She did not touch the pale, bare skin of his back to wake him.
She did not sit at the edge of his bed, on the floor a few feet away, determined not to make a sound that might disturb his rest.
She did not quietly creep through the door, wincing as the hinge creaked slightly and stilled her movement. She did not feel the grass brush against her sandaled feet. She did not slip through the hedge, into the big gardens; she did not watch the towering castle from the far end of the street, looking at the shadows cast by the moonlight and the street lamps.
She did not walk carefully, with measured steps, as if considering the importance of the distance between herself and him. She did not stake a vampire that threatened her path; she did not whirl and kick and fight, bloodying her shirt and forgetting to pull her stake at the last second, so that it disappeared into dust.
She did not walk through a graveyard, eyes roving over tombs she knew better than any other alive; she did not watch a mother grieve over the death of her son, whose body no longer lay in the ground and would never be laid to rest. She did not destroy the vampire that was this woman's son, his dust spilling around her in a brief brush of wind.
She did not leave Willow's house in the middle of the night, slipping from the bed they shared because they'd pulled another round robin and had nowhere else to sleep and walk down the stairs; she did not open the door that let her out into the world. She did not stare blankly at the wall for three hours, as her friends chattered about the day and their homework and the things they wanted to do, pretending not to notice the lack of emotion or care on her face. She did not do her homework this night.
She did not leave the library listless and wanting; she did not hear a lecture from Giles on how to get through the loss of Angel. She did not exercise, she did not practice, she did not go to class.
She did not wake up this morning, eyes already unseeing the day before her. She did not listen to her mother as she toasted English muffins and talked about the day before them; she did not eat breakfast.
She did not have conflicting dreams, terrifying for one moment in its black possibility, stunning and erotic in the next, remembering the way things might have been and the way they almost were. She did not wake up in the middle of the night, panting from fear and exhilaration. She did not go to sleep with her eyes wide open, not wanting to see what the night might bring her.
She did not do any of this.
Instead, she stared at a photograph and tried to remember a time before there was Angel.
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