Title: Grains of the Golden Sand
Author: alliterator
Summary: "All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream." E. A. Poe, "Dream Within A Dream." Post-Grave, Restless-style.
Spoilers: Spoilers for Season 7 (or at least foreshadowing).
Disclaimer: If I owned Buffy, do you think I'd be writing fanfiction?
Feedback: You think I'm going to say no?

Buffy's Dream

The window was unbroken. Buffy watched as rays of light passed through the clean window and wondered how it could have fixed itself. "How did it get like that?," she asked.

"It's always been like that," Dawn said.

Buffy turned to her. "I thought it was broken."

"It is broken," Dawn said. "Look."

Buffy looked back at the window. There was a deep crack that ran down the middle of it, creating little tiny cracks around it. Buffy approached the window and looked outside at the yard. She saw two people sitting on the bench talking. One was Xander. The other was herself.

"Thank you," she said to Xander.

"For what?" he had a look of puzzlement on his face.

"For saving my life," Buffy answered.

"I didn't save your life," Xander replied.

"You were here when I was shot," Buffy told him, "you called the ambulance, you got me to the hospital."

"But I didn't save you."

"If you didn't save me, then who did?"

"She saved you," Xander pointed near the gate and Buffy turned her head to see who was there. It was Willow, clad in the clothes she turned evil in, with a pale face and black hair. Buffy approached her.

"You saved me?" she asked Willow.

"Of course," Willow replied.

"Why?"

"Because, silly," Willow smiled, "you've already died twice, I thought it would be just stupid if you died a third time."

"Oh."

"Don't worry though, I'm going to correct my mistake," Willow raised a gun and pointed it at the window to the room in which Dawn and Buffy stood. "I'll make everything alright," Willow said and then she fired.

The bullet ripped through the window, shattering it. Buffy looked down and saw she had a hole in her heart. "My shirt," she said.

"Don't worry," Dawn said. "A little soda water will take that right out."

"Why'd Willow do that?" Buffy asked her sister. Dawn didn't answer. Buffy turned to Dawn, but saw she wasn't there anymore. "I wonder where she went." Buffy opened the door and walked out into the hallway of the University of Sunnydale. Students crowded around her as she walked through the hall looking for Dawn. Finally, she stopped a random person as asked "Do you know where my sister is? She's taller than me, shiny brown hair, used to be a mystical key that opened the dimensional gates?" The person shook his head and Buffy sighed. She would never find Dawn in this mass.

Suddenly, she spotted someone she knew. "Riley!" she yelled to him. "Riley! Come here." Finally she saw Riley turn around and look at her.

"Buffy," he said enthusiastically, "I've haven't seen you in ages. When was that last time?"

"You know," Buffy said, "with the dam and the demon and the wife."

"Oh right," Riley smiled wide. "Sam. I remember her. Wow that must have been a while ago, I divorced her a while back."

"Really? Why?"

"She was just too perfect," Riley said, "but I've figured out a solution to that. Here, come with me." He grabbed Buffy's arm and started pulling her towards a door. "By the way, what happened to your shirt?"

"Shot through the heart," Buffy explained. "Didn't hurt as much as I expected."

Riley pushed open the door and led Buffy into a laboratory filled with all sorts of mechanical things, gadgets and widgets and things Buffy didn't recognize. "Where are we?" she asked.

"We are in an old Initiative lab," Riley answered. "I've been spending time here to figure out a solution to all my problems and I've finally found one." He led her to a tall object that was covered by a white sheet.

"What is it?" Buffy asked looking at it.

"I call it the Mechanical Artificial Retractable Yellow-haired – Servile Understanding Entity," Riley whipped off the sheet revealing the thing that was underneath, "or simply MARY-SUE for short."

Buffy looked at the robot. It looked like an exaggerated version of her, with larger hips and breasts and lips and it looked sort of plastic-y. "Isn't she great?" Riley asked her.

"She's so... life-like," Buffy answered. She reached out with her hand to touch its face. Suddenly, a light turned on in the robot's eyes.

"We're very pretty," the robot said.

"How did you make her?" Buffy asked Riley.

"I just duplicated the original Buffybot and made some modifications," Riley said.

"The Buffybot?" Buffy was confused. "I thought she was ripped into pieces by demon bikers?"

"She was," Riley went over to a table that was also covered with a sheet, but this one dirty and covered with stains. "I was able to salvage her enough to build MARY-SUE." He took off the sheet and Buffy saw the Buffybot, or at least what was left of her. The 'bot's left eye was twitching and sparks erupted from the bottom of it. "I guess I'll put her away with all the rest now." Riley picked up the Buffybot and brought her over to a row of containers.

"The rest?"

"The other robots you fought," Riley open an empty container and put the Buffybot in it. "See." Buffy took a look at the containers which all had labels. APRIL (1999-2001), TED BUCHANAN (1965-1998), MOLOCH THE CORRUPTER (AD 700-1996).

"Wasn't Moloch a demon?" Buffy asked looking at the container.

"Aren't we all, Buffy?"

"I don't know about you, but I don't think I am." Suddenly a robotic arm shot up from the container and grabbed Buffy around the neck. She struggled for a moment before ripping the arm off and tossing it across the room where it fell with a clang. "I hate it when they do that."

