Authors note: Thanks everyone for your wonderful support!! I could make the chapters longer…or rather, I could post more chapters in one sitting, because I kind of like the length they're at now, and don't feel it would be right to change. But then there would be fewer updates. If you could let me know in your reviews what you'd like, shorter, more frequent updates, or longer, less frequent updates, I'll try to do that. Please keep reading and reviewing, you make my day!!
And now I'll let you read the chapter…
____________________
When they arrive in London, a week and three cars later, it's raining. Buffy leads the way to a seedy hotel that looks like a hard gust of wind could bring it down. No point in spending precious money on something neither would enjoy.
The woman at the counter smiles lewdly through her crooked teeth.
"Just married, eh? Gosh darn, them young folds do get 'round." She pauses, waiting for comment.
There is none.
Xander digs his hands further into his pockets, and Buffy continues to stare into space. A few people turn to stare, then turn away. Buffy supposes she can't be a pretty sight, still cut up in and full of bruises, in bloody jeans. Oh well.
"A-arighty, then." The woman's energetic voice falters. "Room's right down the hall, first door to you left."
No beds, just a little bunk in the middle. Xander throws himself on the bottom, folds his hands over his stomach, and closes his eyes.
The dandelion is slightly browner than it was earlier when she takes it out of the bottle. There's a glass of water on the chair by the window, and she places it in there. Buffy wishes there was more sun, so it could live.
She took it out of the hellmouth where it was sure to perish, and took it into her new life. It's still dying.
Xander murmurs Anya's name in his sleep and she freezes. She wonders what she says in her sleep, doesn't even want to know. If it's anything like what she dreams…no wonder Xander doesn't talk to her.
Come to think of it, Buffy doesn't even know if she dreams. The visions plague her day and night, are behind her eyelids even when she's focusing on something else.
..the potentials screaming, crying, they're being split open, heads torn from their bodies, of course they're crying. Dawn's bleeding on the floor and she couldn't save her, couldn't save anybody, and Giles' glasses lie at her feet and she steps on them, and he screams, and he's gone, and it's all because of her, and she's destroyed everything, and –
She wakes up.
And faces the horror that her dreams are reality.
Maybe not that day…maybe not for years. But sooner or later, her friends will die. And it'll be all her fault.
The hand that touched the flower burns.