The clock on the bed table read seven thirteen and she couldn’t sleep.  She had lain awake for hours, curled up against her husband, silently thinking.  People say that a brush with death changes a person.  What happens though when a person is on a first name, Christmas card exchanging basis with the grim reaper?  Buffy Summers, slayer extraordinaire, was one of those individuals whom Death had visited far too regularly.  Death had changed her, formed her into the person she was today.   For fourteen years, she had fought vampires, demons, and the occaisional human.  Twice Death had led her to the afterlife, and twice her friends had called her back.  Now, Death had led another of her inner circle away.

Slipping out of bed, she walked over to the curtained window of her hotel room and looked out at the approaching dawn.  Heavy rain clouds obscured the sun and the light rain blanketed the countryside in a heavy mist.  The bleak weather fit her mood.  She hadn’t wanted to come to England, but when she Willow called with the news, she and her family had boarded the first plane to London.  Giles was dead, killed in a car crash.

Scrubbing away tears, Buffy looked back on her life.  She had been lucky.  The only Slayer who had survived to see her thirtieth birthday, she owed part of that to Giles and his training.  The rest of it was due to her family and friends.  Spike had been right all those years ago.  So long as she had people to live for, she could fight the death wish that haunted every Slayer.  But with every Scooby death, she came closer and closer to giving some demon his one good day.