Disclaimer: The characters found in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions, Inc. No copyright infringement is intended and no profits are being derived from the creation of this fanfiction.

Rating: G-Appropriate for all audiences.

Feedback: Please leave a review here at www.Fanction.net or send individual e-mails to MerrinM@aol.com

Editor's Note: This short piece is a ficlet written by our newest author, MerrinM, based on an idea I had some time ago. It is set the night after Buffy's death in "The Gift." While it is intended as a pre-quel to the Buffy/Spike Shipper's Society's fic novel, "Shades of Gray," it can also be taken as a general standalone, since it does not contradict any BTVS canon from either seasons Five or Six.

The Choice

Written by Merrin

The room was soundless...

…except for the soft, steady ticking. Willow slid one finger through her hair, hooking a deep red strand behind her ear. She was staring out at her surroundings, without a thought to spare for anything going on inside of her. There was just...waiting.

Idly, Willow scratched at her arm, where the wristwatch irritated her delicate skin. She paced the length of the Summers' living room a half dozen times, then sat down at the dining room table. The drumming of her fingers on the table created a thick, padded counterpoint to the staccato ticking of the clock as she waited for the others, and checked her watch, for the twelfth, or the twentieth time.

Anya was 'under observation'. Whatever that meant...

Anya watched the second hand circle the clock face as anonymous nurses came in to draw her blood, check her vital signs. Anya didn't quite understand the hustle-bustle. Wasn't this a place where sick people needed peace, quiet? This was the opposite of peace.

She needed Xander. He would be here soon. She just had to wait; it was what she had been doing for the last twenty-some hours. Not sleeping. Barely eating. Just waiting.

The second hand on the clock bounced as it collided against the passing moments. Suddenly, each tick of the second hand was like a heavy weight pressing into her chest. She had never felt the force of gravity pushing her down so strongly. It was so heavy that she didn't know if she would be able to lift her arm from the bed. She was afraid to try.

She simply needed to wait for Xander. It became her only purpose, her only focus, aside from the rebound of the second hand, which drummed through her entire body now. She tried not to think about the rest.

The clock had stopped...

Maybe time had stopped, too. Dawn was very still. She had been sitting cross-legged on her bed for an hour...maybe longer, abandoned by her own thoughts, left with a heart that beat all on its own. Breathing, though, now seemed like a self-willed task.

Was it almost morning? Dawn didn't know how much time had passed since it happened.

For all she knew, she was alone in the house. There was no sound of human voices, no bustle of activity, only the music of whirs and clicks that live under the surface of consciousness: electrical currents, humming appliances, house-settling noises. There was intermittent traffic outside, and she felt the static electricity suddenly creating a buzz that filled the inside of her ears.

Dawn wished that she had held her sister's hand, before Tara led her away. Brushed her hair from her face, touched her cheek.

The house seemed so empty. She waited for signs, but there were none; she felt no presence. There were definitely ghosts inside her brain, though. Buffy's voice. She listened to the echo of Buffy's words inside her head, trying to believe.

When Tara knocks on the door a few moments later, Dawn won't hear her. Only after Tara calls her name for the third time will she answer.

Time was passing. Willow's leg jittered up and down. She turned her arm rapidly, fingers splayed. Somehow she had to keep moving. She was thinking about the passage of time: that was where the danger was.

Tara, coming downstairs, approached to stand quietly at Willow's side. When Willow scratched at her arm, digging underneath her watchband, Tara noticed that the skin was raw and red, with blood red scratches starting to appear.

Tara reached over and took Willow's hand. "Sweetie..."

Willow stared into Tara's eyes, into eyes that could see her again, know her again. She clung to Tara's hand, desperately grateful that her lover had come back to her. Unable to embrace her, or kiss her, or make love to her, she simply held her hand.

Once again, Willow checked her watch. "Where are they?"

Counting...

