Buffy was pacing back and forth like a caged beast as she waited for Angel to re-emerge from the hospital room. She looked lost and frail in the harshly lit hallway and Willow couldn't figure out just why it no longer bothered her to see the slayer that way. Maybe it was being wrenched from Heaven that made Buffy the way she was; maybe it was the loss of her mother but either way, Willow had grown cold to it. The darkness in Buffy's eyes revealed a fury that Willow knew too well. It would eat away at her soul if left unchecked but Willow wasn't sure who could save her now. The last week had proven that it wouldn't be her.
Giles studied the girls in his charge as their anxiety grew. He knew even before Willow told them that when Xander left, so would she. It was also apparent to him that the young girl in his arms would not choose to remain with her sister. Dawn was in many ways as lost as Buffy. Their blood wasn't the only thing that held them together though both would deny it. Idly drawing his fingers through Dawn's hair, Giles contemplated the future that Sunnydale held. It was an increasingly bleak one without the bright lights of Willow and Xander. Perhaps LA would have room for him as well, though the prospect of leaving his Slayer once more was a harrowing one.
Dawn stirred in her slumber bringing Buffy's attention to the others in her presence.
"What's taking so long?"
"Eh?"
"Seriously, what is it that Xander could possibly have to discuss with Fangless for so long? We've been here all night."
"And Spike's been here all week, more specifically for ten days and eleven hours so I really don't think we have room to complain. Buffy, we may have to face the fact that Xander has chosen a life that we neither approve of nor understand." Giles sighed the weary sigh of a father who has long gone without rest. Willow joined him in the puke green chairs that lined the waiting room. She suddenly looked much more tired than she had moments before as she looked to Buffy then. The silence that followed Giles' words was echoed by the whir of an air-conditioner. Buffy's anger boiled over to the point that her fist slammed into the brick wall beside her. The crumbling cement and stone shattered with a cracking boom that jolted Dawn awake and startled both Willow and Giles. "Buffy Anne Summers, I am ashamed of you. The fact that you can't forget your petty anger while your best friend lies in a hospital bed not fifty feet away upsets me more than you can know. I thought you'd moved passed this childishness."
"Giles, I…"
"Stop Buffy. You can only rely on you own problems so often before it becomes too much for us all. You're lost Buffy and I just don't know how to find you anymore." The slayer looked first to Giles, then to Willow and Dawn. They looked to her as though she were a stranger. Their eyes denied her the sense of home she so desired. Tears swelled along the rims of her hazel eyes. The red sting in her bloodshot eyes burned as she blinked back the tears. Buffy turned from them, the familiar strains of her lonely song returned to her from months before. "My return from England was only temporary Buffy. I realized now that I am still needed here in the states but only in the capacity of a father figure to Willow, Xander, and Dawn. What will you do now? Can you tell me that? Now that you've turned everything you've ever loved away."
"Me? I didn't do this. It was – He… what would you have me do? You left me alone with all these problems. I couldn't do it alone and now look. I couldn't even see that Xander was so far gone. And Spike, well, you know how things were going there. He can't be trusted you know."
Dawn piped in next. "And why can't he be trusted Buffy? Because he isn't wholly devoted to you now? Is it because he doesn't obey your every whim? You know I thought you were ignoring me this year, I even understood, but now I know you ignored us all for your own woes. You're more like Dad than you'd ever admit yourself but it's true and we, all of us, have paid the price for it. Xander almost paid the price with his life."
Buffy may not allow the tears to fall but Dawn would. Her eyes filled with the same tears that Buffy forced back. Summers' tears were violent and sharp. They crashed like waves in the ocean and created pools upon any surface they might touch. As the salty drops splattered upon the linoleum floor, Buffy turned away from her sister. She couldn't face the hatred she saw there. Both inside the hospital room and out in the waiting room, questions were answered.