Drain Brameged Inc. Proudly presents,
A Mad-Hamlet Production

Janus was Healed

EMail: Mad-Hamlet@usa.net

Disclaimer: All this belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Inc. (Grrr...arrgh)

Xander and Giles wave to us one last time before rounding the corner of what was left of the campus pub. That is, Xander waves, and keeps waving, and waving, and waving, till Giles's hand snakes back, grabs Xander by the collar and pulls him out of my sight. I smile at my oldest friend's antics. He's a pain sometimes, but I love him to death. Once around the comer Buffy sinks back onto her haunches. She sniffs the air a few times and gestures emphatically at the corner Xander just vacated.

"Boy silly." She grunts still pushing at the air in front of her.

I nod to myself, still smiling. "Yeap." I drawl, " We love him anyway though."

I cast a glance in the Slayer's direction, that being mostly down. She's not paying any attention to me; a fallen leaf is distracting her. She sniffs at the ground around the leaf a few times before raising her head up to look at me, looking at her.

"Leaf smell strange." Buffy explains. She has the leaf pinned to the earth underneath one hand and her other drawn back into a fist. She looks ready to give the leaf a good thrashing should it do anything foolish.

I try not to snicker.

"Tell you what Buffy," I say crouching down myself so we're more eye to eye. "Since I highly doubt that leaf will rise from the dead to threaten the innocent, what say we let it rest in peace and head home. I'm bushed."

A cool evening breeze springs up, I sniff a few times, Buffy follows suit. The fire was put out long ago, so why do I smell...oh, cause I smell.

"And I need a shower," I finish lamely.

Buffy glances back at the leaf, deathblow still poised, then back to me, and back to the leaf one last time. She stays like that for a few seconds, then shrugs her shoulders. "Willow want."

"Good," I mutter, starting to stand back up. "Glad that's settled."

"DOINK!" Buffy suddenly exclaims loudly and pokes me in the center of my forehead.Being in a crouching position on the balls of my feet I easily lose my balance and fall onto my butt.

"Hey!" I shout and scramble to my feet. Buffy tears off down the street laughing...I think?

I only find it mildly disturbing that she's running on all fours rather than upright.

"Not catch Buffy!" She loudly taunts me.

"Wanna bet?" I growl and take off after her.

One of these days I have to have my head examined. She's the Slayer for goodness sake! Of course she could outrun me. If I glued her feet to the ground she could probably still outrun me. Wait, no that doesn't make sense, maybe if she took off her shoes, provided I glued her actual shoes to the floor and not her literal feet. Yeah, that works.

All thing considered though she didn't actually outrun me. To be outrun requires that you see the person running away from you. I didn't. She was, Buffy just went POOF! Gone!

Oxygen deprivation, that has got to be the only answer. I slump gratefully onto a nearby bench. I had been chasing Cave-Buffy for three blocks. She's probably not even winded and here I am gasping for breath. Where the heck is she anyway? She disappeared around a corner and I haven't seen her since; not that I'm worried or anything. I'll just catch my breath, should only take three or four hours, and head back to the dorms.

Me feet are complaining loudly about how much they don't like being overused. With all the running away from nasties you think they'd be more willing. Still, this is nice spot. Lots of streetlights keep the most of the night at bay, though I'm not naive enough to believe that they offer any form of protection. It's kinda sad really. Behind me is the park I used to in when I was younger. So full of trees to play on, and trails to run. I didn't actually climb the trees. Xander did that. I can remember him daring me to climb the iron fence that rings the park. I never did even though it's still there today. I look at the tall, metal spikes. They look...um...pretty spiky.

I used to think it was so safe and warm in the park. All the time. Now I know better though; it is safe and warm enough, in daylight.

"Willow play!" Buffy announces her presence by popping up from behind the backrest of the park bench and practically shouting in my ear. I react accordingly.

I scream at the top of my lungs.

Buffy lurches backward with a startled shriek of her own at my reaction and I whirl around, one hand clasped to my chest, glaring fiercely at Buffy. She's sprawled backwards, resting her weight on her elbow and staring up at me open mouthed.

"Don't do that!" I admonish her fiercely, shaking a finger in her face.

"Buffy!" I continue to say glaring at her. "You nearly gave me a heart attack, that wasn't very nice."

