Disclaimer: Last time I checked, I didn't own anything even remotely close to any of the characters on the show. With that being said, my lawyer is on permanent vacation and my bank account is nonexistant.

Chapter 6:

She's not breathing. It was his demon that noticed it first. The irrational side of his mind said good riddance, but the caring side knew better. His slayer had stopped breathing. That meant she was dying. So he needed to remedy the situation by getting her to breathe. The only problem was how do you help a person breathe when you can not breathe?

"Lorne!"

The heavy thud of several pairs of feet running towards him was his only answer, but this wasn't good enough. Not when his slayer was dying before his very eyes. He needed help now and was not afraid to do anything necessary to obtain it. Even if it reduced him to begging, he would get his slayer what she needed.

"LORNE!"

The room was instantly filled by every availible person in the hotel. From Lorne to Dawn and even a horror struck Angel and Cordelia. Angel moved quickly and began calling someone on the phone. The demonic obgyn was all that could be assumed. The rest of the gang stood partly to the side. Most in too much shock to be of much use to anyone. Cordelia, on the other hand, held no qualms and went straight to business while switching Connor from one shoulder to the other.

"What's going on?"Cordelia asked while tapping young Connor on the back to soothe him.

Spike restrained himself from rolling his eyes and merely looked down at the now paling woman in his arms. Her face was starting to tint a soft blue on its edges. She needed air and fast.

Wesley knelt down beside the fallen slayer and Spike. He whispered a soft prayer to himself and began to perform cpr on the still form. After a few minutes of anticipation and fustration, a small cough sputtered from her cold lips and her eyes rolled forward in her head.

"Spike," she mumbled weakly and reached hesitantly in the direction she assumed him to be in.

Spike's arms were around her before anyone could bat an eyelash otherwise. His face buried in her neck, sniffing away his unshed tears. His words of comfort spoken so softly that only her ears could hear. Hesitantly Buffy lifted weak limbs to wrap around Spike's lean torso. Her eyes over flowing with tears of sorrow and appreciation.

Lorne took this as his cue to get the couple to finally settle down and begin singing.

"Alright you two," Lorne whispered quietly,"I think now would be a good time for you to sing so I can read you?"

Spike looked up at Lorne's face and nodded slightly before looking down at Buffy's troubled face. His mind fought with his heart as he began to sing a short song he thought he had long forgotten. For his girl, he'd risk his pride.

"'Early one morning...'"Spike sang softly in Lorne's general direction.

His voice wavered a bit and never raised louder than required for Lorne's sensitive ears to hear. After watching Spike's finishing expression towards Buffy, Lorne looked pointedly at the slayer to cue her to begin.

"It's my turn now isn't it?"she recalled, more to herself than to any one person.

Silence was her only reply. After a pregnant pause, she cautiously began to sing,"I've been looking in the mirror for so long. That I've come to believe my souls on the other side..."

At some point, she closes her eyes and silent tears trail down her cheek. She continues on and Spike unconsciously holds her closer to his unbeating heart.

"'Oh the little pieces falling, shatter. Shards of me,To sharp to put back together.To small to matter,
But big enough to cut me into so many little pieces...'"

Willow, Dawn, Tara, and Angel all take sharp intakes of air as they realize what the words mean as Buffy's voice strengthens and she continues to finish the verse she has begun.

"'If I try to touch her, And I bleed, I bleed, And I breathe, I breathe no more...'"

The last few lines were strangled from her throat as she started to cry harder and louder now. Spike's prescense was oddly comforting, but everyone else's was trying her mental state at the moment as she broke down before them all. She cried for a life she would never have. She cried for a life she barely remembered. But mostly, she cried for a moment in heaven that she wished she could have forgotten. Her brief moments of passion with Spike held no light towards her stint in heaven. It paled in its lustfullness and cowered in the wake of a time that would never be able to be compared to another. Buffy cried for every moment that she had ever wanted to be a weak, powerless mortal and instead had to fight the biggest evil the world could cook up for the moment and for once in her life, she didn't feel the need to hide. She would get through this because she had friends she could lean on. Mostly, she had him. Which was a vast improvement on what she had before him.

I know it's not long and it's probably loaded with errors that spell check and myself are too distracted to locate. However, this is just a sampling of what this chapter will be..eventually. With work, school, and extra curricular "fun" there is hardly time to sleep and eat let alone do this fic justice. As an afterthought, Spike's song is the hypnotizing lullaby he sings in the last season of BTVS and Buffy's song is a sampling of an Evanescence(if I spelled that right) song. As always, reviews are more than welcome. Adieu for now.