DISCLAIMER: Yeah. Like I'd give my *SELF* a hysterical nervous breakdown if they were mine. Pfft. They belong to people who don't really give much of a hoot about them. Their handlers and owners care not that the fans need to grieve with their beloved characters. *I* do. Unfortunately, I have to put them back in their lonely, disconnected universe when I'm done, and nobody gives me a red cent for caring about the way their histories are inexorably tied together. *sniff* To make a long story less long (We miss you, Lindsey!), not mine, don't sue.
PAIRING: B/A
TIMELINE: Post Season 5/2 Finales
SPOILERS: Consider the entire canon fair game, especially BtVS5/AtS2, and ESPECIALLY-especially "The Gift" and "There's No Place Like Plrtz Glrb"
SYNOPSIS: Following Angel and some friends through Kubler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief.
RATING: PG-13
CONTENT: MAJOR angst. References to character death. Did I mention the angst?
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The reported end of crossovers leaves Angel's grief as possibly the biggest plothole in television history. Not to mention the central mythology of both series and characters that is the B/A relationship -- without that foundation stone, as far as I'm concerned, much of the magick is simply gone. Poo on JossCo.
This story was inspired by my own experiences in response to the season finales. And yes, I know how twisted grieving for fictional characters is. ;) This is definitely not my best work... but I had to write it. Angel made me. He says all this happy, grinny, jokey stuff the writers are dishing out is crap. *g* No, I swear, he did!
DEDICATION: To my Devoted Minion Dru, for demanding that I "FIX IT!". To V, for feeling my pain. To Anja, who begged for gratuitous over-corpse wailing. And to my beloved Slashers, some of whom have come down with a sudden B/A bug. ;)

Stages of Grief
By Ducks
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Stage I: Denial

"At first, survivors may deny the loss has taken place, and often experience a lingering numbness, shock, or lack of emotional sensation. We may withdraw from our usual social contacts, and refuse help or comfort. This stage may last a few moments or longer." - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"There's no place like... Willow?"
"What's..."
Willow rose slowly to her feet, grief plain in her eyes... in the pale, drawn line of her features. In a split second, Angel knew. "It's Buffy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I remember the sensation of being sucked into Acathla's vortex with crystal clarity. It was like being vacuum sealed... all the air rushing away, the very cohesiveness of reality torn asunder, the solidity of my body broken, collapsing in on itself, shrinking into a pinpoint of pain... darkness... and finally, blinking into nothing. And when next I had form again, I found myself in Hell, where everything was agony. Each moment worse than the one before. An entire reality built of endless torment and torture, and my first coherent thought was the certainty that this was my eternity... and it was far less than I deserved.

This moment was worse.

I've experienced a lot of mood swings in my two and a half centuries, but never had I plummeted from pure, simple, buoyant joy to crushing despair as quickly and utterly as I did when my friends and I returned from Pylea to find Willow waiting.

No... that's not true. It happened once before, the night Buffy and I made love for the first time. When I fell asleep in her arms, cocooned by love... hope... dreams of the future... things I hadn't had since the cold, damp night of my mortal death... if I'd ever had them at all. When I woke to searing pain and stumbled blindly into the night... realized what was happening, and what would inevitably happen next... I felt it then. My first plunge into Hell.

In the matter of a heartbeat, looking into the big brown eyes of the dearest friend of my life's only love, I felt it. The moment that I said the words ((It's Buffy.)), I knew. My entire reality disintegrated and I was once again sucked into a vortex of disbelief... ultimate pain... and finally, nothingness. Hell again.

Buffy was dead. I could read it in Willow's eyes. The one thing in my entire existence that had truly been good was gone.

I froze there on the stairs, stunned. I couldn't move or speak, I forgot to breathe and just stood, gaping at her.

Cordelia broke the heavy silence first, taking a step forward as realization stole on her. "Oh... No. It can't be. Not Buffy," she moaned. I watched as she stumbled across the room in what seemed like slow motion, pulling Willow into a crushing embrace and bursting into very un-Cordelia-like tears.

Willow's eyes never left mine, even as her arms wrapped around Cordy. The Witch looked so haggard... so worn and old. And I remembered... she was little more than a child. A child who had seen far too much simply because she cared about one incredible woman. An unfair price to pay for such pure love...

