Chapter Notes:

A thousand thank yous to my awesome beta reader and friend Pfeifferpack.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Somehow, Buffy wasn't surprised that her subconscious led her to a cemetery at night. The problem was, she was searching for him. She didn't like that she had to search for him in the dreams now.

She wanted to call his name to the graves, but she was afraid this was that dream, the one where she didn't see him, the first of many, and her throat tightened. She stopped, listening to the sound of crickets. It was a more straight forward dream than she was used to. If not for the sense it made, she'd say it felt like a slayer dream.

She stepped forward and the cemetery came into view through a light fog. It was horror-movie-esk. She saw the familiar tombstones of Restfield, but that didn't make sense. Restfield didn't have an entire forest around it. She looked around and there were no streets, only the trees and the cemetery. She started the familiar walk through the markers trying to get to a familiar mausoleum. She stopped when she saw it, unable to go much closer. Last time she was in there she saw something she couldn't unsee.

She closed her eyes, wishing she could wake up and just get it over with: his absence, the first indication of its permanence.

But the wings on a cemetery angel were moving.

She looked over, hand by her side where a stake would normally be, but she was unarmed. And it wasn't the angel moving. A shadow with wings rose onto its shoulders, crouching there. It had spikes on its brow and cast a deep enough rumble toward her where her body stiffened in full awareness.

She saw darting and slinking movements and heard rumbles from all corners of the cemetery, some from the tops of mausoleums and others crouched close to the ground or in the trees. She let her body make the decision and spring for the one closest, the one perched on the angel, and woke up rolling to her feet from her bed, panting, her fists up and ready to swing.

Going out was a mistake. Patrolling was a mistake. Working was a mistake.

"You... r-really should consider taking some time off—"

Tara was sweet. Tara was helping take care of Dawn and get her out of bed and off to school in the morning. Xander was picking her up and dropping her off. Tara was nice and sweet. She should not bite Tara's head off, no matter how much she once thought she had come back as a demon. Tara was nice and sweet and necessary and the strength of holding back her sudden and unexplained anger made her sigh out in exhaustion, her body slumping. but she leaned against her kitchen counter to keep from showing it too much. "I'm only two days from a day off. I need this."

"I know, but... you need rest, too. You haven't rested enough before and now..."

"And now you aren't the mom, Tara. I have to be the mom."

The other woman blinked as if she'd been slapped, then nodded and looked down, stepping away.

Buffy straightened back up to her feet. "I'm... I'm sorry, Tara."

The other woman still wouldn't look at her, just down at her hands.

"I don't mean to be mean, really. You've been nice. I appreciate the help. I just... I can't just not do the these things... I have to take care of Dawn and be a mom now all the sudden... and I have to be the slayer. I don't ever get to..." Her voice wavered, and she cleared it harshly. "I have to go."

Tara nodded, then finally raised her eyes to Buffy's again, and they were filled with a familiar warm compassion that she'd relied on not long ago. "I am sorry, Buffy. It's okay to feel however you feel right now. You know I'm not going to judge you for it. I don't know how you feel. None of us do. But whatever it is, it's okay to, and it's okay to give that feeling space."

So, she gave it space right out of her home as quickly as her feet could take her.

Buffy made it almost across town before the stagger started. She straightened up as quickly as she could but walked more stiffly. Her heart rate rose.

She was so tired she looked like prey walking down the street, and she couldn't afford to look like that.

First it was five hours at the Double Meat. Five hours isn't bad though, right? It was far from a full day's work. The highlight of her day was when she had briefly nodded off during her break leaning against the wall next to the back door of her workplace, where Spike used to take her mind off everything for brief moments between the drudgery. But the few-minute piss-smelling-wall-nap wasn't the highlight so much as the brief but intense dream in which she heard his voice, "Won't you hear me? Won't you listen?" The rest of the dream faded from her mind, but the brief snippets of his voice let her know that she should at least be in store for a few more cameos of him via her subconscious before he faded away completely.

Then it was three hours in the cemeteries, and around the docks, and anywhere else she could walk because for the life of her she could not find one thing to beat up and it was freaking her out.

Buffy slumped against her front door for a while and didn't bother to go in. The lights in the living room were dim, but the T.V. flickered. She had no real way of knowing how many people were inside and if they were awake and waiting for her. Did it matter?

She rested her head and shoulder against the door and closed her eyes and imagined when she reached down and turned the knob, she would walk in and see her mother waiting expectantly for her in the kitchen doorway or the living room couch, a sight or reality that she dreaded most at this hour once upon a time.

She took her hand off the doorknob before she could squeeze hard enough to break it. She let her back rest against the door instead and sighed. She imagined someone opening it, discovering her there by her falling backward into them or by hitting the ground and cracking her skull so she didn't have to get up again. Maybe she'd end up in a coma and get a free bed and roof over her head for a while.

She groaned but stiffened and shot a glance at the front room window.

The curtain didn't stir. The gray lights were so gray coming from the television she was sure that it was an old black and white movie. It had to be something vintage that you pick in order to fall asleep to. No one was stirring that she knew. She should go inside and use whatever waning energy she had left to take a shower so she could collapse in her bed and do it all again the next day.

She couldn't help it, on the next exhale, she groaned again, louder this time, strangled, and wondered if she could quit her job to be an extra in a zombie movie.

And then a groan answered her. Except it wasn't really a groan. It sounded like the same exasperated noise coupled with a mild growl.

Her body went rigid on alert. She quickly descended her front step onto her lawn and looked towards the noise but saw only the tree in her back yard that Spike used to hide behind. She sprinted towards it. When she reached it, she rounded it with fist raised as if prepared to smash the annoying vampire in his stupid face, only there was no vampire. There was nothing. Even most of the cigarette butts were gone with no new ones. She listened, frozen, then heard a branch snap down the street. She pushed off the tree and took off towards it, on the chase. Whatever it was moved faster. There was something bouncing off tree branches, going from branch to branch. She kept pumping her legs after it, following it around a corner, down another street and towards one of the cemeteries.

Chapter End Notes:

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