She soared. She wanted to dance a jig. She was finally free.
The spell had freed her from her destiny. The amulet freed her from her darkness.
She could finally be in the light.
She fluctuated between laughter and tears. The laughter she understood and welcomed. And the tears were happy ones.
She thought.
But when she reached that roof she quaked with violent tremors too powerful to be considered joyful. Her face contorted in a horrible grimace. She didn't feel like laughing through them like the earlier ones. No, these threatened to shake her whole body apart.
Couldn't say why, exactly.
It was only when she saw the bus that her survival instincts kicked in. And she channeled her Slayer agility like never before.
She leapt as the theater collapsed, suspended in mid-air.
I can see it. I can see heaven. It's calling to me. Angel, it's calling to me.
Physics took over and gravity asserted itself.
She wondered what would happen if she missed the bus. Would she feel her body as it ripped apart in the abyss of the crater? Would she be at peace like Spike?
The hard thump of metal that knocked the wind out of her answered her question.
After that everything was a blur. She instinctively hugged Dawn, but there was nothing behind it. Just something you do when you make it out alive. A cliché.
Giles asked who made the crater. She mumbled Spike, she thinks. But she doesn't really know.
And then she just kind of stood there. Blank. She'd had lots of practice after she came back. How could she not? But it was different this time. She felt hollowed out. But she'd won.
Hadn't she?
Of course I won. Because I'm alive. And Angel is waiting.
And at that, she allowed a smile and tried to ignore the unrelenting pains which strangled her stomach.