There were a lot of smog alerts that August. In past summers they made Buffy bitter. It was bad enough that Sunnydale was on a Hellmouth without them having to deal with the pollution blown in from LA. She didn't mind this year. They gave Buffy an excuse to stay inside all day. She'd take books to room, tell her mom she was getting a head start on next semester's readings, and spend the day in bed, staring at the ceiling.

She thought a lot about death and what might come after, of how many heavens and hells there might be, and if what a person did in this life really did have anything to do with where they ended up in the next one. Sometimes she hoped it did, because that must mean that the souls of those who never even had the chance to sin must be in the best place of all. Other times she hoped everyone ended up in the same place. She looked forward to going there.

Nighttime was when she felt free and alive. When she was on the hunt she felt like there was no right or wrong, or that she was even entirely human. There were no rules; she was the law, she was power, she was death; they had no control over her. She was a killer and she didn't have to hide it.

It was the hiding that was getting to her the most.

Riley's belief in her had been just what she needed right after. She had felt dirty and evil, and had no hope that she could ever be anything else ever again. Riley believed in her goodness. He looked on her as if her face shone with the radiance of Righteousness, and even if a cloud passed over it, it would soon be burnt up by the inner light of Purity, the eternal purity that was Buffy. She was an emblem, an idea, that he had faith in. She had needed that kind of adoring love so that she could learn to live with herself again.

Now it made her tired. She knew she wasn't wholly good, she wasn't pure, and she could live with that, but wasn't sure that Riley could. She was afraid of disillusioning him, because she also loved him as a symbol; he was the innocence and trust that she thought she had lost.

She knew this wasn't what true love was supposed to be, but she thought sometimes that it was the closest she could ever expect to get. So she continued to hide, and to pretend.

One morning in August, Buffy came into the kitchen to find her mother trying very hard to take deep, slow breaths, her eyes distant with shock and bitterness. Buffy asked her what was wrong and she pointed to the mail on the counter. There, among the electricity bills and coupon mailings was a letter that explained that all future attempts to contact Hank Summers should be directed to his address in Spain, which he shared with a Ms. Sandy Kowalski.

Buffy felt like she had been stabbed in the gut with a red-hot knife. She felt betrayed and abandoned and like she never really knew her father after all. She had learned to control her emotions by now however, so she could reply with disinterested flatness, "Well, it's his life; he can do what he wants with it. I don't care."

"You're right," her mother said, seeming to calm down, but then was overcome by a fresh wave of bitterness. "She's his goddamn secretary," she said with a grimace. "A cheap blonde half his age."

"Oh," Buffy said, her face blank, while suddenly experiencing a desperate hope that her father loved Sandy and that they would be happy. "I'm going to go read in my room now."

Buffy could feel the tears coming as she walked upstairs. She tried to hold them back, told herself that she was over-identifying. But when she got to her room she still curled up on her bed and cried, because while she knew she was over-identifying with Sandy, she also knew that she still loved Giles and that she missed him.

As August drew to a close, Willow told Buffy how Giles seemed to be drawing out their archiving project as long as possible, trying to delay the date when he would have to leave. "And you know, at the beginning of the summer he was all stoic and never mentioned you at all. Then he started asking me these oblique questions about my friends and my social life, and now he just asks about you every day, and if you ever say anything about him."

"Oh," Buffy said, forcing herself not to care, not to even think about him.

"Also, I think he's maybe started drinking again," Willow added tentatively. "I'm kinda worried about him."

"I'm not," Buffy said, and pretended to herself that she believed it.

Some nights, when she was filled with a sense of freedom, vague, half-acknowledged fantasies of going to him flitted across her mind. She could be free with him like she never could with Riley because he knew her so much better, because he had seen her fall, because they had fallen together.

He would leave at the end of September. There were three days to go when she went to him. He stared at her, she was sure, for a whole minute before he stepped away from the door and let her in. He must have been drinking because he made himself some black coffee instead of tea and had to finish off a mug before he agreed to talk to her.

"Did Willow tell you about Dracula?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes." She thought she saw a flicker of pride in his eyes, because he knew she defeated the famous vampire. He was still a watcher after all.

"Yeah… 'cause he said some things to me that made me think, about my power. He knew it better than I do. He saw darkness in it. I think he knew where it comes from. I want to know too. I want to learn about it, about past slayers, because I think it will make me be stronger, and better, and because it's who I am."

He was looking at her like he knew where this was going, like he was ready to say "yes" already. His eyes were so hopeful.

She tried not to feel for him. She made her face blank. "And the only person I can think of who can help me do that, who has the knowledge and the connections to help me, is you. This doesn't mean," she continued, cutting short his acceptance, "that I forgive you. But I need to work with you again. I'd understand if you weren't okay with that."

He managed to mask his disappointment so that he only looked somber, and nodded. "Yes, that's fine."

"Thank you," she said sincerely, and left.

As soon as she was outside and the door was closed behind her, Buffy sunk to the ground and wept. She had been so close to forgiving him, and without him bearing all the blame for what he did to her, for making her a killer, she felt like she would collapse, that she would shatter under the weight of the guilt of having killed his child. If she ever forgave him completely, she was sure she would.