"If I've told you idiots once, I've told you a thousand times, watch each others backs! Chloe died because someone wasn't watching her back. She died because you failed. Now, buck up and learn what I'm trying to teach you!"
'Buffy's latest rant session is well and truly underway,' Xander thought. 'I wish she'd just shut up sometimes and think about what she's saying.' when she started to condemn Molly, he decided it was time to step in.
"That's enough, Buffy. I think they get the point."
"Do you? Do you really? And what would you know about points, Xander?" She yelled, whirling around to face him, incensed by the fact that someone was trying to usurp her authority. "You haven't made a good one since High School."
The carpenter sighed heavily before speaking. "It's already four in the morning. Everyone get up to bed. Now." As Slayers-in-Training rushed up the stairs to the various mass bedrooms that they now shared, desperately trying to hide from the Slayer's wrath, Xander slowly turned back to Buffy, and tossed her a beaten-up Walkman.
"Just press play, and listen. I can't get through to you, but maybe the Eagles can. Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all. You taught me that. Good-night, Buffy." He slowly turned away from her and headed out the door, not seeming to care that dawn wasn't due for at least another hour.
The eldest Summers woman sat down on her living room couch, thinking, 'What an idiot, as if some stupid song is gonna make me any less mad at him.' But she lowered the headphones down onto her head, pressed play as instructed, and listened anyway.
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
You been out ridin' fences for so long now
Oh, you're a hard one
I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin' you
Can hurt you somehow
Don' you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
You know the queen of heats is always your best bet
Now it seems to me, some fine things
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get
Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'
Your prison is walking through this world all alone
Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're loosin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?
Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before it's too late
Silence filled the room as Buffy took in the meaning of one of her all time favorite songs, felling as if she had just heard it for the first time.
"What have I done?"