A/N Thanks to Megan and Tam for the great suggestions and beta work! Buffy’s journal entries will be in quotes. This way I can break in with Angel’s reactions to what he’s reading. Also this is only the beginning of the journal. There will be in depth entries in chapters to come of each of the core Scoobies as well as Angel and Spike. One more thing. The writings in the journal will have some small flaws in grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. It’s supposed to be a journal after all and no one writes perfectly in something that is for their eyes only.
Chapter One
Who Am I
From the journal of Buffy Summers
10/11/02
“Spike is back.
Last night I was struck by a revelation that sent me running for my sanity. I can’t believe now that I just left him there, hugging that cross with the smell of his burning flesh choking me. I can still hear his pain filled voice asking if we could rest now, but at the time I was too stunned to move. Nothing made much sense after his confession that he’d somehow gotten his soul back, and that he’d done it for me.
I ran home faster than I’ve ever run before. The voices inside my head were driving me crazy; one screaming that no one has ever loved me more or better than Spike, while the other demanded that I should stake him and put him out of his misery. But that misery is my doing, and if I’m such a good and pure person, how could I even think of killing him? He’s talking to imaginary people and not making any sense half the time because he wanted to be what I thought he should be. How can I abandon him when he needs me?
It took the shock of Spike’s words and actions last night to make me see that something is really off inside me. If I weren’t so screwed up, I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Of course, who else can show me those hard truths but Spike? He always knows me better than I know myself and messes up everything I think I’ve finally figured out. After what happened last May, I was sure that I would never see him again. Then last week he shows up, all with the craziness in the school basement, forcing good and bad memories of him to bubble up. Especially the never leaving part. He’s the only one to see the real me. The good, the bad and the really ugly and still stand by me. He’s nothing like the other men in my life. Why has it been so hard for me to see how deeply he loves me?”
Angel jumped up, slinging the book across the room and growling, “I did that for you! Walking away was the hardest thing I’ve ever done! Why do you have to keep slapping me in the face with it?”
Realizing he was yelling at a book, he calmly picked it up off the floor and went back to his desk. After flipping through the pages slowly, trying to get his anger under control, he finally settled where he’d left off and resumed reading.
“I was steadily becoming completely unglued, so I reached for my journal, hoping that by writing everything down I could stop the ache in my heart. I was so out of it from all the crying that I accidentally grabbed the first one. The one I started just after moving to Sunnydale. I started to toss it aside and grab this one when a crazy thought gripped me.
The last few years have left me completely confused about myself, my friends, my thoughts on real love, and a supposedly evil vampire. The purpose of me getting all philosophical with the journal writing in the first place was to help me work through my muddled emotions and find the point where I became so cold and twisted towards others. Yeah, I could blame everything on being pulled out of heaven by my friends, but it started long before that and I have used that excuse for too long. Maybe by going back to the beginning - back before all the pain started - I could find what I needed. Maybe I could get past it and make amends to everyone in my life.
In those pages I found such idealistic hopes and dreams from a young teenage girl I no longer recognize. There were so many entries about the new friends I’d made and the mysterious handsome stranger who warned me of upcoming dangers.
I saw a sweet, smart young redhead with a shy smile that was always eager to help and a boy whose jokes never failed to bring a smile to my face. Then there was my watcher in all his tweedy glory that seemed to always have a stake up his butt that first year. Looking back now, I can see they have changed so much - maybe as much as me - and not always for the better. They seem to think they should tell me how to live my life, even if they don’t know how to live their own. I love them all but I don’t think I can completely trust them. Especially Giles. I’m not saying he would do anything to hurt me intentionally, but he would do something for my own good even if he didn’t know what that was.
Then there’s Angel.”
Sitting up straighter, Angel grinned smugly. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff. I knew it wouldn’t take long for her to get to me.”
“The love of my life. Was he really that, or was he just a fantasy of the first love every girl has at that age? I don’t really know, anymore. I put him up on a pedestal and kept him perfect in my mind for so many years. Some of the things I’ve heard from LA since he walked away from me makes me think he was never really who I thought he was. I used to make excuses for the bad things that I’ve heard about him, but now with all my old writings scattered before me, I think I’m ready to really see him for the first time.
Last, but certainly not least on my list of people I must examine other than myself is, of course, Spike. The vampire who has complicated the hell out of my life since he first told me he was gonna kill me in the alley behind the bronze. Up until last night, whether we were fighting, talking, screaming at each other, or trying to screw each other to death, I have always clung to the fact that he was a soulless vampire which equaled BIG EVIL. No matter how many times he saved my life, protected my sister, or respected my mom, I held on to my memories of Angelus and used them to keep from letting Spike into my life.
As for me; well, I really don’t know what I feel. I don’t think I’m really the good person people say I am. I don’t even know if I ever knew what real love is or how to open myself to anyone. However, I do know that my experiences have done more damage than others might think. That’s the whole point of this; to find out when I became so hard and work on fixing myself.
Having said all this, I guess its time I got started sorting through each and every part of my life spent in Sunnydale, including the good things and the terribly bad (which we have all ignored) about myself and the people around me.
This is gonna take a while.”
@~@~@~
Angel was stunned by the first few pages of Buffy’s journal. She was acting as if she didn’t know him at all. And who’d been saying things about him to her? Probably that watcher of hers. He’d always held him responsible for the death of his girlfriend. Why couldn’t they understand he’d lost his soul? That it wasn’t him. If he ever found out for sure he’d kill them.
It unnerved him to see her writing about their love in the past tense. How could his little Buffy believe that what they shared wasn’t true love? How could she even suggest that it might be just the ideals of a young girl? For five and a half years they’d fought to stay apart so his soul would be safe from that moment of happiness. Now he was reading that for her it wasn’t anything like he remembered it being.
The insanity that his lowly grand-childe was deserving of her kindness and consideration because he supposedly loved her was outrageous. There was no way Spike could love her or know her better than he did.
His face flashed between his demon and human visage at the disgusting thought of Spike touching his precious Buffy. Of course the evil pain in his ass had used that subject to goad him into throwing a punch at him before, but seeing it in her own girlish handwriting twisted his insides into excruciating knots. How could she let him touch her? And how could she get pleasure from such a touch?
Something else he didn’t understand was what she’d said so far about her best friends and her watcher. He couldn’t remember them doing anything to her that she would think of as ‘terrible’, except maybe pulling her out of heaven.
Rubbing his hand across his face, Angel stood up and walked over to the wet bar. If he was going to continue reading what was hidden between the leather coverings, he needed a stiff drink. Or six.
He couldn’t even understand why he was letting this get to him anyway. He was positive that in the pages to come, Buffy’s scribblings would confirm she was still in love with him and always would be. It was clear she was using this to examine her life and the people in it, which meant he would have to go through the heartache with her to finally see how much she longed to be with him. It was just going to be a little rough getting there. But he could do it. She was his cookie after all.
Deciding the quicker he read, the sooner he would get to what he knew as truth, Angel took his glass of scotch and sat back in his chair to stare at the open book before him.
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