure enough it was her.
She placed her hand over his and said very quietly, "I know we've had our differences but believe me, I am so sorry." Cordelia chewed her lip thoughtfully and then said, "I think anything else I say would sound stupid but I am sorry." She gave him a smile and moved away. Xander watched her for a minute and shook his head.
"Xander, you ready to go?"
"Where are we going, ma?"
"To the reception."
Xander shook his head, "Not much in the mood. I just want to be alone." He didn't give his mom time to reply before moving away from her.
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