"No..." she breathed. "ANGEL! WAKE UP!!! GET UP!!" She shook him violently, his head lolling sickly to the side. "ANGEL!"

She put her hands to her head, trying to remember what to do. There was something. She took in a sharp breath when she remembered. Leaning over him, she pinched his nose shut, and breathed into his mouth. "Come on, baby. Breathe with me." She pressed on his heart quickly and sharply. She'd done this before. Cold skin, dead skin, no breath..."Breathe!!"

She forced air into his lungs, probably more than she should have. But she was losing it by now, panicking. "BREATHE, DAMMIT!!" She screamed at him. He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Rage wasn't helping. Her love wasn't helping. Nothing was helping.

He was just...gone.

As soon as she came to this realization, she stopped trying to resuscitate him. She stopped moving. For a while, she stopped breathing, as well. Just let out a breath and...stopped. Don't need to breathe. Don't need the air. He doesn't get it, I don't get it.

Just...sit. Don't move. Don't think. See that cold weight on your lap? That's Angel. that's his dead body...all that blood is his it's all his, it always comes back to him, doesn't it? can't escape, don't wanna escape, just sit and breathe...when did I start breathing again?

Matt found her cradling his body sometime around noon the next day. He touched her shoulder, and for once, he didn't say anything when she turned to look at him. She had bitten her lip so hard the blood was caked underneath it.

The contact brought the tears back, and she crushed Angel's body to his chest and sobbed over him, tears falling on his face and his chest. He didn't flinch or move. Of course not. He's dead, remember? She cradled his head against her hollow, aching womb and cried some more.

***

An hour later, Matt was still with her. And the tears had stopped. Angel's body...all heat had left it a long time ago. Sometime in the night maybe. But he was still warm where she'd touched him, held him.

"Buffy," Matt finally spoke. "We need to go. What...what do you want to do now?" Buffy looked at him blankly, and then down at Angel.

"Ask him. I don't know."

"We need to go. It's not safe here any longer. Do you...do you want to bring the body with us, or bury him here?" Buffy's eyes went wide with panic at the mention of burying him and she clutched him closer.

"Bury...bury him? I...I don't know...Here? Maybe...leave him here." Buffy rambled on to herself and Matt let her. He knew what it was like to lose someone dear.

"Okay, Buffy. I'll get some of the guys together, and we can have a nice little ceremony tonight. I don't think we have time to make a coffin, but we can still give him a decent burial." Buffy cried. She reminded Matt most of a lost child, alone and scared and utterly unable to guide herself. "Do you want to get some flowers? And give a eulogy?"

He was being as gentle as he could, but these were things that needed to be taken care of. And after having finally established a hierarchy, one of their leaders was killed, and the other rendered utterly helpless. This was a devastating blow, and he knew he would have to take charge for now. At the moment, Buffy couldn't even bring herself to speak full sentences.

She nodded violently affirmative. "Thank you," she said softly, still hugging Angel's cold corpse to her breast. Matt smiled, glad to finally have been of some help.

"It'll be okay, Buffy. I know it feels like hell, but...the world's still here. You're still alive. And that's something to be grateful for."

Then he left to go arrange Angel's impromptu funeral.

"No it's not." Buffy whispered to herself, beginning a gentle and familiar rocking motion. "No it's not."

***

Nobody cried at the funeral. Nobody knew Angel that well, and besides that, everyone was all cried out from their recent losses.

And Buffy, Buffy couldn't even feel her body, let alone work up any more tears. She said a few words about how he was a beautiful, wonderful, strong person, and that the world would be that much worse off without him. And then they lowered him into the crude hole they'd dug.

She fought the urge to reach out for him when they started to pile on the dirt. Outwardly, she was stone. Inside, she was screaming. No...don't take him away from the sun. He loved the sun..loved it so much. He was always so pale...he'd look good in a tan. He always looked good. And now they're burying him, piling dirt on him, and he'll never see the sun again....he'd only just started to live...there's so much we were supposed to do together. We were supposed to have kids and a mini-van and go to the opera together and eat chocolate ice cream in the sunshine at the beach and take picnics to the park and watch our kids grow up and send them to college and cry after they left and retire in southern California and live in a retirement home together. We were supposed to go to Bingo night. We were supposed to die in our sleep, still holding each other. We were supposed to be buried in adjacent plots in the cemetery where our bones would gravitate towards each other.

