Chapter 5

"Don't you think it's weird?" Buffy broke the silence as they wandered scoobies wandered through the cemetery.

"What's weird?"

"This," she waved her hand, still holding a stake, across the cemetery, "Like, usually, before an apocalypse there's either a lull in the demon activity or there's an increase. This . . . This is just normal!" She stopped suddenly and Xander and Willow both ran into her, "Don't you think that's weird?"

"Well . . ." Xander hesitated as he thought about what she was saying, "Yea. It kind of is; where's the apocalypse party goin' on?"

"Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it isn't happening in LA."

Nobody said anything as they walked back to the hotel.

"You mean . . . you don't think it's going to start here?" Giles, in a classic Giles move, took his glasses off and rubbed them absently on his shirt, than put them back on him face.

Buffy smirked, "I've been through a lot of these apocalypses and well usually there's some sort of sign. There hasn't been any sign. At all. Nada signs."

Xander added, "ixnay on the ignsays."

Angel walked into the room, "What about your dreams?"

"Well . . . yeah, but they happen in Sunnydale," Buffy dismissed them.

Both Angel and Giles raised their eyebrows pointedly at her.

"Oh! You mean . . . You think . . . Sunnydale?" She said with a slight groan.

Willow looked at Giles, "But . . . isn't the Hellmouth closed, like, permanently?"

"Well, yes, I thought so, but . . ." Giles was confused as all the possibilities began to run through his head.

Angel looked pensive, "Just because it's an apocalypse doesn't mean Hell will be on Earth. Apocalypse just means the end of life."

"Even demon life?" Buffy, embittered by her years of servitude to the world, wondered if maybe this was the chance to get rid of all evil.

Buffy looked more thoughtful than she had her entire time in LA and Angel wondered what she could be thinking about. No one would ever have guessed the truth.

The two beings sat on a couch made of clouds.

"Is this it then? Will this be the end of everything?"

The other replied, "I doubt it. I have lived a millennia, I expect to live another."

"But she's seriously contemplating allowing it to happen. Seriously contemplating not fighting!"

"It does not matter if she fights."

"What happened to Dawn?" Angel leaned against the doorway, watching Buffy pound the punching bag.

1-2-3-1-2-3 she punched with her left fist than her right fist. "She never existed. Dawn never exists. It is night, than it is day. Dawn is a moment of both and than she is gone."

"They took her away from you." Angel understood that pain. "Made everybody forget?"

"No. Everyone remembers her. It. The key. A green ball of energy."

"But her, the girl the one who would watch us from the kitchen window? The girl who snuck out to follow you on patrol? Your sister, do they remember her?"

Buffy grabbed the punching bag to stop it from swinging back and hitting her, "They remember her, but she doesn't seem to evoke any emotion. It was like she was nothing. But she wasn't. She was everything." Her voice broke into a sob and she fell to her knees on the mat, "everything. God, Angel, everything leaves. Everyone leaves. It hurts so much Angel. It hurts so much."

He wrapped his arms around her holding her head to his chest. Her tears soaking through his black silk shirt. "Sometimes we come back. Don't we?" He wasn't sure if it was the right thing to say.

She acted as if she didn't hear it. Continuing to sob until she ran out of tears. Even than she didn't move from her position on the mat and in Angel's arms. Silently they comforted each other.

"See! I told you!" The being jumped from her seat on the couch. "I told you it would be alright. They'll figure it out. I told you so!"

The other being, from its position on the couch, looked skeptical, "They do this all the time. Comfort each other. Than they fight. They will never change. They are only human."

"Only?"

"Only."

"They are the only good that exists on earth. And, remember, they are the ones we are relying on to save even us. Do you not think that raises them above us? No longer lower beings."

The man on the couch snorted, "Humans."

Gugulanna, God of Death and War, stood at the edge of the crater. Enlil, the supreme god, ruler over destiny, stood next to him. "This is what caused the problem? A whole in the ground? Could not Ki solve this problem? She is after all in charge of this dirt." He kicked at the ground in childish petulance.

Enlil smiled half-heartedly, "It is not Gaea who needs fixing. This 'whole in the ground' was caused by war and death. You are the god of these things."

Gugulanna whined, "Well, couldn't you get Ereshkigal? She rules the underworld. Perhaps she would allow whoever caused this to come back?"

"That is not the problem. Who caused this has both come back and gone again. You are going to work with Inanna. And both of you are going to fix this."

"Fine." Gugulanna and Enlil both faded into the night.

Inanna, goddess of love,sat with her legs crossed at the very center of the crater and soaked in the earths' memory of what use to be. She saw the Bronze and the Starbucks. She saw the house where the little witch had lived and the house where a mere human had become something more. She saw the Slayer's home and home of the green ball of energy who had become something both more and less. None of these were just buildings, they were family and friends, memories come and gone.

TBC