It’s almost a year and a half since Sunnydale fell into a crater. Now retired from slaying, Buffy’s been voluntold to go to Wesley Wyndham-Price’s memorial service, where she finds a few familiar enemies. Everything’s so surreal anyway, Buffy decides she might as well just give into it and see if lunch with Drusilla and Harmony might be one of the better things she does that year. It’s a pretty low bar, after all. The day keeps getting weirder, but the bar for the year might just be unsurpassable by the end of it.

The comics are ignored completely and both TV series as taken as cannon. This is a not a romantic reunion fic, although there are reunions aplenty, and parts of it could be described as romantic. Spike does not speak in this story, although others speak about him quite a bit.

All song and chapter titles are courtesy of X-Ray Spex, and all the characters and settings you've heard of before are courtesy of Mutant Enemy et al. Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is partially quoted. The story is entirely my own, although the original plot bunny was an EF challenge by knightowl. No copyright infringement is intended.
 
Behind Blue Eyes gave me a very early beta, for which I am grateful. I'm not sure the final product is recognisable from the one she read, so any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

 

Warning: there are some descriptions of grisly injuries in this chapter.