A/N: Thank you so much for all my reviewers. You people say the nicest things. I also want to thank the people who take the time to read my story. Thanks.

manticore-gurl071134: thanks so much. And your question will be answered in the next few chapters.

WhiteWolf 3I always thought so too. I think the other Scoobies bought way too much into her I'm-a-dumb-blonde routine.

goddessa39: I'm glad you picked up on the wording (and this time it was on purpose). The Dumbledore question won't be answered for a while, but there are hints. And if you keep reading, you're gonna find out about Dawn.

Musings-of-Apathy: You thanked me for writing…that's the nicest thing ever! I couldn't get the grin off my face after I read your review. My jaw is starting to hurt.

Sukera: Thanks, it means a lot that you reviewed.

Moony's-Mate: Awww blushes Thanks.

xoxox

England, September 2005.

"Buffy, is there something you wish to talk about?" Dumbledore questioned as he watched her beat her fists against a large tree in The Forbidden Forest, sending chips of wood flying when she impacted.

"Nothing really," she grunted. "Just workin' out some extra stress." Her mind was disconnected to the pain she felt in her hand. She knew that her knuckles were bloody and raw, cut to the bone, but she couldn't stop her actions. It was the only thing that kept her from leaving and pounding into the person she really wanted to.

"My dear, I believe the tree would be forever grateful if you found some other unsuspecting victim to attack." He was concerned for the woman he increasingly saw as a daughter. He knew that there were things in her past that she had yet to come to terms with, and he had hoped that she would come to him when she was ready to share her burden. However, it had been almost two years since he offered her a home at Hogwarts and she had accepted, and so far there had been no sign of her breaking down the walls she had placed around herself.

"It's her birthday today, did you know that?" she asked without turning, never ceasing her movements.

"It has been a long time. Have you even spoken to her?" he questioned gently, without accusation.

Her shoulders tensed and with one loud grunt she threw all her strength into her next punch. Wood cracked and splintered as her fist went through the center of the great oak she had been pounding into. With a snarl she jerked her hand free and flexed her fingers, ignoring the grinding of bone against bone, and the ripping of tissues.

"Have you spoken with any of them?"

Her shoulders slumped in defeat, all the anger going out of her. When she finally turned to face him fully he saw that there were tearstains on her cheeks.

"I can't."

"Why ever not?"

"It wasn't what they wanted. All of them."

"Are you sure of that?"

She gave a bitter laugh, "They made things clear to me before I left. I thought things would be different, but no. They had already made their decision, and I chose to honor it. It was the least I could do."

"Perhaps we should adjourn indoors for this conversation?" he asked.

She nodded and stiffly began walking in front of him. He watched her back in silence, wondering what was going through her head. It came as no surprise to him that she chose to speak with him in her cottage rather than the castle. She wanted the comfort of familiar surroundings when she bared her soul to him.

She moved through the door without looking back at him and sat on one end of the couch. He looked around the comfortable room and took a seat on the small coffee table in front of her, their knees almost touching. When she didn't look at him he gently took her hands in his own and examined the damage her anger had caused. But when he pulled out his wand to heal her hands, she stopped him.

"You are going to have to let me heal these before I leave," he told her.

"I know, but wait. For after." She had yet to look at him. It pained him to realize that she was using the pain in her hands as a way to punish herself. For what he did not know, but was about to find out.

"Where do you want to begin," he asked softly.

Her tone was dry when she finally answered him, "Personally, I don't see the need. I don't need to bore you with my troubles and I'm sure there are kids misbehaving at the school that you need to see to. Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

He shook his head, unconvinced with her argument, "My dear, my schedule is clear. You see the wonderful thing about being the headmaster is that I can delegate undesirable tasks to others. Why do you think that other teachers are heads of the houses and not me?" He gave her a small smile that she did not see, "Please Buffy, unload your troubles on me. I assure you that I will not judge you for your actions, and you have my word that none of this will ever pass my lips."