"Dear God," Wesley mumbled, taking a step closer to me. I could feel his body heat pounding against my skin... scent his shock and sudden sadness, but he mercifully didn't try to touch me. "How? What happened?"

"Who's Buffy?" I heard Fred whisper.

And Gunn's soft reply. "It's uh... kinda a long story. Her and Angel used to... They were..." He left it at that, and Fred didn't push.

I don't remember walking to the couch or sitting down. Actually, there's not a lot that I remember about those first few moments, besides feeling... nothing. I wondered... shouldn't I be crying? Shouldn't I curse the Gods for taking her when she had already given so much? How could she just not... be, anymore?

Maybe I should have wept... but I didn't. I was calm... and colder than I ever remembered being. I sat beside Willow and listened to her spin the tale of that final battle... Buffy's nobility and bravery in the face of her death... how she sacrificed herself to save her sister, and ultimately, the world. She spared the more painful minutiae, of course, but it didn't matter. My imagination created a perfectly detailed picture of every one of Buffy's last moments. The agony on her sweet face... her body lying broken and bleeding on the ground, the beautiful light in her eyes snuffed out forever... her soft, golden skin gone grey with the dull pallor of death...

Death. Buffy was dead. I thought the words, but they had no meaning. No possible tie to my reality.

"I thought I should... I wanted to come and tell you in person," Willow concluded gently, and for the first time, I realized that she was holding my hands. I stared down at them... her small fingers fit around my larger ones much the way Buffy's had... the living heat of her skin was much the same, but somehow... not. She squeezed hard, almost desperately, and I realized that she wasn't just touching, she was holding. Holding on. Holding on to me.

I wanted to tell her not to, because I wasn't sure if I was solid enough to bear even her small weight anymore.

Cordelia sat nearby, crying in the safe circle of Gunn's arms. Wesley was on the phone talking... to Giles, maybe? Poor Fred just sat looking confused and lost.

Lost. Everything was lost. Everything I ever dreamed of and hoped for, crushed. My life's only light, gone.

Buffy. Dead. No warm, soft breath. No strong, soothing heartbeat. No more Buffy. It echoed on and on like a morbid mantra in my head.

I nodded absently. "Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that."

Willow's eyes flooded and she squeezed even harder. "I know how much you loved her. We all did. I'm so sorry, Angel. I'm sorry I couldn't... save her."

Buffy cold, her heroine's heart stilled forever, her strong, beautiful body buried under mounds of cold soil...all those inches of skin I'd kissed breaking down to their component parts... seeping away into the earth. Her smile would never again bring grace to my life. I would never feel her touch or hear her voice, and that particular way she said my name... with a sort of wonder... with a sweetness that, once upon a time, never failed to make my dead heart leap.

"She loved you too," my love's best friend went on, tears choking her voice, "She never stopped. She never said it... but we all knew."

Again, I felt my head bobbing in affirmation... I heard her words, and yet... I felt as though I was standing outside all of this, looking in. I got up. It was just a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, right? All I had to do was keep moving until the sunset woke me.

"Would anyone like some tea?"

Everyone stared at me as though I'd begun speaking a foreign language. What were they waiting for? For me to fall to my knees and keen like the mourning women of my mother country? To scream and cry and rage at the Powers for stealing the sunlight from me yet again? Why would I? None of this was real.

I didn't wait for an answer. My body moved of its own accord, down the hallway to the kitchen. The motions were automatic...open the cupboard... take down the kettle... turn the burner on... fill the pot with water... set it on the burner.

It was a new kettle... red, at Cordelia's insistence. To offset my perpetual black, she said. I tried to tell her... if she needed color, could she pick another than blood red? She said it wasn't blood red, it was crimson. The blue one that Buffy and I drank from on the Day That Wasn't was lost when my old apartment exploded.

I stared as the foreign kettle heated... then whistled with steam. I gave up my humanity so that she could live. I sacrificed both of our happiness... ripped both our hearts out... for what?

For her to do exactly this, I imagined. So she might fulfill her destiny... save the world, then die like every other Slayer had died.

