I guess I'll just repeat the whole "don't sue" thing and note that this chapter contains dialogue from the Buffy episode "Fool For Love."

Also, thank you to all my reviewers! Hope this chapter is up to specs.

Harry Foureyes- Thanks. I've always wondered why there weren't more Buffy/Harry fics too. I think they are two fascinating characters to put together while Buffy/Draco tends to seem like Spike: The Sequel. (And I'd much rather have the original myself).


Open to Interpretation

Buffy stood over Harry as he sat on his makeshift bed, watching him impassively. "You know you don't belong here, right?"

"Yeah. I guess" Harry answered noncommittally.

She laughed. "But that'd never stop you." She looked out the window. Sunlight streamed through the curtains. "It's getting dark."

"Really?" Harry questioned, seeing the bright sunlight yet believing her anyway.

Buffy smiled sadly. "It's always dark."

"But what about them?" Harry questioned suddenly. Willow, Anya, Xander and Dawn had walked into the living room. The four of them were laughing and talking animatedly, not noticing either Harry or Buffy.

Buffy glanced their way, and Harry suddenly noticed that each laughing friend had blood running down their faces, their hands and their clothes. It didn't seem to affect any of them though and they continued laughing and gesturing wildly. "Harry, they're not even there."

"But…" Harry trailed off, realizing that he no longer even felt like arguing. He turned. Buffy was now sitting on the couch next to him. She hummed brightly as she undid the ribbon on a brightly wrapped package. "I love pressies!" she told him with an air of confidentiality.

"What did you get?" Harry asked, leaning closer and suddenly excited to see what had been given to the slayer.

Buffy continued humming as she patiently unwrapped the present. "Drawing it out only makes the surprise better" she told him, winking.

"Who's it from?" Harry asked.

Buffy wrinkled her nose. "I don't know. I never thought to ask." She paused, thinking for a minute. "Everyone I guess. Or maybe me. Maybe I got it a while ago and saved it." She turned excitedly towards Harry. "But I don't remember what I got. I bet Giles and Willow and Xander and Mom got it for me. And maybe Angel" she said dreamily. "It must be my birthday." She was still patiently taking off the wrapping and then folding it gently and setting it on the table. Finally a closed box sat on her lap.

"Gonna open it?" Harry asked gently.

"Just savoring the moment" Buffy informed him. She shook the box and Harry heard something heavy bang against the side. "Hmmm. I don't feel like guessing." Buffy shrugged and removed the lid from the box, an expectant smile upon her face.

Harry peered into the box excitedly. But it was empty. "Where'd it go?" Harry asked, a little upset. "It was just in there!"

Buffy donned the all too familiar sad smile again. "Told you it was a surprise." But she didn't look surprised. She looked as if she had expected this all along.


Harry awoke feeling groggy. As the Summers' living room came into focus around him, he began to recall a strange dream. He could tell that it wasn't just an ordinary dream. Besides, Harry's dreams were rarely ordinary. But it wasn't like his connection with Voldemort. It was different, yet it had felt real. Harry bolted up as he realized that the experience was slowly drifting out of his mind. He grabbed a piece of parchment and wrote "Someone covered in blood? Sitting with Buffy. Why is the gift empty?"


Harry walked into the kitchen smelling pancakes sizzling on the stove. Buffy was dutifully flipping them although her mind seemed to be somewhere else.

"Buffy these pancakes seem kind of wonky" Dawn noted. Her eyes seemed to cloud over a bit. "I wish Tara was here."

"Of course I'll meet you after school today" Buffy answered dully, continuing the pancake flipping.

Dawn looked worried for a second before rolling her eyes. "Fine, whatever" she said setting her empty plate on the counter with a clatter. "I've got to go."

Harry eyed the exchange with a growing sense of sadness. It hadn't taken long to realize that the Scoobies were putting up a happy front for his benefit and that the act had slowly been slipping away. Maybe not my benefit, Harry wondered idly. Maybe their own.

Most of all, Harry couldn't stand the empty look in Buffy's eyes. He wished that she looked lost, because that meant he could find her. But lately she looked as if she wasn't even there.

He had hoped that they'd reached an understanding after that late night talk. After all, they had a lot in common. He recalled the funny stories—the time that some demons took away everyone's voices and another time when she gained "an aspect of the demon." She told him about how unsure she had felt about various battles and how she was so sure that she'd lose. Harry couldn't believe how open Buffy had been with him.