Buffy starts making hiccupping sounds once or twice and I can't help but stare a little as her eyes begin to tear up. She rolls over on her side and covers her face with her hands and begins to cry.

"Shh..shhh.." I whisper quietly, kneeling down and gathering her in my arms. She tries to pull away a bit but I don't let her. "Hush, you're okay." I whisper in her ear, rocking her back and forth. "You're okay. We're okay. Everything's okay. Shhh..."

Buffy looks up at me, her eyes, shimmering in the light... They seem so innocent. Almost as if everything that has happened to her, fires, demons, hunts and demons, like none of those ever happened. She looks like a child who has just been given their first spanking. Sure in their belief they are sure they are the worst, most miserable, wretched sinners, in the whole of creation. But she's not and I'm not going to let her think that for a second longer. And on a second note, if I ever have children I am not going to spank them.

"Willow," she opens and closes her mouth a few times, she's searching for the right words, and considering that her vocabulary is a lot less than it was a few hours ago, it's probably a lot harder than it used to be. That's alright though, I'm patient, I can wait.

"Willow," she repeats starting her sentence over. "Still like Buffy?"

"Of course." I murmur pulling her close for another hug. "I'll always like you."

That's the problems with words, 'like', 'admire', and others are so basic, so commonly said and repeated. I..I don't feel that way about Buffy, I feel more. Not sure how, just more. I mean, there's family and other friends..even ..well..Oz. But behind all this, is her. My feelings for her, she's needed by me... she's so needed. Which means I'm needy but I'm not greedy in my needy..er.. She's critical to me. How do I... Well. I'm not sure how I explain this to her. Even if she was..er..fully available, y'know..all functioning I don't think I could really tell her how I feel. I can't even tell myself how I feel! Maybe now...with simple things being so important to her..maybe I can now. Tell her I mean. And me.

"I like you Buffy," I repeat nudging her chin with the tip of my finger so she has to keep looking up at me. "I'll... we'll always be together."

Her eyes are still shimmering in the lackluster light of an overhead streetlamp. "To..geth..er?" She pieces the word together slowly, brow scrunched in concentration.

"Yes." I take her hand in mine and gently roll the fingers down one by one until only her index finger is still pointing, then, I curl my own fingers so I too am pointing.

"You," I say calmly, inside I'm a shivering whirl of nerves, something big is happening here. I'm not sure what...but it's going to change a lot...and I want it to. I point my finger at her, its tip a whisper away from her heart, "And me," then guiding her own hand with my free one I lead her in pointing at me. "Together," I line up our pointing fingers and slowly ease my index finger next to her and finally curl it around hers. "Forever. See?"

Again I meet her eyes with mine and now her eyes are not just shimmering, but tears, fresh ones, slide down her dirty cheeks leaving tracks in the ash covering her face. Her lower lip trembles and I watch silently as her throat works, swallowing a few times. The cool night air suddenly becomes very heavy.

"Buffy..." she says in a raspy voice. She swallows once more and tries again. "Buffy loves you."

I think I'm about to cry any second now. Without another word she bends down quickly and brushes her lips across where our two fingers are intertwined. I wanted to show her, and now I'm the one being shown.

"I.." I too need to swallow to choke down a sob. "I love you too Bu-"

Someone screams.

My arms feel suddenly cool and empty. Buffy's gone. She pulls herself out of my hug, and is over the fence and lost in the dark before I can even realize it. One minute we were snuggly and now we're...not.

I awkwardly scramble to my feet and clamber over the pointy black metal spikes (Ha! Xander would be proud.). I crash through bushes and dodge frantically around trees. There! I can hear...growling?

I run around a large clump of bushes and...

Buffy is crouched at the base of a small incline in the cemetery. She's on all fours and her back is arched. It's like she's a cat, even her matted hair seems to stand up... highlighted by the moonlight, I can hear a low, feral growling coming from the back of her throat and she's staring balefully up the gently sloping black grass.

Standing on top of the rise, looking like people playing some nightmarish form of 'King of the Hill' stand three vampires. By their posture I can tell they are not newly risen. They give off a sense of confidence, and power. My heart catches in my throat as I realize something that I normally wouldn't find so chilling. They look, most ominous of all, patient.

