Title: Witnessing her gift

Summary: Set at the end of the Gift. Told from the perspective of one of the characters watching Buffy jump. Femslash.

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, or any of the characters in the show.

Rating: PG

I see the determination on her face. She wears a look I've seen all too often. It's her 'I-have-to-do-something-you're-going-to-hate-to-save-the-world-because-it's-my-duty' look. I look out over to the ledge as she does. There's a large swirling mass of colour and crackling energy below the edge of the platform and I know what's running through her mind. It's summers blood. The words haunt my mind as she begins to whisper in the darkness.

I can't let her do this. I can't let her jump into nothing but air to plummet to her death. But there's nothing I can do. She whispers messages to her loved ones and sobs begin to wrack my body as she whispers one last message for me. "Please don't leave me." It's too late; she's already running to her death and this time there is no bringing her back with CPR. She's going to fall and when she hits the ground she'll be gone.

Her leap into the energy is graceful and valiant and it's almost like watching her in slow motion. She always has to be the hero. Not because of her birthright, or because it was a good thing to do. It was always for the ones she loved.

Now she's giving her life up to send hell back to where it belongs, knowing she could go back with it, but as she falls I know she's thinking of those she's leaving behind, they'll be safe and to her that's worth an eternity of torment.

"I love you." It's barely a whisper but she hears me. Maybe it's the power from the tear in the fabric of time and space, maybe it's the slayer senses or the love that binds us, but she hears me and her last words are "love you too."

When she hits the ground the pain is unbearable I feel the impact shake my bones and it knocks me from my trance. I look about and I'm sitting on my throne in Pylea.

Since inheriting the visions from Doyle I've seen thousands of blood curdling events and deaths, but they were nothing compared to watching the slayer fall to her death to save her sister. Her family. Her friends. Me. She loved us all enough to trade our lives for hers. I don't know what time it is back in my own dimension or what day it is, but somehow I know that I saw her death as it happened. It wasn't a premonition; it was a gift from the powers that be, one last chance to see her soul mate before she died. To hear her confession. She wouldn't need Dawn to tell her what Buffy had said to her on the platform she already knew.

"Tell Cordelia…tell her I'm sorry about the way things worked out. That I wished I could have finally told her what I've always been too afraid to admit. Tell her…" Buffy paused as she felt a familiar presence all around her. It was calming and soothing and she knew of only one thing in her life that could make her feel so comfortable when she was about to die.

"It's ok, she knows Buffy." Dawn had always known more than she'd let on. The secret touches and feverish whispers had not gone unnoticed by her, neither had the change in Buffy when Cordelia left her.

When Buffy jumps she hears a whisper in her ear and she can almost feel warm breath tickling against her ear and soft hands slipping around her waist to comfort her. "I love you."

End.