But he should have noticed it, even with the late night-early morning delirium setting in. There were times in the story when Buffy paused before going forward with what seemed like a party line: "I died to stop Glory. I was in Hell. My friends pulled me out." Harry could have attributed the haunted look in her eyes to being through hell. After all, Sirius had had a similar look in his eyes when he first escaped from Azkaban. But the way she was acting now, the way she was pushing her friends away made Harry think that the here and now were hell to her. The things she had said the day he first saw her were incongruous to these parts of the story.

"The real Buffy is gone. She died. All I am is an empty shell. A dead thing."

Harry remembered suddenly the things that Buffy had said when she thought he was a watcher. Her eyes were feverishly bright, her face twisted into a harsh grin. "What does Travers want to know now? How I died? How I clawed my way out of my own grave? Or is that too unseemly? Does he wanna know how Willow did it? Does he want to know if I came back wrong? If I did, does he actually think that he could kill me?"

His mind snagged on one line that he had been too fearful to process at the time.

How I clawed my way out of my own grave?

Harry blanched, staring again at Buffy with new understanding. She was now staring intensely at a sizzling pancake, way past overdue to be flipped. Buffy seemed mesmerized at the popping, burning, boiling mess, the spatula cocked slightly in her hands.

"Here, let me help you with that!" Harry yelled suddenly, scrambling out of his seat. He was trying not to picture Buffy alone and scared as she punched ragged holes through the top of her coffin.

Buffy started briefly before regarding Harry with cool curiosity. "Afraid I'm gonna burn the house down?" she asked.

Harry stared a little helplessly into her eyes, finding himself unable to form words. He desperately tried to plumb the depths of her hazel eyes, try to understand what she must have gone through. How could he have been so stupid? Not putting together everything Buffy had said.

Buffy gave him a concerned look. "Are you ok?" She waited a beat, but an answer never came. "Oh wow, I have something on my face, don't I?" Buffy asked amusedly.

Harry snapped back to Earth. "Mmgh, oh God, of course not."

Buffy laughed lightly. "Then why were you…" She turned back to the stove with a squeak as she realized that the pancake was smoking. "Oh God!" she cried. "You were right the first time. I am gonna burn the house down!"

That possibility finally spurred the two to action, as they rushed to control the damages. Somewhere in the distance, a smoke alarm was going off.

A little while later, the two stood side by side as they attempted to scrape the charred and misshapen pancake out of the pan. They stood in companionable silence, a situation that Harry had interpreted as awkward with any girl other than Hermione. Well, actually silence would have been awkward with Hermione too. She always had something to say. He wanted to talk to Buffy, hear her laugh. It should have been easy.

Think Harry, think. He was trying to think of a conversation starter so hard, that he hadn't even realized what had slipped out of his mouth. "What is your gift?"

Buffy's reaction was instant. She no longer stared out the window over the sink. She momentarily turned a shade paler and her lips compressed. But her features slackened again as quickly as they had changed. "My gift?" Buffy asked carefully.

Harry instantly turned an alarming shade of red. "Did I say 'gift?'" he tried to backtrack. "Because I definitely didn't mean to say gift."

"Well good" Buffy said, scouring the pan rather violently. "Because I'm giftless. That's right, no gifts here. I'm a Buffy of the non-gift variety."

The dream actually meant something Harry realized.

The pair fell into silence once again, each lost in their own thoughts.


"Are you ready?" Buffy asked Harry, prodding him with the stake in her hand.

"I'm coming" Harry groaned, tossing and turning under the covers.

"Well good" Buffy stated grumpily. "Because I'm not really in the mood to play spirit guide." She surveyed her surroundings with disgust. "Especially in this dump."

Harry sat up boltright. He was in his old cupboard, the one that the Dursleys had made him live in before he found out about being a wizard.

"But this is where I belong!" Harry protested.

Buffy sneered. If this is where you belong, then I don't really think you belong with me.

"But—But it's comfortable here" Harry protested weakly. "Free spiders."

Buffy nodded solemnly, accepting his answer. "But comfort is for fools. Or people who aren't us. Come on."

"Where are we going?" Harry asked.

