Title: The First Cut
Author: Becca AKA Barbie Girl
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Post As You Were
Summary: Riley makes a late night phone call to a friend and finds out more than he wants to know
Disclaimer: Joss doesn't share well so I am stealing them for a while. Don't worry he will get them back. Possibly even intact.
Distribution: Sure! Distribute away. I kinda would like to know where but you don't have to. As long as you keep my happy little name on it and a way for people to send feedback I'm a happy little clam.
Notes: I love my Betas on this. Morganna and Jen! Thanks so much! Also please R&R.

The First Cut

It can't be true. None of this is real. It can't be true. I would have known. It feels as though there is an unmovable weight sitting on my chest, a granite block carved by guilt and fear. It pushes downward, my heartbeat racing up to meet it, striking against one another, pushing the breath out of my body, and inhaling nothing but anger and frustration. It can't be true. Buffy died. I don't understand it. Willow's voice seems distant, as if stretching over the fabric of time itself instead of just the miles between us.

I knew going back to Sunnydale would be rough, trying to take the pieces of the past and jam them into the mold of what has become. Sam was by my side, but even her presence couldn't halt the whirlwind of emotions storming from the hazel eyes of my first love. I knew it would be hard going back but I never knew how hard it would be to leave. It was, as if I was hanging on to a ledge by the tips of my fingers, grasping to the past, and leaving again would seal the deal. There would be no more ledge to hold on to, no more place for me in that world. I would simply fall away.

There was a nagging voice in the back of my head on that flight to the base, a constant gnat, something more than the sight of seeing Buffy in so much pain, or seeing her with... that thing. An echo of a conversation that didn't settle well swimming in my brain.

"How's your arm?"

"It'll heal. How you doin'?"

"Complicated question."

"I just meant-"

"I know."

"I hear ya. Got some, uh ... big stories to tell you too. If we ever get half a second."

"Did you die?"

"No."

"I'm gonna win."

I had to know. I just had to ask. Couldn't leave well enough along, be grateful I got out of Sunnydale with as much as my heart still intact as I did. No, I had to push. The harsh lines of the military base with its strong concrete walls go hazy and out of focus, my world blurs as I struggle to make sense of the words Willow had just spoken when I called and questioned her about it. Buffy had died.

I was never like this before I met her, before I met Buffy. Sure, a few times anger, fear, and even jealousy colored my judgment, I won't lie, but I never felt lost. My world was clear, precise with sharp lines and crisp orders. There was good and there was bad, and I knew what side I was on. My life was in focus, I could see it through my pinpoint vision, sure the edges of the larger picture became blurred but I looked towards the end result that loomed ahead of me, the light in my tunnel.

But I never saw her coming, not really anyway. I saw a girl with courage, inner strength, and loyal friends but I also saw she was just a girl, one with a heart on the mend, with the weight of the world on her shoulders. I saw her, and she was hurting in a million little ways that I wanted to make better. I wanted to change her life. I never dreamed that this tiny waif of a girl, this woman with soulful eyes, would end up changing mine so much that I wouldn't know up from down, good from bad. She took my world, sharp with contrasting black and white, and instead brought the edges into my view, color bleeding over all of it.

Rules, once so defined, bent with her paintbrush and laws that refused to give under the layers of colors she brought with her and simply shattered. She was my life; she brought me into her world of color. And I loved her. God, how I loved her. She was beautiful with a Mona Lisa smile, with eyes that held all the wonder of Starry Night, and I was crazy about her.

Buffy was like a firecracker, breath taking, potentially deadly, and impossible to hold on to without getting burned. I think I knew that early on, knew that I would get scorched, that in the end there would be no happily ever after. That in the end she would never be mine, not really anyhow. But I didn't care. I loved her and she was with me, and that was enough. I could be happy with that; I had to be happy with that. Because losing her... it wasn't an option. She was my world.

There was always a shadow lingering, memories of the past threatening to steal her away. Slowly it spread like a bottle of spilled ink, encroaching first on the corners of our happiness, Angel's little visit. When it began, she didn't see it, she was so used to the darkness but I noticed. Our picture perfect life was blackening. Dracula was just another stepping-stone. I wasn't powerful, I wasn't dark, and I wasn't from her world. I tried to fit. I tried to find the darkness that she seemed to need. I wasn't from her world but I wanted to be. I wanted to help her, for her to need me like I needed her, but she never did. She needed the darkness and I wasn't the right fit.

I'll admit it; I went a little insane there. The biting.... But that's what love does; it makes you crazy. I just wanted to be a part of her life and in the end it was what yanked me out of it. I wonder sometimes if things would have been different, could have been different if I had just given her some time. But I'm not kidding myself, she would have never been mine, not the way I needed her to be. But still I wonder.

They say nothing hurts like losing your first love. I thought they were right. Our existence was slashed, the canvas cut deep, never to be repaired. She had opened my eyes to the world, with its colors and brilliance but also to darkness I never knew existed. And she left a void in my life, a slice in my heart that will never fully mend. She was my first love. She was perfect, and flawed, and strong, and wonderful, and I loved a million little things about her. I love my wife don't get me wrong. She is amazing, she is the salve that soothes my soul, but I know nothing will ever hurt like losing Buffy; nothing will be like that first cut. Nothing could ever hurt that much. Nothing but this.

That's what made me end up on this phone with fuzzy reception talking to her best friend. It just didn't settle well.

"Riley?" Willow's soft voice, laced with concern pulls me harshly into reality, dreams of the past crushed under the foot of the present. "Riley, are you there?"