She finally lifted her head to look at him. His sorrow for her suffering was clear to see on his face, and it broke her heart to see it. She had come to love the old man, much like she once had Giles, but times had changed and that relationship was almost nonexistent. She feared if she told him, he would only reject her, like so many had before him. But she also knew that if she didn't tell someone that she would come apart at the seams. She had already noticed that she was beginning to shut down emotionally, how much longer would it be before it left her even more vulnerable?

"You know so much about my life, but at the same time know almost nothing. It would take way too long to explain everything-"

He cut off her protests with a wave of his hand, "I have all the time in the world."

She sighed in defeat, knowing that she had finally arrived at the moment she had avoided for years. "When you last saw me, I was in a really bad place. You know what happened, and I told you in my letters that things got better, for a time. And I know that you were worried when I didn't write to you that year…but what you don't know is that I couldn't."

She saw the confused look on his face and couldn't hold off any longer, "I died, Dumbledore. When I defeated Glory, I died. I wouldn't-I couldn't sacrifice another loved one for the sake of the world. I did it once and it almost killed me. I couldn't go through that again. So I took the easy way out and took my sister's place. I died to save the world…again. But this time wasn't like last time. There was no one to bring me back. I was dead."

She sighed again and seemed to slouch into herself even more. She spoke very slowly, carefully choosing her words, "But Willow…she just couldn't leave things alone. She knew that I was trapped somewhere in a hell dimension. So three months after I died, they brought me back. But they forgot…oh God-they forgot the most fundamental thing. They didn't dig me out of my grave."

She looked up at his sharp intake of breath. He was clearly stunned. He couldn't believe what she was telling him. She had been dead? He knew now when she had been brought back. From across the world he had felt her friend, Willow, cast the spell to resurrect her, but he couldn't identify it, no one could. It is impossible to change the natural order of things without causing a ripple effect that can be felt by all associated with the supernatural. The magical community had spent excessive amounts of time and manpower attempting to discover the source of the power, but had failed. In the end, the best they were able to do was pray that Voldemort was not responsible for whatever it was that had happened. It would have been an easy matter to find the being responsible for the shift but he now that he knew where it had originated from, it made sense. The Hellmouth would have distorted any attempt to magically find where the spell originated.

He realized with a start that he held her broken and mangled hands in a death grip, then gently loosened his hold on them and gave her an encouraging smile, trying to show her that he was still with her. "And then?"

"And then things got worse." She lowered her voice and looked down at her lap and their joined hands, "I wasn't-I wasn't in hell Dumbledore. I was in heaven. And I know you understand the implications of what had happened without me telling you. I was like a zombie. I only existed, I didn't live."

She glanced at him through her hair and he gave her a sympathetic look, "And then…time passed. It took me a long time, but I slowly learned to accept the fact that I wouldn't be leaving this world anytime soon. I never got over it. I don't think I ever will. But I learned to accept it."

"I had no idea," he whispered.

"And I wanted it that way. You had a war to fight. My problems were small compared to the world, and I know that. Every slayer knows that. It's ingrained it each of us. This is a thankless job, but we do it because someone has to. Because if we don't, then they win, and the world loses."

She pulled her hands out of his and slowly flexed her fingers. They had completely healed since she began speaking. "I didn't have the energy to write you and it wasn't until later that I was able to put a pen to paper."

He gave her a reassuring smile, "I am terribly sorry for the trials you went through. Had I known-"

"There was nothing you could have done," she interrupted. "They had their minds set, and even if they hadn't…well, you couldn't do anything."

"I understand all you have said thus far, but I still don't understand how you can infer from your friends' actions that they no longer wanted you. To the outside observer, it would seem that they couldn't let you go."

His eyes followed her movements as she rose from her place at his side and moved to the fireplace, her back turned to him. "That's because it doesn't end there."

She turned to face him before going on, the fire at her back making it hard for him to see the expression on her face. "Another year passed before the price for my return was discovered. My re-entry to the world gave the First Evil a foothold to affect this world directly."

At his confused expression she clarified, "The First Evil is older than the world. It is an incorporeal being that is the root of all evil, but it was never able to actually do anything…until I came back. Because my resurrection threw off the nature of things, the First was able to choose a human to work through. It did, and began the end of the world."

