My life closed twice before its close;
  It yet remains to see
  If Immortality unveil
  A third event to me.
  So huge, so hopeless to conceive
  As these that twice befell
  Parting is all we know of heaven
  And all we need of hell.

  -Emily Dickinson
 
 

  Angel gathered Willow's lifeless body close to him. Wrapping one arm around

  her body, his other arm cradled her neck and tucked her head beneath his
  chin. Angel was beyond tears, beyond any expression of grief. He just sat
  there with his body curled around hers and his face buried in her hair.

  "She can't be dead! She's not," Xander stated in a flat tone, not accepting
  that what his eyes told him was true.

  Since Willow was a vampire, she didn't breath, she had no pulse and her
  skin was without the warmth of a human body. So the absence of those
  things
  weren't what told them all that she was dead. It was her eyes. Her eyes,
  still open, were without the animating quality of Willow-ness. They were
  blank, glassy, vacant.

  They were dead.

  Unable to bear it, Angel took one last look at her blue-green eyes and then
  swept his hand over them, closing them forever. He laid her gently on the
  ground and stood then, staring down at her silently.

  Behind him, the rest of the group stood in absolute silence as the
  impossibility of all this was still filtering through them.

  Buffy had had only moments to focus on dispelling the dizzy fog from her
  body after she gained consciousness before all her attention was
  transferred to a fading, dying Willow. She wished she was still
  unconscious. That all this was a bad dream. But no. The obvious reality was
  that Buffy had failed her friend for the final time. < Dear god, it should
  have been me, > she thought. Instead of rescuing Willow, it turned out that
  Willow had rescued them all, sacrificing her life to do it.

  Seeking comfort and refuge from the battering of her own thoughts, Buffy
  instinctively leaned against Xander.

  Despite everything some stubborn part of him clung to hope, turning to
  Giles Xander argued, "She's a vampire and she hasn't turned to dust. There
  has to be something we can still do!"

  "She was unlike any other vampire we've ever known," Giles replied
  mournfully. "Those differences may include a different kind of-of death for
  her."

  "I don't believe it. I won't!" Xander rasped but his words echoed with a
  hollow air of despair. Yet he refused to cry, as if in the belief that
  should he shed tears it would make this nightmare all the more real.

  "Xander…" Buffy pleaded through her tears.

  "No! SHE CAN'T BE DEAD!" Xander kneeled down and desperately shook
  Willow's
  body. "Willow! Wake up! Willow, please…"

  Even as Giles turned away unable to watch the outpouring of Xander's
  anguished denial and Angel, seemingly locked in his own inner world of
  pain, merely watched impassively; Buffy couldn't stand silently by a moment
  longer waiting for Xander to crumble.

  Choking on her own tears she grabbed him from behind. Xander struggled for
  a moment before submitting to Buffy's embrace. Turning around in her arms,
  he buried his face against her neck.

  His sobs came then, ragged and terrible.