Prologue: This is All Depressing And Stuff

A/N: Here's the AU I've been talking about for so long... hope you like it! I know this will be slowing down everything else I've got on the go, but this idea seemed so neat that I wanted to get it out there. Reviews are lovely things.

Perfect moments are rare, and when they do come, they can be a disappointment, because we've been looking forward to a moment of absolute peace and we know that, eventually, it has to end. Which is why I have never really liked pure peace as a rule, it's all very nice to talk about, but in reality it's kind of a letdown.

And that's all the insight you're getting out of me.

I don't like talking about the past, it hurts, kind of. Not so much anymore but, well, I try not to think about it. I'm not going to tell you a fairytale, there are no knights on white horses, though there is a really funny story about Xander, Anya and a white horse on a beach. But that wasn't really the point I was trying to make, what I wanted to say was that this is a story about real life, and there are no real happily ever afters in real life, we get damn close, but well, let's just say nothings ever as nice as it sounded when we were six. True love sounds nice, but really it isn't with the flowers and the roses all the time, sometimes it's with the broken dishwasher and the colicky baby that won't shut up.

But that's not my point. I want to tell you a story, a story about a little boy, and a little girl, who never had things as easy as it seemed.

"I'm not really looking forward to it," Joyce Summers laughed, looking over at the balding thirty-something woman with dark hair lying across the hospital room from her.

"I don't know how I feel. If it weren't for the boys and Rupert I wouldn't mind dying," Anne Giles said, "I'll miss them so much... and Angel needs me. It's better now, with the meds, but he still has days when he's violent." Anne's eldest son, Liam "Angel" Giles had been diagnosed with schizophrenia three weeks before Anne's breast cancer tests had come up positive- it had been a year of hell for she and her husband, Rupert Giles.

"I worry about Buffy most of all, she takes things so deeply. Dawn will get over it, but I doubt if Buffy will ever be quite the same when I'm gone," Joyce's daughters were six and eleven.

"You should tell them, Joyce, they need to know," Anne said, "Will and Angel know, and I think they'll be better for it the long run, I get to say goodbye."

"I have more time, I'll tell them soon, when they're ready."

"Tell who what, Mom?" A petite girl with dirty-blonde hair said, coming into the sunny hospital room, dragging a younger brunette by the hand. "Come on, Dawnie," she whined at her younger sister.

"Morning, sweethearts," Joyce said, pushing the button to get her bed into the upright position. "Tell me about yesterday at school, and where's your father?"

"Daddy said he had to go to work and Auntie Emily had a headache, so she couldn't come," Buffy explained, "she gets a lot of headaches, doesn't she?" Joyce and Anne shot each other looks, Emily was Joyce's ex-husband's much younger wife, and you could tell she was repulsed by her husband. Frankly, they thought he deserved it.

"I drew a picture for you, Mummy," Dawn said, pulling the scribbles in yellow and green marker out from her Barbie backpack, "we drew it in Sunday school. It's heaven."

Joyce started crying.

Maybe I'm not the best person in the world to tell a love story. I don't believe in true love or any of that nonsense. Fate or God or what have you. I believe in pure random bloody chance- and I thank it for what it's given me. I believe that there aren't any perfect fits out there in the world- no matter who you are there are flaws in your relationship, you can't be perfectly compatible with someone.

But, then again, I could be wrong.

I was strong for a long time, for a lot of people. My best friend, my father, my brother, my deranged ex-girlfriend, my closest friends. I'm still strong, but it's nice to hurt once in a while, even if I have hurt enough for this lifetime and the next one as well.

I don't want to waste your time or mine complaining about how sodding horrible my life has been, so I won't. Instead, I'll tell you a story, about a room full of death, and a little girl full of life.

"Will, pet, it's going to be alright," Anne said, knowing it was futile to try to stop her youngest son's waterworks once they had started. "It's going to be alright, baby."

"No, it's not, Mum. Everything's gone to hell," the eleven year old with curly brown hair and his mother's striking blue eyes sobbed.

"Language, William!" His mother reprimanded. "And, yes, we're all going through a bad patch right now, but nothing lasts forever. Have I taught you nothing at all?"

"Please don't die, Mum," Will begged.

"I would die eventually, it's best to get it out of the way now, isn't it? Like doing the dishes," her son laughed for a moment and then looked at her, horrified.

"Mum!"

"It's true, isn't it? Yes, I'll miss you all terribly, but it will most certainly be a great adventure to die. Now, who said that?"

"Peter Pan," William replied instantaneously, his parents were both librarians and he and his brother had been taught from birth how to cross-index and read anything they came upon.

"Smart boy, you are. You'll get places with that brain," she smiled at him, glad to have distracted him from his melodramatics. She thought they'd been past that. She kissed his forehead where he lay next to her on the hospital bed, "your mother loves you, Will, and there are a lot of people in this world who never even had that."

"Don't tell me how lucky I am to have a dying mother who loves me and nutcase brother on fancy pink pills! I'm not lucky, Mum, I'm not," William said, passionately.

"Really? I think you're a very lucky young man. But if you disagree I don't particularly care."

"You're no fun, Mum."

"I know that, sweetest one, I know that," she kissed his forehead again, "I do love you, and Angel, and

even Rupert."

"Mum- is it OK if maybe I sleep on your side of the bed at home tonight?" William asked, shyly.

"Why on earth would I mind, Will?"

"It's still your bed," he replied, "it's just, I've been having nightmares and it smells like you in there, and Dad's really not so bad for a cuddle when you're desperate." She laughed, again, her son tried to be so tough and such a trooper for his family, but when it came right down to it, he was a softy and needed a hug as badly as anyone else in this situation would. This thought lead to another, striking thought.

Something clicked the moment I saw him. He was scared, just like me. And he needed a hug, I was good at those.

"I don't know, Buffy, I think it's really more important to help out my dad than my mom. She's happy, in a weird way," William told the blonde girl sitting next to him in the uncomfortable blue, cracked plastic seats.

"My dad doesn't love my mommy anymore. They're divorced, he has a new wife and I don't think he really cares about my mommy anymore. She needs me."

"You want to do something more fun?"

"Yeah, this is all... depressing and stuff."

"Wanna go up on the roof of the hospital? One of the interns showed me how yesterday."

"Yeah."

She needed a crutch, a best friend, a safety net. I needed someone to hold onto while I fell. We needed ropes and lifejackets. We had each other.