Disclaimer: Blah, blah, they don't belong to me.
Rating: PG, for some swearing on our broody Angel's part. *g*
Summary: Angel's POV as he has doubts about his relationship with Buffy. For the A/Cers I'm sending this to, she is mentioned in there, but just as a friendship/sister thing.
Notes: What can I say about this one? It's good, and I know it's good. There will a companion to it from Buffy's POV as soon as I get in the mood to write it. So send me.
Feedback: Please? Really I'm not begging! *smiles*

The bond is gone.

After all this time, I knew it wouldn't be in place forever, especially after all our time apart. It's true; I can't feel her anymore; I can no longer sense his presence.

But I had never expected it to happen.

I had never expected this

I had never expected her to hate me.

Do you think I asked for it? Do you think I asked to leave my love, to give up the only thing that ever made me feel human?

I'd like to think I didn't.

But . I just don't know anymore. Sometimes, lying in bed at night and remembering her scent, I have the strangest feeling that I did ask for this.I asked to be set free.

During my time with Buffy, I never thought of it as being trapped in a relationship. Of course now that we've been apart for almost a year, I realize what eluded me for so long. I was completely and absolutely dependent on her. Whether it was subconscious or not, I always put her needs above my own. I hid from her my resentment of Xander, how I sometimes wanted to kill him for having such an incredible gift.

For having mortality.

From the moment we first met, everything was always about her. When I had a problem with my life and the omnipresent guilt in it, did I ever talk to her? No, of course not. That would make her unhappy, that would make the sparkle in her eyes dim a little; hell it might even *gasp* give her fucking worry lines! Poor darling!

Do I sound bitter?

I'm sorry; I guess I'm still mad at her for that little display in *my* town.

She doesn't get it. She's still a child; she will never understand how deeply those words wounded me.*sigh* Of course she doesn't understand. Sometimes I don't think she ever understood.

How could she? I hid most of the unpleasant aspects of my life in the shadows from her. When I came back from Hell, she assumed that the nightmares were a temporary thing, brought on by my traumas in that other dimension. What she didn't know then, and still doesn't, is those nightmares were, and are a regular occurrence when I sleep. See why I don't sleep too often, only resting when it's either that or drop down dead (pardon the pun!) from exhaustion? What's actually very funny to me is that Cordelia, of all people, knows about the nightmares. *She* is the one who comforts me when I wake up in the middle of the day, crying and shaking like a forlorn, forgotten child. And she knows about the brooding; she does after all, see it every day. I'm not trying to say that my relationship with Cordy is more intimate and close and fulfilling the brief, but angsty tryst I had with Buffy.

It's not. It never will be.

Perhaps if I had let her know how screwed my life really was, and not kept everything all bottled up, I wouldn't have been swayed by a few words from Joyce and the Mayor.

I couldn't; I just couldn't. She was the light; I was the dark; I couldn't stand it when things got *really* bad (we're talking screaming and crying and begging for death, *real* death), and I had to accept her comfort and love whether I wanted to or not. If it didn't, I surely would have gone mad by the vivid, agonizing flashbacks of torture I endured every day.

Perhaps I'm wrong, though. Perhaps she saw my pain. But if she had, how could she let me tear everything apart like that? Doesn't she know how hard that decision was for me to make, how I longed for her to convince me to stay?

Why doesn't she know?

Goddammit, why doesn't she fucking know me?!

Why, indeed.

I love her.

God, how I love her.

But sometimes love isn't enough.

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