1. The library was sweet and still. Everyone was at home, asleep in their beds. Or so she believed. She would find out later that Giles stopped by Jenny Calendar’s grave; a pilgrim bringing flowers and tears, that Willow’s hymen tore just as the bells tolled five O’clock, that Faith and the Mayor lay together in a dark hospital bed and dreamt of snakes, that her Mother baked a pie and it burned, filling the house with the smell of ash.
She would never know what Xander did.
But her.
She reeked of blood, her own, his, poisonous sweat. She wore leather pants the color of oxblood. Her mouth felt full of blood, for soon it would be unkissed, unloved. And so she made him make her into his for one last time. One last hurrah. He owed her. She wept, trying to believe that.
Angel fucked her with his fingers, as hard as she wanted, as furiously as she wanted. Library books fell like rain and yet nothing moved, nor spoke, nor hurt. There was only his kiss, sorrowing and apologetic, against her mouth.
2. Sunnydale was ravished by snow. They stopped in a quiet little cupboard of cold, against a storefront, mute, feeling. Sleet painted the horizon white and the stars burned through and through. She had pulled him back from the lip of the avalanche and she could tell that he could scarcely weather her touch. But he bore it. Her cheek, pink against his sleeve. The tiny lengths of her fingers; her palms, sticky with icicles.
“Are you ok?”
He shrugged. “Very… cold. Which isn’t too different from every day, I guess.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t know what to say, which was new, all in all.
So she did what any brave, self-respecting girl would do. She kissed him. It was quick and it tasted of saltwater. Her lips stuck to his for a moment, chapped from the wind and the frozen sky. He shook against her, drawing her close. But she pulled away, because it was always the push-and-pull with them and she smiled, whispering walk me home? and he did, he saw her safely home.
3. Light was sliding across the expanse of sky, cliffs of light, endless.
She saw him to his car, stuck her head through the window, couldn’t resist climbing in to rest on his lap. The blacked out windows were macabre and coffin-like, but she still kissed him, unable to stop.
“Buffy—“
“I know.”
But she was falling and he knew it. Carefully, very carefully, she curved her head against his neck and smelled the hollow just beneath his Adam’s apple.
“You don’t really need to go home, do you?” she asked, and felt him smile ever so slightly. “Couldn’t you stay? You lived here once.”
“I thought you said I had to go.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“No you haven’t,” he said gently. “We’d never survive.”
“I always do.”
“Don’t sound so sad about that.”
“I’m not.” She was surprised and she looked at him, really looked and couldn’t help but kiss him again, and again, and again, until everything felt breathless and nameless and spun-round. There were still things to do; vomit to clean up, laundry to do, funeral taxes to pay. She didn’t have enough time to get over him again. “I’m not.”
“I know.”
His lips tasted of the earth. When he was gone, well and truly gone, Buffy stood by her Mother’s grave until the sun died and she smelled him on her hands and then, and only then, did she wail her grief beneath the burnt-out moon.
4. It was a castle made for a Princess.
Smelling of alloy and carbon, malleable and sharp. She ran from its beginning to its end, and she leapt and leapt and leapt, seeing birds and leaves and oh, it was so beautiful, to die.
She blew him a kiss, from Sunnydale to Los Angeles, wishing him well, wishing him happy.
She didn’t know if he would understand, but she thought he might. Dying, in this moment, was the purest act of love she could ever conceive of. It was her work, her toil. Of all those who had loved her well, she believed that he would miss her the least – and yet she still spared one of her last thoughts for him, and remembered his kiss, how it felt to be held against his body. The breadth of him. The way he made love.
As the dawn welled in the sky, she stopped breathing and the old world cast her out, leaving her body for her friends to bury, cover with dirt, mourn. Left her lips to dry out and wither, with only the memories of kisses once felt.
5. It was an old, abandoned road-stop by the Pacific Coast Highway. The smell and tang of salt was so heavy in the air that it lay like a second flesh.
He said ridiculous things, quoted Gilgamesh, touched her until everything felt raw and bony. He was glad she was alive, he was glad and he loved her, oh how he loved her, and she kissed him to shut him up. Every wound felt scraped, and her knuckles still bled at night.
When she kissed him, the world cracked open. She knew poetry too.
6. Rain was falling and bleeding over him. The dragon took him in, Death came for him, finally truly came for him, and yet he saw only her face – beloved – felt only her kiss, and in that simple moment of freedom, he mouthed her name, her name.
The End