you call it chosen, i call it convenient

[lastguardian]

So this is what being alive feels like. God, I’d forgotten. To breathe. To feel. To have to wonder what the fuck your friends were thinking when they brought you back from the dead. Or if they were even thinking at all

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[buffys_bitch]

Still can't believe she's back. Buffy's alive again, in the flesh. Don't know what to say to her, how to react. But something deep inside me feels alive again too, in my own dead flesh.

I stand out on the porch, smoking a fag and listening to them all chatter inside the Summers' home. Sounds like everyone is chipper and making with the hugs and reunions.
Not my scene. Don't belong in that circle. Only when it was broken was I let in a little. Now, everything is back to the way it should be. Happy families, and me on the outside, looking in.

Better that than the alternative. Buffy being gone. Rotting in some grave in the cemetary. This is better.

[lastguardian]

Everybody’s standing around chattering, pretending everything’s supposed to be normal, and I can’t even listen to it. I can’t deal with it right now. I stand up, brush my hair back out of my eyes, and start toward door. Willow glances up sharply.

“Where are you going, Buff?” She looks... God, she looks disappointed. Not to mention worried, but whatever.

“Out,” I answer shortly. She’s about to say something else, but I just hold up my hand. “Slayer, remember? Just... I can’t be here right now.” I’m out the door before she can say a word, or follow, or - it doesn’t matter. As soon as I feel the cool night air on my face, as soon as I feel free of my friends, I’m spinning around because I can see someone else gawking at me.

“Spike.” No idea as to what he’s doing here. I certainly haven’t seen him since before I died. “Why aren’t you inside celebrating? Did they forget to invite you?” There’s a sneer in my voice and I know it, but it’s not like it matters. What’s he going to do, stop mooning over me? As if.

[buffys_bitch]

“Spike. Why aren’t you inside celebrating? Did they forget to invite you?”

Well, she's in a right mood then. I shrug casually and continue to smoke, even though I'm bloody happy to see her.

"Please. Never was one for the campfire ditties and gettin' the kumbayayas out and all that. So, me celebrate? I will in my own time, maybe over a bottle of jack. What about you? Why the need to leave the 'happy families' rerun? Can't blame you wanting some alone time. Being dead, and then alive again, isn't something you can share with others who haven't experienced it. They don't understand what it feels like to truly end. Then be back again."

[lastguardian]

What a lucky girl I am. So many friends who understand exactly what I’m feeling. I bet no other slayer’s ever come back from the dead to such a warm welcome.

“You know, Spike,” I start, in a voice coated with sugar. “You’re right. You’d understand exactly what it’s like to be alive again, wouldn’t you?” My eyes have narrowed so much it’s a wonder I can even see him, standing there pretending to be nonchalant. “You think you get it, Spike? You don’t even have a heartbeat. And just because you get your rocks off pretending that my mission is your mission, it doesn’t make us friends. Do you get that?”

Of course, there is no mission anymore. And the fact that I haven’t hit him yet, haven’t even had the urge to hit him yet, probably makes us closer to friends than we ever were. But hell if he’s ever going to know that.