The birds had stopped singing months ago, their silence heard more in the first moments of dawn and dusk, their happy songs long gone, but not forgotten. The days were growing longer and the silence growing louder. It wasn’t just the birds that were gone. No longer were there echoes of the wild dogs barking in the distance or the noises of the animals foraging and living in the forests. No longer did the bees fly and buzz and pollinate, the flowers dying out that spring, never blooming, the landscape dull and barren.

Even the fish in the streams and the lakes and the oceans had died off. It seemed that in the span of eight months, the only species that survived were humans. And the ones that were not.

The ones that were not were that not even the worst of nightmares could conceive. They walked throughout the day and night, feasting, hunting, never sleeping, their blood-thirsty bodies always searching for their next meal, preying on what they could and without a mind, without a soul, it was the only thing driving them, keeping them alive—dead, but alive.

Faith Lehane lit a cigarette as she sat upon the rooftop of an empty warehouse, their home for the past three days. The sun was just setting and another long, sleepless night was upon them. Her lighter clicked, filling the silence and she snapped the lid shut, taking a long drag of her cigarette and watched as the smoke curled up into the darkening sky.

“Did you want to be alone?”

Faith turned to look behind her and she sighed, shrugging her shoulders as Dawn Summers came to sit down on the gravel rooftop beside her. She pulled out the metal case she kept her cigarettes in, offering the younger woman one. She knew she’d decline, she always did, but it’d become a habit to offer.

“They’re going out again tonight,” Dawn said quietly. “They won’t let me come.”

“Safer here for you, kiddo.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“I know.”

Faith took another long drag of her cigarette, her eyes on the horizon and the setting sun. As she exhaled slowly, she turned to look at Dawn. She definitely wasn’t a kid anymore. The sudden epidemic had changed all of them and Faith had noticed that change the most in Dawn, out of all of them that had banded together when the whole world started to fall apart to pieces.

She could barely remember that day, at least that’s the lie she told herself. After she joined the others in Sunnydale to fight the First and after all was said and done with Sunnydale nothing but a big hole in the ground, she turned herself back in, determined to live out the rest of her sentence in prison. It had barely been three months after that when the first prisoner was infected. Every night the screams of terror, of fear, echoed in her head and every night she wondered just how the hell she’d managed to escape unharmed.

Maybe it was because she was a slayer. Maybe it was because she was supposed to survive. Maybe it was her own fear that drove her to run and not stop until the screams and cries of anguish were nothing but echoes in her mind.

It’d taken her two months to find Buffy Summers and the rest of the Scooby gang. She found them hiding out in a cabin just twenty miles outside of Castle Rock, Colorado. Angel was with her at the time, which was why it took her so long to find them and catch up to them.

Angel.

It burned deep in her heart whenever she thought of him—which she tried not to because it hurt too much. She shook her head as she took another drag of her cigarette and turned her head up to the sky. Angel had sacrificed so much, not just for her, but for all of them. Nobody knew he was infected, not for the first few days, nobody knew but her.

She had been the one to kill him. He’d been oozing blood from his mouth and eyes, the infection gripping him, yet it working far slower than with the others, his un-beating heart made the virus spread slower, increasing the agony he lived through in his final days.

She told him she loved him before she plunged the stake into his heart. She meant it when she told him she loved him and she knew that he knew. He saved her and in the end, she’d saved him. At least that’s what she kept trying to tell herself six months later, the infection getting him far quicker than she thought it would.

She still doesn’t remember him being bitten. He went on for days without showing any signs things were off, that he was changing. Days on an end, right around the time she found Buffy and the Scooby gang outside of Castle Rock, Colorado. If she only knew right from the start, if she only knew, she could’ve saved Buffy from the heartbreak she went through seeing her kill her first love. Seeing him suffer and being killed by a woman who was once her enemy. Her rival. Her equal.

Everything was different now. They had nobody else but each other and they all knew it.

“Do you ever think about what would’ve happened if the world was different?”

Faith turned her head to look over at Dawn and she managed a small, sad smile. “Every day, Dawn. Every fucking day.”

“Is it ever going to get any better?”

Faith sighed as she turned her attention back to the sun lowering in the sky, half of it consumed by the trees on the horizon, the brilliant colours of reds, pinks, purples and oranges filling the sky and bouncing off the clouds that skimmed by. For a moment she could feel that lingering feeling of peace, but it faded. It faded so quickly, just like all the other hopes and dreams.

