disclaimer: I, obviously, own nothing because if I did I can guarantee you I would be running down the street yelling that I had something to do with Buffy. It all belongs to Joss, ME and FOX. Big thank you to Ali for putting on her beta cap.
summary: Buffy muses on her way home after her talk with Angel in "Chosen". Very heavy B/S undertones.
rating: PG-13; strong language

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Cookies, Choices and Champions

Cookie dough? Jesus, that was weird, wasn't it? The look on Angel's face, however, was priceless. I've been reduced to analogizing my life to cookie dough. Yeah, I've grown. And is analogizing even a word? Oh, who cares.

I told him to go. A strong fighter, a great ally...and I told him to high tail it out of here and start a second front. Was that the wisest thing? Would he have been more of a help than a hindrance? And how did I suddenly come upon thinking of Angel as a hindrance? Was it, as Angel had asked, because of Spike? He was the Pacey to Angel's Dawson, after all. The cookie metaphor might have been a little out there, but that Dawson crack was so on. What if I told him to stay? A pissing contest between those two? Don't need that. What if Angel had insisted upon staying and not swallowed the cookie so easily? Oh, it's that fun what if game popping up in my head again. Can't go there, though. The what ifs are too many and if I start second guessing my decision to have Angel go, I'll start what if-ing everything I've done in the last forever. I have an apocalypse to worry about.

What ifs don't help with that.

I remember the good old days of walking home from the cemetery and encountering at least two or three, sometimes more, vampires on my way. Now Sunnydale is a ghost town. There's only two slayers, an embittered Watcher, a witch who doubts herself, a one-eyed side-kick, a key that doesn't open anything, a principal with a vendetta, a nerd with a penchant for baking, an ex-demon who is more human than most and a whole slew of girls who may know they're all going to die but continue to rage on. Nothing says terrifying like forty people who have no idea what the hell they're doing. I'll try and excuse the fact that we can barely speak two words to each other at the present moment in time.

But there is someone else who hasn't deserted the town or me. Waiting for me now, maybe. Hopefully. Another vampire. Another vampire with a soul, no less. A vampire who is the same either way you cut him. I know that now. I see it. I often wonder why I hadn't before. Didn't care. Didn't want to. Easier to think of him as nothing more than a monster and a human-shaped sex toy. Fuck me into oblivion, Spike, but don't you dare talk to me afterwards. Shamefully using him for my own pleasures, torturing him with my inability to be Buffy. The girl that was inside me. He's seen it, though, or at least thinks he has. He told me just a few days ago. He's seen everything that I am. So very true and yet not. He knows me better than anyone but at the same time he doesn't really know me. The girl I once was.

I miss her, that girl that used to be me. It's hard not to. I long for the days when the horrors of high school practically outweighed any nasty that came my way. When did it start? When did I begin to lose myself? Was it right when I was called to this life? When my parents finally split? When we moved here to this once beautiful and demon-filled suburb? When I died the first time? When I fell in love with Angel or even better when I lost him to his demon and had to run a sword through him to save the world? Was that the beginning of the end of my innocence? Or was it when I found out everything I remember about my life is false? How about Mom dying? There's a hard life lesson. Finding your mother dead on your couch. I don't even know why we've kept it. We sit, we research, we fold our laundry, we kiss, and we talk out the rest of our lives on it. And it's where one person's life ended. That probably doesn't bode well, now that I think about it.

What would be different if she had lived? Would I have been so willing to die for Dawn? Would Glory have gone after Mom anyway? What if I had come back from above and she had been here, waiting for me, would that have made a difference? Would I have still shut everyone out, ignored my sister, used a vampire if Mom had lived? God damn what ifs. If The First doesn't kill me, they will. But I can't stop. I could die in a few days time or hell, right now as I walk home. Who knows at this point. These moments of silence, of being with myself are the most important right now. I have to save the world again, I have to make sure the people I love aren't killed, I have to keep on trucking. Where's a pit stop when I need one?

Resting...what a concept. Spike's image pops up in front of me and I can't help but smile. I found rest with him and he with me. I told him it didn't have to mean anything because I honestly don't know what it meant. I've wanted and craved sleep, to relax, to feel comfortable in my own skin again. The other night was the first in a long time where I felt content. Peaceful. And is it wacky that I don't find it ironic in the slightest that I found it with Spike? All his talk (and singing, never forget the singing) of resting and we both finally got it. With each other. The best night of his life and I believe him whole-heartedly. If one night of holding each other can replace his other best night when he killed his first Slayer, well good on me and my magical holding arms.

So now I have an amulet and a scythe. I'm not really sure what to do with either. One kills proficiently, makes me a stronger me. The power in it is unbelievable and I wish that everyone else could feel it. The other is a maybe cleansing, maybe scrubbing bubbles jewel. But both these things are important to our fight. I know that we need them. I just know it. I've seen and felt what the scythe can do so I'm not worried about that. I can feel the weight of the amulet in my hand and I let out my one hundredth sigh of the night. I'm not entirely comfortable just handing it to Spike and saying "Wear this" but I don't think Angel would give it to me unless it was important to the fight ahead. Especially if he had thought he would be the one to wear it. This is a new mystery that I don't have time to unfold. It's coming soon. I feel it all around me. It's the same feeling I got when we went against Glory. A tingle in the base of my spine that tells me this is make it or break it time. So I have.

I made a choice tonight.

I'll make Spike my champion.

If someone had told me that I would choose Spike to be my partner in this war on the night of the ill-fated Parent/Teacher Conference, I would still be laughing hysterically. No fake, hallucinated asylum for me. I'd be straight in the loony bin.

Spike. Champion.

