Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 3 - MY LAST BREATH

Hold on to me love
You know I can't stay long
All I wanted to say was
I love you and I'm not afraid


(Evanescence - Album - Fallen)




Chapter 3.04
Monday, May 27th, 2002


For Xander, the funeral service passed by in a haze, the rituals and customs seeming alien and unreal. It was the first time he had ever seen Willow's father seem anything but composed. His five o'clock stubble seemed to show a lack of respect that was belied by the slow constant stream of tears on his cheeks. Her mother's face was puffy from crying and she had panda eyes. It looked as if she hadn't even washed off the make up she had worn that morning but simply left it to run down her face. Xander couldn't remember Mr Rosenberg ever wearing anything other than leather brogues outside the house, but for his own daughter's funeral he wore canvas deck shoes. When the rabbi ripped the left sleeve of her father's and her mother's clothes, that seemed to make a perverse sense, appealing not only because his own anger urged him to destroy something, but because it felt to him as if a part of him was missing.

The plain pine box with its lid hammered shut offered no stately resting place, no chance to pay your last respects, to tell yourself how peaceful she looked as if that somehow proved that she was in a better place rather than simply prepared by a skilled mortician. Instead she was nailed up tight in a plain, claustrophobic, wooden box little better than a packing crate.

So while for her family, and even for Giles, Tara, Anya and Wes who seemed to understand the intent behind the ceremony and in some cases even the Hebrew prayers, the rituals brought comfort and a sense of closure, for Xander they seemed only to add to his sense of unreality. He couldn't help looking round in case Willow had sneaked up behind him somehow and was just waiting for the moment of maximum effect to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Gotcha." He shivered despite the summer heat and wondered if maybe he was in shock.

How was it, he wondered, that he should be so lost in a situation where everyone else seemed to know what was happening. Anya had squeezed his hand and asked him where he thought an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth came from, as if it was obvious that a former vengeance demon would be familiar with Jewish funereal customs. Tara seemed to have discussed all this with Willow in some detail, which he supposed made sense as, until their split last year, the blonde had been listed as Willow's next of kin. Watchers... they just knew all that sort of stuff anyway. Xander hadn't a clue what was going on. He'd never discussed any of this with her. Even before she went the Wiccan way, Willow had always just been Willow, not Willow, the Jewish girl. Her faith or lack of it had never been a topic of discussion, except to commiserate on the whole missing out on Christmas deal. Okay, so she had had Hanukkah, but Xander couldn't even say that he knew what that was. It was just a name to him. Maybe, if one of her grandparents had died while she was growing up, they might have talked about it, but the ones that weren't dead before she was born were over in the front row looking like death warmed up.

Xander just let the whole thing pass him by in a blur, still not quite able to accept that she was really gone. After all, she had brought Buffy back to life and this was death by magic, not a natural death... She would come back... somehow. She had to. Xander didn't know how to live without her.

---

"I don't know how you can all be so calm." Xander took a swig from his glass of bourbon before slamming it down on the glass topped table and fixing his gaze on Tara who sat on the floor of his and Anya's apartment with her back against the L-shaped sofa where Wes and Giles sat on either side of her. "You heard what she said. She's dead because Spike interfered. If he hadn't got in the way Willow would still be alive."

"Possibly..." the Wiccan admitted.

"Possibly? He-."

"Willow might have managed to complete the spell without making any sort of sacrifice on her own part, it's possible, but if Spike hadn't stopped her I'm pretty sure she would have killed Dawn in the process. Willow might have still been walking around if the curse hadn't aged her to death for taking a human life but she would have been more lost to us than ever."

"Willow wouldn't kill Dawn... She wouldn't." Xander's protests were weak though, as he remembered the exultant look on Willow's face earlier.

Tara didn't bother to argue the point when it would serve no purpose. "Xander, you've got to understand that I didn't lose Willow today, she got lost a long time ago. Today, just for five minutes, I got back the girl I fell in love with and, even though I will miss her, I believe that everything worked out as it had to and I will treasure the memory of that five minutes for the rest of my life."

Anya came back through from the kitchen and took a seat next to her husband at the table, dropping a family size bag of cheese doodles in front of him and tossing a bag of Doritos in the direction of the threesome by the sofa. "Let me. I can do Xander-speak. Willow was already well on her way to Vaderdom. If Spike hadn't got between her and Dawn, then sucking the life out of her would almost certainly have tipped the balance. So now she's dead but she died a Skywalker. It took that sort of sacrifice to redeem her, though. So you tell me, Xander, what would you have chosen? Live Darth Willow or dead Anakin Rosenberg?"

Xander took another sip of his drink and didn't answer out loud, but he remembered his wish that he could have his Willow back and it sent a lance of guilt straight through his heart.

---

Spike's fingers tightened around Buffy's wrists and he strained to pull them apart. He whispered in her ear, hoping it would do more good than his show of strength, which was having little impact. "Let go, baby. This isn't what happened. You're not to blame. Let her go. You never hurt her. She chose her own path. Honey, if it wasn't for you, she'd have been vamp food long ago. Let it go."

Buffy's grip on Willow's neck didn't loosen. She held the long-haired geekish teenager with her checked pinafore dress and thick wool tights up off the ground until her face turned purple. "I did. It was me. You know there wasn't even a hellmouth here until I arrived or it wasn't active or something. Either way the trouble only started when I arrived."

"You arrived here because here is where you were needed. You're not some jinx and you didn't kill Red. I told Pixie an' I'm telling you Red's parents laid the groundwork that made her who she became. Soon as she got a whiff of any sorta power she was gonna go crazy. Now, let her go, sweetness."

Finally, finger by finger, he managed to pry Buffy's hands from her friend's throat. "We make our own destinies, my love. Sometimes we get a little help. Sometimes there aren't any good choices but there are always choices and she made the ones that brought her to where she ended up. Not you."

"You said she would do it. Bee said it would kill her and you said she would do it. We could have just not said anything, not told her."

"We could have... But do you really think Angelpants woulda given up on his lady without even asking? And we're not in the business of playing God. You think if we'd all kept quiet you wouldn't be dreamin' about the cheerleader instead?"

"But Cordelia wasn't my friend... at least, not like Will was."

"Red was your friend, but somewhere along the way she forgot the meaning of the word, else she wouldn't have hurt Bit. She definitely wouldn't have done it twice over. You can't be responsible for everything that happens."

"Isn't that what it means to be the slayer? To be responsible for protecting them all."

"You can't protect someone who doesn't want your protection, baby. She made you choose between her and Dawn. She forced your hand. Being the slayer is like being a general in a war and today your side won a huge battle. You took down a god, but it didn't come free. You lost someone who used to be your friend, but, if you take that weight on your shoulders, you deny what she did in the end. If you take responsibility for her death, then you take away from her the credit for the good she did. She won that battle and she chose to give it everything she had. She gave her life and at the end she did the right thing... in the wrong way... but it was her choice."

Buffy sagged against him. "Why is it when you're making the sense that's not that I understand what you're saying?"

"Because you've been listening to men that you've driven to babbling incoherence ever since you hit puberty?" Spike suggested, his arms wrapping her round and holding her close.