“I don’t know anymore, Dawn,” Faith finally replied and she flicked her cigarette butt over the edge of the roof, watching as it fell to the ground below, the embers exploding as it hit the ground before they fizzled out and died. “What’s the world without hope, yeah? Don’t lose it, kiddo. You’re the only one who has any hope left.”

“That’s not true,” Dawn said quietly and she nudged her shoulder into Faith’s. “I can’t be the only one. I know you have hope too.”

“Be easier if I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Cos that bite of yours looks pretty nasty, kiddo,” Faith said as she pulled Dawn’s shirt collar to the side, revealing the infected bite mark just below her collarbone. “When did it happen?”

Dawn recoiled, pulling her shirt out of Faith’s grasp. She shook her head, but it didn’t hide the fact her whole body was shaking now. “I—I don’t know,” she muttered. “I can’t remember.”

“Do they know?”

“No,” Dawn shook her head and she shuddered. “No, they don’t know. They can’t know.”

Faith laughed bitterly as she stood up and backed away from the edge of the roof, the gravel crunching under her well-worn boots. She reached inside her jean jacket pocket and ran her fingers over the handle of her curved dagger. It was almost time.

“Please, Faith…please…”

“Please?” Faith shook her head as she pulled the dagger out of her pocket, the blade glimmering in the light of the setting sun. “You want me to kill you, Dawn?”

“Please…”

“What makes you think I will?” Faith asked as she stepped a single step closer to Dawn and watched her as she peered behind her, the five hundred foot fall beneath her likely looking like a better way to die than at the hands of Faith Lehane. “I love you, Dawn. You’re like a sister to me. What makes you think I can just kill you?”

“I’m infected,” Dawn muttered as she stepped closer to the edge of the roof. “It’s the right thing to do. You know it is, Faith. It’s the only way. Please…”

Faith bit her lower lip as she gripped the dagger tight. There were no sounds other than the sound of her own ragged breathing and the desperation she could feel coming from Dawn resonated loudly. Could she kill her? She was infected. A threat. There was no way out of this. It was either kill her or watch her try to kill herself, but she knew Dawn wasn’t that brave. She wasn’t brave enough to jump her way to death. No, she was petrified and she came to her, her of all of them, pleading for help. For death.

To save them all.

“Please, Faith…before it’s too late.”

“Why me?” Faith asked as she took another step forward, her grip so tight on the handle of the dagger her knuckles turned white. “Why me, Dawn?”

“Because you’re the only one that knows it’s right.”

Faith watched as Dawn’s body twitched and convulsed in the dying rays of sunlight. She watches as the steady stream of blood flowed first from her mouth and then her eyes. She gripped the dagger tighter, fighting her tears as she reached out and grabbed Dawn by the front of her shirt before she could topple over the edge to her death.

And then she slid the blade deep in her upper torso, into her heart, her tears falling steadily as she gripped on to Dawn and held her tight. Her tears fell upon Dawn as she held her and she pulled the dagger out from her heart, the blood drips echoing loudly just before she dropped the dagger to the ground.

“I’m sorry, Dawnie,” Faith whispered as she placed a hard kiss to Dawn’s forehead, her fingers interweaving their way through her thick hair. “I’m so sorry. It shouldn’t have been this way.”

“It’s okay,” Dawn choked, her body giving in to death by the second. “You did…what was…right. Thank…you…”

She held Dawn as she passed, feeling her die, feeling the last of her soul leave her body, feeling her body grow limp and lifeless until she let her fall to the gravel roof in a heap. Wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, she reached for the dagger lying half a foot away and she closed her eyes, heartbreak and guilt filling her, before she drove the blade clear through Dawn’s neck.

She let go of the grip she had on her hair, her fingers numb. She just stood there, watching her lifeless head roll slightly along the gravel roof before she rose to her feet and wiped the blade off on the thigh of her legs, her jeans soaking in yet another layer of blood. In this world, things were different, and she just saved the world from another creature who would have been the ultimate end to the world as she knew it. The question was, could she save this world from killing itself before she sought the ultimate fate for herself?

She didn’t know. She’d never know. The sounds of the birds were long gone and so was the hope she’d once held deep in her heart.