Although her legs and hips were hurting, she stood and waited. Night had fallen and John was the last with her. In one of the odd little distractions that came at times like this, it was amazed her that her grandchild was thirty years old. John was sweet. He stood with her and held her arm. It was a testament to her increasing frailty that she was glad of it. Frailty, of course, being a relative term; she was probably about as strong as John. When she told him to leave but he refused at first. It was beyond him to leave an eighty three year old woman alone as night fell in a cemetery. He took after Xander.

"Grandma Harris," he said plaintively, "you have to come with me. You need to eat and everyone's waiting."

"Go," Buffy said. "Tell them not to wait. I'll be along. I can still drive just fine."

John had quirked a sad little smile, "Pop always said you never could drive."

"Pop said a lot and he was usually right but I can drive well enough to get me home," Buffy responded. She thought that she would have to remember to look right for traffic. Xander had finally lost his license and for years she had practically never driven without him in the car. He looked right from the passenger side and told her if it was clear. It was one more dependency; one more thing to get used to doing alone. They kept adding up and she wondered if they would ever stop.

"Let's go, Grandma," he said again. He took her arm and tried to urge her along.

Buffy pulled her arm away. "No, Johnny," she said, giving him his childhood name unconsciously, "I have to wait."

"Why?"

"Someone else will be here," Buffy said, and she was certain of it. "I have to wait."

"Who," he asked, growing aggravated, "and why didn't they come before?"

"You don't know her," Buffy had answered. "She'll be here."

"This is silly, Grandma! I am not going to leave you standing alone in a graveyard at night."

She had laughed a bit, cynically, before she turned and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "You are your Grandfather reborn," she said. "Go away and leave an old woman alone, please. I'll be fine."

He had finally left. That was an hour ago and Buffy simply stood and waited, shifting uncomfortably. "He waited in his car," a voice had finally said. "So I waited too."

"I knew you would come," Buffy said. She turned and looked at Willow. It should have been surprising but wasn't that Willow was still the young woman she had been sixty years before. Buffy knew a little about magic and wondered what the price of her agelessness had been and what had prompted her to pay it. She took Buffy's hand and arm, subtly supporting her and they turned to look at the grave.

"Alexander Harris," Willow read softly, "Beloved Husband and Father." After a pause, she said, "It should say more."

Buffy nodded. "It should," she said.

"He saved me, "Willow said, "when we were kids, on that hill when Tara died. He saved me time and time again."

"Could you have saved him?" Buffy asked. She looked hard at Willow, "Could you have made him well? Or young, like you?"

"I could have," Willow said.

"I remember when my Mother was dying," Buffy said, "and you said that couldn't be done."

"I am not now what I was then," Willow said. "I came to see him in the hospital."

Buffy looked surprised, "I didn't know," she said.

"I shouldn't have," Willow replied, "but it was him. You were asleep in the waiting room. I had to watch for a long time before he was alone. He looked so small and weak. He was so sick and he was hurting."

"He never told me how bad it got. He tried not to worry me," Buffy said. "Worry me," she repeated bitterly.

"I knew I shouldn't have offered," Willow went on, "but I couldn't stand it. I told him I could fix him. I could have made him well. I could have made him strong or young. There would have been a price and I would have paid it so he didn't have to."

Buffy flinched and felt her stomach lurch. He could have been saved. He could have come back to her and she wouldn't have to face passing time alone as years went by. She thought she had cried herself out but she gasped and struggled for a moment to breath, and the tears started again. "He choose to leave me?"

"He was wiser then you and I," Willow said. "He said that he had lived a man's good life. He wanted to die a man's good death."

"That selfish bastard," Buffy choked out through her tears.

"No, Buffy," Willow said. "He said that he wanted more then anything to stay a little longer. He knew it would be wrong. He spent years walking among gods and heroes and he remained quintessentially human. That's what beings like you and I are allowed to exist for, to defend that. He knew what it meant to be human because he had seen what it meant not to be. To be human is to die and there is nothing finer in the world to be."

"He could have lived and he choose to die," Buffy said, still not believing it, "Oh, God, I'm going to be sick. Why are you telling me this?"

"I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have. I can make you forget, if you want," Willow said. Buffy grasped at the thought. She truly didn't want to know this. Buffy squared her shoulders and stood straighter. She could think only of the fact that her husband, who was central to her soul and so inextricably tied into everything she was had made the decision to leave. It could be taken away and she wouldn't know this terrible thing. This ugly memory went with many others that weren't sweet to recall. The time they almost divorced was painful to think of, or the time he had been in the accident that finally taken his right to drive and nearly killed him, or when Mary had been so sick that the doctors had all but told them to give up hope.

Xander hadn't given up hope, even when Buffy herself had, in the quiet of her soul begun to say goodbye to her baby girl. Xander had said that sometimes hope was all you've got. He had said things like that a lot; more importantly, he had lived that way. She couldn't reconcile the two things. How could he live so optimistically and then let it all go? Had even he, in the end, lost hope?

Willow silently held the elderly woman she had once known. No one could claim they were friends now. Too many years had passed and Willow was too far gone on strange paths. All they had were shared experiences and secrets. She waited, certain that Buffy would make the right decision.

Buffy didn't understand his decision and she resented him for it, but somewhere in it there must be light and hope. Xander always moved towards the light, even when he wasn't aware of it. As to Willow's offer, Buffy knew the answer. While she didn't understand, her faith in him and his love for her was enough. Someday, she would understand. Someday, she knew, she could ask him. Better then any other mortal who ever lived, she knew. "No," Buffy said, "I don't want you to take it away. Memory is all I have of him for now and I will not give up any of those."

"That's good, Buffy," Willow said. In the ensuing silence, Willow closed her eyes and listened. Songs from distant Earths passed through her and she ignored them; screams echoed through endless vaults and she turned away, listening hard for one small voice, and she heard it. Somewhere very far away, so far that even her consummate power could find him only because it was so well known and loved a voice, Xander waited in, perhaps created, a pool of light in an endless maelstrom.

Buffy sighed and wiped at her eyes, feeling every moment of her age. "Life goes on," she said.

Willow nodded, "Everything goes on."

"I'm not going to invite you to meet my family," Buffy said, "it would be too much to explain." Buffy did not add that and if Willow had cared she would have come sooner.

"I understand, "Willow said. She turned to face the elder slayer. "I don't think we'll ever see each other again," she said.

Buffy nodded. She briefly clasped Willow's young, firm hand with her own withered one. "Goodbye, Will," she said.

"He's happy, you know," Willow said.

"I know," Buffy said. She turned and for a moment touched Xander's tombstone, "I love you," she whispered. Without speaking again, she walked away.

Willow watched an old woman who had once been the greatest of champions move slowly through the cemetery, going back to where she belonged with family and friends and a load of grief.

Something dark moved somewhere in the world and it tugged at the edges of her mind, creeping slow and silent into her vast awareness. With an act of will she floated slowly into the air and with a twinkling like a star, she vanished.