1 Night before She Rises

Buffy avoided it, the grave, she couldn't bring herself to see it, to look at the ingraved name that make it all too real that her best friend was there. She could see it in the distance, facing away from her, under the shadows of a willow tree, it was almost too eerie for Buffy to deal with.

"I can't look at it either," Xander said coming up behind her. "So, out of the four of us in the beginning, that first day, you me, Will and Jesse, we're all that's left." He let out a small laugh. "Who would have thought it'd be me with the Slayer?"

She gave him a sad smile. "I'm glad you did Xander. Willow was always my heart, but you're my conscious, and I miss her so much, but I need you." She squeezed his hand. "Just, promise me you won't leave me."

He crossed his heart with a shaking finger. "Scouts honour. How's patrol?"

"Slow. What about the others?"

He shrugged. "Cordy is home. Resting, Oz is locked in the library, Giles is looking after him with Angel."

She paused. "Wait, Angel is alone with Giles?"

He nodded. "Yeah, they seem to be getting along okay. Giles I think is accepting that Angel isn't the same as he was when Miss Calander died. He doesn't forgive Angel but I think he may be forgetting, enough to not let it get in the way at least."

She nodded. "What about you?"

"You love him, I know that, and I always hated him." He tried to laugh, only to fall silent. "Doesn't this seem wrong?"

"What?"

"Talking about life again? Moving on. I mean Willow's only been gone two days…"

"She wouldn't want us to dwell. Besides, I have a feeling that she won't really leave us."

Spike watched as the Slayer left with the boy who had been with Willow when he kidnapped them. He growled, recalling how close they had been. He wanted to rip his throat out, but then, with a laugh, he thought better of it. He would wait, he would train and when the time came, he would watch as she did it for him.

He knelt beside the grave, the scent that was still her reached his sensitive nostrils, and he could feel his blood in her, moving, starting to turn her, to nurse her, to cure her of the humanity that she had been cursed with. Touching the cold stone lightly, he wondered if he felt what Dru had over a century before when it was she who was waiting for him.

Closing his eyes, he let the feel of her, so very close to him, wash over him, surround and fill him. She was so close to being his, he could feel her, stirring, shaking with the demon that was now finding itself at home within her, a part of himself now her, combining within the life lost, becoming something new, special, something that Sunnydale would never forget.

Opening his eyes he smiled again, he was almost ready for her, to teach her everything he knew, how to take pleasure from pain, how to cause harm, how to make them beg for death. All of this without tainting the innocence that would still be in her, that would still make her his, that would make her Willow.

Only one more day, then she, and Sunnydale, would be his.

TBC

If you want it… I'll give you more.