disclaimer in part 1

Stages of Grief
By Ducks
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Stage II: Anger

"The grieving person may then be furious: at the person who inflicted the hurt (even
if she's dead), or at the world for letting it happen. He may be angry with himself
for letting the event take place, even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped
it." - From the "Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief"

~~~~~~~~~~~

It took two weeks for me to even be able to consider going to Sunnydale. Two weeks of
emptiness, running on automatic pilot. I didn't sleep... barely fed. Cordelia
continued having visions, and my friends and I continued our work, as if the bottom
hadn't fallen out of the universe. I chopped and sliced the demons, listened and
spoke to those in need, and still... I sleepwalked through it all, unable to remember
why I bothered. I was a husk of someone who once cared... the shell of an alleged
champion. There was nothing all all left inside of me that could be called life.

Cordelia was the one who finally bullied me into going. She didn't even try for
compassionate subtlety. She simply told me, point blank, that I *had* to.

"You have to say goodbye. You can't just walk around here pretending nothing's wrong.
You have to *grieve*, Angel! You'll never be able to go on if you don't!"

"I'm *fine*, Cordelia!" I told her for the thousandth time, "I don't have to go to
Sunnydale to grieve."

In fact, I'd become convinced that I didn't need to grieve at all. Hadn't I already
mourned for Buffy the entire first year I spent here in LA? Didn't I cry myself to
sleep every long, empty night for months over the loss of the only woman I'd ever
loved? What need did I have to cry anymore? She was dead. Breaking down wouldn't
bring her back. Nor would standing and staring at some rock with her name on it.

Cordelia looked me straight in the eye. "Maybe not. But *I* do. And I need you to
come with me. Please."

She never liked Buffy very much... that was no secret. So her reaction over the past
couple of weeks: sudden bouts of crying; her continual attempts to draw me into
conversations where she would relive and remember our adventures on the Hellmouth...
and now this? The meaning of it all eluded me.

"Why?" I wondered aloud, "Why should you care? You never showed anything but disdain
for Buffy and the way I felt about her before. You never gave a single positive
thought to her when she was alive, so why now?"

The anger suddenly beginning to well up in me was strange after all the nothingness.
The sound of my voice slowly rising in volume and pitch was enough to make both Cordy
and me jump.

But she stood fast. Instead of walking away or shouting back, she took my hands and
looked deeply into my eyes.

"Maybe we were never really friends. But... whether I liked her or not, I respected
her. I understood how important she was. And... she did save my life a bunch of
times. You're right... I never told her any of that when she was alive. But... I need
to show it now that she's..." Cordy shook her head as if to will the reality of it
away. "I just need to. And I need to see the others. She was a *huge* part of our
lives, Angel. We can't just pretend she never existed."

My fury grew, like burning lava in my gut. What did Cordelia know about loving Buffy?
About having her be so much a part of her that the loss was like being ripped in two
from the inside?

Roughly shaking off her hands, I barked, "I'm not going to Sunnydale, Cordelia, and
that's final! Let it go, all right? If you need to be there, fine. Go. Take Wesley.
Take Gunn. Take Fred, I don't care. But I'm not going!"

I turned my back and stomped away, slamming the office door behind me.

Only to have it crash open again a heartbeat later to admit a now enraged Cordy. She
slammed her perfectly manicured hands down on the edge of my desk.

"Why are you being such a stubborn jerk? You *loved* her! You gave up your *humanity*
for her! Are you going to try and convince me you don't *care* that she's *DEAD*?!"

I felt something snap inside of me... in my head, or maybe my soul, I'm not sure. But
whatever it was broke, and the fury shot me from my chair.

"HOW DARE YOU?!" I raged, "Who the Hell do you think you are? Of *course* I care that
she's dead! I feel like my heart's been ripped out of my chest! It's all I can do not
to walk out into the sunrise every morning! How can you even *insinuate* that I don't
*care*?!"

She blinked, the tears that had been welling in her eyes finally breaking free to
trickle down her tanned cheeks. Her voice was soft and scared as she said,

"Because you haven't cried. Not even once. You haven't said her name out loud. You
leave the room whenever we talk about her. You don't sleep. You don't eat. You
haven't smiled once in two weeks. You shuffle around here like some creepy zombie
hero robot with this blank look on your face. I know you hurt, Angel... I can *feel*
it
coming off you. And it scares me that you won't let yourself be sad that she's gone."

The anger left me in a rush as I listened to her speech, and I was left drained and
vacant once more. Too weak to stand any longer, I slumped back into my chair and
stared down at the blotter on my desk.