I can hear the unspoken question in her voice 'Are you okay?'. Thank God she didn't ask me. I don't know if I have ever been okay since the day Buffy walked into my life. I've been furious, in love, hurt, passionate, and mad but never just okay. "I-I'm here." I manage to choke out and my voice sounds foreign, like that of a small child.

"Riley..." And I know she doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know what to tell me.

"How? When? How? I don't understand." The words come pouring from my mouth, my mind a whirlwind of confusion and hurt. Buffy died. Buffy died. Like a record that is stuck, it keeps playing in my head. Buffy died. It's sounds so simple. Buffy has died. But she's not. She was there. Buffy died. I test the thought out, trying it on for size but it won't sink in. Buffy died.

"It's not important." Willow speaks softly; to comfort herself or me I can't tell. "She's here now. That's all that matters."

Not important? Buffy died. It's important to me! "Oh it's just not important. I see. Doesn't matter one bit how she died? She's here now, let's just pass around a beer and forget it ever happened?" I bite back, hot blood rushing through my veins. And I know I sound like a child angered because he didn't get invited to a birthday party but I can't help it. This is Buffy we're talking about.

There is a pause and for a moment I think maybe Willow has hung up. I mean what right did I have to know? I left. Maybe if I had stayed... If I had been there... "Last May." She answers softly.

"How?" It's a sharp word.

I can hear her breath catching in her throat, as if the memory is too painful to even breathe and all I can think of is Buffy lying still, no breath in her lungs. Buffy died. It doesn't seem real. Our picture perfect world was slashed but this? "She died saving Dawn's life."

A sense of pride swells within me. That's my girl. But it is just a flash before another question looms on the horizon, pushing me to ask. "Glory?"

Willow's tone is stern. "We got her. She's gone."

My stomach sinks, a hard pit forming in it. I knew about Glory. I could have stayed. Maybe then we could have stopped her before... I could have stayed. I should have stayed. "Glory."

"Riley." There are tears in Willow's voice. "Don't do this to yourself. You couldn't have stopped her. No one could."

I hold my head in my hand, the other one clamped tightly around the cell phone, my last lifeline to the world I left behind. "How-how long?" I try to form the words 'how long was she dead' but I can't. I'm sure it was just a moment, maybe just a second. That's why I didn't know. It was so quick.

Willow seems to hear the unspoken words lingering in my voice. "We brought her back in the fall."

Brought her back? "Brought her back from where? Why would you bring her back unless..." A thought dashes into my mind as Willow sits silently on the other end. "From Hell? She was in Hell?"

And the thoughts that would not sink in before suddenly crash around me, dissolving the world like paint thinner thrown on a canvas. Colors run and bleed, dripping to the floor. Buffy was in Hell. All that time. I should have known. "I should have known. I should have known." Like a battering ram it pounds into my head. I should have felt something. All those months she was gone. I should have felt her slip away. I loved her. "I should have known." My fist strikes repeatedly into the concrete wall, flesh turning red as it cuts deep.

"You couldn't have known." The red head on the other end insists.

With those words of comfort the anger leaves me and instead is replaced with a horrible aching as I sink to the floor, back against the harsh walls. The thought slams into me, knocking the wind from my lungs. Buffy in Hell. I can fight demons and monsters but I can't war against this. There is nothing to battle, nothing to fight, except the truth. I asked for the truth when I called, I basically begged for it. Somehow I always thought lies were what destroyed; I never thought the truth could be so painful. I run my battered hand through my hair. Buffy. In Hell. Oh God.

"She- she wasn't." Willow's words are spoken softly, and my head snaps to attention. "In Hell. We- we thought she was. But she wasn't. We would have brought her back if we had known."

"Known what?" If she wasn't in Hell then where was she? Oh. "Heaven?" No reply comes. "She was in heaven." I confirm from her silence. Buffy was in heaven and they brought her back. And I think of all the darkness in the world, the ink that splashed on to our picture life. She was pulled back into those shadows. She was ripped out of the light.

Willow's broken sobs assail my ears. Her voice is racked with guilt. "I- I didn't know. I swear I didn't know."

It's my turn to comfort her. "You couldn't have known." I repeat back her own words like a parrot.

"But I should have! I should have known!"

"Willow, you couldn't have. You were trying to help. I'm sure Buffy knows that." The guilt circles again. "I didn't even know she was dead. I loved her and I didn't even feel it. Guess that puts me out of the running for ex boyfriend of the year, huh?"

There is no reply to that and how could there be? I loved Buffy. Loved. Images flash of her and Spike. Spike of all people! I wonder if she has come back wrong. Spike, who is vermin, and my picture perfect Buffy, it doesn't make sense. I wonder if she ever realized how many hearts she holds in the palm of her hands, men that would love her, that do love her, and she chooses him? But I don't ask. I can't bear to ask.

I take a deep breath, my heart still racing, and I feel something wet slide down my cheek but I shake it off. Soldiers don't cry. That's what I am now. It's all that I am. I'm not part of Buffy's world, I don't belong in that picture anymore. Sam and I are soldiers. It's not black and white like before, I doubt I will ever be able to see the world so simply again. It's all gray area now, sifting through right and wrong. There is a middle road and I can see that, Buffy showed that to me. But it's not the world of color either. I'm happy here. I know I am happy but sometimes I miss the colors. Sometimes I miss her.

"Riley? Are you okay?"

"Yeah." I shake my head, leaning it back against the wall, looking at the harsh florescent lights. "It's just that everything has changed so much."

"Things normally do."

"I know." And I do know. My watch beeps. Damn, the briefing. "Willow, I have to go."

"Bye." And as I go to hang up her voice catches my ear. "Riley?"

"Yeah?"

"She still likes cheese."

A small melancholy smile creeps on my lips. A solid thought to hold on to. "Willow?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."