He owned no clock. But Spike could count the minutes, the hours. Almost twenty-four hours since it happened. It was like counting the stars. Counting the stars, traveling further and further away from her. Counting the minutes and hours, leaving her far behind. It had been almost a day. The first day.

Through the fog in his whiskey-soaked memory, he remembered being led home to his crypt, leaning his broken body against the stone bier. Then he saw himself sitting in the chair, holding his head in his hands. And crumpling to his knees. Nothing he did... If he were to keen and wail, there would be no relief.

He didn't bother to beg God to change everything back. And it never occurred to him to beg for God's mercy for himself, simply because he knew there was no such thing. No God; no mercy on this earth. Not for him.

He grasped the whiskey bottle tighter and braced himself for the onslaughts, walling himself in against the waves. But there was no protection. They rolled over him, engulfed him, knocked him down hard. He lay flat on his back, left there by the rush of grief, abandoned by his own will.

Maybe, if he were to lie very still. There would be no heartbeat, no rush of blood in his ears. No sound. He could huddle close to death, let it embrace him.

His head lolled back as he gazed at the ceiling, creating another world for his eyes to see. He almost had it in his grasp. Spike was imagining a world in which she was alive and he was gone to dust. He smiled, letting the tears roll down the side of his face.

When he finally falls asleep, he will dream that he saves her...

Giles and Xander had finally arrived. Tara let them in and they gathered in the living room without a word spoken for a minute or two.

Spike wouldn't come with them. Couldn't.

"He's so drunk, he can't even speak in complete sentences. Kept wanting us to tell him where she was, saying he wanted to lie down next to her. Like he's Heathcliff or something. It was creepy."

If Spike only knew how very close she was. A few hundred yards, perhaps. She was waiting for them. Waiting with the dead.

"Leave him alone for now. But we're going to need him eventually. I'll bring him out of it if I have to beat him back to his senses."

Xander recoiled at Willow's harsh words. If he could just get back to Anya. First, there was an awful task, something they had to do, him and Giles. Then he could be with Anya. Everything would start to be better, once he was with Anya.

Leader Willow suddenly became friend Willow. A sheen of tears covered her eyes. "Where...where is she?"

Xander and Giles looked at each other.

"She's safe," Giles said quietly.

It was Willow who told them they had to keep the secret. Buffy had become a fugitive, hidden from the eyes of demons she never feared in life.

In his mind's eye, Giles could see the morning light filtering into the crypt...

Xander and Giles both stood next to the stone bier on which her body lay, only a short hour after her death. Neither reached out to the other for comfort. No tears were shed. Xander wanted to cover her with something, but Giles shook his head as he quietly studied her profile.

"Leave her," he said, as he turned toward the door.

Xander followed, uncertain.

Giles locked the neglected crypt and he and Xander walked away.

Xander kept thinking that they shouldn't leave her alone like that. The cold emptiness of the crypt, the large hollow space of it, surrounding her.

Giles will never tell the others that he returned on his own that day, to check on her, to touch her hair and grasp her cold hand. He won't be able to recall how long he stood next to her.

Giles led Xander from the crypt through bright sunlight. They walked to a clearing surrounded by willow trees. It was tucked away in an untended corner of the cemetery.

"This is where we'll bury her, just before dawn tomorrow morning. An approaching sunrise will mean that our actions should not attract any demonic attention. Hopefully humans will be absent from the graveyard at that hour."

"We're not going to just...put her in the ground, are we?"

"It will be taken care of." Giles had spoken more sharply than he had intended. He reached out to put a hand on Xander's shoulder, but the distance between them was too great and he let his arm drop to his side.

Xander stared at the ground in front of him, then drew a shuddering breath. "We can't just leave her here, with nothing that tells us where she is. In an unmarked grave? It would be like no one ever knew her. Or cared about her." Xander's voice was tight in his throat.

"There'll be a marker. Something that says how important she was to us. We'll decide together."

"What about...Won't that alert all the demons that she's..."

"They'll never notice it."

