She was happy.
How could she not be? For the first time in her life, not counting her brief interlude in heaven, she had the opportunity to be at peace. She was not the Chosen One, she was not even one of the Chosen Two. There were countless Slayers now, and she could rest when she wanted to rest and slay when she needed to slay. Nearly everyone she loved came out of the battle alive.
It was that "nearly everyone" part that was killing her.
They'd driven to L.A., to tell Angel that the danger had been averted, that the impossible had been done. As Giles had told Angel, "Well, there's not what seems to be an imminent threat. This plus the addition of countless Slayers should, ah, lighten your work load a bit."
She stayed in a hotel with the others, shopped and laughed and felt a tremendous sense of relief.
She waited a week and a half before the dam broke, before the questions she'd kept to herself spilled out of her with anger and hurt she didn't even know were there.
"What the hell was it?" Buffy slammed the door to Angel's office, shattering the glass. He didn't even flinch, which somehow pissed her off even more.
"It was just a sheet of glass," he said calmly, raising an eyebrow at the shards on the floor. "But now I'd say it's a hazard."
"What was that necklace? What power did it have that it could… that it could do that to him?" She planted her palms on his desk and stared into his eyes, looking for any reason to pick a fight. Any reason to break the impossible quiet that had fallen.
Angel felt a lump rise in his throat and pushed it away ruthlessly. She hadn't spoken at all about what happened to Spike, and no one else really seemed to know. All they knew was that he was the last one left, and the last person he'd called for had been Buffy.
Of course he had, Angel thought. He'd loved her. The thought made him want to spit, to try and clear his mouth of the bitterness that gathered there, but he continued staring straight at Buffy, his eyes unreadable.
"I told you it was meant for a champion. More than human." Neither of which I would actually attribute to Spike, he thought. "That's all we knew."
"It fucking burned him alive!" she exclaimed, shaking her head so he couldn't focus on her eyes. It wouldn't do for him to see the tears. She had to know. "Burned him alive from the inside out. And he was scared, Angel. He tried not to show it, and he was laughing through it all, but…" She shoved the heels of her hands up her face, swiping the tears away. "He's dead."
"I know," Angel said, hurting for her. In a way, he hurt for Spike as well. Somewhere in that twisted mass of siring and bloodlust, he had been responsible for Spike. And his death meant one more lost soul.
Maybe not lost, Angel amended. He didn't want to push any harder than that. Theology wasn't his strong suit by a long shot.
"He died for me. For all of us," she insisted. He died and rejected my last words to him. But even though the memory of that twisted like a burning skewer through her brain and heart, she knew why he'd done it.
If he hadn't, she would have stayed. Staying, she would have died.
"I'm leaving," she said. "I wanted you to know."
That broke his calm, his monotonous expression and unchanging demeanor. He stood to face her, now towering over her small frame. "What? You just got here. You're not even a fortnight away from the biggest battle you've ever been through, you're not even completely healed yet, and you're leaving? Leaving where?"
Buffy's lips quirked. That was the largest number of words she'd heard him string together in quite some time.
She missed Spike's rants.
"I don't know. Well, not exactly. I'm looking for quiet, Angel, a place where I can concentrate on me, focus on what I want. Focus on bringing Dawn up and maybe even myself. Los Angeles isn't that, Angel. It's too loud, it's too fast. I was thinking…" she broke off, playing with a pencil that sat on the edge of his desk and wondering if Angel knew how dangerous it was to keep sharpened wood so close at hand. "I was thinking somewhere in the Midwest. I want to be bored."
It wasn't entirely true, but it was close enough. She wanted to forget the last seven years, forget any of it had ever happened. Forget Angel and Angelus, her failure with Riley, her rejection of Spike. Her dishonesty to Spike. Her dishonesty to herself.
God, I'm going crazy, she thought.
"What about Willow?" Angel asked, hating the note of desperation in his voice. "And Xander, Giles, Faith. The new Slayers."
"They all want to help," she said wearily. "So… happy birthday, Angel, I brought you an army."
"I don't want an army," he burst back, knowing she was already gone. "I want you!"
"I'll say goodbye before I leave," she insisted quietly, and crunched over broken glass as she walked out the door.
~~~
It was like, William thought, being torn in two.
"What's for breakfast, mum?" He pushed his spectacles up a little and saw the shocked look his mother gave him. "Sorry. Mother."
"Well, darling, Eliza has some ham on and also a rasher of bacon. There are biscuits in the tin if you've a need for food immediately." She patted her hair and moved to the chair at the head of the table.
I killed you, the street voice said in his head. Killed me own mum 'cause I'd turned her--
"William," she said sharply, rapping her knife against the hard wood of the table. "Aren't you paying any attention?" Her face softened and she smiled as he looked back up at her.
There now, he thought. I can see a bit of that demon… "I'm sorry, mother, my sleep was… restless. I beg your pardon." William's eyes narrowed in distress. The thoughts he was having were unimaginable.
They felt like the cold, hard, truth. Truth was something he'd been a bit too sheltered from in his life, and now that he was faced with a truth so bizarre it was laughable, he didn't know what to do.
"I was just expressing my curiosity as to your plans this evening. Had you planned on calling on Cecily this afternoon? She looked quite lovely last night."
She looked like a cruel, ball-breaking bint, she did. Lovely like a bleedin' shark is lovely.
"I'm afraid not, mother. Cecily is—"
A tease only a soddin' blind idiot could love.
"—indisposed," William finished, nearly out of breath with his efforts to control his voice and his thoughts. And since when was it so bloody hard to breathe?
Since it hadn't been necessary to do so for a great long time.
"Well, William, I think you should take a rest before noontime," his mother said, her brow wrinkled with concern. "You look as though you were up all night."
No, he thought, neither William nor Spike but finally an agreement of both. Only for a hundred and some years.