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, fighting the chill she felt despite the fire. The memory of her failures haunted her to this day. She had never been able to forgive herself her mistakes, mainly because those nearest to her couldn't. She sat down in a chair across from Dumbledore and faced him once again to finish her story.

"Its plan was to first kill off all the potential slayers and then move on to me and Faith. It almost succeeded. We were unaware of the threat until it was almost too late. The potentials began coming to stay with me for my protection. And we-I lost some. I couldn't protect them all. I was placed in charged of several terrified young girls. And some of them died."

There was no need for her to tell him how the death of those girls had cut her deep. Each one of them had been a reflection of her. What she had been before she lost her innocence. To see them cut down before her must have been devastating. "To make an even longer story shorter, I made a decision that I thought was the right one. We were losing time and people. But when I took them out it was a trap. Several of the potentials died, and Xander lost an eye. It was no ones fault but mine," her shoulders slumped. "And then when I realized that I was right the first time, and that we had to go back to that same place, they turned on me."

"My friends, who had been with me since the beginning, who I had protected since I had known them, who had seen me at my worst, the people I thought I could count on, decided that I wasn't fit for the job I had been doing for eight years. All my support was gone in an instant. And then my-" she closed her eyes in pain. "My sister told me to leave her house." Eyes that had been clear until that moment filled with tears as she looked over to him. "I wasn't good enough. I never have been. But I knew what I needed to do. I backed out and let Faith take over."

She cleared her throat and wiped the tears from her face, trying to collect herself before she continued. "It turned out that I was right…but in the end it didn't matter. We defeated the First, but not without sacrifices. The entire town collapsed when the Hellmouth closed. And I thought everything would be all right. That we could put the past behind us. I was looking forward to no longer being the chosen one, but one of many. But life, it seems, has a way of turning on you as well. Dawn and I had settled in an apartment in LA and were beginning to make a life for ourselves. Dawn was enrolled in Hemery, and I had found another job at a nightclub through a friend of Angel's. Things were far from perfect. We had a little money from the insurance for the house, but things were still tight. Dawn still resented me for some reason that I've yet to figure out. I always thought that over time she would let me know, but she never did. Then he came. It had been so long, and I was so surprised, I didn't know how to react."

She snorted bitterly, "He brought a police officer with him along with court documents to my home. The man I hadn't seen or heard from in years came to take my baby sister away. It was a Saturday. I remember that. Dawn was doing her homework early so she could go out with her friends that night, and I was getting dinner ready. And he came to our house and took her away. It was all I could do to keep from ripping him to pieces where he stood. I wanted to show him just how ineffectual that cop would have been."

"I think she hates me. I think that she wanted me to fight for her. But I couldn't. There was nothing I could do. What was I supposed to do? She glared at me as they left. And then, when I went to see her later she refused to see me. She slammed the door in my face and told me never to come back."

He rose from his seat and moved to sit next to her. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. She was so strong, so many people forgot that she was just a girl. He could only imagine the pain she must be feeling, the heartache. The sister she had died for had rejected her.

Dumbledore felt his heart break with her words. He had wondered why it had taken her so long to respond to his invitation, and now he knew. He couldn't believe the callousness of the man who claimed to be her father. He knew that there was nothing he could to ease her pain, but he hoped that he could offer her some small comfort. "Oh, my dear, there was nothing you could do. Give it time. Dawn probably doesn't realize the impact her words had-"

But she cut him off with a wave of her hand, "She knew. Dawn has always known exactly what to say to get the results she wanted. And she wanted me to feel pain. And it worked."

He placed an arm around her slender shoulders and pulled her to him. "Give it time Buffy. It is the only thing you can do."

She collected herself and shook off his arm to stand up, her face and voice suddenly devoid of emotion, "I know. But the pain doesn't go away. It will always be there. And I have all the time in the world. I just-I just hope she doesn't run out of time."

Without a backwards glance she walked through the door to her bedroom and closed the door.

Tbc…