The one closest to us seems most lethal, his arm is outstretched and dangling from his talons is the body of ..oh god.. it looks like a girl. She couldn't be more than fifteen. He stares down at us with a sense of mild disinterest before carefully and with extreme deliberation turns his back to us, with a flick of his wrist he sends the body tumbling down the hill toward where Buffy and I are. A rolling, flopping, flapping disjointed empty husk of limbs and meat.

Buffy starts really snarling now, pacing back on forth, still on all fours, behind the girl's body. Her eyes never leave the vampires standing a bit higher up the hill. Her teeth are bared and there's this deep rumble echoing from her chest. It's...painful somehow to witness.

The vampires watch us, I can see them eyeing each other but they look amused. One of them even snickers, his arms crossed over his chest. Why should they be worried? She has no stakes, no holy water, no nothing. Just her.. just her. If anything we should be running but I won't leave her and I doubt very much I could get her to leave with me. I'd probably have an easier time commanding the tides.

The Leader, I guess, still has his back to us. He knows who Buffy is. That's almost impossible for a vampire not to know the Slayer lives in Sunnydale. He doesn't seem worried though. Oh God.

Oh God!

"Kill them." His soft purr echoes down to me.

The two vampires on either side blur as they come hurtling down the slope toward us.

They don't snarl and growl as they advance. Maybe they're too experienced, too old, or just confidant enough not to sound bestial.

It could be because they're already dust.

Buffy kills them.

I've never seen her move so fast.

One second she's crouched at the edge of the hill and then she too just...blurs.

I see her pounce on the closest one, grab it's arm as it tries to claw her open. She grips its wrist and yanks, nearly tearing its limb off, I hear the crack of bone, but that's all I hear because it doesn't have time to scream. Buffy drives her hand into the soft tissue underneath the armpit and her hand comes bursting out its other side gripping the thing's heart. Yanking her hand free she jumps up and uses the already dead vampire as a springboard before it can turn to ash, sending her hurtling at the other one almost on top of her.

A flying tackle clotheslines the other and before it can regain its footing she is on top of it, clawing, biting, and yowling. Her hands blur as they burrow into its chest, it has time to scream though. Once. Dry cracking of ribs being pried apart then a moist sucking sound as Buffy rips its dead heart free.

This all happens in under a second.

I think.

It is one of the goriest things I have ever seen and yet I am strongly untouched.

So, it seems, is the leader.

"They were children." He sneers down at where Buffy is again crouching. The body of her recent kill having blown away moments before.

His posture, the way he's resting his chin on the knuckles of one hand, with his other hand providing a resting place for his elbow, screams sophistication and age old manners. Or someone who overdosed on classic vampire movies. I'm sure Buffy would say something to that effect. If she were Buffy. Which she isn't.

She isn't Buffy anymore. I mean she is, but... I ..don't know... This is new. I should be scared, I think. I should be scared and nervous because I don't know her any more. I should be terrified. But I'm not, I don't think I am.

"She was a snack." The leader indicates with his chin to the body still at my feet. "You will be the main course, Slayer. My piece de la resistance!"

Oh brother.

"And after I am through draining you dry and dismembering your corpse, I'll eat your little friend too." He says pointing at me with one delicate, yet lethal looking talon.

And Buffy speaks. At least, I think it's Buffy. I've never heard this voice before, it's guttural and rasping. More beast than human.

"No friends." She grunts and, still on all fours, takes a step toward him. Even walking like an animal Buffy has such grace. Even, maybe even more than when walking upright.

"No family." A rattle deep in her throat. Like her throat is no longer sophisticated enough to make the proper sounds for speech and she's having to force it.

"No help." Another step.

"Just the kill!"

He smirks, looking faintly amused. "Your's maybe." He laughs gently. "Come then Slayer, let us do baaaARGHH!!"

I guess Buffy got bored.

Buffy would have listened to what he had to say. Buffy would have made some snappy comeback before flashing the vampire a dazzling smile. Buffy would have strode forward, fearlessly to do battle against her enemy. But this thing isn't her enemy, it's her prey.

She smashes her forehead into its nose then she's raking her nails across its face. It's dark and they're so far away and yet I can see everything. All of it. His eyes being pierced by her fingers, her teeth flashing in the moonlight. I can hear her snarls, and his screams.

He sounds like a pig. A pig being butchered. Sooeee little piggy.

