For �The Song Remembers When� by Trisha Yearwood. It kind of inspired this.

I had spent months driving around after I left Sunnydale for the final time. Driving, staying with friends all over the country. On full moons I would drive out into forests and sit on a tree stump and just concentrate, holding in the wolf. Sometimes I wouldn�t hold it in, sometimes I would let go and let the wolf hunt. Hunting for the mate it lost, hunting for her.

One morning I woke up under a weeping willow tree. I had cried then, it had been nearly three months since I had seen her and that tree that she was named for. . . it brought up the emotions I had forgotten to have. I had tried to loose myself, drive as far away from her as I could, forget her. It was all useless and I knew it, she was apart of me and I knew I would never be able to outrun the memories.

All I could seem to do was keep telling myself that high school romances never stuck. They always ended, sometimes badly, sometimes well. How many people did you hear about now a days that were high school sweethearts and married? It ended, eventually. Somewhere in my heart I had prayed it wouldn�t be like that for us. We would get married and have kids, move out of the Hellmouth to somewhere normal. Or maybe we would stay. I wouldn�t care, as long as she was happy.

And now she was happy, and I was left miserable and alone. I still had Devon, he was my best friend, but he didn�t understand. He used girls, that was his way. He didn�t get how someone could be so special to me that I would have to leave the very state she was in just so I could feel there was distance between us. He didn�t get it, and maybe that�s why I hadn�t called Devon in so long I couldn�t remember his voice.

I could remember her voice though, clearly. It came to me in my dreams, her haunting voice whispering sweet nothings in my ear. That's what they were now, nothings.

I�d called her once, just to hear her voice. I suspect everyone who�s ever lost someone they were so in love with has done that. Wanted one more conversation, minute, second listening to the persons voice. Willow hadn�t picked up the phone though, SHE had. I slowly slid the receiver back into place and had jumped into my van and drove away from the gas station.

People have always said to me that love wasn�t worth all the pain that it caused, maybe they were right. It hurt like hell to remember her, made every breath that came into my lungs hurt. What was breathing with out her? What was listening to the radio, strumming a guitar, smelling a rose.

Now I just sat in my van, starring out over the large ravine. I wanted so much to hit the gas and end it, stop the pain. But I knew I couldn�t do that, suicide meant hurt and pain for everyone who had ever known me. It would hurt her, and that was something I had sworn I would never do again. I was living to spare her from pain. It was all that kept me living, driving, breathing. . .

The thought of the pain that it would cause her if I stopped. Not real pain. Guilt. Not love. Guilt.

If I was dead, she would cry from guilt.

And I wasn�t willing to let her have that pain, she was happy.

I didn�t matter.

~*~End~*~