Disclaimer: None of this is mine, I'm just borrowing it for a moment.

Author's Note: Post-series, spoilers for NFA.

He didn't understand how he survived.

The dawn was approaching, he could almost taste the fading moonlight, yet he could not move. He stood there, in the alley, regarding the battlefield, and wishing one of the corpses would stand and explain to him why he was left standing.

He was coated in grime, blood and guts and ashes, hand still gripping the sword he'd wrenched from an attacking monster. His clothes were ripped to rags, bared skin covered in shallow wounds. Nothing had gotten close enough to do more damage than that, he thought wryly as he stared at the bodies before him, picking out the ones that mattered, remembering the bodies that weren't there.

Cordelia was gone. She hadn't survived the last apocalypse, she'd been used. Something had crawled inside her and used her up, and left her for dead. And the brief glimpse he'd gotten of her before that death had only been enough to rip the wound she'd left wide open.

Wesley was miles away, body cold. Illyria had brought the news of his death, his final moments. How he'd asked for lies and for Fred, and how she'd obliged him. The goddess had shaken with barely contained rage, and they'd stood, silent, as they contemplated the oncoming horrors.

Gunn was the first to fall during the battle, Angel remembered. He'd arrived bloody, nearly beaten, yet he'd stood with his doomed friends. A faceless, nameless demon had gutted him. Angel remembered screaming, but the dragon had been between himself and Gunn, and his friend had bled to death before Angel or Spike could get to him. He was crumpled on the asphalt, eyes closed, face still twisted in pain.

Illyria had snapped the dragon's neck, shrieking a battle cry as she did so, the great body collapsing beneath her. She'd killed so many, unleashing the wrath they'd always known she was capable of, until she seemed to just give up. In essence, she committed suicide, standing before the tide of beasties, her arms dangling at her sides, laughing almost hysterically. She'd called Wesley's name as she died, and even Spike's teeth at her throat couldn't save her. Her body was draped gracefully across the dragon's, and, in its inertia, she looked more like Fred than ever.

Spike. Spike should have survived. He'd been surviving apocalypses since Drusilla had sired him. He'd been the one that Angel hadn't worried about.

And he'd died.

Angel had felt it coming, turning in horror from whatever opponent he'd been dismembering, to see his childe explode into flame. To his credit, Spike hadn't screamed. He'd been laughing, maybe even crying, as he dissolved into ash for the second time. Wind had kicked up, blown his ashes into the fray. Angel could still feel him, sticking to the blood and sweat on his skin.

He didn't know that he'd ever have the heart to wipe Spike's essence away.

His sword hung loose in his hand, and he stumbled backwards, into a doorway, as several rays of sunlight peeked out over the horizon.

Blinking, his eyes focused, and he saw Buffy, standing in the sunlight.

She was always in the sunlight, he remembered. Always just a hairsbreadth away, close enough to touch, yet it was all illusion and lies. They never had anything but pain together, pain and love and heart wrenching need that propelled him to her side when she faced her own apocalypse.

"I survived mine too." She murmured, reaching out a hand.

She drew him into the sunlight, and his skin did not crumble into ash. He laid his head on her shoulder, because she was still strong enough to hold him, and sobbed. He sobbed for his lost family, painstackingly assembled and ripped apart in an instant, for his childe, burnt alive, and for the redemption he had found at last, at a price far greater than he'd ever thought he'd have to pay.

And then, in the sunlight, he kissed Buffy Summers, his tears streaking through the grime on his face to fall onto her upturned cheeks, and thought that this redemption tasted like cherry chapstick.