Summary: Post series. Immortality is a big word when everyone you loved has died. Inspired by Three Days Grace's song "Lifetime".

E is for Eternity

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.

-Do not stand at my grave and weep, Author Unknown

The phone rang endlessly and Buffy found herself hating him for never setting up his stupid voicemail. She didn't have it in her to end the call so she just listened to the shrill unanswered ringing until the clinical robotic voice finally put her out of her misery. "I'm sorry, the person you are trying to reach has not set up a voicemail box…" Yeah, she was sorry too.

The empty line clicked off and she finally allowed herself to bring the phone away from her ear as a choked sob escaped her. She hadn't known. When she saw him the last time...she hadn't known that it would be the last time. How stupid was that? The lives they led, she should have always lived as though each time could have been his last.

It's just that he was...Spike. Stuck to her like glue even back when the only thing she'd wanted was for him to get the hell out of her town and never come back. Losing him the first time, when Sunnydale had fallen, had hurt. Losing him now…

Decades. They had decades under their belt. They'd had their fair share of issues after she'd found out he was not quite alive in L.A. and had flown there without a second thought to chew him out for not telling her. For not dropping everything and coming back to her. They'd been inseparable from that moment on though, no matter how bad things got.

He was there for her when she turned forty and they all had the dawning realization that she hadn't aged a day since she was twenty. Since she was resurrected. Then they had started to consider that maybe her advanced healing was a little more advanced than it should have been. Something confirmed when she was dealt what should have been a killing blow.

Her eyes had widened as the pain had bloomed and they had connected with the horror filled gaze of her vampire as he blindly tore the demon who had attacked her in half and rushed to her side. She should have died that day. Should have but didn't.

Willow had been panicked when the consequences of what she had done became glaringly obvious and Buffy had nearly cut off all communication with the woman who had spent so many years as her best friend. It had been Spike that had brought her around.

"Immortality is a funny lil' thing, luv. You'll go on remembering the people you've known over the centuries, have all the time in the world to suss out your regrets, realize that maybe things could have gone differently only it'll be too late and there will be no way to fix them. Red'll be gone before you know it...I just don't want this to be one of those things that eats at you further down the road, slayer."

She'd probably always have some resentment towards Willow. Now especially. She had taken Spike's words to heart though and managed to bridge the chasm that had grown between them. When Willow died at the ripe old age of eighty, Buffy had been right at her side.

Xander had been next, he'd never bore the weight of her anger like Willow had, despite the roll he'd played in her resurrection and ensuing immortality, so they had remained close until his dying day. Giles had passed decades earlier, a loss reminiscent of her mothers.

Dawn...god Dawn had been torture. Cancer had eaten at her little sister, a product of the key energy overloading her human form. She'd passed when she was only sixty three.

Through it all she'd had Spike. Spike who sympathized with her situation despite the joy that he'd tried to keep hidden at the knowledge that he wouldn't have to watch her waste away like her friends and sister had.

Spike was the one who she wasn't supposed to lose. She was supposed to have had him for her lifetime. All of them.

She was sat in one of the graveyards of the small Italian town they'd called their own for the last decade. They only stayed in one spot for ten to fifteen years, any longer and people started to get suspicious of the beautiful, ageless couple. She was leaning against a headstone. It wasn't his, of course.

It was an old cemetery though and some of the grave markers had long faded, making the grave inhabitant an unknown. She'd chosen this one at random and made it his.

Her voice finally broke the silence though she'd made no conscious decision to speak. "Who do I talk to when I want to talk to you?" she wondered. "There's no-" she broke off with a sob. "No one else, Spike. They're all dust, just like…"

"And I'm so pissed. You promised me that you would be here. 'No matter what, luv, ol' Spike'll be here. Can't get rid of me that easily," she mocked in a horrible approximation of his accent. "I told you. I fuckin' told you that you weren't as unbreakable as me. You should have just let him….I would have been fine. I would have still had you. Why did you get in the way? How could you have left me here alone? For Eternity Spike."

Her eyes closed as she tried to picture his. Bright blue and dancing with laughter and love. Eyes that she'd never get to look into again. No one would ever know her as well as Spike had. She tried to conjure up a memory of his voice, god how she wished he'd made a voicemail box. His voice had the power to rile her up like no other but also to soothe her like no one else had ever come close to being able to do.