The soft shuffing sound of the dirt hitting his body. His eyes still open. He was paler than he had ever been. No blood on his clothes, though. Buffy had changed him and cried again at his stiff, cold, and dead body that she had trouble maneuvering into a clean outfit.

Burying him felt like leaving a piece of herself behind. Like losing a limb, and still being consciously aware of the place it used to be, she couldn't seem to leave him. What if he woke up and she wasn't there? What if he woke up and he was scared and had to dig himself out of his own grave? She'd been there.

But now it was over. Their love was undeniably over, cut off by a cruel irony. His life was over. The happiness was over.

And Buffy knew that soon, the pain would be over, too. The numbness that she was already ushering in would take over completely. It would wash over her and burn her out and she would be left with blissful, wonderful, perfect nothing. She could already feel it, deep in her bones. The depression, or the emptiness that once had her panicking and screwing Spike, was now awakening and rattling it's newly forged chains. Buffy smiled in anticipation.

The hole was filled now. Angel's deep brown eyes were closed and buried six feet under. It was over. People filed past and offered her condolences or hugs. Minor things that she lived through by not caring.

She didn't even realize that the last person was gone until Matt shook her from her trance. "What?"

"Buffy. It's night time. We should...You should really get some rest." She nodded dumbly and started walking towards her camp. Angel's stuff, she remember. She had to get Angel's stuff. No use in letting it all go to waste.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. "Wait." Matt said. "Do you wanna stay in the trailer with me and my dad? I really...I really don't think you should be alone right now. Not when you're so..." Matt couldn't think of a word, really, that described her right now. Earlier he might have said confused, sad, depressed. Now...nothing. She didn't seem to care anymore.

"Okay. Let me get my stuff." Everything she said was completely without emotion. It was what worried Matt the most. She'd always seemed so vibrant, so alive to him. Like she wore hope and life around her in an invisible cloak, something that one couldn't see, but only sense.

It was gone now. Nothing was left but a haggard and dead-eyed young woman who was trudging to grab her sleeping bag so that she wouldn't be left alone to cry in the night.

Matt wished that he could have helped.

***

They left the next day, moving quickly for such a large group. The few cars they had were used to haul stuff, and the only passengers allowed were the little kids. Everyone else walked. They made it out of the valley and into the surrounding forest by nightfall.

Buffy didn't speak more than two words the entire day. And no one asked it of her. Matt took charge for the moment, claiming that Buffy needed some time to regroup before she could be of any help. But she needed more than time.

It took them four weeks to reach L.A. By that time, Matt had resigned himself to leading until Buffy was better, which wasn't looking like it was going to be any day soon. She would sit in her bed for hours, staring straight ahead. Unfocused. Uncoordinated. A nebulous entity that floated around, never going anywhere and never staying still.

Matt hated it. He hated watching her be like this. He hated knowing that she was thinking of Angel's corpse, rotting in the hole they'd dug for him a month ago. And he hated knowing that there was nothing he could do about it. She didn't love him. As far as he could tell, she didn't even like him that much.

But he owed it to her, to himself, and to the memory of his dead girlfriend, soulmate, and general everything, Rebecca to help her. Or at least to try.

***

The Oracles weren't hard to find. In fact, they were so glaringly obvious that Buffy wondered for about thirty seconds if it was a trap. Then she decided that it didn't matter and forged ahead anyways.

They were holed up in a building that stood tall above the rubble surrounding it. The walls were an unearthly shade of white that wasn't really white. Buffy knew upon seeing it that it was where she had to go. She only hoped that she would get some answers here.

She told Matt to stay behind. She didn't think she could do this with someone else present. For she already knew what was going to happen here. She would be told that her duty hadn't ended, that she was expected to continue on indefinitely as the savior of the world. And that she was now supposed to do it alone. They would guilt trip her until she fell flat on her face with her responsibilities pressing her into the ground with their weight.

