“Buffy, it’s started.”

Buffy turns. They can both see the swirling light beneath them as the portal grows ever larger. Lightning crackles and shoots out of the gaping wound in the dimensional walls.

“I’m sorry,” Dawn says, trembling, the words barely audible above the noise of the portal.

“It doesn’t matter,” Buffy insists, her voice breaking.

But Dawn knows that it does, and she knows what she has to do. She tries to run past, but Buffy grabs her.

“What are you doing?” she cries.

“I have to jump,” Dawn replies. This is her fault and only she can fix it. “The energy –”

“It’ll kill you.”

“I know.”

Dawn understands now that Glory was wrong. Her sister would always come for her, would always save her. Even now, with the world ending, Buffy can’t bear to let her go. Dawn holds back her tears and tries to be strong. “Buffy, I know about the ritual. I have to stop it.”

“No.” Buffy is adamant, but the tower shakes beneath them, causing them both to stumble.

“I have to! Look at what’s happening.”

Just then, a dragon emerges from the portal, and they feel the wind as it flies close to the tower. Buffy glances up, and Dawn takes that moment to break free of her grasp. The Slayer scrabbles to catch her, but in her panic it feels as though she’s moving in slow motion, and her fingertips brush helplessly against the sleeve of Dawn’s ceremonial dress.

“Buffy, I have to do this!” She shrugs off her sister and runs for the edge. She stops, turns.

She smiles bravely, accepting her fate. “I love you.”

Then, she is gone, and Buffy runs after her, nearly plummeting over the edge herself, but she grasps onto the posts at the last moment and stops herself. There is a fist in her chest, squeezing so tightly she can’t breathe. She thinks her heart has stopped beating. She stares down helplessly as Dawn’s body seizes and writhes in the shimmering blue swirl. The portal closes with a sucking sound, and Buffy falls to her knees.

Spike staggers to the top of the stairs, pain still coursing through him from the fall. The last thing he wants to do is climb back up this tower, but he watched Dawn’s frail body come plummeting down – his heart dropping like a stone right along with her – and he’s terrified that Buffy will be next.

She can feel him behind her, hears him speak her name, but she doesn’t turn.

“Buffy?” His grip is tight on her arms as he tries to pull her away from the edge. She fights him, twisting in his grasp as she clings desperately to the grating that makes up the platform. What she needs is here.

The sun is rising, and Spike can feel his skin starting to tingle. “Buffy, listen to me!” he says, a tremor in his voice. “Sun’s comin’ up, and I’m not going back down without you.”

This gets through to her, and she stops resisting, collapses against him. She lets him escort her back down the tower without a word. He doesn’t know what to say, and there’s nothing she wants to hear. His body is smoldering and smoking by the time they reach the bottom, and he has to abandon her and run for shade.

Buffy crouches down by Dawn’s lifeless, broken body, lying amid the debris like wreckage.

“Buffy…” Giles starts, but she doesn’t hear him. The world feels hollowed out, dull, void of sound and color, the sun so bright in her teary eyes that it makes everything seem washed out, overexposed.

“It’s my fault,” she says, reaching out one shaky hand to touch Dawn’s pale face. She bends her head low, crying as she whispers, “I’m so sorry, Dawnie.”

Willow remembers Buffy’s guilt, has walked through it. “You did the best you could. We all did.”

“But I’m the Slayer. It’s my job to…” She breaks off with a sob. “I was supposed to protect her. This is my fault.”

Giles reaches for Buffy, trying to offer comfort. “Buffy…” he tries again.

“Don’t touch me!” she screeches, flying to her feet and jerking away from him. She remembers what he said, what he wanted her to do. “I hope you’re happy,” she says coldly.

Giles freezes, stricken with shock and guilt. He never wanted this.

Buffy looks back at Dawn. I killed my sister. She is quiet for a moment, unwavering, then says, “It’s over. I’m done.”

*****

Buffy stands on the back porch. She wants to run, to go far away where there are no reminders, where everything surrounding her doesn’t scream of Mom or Dawn. She thinks she can outrun the memories, if she tries.

She sees Spike cutting across the lawn towards the house. It’s been a few days, but it’s the first time she’s seen him since he brought her down from the tower, disappearing from the construction site so suddenly that they’d all wondered if he was dust.

She wouldn’t have blamed him. She wished she was dust, too.

She runs at him full speed, nearly knocking him over with her embrace. He hesitates a moment, confused by her sudden display of affection, before his arms encircle her.

She tries to explain. “I thought you were…”

Spike nods. “Thought about it, once or twice. Figured you’d rather do the honors yourself.”

She pulls away, horrified. “What?” Hasn’t she lost enough?