Buffy peered back at him over her shoulder. "If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Harry hung back tentatively before grabbing her proffered hand. She pulled him up and suddenly the tableau had changed. The sky was a dark blue, but lit up by a blinding purple-white light in the distance. He looked down and noticed that his feet weren't on the ground. He was standing atop a shoddily constructed tower raising hundreds of feet in the air. They were standing at the beginning of what seemed to be a plank towards the bright light, a plank that seemed to go on for miles without ending.

"Where are we?" Harry asked, slightly dizzy.

Buffy pulled a face. "Do you realize how many questions you ask? I don't have all of your answers. Plus, this is your mind anyway. How am I supposed to know what's going on?"

"Well you just seem to…know. About stuff" Harry supplied.

"Sure, I know about lots of stuff" Buffy agreed. "I know how to shop, how to decapitate a vampire with an exacto knife. I know how to alphabetize a filing cabinet. I hung out in the school library a lot" she whispered the last part before giggling, as if to say "shh! Don't tell." "I know more than they give me credit for." She turned a sharp eye on Harry. "But what I know is not the point."

Harry tried to think of something to say that wasn't a question. He settled on "Stop speaking in bloody symbols!"

Buffy just laughed. "Whatever you say, Giles Junior. Come on. We've been standing here way too long. Standing around never got one anybody a gold star."

"This looks dangerous" Harry noted hesitantly. They had been walking down the path that lead to the bright light. The farther they walked, the higher up they seemed. The steel underneath his feet was beginning to squeal threateningly.

"Of course it is!" Buffy said cheerfully. "Do you think that a friggin skyscraper would have been as symbolic?"

"I guess not" Harry answered, unconvinced. "I just don't think that it is a very good idea."

Buffy paused suddenly. "Yeah, I guess you're right for once, Jeeves. You've got your whole life ahead of you. Walking here with me is only going to slow you down."

"No, no" Harry rebutted. "I like walking with you, you're good company. I just wonder if you know what you're doing."

"Of course I do" she said, puffing out her chest. "I already told you that I know more than they think. So I'm not book girl, I'll deal. But my gift is over there, and I want to get it back."

"Your gift!" he said excitedly. "I wanted to see it."

"It's close, we're getting closer" Buffy told him.

The two broke out into a full run, trying to reach the end of the plank as quickly as possible. They finally reached the landing, where Buffy stood basking in the unearthly light. Harry stood behind her, still winded from the run.

"Here" Buffy said turning to him as she began to empty her pockets. "Keep this safe." She began unloading a large amount of knick knacks into Harry's hands, including an elaborately carved knife.

"I don't know what to do with this stuff."

"You'll figure it out" she reasoned.

"Where's your present? I want to see it."

"Oh" Buffy said, turning. "Thanks." A blissful smile filled her face.

Harry stared in horror down at her abdomen. The knife she had given him earlier had been run through her middle. Blood quickly seeped through the fabric of her white shirt. "Thanks" she told him lazily once again.

Harry began shaking uncontrollably. "But I didn't—no—I didn't…" He stared down and gasped. His hand was now firmly attached to the knife in question and he gave it an upward jerk before pulling it out with a sucking sound. The dagger clattered to the ground as Harry stared at his blood-soaked hands.

Buffy looked down at her abdomen with interest, holding her own blood-stained hands to view. She looked into Harry's eyes again, which were filled with disbelief, horror, and maybe a little understanding. "Told you it was a surprise." With one last parting gaze, Buffy tumbled off the edge of the tower, pulled away from Harry simultaneously by the bright portal and the surrounding night.

"No! No!" Harry cried as he stumbled toward the edge and hunkered down. Salty tears streamed down his face. Buffy was gone. And then, everything went black.

Harry woke on the familiar couch in a cold sweat. As his eyes focused on the surrounding darkness, he realized that he was not alone. A very real Buffy was standing at the foot of the couch with her arms folded. Her face displayed a mix of confusion, anger and a little fear. "Okay" she said, stepping forward threateningly. "What the hell is going on?"

Buffy. She's alive. God, he'd never been happier in his entire existence, as traitorous and surprising as the thought was. Everything from that dream was still imprinted in his mind's eye and—and—a horrible gasp ripped through Harry's throat. The words spilled out without his consent, as he leveled a disbelieving look on Buffy's angry visage. "You wanted it."

