Chapter Four: The Vision

Everything was dark - her mind a cloudy, black haze. She couldn't see or think or feel. She was numb - completely and totally numb - from head to toe. Buffy lay still in her bed, her eyes closed, existing somewhere between the worlds of wake and sleep. Suddenly, a light shone through the darkness.

Where there had once been a vacuum, now there was light. Frantic images started crowding her head, swimming about, fighting for space.

The battle. She saw the battle.

Everything was masked in a blood red haze. She could see the demons falling, see her friends falling. There was screaming and bloodshed. She felt trapped. Desperately alone and trapped.

Buffy began tossing in her sleep. The blood was pumping faster through her veins, and she was desperately struggling to break free of the nightmare.

Then the picture changed.

Everything was calm.

She saw Spike, standing before her. He was watching her curiously, questioning her with his eyes. She wanted to reach out to him, to take a step forward and touch him, but she couldn't. Try as she might, her body refused to move.

And then, before she knew what was happening, the battle was once again surrounding them. The demon she had seen kill Spike was lumbering up behind him. She tried to call his name, but she couldn't. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound wouldn't come. Spike continued to stare at her. Buffy struggled against the chains of her nightmare, to no avail. Paralyzed and helpless, she watched again as Spike received a stake through the heart and disappeared in a burst of ashes.

Her limbs were twitching now, her body trembling with her frenzied struggle. She threw her arm out over the side of her bed and hit the lamp on the bedside table, knocking it to the floor. Even the sound of the crash wasn't enough to wake her from her nightmare.

In an instant, the cloud of dust dissipated to reveal a steady stream of frenetic images. All of Spike. She saw him as William. Saw him as William the Bloody. As Spike. It seemed his entire life was flashing before her eyes. More than a hundred and forty years sped before her in a matter of seconds, everything from his birth to his turning, to his ultimate death just a week earlier.

The images were jumbled, horribly out of sequence and disturbing in their intensity. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, but she couldn't do anything. Just lie there and watch as her mind fought to make some sense of the chaos before her.

One moment she was seeing Spike slaughter a dozen people. The next, he was taking care of Dawn after Buffy had died two years ago. Now he was killing again. There was no method to the madness, just a random assault on her senses.

She felt warm hands on her arms. Someone was shaking her. Buffy tried to break free of the dream, but couldn't. Somewhere in the distance a voice was calling her name.

"Buffy, wake up. Buffy!"

Buffy's eyes shot open, and she realized she was sitting up in bed. Dawn was just inches in front of her, perched on the edge of the mattress, her hands gripping her sister's arms tightly.

Buffy was shaking, her breath coming in heavy pants. Her skin was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and in spite of the fact that she had just woken up, she felt like she was going to pass out.

"Buffy, are you okay? Can you hear me?" Dawn asked frantically, as she moved closer and searched Buffy's clouded eyes.

"What . . .?" It was barely a whisper.

"Oh thank God!" Dawn exclaimed, as she threw her arms around Buffy and wrapped her in a warm, desperate hug.

Buffy could hear the faint sound of her sister's crying. Gently, she pushed Dawn away so she could get a better look at her. Dawn seemed to be in one piece. She looked healthy, unscathed. She looked like she had just been roused from a fitful sleep herself. "What happened?"

"You had a dream. A nightmare. You knocked the lamp over, and--"

"No. Not that." Buffy shook her head absently, trying to clear her fogged brain. "The battle? Did we win?"

Dawn couldn't suppress a laugh. "Uh . . . no. We didn't win. And for some inexplicable reason, heaven just happens to look a lot like your bedroom back in Sunnydale."

Buffy gave her sister a censorious look.

"Of course we won. Saved the world. Carried the day. Averted another Apocalypse. What else is new?"

"And Spike?" Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Buffy already knew the answer to her question, but she still needed to hear someone say it.

Dawn dropped her eyes and slid her hand over Buffy's, squeezing it gently. "He didn't make it," she said quietly.

For a long, painful moment, Buffy just sat there, perfectly still. She had known what they were risking when they had gone into battle, but knowing the risk and actually living with the consequences were two different things. Buffy had thought if Spike died, that she would die too. How was she supposed to keep on living, now that he was gone?

Buffy pulled her hand away and shifted off the bed. Wrapping her arms around herself, she drifted over to the window and stared out into the street. "Who . . . else . . . did we lose?"

Dawn turned on the bed so she was facing Buffy, but she made no move to join her sister. "Faith. Kennedy. Rhona, Amanda. More than half the Potentials."

"Anyone else?"

"No. Everyone else made it out okay."

"And the new Slayer?" Buffy asked.

"We don't know," Dawn said, as she nervously folded her hands between her knees and began bouncing the heels of her feet on the floor. "None of the Potentials were called. Giles doesn't know what's going on. With the Council gone, he's not sure how this thing is supposed to work."

Buffy shook her head again, and turned her body slightly back toward the room. "How did we defeat it?" she asked, catching a glimpse of Dawn over her shoulder.

"Faith. She . . . she sacrificed herself. Threw herself into the Hellmouth, and restored the balance of Slayer power. At least, we figure that's what did it. The Hellmouth is gone. Apparently, the life of one Slayer was enough to destroy it for good. Now Sunnydale is just your average vampire and demon infested burb. No different than New York, or Chicago, or any other town."

"Uh huh," Buffy mumbled, barely audibly.

"What?"

"Oh." Buffy turned around to face Dawn now, her arms still wrapped tightly around her chest. "It's just that those shaman, or whatever they were, who instituted the Slayer line in the first place, told me I was going to be the last Slayer to protect the Hellmouth. I guess they weren't kidding." Buffy sank down beside Dawn on the bed and stared straight ahead. "So now what do we do?"

"I don't know. Everyone was just waiting to see what would happened when you joined the land of the living again. Now you're here, I guess we have to figure out what to do."

"How long . . . how long was I gone?"

A small smile pulled at Dawn's lips as she answered, "A hundred and forty-seven days?"

"You're kidding," Buffy said, dumbfounded.

"Of course I'm kidding. You've only been out to lunch for nine days now."

"Good," Buffy mumbled absently. After a long silence she said, "Dawn?"

"Yeah, Buff?"

"Are you all right?"

"Me? Yeah, I'm fine. Now that you're here." Dawn wrapped her arm around Buffy's and cuddled up close to her. "We'll get through this together. Somehow, we'll find a way to make it work."

Buffy sighed and leaned her head against Dawn's. Slowly, she let her eyelids drift shut, and tried to lose herself in the vast blackness clouding her vision. But it was no use. An image appeared before her, a strange yet familiar image. She had seen it before. Right before Dawn had woken her up.

It was Spike. He was standing in front of her. He was completely naked.

Buffy's heart skipped a beat, but not with arousal. With fear.

He looked so different. His hair had grown out. It was brown, not blond. He looked very much like the William she had seen in her vision - except for the naked part. He was looking around searchingly. He seemed to be confused.

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut, trying to discern any detail of his surroundings, or what was going on. But she could make out nothing. Just Spike, pale and vulnerable, standing in a vast, empty darkness.

A painful shudder coursed through Buffy's body as she watched him helplessly. She wondered if he was in hell, if she was seeing him as he was now. She could feel tears stinging behind her eyes, but she couldn't open them. She would never open her eyes again, if it meant that she could continue to see Spike.

Finally, however, the image faded, and Buffy was greeted by a warm, mindless sleep.