A/N: I'm not entirely sure yet if this is going to be the start of something bigger, or if I'm just going to leave it as a one-off. I just had this in my head, and I wanted to get it out there. I hope you enjoy it, either way.

Ashes to ashes …

She had the dream almost every night, it seemed. And it always started out the same. She would hear the disembodied voice of the preacher who had spoken at her mother's funeral, but she wasn't dreaming about Joyce.

There were flowers, and there was grass. A weeping willow beside a brook, a moonless night. It was always night, and it was always moonless.

Dust to dust …

There was a stone there … no body, not even ashes, but a stone, nonetheless. Beside where she had been, once. They had thought he might like it there … in the dream.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

She heard Drusilla's voice in the dream, as well. She laughed her maniacal laugh. "But it's so funny," she would sing-song. "I knew before you did …"

"You taste like ashes …"

She would wake then, gasping, sitting straight up in bed, moonlight streaming through her windows. Sometimes she would scream out his name, sometimes not, but it didn't matter.

He was always there, and he would pull her into his arms without a word, and she would lean against him. "You went away again," she told him, and he would chuckle.

"Not in a million years," he'd murmur against her hair, and she would turn to him and kiss him as though her very being depended on it.

It wasn't like before, these times … it was deeper now, realer. His hand would snake up under the fabric of whatever she'd worn to bed that night, and she would give into him as he touched and caressed and licked and nipped at her skin, opening herself to him fully, letting him in as she'd never let anyone in before. "I love you," he would whisper, "I love you so much." And he would intertwine his fingers with hers … the flames would lick at the skin of their joined hands … but it wasn't like the first time, when the heat of his soul had scorched her in the most beautiful way … now it felt like nothing. Now it felt cold.

I touch the fire and it freezes me …

And then there were no more rough hands on her skin, no more whispered promises, and she wasn't even in her bed any more. She was beside that brook, that weeping willow, that stone that marked the site of nothing and everything, and it was night, and there was no moon, and she was cold, cold all over, and so empty she couldn't bear it.

I'm not ready for you to not be here …

She would go to her knees then, and trace her fingers over the epitaph, but she still wouldn't cry. Couldn't cry, even though she wanted to so badly. She wanted to cry for him, because didn't he deserve it? After everything he'd done, didn't he deserve her tears? But every emotion she'd worked so hard to get back, it was gone again, gone with him, and she wanted him to just come home.

She'd wake for real then, to the sun streaming through her windows, and the empty feeling gnawing away at her.

It had been 146 days.

I want the fire back …