Chapter Fifteen: Understanding
Italics are quotes from the show that explain her past.
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Snape spent the better part of the morning looking for the blonde before he took the time to actually think it through. He happened to have been intrigued by the girl so much that he done a little investigating without her knowledge. The small bit of history she'd supplied him with, through her tears, hadn't explained anything of what she'd really gone through. What he'd found severely pained him and, with a background like his, that was hard to do.
"You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire."
"Giles, I'm sixteen years old. I don't want to die."
"When he wakes up tell him... I don't know. Think of something cool, tell him I said it."
"What happens Saturday?" "I kill you."
"If Angel achieved true happiness, even just a moment…he would lose his soul." "So it was me…I did it."
"You can't do it. You can't kill me." "Give me time."
"She's gonna have it tough, that Slayer. She's just a kid. The world's full of big, bad things."
"No, it doesn't stop! It never stops! Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is, how dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or... God, even studying! But I have to save the world... again."
"If you walk out of this house, don't even think about coming back."
"No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what's left?" "Me."
"Forever, that's the whole point. I'll never leave. Not even if you kill me."
"The important thing is that I kept up my special birthday tradition of gut-wrenching misery and horror."
"I don't have a clue what you are talking about and I don't care. I'm talking about watching my lover die."
"Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live... for me."
"I don't understand theology and 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."
"It is always different! It's always complicated, and at some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me!"
"Suddenly you're all acting like you can't trust me?" "We have to be together on this. You can't be a part of this. So I need you to leave."
He could finally understand why she sometimes withdrew from touch and why she always found the exits the minute she walked in a room. Having to go through all that, through years of making sure that your friends survived, watching while some died, and then finally feeling safe only to lose them all, he couldn't see how she even got out of bed every morning. After her talk with Dumbledore she must have wanted to get away, wanted privacy, and with the ability to apparate she could have gone anywhere. Severus didn't think that she had left the property though, she had no where else to go really. All he really had to do was think. Where would no one go to find her? Where would be the only place that no one would even happen to pass through? Where would be the place that only she felt safe?
"She's in the Forbidden Forest!" he whispered as the answer came to him.
He, himself, would rather not be anywhere near there, but he could see its appeal. None of the students would dare venture near, except maybe Potter's trio. Anything that came her way she could handle, of that Snape was sure. He quickly apparated to just outside the wood hoping that she was near the edge.
"Buffy? Buffy are you there?"
And for a moment, he thought me might have been wrong. That she really wasn't there.
"Sev?" her voice quiet and hesitant.
"Buffy are you all right?"
"Fine, just berating myself for actually thinking that happiness was that easy – that I could really bring them back."
"Bring who back?"
"Everyone, everyone I've killed. Willow. Xander. Giles. Tara. Kennedy. Spike. Anya. Andrew. Dawn. Jesse. Jonathon. And so many more…"
"Buffy didn't you tell me that Alecto killed Willow, Xander, Giles, and Dawn?"
"Doesn't matter. If they hadn't known me, they would still be alive."
"Stop it! Just stop talking like that! I've killed people. I've killed innocent human beings. Not you. Never you Buffy. You should feel grief for their deaths, you have to because of who you are, but you shouldn't be guilt ridden. They would have died sooner if not for you. You must have heard all of this before, you're just a silly little girl who refuses to be happy. You'd rather suffer, because you want to be a martyr!" Severus knew that had been a bit harsh but nothing seemed to work with her, and it was infuriating to see her die like this.
"What did you say?" the slayer's voice hissed from somewhere in the forest and the sound worried the professor slightly, for it sounded oddly like the hiss of a former master who often talked to snakes. "I'll kill you! Never tell me what to feel. You don't know what I've been through!"
"If you could find love again after being pulled from heaven, you can surely forgive yourself for deaths that you had no hand in committing!"
"How do you know about that?"
"I know because you were the first thing that interested me in a long time. You were the first person that actually knew what pain was. Not like Potter who has lived in fear of his shadow, not physical pain, but the terrible emotional pain that self-loathing and bitter hated cause. You were the first person who could possibly understand why I'm cruel, why I can't forgive myself, why I can't look in the mirror!"
"I'm sorry Sev, but I don't understand anything at all, because if anything made sense, the powers wouldn't have taken the others from me after all those years. They would have been satisfied with both my deaths, the countless lives I've saved, and pulling me from the only salvation I'll ever find. I don't understand at all."
Before he could get any words past his stunned lips, he found himself in his dungeon, and he knew Buffy would not be so easy to find the next time.