“I’m sorry, Buffy. I should’ve… should’ve…” He sighs. “Keep thinking, if I’d done something different, you know? Been faster, more clever…”

Buffy reaches up, cups his cheek. “You did everything… everything you could. I’m the one who failed.” She can’t hold it in any longer, and the tears come. He holds her, crying himself, and she remembers he loved Dawn, too.

She clings to him like a lifeline, wrapping her arms around him inside the duster and clutching at the back of his t-shirt, burying her face in his chest. He tries to comfort her, rubs her back, strokes her hair, kisses her forehead. She tilts her head up, pressing her mouth against his. Then, she is kissing him, but she hasn’t stopped crying, and it’s messy and desperate and unromantic. Her face is wet with tears and she can’t breathe through her nose.

He stops her. “Buffy, you don’t want to do this.”

She knows that. She knows she should be ashamed, but she can’t muster up the emotion. All she has is grief. She should back away, go inside, but instead she pulls him closer, her cheek against his unbeating heart, and sobs.

*****

“She’s gone!” Buffy cries, as soon as she sees Willow on the other side of the threshold.

“Who?” Willow asks, stepping inside.

“Dawn.”

Willow sighs. “Buffy, she – she’s dead.” It’s been two weeks now. Well past time for such revelations.

But Buffy shakes her head, adamant. She tows Willow into the living room and shoves a framed photo into her hands. It is a picture of Buffy and Joyce, but Willow remembers that it used to be the three of them.

Dawn has faded out, as though she was never there.

“She’s gone,” Buffy repeats, her voice wavering. “It’s just like when I did that spell, the trance to – to detect other spells. Dawn disappeared from all the pictures and – and her room was… She was standing right in front of me, but she kept… flickering, in and out.” She’s worked herself into a panic, and she looks at her friend with wild eyes. “Willow, what’s happening?”

“I – I don’t know,” Willow stammers. “Maybe the spell is – is broken? I mean, when Dawn…”

Buffy squeezes her eyes shut, shakes her head. “No. It can’t. It has to be something else. Something taking her away from me.” She suddenly grasps Willow by the shoulders. “You have to do it – the trance. Tell me it’s magic.”

Willow agrees to do the spell, but when she walks through the house in the trance, nothing is changed. “There’s nothing here, Buffy,” she says apologetically. “No magic.”

Buffy shakes her head, tears welling in her eyes once more. “It has to be!” She runs upstairs and flings open the door to Dawn’s bedroom, but all she finds is a storage room full of boxes. It clearly hasn’t been used as a bedroom in years, and she is faced with the awful truth.

Willow comes in behind her and puts a consoling hand on her shoulder.

“I’m losing her,” Buffy murmurs. “I’m losing her, Will. She’s slipping away.”

*****

Spike stops by that night, before going out to patrol. “You sure you don’t want to come along?”

He asks every night, but the answer never changes. She hasn’t slain anything since Dawn died. He has taken up the burden for her. It suits him; he is a killer by nature. She doesn’t have it in her to be a killer anymore.

Buffy shakes her head, as always. He accepts this and turns to go.

She sees the picture of her and Joyce, and the empty space where Dawn used to be. “Spike?” He turns back. “Could you… stay with me instead?”

He does, and she shows him the pictures, shows him Dawn’s room. She leads him into her own room and beckons him to the bed.

She curls up against his side, taking solace in his embrace. “I’m so afraid, Spike… afraid we’re all going to forget.”

“’S not gonna happen, pet.”

“It already is!” Buffy protests. “I can’t… I can’t remember when Mom and Dad brought her home from the hospital. It must have happened, but I can’t remember! I don’t know what she looked like as a baby, or – or what we did when we were kids.” She looks at him with pain etched on her face. “When did you meet her, Spike? The first time?”

He doesn’t know.

He can’t bear to look at her anymore, can’t stand the horror in her eyes, so he pulls her against him. “Shh, it’s all right, pet. None of that was real anyways, yeah? But what’s real – what’s true – that we won’t forget.”

“As much as it hurts to – to remember, I couldn’t bear it if… if I couldn’t.” She shudders at the thought.

He promises her they won’t forget. He tells her everything he can remember, unexpected baby-sitting duties and interrupted ghost stories and even the time he helped Dawn try to resurrect their mother, even though he’d sworn Buffy would never find out. Now, he thinks the more memories he can give her, the better. He prompts her to tell her own sisterly tales, and she talks through the laughter and the tears until she is too overwhelmed with emotion to go on.

He kisses her, then, long and slow. This time, she’s ready, and she kisses him back with tenderness. She tastes his sorrow, but also his love, and it buoys her up against the flood of fear. Their limbs tangle, his body shifts, and then he’s on top of her, enveloping her in his sinewy strength, and she feels safe.

She doesn’t think. For the first time since losing Dawn, she is able to shut out everything – except him. She is drowning in him, and it is just where she wants to be.

