Chapter 4 - Soul Search
Buffy walked around the cemetery. This is my seventh lap and nothing! There have been some pretty, well, dead nights before , but this was rediculous. It's almost as if someone had been... no, Spike wouldn't be out doing me any favors. Especially after they way I have been treating him She sighed and sat on a rock next to an old headstone. She lifted her stake to eye level and said, "Well, it looks like it's just me and you..." , she frowned, "Hey, don't look at me like that." She dropped her arm down and stood up, brushing the dirt off of her pants. "Stop making with the pointy looks..."
She stared intently at the wooden stake for a second. "You want to know why I am not going, don't you?" Oh, God... She thought, I am defending myself to a dead piece of wood. She wrinkled her nose. What is it with the spilling of the guts to all the dead things? "Well, you *do* know why I can't go..."she trailed.
"I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time ... didn't mean anything ... nothing had form ... but I was still me, you know? And I was warm ... and I was loved ... and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or ... any of it, really ... but I think I was in heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there. Pulled out ... by my friends. Everything here is ... hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch ... this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that ... knowing what I've lost..."
She sat with her head in her hands. "Knowing what I lost..." she whispered into the darkness. I lost you mom. All over again. And every night I lose you...over and over again I am ripped from your embrace and left here, cold and alone...and missing you. Oh, mom...She sobbed, I miss you...I would give anything to feel you near me again, mom...anything...
"Anything...", she could hear the words escape her lips. As they hummed in her ears, she remembered demanding of all those in the room that night, "Give me something to sing about!" She was ready then. Ready to walk through the fire, hoping the flames would return her to where she belonged. Where I belong... Where do I belong? Suddenly it dawned on her. I don't belong here, afraid to be near the one place I can go to...the one place where you will always be... She jumped to her feet and began walking across the cemetery. Then she ran, faster and faster, as fast as her strength could take her.