Thanks to my beta, Hils!!! You rock, hons!

       "Love don't make things nice - it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and *die*. The storybooks are *bullshit*. " --Moonstruck

       You still have a death hold on me.  So many bloody, goddamn years...and you still have the same power over me as you did so long ago.  You ruined me...ruined my life...my heart...my entire being.  Even from the grave, you mucked everything up for me...when I should have been at my happiest...there you were, in the back of my mind...laughing...mocking me.

       It's been so many years...I watched the Scoobs grow up and grow apart...I watched Anya and the Whelp get married...I watched Anya waste away from the tumor beneath her breast.  I watched Harris break down, then build himself back up from nothing...if only for his son...their son.

       I watched the witches fight and break up...and I stood at the gate as Willow disappeared on that plane to England.  I watched Tara disappear to LA.  Sometimes, Willow will write me...when her deteriorating mind allowed her to even remember I existed.  I haven't heard from Tara since she left.  No one has.

       I attended the Watcher's funeral...heart attack, it was.  Took him when he was fifty-five.  He was buried back home in London.  It rained that day...so I was able to stand beside the remaining gang to give tribute to a man that had tried his damnedest to keep us all together.

       I helped Harris pack up his and Alex Jr's belongings, and he moved to Seattle, a contractor for a big, expanding construction company.  He and Willow were the lucky ones.  They moved on and out of Sunnydale.  Like the fool I am, I stayed.  I stayed.

       I helped out Faith, when she got out prison...and I helped the three Slayers after her...it made me feel closer to you...to the woman I will always love...not the woman I should have loved.

       Our wedding was a beautiful affair...she was twenty-three...and she almost looked like you.  Same nose, same eyes...but she was more slender, taller then you were...and she always kept her hair the same, soft brown.  But...if I squinted...you were there.

       Maybe if I had moved us somewhere...anywhere...instead of staying in Sunnydale...thing would have turned out differently.

       She knew, of course...bloody hell...how could she not?  She knew why I closed my eyes when we made love...and she knew why my body quaked with emotion...and she always pretended to not notice when your name tumbled from my lips.

       We bought a small house...just a little thing...she went to college...she wanted to be a doctor.  Maybe it was something about the whole Ben thing that stuck with her...I never knew...I never asked.

       We adopted a little girl...since I couldn't have children.  I wanted to name her Elizabeth...but she didn't, for obvious reasons.  We finally settled on Regan.  She was so beautiful...blond, bright, cheery...and had the greenest eyes I have ever seen.  I loved my daughter with a passion...I would have died for her.  She was everything to me.

       I stayed in Sunnydale...I fought the beasties and the nasties every night...I told Regan that I did it for her...because I cared so much for her.  She didn't know any better...but Dawn did.  

       I should have noticed when she turned away from me, barely talking to me when I came home from patrol...she took the night shift at the hospital, and wouldn't come home till past dawn most of the time...and the rest of the day was spent sleeping or playing with Regan.  She avoided me in our own home...and I let her...I was too busy letting the past eat away at me...consume me heart and soul till nothing was left but a shell.

       I tried for ten years...ten years I stayed in Sunnydale, haunted by your ghost, haunted by you every night in my dreams...haunted when I made love with my wife...I tried so hard to bite my tongue...but every night, it still slipped out.  I couldn't help it...I loved her...but she could never be you.

       That's what she told me when she served me the divorce papers.  She could never be you, Buffy...and she couldn't live in her sister's shadow anymore.

       She left me...and she took Regan with her to New York...I could've followed then...just to be near my daughter...but I couldn't leave Sunnydale...it had trapped me...enthralled me like no other place has ever done.

       I used to send her letters...but they returned, unopened...but she never cut me off from Regan...I talked to her every chance I got...sent her presents...but it wasn't enough.

       My daughter's thirty years old now...has her own children...and she wants nothing more to do with me...the last letter I sent was sent back, unopened...with a note written on the back of the envelope.  She said she doesn't have father...she doesn't want a father, and for me to stop writing.

       So you see, Slayer, you ruined my entire life!  You ruined me for any happiness that I could have had!  You bloody...fucking BITCH!  Why couldn't you have left me alone?!  Because of you, my wife, my daughter!  They won't have me...no one's left but me...and that fucking cold, hard stone that bears your name!  I asked for a crumb...and looks like I bite off the whole bloody cake.

       I'm choking on you, Summers...drowning in you...you're stuck firm in my craw...and I can't get rid of you...after all these bloody years...and you still have me...your fuckin' slave.  Is that what you wanted?!  Are you up in whatever paradise Slayers go to when they die, laughing at me?!  At my pain?!  At my stupidity?!

       I FUCKING HATE YOU!  I want you gone!  Out of my head!  Out of my 'effin HEART!  Why can't you just leave me alone?!

       I'm crying...is that what you wanted?  Me?  Weak...on my knees...sobbing...begging?!  I want you gone, Summers...I want my wife...my daughter...I want everything the way it's supposed to be!

       There's no peace in this world for me, Buffy...I love you...God help me...I still love you...and you're nothing but mulch now.  I had everything...and I let it slip away...I let you take it from me.

       The sun's coming up, Slayer...tell me...tell me this is what you want...I've always done what you wanted...tell me...tell me you want me to find Dawn...to find Regan and make her have me back...to make her see that I'm still her father...that I'm a stupid foolish man...

       TELL ME, YOU BITCH!  DON'T JUST FUCKING STAND THERE!  I HATE YOU!  I HATE YOU!  I FUCKING BLOODY WELL HATE YO--

The End

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