A/N: You don't have to have read HDM to read this but I recommend it. This is a little pointless but fairly good. When I say utopia I don't mean a happy place I mean a fool's paradise a fake heaven.

Summary: Buffy dies at the end of season five but instead of going to Heaven she goes to "the land of the dead" Crossover with His Dark Materials.

Disclaimer: HDM belongs to Philip Pullman and Buffy is property of Joss Whedon e.g.

Paralysed in utopia

As the atoms of energy and an electric symphony raged through her ears, Buffy died her body fell lifeless and abandoned but her sole wandered the misty land of the departed. Walking between worlds losing sight of time until it found its place.

People ask if there is a heaven or if there is hell. Buffy did not know the answer but if there was a hell this was it; Harpies cry day and night guilt and pain arisen to the surface fresh and cold blood on her hands again.

Perhaps she was stuck in limbo, God, or whoever decided these things, wasn't sure where to place her she had murder and deceit on her hands but she also had selfless winnings weighing down her shoulders.

Buffy's vacant scarcely there body had arrived to the ghost filled lake after millennia's

Of lost drifting. She felt the special part of her spirit that kept her safe and warm, being ripped away as she was rowed across the placid water.

The grotesque half women half bird banshee demons that guarded the heaving land for dead soles, mocked, laughed and delighted in her sorrowful pain as they led her through. She had felt smothered and lost as the thousands upon thousands of ghosts

Crowded her, asking "what world are you from?" she had never found out the answer to this.

Buffy had never even tried to look for her dearly departed. She had crawled into a rocky grey corner, coated in that eerie mist that covered the endless vicinity. Her dirty blond locks curtained her face and had stayed that way; she had stayed in that crouched position all her time there.

Time was lost to her time was lost down there, but all she had left was time. Her time that had died long ago another had replaced her, now all she could do was try and grasp onto the faint memories of her friends and the feel of a light breeze caressing her rippling skin.

The dank city of the dead smelt of remorse you could taste it in the oxygen-less air. The looming rocks and islands of led that filled the space were foreboding. The drifting presence of the dead was obscure and sad.

Buffy was one of these bodiless creatures she recoiled at the past that the Harpies fed of but she could not forget.

Giles: "We may, in fact, stand between the Earth and its total destruction."

Buffy: "Well, I gotta' look on the bright side. Maybe I can still get kicked out of

school."

Xander: "Oh yeah, that's a plan, 'cause a lot of schools aren't on Hellmouths."

Willow: "Maybe you can blow something up. They're really strict about that."

Buffy: "I was thinking of a more subtle approach, you know, like excessive not

studying."

Giles: "The Earth is doomed."

She could cling onto this happy memory but still the darker ones were dragged out of her.

Buffy: (whispers) I love you.

Angel: (whispers) I love you.

She touches his lips with her fingers again.

Buffy: Close your eyes.

She nods reassuringly, and he closes his eyes. She tries hard not to

start crying, and kisses him again gently. She steps back, draws back

her sword and thrusts it into his chest. His eyes whip open in surprise

and pain, and a bright light emanates from the sword. She steps away

from him. He reaches out to her and looks down at the sword thrust

completely through him. He looks at her imploringly, completely

bewildered by this turn of events. She can only stare at the sword

protruding from his chest, and slowly steps further back.

Angel: Buffy...

Behind him the power of the sword begins to swirl into the vortex. Buffy

steps further back, still looking only at the sword in his chest and not

into his face. The vortex has enlarged to about twelve feet across, and the two energies begin to interact. Angel still holds out his hand to Buffy. When the vortex finally meets him it suddenly closes into Acathla's mouth without so much as a spark, taking him with it. Buffy stares at the stone demon for a long moment, a light of awareness dawning in her eyes as she truly realizes what she has done, what she

has lost. She begins to sob, her heart breaking.

She felt the memories being sucked out of her and spat into the abyss of Harpy tainted recollections. She was gone she was a shell; she was no wiser about life after death even though she'd been there. She had no idea what happened after you died although she had done, she was no angel, she was no ghost so what was she?

Buffy had heard the ripple and shout of "Roger Lyra's here, Roger?" she had stayed in her corner her face turned from the rest of them she had stayed locked inside her mind. Until they jostled and moved on a procession through the mountains of dismal death and mist.

As the Harpies flew further from her she felt a twitch a spurt of energy. She new she had to follow and so she did, the girl in the corner the girl with no face now had one as she walked with the other ghosts with the other lost wanderers. She thought of the moon the starry skies and Dawns tear streaked face eyes full of love.

She had been paralysed unable to come out of her cage, unable to think or hope. But as her atoms filled the sweet summer's air and the breeze carried her particles across the grassy land Buffy understood finally understood death, life and limbo.

She had not been in hell nor lost in a nameless land she had been paralysed in utopia.