I halted that line of thought very quickly, and stood staring at the bags of tea lined up like paper soldiers in the cupboard: morning blend; Earl Grey; Lemon Zinger; chamomile; peppermint. Buffy always liked peppermint. She used to say that tea was a horrible British disease she caught from Giles. She'd put two tablespoons of sugar in her cup before she poured, and I would tease her that she might save herself some trouble and just eat the sugar straight from the bowl. She would roll her eyes, wrinkle up her nose, and inform me that I should shut up, since I couldn't taste it, and therefore had no idea what I was talking about.

She was right, of course... but I could smell it on her, her usual sunshine and vanilla scent touched with the tang of the mint, and when we kissed, I could feel the sticky sugar on her tongue, and it made me remember what sweet tasted like. I could have tasted the world from her all night...

I picked up the bag of peppermint and stared at it, wondering if some cosmic answer might be found on the brightly colored label, and found suddenly that I didn't remember what I should be doing with it. I lost, in that moment, the simple ability to make tea.

Buffy. Was. Dead. Deceased. No longer among the living. Passed away. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Gone to meet her Maker.

None of them sounded right.

A gentle hand lit on my shoulder. "Angel? Are you..." Wesley began, then reconsidered the question he was going to ask. Was I all right? Of course I was all right. Why wouldn't I be? Life would go on... I would go on... everything would remain exactly the way it had always been, and I wondered if Buffy would be upset that I had no milk in the fridge. You can't have tea without milk, she used to say... "Can I help?"

I forced myself to turn and face him... pity and sorrow wet in his kind blue eyes.

"I don't know if it would be right to make peppermint," I told him, and my voice sounded wrong... tinny and hollow, as if I was hearing myself from a great distance. I frowned. What was wrong with my voice?

His mouth drew into a sad, tight line. He nodded, and took the bag and kettle from my hands.

Did he know that Buffy liked peppermint? That the first time I suggested she could chew on the raw leaves to freshen her breath, she snorted that that was what Tic Tacs were for? Did he know that she curled her hair when the ends were still wet so she wouldn't get split ends, even though she knew she might get electrocuted? Or that she despised history class, but loved poetry, and that I used to read to her from books far older than would ever be, through long nights when we were desperate to be near one another, but were denied the simple comfort of touch? Did he know that her favorite color was blue -- not sky or navy, but Dusty Denim, a Dutch Boy paint that she saw in the hardware store when she was 9? Did he know that the last time I held her, I had no idea it would be the last time, and if I had, I never would have let her go?

"Perhaps chamomile is the best choice for this occasion," he replied calmly, "Why don't you join the others, and let the expert take care of the tea?"

I stared at him, wondering if I should remind him that I was two and a half centuries old... and Irish, thus plenty schooled in the fine art of tea-making, but chose to shrug and shuffle back to the lobby, instead. Everyone was exactly where I left them, only now Willow and Cordelia were crying together, and there was a big empty space at the end of the couch where they sat that just didn't seem like it belonged there...

Or maybe that was the hole inside of me. Was it possible for my heart to turn to dust, and still leave the rest of my walking corpse intact?

Willow's eyes met mine once more, and I could almost hear her thoughts, as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud.

'You're the only one who knows. Who understands how much I miss her. She was part of my heart, and now I feel like I'm dying too. Do you?'

I don't think I answered her. I should probably have been surprised at her new ability... maybe asked how the magick was developing, or how her new lover was, or how Dawn was handling this... or Giles... or even Xander. I should have been doing or saying *something* to help put the world back into its proper orbit and dispel the sensation in my stomach that if I walked back outside, I would find that the stars had all gone out, and the moon was weeping.

I walked over to them, meaning to say something... I don't know what. Or maybe to give them a hug. But there was nothing inside me. No pain, no tears, no comfort to share, so instead I simply looked at them for a moment... how lost they were in their grief, and wished that I could be there too.

"I, uh...I need... I'll be..." I stuttered, and went upstairs.

What difference would it make what I said or did? Buffy was dead, and I didn't know if I would feel anything ever again.

***

It was too dark in my room, so I turned on all the lights. The air was stale and hot, so I threw open the French doors to the summer night. The resulting breeze eased through the empty room, kicking up a thin cloud of dust over everything. How many days had I been gone?

Buffy had been dead for two.

