*****

Like lightening, he was gone. There was no trace of his existence. No footprint where he had stood. There was no sign that he had been standing two feet away from me. Now there was nothing. Not even the scent of him left in the air.

The wind rushed over me as the air was forced out of my lungs. I couldn't breathe. He wasn't there. He wasn't beside me. Now what was I to do?

He was my balance. He was my center. He was stabilizer. And now he was gone.

My mind raced from one thing to the next, but one thing remained constant. The thought. The frightened voice that asked how I would survive with out him?

Honesty, I didn't think I could. I had been living for him these past few years. It was his smile that forced me out of bed in the morning. It was his laughter that kept me moving during the day. And it was his touch that calmed me at night.

He hadn't ever asked any questions after my love died. He had just consoled. Wrapping me up in his arms, he would whisper to me. Sometimes his words did not make sense, but it didn't matter. What mattered was this man was caring for me. Was loving me when I was refusing to be loved.

I would lash out at him verbally, trying to make him leave me. I had thought it would be easier that way, to be alone. But he had showed me. He had showed me that being with someone made the hurt lessen. Being with someone made the world make sense again.

Perhaps we had our grief in common. After all, my love was his love. We once fought without violence or harsh words for that love, but finally, he had conceded. Finally, he had backed down. My love was no stronger than his, just of a different caliber. We had both loved the same woman. We had just loved her differently.

He saw that. He understood that.

When she died, I locked myself away. I put my heart in a strong safe and buried the key where I thought no one would find it. After her, I didn't want to love again. I didn't want another being to touch my heart as she did.

She wasn't supposed to die. It hadn't been her time. She had been so young, so vibrant, so full of life. It was supposed to have been me. I saw it coming, but she did not. I tried. I tried so hard to knock her out of the way. I tried to make it so that my pretty girl would go on breathing. But the bullet passed through my arm and did not slow until it ripped through her flesh and punctured her heart.

I remember the look on her face. It drifted from confusion to fear to a scary calm. As she fell back to the ground, I fell with her. I stroked her hair and asked her to stay with me. I didn't want her to go. I didn't want her to leave me behind. We had made plans. Plans that would change our lives.

I had just laid there, talking to her until someone pried me away. Who would have thought that she, the magnificent creature I loved, would die that way?

She was my girl. She was my girl and I had let her die.

Her funeral had been small. I had drunk an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, trying to get my emotions in check. In the end, I ended up on my knees, hugging her casket as it sank down into the pit. Blubbering, I had forgotten that anyone else existed, let alone were standing next to me.

Strong arms lifted me up and had held me tightly. I cried, not knowing whose shirt I was soaking with my tears. When I had looked up, I saw him and the pain in his eyes made me cry harder. We had taken turns crying for her that day. But after that day, I had swore never to let anyone in. I told him to go away, I told him to stay the hell away, that I didn't need his sympathy or his pity. Deep down, I knew. I knew it wasn't pity. It was grief. It was a bond that we shared. But I refused to acknowledge it.

In the month following my love's death, I had become a drunk. A slobbering, bleaching, vomiting drunk. No one could stand to be around me unless I paid them. And I did pay a few. The whores were always good to me. They knew that I paid in full and tipped big and that most likely I'd pass out in my own vomit before we would actually get into anything heavier than foreplay.

I had been on my tenth shot of Tequila when those strong arms wrapped around me, carrying me from the bar and depositing me into a shower. Cold water assaulted me. I had sobbed heavily, crawling out of the shower and into his arms. He asked no questions, he had merely held me until I fell asleep.

I had woken up in his arms. And after that day, he was never more than an arm's length away. He kept me warm when the chill of her death proved too cold. He kept me sane when my mind told me that she was still living; that she was just away on a vacation. He found the key buried in the darkest regions and unlocked my heart.

He became my joy. He became my reason for living. He was everything to me. My sun, my moon, my stars, and my clouds.

There wasn't anything he wouldn't do for me.

And now he was gone. I looked around, trying to see what had happened. I didn't know where he could have gone. I couldn't see anything of him. Nothing remained.

I looked to the Slayer, but she provided no answers. I looked to the Watcher, hoping that in that steel trap brain of his, that he'd have some information on where my meaning, my love, my only and best friend had gone. The Watcher's eyes conveyed confusion and I cried out.

I turned to the last person standing by me. "Did you see?" I asked him. "Did you see what happened to him?" My voice was frantic. The vampire nodded. He made no move to speak, so rushed at him, my hands clutching at his coat. I shook him hard. "Tell me!"

Shaking his head, the vampire's hands covered mine. He pried them off of his coat and took a step back. "He was taken up." I looked heavenward as did the other three.

"We have to get him back!" I moved to the Watcher, pushing and tugging at him, trying to get him to say that there was a way. "We have to get him back. You know a way, I know you do!" The Watcher just turned away. I could hear his weeping mixed with the Slayer's. The vampire moved in front of me and I turned my attack back to him. My fists pounded his chest. "We can get him back. We HAVE to get him back!"

"No. He's been taken up. There is no way." I pound harder with my fists, but the vampire just shook his head. "He's been taken, Oz."

"No, no, no, no, no," I chanted, my hands tugging at my hair as I took steps backwards. "Xander," I whispered.

He was gone. Like my Willow, he was gone. It had only taken a split second and he was gone. Like lightening, he was gone.

~end~