No no no no no, couldn't have thought that, this is wrong, she shouldn't be doing it this way. She shouldn't be sinking her teeth into the vampires neck, I shouldn't be seeing the blood leaking around her teeth and her throat working convulsively, she must have swallowed some of it. She shouldn't be doing this, killing this way. I..I..I shouldn't be enjoying this.

She has her teeth locked around it's throat still, her jaw muscles standing out as she violently shakes her head back and forth. Her arms are wrapped around it's head and her feet pushing against its chest. She's trying to..trying to...

I'm in a field of grass and flowers. It's a warm, sunny, summer day. I'm a child again. Xander, also a child, is standing in front of me holding a dandelion under my chin.

"You like butter!" He proclaims.

I nod smiling up at him. "Yep." I say.

"Watch this." He says. He hooks his thumb right underneath the flower, where the stem and the blossom meet.

"Mama had a baby," He intones almost seriously. "And it's HEAD popped off!"

When he says 'Head' his thumb snaps upwards tearing off the poor dandelion blossom, I watch it fly into the air and begin to fall back, a graceful, dead arc. And I'm running home, crying. Crying about how Xander killed a baby.

And I'm in the park again, the memory releasing me. The vampire's talons shredded the back of Buffy's shirt, but its strength is gone. Its hands hang limp at its sides. I see the muscles of Buffy's back tense and ripple underneath her flesh. I hear her feral growling, and the cracking of vertebrae. The Vampires screams are now a wet, bubbly gurgling.

"Mama had a baby." I whisper to myself.

Buffy heaves again, there's a sound of...stuff..tearing. Just stuff, nothing human or living or something with feelings. Stuff, plain, simple stuff is tearing.

"And it's head popped off." This time I don't cry.

In the moonlight the arcing blood looks black, who knows, maybe it was old enough to be black. But in midair it disintegrates into night blown ash as he died. His head doesn't even make it to the ground before blowing away in the wind.

It's over. I take a deep breath and try to ignore the trembling in my knees.

What I have just seen... get a grip Rosenberg... was the ..it..really just really. So how come I'm not all shocked or, or numb? My feet are here, not cold either. The night doesn't seem any more ominous or, or, foreboding. It's just night. A night with Primal Buffy.

Now the only king of the hill is Buffy. Still crouching on all fours, head flung back, mouth open, eyes staring at the moon. Covered in blood. She looks ... so ugly and..and feral. Like some beast, a killing machine honed by nature over the course of eons. Hair matted down with gore, face bathed in the stuff.

She's beautiful.

Peeling back her lips in a growing feral snarl, she tilts back her head and howls.

I can't move. I can't feel or think or hear. But I can see and I can see in my mind over and over again what she just did. She just butchered them. They were strong, and powerful and old. She was just one and she didn't have any weapons! Yet she just tore them apart like...nothing!

She enjoyed it too.

And I don't care.

It wasn't too much, or too violent or primal or anything. Maybe others would think so. Xander would be devastated. It takes a lot to make Xander panic but... He'd be crazy. Shouting and fierce. His winsome quirks crushed under a wave of fear. He'd be afraid of Buffy. I..I wouldn't be. I'm not. Giles probably would be cleaning his glasses furiously, give her some space maybe. Read a few books. Than, after some time, try and get her to talk about it. Something Buffy, even when she fully is Buffy, hates to do with a passion.

But I know I don't care. Because...because....because I...

She's stopped screaming, howling, whatever.

Buffy's staring at her hands now. Even though the vamps themselves were dusted the blood on her flesh remains. She's staring at her hands now, at the blood running over her fingers, between the cracks in her skin, coating her arms up to the elbows. She turns her hands this way and that, underneath the light of the moon, studying the crimson liquid hugging her hands close like a second skin. Then tentatively she touches her face, the skin around her lips and chin, her finger slide over the flesh down to the base of her neck. She would leave red streaks on her face from the liquid coating her fingertips, if the entire bottom of her face wasn't already drenched in blood.

She runs the edges of her fingers in the sticky mess that coats her jawline and pulls her hands away and then she just stares curiously at the fresh covering of blood on her fingers. Then her head slowly lifts and her eyes meet mine.

Buffy's in there.

Behind the blood and dirt and ash.

Buffy's in there.

