TWENTY

* * *

Home.

It was morning now and she stepped up to the front door, slipped inside.

Quiet.

Where memories of the night should be, there was nothing. She stepped into the living room, heard noise from the kitchen.

Latin.

Tara, there at the counter in the center of the kitchen. Dawn standing behind her. They looked up; the room smelled of incense.

"Buffy," Tara said. Her eyes were puffy, tired.

"What's this?" Buffy asked.

Tara looked back at Dawn. "Dawn had an idea," she said.

Dawn smiled. Buffy looked at her.

"Have you been doing magic, Dawn?"

Dawn's smile vanished and she shook her head. "No, no. I just thought that since Tara can't find where Willow is, maybe she could look for where she isn't."

Tara smiled. "I've covered a good part of town. It's a good idea."

Buffy nodded, then felt a smile move across her face. "Thank you, Dawn. It is a good idea. Have you found anything?"

"Not found." Dawn corrected.

Buffy chuckled.

"All right. Have you not found anything?"

Tara shook her head. "Not yet. We'll keep trying."

#

She was watching him and he watched her now, his face curious.

"We'll keep trying," he said.

Familiar.

The words, but not the meaning.

"How do you feel today?" he asked now.

She remembered. Spike, his hands not living, no pulse in them. Yet feeding her need, for life, to feel something, even if only for a moment or two or three. Needing to feel like there was some reason, some small pleasure in the gray, sharp pain that was everything.

Touch me.

Hold me.

Take me.

And he did.

But when it was over there was nothing save for her disgust at what she was.

Dead.

"I can't anymore," she said. "I can't."

"Can't what, Buffy?"

"Live. It's too much. It hurts too much." She lowered her head into her hands, lacing her fingers behind her head. Every day was pain, was loss. The universe was a fragile thing, teetering on the edge of chaos, of fear and hate and suffering, and nothing, nothing in all of it was permanent, was certain, was safe. There was no hope in it, for hope was an illusion, taken away by fate.

You are the chosen one. You cannot just be a normal girl, cannot just be a cheerleader who shares giggles and gossip and milkshakes with her friends. You have to save the world and save the world and save the world, and when you cannot it is you, not the world, that has failed.

And you are crazy. You are the crazy, broken girl who they all laughed at in the halls of school, because you wore that big cross and because you were afraid and because the voices kept talking to you and the vampires kept looking for you but no one else ever saw them. You are the one who the shards of sharp reality tear, cutting into you, spinning as you are ripped into a million pieces of pain. You are the one who stands in line for meds that make you feel dead, who lives in the world of the hall and the ward and the rooms and the restraints, holding you down in place as your soul burns.

Buffy whimpered. She drew back in her seat, pulling her knees close, her arms protective against her chest. And she saw as Garrett nodded, as he leaned back in his chair. "Life is hard," he said. "There are no guarantees."

It seemed a platitude and she seized it in her rage at the world.

"How would you know?" she shouted. "How would any of you know? You don't have these voices in your head and this filth touching you and this hollow inside you! You get to sit there all fine and go home in the afternoon and everything's just fine! How would you know?"

He didn't answer. His face was different suddenly; the calm, relaxed look was gone, just for a moment. Then he reached back, pulled out his wallet, opened it.

"You think your pain is the only pain, Buffy?" he asked.

She just watched him. He pulled out something from his wallet and handed it to her. She took it.

It was a photograph. A little boy. One of those school photos where they line you all up and say smile and snap and flash and then next please. The boy was missing two of his front teeth and he was smiling broadly.

"My son," Garrett said softly. "Leukemia."

It was silent, there in the office where she sat.