Disclaimer – Not mine. Don’t sue.
        Rating – PG-13
        Author’s Notes – This is an episode tag to ‘Body.’ Pardon the pun, but this one's a bit chilling, so be prepared.
 

    I never really understood what it meant when someone said that it was so cold that their ears hurt. I’ve lived in southern California all my life, after all. But tonight there’s a freeze warning. Middle of March and it’s thirty degrees in Sunnydale, can you believe that? That’s a sure sign of the apocalypse if I’ve ever heard one. Or maybe not, maybe it’s just the end of my personal world. That would be nice, in comparison, I guess.
    So now I know what it means when it’s so cold your ears hurt. Pay attention now, if you’ve never felt it I promise you don’t understand.
    It’s not your earlobes or that upper cartilage part that hurts. I’d sort of always thought it was the lobes, myself. I was wrong. It’s the inside. That cold bitter wind just cuts straight through and makes your ears ache like you’ve got the mother of all swimmer’s ear infections. It pounds in your head, unrelenting, even after you get out of the cold. I only know this because I had to go in and go to the bathroom about an hour ago.
    So why am I sitting out here in the cold, in a sleeveless shirt and miniskirt, freezing to the core? I’m not really sure. I’ve been sitting on this step outside my house for hours, except for going in to pee of course, but I already told you that.
    I’m no masochist, don’t get me wrong on this point. I’ve never enjoyed pain before and I don’t now. But it’s real. It’s something I feel. And somehow it seems right that I feel physically what I’m going through mentally and emotionally. It’s like it suddenly all matches and makes sense.
    You know, after it happened, I got all numb, like none of it was real. After a while, the cold does that to you, too. I like that, the symmetry of it. They say, after long enough in the cold, you start to feel all warm. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I don’t have any intention of finding out either, but I can’t imagine ever feeling really, truly warm again.
    There are people driving down my street who don’t even see me sitting here. They sit in their cars with the heaters on and rub their hands together for added warmth, but they don’t really even have any idea how cold it is out here. They can’t until they experience it. They don’t know that their ears will hurt and ache and that that throbbing will carry through their whole body. Maybe they’re better off not knowing.
    I can hear my front door open and from the sigh that soon follows, I know that Giles is standing behind me, looking all sympathetic and helpless.
    “Good gracious, Buffy, it’s terribly cold out. You should come in,” he tells me.
    I turn to see him standing in the doorway, shivering slightly with his arms wrapped around himself for warmth. But he never quite leaves the confines of the heated house. He only hovers over the boundary.
    A week ago he would have said I’d catch my death out here in the cold. But things were different a week ago. A week ago, no one walked on eggshells around me when the word death was mentioned. A week ago I’d never felt my mother’s body cold.
    I think about his words, spoken and unspoken, for a moment as impossibly cold tears stream down my face. He’s right, of course, I should go in and warm up. There’s no question there.
    I stare out into the street in front of me and watch as a few snowflakes drift softly to the ground and a sudden realization dawns on me.
    “Giles,” I say softly, “I don’t think I can.”