He looks to her for reassurance, and when she nods, he begins to undress her. He is gentle, handling her as though she’s fragile. Buffy watches as he peels his own clothes off, admiring the way his body ripples with his movement, graceful, restrained, even though his face tells her he has been waiting a long time for this. Her body slides against his, anxious, eager, and she realizes that she has been waiting a long time, too.

Spike fills her up, all the empty spaces inside her, the caverns and crevices that life has carved into her heart. He murmurs I love yous but asks for nothing in return, rocking her gently as she holds onto him tightly. This is what they both need, to remember, to forget, to begin to heal.

*****

The last box goes into the backseat of the DeSoto, now packed to the brim with her things. It’s twilight, which means that Spike will be ready to leave soon, and her friends gather on the front lawn. They give wide berth to the wretched For Sale sign, now proclaiming its betrayal. Sold, it says. There's nothing left for her here.

They have come tonight to say goodbye, but they already lost her six weeks ago. They’ve drifted apart, unable to reconcile this withdrawn, solemn creature with the vibrant Buffy they used to know. She can’t make them understand. For them, Dawn is already only a vague anomaly in their recent history, a piece that doesn’t quite belong. It will resolve itself in time, and it will be as though she never existed. The confusion will fade; they will remember some other reason why Buffy left. What’s important is that they have each other, and they’ll be all right.

She is mildly surprised that there has been no objection to Spike. A relationship that at one time would have caused arguments and recriminations now brings only resigned acceptance. It is as if they know she is not the same Buffy as before, will never be the same again. She has chosen her path, and it does not lie with them.

Willow is the first to step forward. “Promise you’ll at least let us know you’re okay.”

Buffy is non-committal. Once she leaves Sunnydale behind, she hopes it will disappear as swiftly as Dawn’s image in the photographs. This place has brought her nothing but pain, has taken her family, her lovers, her freedom, her innocence.

She hugs them all, reaching Giles last. She loved him like a father, and it hurts. She doesn’t know how to forgive him, can’t find the words to tell him that she didn’t mean what she said. She just hugs him and hopes he knows.

*****

Buffy steps out onto the balcony of the hotel room. There is a cool breeze blowing in from the ocean, and it ruffles her hair. They are making their way up the coast, for now. They’re going to hit Canada soon, so maybe they’ll turn east, drive across the mountains and the plains. She doesn’t care, as long as they’re headed away from Sunnydale.

Spike comes up behind her, runs his hands down her arms. His body is hard, comfortingly solid at her back.

“I think I’m starting to forget,” she says, with a trace of regret.

“Forget what, love?”

“Dawn.”

Spike chuckles. “Becoming too much of a creature of the night, pet. ’S the thing that comes after the moon goes down.”

Buffy shakes her head. “No, Dawn. My sister. I had a sister.”

“Yeah,” Spike says. “Right, yeah,” like he knows what she’s talking about, even though she’s been an only child as long as he’s known her. But there’s something nagging at him, something about the sister… the reason why he and Buffy are together…

“I’m counting on you to protect her.”

He thinks he made a promise, but it’s all a blur, the past year, keeping the Key safe from Glory, being on the run, fighting the hellgod at Buffy’s side. He knows the sister fits in somehow, but he can’t put the pieces together. They are long gone, washed away in gentle waves as new memories carve spaces in his mind.

Buffy stares out at the sea, lost in the bittersweet sadness of missing a sister whose life and death she cannot quite recall. She is aware that her memories are being stripped away, and it horrifies her even as it brings her peace, dulling the grief that was so acute only a few short weeks ago.

Buffy shivers, and Spike wraps his arms tighter around her, thinking it’s a chill.

“I don’t want to forget, Spike.”

“Then we won’t, pet.”

*****

It’s cold up in the mountains, and Buffy shoves her hands into her coat pockets. Something crinkles inside, and she withdraws a crumpled piece of notebook paper. Unfolding it, she realizes that one word has been scribbled over and over, filling the page.

Dawn.

She stares at it for a moment, furrowing her brow. It’s distinctly her handwriting, sloppy and urgent, but it means nothing to her.

“What’s that, pet?”

Spike has noticed she’s no longer beside him and has turned back with a curious expression.

“I don’t know,” she replies, studying the paper for nonexistent clues. “It looks like… like those handwriting exercises you have to do in elementary school, except…”

“’Cept it’s been a long time since you were in elementary school.” He tugs at her arm. “Come on, pet, don’t worry about it.”

She stares at it a moment longer, feeling as if something important is just beyond her grasp. It’s troubling, but ultimately, she can think of no reason why she would emphasize the word or what it could mean. Reluctantly, she balls up the paper and tosses it in a nearby trash can, forcing down the sinking feeling that she’s lost something precious.