So I dusted... the feathered brush swishing back in forth in a hypnotic rhythm over the dull, hollow surfaces of my life's trappings. The books and the tables, the chairs, the television. I swept away the cobweb that had sprung up in the corner near the balcony door, and I saw that the sheets were dirty. I pulled them off, along with the pillowcases and the bedspread, and threw them in a heap by the door. Pulled fresh ones out of the linen closet and remade the bed, executing four of the finest hospital corners I'd ever managed. I stood there and stared at the flawless angles and failed to understand why they used to matter so much. All those bits of order I forced on the unnatural chaos of my existence, suddenly meaningless.

There was so much to do, and I'd been gone for so long. The kitchenette floor needed mopping... maybe waxing, too. The fridge had developed a low rattle, and the blood inside was probably bad. So much to do... so much to do.

But I couldn't find the screwdriver, and the blood smelled okay, and my skin was too dry and tight to handle hot water or Pine Sol right now. I couldn't find the will to wonder why I even needed dishes at all, really, and the linoleum needed replacing, not waxing. Tiny cracks had popped up here and there in the cream tiles, exposing the old wood underneath. Maybe I would strip the floor and restore the room's original hardwood. The shine would be nice...

But it would make the space just that much darker.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at nothing.

Buffy. My beautiful Buffy. My lover. My friend. My guiding light. My inspiration. Gone. Dead. Never coming back.

I could feel the pulling in my chest... the labor it took to simply draw a single, unneeded breath, and there was a pressure behind my eyes that said I should have been crying.

I loved her. No... *love* her. She was the reason I had come so far, and wasn't dust blowing in some cold Manhattan wind. I should have been mourning. I should have wept. After all, I'd bet that she cried for me when she was forced to send me to Hell. She would never talk about it, but I know her. I know she grieved for me.

So why couldn't I feel anything?

A soft knock fell on the door, and I laid back on the bed. I didn't want to answer. I couldn't look at any of them... at their pain or their concern... their confusion. I couldn't hear their condolences or reassurances that she didn't suffer... or that she was in a better place now. I didn't want to be held or consoled. I didn't want to *be*. I didn't want anything.

I just wanted her back. Failing that, the rest of the world could go to Hell. And stay there.

"Angel?"

I closed my eyes and pretended that I wasn't there. Closed off my senses to sight, scent and sound, and tried to remember what it felt like in my own casket, more than two hundred years ago. But the images were old and dull... faded to the point where I wasn't sure what I was really remembering, and what was just remnants of a thousand screaming nightmares.

Willow's weight depressed the mattress... but barely... as she sat down next to me. I laid there, and she sat there, and neither of us made a sound for... hours, maybe. I don't know. I kept my eyes closed, and neither of us asked for or offered comfort.

I always knew that Buffy would die. She was mortal... and the Slayer. My logical mind carried that knowledge somewhere deep within. But, like everyone else, I thought that "Someday" was a distant, abstract future, far away from Now. That she would fool them all... beat the odds. Die old and grey at the end of a long, happy life, full of love and sunshine, laughter and children... and the Watchers' Council would huff and puff and wonder how she managed it when all the others had failed.

I never thought it would be so soon. Never like this. Not without me having one last chance to tell her how much I loved her... how many precious gifts she gave me. How thankful I was, despite all the pain, that I had the honor of knowing her... of sharing some small part of her amazing life.

I never thought the day she died would be today... or yesterday... or a week ago. Always "Someday".

Willow took a long, hitching breath that finally broke into a sob, and my heart wrenched for her. I couldn't help the compulsion to sit up and reach out... take her warm, quivering form in my arms. I couldn't not help her in her hopelessness. That was my job. And she had once been my friend.

But who would help me? Who would tell me that this was real? That I hadn't somehow tumbled back into the pits of Hell?

"I loved her... so m-much, Angel! I wouldn't be who I am now if it wasn't for her. I don't know what to do! How am I supposed to live without her?" she cried, clutching me for dear life.

I closed my eyes again, and breathed in the shampoo-clean scent of her hair. Pulled her more tightly to me and desperately wished I could *feel*. Something. Anything.

Nothing came. So I just held her, because I didn't know how to answer her question. I didn't know if there was an answer.

I simply didn't know how to believe that there could be a world without Buffy Summers in it.

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