"It's more than just the nursing, Buffy. You're bonding with her, which is a risk you shouldn't be taking."

She took a few deep breaths, not wanting to get angry during a feeding. She'd done it the night before, and had been up all night trying to settle a very cranky Tara.

"You'd rather I just ignored her, and let you run to her with a bottle every single time she needs something?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"Not going to happen. I thought you knew me better than that." Buffy watched the movement of the little jaw as Tara suckled. "You can't expect me to just leave her alone."

"Buffy..." he stopped and let out a short sigh. "I only want what's best for the both of you."

She looked up at him, exhausted and sick of the argument. "You need to let me be the judge of that."

After that, he kept his opinions to himself for the most part, and she kept tracking the ever-shrinking number of days until her six-week appointment.

• **

She had to admit, part of her had hoped that there was something wrong, something that hadn't healed right and would force her to stay just a few more weeks. She knew better. After all, quick healing was part of the package, and she'd felt almost like her old self for a couple of weeks. The post-natal appointment just confirmed it. She had the go-ahead to resume almost everything, and while slaying wasn't technically on the list, she'd run out of excuses. It was time to go home.

Even if it didn't feel like home anymore.

It didn't take her very long to pack. The maternity dresses went into a black garbage bag, ready for donation, and the t-shirts and sweats she'd been wearing for six weeks weren't hers to begin with. In the end, it was just another light bag with a few essentials ready for another bus ride away from the things that mattered.

They'd gone out while she readied her things, leaving a house loud with their absence. She set her bag by the door, then went to the hamper and started folding the pile of baby clothing Wesley had washed while she was at the clinic. Tara was growing so quickly; the littlest newborn items didn't really fit her anymore. Buffy separated the clothing that Tara'd outgrown from the things that still fit. Instead of putting them in with the rest of the things to given away, she slipped them into her bag, putting them under the change of clothes and the Ziploc with her toothbrush and floss. She realized she was crying again when she felt something wet hit her hands. She hated crying, but it seemed like she'd been spending a hell of a lot of time doing it as of late. Her breasts were aching, which meant Tara must be getting hungry, but there was no sign of them.

She checked the clock. They'd been gone for two hours. She checked the freezer. There was one less bag of milk than had been in there when she'd left for the appointment. He must have packed a bottle. He'd been doing that about as often as she'd been crying. Funny, that. She pumped to relieve the pressure, then sealed the bag and stuck it with the rest of them. Buffy figured Tara had at least a two more weeks of milk left before she became a formula-only baby.

When she ran out of chores, she took out a pen and a stack of cards she'd purchased on impulse a few weeks before giving birth. There were eighteen of them in all. Buffy wrote something on each one and enclosed them in their envelopes, numbering them as she went.

Her breasts were full again by the time Wesley returned with the baby. She grabbed Tara before he had time to take off his coat.

"Nice of you to take so long," she said flatly as she pulled up her shirt and guided her daughter to a nipple.

"You're leaving in the morning. She needs to get used to you not being here."

"So, what? That means I should be allowed to spend time with her before I leave?" She tried to keep her voice level.

"Buffy, you're leaving. In case you hadn't realized it, that means you're going to have to get used to not being with her the same as she has to get used to not being with you."

"Believe me, I'm well aware of that, but I sure as hell don't see why that means I can't spend as much time with her as I can before I go."

"Buffy--"

She cut him off. "If you tell me it's for the best, I swear I'll break something."

It was obvious that he was well past angry and bordering on furious, but he said nothing. She stared at him, eyes daring him to speak, until he turned and left the room. Tara kept nursing, blessedly oblivious to the tension, until she drifted off to sleep, little milky bubbles gathered at the corner of her mouth. Buffy set her down gently in the crib and went in search of Wesley.

As expected, he was in the bedroom, nose in a book.

"She's asleep. Her clothing's been put away and there's more milk in the freezer. I'll be out of your hair before too long, so you can stop fretting."

He slammed the booked closed and stood up. "Stop it."

"Stop what? Stop caring? Stop hurting?" She moved until she was close enough to feel the warmth coming from his skin.

"Stop taking it out on me, damn it." He must have been stewing the whole time Tara had been suckling, because he'd crossed the border to furious several miles back. "What in heaven's name do you want me to do, Buffy?"

"What I want is to have spent more time with my daughter on the last day I could be with her, but you just have to know best, don't you?"

"Because it would be so much better for her to be subjected to your self-indulgent moodiness, I suppose?"

The crack of her hand across his face shocked them both. She stared at its reddened outline, appalled.

"You should get out before I'm tempted to respond in kind." He spoke so quietly she could barely make out the words, but there was no mistaking the sentiment.

She stood and waited for the answering blow. His hand lifted, but instead of connecting with her face, it tangled in her hair, tugging until there wasn't any space left between their bodies, and very little between their mouths.

"Is this what you want?" Her voice was harsh, foreign to her own ears. Her mouth covered his before he could say a word, teeth digging into his lower lip as she sought to punish them both for everything and nothing at once.

