They Loved Her.
By Lily
Riley.
Riley,
Buffy's dead. They thought you might like to know, and then made me write
to you. Willow said to tell you to take care. I say, stay in the fucking
jungle and get eaten by a tiger.
Spike.
P.S. Riley, sorry about Spike. He's an ass. - Willow.
They brought me the letter this morning when we came in from hunting a couple of
demons that were terrorising a local village. A couple of the guys ragged on me,
thinking it was a letter from a girl. And it sorta was, just not the girl I wanted.
Buffy's dead. She died. Buffy is no more, she's no longer with us. She's kicked the
bucket, bought the farm, and gone to a better place.
Better place my ass.
She's dead, and every time I think it, it becomes more and more unreal. She's the
Slayer for crying out loud -- nothing can kill her.
I wonder when it happened.
The envelope looked a lot worse for wear when I got it, and it looked like it had
been redirected a bunch of times just to get to me. So I don't know if she died last
week, last month, or the day after I left. Or, even, if she died five minutes before
the helecopter took off, and that was why she didn't come and stop me from leaving.
And was it a Vampire? Or did a demon turn out to be too much for her? Was there a
lot of pain, or did she die peacefully in her sleep? Was she surrounded by friends...
or alone?
Why did I even leave? Because I'm some pansy who can't help it when his girl gets
distant, that's why. Instead of dealing with my own demons, I travelled halfway 'round
the world to kill someone else's. I could've been there, I could've helped her... I
could've said goodbye at least.
There's part of me that wants to apply for a transfer or quit or whatever. To go back
there and see it for myself, and put flowers on her grave, and go out and get pissed
with Spike and Xander, while we reminise about how much we all loved her.
But the rest of me... It knows that if I go back, she won't be there. And I've been
holding onto a fantasy ever since I left Sunnydale... That one day I'd roll back into
town and she'd be there waiting for me. In the fantasy world, she's been pining away
for me, cursing the day that she let me leave. And when I knock on her door she jumps
into my arms and tells me how stupid she feels and how much she loves me, and how we'll
live happily ever after.
Obviously, this isn't an option. But as long as I'm here, as long as I can pretend that
it's all a stupid joke that Spike is pulling on me, I can believe that she's still alive...
And that she's waiting for me.