RATING: PG
CONTENT: Adult themes, sexual references
SPOILER WARNINGS: Buffy season 6, up to and including 'Gone'; Angel season 3, up to and including 'Waiting In The Wings'. Note that for this fic, Buffy is aware of Angel's current attraction to Cordelia (artistic licence, right?)
DISCLAIMER: Humph! These characters obviously aren't mine, or things would be different! They belong to Joss, of course.
SUMMARY: A lost Buffy seeks solace in the familiar. Knowing Angel loves her is a source of strength for her...unless she doubts his passion. The opening quote is from Shakespeare's *Hamlet*, Act 1.

Broken
By Ezra
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A little more than kin, a little less than kind. - Hamlet
I'm broken.

Torn, shattered, screwed-up, wrong. I can't seem to care, about anything. I'm sleeping with something soulless, and I'm betraying everything I'm supposed to hold dear. My world is grey.

And I know why. It isn't what they think, Giles and the others. It isn't from every bit of innocence being stripped away from my soul, every burden that's been heaped upon my shoulders over the past...life, all the worry and loss and responsibility eroding away at my sense of self. That all helped, but it's not the thing that dissolved me, that left me empty.

He did it.

He swept me up into a whirlwind of passion and understanding and love. And then he left me, and he took my heart with him. He has it still, even though he doesn't want it anymore.

Isn't love supposed to be forever? Well, mine is, anyway. I kept on loving him even after I died. It was a truth, something I would never question. I wasn't supposed to come back and find him falling for Cordelia, of all people. I guess I'm still dead to him.

I guess it was all a lie.

I remember how I used to turn away from Riley while he slept, the sound of his heart beating breaking mine. In a naive moment I had thought that having someone so opposite from Angel would make me forget...

Having failed at that, I've turned to something a little closer to home. This isn't about forgetting, or trying to have a normal life with a normal lover. It goes much deeper -and maybe darker - than that.

This is about feeling cool skin inflaming my own, about sensing the demon inside Spike as he surrounds me. The demon feels like me. I think Dracula was right, when he said we were kindred, Vampire and Slayer. This is about sinking into the world Angel opened up to me, and then never filled. This one, this primal demon, this man, yearns for me.

I don't ever try to pretend it's Angel - that's separate and sacred, however far away and lost. But I know his essence runs through his granchilde's veins, and Spike makes me feel alive again. Sometimes, when I am with him, I almost know my own heart again, even though I'm not sure it works anymore. I can rest my head on Spike's chest and hear not a pulse but a hundred years of savagery and bloodlust and truth and desire and power and need, and even love. He's like Angel.

And I can't be without Angel.

end

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