~BTVS~

She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the light. They'd had blackout curtains thanks to Spike's sun allergy and she had long since given up the idea of getting out of bed to turn on any lights. If she wasn't home in bed she was at that forgotten person's gravestone talking to her dead everything as the night encased her. Night had always been theirs.

They'd been together for nearly one hundred years. There wasn't a single person alive or undead who had known them back in their Sunnydale days save for maybe Drusilla. Buffy didn't doubt that the mad bitch was out there somewhere grieving the death of her childe while simultaneously laughing manically at the thought of the abandoned slayer.

Angel had gotten his prophecy after the big battle in L.A., became human, realized that Buffy had finished baking but wanted to give her cookies to a different guy. He'd settled down with some demon hunting do gooder, had a couple kids and died a few decades later.

It had just been her and Spike for nearly forty years now. Now it was just her and she was staring down the barrel of eternity.

~BTVS~

The slayer line had dwindled in the decades following Willow's spell. They were still out there and more were still being called but they weren't legion like they'd once been. Buffy was a living legend amongst them. The Immortal Slayer with the vampire husband who had saved the world more times than could be counted. The slayer who was still called upon when any big, not quite run-of-the-mill apocalypse popped up. She had never before refused their call.

It had been thirty years since Spike had dusted. Buffy still lived in their Italian countryside home, a hermit who no one saw so no one could see what she had become...or what she hadn't. Still looking twenty, Buffy had never felt older. She felt every bit her age and then some. Nearly one hundred and fifty years old.

She understood now, better than she'd ever wanted to, why Spike had latched onto Drusilla even though she couldn't love him right. Why he'd stuck with Buffy even when she'd done her damnedest to push him away. Loneliness wasn't something she'd wish on her worst enemy. It was without end.

When Whistler came calling, urging her to the front lines of the latest apocalypse she'd told him no. She hadn't even looked his way, her gaze stuck on a photo of a happier time. A photo of him. Digital photography had been a game changer for them. He was smirking at the camera, eyes bright and mischievous.

"I know things have been...tough, kid," Whistler was saying, voice full of sympathy. "This one though...it's the big one, the one we've been talking about for eons. The little kiddie slayers aren't up to the challenge."

"Yeah? Well neither am I," Buffy grit out tersely. "I've saved this world a million times over and what do I have to show for it?"

"So what's the plan then, slayer?" the annoying liaison asked. "Be the only remaining human alive in a world full of demons?"

Buffy's eyes fluttered closed as tears sprang to them. She understood all to well what he was getting at. Not even the end of the world would end her miserable existence. She refused to answer him and eventually he left.

~BTVS~

"The powers that be are prepared to offer you a one time deal. Refuse it and it will never be offered again."

Whistler was back. He'd been popping in and out for a couple months, ever since the first time she'd refused him. She wasn't stupid, she didn't venture out much but she could sense the end as it drew nearer. The world seemed a little darker, which wasn't something she'd thought possible. Her world had been colorless, only dark shades of gray, for the last three decades.

She didn't answer him now. She knew that she didn't need to, he'd spill it anyway. He couldn't stand to let silence reign...kind of reminded her of her vampire in that respect. "You do us this solid, play the general one last time, and the PTB will reverse the side effects of your witch friend's spell."

Everything within Buffy froze. Her heart stopped beating, her blood stopped pumping, every molecule had seized up as though afraid that any movement would erase his words. Finally, slowly, she turned towards him. She could almost hear her neck creaking in the silence that followed his offer as it moved.

"What?" she croaked out.

"You head up the army of slayers, bring down the big bad and save the world and in exchange the PTB will lift your immortality curse, you'll go to sleep one last time. One last time, kid, and then you'll just never wake up again. Free at last."

She was on her feet and faster than he could blink her hand was crushing his windpipe as his back met the unforgiving wooden beams of her rustic walls. "You mean to tell me that they've had the power to end this living hell I've been in this whole time?" she seethed.

Whistler let out a sound that may have been a word or perhaps just his windpipe breaking. She loosened her grip enough to allow him to answer. "Not quite so simple, Buffy," he rasped out. "It'll take a lot of power for them to reverse the effects."

