Buffy was a little bruised and banged up from her falls, but nothing worse than when she'd been out on patrols and run into a scouting party of vampires or werewolves. She knew that he could've done far worse, and yet he hadn't. It frustrated her because that was what she needed to really be able to let go of Daniel. If he hurt her, more than a few bruises and a lump on the back of her head, maybe she could admit that he wasn't there anymore. It was a twisted way of thinking, and yet it was the only thing she could cling to in that moment. That he wouldn't do it was killing her because she was unable to abandon her best friend. Partially for his sake, and partially for her own selfish need to not lose one of two people in her life that really knew her beyond her calling.
Buffy stood still when he stepped closer, tensing like she was preparing for an attack. When his hand swept that hair away from her face, it was far more painful in some ways.
And then those words. They were like a knife in her. Of course she hadn't known. She'd been so caught up in her own world, and in what had been happening to her that of course she wouldn't have realized. Maybe she had, and maybe she hadn't wanted to deal with the complications that would have come with it. Daniel had always been her best friend, and she'd needed that. She still needed that, she found. She knew that she loved Ambrose, and that didn't change or falter even with the confession. But had she loved Daniel once and been too wrapped up in her world to admit it? Did it even matter now if she had?
"You can't do this to me," Buffy broke down, her voice breaking as her face crumpled and a tear ran down her cheek. It had been meant to prove to her that Daniel wasn't present any longer, but she was still clinging to that perhaps stupid idea in her head that Daniel was still there. Whatever the past had or hadn't been, she needed her best friend, and she refused to give up on him. "You can't stand here and look like him and sound like him and tell me he's dead. You just can't." She wasn't sure how to respond to the words, but the conflict on her face would show that she'd heard them. She knew that she loved Ambrose, knew it with a fire and a certainty that she rarely had in her life. It was hearing that someone she cared for in an equally deep but different way might have loved her with that same fire that was killing her.