In the end, Giles chose the stake. The sword, the weapon most natural to his hand, was entirely out of the question; his arm could no more part her head from her body than his lungs could breathe water. The crossbow would have allowed him the mercy of distance; but Buffy deserved better of him than that.

In the past few years he had learned too much about the art and artistry of the mortician, the selection of the clothes, the tiny stitchwork, the concealment of wounds. You would have thought it was no more than a pinprick that killed her.

They laid her out in a simple white dress, a spray of tiny pink-tinged flowers at her breast. Giles knew the spark of her life was gone, skin plastic over lax muscles, color false; but his eyes saw a napping bride.

Her father sat in his chair with a hand to his forehead; as he had been distinct from Buffy's life, from the truth of her, he was now distinct from the nucleus of whole grief that had formed around Joyce Summers.

There, they moved in slow, ritualized circles of exchanged comfort, moved like sleepwalkers. Willow and Oz, turned almost entirely into each other like siamese twins, whispered to each other in the abessive case. Xander looked more betrayed than sorrowful, rage keeping him upright. Cordelia, simply crying, nursed them all.

And Angel, who came and would leave by the basement, was there too.

Giles stayed close by the coffin, let Xander hug him unashamedly, let Willow -- Oz, now more than ever, her constant honor guard -- sob into his waistcoat, let Cordelia blot his tears and bring him glasses which he emptied without tasting and hold his hand when he weakened.

Angel must have found him a thorny problem -- Giles would not move away from Buffy, and Angel did not quite dare approach him. Giles could see in his eyes what Angel hoped for.

So Angel never touched her. Nor Giles; even in the last moment before they shut the lid over her, Giles could not kiss her cool cheek with her mother, her friends, watching.

Later the doors were opened and more came, in trickles and knots, bringing their thanks, their acknowledgments, their apologies, while her mother and father sat, for the last time in their lives, side by side, trying to piece together between them how their baby could have come to be laid in this strange cradle.

It took distressingly little to misdirect them all, after -- a wild goose chase for the components of a spell he never intended to cast. They saw only the same thing Angel dreamed of: Her awakening. Her kiss.

Let him be the villain, then, if he must be the villain, and give her one more bitter gift; her life had blessed his, and he would not curse her in return.

She has labored. Let her sleep.

He waited alone for her in his black funeral suit, half-sitting on a stone marker, watching the grass over her grave quiver and rumple.

He let her claw her way out, shuddering a little as she plunthered in the loose earth, her face smeary and pale. Finally she dragged herself up onto the grass, and he waited for her to get her bearings. Her face crumpled into ridges when she saw him and she smiled, letting him see the fresh thorns in her mouth.

She came to Giles, and he moved to meet her. A stake, like a dagger, is a weapon for intimate range. It seemed to take only a prick.

Alone, no one to witness, Giles kissed Buffy, very gently, and felt her lips turn to dust against his.