DISCLAIMER: I don't own Buffy, I don't own Angel. I don't own the song. OK?

TIMELINE: Who can say? This is pretty vague stuff. No spoilers to speak of, either.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: OK, I punched this out in about, twenty minutes while listening to All Things Must Pass, which is by the way, one of the greatest rock albums ever. I'm posting all my old stories, including this one, to .

A/N Aug. 2003: Have redone the story in order to improve my writing. I don’t know how different it really is, but I’m all for self-improvement!

FEEDBACK: Please feedback, I'd like to know what you think of this one.

DEDICATION: I know I don't usually dedicate what I write, but this is dedicated completely and wholeheartedly to George Harrison, who I miss already. The world is an emptier place without you George. OK, I'm done with the sappy stuff.

Art Of Dying

*

Buffy Summers wandered idly through the darkened streets of Sunnydale on her usual nightly patrol. Since returning from Heaven she had been filled with a feeling of discomfort and of unrest. She hadn't been able to relax- not even in one of the epic baths for which she was becoming infamous.

For her entire life she had been focused on the day that she would die. From the age of fifteen she had been forced to come to terms with the fact that for her, that day would come sooner rather than later. Of course, she'd always expected that once dead, she would stay that way.

She had always thought that once she died she would go to Heaven and that would be the end of it. After all, nobody came back from the dead. That was it, the end. The only people who came back from the dead were usually demonic in one form or another and she was usually the one who had to sort that out.

***

There'll come a time when all of us must leave here

Then nothing sister Mary can do

Will keep me here with you

As nothing in this life that I've been trying

Could equal or surpass the art of dying

She had often wondered how she would die. Drowning was less than glamorous, as she had discovered the first time. She had, of course, imagined dying in what a hack Hollywood screenwriter would call a 'blaze of glory' on the battlefield, perhaps even saving some lives in the process. It was the kind of honourable death reserved in literature only for the greatest of heroes. Her favourite of her many death scenarios involved dying in the arms of the man she loved. Dying in the arms of Angel, content at last. If she had to die- and she did, sometimes even wanted to, that was how she wanted it to be.

***

Do you believe me? There'll come a time when all your hopes are fading

When things that seemed so very plain

Become an awful pain

Searching for the truth among the lying

And answered when you've learned the art of dying

***

Of course, she'd died twice already now and neither time had been how she'd really wanted. The second time was certainly heroic but it hadn't felt right. It felt premature and wrong, as if she wasn't meant to follow her mother quite that soon. Maybe that was why she'd come back again.

She wasn't really sure of anything anymore, not even of dying. If Willow had brought her back once, what was to stop someone bringing her back time and again? Where was the honour in repeated resurrection? Where was the satisfaction or the peace? How could she fulfil destiny's plans for her if she just kept on coming back? Or was that Destiny's plan?

***

But you're still with me

But if you want it

Then you must find it

But when you have it

There'll be no need for it

***

Even Angel had returned- twice. First of course, he'd been killed then returned as a vampire. Then he'd returned from the depths of Hell itself. Perhaps it was their destiny to return and return and return until finally the two of them could be together as she was certain they were meant to be. Without the pain and tears they seemed to incite in each other, how could they appreciate paradise when they got it?

Pain makes happiness that much sweeter, she thought. Then it hit her: perhaps finally, they would fulfil their dual destinies, attain the perfection they sought in each other and be, finally, at peace. And until then, they could always come back and try again at this so-called Art of dying.

***

There'll come a time when most of us return here

Brought back by our desire to be

A perfect entity

Living through a million years of crying

Until you've realized the Art of Dying

Do you believe me?

THE END

Clare/Apollonia/Apolla January 2002.