A/N so I was TOTALLY going somewhere with this when I started it, but that was, like, a month ago, and now I have NO idea what I was planning. So I just added a really small ending paragraph and am done. PLEASE review!
First came relief. As they stood on the edge of the crater that had been their homes for anywhere from a few years to their whole lives, they each felt their own individual rush of relief that they were alive. All of them had a moment of inexplicable delight to be alive.
Then came joy. They had won. After the initial shock and happiness that came with life, the truth of what they had just accomplished really sunk in. With the town, the hellmouth had been destroyed. They had just gone up against evil itself and come out victorious.
Lastly came grief, and with that, guilt that it wasn't the first emotion to strike them. Anya, Spike and so many others had lost their lives. Looking back farther than the final battle, they remembered the innocent girls who hadn't even made it to Sunnydale. They thought of Joyce. They thought of Tara. When they remembered the people who had been taken directly and indirectly by the First, their victory seemed insignificant.
Nobody told Dawn that Spike or Anya had died. She was just there, on the bus, apparently not important enough to hear news of her friends' deaths. Spike had been a close friend to her. The truth had slowly dawned on her, as she stood above the crater that had been her home, and she realized that if Anya and Spike weren't on the bus, they had been killed, or had fallen behind. She realized that there was no miraculous place for the new slayers—her friends—to be hiding if they hadn't been sitting beside her on the bus. Everything was gone.
She had refused to say goodbye to anyone, because it would make her feel like she was never going to see them again, but now she never was going to see them again. Spike had never known how much he meant to her. And now he never would.
A/N huzzah. That was… well, how bout you tell me what YOU thought of it. Yeah. REVIEW!!!!!! AND DO IT NOOOOOOW!