Giles had been firm about that, not willing to explain why he was so certain. He sounded firm and sure. But hours later, standing in the Summers' living room, Giles was now consumed with doubts about this plan of Willow's. He stood leaning against the mantel, facing her, blocking her will with his uncertainty, his fear. The secret burial was the sharpest knife stabbing into his heart. How could this be the choice they were making for Buffy?

Giles suddenly blurted out, "Perhaps the council..."

Willow turned to him. She gestured with a hand that shook with fatigue, with overwrought energy. "You know they can't do anything. There's already an active slayer. The ancient power that's responsible for the Slayer line doesn't know, or doesn't care that Faith's in jail. There won't be another Slayer unless Faith dies." She drew close to him, eyes wide, staring into his face, with pleading, and with the strength of her conviction. "Think about what happens, Giles, with no Slayer guarding the Hellmouth."

He was quiet, living with the picture of Sunnydale as a Mecca for demons that poured in from around the world. There would be no slayer to fear; they would be free to make alliances, and openly draw strength from the Hellmouth. It was horrific, and Giles' heart constricted with fear.

But he couldn't bring himself to endorse Willow's plan, even though it was logical, and cold-heartedly practical. They had already retrieved the robot. That headless...thing had always been a monstrosity as far as Giles was concerned. Now that horror was ensconced in Buffy's basement. Thank God Dawn was upstairs when they carried it down there.

His largest worry was about Dawn, and how this plan would affect her.

"I think you should do it." Dawn was standing under the entryway to the living room.

They were startled. No one had noticed her coming down the stairs.

"Like Willow says, it's the only way, without Buffy." No one answered her; the room was still. "But I don't want to see it," Dawn's voice tightened. "Don't let me see that thing…not until I'm ready."

Tara went over to Dawn, drawing her toward the stairs "Come on," she said softly.

Dawn let Tara pull her back toward her room. Suddenly, at the bottom of the stairs, Dawn stopped and she turned toward the group. She locked eyes with Willow as her body quivered with the force of her emotions; her gaze was hard and filled with jagged energy.

Willow acknowledged Dawn's anger, accepted it calmly. She saw that it had to be. Just as she saw, more clearly than the others, that the 'bot had to take Buffy's place.

Dawn and Tara resumed climbing the stairs, and disappeared from view.

Willow, bright-eyed, looked at Giles and Xander. "It's actually quite simple, in theory. The work will be slow, though. I won't be able to hurry. I've got to get all the right wires connected, you know."

Giles nodded, accepting. Resigned.

Xander and Giles left Willow to her task. They had their own duty to perform, after which both would need something to get them through this day, and all the rest to follow.

Xander will go to Anya. While he and Giles work, he holds onto the comfort of knowing he'll soon be with Anya. What he doesn't know is that when he walks through the door to her hospital room, he will realize that neither can ease the other's pain. They will cling to each other anyway, heart sore.

When Giles gets home, he'll open a bottle, and clutch it for the rest of the day. He knows that is what Spike has been doing. They'll both be dead drunk, a kind of shared grieving, with each locked in their separate dwellings.

Willow was a practical girl. This was a task for a logical, scientific mind. It would be like a puzzle, a brainteaser. No one else wanted to be there, and she understood that. She started down the steps to the basement alone, not acknowledging how cold her hands and fingers were. They would probably shake too much for the fine work that was needed.

When she finally starts to work, Willow will find that she is able to shut out thoughts of the real-life Buffy, even when she stares into the 'bot's wide-open eyes. Willow will be lost in her work for hours, not coming upstairs until it's done.

When Dawn wakes up late the next day, still wearing the clothes she put on the previous morning, she will find herself wrapped in a loving embrace. At first, she will think that it's her mom holding her: the soft, cushioned feeling of a mother's arms. Then she will notice the scent, something flowered, violet perhaps: nothing that her mother ever wore. Of course it's not her. She will lie in Tara's arms and listen to the sounds of the empty house.