'What if I were miserable? What if this were hopeless?' She thinks, as she watches him disappear in the exhaust and smoke. She thinks that she will never see him again. And that she does not know how she can bear it. Through it all he has been there. At times the one cushioning the blows, and at times the one to dole them out. She has stood through it all, only yearning for his touch, no matter which way it might come. And now she does not think she can stand any more.

The memories are already worn too thin and this is only the first day of goodbye, the first day of forever. She does not know what memories she can possibly sustain herself with when already she has watched over and over the one night they had together, the one night that made sense. She has watched it so many times that she does not trust her own accuracy. And what about next year when she is at school, when she is no longer in the places she has known him, the Bronze, her mother's house, the school, the mansion, even the sewer system. When she cannot touch the things that he has touched. When gradually all of her clothing has changed and she has gotten rid of, or lost, or worn through everything of hers that he had touched? When Angel and Buffy is old news, when Willow and Xander have only vague recall of him? When after she has a new boyfriend, or after she has had ten new boyfriends, they cannot understand why she must still say Angel's name?

What about when Angel her lover is no longer the Angel whose name they hear? When all they hear is: Angel, the man who murdered my love, Angel, the man who hurt my best friend, Angel the man who I was jealous of, or worse still, Angel the vampire with a soul.

All of a moment as he turns and she feels desperation, desperation and despair. She has one last second, one last second to see him, to call out to him, to run to him. One last second to have him with her. She feels the panicked tears inside her body and she gags on them, they cannot come out and she is trapped within herself, screaming in her throat and stomach. She cannot express, she cannot reach, she cannot touch. And then he is gone. Her muscles contract in anguish and her face contorts and twists in agony and she cannot make a sound except the cries inside her mind, of damn it, damn it, damn it. This is it, this is the end, she repeats, though she cannot believe it. She had held his heart. What if this were miserable? What if this were hopeless? It is, and it still doesn't make any difference. It would still be a moment of true happiness.

Later she lies in her bed and wills herself to cry. If she cries she will feel better. She will be able to sleep. But she cannot even bring her mind to face that he has left, that he is no more. She cannot even make it enough of a reality to cry about it. Instead she gets up and turns the lights back on. Her room has been a prison as much as anything else the last three years but now all she can think is that she doesn't want high school to be over, because with the end of high school comes the end of her love story, and the end of who she has understood herself to be. She must learn to be a new Buffy, a Buffy without the one thing that has ever made sense in her life. And he had walked away from her tonight without once looking back.