The Slayer is always alone...

So stupid to think that the PTB might throw her a bone. So dumb to think that they'd let her have just this one little thing, just this one, tiny, perfect thing. Hell, even if they'd told her that she and Angel couldn't be together, she'd still have him. She would still feel him, instead of this aching, devouring cold freeze.

But then again, she didn't know why she'd even suspected that she'd get that. After all, the Powers hadn't even given her the satisfaction of a final death. Couldn't they have Chosen another girl? Another leader of the world? Someone else, someone young and strong and willing and able?

She felt the apathy that she'd maintained for the past month dissipate in a red haze. Rage colored her vision and she faintly realized that she was digging into her palms so hard that she was drawing blood. She didn't care. They said they'd resurrected the Oracles. Well, she hoped for their sake that they could do it again, because if they told her what she knew they surely must, she'd kill them.

She kicked the doors open, shattering the glass in them into a million pieces. They crunched under her feet like gravel as she stormed into the lobby of the building.

Abandoned. She wasn't deterred though, especially when she saw the stairway leading upwards.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped. There they were. There were three of them this time. Angel had said there'd only be two. They glowed, and their shimmery opalescent skin rippled with every movement. Beautiful.

Buffy's hands relaxed momentarily in awe, and her blood dripped onto the floor. They were so beautiful. Two men and a woman, they seemed to be triplets. They wore white silken robes and crowns of laurel on their heads. Like the Roman gods, Buffy thought briefly.

Angel's face flashed through her mind. His kind eyes and hopeful look when he gave her a poetry book for her eighteenth birthday. She missed him.

White-hot loathing ripped through her for a second time, catching her every muscle on fire and throwing a mist of red over her vision. These beautiful creatures dressed up like gods had had a hand in stealing him from her.

Without pause, she walked up to the male in the middle and backhanded him across the face. There was a resounding and satisfying crack of skin on skin and his head snapped to the side, where it stayed. A bit of her own blood remained behind on his face. Neither of the other Oracles seemed the slightest bit surprised.

"We knew you would come." The all said in unison, even the male Buffy had slapped. He turned back to face her and she could see that his eyes seemed to be made of chips of midnight, icy and black.

"Good for you," she quipped. She was finally beginning to feel some of her old self coming back. "Now, did you have anything else you wanted to share?"

"Your duty," The first started.

"Is almost over." The second stated. Buffy's muscles relaxed a fraction of an inch, but though she wanted to believe this with all her heart, the cynical side of her rebelled. Not yet. She couldn't believe without proof. Without finding the loophole and understanding it first. The ruin that dashing her hopes again would bring would be abysmal.

"Your child,"

"Shall carry,"

"Your burden." Child? Buffy froze. One of her hands came up to her belly. Wonder crossed her face. She didn't know whether or not to believe it, but she had been feeling bloated and slow lately. She'd attributed that to Angel's death. A child. A baby with Angel. Something of him would remain with her. There was a slight swelling at her belly, and she felt it with wonder. She'd made that with him.

But then she grew angry again, when she realized that she would never see him again.

"What about Angel?!?" she shouted. "What about him? You gave him life and took it away in an instant. You took everything from him! And you took him from me!!" Buffy refused to break down in tears, instead riding her wave of righteous anger and undeniable pain. The end of her job as slayer was coming. But what worth was it without him?

"Your mate," the first one said.

"Is not dead." Said another.

"He is," started the third.

"No longer living,"

"Either." Buffy was beginning to be irritated with their mode of speech when she registered what they were saying. Angel wasn't dead. But he wasn't living. Which meant....

"Oh, god. Angelus is back?"

"No." One of the three answered. Buffy had given up trying to tell them apart.

"You mean he still has his soul? He's still my Angel? How is that possible?"

"You are,"

"Soul mates,"

"His soul,"

"Is bound to yours."

"Where is he, though? Oh god, he must be so lost. Alone. He had to dig his way up out of that grave, and he was all alone. I wasn't there. I left him!" She wailed, the tears she'd held off for so long flowing hot and fast down her face.

"He is coming."