The alarm clock rings too loudly, feels like it's piercing her ear drums with it's shrill cry. There are demons that make less awful sounds she is sure, though it's been many years since she really faced any. The bed is empty beside her, her husband has already gone to work at least an hour before, not that the space beside her would feel any more filled if he was still there.

He loves her, and she knows it, but not enough. From the day he proposed she questioned her own feelings for him, but after the accident and the fall of too many of her friends, he was pretty much all she had left. She'd clung to him like a drowning person clings to a rock and he'd cared for her and loved her like she needed to be loved. Now he could no longer give her what she needed, it is an impossible task for anyone in this world, she thinks as she lays on her back and stares at the ceiling.

Daylight creeps around the edge of the drapes, making patterns on the walls as it reflects off the glass in picture frames upon the shelf. Herself and her so-called family, it means very little. The slamming of the door without so much as a good-bye reminds her of that. The kids have left for school, not even bothering to check if she were asleep or awake, dead or alive.

She starts to wonder if she herself cares. It is increasingly difficult for others to love you when you cannot even like yourself, and vice versa she supposes. That particular vicious circle did not improve with time, only worsened. It was months, maybe years, since either of the boys had hugged her or said a kind word to her that they really meant, and almost as long since the man she'd promised to love, honour, and cherish had touched her.

Escape was impossible when there was nowhere and no-one to run too. Everyone was gone, she was always alone. Hadn't they always told her she'd end up this way in the end? Didn't the prophecies and beings in power foretell her solitude in legends of others Chosen for the same destiny as she herself had been?

Even that had been taken away, though it was she herself who made the decision to let it be so. Normalcy is what she'd craved, a job, a family, and a happy ending. She should have known the world well enough to know it could never be so simple. She had what she supposedly wanted and everyday wondered why she bothered waking up. At least in sleep she had her dreams where she saw the world the way she wished it was. Her friends could return to her in unconscious adventures she told no-one of. He could come back too. Hold her whilst she cried, catch her when she fell, make love to her like nobody else ever could.

A tear runs down her cheek as she reaches into the cabinet by the bed and pulls out the bottle she keeps there. It doesn't help much, her strengthened constitution sees to that, but it dulls the pain a little if she swallows enough. Whilst the room is spinning the walls cannot close in so easily and she can fall into a half-conscious state where her dreams feel that little bit more real.

It is at least the middle of the day before she gets out of bed. The boys stopped coming home for lunch when they realised she would always be there. She wasn't their mother, and they resented her when she tried to be, almost as much as they hated her when she didn't bother. She closes her eyes and laughs painfully, letting the almost empty bottle fall from her hand onto the floor. A brown puddle slowly forms on the creamy coloured carpet and her laughter stops as she watches it grow, engulfing a few more fibres every second that passes.

With the humour gone there is nothing left but pain and heartache. How her life disolved into this mess she can't conceive, but how much longer she can stand it, well, she knows the answer to that.

It's fifteen years since she lost him,six since the others went the same way, and yet their faces and voices, every aspect of their beings are as clear in her head as they were then. Laid back on the bed with her eyes closed she can picture him so well he might easily have been lying there beside her, whispering words of comfort, holding her close to him, kissing her hair, promising her the world. It only hurts more when she forces her eyes open and faces the reality that he's not there at all, and never can be. He cannot come to her, she knows that, but today is the day she returns to him.

It surprises her, how well her legs work as she gets to her feet and heads out the door. Another leads to a stairway and she stumbles slightly as she climbs on upwards, clad in just her night-dress, and barefoot still. The warm sun greets her as she heads through the final door, and not a shred of fear exists in her being as she walks over to the edge.

The cars below make no sound, the ant like people not registering as existing at all as she steps up on the edge and smiles genuinely for the first time in years when she sees the one she was looking for.

"'S been too long, luv" he says as he stands a few feet away down a winding road, smoking a cigarette.

"Too long" she echoes, nodding her head.

"Ready to let go now?" he checks, his blue eyes as intense and full of love as she remembers.

She nods again and reaches out a hand to him, which makes him smile. He pushes off the tree he'd been leaning on and flicks his cigarette away as he steps towards her, his arm extended, reaching out like she is, but he stops just short of taking her hand.

"'S up to you now, pet" he tells her gently and she looks into his eyes.

"If I fall, you'll catch me" she says with complete certainty, "You always did before"

He nods in agreement of that and she closes her eyes, taking the last step forward. Though her body hurtles towards the ground at break neck speed, she feels nothing. She never fell at all, he caught her like he'd promised and now carries her safely down that long winding path he first found himself upon years ago.

The newspapers would report the untimely passing of a suicidal wife and step-mother, a drunk, a mad-woman, a coward, but the heavens angels would sing of love, a destiny fulfilled, a reunion they had waited too long to see.

At the age of thirty-seven, Buffy Summers found forever.

The End