A/N: And a bonus! Are you surprised? 'cause I seriously am. I was sure this was finished until about eleven-thirty this morning. Go figure.
Minor spoilers for season eight.
The baby Slayers make a big deal about it.
A part of being the Slayer—a Slayer now, actually—is accepting that twenty-three probably isn't going to come. A normal person, a civilian, the sort of person they were but aren't any more, they might think; 'gee, wouldn't it be neat if I made it to a hundred-and-some like that lady on the Discovery Channel?'
It's pretty much the same thing.
There're streamers all over the mess hall, and a giant cake that some of the girls threw together, and Buffy gets more birthday cards than she can count. Xander and Dawn hover around the party, trying to stick close to her but finding it difficult to compete with a bunch of super-powered teenaged girls with hero-worship.
Giles sends her some books, because he's Giles.
She spends the evening smiling and being grateful and pretending she isn't missing her living room in Sunnydale, and her back porch, and Tara, and Anya, and Spike.
Willow calls her around midnight, and babbles about time-zones (Buffy knows Brazil isn't that different from Scotland, but she doesn't bother calling Willow out on it) and about ticket costs and about duties in Rio and Buffy's pretty sure the call is really supposed to distract her from the present that materialises on her floor. Kennedy grumbles in the background throughout the entire conversation, so Buffy's let Willow get away with being the good friend and girlfriend and is the one to close the conversation.
The teleported shirt still has the tags on it and the receipt says 9:34 pm.
She struggles to open the E-Card Andrew sent her way, but the donation to the Red Cross in her name is kinda nice.
When she goes to brush her teeth, Xander is in the hall on a return trip from the same. He gives her a minty-fresh grin, like something went really right and so she smiles back.
She lights one of the candles and lets it burn into a puddle of wax on the windowsill.