And even as you're falling, going over the scene again as you've done a thousand times, you hear a brush of voices in a language you don't understand, but you do in that weird magic-y way that shit happens to you. The words are double-layered, in English and something that sounds like the little Russian you've heard, and you wish you didn't have such shitty luck with Watchers 'cause one would be damn helpful right about now.
As you come closer to the world with Matilda the prison guard, you're dragged back to the dream. You writhe as you feel those red, agile lips suck on your clit, and possession reverberates through your body till you cry out in pain when lips part to reveal teeth, and you're disintegrating again.
Maybe floating's a better word, because you're seeing weirdoes in brown cloaks talking about failure and Slayers and second chances that don't belong to you, and you think you might want to rewind to the part where you're getting your groove on because you've heard this litany before and it wasn't pretty the first ten times.
You still want a second chance, because you know you messed it up somehow.
The brown guys start chanting and you hear your name, and there's a flash of a girl with brown hair and full lips and your eyes and you think it must be you. You're in a room with a mirror, and you turn around when you hear your name and see that girl looking at you, looking at herself, and you hear that insistent voice in your ears over the chanting saying that what you did wasn't enough, wasn't near enough to Buffy, and you know things are gonna change, heads are gonna roll.
You feel like spiders are all over you again but instead of covering you up they're pulling you apart, and you hear the word "dear," and grasp desperately for the mirror, but all you can see is bright green light and all you can hear is Buffy's name, over and over in your mind.
You're being unmade. You can feel it in your bones until they are no more, and in the core of your being until that dissipates too, and the world goes white and new as you wake up in your bed with the comforter over your head, and when you sit up you see a startled, wide-eyed face in the mirror before you.
fin