DEALING (WITH) A LITTLE DEATH

by - Joe Conat

TITLE	DEALING (WITH) A LITTLE DEATH
AUTHOR	Joe Conat
DATE	4/19/01
DISCLAIMER	The named characters in this story are the property of Joss Whedon and/or Mutant Enemy. The content of the story is, however, the author's. This story was written for no profit, and the characters used without permission.
RATING	PG
SUMMARY	Shortly after Joyce's death, Buffy receives a strange visitor.

"Time to go."
With a nod, he picked up his leather jacket and slung it over his shoulders to shrug it on. Then he lifted into the sky, and was gone.

It astounded her how quickly funerals were arranged, performed and done.
A part of her mind acknowledged that, lately, she was in no shape to judge the passage of time. She was barely aware of it, like it was a bad dream; disjointed memories of forms to be filled, caskets to be chosen. Her friends, her `Scoobys', constantly surrounding her, comforting and supporting. She knew they meant well, but finally she had had to go, get away.  She found herself, naturally, next to her mother's fresh
grave.
Buffy had no idea how long she had sat there, staring unseeing at the headstone. Her legs were numb, as were her hands. As was her heart.
She thought she heard a soft thud behind her, like someone landing softly on the grass. She didn't care.
"Buffy Summers?"
She didn't recognize the voice. She nodded, her eyes still focused on her mother's grave.
She felt a tap on her shoulder. "Time to get up."
She heard her voice from far away, lost and small and cold. "If you're a vampire, go ahead and kill me."
There was a warm chuckle. "Nope. No such luck for you. Now c'mon. Get up."
There was something in the voice, something both commanding and coaxing and she found that she had begun to stand. Her legs, long since asleep, tried to give way under her, but there was a firm strong hand on her elbow helping her up. She flexed her thigh muscles, tightening and releasing them to get the blood flowing again. When the tingling started and she knew she had full control of her legs, she turned.
She didn't know him. He wasn't a vampire, though.
He was tall, taller than Angel. Dressed in rumpled khaki pants, worn workboots, and a leather jacket and plaid shirt over a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with a yellow bold of lightning. His eyes were blue, and lined, though he didn't look too much older than herself. He gave a lopsided thin smile.
"There you go," he said. "Good girl."
"Who are you?"
He stopped to think. "I guess you could say a friend, but that's not really appropriate, since we haven't been introduced. An admirer?" He walked off. She followed him. She noticed with surprise that the sun was setting. She'd really been out there a long time.
"Look, I'm, uhflattered, I guess, but"
"I'm here to help you, Buffy."
She felt tired. "Another world ending cataclysm? Give it to someone else. I'm not up for it."
"No, Buffy. Not the end of the world. Not even for you."
Somehow, she knew he was talking about her mother. "It feels like it."
"I know. It's okay."
She noted that they were walking further into the graveyard.
"Where are we going?"
"You're on patrol."
"Not tonight." She stopped. He walked on a few paces, then stopped and turned to her.
"I'm not patrolling tonight. I can't. I don'tI don't feel like it."
"I know. But you have to, Buffy. It's your job."
"I don't care."
He came back to her. Laying a hand on her shoulder he gently turned her around. Through the trees she could see the lights of Sunnydale.
"I could talk to you about duty and honor and responsibility. But you don't care," he said. "And I don't blame you. But I want you to look out there, at all those lights and remember this: if you don't patrol, at least one of those people is going to die. And while your grief seems to be the most powerful in the world right now, someone out there will end up grieving too. And, to them, the death that you let happen will be just as senseless and stupid as the aneurysm that took your mother.
"So, you see, you have to patrol."
"Butbut that doesn't make any sense." Buffy whirled to face her `admirer'. "Nobody could stop what happened to my mom. Nobody was there to save her, to prevent her dying. So it doesn't add up." He gave another one of those lopsided and infuriating smiles. "If someone could've prevented your mother's death, and didn'thow would you feel then?"
"Angry."
"And how do you feel now?"
She stared up into his blue eyes and sawnothing. He wasn't letting her in, wasn't showing his emotions. He was testing her, she felt.
"angry" she admitted reluctantly.
"Anger is a natural response to death. We don't get it; it's beyond our comprehension, really. We view it in the abstract and try not to go further than that.
"When we're confronted with it in all its reality, then we panic a little. It's not so much the `it could happen to me' syndrome, but, in my opinion at least, perfectly understandable fear in the face of the ultimate human unknown."
"Thank you, Socrates," she snarked.
He laughed. "Okay, my apologies. I tend to get verbose. C'mon." He continued walking into the graveyard. Once again, she found herself following.
They came eventually, to a mausoleum. At first she thought it might be Spike's but realized his was in another section of the cemetery.
"What is it?" she asked.
"A nest. Here." He handed her a stake taken from a side pocket of his jacket.
"I don't want to," she repeated. She realized she sounded whiny and hated herself a bit for it.
"Just go."
She shrugged and trudged up to the crypt, her feet dragging. She felt cold inside and useless and tired. Why didn't he understand that? She didn't want to do anything, let alone slay. She didn't bother knocking or even kicking the door open.
          She just pushed it, causing it to scrape open with a grating noise that made her teeth ache.
Inside, seven or eight vampires, just stirring with the setting of the sun, looked up in surprise.
She glanced back to her `admirer' and saw that he wasn't even paying attention. He was looking out at the lights of Sunnydale. He turned his head briefly to give her a nod, then resumed watching the city.
She turned back to the vampires, shuffling to their feet, glaring and snarling at her. She thought about what her `admirer' had said, and how each one of these creatures represented senseless death for someone out there. Senseless, stupid, unexplained death.
And she felt a rage build within her. Unreasoning, uncontrollable rage that filled her chest and stomach, climbed up her throat as it also flowed into her legs and arms and finally reached her brain and washed everything away.
She heard a scream. She thought it might have been her own. She didn't care.

