Though substantially cooled with the light evening breeze that wove through the skyscrapers of Los Angeles, the dirt maintained a level of warmth that comforted Buffy's rigid frame. Beside her, one hand clutching her clammy palm, Angel cupped the nape of her neck and eased her down against the ground. Their hands clamped tightly around one another's wrist, his blue veins standing out from a backdrop of pale skin. Fear trembled in the whites of his eyes, quaking the deep brown iris, enlarging the black hole of his pupil. Yet, Buffy showed no fear, no concern about the fate that would soon settle over her troubled soul. Instead, a relief seemed to glitter in her faded gaze, bringing a brief light.
"Don't worry," she whispered.
"He won't," Wes replied, though his voice was as choked as Angel's had been. "The spell…it turns back the clock. We'll…everything will be okay."
The pungent fragrance of licorice and dying embers drifted into the night sky, hovering over the assembled champions, an impenetrable fog. Cordelia walked slowly around Buffy's prone figure, sprinkling a powdery mixture. Behind them, Wesley opened the spell book, sliding a hand beneath the spine to keep the text propped open. He read slowly and methodically, sounding out the words he did not know before speaking them aloud. As he read, Cordelia continued to encircle the pair of heroes, salting the Slayer's body with a mixture of ingredients.
Nos adveho pro vos , vox of vita quod nex , quod scisco ut vos ostendo sum vicis. Take animus illae tener mulier quod transporto is tergum in vestri folded manuum. Inhio quod servo is valde donum , servo suus usquequaque tutus. Averto clock ut vicis of suus nex quod servo suus tutus ex vita.
Fragments of the fading day crept beneath Buffy's falling eyelids. Within her psyche, imprinted on her brain, Angel's eternal face comforted and kept her safe. The warmth in the earth beneath her began to recede, taking with it the movement of oxygenated blood through veins and arteries. Life's hands wrapped around either side of her throat, choking out the air that might invade her flat and empty lungs. The tips of her fingers began to tingle and then go numb and cold.
"Are you still there?" Buffy gasped, though her body was unresponsive. Was she even moving, speaking, breathing? "Please, please don't leave me alone!"
"Buffy!" Angel barked, holding her hand tighter, his fingertips pushed tightly against her wrist. The body beneath them had become rigid, as though rigor mortis had set in instantaneously. The nostrils took in no breath, the lips faded to a dull, pathetic gray. Beneath the corpse, hardly a shadow of the girl it had once held, the ground began to melt. A pool of rippling mud and darkness formed beneath her. Choppy waves broke out along the surface, capturing the Slayer and dragging her down into the rotting earth.
"Don't leave me…"
Shaking erupted over every pore of his skin, throwing him to the ground, seizing every ounce of pathetic, half-hearted strength. Gentle hands slid over his back, and tear drops soaked into the rustling silk shirt that hung loose on his backside. A few feet away, the spell book fell uselessly from Wesley's hands, fluttering the pages as it rustled through the air and bounced onto the dirt.
"She's no longer suffering," Cordelia whispered through a spell of tears.
"The Powers will take care of her," Wesley added, pulling his glasses away from his face to rub the stained lenses with his shirt.
"Goodbye."
"Osiris, release her!" Xander, Anya, and Tara looked on, fear spread across their darkened faces. Beside them, enraptured by a strange crimson hue, Willow resumed her incantation. Her breath heaved raggedly from her lips as she wove through the spell, reaching out to the keepers of the dead. Around them, the carefully prepared gravesite broke out into chaos. The Buffy Bot, a protection against the creatures of the Hell Mouth, scurried into view, and in her wake she brought the chaos of demons on motorcycles.
"Willow!" Tara screamed as the riders ravaged the burial site, rolling forcefully over a small ceramic urn.
"No!" Willow cried breathlessly, falling helplessly to the damp grass as the reddish light dissipated.
"You said it yourself, Slayer. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it."
"Did it work?"
"I'm sorry."
And deep within the earth, six feet below the surface, a pair of frightened green eyes opened with a start. On her dry lips, there hung a single word.
"Angel…"