I almost..almost take a step backwards. Her eyes are so sad. Even from the base of the small hill I can see them. Again covered in a sheen of unused tears, her lips involuntarily beginning to turn downward, I see a single tear curve gently over the slope of her cheek and get lost in the red and black muck of ashes and blood on her face.

"Willow?" Buffy chokes out. Her hands begin to paw at the air in front of her helplessly, like trying to fend off something.

"Willow...see?" She asks. The gentle lilt of her voice has returned. The guttural, snapping beast voice is gone, along with its rage and protection. I can see what's happening..I can see it and can't do anything to stop it.

My own vision is getting blurry, hot streaks run down my face, and I think I have to blow my nose.

Buffy has placed her hands on the ground. Her body language..all the strength has seeped out of her, her shoulders are slumped, the wild vitality that drove her is gone so her matted hair hangs loose and unkempt, even more so than before. Only her eyes, her terrible, sad eyes still retain any sense of life.

"Willow, Willow see Buffy?" She asks again, her voice is desperate. She wants me to say no, no that I didn't see anything, that I didn't witness her recent slaughter and that I didn't see, ultimately, what a slayer is. I want to say no. With all my heart I want to smile and deny I saw anything. To make everything go away that probably is going to hurt her.

I nod. I nod and damn myself the entire time doing so. A whole whopping half second.

With an inarticulate scream she turns and rushes down the other side of the hill and is lost to the dark seconds later.

"Buffy!" I shout in vain. "Buffy come back! Please!"

I move to run after her only at the last second noticing the body still sprawled out in front of me. The unknown girl's eyes are open, staring sightlessly at the black heavens. Her throat was torn open, I can see hints of white bone of expose spinal tissue. This wasn't a feeding, this was fun. An evening out for them.

I shake my head and with a brief silent prayer step over her body without a backward glance. I can't do anything for the dead, but I can do something for the living.

For the second time this night my heart is ready to explode. Again blue spots swim in front of my vision and I'm gasping for breath, lurching down this dark path through the woods but now I cannot stop. Cannot take a moment to catch my breath because now someone needs me. She needs me.

I go on.

I can't stand up any more. My legs feel like rubber, loose hot rubber that's melting by the side of overcooked pavement. Extreme example but accurate. Buffy, where are you? I need to find you, not just for you you stupid slayer for me. I don't know..I don't now I don't know how or why but I need you. To...to tell you...to ... to SOMETHING! Where the hell are you!!

I want to cry in frustration but as I'm busy greedily sucking in all the air I can, as fast as I can, I don't have that option. I try and be quiet, to listen but aside from my own great attempts to stabilize the oxygen levels in my blood I hear nothing. Which is not surprising, Buffy's the hunter, not me.

Buffy...

If only there were a way to find her, like..magic.....or.......something.

Boy do I feel stupid. I smack the heel of my hand into my forehead, doesn't make me feel any smarter but at least it expresses my self disgust nicely. Of course there's magic. Heellooo! Practicing Witch here. Sheesh.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath or five, try to find myself, calm all the whirling feelings rushing around my heart and mind, I don't have time to chant the chants and make the proper gestures of supplication or whatever's. I have to find her.

"Find her." I say aloud and when I open my eyes I see a small blue spark floating in the air in front of me. It drifts in a lazy figure eight pattern in the air, waiting for my instructions, even though I just said 'find her'.

I follow it's drifting path with my eyes for a few seconds, it is rather lovely, a soft blue glow in this dark wood. But I can't afford to be distracted.

I take a deep breath and let it out carefully. "Take me to Buffy." I say clearly.

The small light bobs in midair as if acknowledging my command and zips quickly over my shoulder. "Hey!" I shout after it scrambling to keep up. "Slow down!"

I impatiently tug at where my skirt has snagged on a bramble. I don't have the time or inclination, nice dress or not nice dress be damned. The material tears before the thorns let me free but I don't care. My guide is bobbing in the air in front of me, zipping around with similar impatience to my own.

I push aside the last few branches still stubbornly clinging to my clothing and find myself in a small clearing. In the center of the clearing is a monstrous oak. Its trunk must be four feet wide at the base; its long heavy branches disappear into shadow far over my head, and its canopy blocks out the sky with a darkness deeper than the night around us both. It is around the trunk of this tree the guide is furiously spinning.

