Buffy felt The Master's teeth in her throat. She silently wailed in despair as she felt him drink her blood, her blood that would enable him to escape his prison at last. She had failed. She closed her eyes as everything went black.

When she opened them again, The Master was gone. His lair was gone. Sunnydale was gone.

She wasn't standing in the underground caverns beneath Sunnydale High any more. She was standing in a forest, underneath a huge oak tree.

"What the-" Buffy started to say.

"Welcome, Slayer" a voice said from behind her. Buffy whirled at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Merrick!"

He looked just the same as the first time she had seen him in the shopping mall. Same uniformly grayish-brown trenchcoat and trousers, with a battered fedora on his head. Merrick smiled, the same gentle smile he had given her just a few times in the period they had known each other.

Buffy realized what seeing Merrick again must mean, and she wasn't sure whether she was wigged, bummed, or relieved.

"I guess I'm dead, huh?"

"Not quite" Merrick said.

"Okay Merrick, what's the sitch?"

"I'm not Merrick," he said, shaking his head.

"You're his ghost, then?" Buffy asked.

"No. I appear to you as Merrick, because he is the person you associate most with death. His death has injured you more than any other."

Buffy opened her mouth to deny this, but realized that she couldn't, and asked instead "So who are you?"

"I am the Guardian of the Place between the Worlds."

"This place?" At the Guardian's nod, Buffy added "The place between what worlds?"

"The worlds of life and death."

"So I'm not alive, but I'm not dead either?" Buffy asked slowly, trying to work this out.

"Exactly" the Guardian said, smiling at her in that she-finally-got-it- right way Merrick had.

"So what happens now? Do I get to go to heaven, or what?"

"That's up to you" the Guardian told her.

"What do you mean?" Buffy asked.

"You have come to me at a crossroads. Of your life, of the lives of many of the people you know. You may choose to pass to the reward you have earned, or you may return to life, to fight again."

"Again?" Buffy asked, her voice small.

"Yes"

Buffy took a deep breath, and questioned "If I don't go back, will the Master open the Hellmouth?"

The Guardian shook his head solemnly. "One way or another, his plan fails and his life ends. Tonight."

Buffy gave a deep sigh of relief, and replied "Thank you. I needed to hear that so bad."

"So you choose to pass on, then?"

Buffy didn't answer for a minute; she just looked at the ground. When she raised her head, her face was wet with tears.

"I'm just so tired" she confessed.

"I know" the Guardian said. "Shall we go?"

Buffy nodded and reached for the hand that he held towards her. The forest shimmered brilliantly for a second, then smoothed out into a different place, a clearing. There was a wide pool of water to her left, and a doorway made of branches set in the ground to her right.

"We're still in the forest, aren't we?" Buffy asked, puzzled.

"Oh yes. It's just faster this way than walking." He indicated the doorway, and told her "That's where you need to go."

Buffy took a step towards the doorway. Then another. Then she turned around, her white prom dress swirling around her.

"What about the others?" she asked the Guardian.

"What others?"

"My friends. Giles, Willow, and Xander. The ones I love. Mom and Angel. What happens to them if I go now?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

Buffy nodded resolutely. She had no choice.

Part two is here.

FEEDBACK!

Go here for more of Lady Raven's stories.