[Note: This story takes place after Season 3, Episode 10 ("Amends")—that is, early January 1999.]

By now the graveyard was something like a set piece to her, its tombstones set like slabs of cardboard and its thin trees still and seeming to evade even the small changes the seasons brought. In this particular spot, in this particular graveyard (there were several in the city), at this particular time of night she would "patrol." She wouldn't spend all her time there, of course—there were other locations to monitor—but this spot had become her favorite. She would wait for sunrise there and sometimes even bring a light and try vainly to finish homework. On occasion a friend would meet her there and they would have conversations—those conversations briefly interrupted as she dispatched newly risen vampires.

She had trouble imagining that there were people at the graveyard during the daytime, paying their respects and weeping. She, of course, had learned to weep in safety: among the tombstones was no place for the vulnerability of tears. And at night there were few mourners, although recently she had been seeing one man, whom she placed in his mid-thirties, return to one site, a slight distance to her left, night after night. He never seemed to notice her, and he was never around when there was danger. A recluse, perhaps. She wasn't one to judge a recluse.

She saw a silhouette move, and for a second she thought a vampire had risen without her noticing. Seeing it, however, she realized its movements were far too natural to belong to the newly undead. She sat still on the grass and observed.

The silhouette moved away: her trained eyes still saw its movements only dimly. It stood still for a few moments, walked in one direction and then another, skipped, balanced itself on a tombstone. Disrespectful and erratic, but not threatening: she allowed it to continue.

It began walking towards her, and she got a good look at its face: a human, definitely, and though as tall as she was, very young. An overgrown boy, his face mischievous. As he approached her his smile slowly faded; once he reached her he sat beside her on the ground.

"Are you lost?" Buffy said.

The boy said nothing. He sat on the ground, his eyes wide open and his mouth blank. He couldn't have been older than twelve.

"Is something wrong?" she said. "What are you doing out this late at night?"

No sound but the wind moving the chilled grass. Buffy stood up and walked up to the boy. He could be a ghost, she thought. Or a demon. Or a harmless boy lost in a dangerous graveyard. She reached out and touched him. He was corporeal.

"Listen, I'd like to help you. Is there anything you can say? Maybe you could show me, if you can't talk. Make hand motions."

She let the silence stretch to minutes as she waited for him to reply.

She kneeled in front of him, looking into his eyes. The pupils did not move; he looked straight forward and did not vary his gaze. He did blink when her hand neared his face, however.

She rested her hand on his neck for a few seconds. Yes, there was certainly a pulse: healthy, at a normal rate. She pulled her hand back, stood up, and looked around the graveyard. The man who was often at the graveyard wasn't there, but she hadn't expected him to be. And Faith was likewise absent—count on her to miss patrol on the one night something strange happened.

Buffy looked at the little boy again and gasped slightly. Though he had not moved, there was now a scratch, very visible although only slightly bleeding, just where she had touched him to see if he was real—the side of his neck, an inch from his jaw. The cut seemed to deepen before her eyes—by the time she reached her hand to it to stop the flow of blood it was tricking too fast to be stopped.

Sharp breath in as she touched his arm. Lie down. If he reclined, would the flow slow? Why hadn't she listened to Giles more carefully? His lectures on bleeding, medical care.

There was too much: red on her hands, the grass, her shirt sleeves (now ruined; she couldn't get all this out), the child's neck. His eyes were still open. Even with both hands she couldn't bind the cut. She thought his whole head would fall off.

His eyes were still open. Had she seen him before? How much blood could he lose before losing consciousness? Before death? She tore strips from her shirt, tried to bind the cut. She wasn't doing this right: the knots weren't staying together. She couldn't do anything.

The blood was a literal puddle by now. How much blood was in a person? 5 liters? He was still a child, he would have less. There had to be at least 2 liters on the grass right now; she could feel it seeping through the knees of her jeans. What had he been doing? Was he sent for her? Why had he gone right to her spot?

His eyes squinted slightly now, and his lips, before locked in a straight line, now hung open slightly. He seemed paler. Was he really paler? Maybe it was her imagination. By now she had torn her entire shirt off, tried to wrap the whole thing around his neck as an oversized bandage, tourniquet. If anyone saw they might think she was strangling him. He didn't breathe, but the blood kept streaming. Nothing she did helped anything. She was no doctor, but she knew blood. Blood didn't come out like this, not from a cut in the side of the neck. Before it hadn't looked like the cut even reached the jugular.

For a second after she noticed the wet feeling on her cheeks she thought the blood had gotten there as well—as it had, most likely, since God knows it had gotten everywhere else. On her cheeks, however, were tears, not blood; she realized this when the salt began to sting. At last the blood was stopping, and it seemed there had been more of it than any child, even such a large child, could contain.

No. If the blood was stopping… Was there a pulse? A pumping to the blood coating every surface? No, now there was no blood at all. It stopped as quickly as it started. No life in those eyes. No sound. Had he made a sound when he was bleeding? She couldn't remember hearing even a gasp.

And now what was she left with? Stripped to her undershirt, covered in blood, her fingerprints no doubt smeared in blood over everything. She didn't want to go home, but she wanted to go see Giles and have him recite the litany: of how there was nothing she could have done, of how sometimes things were out of her control, of how everything would be alright and life would continue. She was quivering, and she couldn't tell whether this was from the cold or from the sheer force of the trauma. She had seen blood; she had seen dead children; she had thought she had seen the worst of everything.

Her torn shirt soaked up much of the blood and cleaned off anything resembling fingerprints in the area. That at least she could be thankful for. She would leave the body for the police to find, ask one of the Scoobies to make a 911 call. All of her clothes were stained with blood, and though she couldn't see a mirror she suspected that she right now resembled some picture from a domestic abuse awareness campaign. Blood, everywhere blood.