She came to and discovered she was covered in vampire dust.
Her newfound companion stood nearby, his face annoyingly blank. "Feel better?"
She was still tired, but morerelaxed. More clear-headed.
"Yes. Yeah, I am." She looked up at him. "Thank you."
He snorted. "Don't thank me. It won't last. You'll feel like crap again tomorrow and the day after. You will find that different things make it feel better at different times. Sometimes it'll be coming out here and kicking vampire ass. Sometimes you'll want your friends and your family."
A sudden insight struck her. "How did you deal with it?"
He smiled again, a knowing little grin that said `you got me'. "I drank for six weeks. Beer, mainly. All that time I packed the apartment and put things in storage. Then I moved away."
"She was your wife."
"No. Not quite. Almost, though."
His tone was light and his eyes still carefully shuttered, but she could feel it. An intense, gnawing pain that still hadn't managed to go away.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"The feeling's mutual," he replied. He extended his hand. "Let's go."

They walked back into town, strolling along the twilit streets in silence. Finally, she asked "What do I do?"
"You don't do anything," he said, as though he'd been waiting for just that question. "Nothing special, at least. You finalize the arrangements. You go on with your life. You grow and you heal."
"That sucks."
He chuckled. "Yes, it does."
"I feel so out of sorts," she explained. "Like I should be doing something, but everyone gives me the same answer; there's nothing you can do."
He looked down at her, a thoughtful frown on his face. "Okay. Maybe there are some things.
"Take care of your friends and family. Dawn needs you. She doesn't have the experience to deal with this. She wouldn't even if she were human. You have to show her how.
"Xander and Anya need you. Xander's a child, in a lot of ways, and so is Anya. She doesn't understand these feelings, because she's never had them before in all her millennia.
"Willow needs you. There's a frightening world out there and you've become her best hope, her hero. You've got to show her that you can deal with it, that you can still fight the evil. Because otherwise, she will have no hero.
"Tara needs you. Take what she has offered, and in return include her in your little gang. Her family is gone, and yours is reduced. Let her join your family.
"Giles needs you. He needs to know he isn't failing you. Show him you rely on him, and show him that you *can* rely on him.
"Spike-"
"Spike?!" she spat. "No way. I can help the others because I love them, but Spike"
"Spike needs you most of all."
She glared up at him, angry beyond words. "I don't love him. I won't love him. I can't pretend I love him just because Mom because Mom"
He stopped and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I didn't say you had to love him, Buffy. Or pretend to.
"Spike doesn't really love you, at least I don't think he does. He loves what you represent. He wants redemption."
"I can't redeem him."
"No. But, you can help. You can start by trying to accept him. That doesn't mean love him, or even liking him. But you gave Angel his chance to redeem himself. You have to give Spike one, too."
"Who's going to make me? You?"
He shook his head. "No. I can't make you do anything. I hope to make you want to do it, though.
"The world is ugly enough, and full of enough death and hatred and anger. I would think you would want to get rid of it as much as possible. Killing Spike isn't the answer; if it were you'd have done it long ago. No, you have to let him seek his redemption. "Or not. It's up to you."
He started walking again.
She felt the rage build up in her again. Who the hell was this guy to tell her what she should do? Where the...the...fuck did he get off?
She ran up to him, grabbing his shoulder and whirling him around. She punched, putting her entire upper body behind it, snapping it from the shoulder and aiming for the middle of his face.
There was a blur of motion and a soft `smack'. He had caught her fist in his hand, and was holding it in front of his face. Not squeezing, not hurtingjust holding.
"No Buffy. You can't hurt me, not here. Maybe in other worlds, but not this one."
She blinked. "Who are you?" she finally asked.
"Just someone trying to help. Seeking, perhaps, my own redemption."
He released her fist and put his hands in the pocket of his jacket. "I've been here, Buffy. I've been where you are. You're cold inside all the time and you can't get warm. You can't sleep and you can't wake up. You can't eat, but you can't not eat. Everything hurts and everything's irritating and you just want to scream and punch and hit and kill until it stops hurting. And then you feel bad because you feel that way.
"Many of us have been here, Buffy, and many of us will be here again. I'm not trying to advise you, not really. I just came here to tell youwe understand."
"We?"
"Everybody who has ever been."
He took his hand out of his pocket and smoothed a strand of hair back from her forehead. "We care. Your friends care. Care back. It helps." He winked. "Really, it does."
Her vision blurred and she blinked. Tears fell, hot, down her cheeks.
"Eventually, of course, you don't feel it so intensely. And eventually, whole days go by where you can not have to stop and remember to breathe. But, I feel it only fair to warn you, there will be times when it strikes you unexpectedly, and that cold knife is back in your heart, twisting away. And there's nothing you can do.
"Except care."
She almost wasn't surprised when, with a smile, he lifted into the sky and flew into the night. She stood there, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up into the starry blackness for a long time.
Then she turned around and headed for the Bronze. She hoped her friends would be there.