Setting: During "Nightmares" Buffy's grave wasn't the only one to appear in the cemetery across from the high school.
Can be read either on it's own, or as a companion piece to my one-shot "Never Say Farewell."
The Other Grave
Seeing Buffy grave had been hard, but even that hadn't hit him as hard as the sight of the other one which he passed on the way towards it. The other one, which made him feel as though someone had reached into his chest, wrapped a fist around his stomach, and squeezed as hard as was possible. It was actually hard for him not to fall to his knees, then and there, and throw up. Even knowing that this wasn't real, and that everything was taken from one of his worst nightmares didn't make things any easier.
The only thing which telling him self over and over, that this wasn't real, was achieving, was keeping himself moving forward.
He was surprised that that simple gray tombstone, engraved with only a name and a date, could affect him as profoundly as it was. And especially with what he had tried, again and again, to convince him self of over the years.
He had tried to convince himself that he didn't care. That he was better off on his own. That it didn't matter, because of what he knew to be proper and correct.
But he knew now, that he was doing a poor job of fooling himself.
It was all because he couldn't deny the realness of the sting of tears, which were welling in the corners of his eyes. Nor the way he wanted to run out of that cemetery, right then and there, and hide. He couldn't ignore the longing, which welled up from his memory, just as much as the sorrow and despair, which were triggered by the present circumstances.
He shivered, and not just from the chill of the perpetual dusk.
And forced himself to walk onwards.
But as he did so, he reached out on the way past, and traced his fingers lightly over the familiar name, which sat, prominent, and alone, on the top of the grave.
It read, simply, "Ethan Rayne."
But that was enough.
When he came upon Buffy's grave, it was the sorrow of both losses, which finally made him break. But no one else had seen his tiny gesture. So no one would fully know.