WINDY DAYS

by - Jessica Frederick

TITLE	WINDY DAYS
AUTHOR	Saber Shadowkitten
PARTS	1/1
DISCLAIMER	Characters and stuff belong to Joss Whedon, etc.
DISTRIBUTION	If you want it, take it. (I'd love to know if you do.)
RATING	PG-13
SPOILERS	'The Gift'

When times flew by, like paper in the wind
And all I could do was cry

"She's dead."

Their words struck me one after another, always saying the same thing, always sounding false to my ears. These words wouldn't make sense. They *couldn't* make sense.

She was my everything. She filled up everything that I was. In a way nothing ever had. Even blood.

I meant what I said - blood is life.

But she was mine.

I always knew that I would never need anything else as long as I had the chance of her. As long as we had any crumb, I knew everything had it's reason.

Because as long as we were both alive (as alive as I could be anyway) there would always be that chance.

So these people speaking words of broken hearts and false regrets sounded only like strangers.

They were in the worst pain imaginable, but they had still accepted her death, in a way I wouldn't and couldn't do.

Like a change in the weather they accepted it. It was always dreaded, never expected, but it was plausible and visible to the eye.

Only I didn't see it. Even as her body was lowered into it's resting place. I had to stop from flinging myself on top of her body - in rage, in betrayal, in pain.

But never in loss.

From the very moment I saw her lying on the broken ground and I cried in mortal anguish, I still knew something was missing.

Something missing - but not her.

The thought had struck me hard, like a slap across the face.

I could still *feel* her. Even though all that she was, supposedly was gone, I felt her still.

Not in that way that people say exists with the afterlife. Where the love still lies in the heart. It was more than that.

I could still feel that hope I spoke of - where as long as we are both here, in reach of eachother, there's a chance.

And watching her body be lowered into the ground didn't change it. Seeing her friends mourn the loss didn't change it. Nothing anyone, including myself, could say within reason or rhyme changed it.

I was still here and in every part of me that was her, and in every part of me that wasn't, I knew.

Buffy was alive.

Of that much I was sure.