"Why now? Why this apocalypse?" she demanded.

"Told you, slayer. This is the big one. They think this is why everything with you shook out they way that it did. You needed to be immortal because you needed to be here now. The fiercest, most prolific slayer to ever live. You're the missing ingredient needed to make this story a success. After this…you're done. I promise you that, kid."

"Will I get to see him? In the...after?" she whispered, unable to help herself.

Whistler brought a hand up to rub at his aching neck. "I can't say, that info is above my pay grade. What I can say is that your boy more than earned his stripes over the last century and he has not been wasting away in a hell dimension."

A sob broke free from the shell of a slayer. Her biggest fear of three decades finally laid to rest.

"So what do you say? We got a deal?"

Buffy's eyes met his, steel even through her tears. "Yes."

~BTVS~

They suffered many casualties, more than Buffy cared to count, but in the end they were the victors. It had been so very long since she'd felt such purpose. Since she'd felt the desire to meet a goal. She left the scattered bodies of broken girls behind her as she walked off the battlefield. Those that were still alive watched her in awe, unable to believe that they were in the presence of The Immortal Slayer. Unwilling to believe that she was so cold.

Buffy didn't care how they saw her. After all, they'd never see her again. She'd finally be a legend laid to rest after that night. It was quite the journey back to her home, the last one she'd ever shared with Spike, but she made it. Forcing herself to stay awake until she was back within their walls.

She'd been torn for a minute. Tempted to just find the nearest hotel- or, hell, even just lay down on the battlefield- and close her eyes, let sleep and finally death claim her. In the end though, sentimentality won out. She didn't know if she'd end up where Spike was when she woke up in the afterlife and just in case she didn't, she wanted to spend her last night on earth surrounded by the memories of the life they'd made together.

She laid down on their bed, photos of him, of them, surrounding her. She had dawned one of his shirts, one of the ones she'd put away and never touched so that it would still smell like he did. It did too, it was faint, barely there beneath the years but if she inhaled deeply enough she could still make out the smell of cigarettes, whiskey and that thing that was uniquely Spike.

She was curled up, still breathing in the last wisps of his scent as her eyes drifted to a close and slumber claimed her for the final time.

~BTVS~

Warmth embraced her, soft and fluffy, like a cloud. She was weightless, it had been so, so long since she'd been unburdened of earthly worries and grief. It came rushing back to her, how Heaven felt. She heard her name then, a familiar voice. It wasn't his though, it was Dawn and her mother.

Tears stung at her eyes as she laughed hysterically when they embraced her. "You made it, we always knew you would," her mom told her, eyes full of her own tears as she took in the sight of her eldest.

"How? I didn't," Buffy heard herself reply breathlessly.

Dawn grinned at her. "He never stopped fighting for you."

"He—" she cut herself off when she heard him, everything in her seized up. She felt like she had when Whistler had dangled the promise of death in front of her.

"'Ello, luv," his voice came from behind her. As quickly as she froze she unfroze and twirled towards him. She took in the sight of him, tears clouding her vision until her eyes locked on his. That bright blue that photos didn't do justice. Bright blue that were glimmering with his own tears, barely held in check. "Been trying to get those bastards to set you free for a helluva long time," he told her in a pained tone that let her know that he knew all too well how very, incredibly long it had been for her.

She launched herself at him. Warmth and love and laughter. Form slipped away and they became one within the heavenly dimension they'd found themselves reunited in. Promises of more reunions with the ones she'd lost were whispered. Giles, Willow, Xander, Anya, Tara, Faith...hell even Angel. 'They can wait', she'd told him.

~BTVS~

Call him sentimental but he hadn't been able to help himself. When The slayer had passed (and that's what she was, no other slayer had ever compared), he'd collected her body and brought her to the little Italian cemetery she'd claimed as hers decades earlier.

He made space for her near the faded grave marker she'd designated as her vampire husbands. Whistler stood back now, at the foot of the dirt mound and stared at the new headstone. It seemed fitting, the shining marble of her headstone side by side with the faded, chipped headstone that represented her vampire.

Buffy Anne Summers

The Immortal Slayer

'Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there, I did not die.'