They sound a bit strange together but there's this feeling in the pit of my stomach when they are. A feeling that it's right; that it will set things right. The past is the past and we leave it behind us on this night because tomorrow never knows...

I have no doubt that he will accept it. He might be more than a little mad about where it came from. Will probably do that lovely vampire parlor trick of smelling Angel on me. And if Angel could smell Spike, even from talking in the kitchen, Spike will most definitely smell Angel's scent. Should I be up front and honest with him? "I kissed Angel", shrug my shoulders and mutter "Habit". Or do I try to turn it around like I did with Angel? Make it not be about love or kissing or cookie dough...God, freaking cookie dough, Buffy! Well, it seemed like a good train of thought at the time. Can I even try the cookie thing on Spike? Would he buy it?

I smile.

He most certainly wouldn't.

He'll cut straight through whatever bullshit story I can think of on the spot and call me on it. Unlike everyone else, he doesn't just nod his head and turn. He makes me get through it; makes me talk; makes me feel whatever it is I'm trying to repress. Sometimes I hate him for it. Other times...well, other times I don't.

The reactions from everyone when I explain the amulet and who I'm giving it to should be the kind of fun that is fitting for the end of the world. At least Xander won't be there to put in his say. Or Dawn, for that matter.

Dawn.

I didn't even say goodbye. But, wait, didn't I? Two years ago, wasn't that my goodbye? Tell everyone I said this, live for me, the hardest thing in the world...Yeah, that was my goodbye. If I die again, will they bring me back? Third time's a charm, right? Of course, if we all die, I don't have to worry about it. Maybe I should have given her a choice to stay or go. But I know her; she's made of me, right? She would stay until the bitter end, just as Xander would have. I'm surprised Anya hasn't skedaddled on out.

But it's all about our choices. So I didn't choose Dawn to stay here and fight the fight because she deserves more than this. I want her to live on. To live on with Xander...although not together because that'd be weird. The two of them have earned that right. Everyone else, with the exception of the potentials, is paying penance for their past sins. Ours, actually. Our past sins. I have to include myself in there. I was pulled back into Hell and I embraced it. I tried my damnedest to forget the warmth of Heaven with cold comfort and hatred. It took Willow almost destroying the world to get me to want to live again. And now the world may be going the way of the Flowbee and I have too much to live for. Too many things I want and need to explore. I'm not done with life yet. I thought I was but there are still so many things I want to do; that I need to experience.

See, that cookie analogy doesn't seem so dumb now.

I want things, not all of them are clear in my mind and some of them are crystal in their clarity but I want. And for the first time in quite a while, I don't feel any guilt over it. I'm going to walk into my house and I'm going to show them just who is in charge here. I'm going to want my vampire to wrap his arms around me, lull me asleep and I'm not going to hide it. I want for things just like everyone else does and there is no reason for me to feel this deep-seeded guilt that has been living in me since Mom died. I deserve to be happy. We all deserve it. We've earned it.

And very soon we'll be fighting for it again. It's what we do best. We fight and we don't die. Well, most of the time that is. We prevail and although I haven't a clue as to what to do to make sure that happens this time, I know I'll be there trying my damnedest to make sure we come out on top. After we win, maybe things can get back to normal. I'll contact Dawn and Xander, tell them it's all safe on the Sunnydale front and that they should come home. Dawn will have questions that I will be forced to answer but I won't care because we won and I'll just be happy to be alive and to have her be alive and in my arms. Maybe Xander and Anya can work things out, maybe Faith and Robin can actually become something or Willow and Kennedy for that matter. Maybe Giles and I can go back to what we once were.

Maybe Spike and I will be able to be something. Or at least try. Isn't it easier to attempt a relationship when the apocalypse isn't looming over our heads? Granted, there wasn't one last year when we were...together...but I'm not the same person I was then and neither is he. I feel like we've grown so much together over these last few months. There's equality between us now that wasn't there before. Or maybe it was always there and I just chose to ignore it. That sounds more like me, doesn't it?

Ah, home. I can see the shadows behind the drawn curtains and I'm filled with apprehension. I miss Dawn and Xander already. I have no idea what I'm going to do in order to win. I think I should take a shower before I see Spike.

I think I'm just dawdling and if I don't just get this whole thing over with, I'm going to leave town.

Really, how annoyed will Spike be that Angel was here for a whopping fifteen minutes?

Crap. This isn't going to be fun.

I open the front door and look up to see my sister glaring at me with her arms crossed over her chest. Never a good sign.

"Ow," I say when she kicks me a good one in the shin.

"Dumbass."

I'm not going to argue that. I look at Xander and he looks a little scared and a little resigned to the fact that he's back here.

"Don't look at me. It's a Summers' thing. It's all very violent."

And I'm not going to argue that. Everyone knows it's true. I tell them about the scythe and Caleb and everyone is thrilled and Xander makes a joke about his eye socket, which normally, ew, but if he can laugh, it makes it easier to digest. Makes it a little less my fault and makes the guilt a little less stabby.

"There's something else," I begin and hold up the amulet. "I don't think we'll find anything about it but it won't hurt to look. Angel –"

"Angel?" Giles asks.

"Yeah, he came, he gave, he left."

"You okay?" Dawn asks me.

And I smile and nod my head, feeling very certain of my answer. "Yes."

"It's awfully sparkly!" It's nice to see Will so Will-like again.

"Angel said it was meant to be worn by a champion."

"Are you going to?" Giles asks like he already knows the answer.

I shake my head. "No, it's for someone else."

I walk out of the room and towards the basement. I stand at the top of the steps and I can hear him punching the bag and growling.

I sigh yet again. No one said this was easy. And it never has been with us…which is sort of what I love about it.

Yeah, love. I said it.

Good thing there's already a plan for the world to end because that might just do it.