It still read "April 2001" -- I hadn't changed the calendar since I last went to
Sunnydale. It was as though time had stopped when Buffy and I spent that night in the
graveyard, talking. Like nothing had happened at all since that final kiss... that
last goodbye that I failed to recognize. And in a flash, I remembered so many things
I never got to tell her. Things I wanted so much to share, but held back because she
needed to ease her burden... not take on mine.

And now she would never know all that I had learned because of her.

"I can't," I finally whispered, not raising my eyes from that date. "I don't
have any tears left inside me for her. I can't go to Sunnydale. If I do... If I open
myself to this..." I looked up slowly. "It might kill me."

She gave me a soft, reassuring smile. "You're already dead. But... if you want to go
on living in your own special un-living sort of way, you have to go. You know you
do."

I sighed and looked away again. "I'll think about it."

"Fine. But... think fast, okay? I'm leaving at sunset."

I looked up again once she'd left... left me alone with a single moment forever
frozen in time, and a void where my dead heart should have been.

***

The grass in cemeteries is always an unnaturally flawless, deep emerald green, as if
the combined life force of all the bodies buried its surface fed the soil. The blades
were
stiff and crisp, and crunched softly beneath my feet as I walked slowly through Sunny
Rest. I wasn't in a hurry. After all, I had eternity to get to her... and she
certainly wasn't going anywhere.

The irony of this particular pilgrimage didn't escape me. I remembered so clearly
hours we spent here, "hunting"...kissing and holding hands... dreaming and talking
against this tree or that mausoleum. So little had changed, and yet... everything was
completely different. Inverted. All wrong. The memories crowded around me as I made
my way, whispering like ghosts of times past... moments we spent together now as dead
and lost as she.

It wasn't right. She should have been stalking the horrors that haunted this ground,
not buried beneath it. She should have been able to smile and bury her nose in the
dozens and dozens of white roses all around her. She shouldn't have been reduced to
nothing but a slab of marble and a few sprouts of new grass.

And she certainly shouldn't have had an evil, soulless demon drunk and caterwauling
wretchedly over her grave.

I was so shocked to see him there, for a long moment, I couldn't react at all beyond
gaping. Spike sat, leaning hard against Buffy's gravestone, sobbing his way through
some woeful mourning song, clutching a mostly empty bottle of scotch. Several others
were scattered about... a couple of empties, and a few more full. Someone was
obviously on a bender.

There was the anger again. How *dare* he profane her memory like this? Spit on her
very *existance*, insult the dignity of her sacrifice? I felt myself shift into demon
face and took the last few feet between us in a single stride, grabbing him and
hauling him to his feet.

I can't remember what I said... I might have cursed him or threatened him... in
Gaelic or Latin or Russian, I don't know. All I remember was blood red rage blinding
my vision, the end result of which was my sending him flying a good twenty feet
across the graveyard, where he finally crashed to earth...

And promptly curled up into a ball where he landed, sobbing even harder than before.

"STAY AWAY FROM HER!" I screamed, putting myself squarely between him and the grave.

"Sod off!" he choked, finally uncurling and struggling to his feet. He stumbled back
toward where I stood, and gave me a weak shove. "You got no right. *I* was *here*!
Where the fuck were *you*? Why wasn't it *you* puttin' your precious immortal
superhero ass on the line for her?" He slurred, punctuating his speech by flinging
the empty bottle across the ground, and it landed with a dull thud a few feet away.
"If anybody's outta line bein' here, it's YOU!" He concluded, and plopped down on the
ground beside me, claiming the next full bottle, cracking the seal, and sucking half
of it down in a single swig.

"She fucking loved you, and you let her die," he added with a hiss. "So *you* fucking
stay away from her."

I blinked at him, still trembling with fury and indignance, still full of a burning
desire to dust him right then and there. But... I didn't want his filthy remains
anywhere near her resting place.

Besides... he was right. My anger quickly turned inward. Why *hadn't* I been there?
How did I dare to mourn her at all, when I might have been able to save her? I walked
away. I was too weak to stay and try. The same weakness that had led to my mortal
death drove me from her side, and she to her grave. I had never been able to say no.
Never to her, even though I knew better. I couldn't fight my feelings... that pull
like gravity that always brought me right back to her, when that was the last place I
deserved to be. And my solution? Leave. Run away.

I should have stayed. I should have tried. I should never have kissed her that first
time. It should have been me who was dead. It should have been my final end. Who was
I to forbid Spike his grief when ultimately, it was I who had failed?

"I didn't even last 30 seconds," Spike moaned, "That bastard Doc tossed me off the
tower like a bloody rag doll, and all I could do was fall." He looked up at me with
an expression of agony like nothing I'd ever seen from him before. "I promised her
I'd protect Dawn. I promised, and I failed. Now she's dead because of me."

My rage was swept away by the shock of his pain, and for the first time, I could
scent his genuine sorrow. He was really grieving for her.