Stepping closer to the great tree I gently place my hand on it the rough bark. I think I can feel the gentle and ancient thrumming of a heart within, but what's actually there is separated by a very thin line from what I probably want to be there. "Thank you," I whisper to the still spinning ball of light. "You can go."

Without hesitation the guide vanishes, no wink or glimmer or sound, one minute its soft glowing body is there, and the next it is not. Illumination so light that its absence is not noticed by the dark, dark I am now trying to penetrate with my eyes. I tilt my neck up and gaze into the darkness of twisting branches and black leaves. Very little moonlight filters through the gently shifting canopy, it's dark, all dark...there.

The main body of the trunk forks about ten feet off the ground and the left branch forks again five feet further up. It is there I can see her. A slightly lighter patch of shadows, hunched over behind the few tiny sapling branches breaking off from the main body. Through their leaves I can see slight glimmers of light reflecting of her eyes.

"Buffy?" I call up to her gently. "Buffy please come down."

The patch of shadow that I see as her slinks down behind the darker shades, hiding, trying to not be seen but I do see, and I do still see her eyes.

I hold out my hands, palm up, being sure they can see they're empty. An odd gesture but I can't think of anything else. "Please? Down here? Can we talk?"

"You see." She grunts down to me.

"Yes. Yes I saw." I reply, my voice is soft, quiet, more like I'm whispering to the air beside me than having a conversation but I know she can hear me.

"Not Buffy." She whimpers. "Willow not see Buffy. See Slayer. See Slayer, not Buffy!" She whimpers in her throat and the sound lances my heart.

A ray of moonlight pierces the canopy of leaves and highlights her for a brief moment before the cloud cover washes the illumination away. Her arms are wrapped around the branch in a death grip, her fingers still caked with blood and there are hand prints all over the tree.

"That not Buffy." She shakes her head..I think. "That not...that no...not me!"

I can hear the words she's not saying, she's begging me, pleading with me to tell her that she's right, what she was back there, in the park, a hunting, feral, killing machine, a machine yes, that that wasn't her. Something else maybe, born of magic or..the moon..or anything else but not her.

But I can't lie to her, not to her. She has to know that...that...she is The Slayer, and that she is Buffy, that Buffy is The Slayer. .. and..that the Slayer is Buffy ..and..now I'm confused.

Darn.

"Yes." I try again. "Yes that was you-"

"No!" She screams down at me. "No say! Bad speak! Bad speak! You friend! Say you smell nice! Like! Buffy like! Not Buffy slayer! Not Buffy!!"

I let the echoes of her shriek die away before replying.

"It's okay though." I smile up at her, I try to smile at any rate, not having a mirror I'm not sure how good the effort is but she doesn't bolt so I'm thinking it looks good enough. "It's okay that you're The Slayer, you have to be. I..I don't mind that you're The Slayer."

I can see her gazing down at me. Just from the way what little light reflects in her eyes I know that she's furious. I never wanted to be on the receiving end of Buffy's anger. It hurts me, like ..on the inside, I've seen her be angry at others. She's so quiet and calm when she's really angry. The energy just becomes so focused, and tight, and all she does is pour out this laser of rage at the person responsible. And she's doing that to me now and I feel like curling up and blowing away.

I hold my hand up, trying to block her gaze, I turn my head away but I'm still feeling it pushing through me and it hurts. It hurts so bad... I'd do anything to make her stop, anything at all.

Except lie to her.

"Please stop." I say, the gorge rises in my throat and I have to swallow it back down. "Please stop Buffy." I'm whispering now. "I don't want to hurt you. I just want you to understand."

"Stand what?" She hisses down at me from the trees. "Stand you say hurt to Buffy? Stand you say Buffy monster? Know name you. Not Willow no. Not Willow. Not friend. Name is Be..betr..Backstabber!"

I sob now, choking, can't breathe, throat closed off with air trying to get in with cries trying to come out. "LIAR!" I scream up at her. Screaming is good, well no it's not cause screaming means anger and anger is bad but at least I can breathe.

"You...you..stupid....stupid proud...stupid person!" I yell. "I don't care! Don't you get it? I don't care. I don't care, I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!! I don't care what you do or what you are because everything that falls in that category is good enough! You ...laugh..and you..you..uh..love and you do what has to be done. And sometimes that means having to do bad things, bad, terrible, violent things and you try and put that under 'slayer stuff' so it doesn't touch who you think you are!"