He answered with hands as brutal as her voice, yanking down the sweats she was wearing and pushing her onto the bed, not bothering with the nicety of foreplay before taking what she offered. She felt dry and bruised and nowhere near used enough, nowhere near hurt enough. Frantic and frenzied with need and self-loathing, she drew him closer, meeting violent thrusts with quick jerks of her hips as he slammed into her, little whimpers escaping her lips at the feel of his fingernails digging into her thighs while his hands pushed them up and further apart. Her hands worked their way under his shirt, pulling it off before returning to claw at his back, slicing into the skin like tiny razors. She was trembling, vacillating between pain and pleasure as she came. Her teeth clenched around his shoulder until she tasted the copper and iron of his blood mixed with the salt of his sweat and felt him shudder, felt the warm-wet familiarity of his release inside her and the warm-wet familiarity of tears across her face.

"You should have left when I told you to do so." The words came out of his mouth without infliction as he rolled off of her, but the hard, haunted look on his face gave lie to the even tones.

Too shocked by what they'd done to say anything, she just stared at him, dumbly taking in the marks she'd left on his skin. There were more than she remembered making, neat imprints of teeth and nails mixed with long scratches welling over with blood.

She looked at her hands and back at the wounds she'd left. "I'm sorry." She was shaking, oh Christ, what had she done? "I'm sorry," she repeated, voice breaking.

"Are you all right?" The question was a mix of weariness and concern, and she had no answer for it. Something between a laugh and a groan escaped him when it became obvious she wasn't going to respond. "G-d, we're a mess, aren't we?"

"That would be one way of putting it. I didn't mean to..." she trailed off, one hand reaching out to touch the worst of the bites.

"Neither did I, but it's not something one could tell from looking at you."

She glanced at her body, startled by the scratches and bruises just starting to blossom. "Oh." Feeling self-conscious, she tugged her shirt down to cover the evidence. "I hadn't noticed." She winced as she shifted her weight; she may have been told it was fine to have sex again, but she somehow doubted that this was exactly what the midwife had intended.

"I didn't entirely mean physically," he added. "When I referred to us as a mess."

"Yeah, I know. I'm starting to think my coping mechanisms leave a little something to be desired. Also? I'm getting the feeling that learning from my mistakes? Not my strong suit."

"Nor mine. Buffy, I'm sorry I took Tara out today. It was presumptuous of me."

"You were also right, much as it pains me to admit it. I'm not sure how I'm going to get through leaving her. I've had to do so many things that seem like they should have been harder than this; some of them have even killed me. But this? It's different. It's not the end of the world, so how come it feels so much worse?"

"I don't know. She'll be well taken care of, if it helps at all." He pulled the blanket up to cover them both.

"It does, a little. And I know she will, but sometimes I get so sick of sacrificing anything that might possibly resemble a normal life for the sake of my calling."

"If it wasn't for your calling, Tara wouldn't exist in the first place. Presuming the best-case scenario, that being a lack of success for any of the apocalyptic events that have taken place during the last half-decade or so, you'd most likely be in your final year at university, still an only child, and Sunnydale would, if it entered into your thoughts at all, merely be a small town with an obscenely high death rate and obscenely low housing prices. However, the best-case scenarios very rarely occur outside of theory, so we'd probably all be dead."

"Thank you, I think. Wow, you sounded like Giles."

"Council training. You said it yourself a while back. There have been times when I've felt an apocalypse might not be entirely without merit, but my occasional bursts of selfish nihilism aside, your role is an important one." He paused, looking for a moment as though he'd thought about, then decided against, saying something more before he took a deep breath and soldiered on. "I realize that I'm the last person in the world who should be lecturing you about this--it's somewhat like both the pot and the kettle joining forces to call the coal bin black--but you need to stop punishing yourself for things you can do nothing about. You're a good person. You've just been dealt a rough hand is all."

"Like I said, I've got some seriously screwy coping mechanisms, but thanks. I'll try to keep it in mind." She gave him a weak smile, and he kissed her forehead.

"Get some sleep, Buffy. Tara will no doubt wake up at least a half dozen times before morning, so you may as well take advantage of the lull."

His estimate was off by one. Tara woke her five times before morning, three of them because she was hungry, one because she wanted changing, and once--the last time--for no readily discernable reason. "You're a strange little thing, aren't you?" Buffy murmured. "Do you know I'm leaving, is that it?" Tara just blinked and scrunched up her face in response before settling down.

Daughter and father were both sleeping when she left. She made certain the cards were in plain sight on the table, along with a letter of explanation and an apology for not waking them to say her goodbyes. Grabbing her bag, she let herself out, locking the door behind her and slipping the key through the mail slot so she wouldn't be tempted to run back inside.

She spent the bus ride back to Sunnydale staring out the window, head facing forward, one tiny sock clutched tightly in her fist. Back home, she resumed her training, stuck close to Dawn, and resorted to monosyllabic responses when faced with questions about what had happened while she was away until no one asked her about it anymore.

End of the freaking first freaking part.

YAY!

I love it so.

And I would be happy to beta part two.

La la la, love this fic...

Freaking part two is coming, slowly.

Work ate me, you see.

Elena is talking smack again. Me = beta.

Please, we've been through this before, curly-girl. Besides, you heart may not be able to take this fic.