Title: A Day Too Late
Author: Cashew
Email: dlg92000@yahoo.com
Pairing: B/G
Spoilers: S6, after Tabula Rasa
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Joss and Co. own all not me.
Warning: Character death and angst.

The soft squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, the combination of antiseptic and despair; they would always be a part of his last memory of his Slayer. He had left her. For her own good. So she'd become strong, stand on her own two feet. What he'd failed to remember, what he'd failed to realize in his frantic flight from pain, in his desperate need to be away from the source of his pain. Was that a Slayer without her Watcher, was a dead Slayer.

Now as he watched the last remains of his Slayer explode around, ironically enough Mr. Pointy, he remembered a day too late.

He had gotten the call at 2 am. Buffy was missing, had been for two days now, he had been on a flight an hour later, suffered through an unendurably long flight. He had called Willow from the cab, had gone straight to the hospital. He had rushed through the E.R. doors in time to hear her pronounced D.O.A....dead on arrival. Blood loss. Severe. Words, impressions had filtered through his mind. Voices ebbed and flowed, faces, people, the Scooby's, looked like reflections seen in a funhouse mirror, distorted and unreal. He had advanced on the gurney, pushing aside the doctor and Xander, had turned her head to the side and saw the two condemning puncture wounds on her neck.  He had hit the floor before they had realized that he was going down. A scream had erupted from his throat that he had no recollection of uttering. It had taken four orderlies and the docor to administer the sedative. The sedative that had given her enough time to rise. The sedative that had forced him to see her, to watch as she turned into a vampire.

Her ashes slowly blew in the wind and landed covering him, the grass at his feet. Mr. Pointy fell from nerveless fingers. He fell to his knees, arms wrapping around himself as if to hold her remains close to him. He curled on his side, eyes unfocused, staring. That was how they found him.

A day too late.

END