My fists are now clenched by my sides, my nails are digging into my palms, I can't see her anymore, shape, shadows, eyes, nothing just a black blur, too many tears and water and salt. Funny, cave slayer seemed so amusing if somewhat disturbing and now it's dissolved into tears and shouts.

I realize this, but I keep screaming at her anyway.

"But it's not true!" I shake my finger in what I remember as being in her general direction. "You are what you are and it doesn't matter to me! You are...you ARE the Slayer. So what? You used your hands tonight? You think I'm repulsed? Sickened? That I'd leave you? How DARE you think so poorly of me...you poor...stupid..."

I whip my head around, squeezing the palms of my hands to my eyes, hot tears squeezing around dirty skin. "God damnit Buffy, don't you get how much I don't care? Those...murderous, hateful things killed that girl, they didn't just do it to survive, they hurt her... you didn't see her... I did. And you stopped them, you made sure they'd never do it again and I don't mind about the means of measure. Maybe that's morally deficient, or dangerous ethically and you probably can't grasp all these big multisyblic words what with you being a cro-magnon but you'll probably understand this,"

I take a deep breath. "I. Don't. CARE!"

The effort of all this screaming, coupled in with my exhaustive state catches up with me and I slump against the tree, resting my forearm across the trunk and my forehead on my arm. "I don't care Buffy," I breathe quietly. "I don't care because.... because...."

"'cause?" Her voice drifts down from the trees, gently, soft, and painfully vulnerable.

Ever had anything 'click' into place? Where all there was were many branches and paths writhing about in your mind like an overactive bramble forest in the night; all of a sudden the one factor comes in and they, these thoughts and feelings, just lay themselves out in neat and orderly rows? It's like that only more so. Now I see everything in my life and their separate factors and values to me. What matters, and what doesn't in very simple terms that are crystal clear.

My parents? Family? They're there but at a rudimentary level, I wouldn't want to see them hurt but... The Scoobies. They hold the place in my life where I suppose most would class family, at least those who were not from Sunnydale. Giles, Xander, everyone I've ever known or cared about suddenly are mapped out in mind and heart, I know exactly where they stand and what they mean to me, to Willow Rosenberg. It's..a little discomforting actually. I realize that people I should care for I don't...that hurts. But Buffy? What do I learn about her?

I slump to my knees, still resting my head on the side of oak.

"Because I love you Buffy."

I say it without preamble or recognition of the accomplishment. I say it because it has to be said and because it's true. All the others whirl around my life, some closer to the middle, the center, others along the edges. But she..she is the center.

Everything is quiet for a while.

There's a small rustle, a sound of someone landing from a fifteen foot jump, since they're not screaming in pain from a broken leg I presume it's Buffy.

I can hear her taking cautious steps closer to me, based on the number of the sounds I'm guessing she's still walking on all fours. I sigh, come the morning if she's still doing that I'm buying a leash.

Her breath is on my neck. Warm air course over my throat, it's not smooth though, her breath come in shuddering gasps.

I lean against the tree for a moment longer before turning to look at her. She flinches away like a startled animal.

"I don't care." I whisper. Throat hurts, whispering probably a necessity, not just a choice. I reach out and stroke her cheek gently. Not quite dry and sticky blood covers my hand but that's okay, I can feel her skin underneath. "I really don't care Buffy."

She sits back on her...well..in that position, haunches would be the correct term I suppose..and just lets me stroke her face slowly and gently, not looking away from me, not even blinking.

"Not friend love?" She finally asks, cocking her head to the side. "Love love?"

I nod slowly, not removing my hand from where it is gently stroking her face. "I'm afraid so." I reply.

She nods too.

Then slowly stands up on her two feet. Cancel the leash idea. She takes a step toward me hesitantly, than another and another before sinking back down on her butt. She leans forward and sniffs at me gently.

"Girl smell nice." She finally announces.

Then she reaches up, and cups my face, lifts her head up to mine and kisses me.

And as the the kiss deepens and I fall into the sensations, I'm aware of the sticky blood coating her face being smeared all over my own face and lips; that I can taste it. That her hands, now hanging onto my shoulders with the strength of someone recently saved, are going to leave stains that will never come out.

But that's okay.

Because I don't care.