Reflections
The last of the smoke was dying, whipped away by the desert wind.
Buffy Summers looked back at the crater that was Sunnydale. The bus they'd escaped on had stopped, finally. So had the giant explosions. Bits were still glowing, embers burning under the dust.
Too many people she loved were somewhere in that crater…
She walked forward, picking her way over the debris and the broken asphalt. Until she could see a full half of the giant soup-bowl that used to be her hometown. Sand and dust were already starting to drift over the ruins.
She blinked, squinted into the dust, looking closer. There were rooftops in there, just recognizable. Pieces of buildings. Doors, walls, windows. The occasional gravestone thrown up by the blast.
The occasional body.
No tears. She couldn't, wouldn't cry for them, the dead of Sunnydale. The town had been evacuated, but a few people had stayed. Stupid, innocent people who'd thought that in staying they could make a difference. Just because you stayed in your house didn't mean it wasn't going to get blown to pieces. It'd be stupid to cry for them, because people that stupid probably didn't need to reproduce.
But she'd cry later, for the Potentials – no, for the Slayers that had fought beside her and died because of it. She'd cry for girls she'd barely known. She'd cry for Anya, crazy literal ex-demon that she was. Had been.
She'd cry for Spike, too.
She'd cry for the home, the life she'd lost. She'd cry for her mother's grave, buried under the remains of the town. She'd cry for the familiar places and faces and the life she'd led, the life she'd left behind.
It all comes down to this. And this…this wasn't what she'd hoped for. It wasn't how she'd thought it would end.
How'd she thought it would end? Who knew? She'd imagined…well, for starters, she'd imagined that Sunnydale would still be, you know, intact. And…well, she'd never thought about it. It was always one thing after another, one bad to defeat and then move on to the next one. Always something to fight, and now that she'd won – what next?
Seven years she'd lived here, seven years of good and bad and love and loss, seven years of being the Slayer and protecting this place. Protecting everyone. Sometimes not always wisely – Andrew, she thought wryly – but it was her job. If you wanted to get corny about it, it was her duty and her destiny and her calling and all that crap.
She'd always done it. Always, because she couldn't do anything else. She'd faced everything the universe had thrown at her. Vampires, demons, every Big Bad under the sun, even death – twice! – and now…well, now…she didn't know.
Someone put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and glanced up. Xander. Bleeding Xander, but at least he wasn't in a dozen pieces scattered across a few square miles of crater.
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "I know. Kind of sucked, most of the time, but …" He winked, which didn't do much for him, since it looked exactly like a blink. "I don't know how we'll survive without nearly getting killed on a daily basis. And where else am I gonna get almost eaten by attractive demon-ladies?" He grimaced. "Not going to miss that part, okay."
"Yeah," she said, a little hoarsely. "But I bet there's other demon girls out there, just waiting for you to show up so they can rip your head off and inject you with bug eggs."
He smiled. "We should get going. Some of the Poten – the new Slayers need medical attention pretty bad, and we're a while away from anything remotely resembling civilization."
"Yeah," she said again.
Xander gave her shoulder one last pat, and left.
Buffy turned to follow him. Then she looked back over her shoulder. At the smoking crater.
She lifted one hand, just a little, waved goodbye.
Then she turned, toward the setting sun, and left Sunnydale behind.