In the same moment, I grasped with a flash that this beast... this monster that I had
tutored in torture and hatred and pain for a dozen years... loved her. Loved the
Slayer. *MY* Slayer. And once I realized that, I could see it burning like an aura
all around him.

Spike was in love with Buffy.

"You tried to kill her more times than I can *count*!" I spat, "I don't know what
kind of twisted game you're playing, Spike, but... Go screw with someone else's loss!
Your presence here is *disgusting*!"

He raised narrowed eyes to me. "Yeah? Well I don't give a flying FUCK what you think,
how about that? I fucking *loved* her. I threw Dru over for her. I bloody well let
that Glory bitch torture me half to death to protect her. I would have died in her
place without a fucking *blink*!" With vampire speed, he was on his feet once more
and shrieking in my face. His liquor and cigarette breath was like a cold, putrid
wind against my skin, and I had to turn away. "YOU fucking broke her heart! YOU
fucking killed her a good, long time ago, and it's only now that she finally realized
she was dead! So you can take your soulful, holier than thou white knight bullshit
and go FUCK YOURSELF WITH IT!"

He pushed me -- hard, this time -- and in my frozen shock, I stumbled a few steps
back. Spike hovered over the grave, game face apparent, and began screaming at the
memorial. "WHY!? Why did you fucking do it? You weren't supposed to DIE! You were
supposed to fucking WIN! You were supposed to be a nasty, snotty, ass-kicking wench
FOREVER! I FUCKING HATE YOU!" He hurled the scotch at the gravemarker, where it
shattered, spilling golden liquid down its polished face. "STUPID MARTYR BITCH!"

I didn't even think to move, but a moment later I found myself standing over Spike,
my knuckles bloody from hard contact with his fangs.

"DON'T YOU EVER DISRESPECT HER LIKE THAT, BOY! You're not fit to even share SPACE
with her grave!"

He laughed drunkenly... bitterly, and sat up, wiping the blood from his chin and
licking it off before laying a sneer on me.

"Yeah, that's right, Angelus. Take your guilt out on me. Don't worry, you can't say
anything to me I haven't said to myself a million goddamn times already." Spike
turned his gaze back to the stone and rose to his knees, tracing the letters of her
name with trembling fingers. "I knew she'd never love me, but... She made me want to
*be* something. She made me want to change. I haven't changed in a hundred bloody
years, but she..." He shook his head as his tears returned. "It's not right that
she's dead, and the world just keeps on going like she never existed at all."

I couldn't comprehend any of this. I'd known that Spike was capable of love... of
tenderness. He'd demonstrated that very fact countless times with Drusilla. But I
also knew the basic essence of him was violent... bloodthirsty... in love with
nothing more than the hunt and the kill. I remembered all too clearly the particular
savagery of his Slayer obsession.

How could it have transformed into this?

"Half the time, I just wanna... kill. Everyone. Everything," he babbled on, "Shred
the whole bloody human race, chip be damned. I almost wish I could get hold of
Acathla again and suck this miserable slimehole of a world right into Hell myself.
All these worthless fucking bloodbags just keep traipsing around like everything's
honky dory. I hate them. I have every single soddin' one of them. They never
appreciated her. They never gave half a toss what she gave up so they could go on
living their puny, pathetic little lives."

He leaned forward, pressing his face into the stone for a moment, his eyes closed,
and his face a twisted mask of rage and pain.

"I miss you, Slayer," he cried, "I miss you so bloody much."

Shame washed through me once more. This villain had been here... he'd been by her
side in her final days. He'd tried to help in spite of the dissonance with his
nature. And where was I? Off playing hero in another world, bathing in sunlight and
staring at my reflection, worrying about my hair.

Spike finally dragged himself to his feet. He seemed to have forgotten I was there at
all.

"I'll never forget you, Summers. And I swear, I'll watch after Niblet till she takes
her last breath. Which'll be a long bloody time from now, if I have anything to say
about it." He pressed his fingers to his mouth, kissed them, and finally laid them
over her name. "Rest well, luv. I'll see you again soon."

Then, he claimed the last bottle of scotch from the grass, and left without another
word or glance back at me.

I couldn't bring myself to look at Buffy's gravestone. She wasn't there... what was
the point? There was no part of the woman that I loved buried under that cold, hard
ground.

I looked up at the stars... I had forgotten they were so bright there. In LA, I could
never see them at all. It was still early... barely eight o'clock, and yet I felt as
though I'd been standing there for an eternity. The nights all seemed so long now.

Everything that remained of Buffy was probably curled up on the couch, watching TV a
few blocks away. The last remnants of my beloved's flesh and blood. What was I doing
here, when Dawn...

I turned and walked toward Revello Drive. If there was grieving to be done, I would
do it there.


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