"Well, Buffy," Riley said, "now that I have shown you MARY-SUE, I don't think you'll want to stick around to see what we do."

Buffy thought for a moment. "Not really."

"Good," Riley said bringing MARY-SUE into his arms and kissing her. "The exit's that way. I'm sure you can find your way out."

As Buffy left she muttered "Geez, get a room." She opened the door and walked straight into the Magic Box. She saw Giles, Xander, Willow, and Anya talking in hushed voices around the table. "So, what's happening? Are we singing again? 'Cause I want some warning this time. Now that Tara is gone, Giles is the only one that sings well."

"Buffy," Giles said surprised, "we thought you with Dawn?"

"I was, but I think I lost her."

"Oh. That's too bad."

"Maybe. So, what are you guys talking about?"

"It seems," Giles said, "that a new demon has come to Sunnydale."

"So what's the prob?" Buffy asked. "We'll do what we always do. First, research – with books and diagrams and pie charts – then we locate the demon – usually in some crypt or hole-in-the-ground – and finally I kill it. Easy as pie. Or possibly, easy as pie chart."

"Actually, it's not the easy, Buffy," Giles wiped his glasses off as he stood up, "see, it's not exactly a demon we're fighting here. It's Death."

"Death?" Buffy was perplexed.

"Yes," Giles put his glasses back on his face, "you see, you have escaped its grasp twice already and it wants to capture you again, this time for good."

"Well, I won't let it."

"You can't stop Death, Buffy. It's as simple as putting a wooden stake through its heart, if it has one."

"Then I'll cut off its head with an ax."

"That won't work."

"Not even with a very large ax?"

"I'm afraid not," Giles sighed. "There is only one thing you can do."

"What's that?" Buffy was scared. If she couldn't cut off Death's head, how could she defeat it?

"You must hide," Giles said.

There was a knock at the Magic Box's door. Buffy turned and looked at the door, terrified of what was on the other side.

"It's here, you must hurry," Giles grabbed her by the shoulders. "Go quickly out through the sewers." There was more knocking on the door as Giles rushed Buffy to the trap door in the back and opened it. "There's little time," Giles told her, "if it finds you, it will take you away from Dawn. You must go now!" He pushed her into the opening.

She was falling now. Falling into a spiraling blackness, a pit of which there was no bottom. She looked up and saw the opening to the trap door getting smaller and smaller, shrinking until it finally disappeared and she was falling in complete darkness. After a few minutes she lost all sense of time and space and could only tell she was moving at all by the rushing wind. She tried to scream but it seemed the sound was caught in the obscurity of her surroundings and she couldn't hear it at all. At last she hit the bottom with a thud, a cloud of dust rising up. She picked herself up and tried to wipe off the dirt unsuccessfully, then looked around at her environs.

She was in the woods, the same place where Willow had tied up Warren with vines and tortured him and then peeled off his skin and burned his body. She looked around, trying to find a place to hide, a place where death wouldn't find her. She saw a nearby church and ran to it. Going inside, she found herself in a jail cell. "I can't hide here," she said to herself. She pulled the bars of the cell apart and squeezed out, then ran to the front of the station, passing a cell with an obviously intoxicated Andrew. She fled out the station and found herself on top of a moving truck. She crawled her way forward to the front of the truck and looked down and saw that Jonathan was driving. "I didn't know he had a license," she said as she saw Jonathan spin the wheel rapidly. She lost her grip on the truck and flew off, landing on a soft cushion. She looked around. She was on the couch in Rack's waiting and Amy was on the floor looking up at the ceiling, drooling. Buffy opened the door to the place Rack had given his costumers a trip and saw Rack's body still hanging from the ceiling. As she looked closer, she saw that it wasn't Rack's body, but rather Xander's. She turned from Xander's body and ran out of the room, going straight into Spike's crypt. She saw Clem and Dawn on the couch, eating potato chips, and disregarded them and she searched for someplace to hide. Running out of Spike's crypt, she entered a small room with a dirt base. She saw Spike, huddled on the floor, hands on hiding his face. "Spike?"

He looked up at her. "You can't be here," he said surprised. "You not allowed in here. This is my hiding place. Go find somewhere else to hide!"

Buffy back away from Spike and he went back to covering his face with his hands. Buffy turned around and ran out the way she came, but found the door stuck. She pulled on it with all her strength, but still it wouldn't budge.

"Getting weak in your old age?" A voice said behind her. Buffy turned and saw the source of the voice: herself. She stood, arms crossed, clad in black.

"We need to get out of here," Buffy told her black-clad self. "Death is chasing us. It's on our heels. We need to hide."

Black-clad Buffy smiled. "You don't understand," she said. "I am Death." Her hand, quick as lightning, grabbed Buffy's throat and lifted Buffy off the ground.

The grip tightening, Buffy clawed at her black-clad self hands, trying to find a way to stop it, but failing. "Spike," she choked out, "help me!"

"Cry William the Bloody all you like, pet," Spike was still huddled on the ground. "I can't hear you."

"Don't you see?" the black-clad Buffy squeezed her fist, making Buffy gasp for air. "You're all alone. You'll always be alone." Buffy went limp in her arms. "Until you die." She dropped Buffy, dead for the third time, on the ground and smiled.