She blinked, and Harry could see understanding and self loathing simultaneously etched onto Buffy's face. With a snarl, she was upon him, slamming her fists ineffectively against Harry's chest, her body wracked with sobs. I could kill him. Pound him into bits, leave nothing but bruised and bloody flesh. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'd do it just to make him shut up. "Take it back! Take it back!" she cried like a child. He had said everything and nothing all at once. Summed up her entire existence. Her purpose.

Spike had been the only one to truly understand. He'd explained to her that night in the alley behind The Bronze. And she had almost killed him then. For knowing. For understanding the dance.

"Death is on your heels baby, and sooner or later, it's going to catch you . . . And some part of you wants it. Not only to stop the fear and the uncertainty, but because you're just a little bit in love with it. Death is your art. You make it with you hands, day after day. That final gasp, that look of peace . . . Part of you is desperate to know . . . What's it like? Where does it lead you? . . . So you see, that's the secret. Not the punch she didn't throw or the kick she didn't land. She simply wanted it. Every Slayer has a death wish."

Buffy wondered though if Spike had ever admitted to himself what had made her jump off of that tower. Spike with his cocky life lessons. Spike, who she had been told cried at the sight of her lifeless body. No, she decided. Not even Spike, the one who had spelled out the slayer's desires in such simple terms, understood what had happened. Maybe Dawn. Maybe Dawn.

No, none of them had understood. They thought it was all about heaven and hell, which one, which one? As if it mattered. They didn't really know why she felt so dirty and wrong. Why she didn't deserve to be here.

It was because she had chosen death, wanted it even. And she liked it.

So that was Buffy the great hero's sacrifice. Death. She had wrapped it up in pretty bows, pretended that this was all about saving Dawn. But hadn't it been about freeing herself?

Harry's eyes widened as the slayer's blows rained down upon him. They were nothing, not the brutal punches that he'd seen her land before. His heart clenched as she began sobbing. "Take it back! Take it back!" How he wished that he could.

"That's me, the hero" she said as ragged sobs tore through her body. Abandoning them all because she was offered a chance at peace. She finally understood. She had thought her friends cowards for ripping her out of heaven. But they had been no less selfish than she had been. What made them resurrect her? God, she had saved this world a dozen times over and she still didn't feel that she deserved to be here.

"What do you think of me now, Harry?" she cried. "Still want to get to know your gracious hostess?" Her punches were now just pretenses, a mere excuse to keep screaming her latest epiphany. She had hid from telling her friends anything for so long and now that she was finally letting it all out, dammit somebody was gonna listen!

"Tell me, what do you think of me?" With that, Buffy collapsed against his chest, shaking as her breath hitched.

Harry said nothing. He just stroked her back as Buffy's breath slowly evened out. Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly, Buffy fell asleep quickly in Harry's arms. He marveled at what had just unfolded. This beautiful, brave, caring girl actually thought that she was some sort of monster. He stroked her hair as a feeling of wonder settled over him. Buffy Summers might not know it yet, but she deserved to feel alive more than anybody in the world.


Wow, ok. That chapter came out nothing like I thought it would, but I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. Just to clear things up, Buffy was having the same dreams as Harry, and somehow believed them to be prophetic. That's why she came downstairs to get answers. The reason for the joint dreams will be explained in the next chapter. The dream scenes contained a lot of the "Restless"-like subtext/symbolism that I wanted to express about Buffy's death and her feelings on it. Hopefully nobody felt like they were running away from falling anvils as they read it. Also, if on the flipside, you thought that the dream sequences made not a wit of sense, just ask me and I'll be happy to tell you my interpretation.

I had been planning to leave this chapter at when Harry wakes up and sees angry Buffy, but I'm glad that I didn't. I hadn't planned the breakdown at all, but I'm glad that it kind of flowed out of my system. Buffy needed to let it out and I didn't want her to be detachment girl the whole fic. Buffy's breakdown was partly inspired by Buffy's confession to Tara at the end of "Dead Things" and a bit of Faith and Angel's fight at the end of "Five by Five." In a way, I also saw it as a sort of counterpoint to Buffy's beating of Spike in "Dead Things."

Next up: Buffy and Harry are going to start to come to an understanding and maybe Buffy will even begin her reconciliation with friends and family.

Ok, so tell me what you thought!