Buffy was gearing up for another kick when -- all at once -- she felt her legs lock up. Strange. She tried again, but it was like her heels were gummed to the ground. Slow and unresponsive. And soon she wasn't moving at all.

She could feel her injuries. She could feel her scythe dangling from one hand and she could feel the locket twined up in the other. Its gold flashed just in the corner of her eye -- heavy with fate and love and dread. A person who no longer existed who once loved someone who...

This damn locket. She hadn't even worn it for the past year; it had lived over Jack's heart and he had guarded it as if he was guarding her life. And she had taken it from him. And now, she thought, she was going to die. Unable to move and unable to strike back.

Helpless.

The thought sent a shiver of something visceral down her spine. Her ability to regenerate felt like slush. Her veins? Cement. But her mind still raced. And her eyes bore into his -- not simply because they had to, but also because they wanted to.

And as Buffy tried to fight off this incursion, she consoled herself with memories of his wings separated from his body in great clumps. Bone and blood.

It's always blood.