DISCLAIMER:  Not mine; don't sue.
SPOILERS:  None
DISTRIBUTION:  Ask and ye shall receive.
RATING:  You watch Angel?  You can read it (R, maybe?)
FEEDBACK:  Please!  I crave it!  It's like cigarettes, ya know?  Just when I think I've quit…

Buffy stood alone on a hill above LA and looked blindly through the darkness at the devastation below her.  The greatest battle between good and evil in 10,000 years was over, the apocalypse once more averted, but the price of winning had been high.  The dead were everywhere, broken caricatures of the living beings they had been only a few hours before, and the city itself was in ruins.  The skyline, once bristling with skyscrapers, was empty; nothing higher than two stories remained standing and the lights, which usually lit the sky and made the city shine like a jewel in the darkness, were dark.  The only light came from the many fires, which were raging out of control.

Sunnydale was gone, swallowed up by the death throws of the closing Hellmouth; where the deceptively quite town had once stood there was now only a vast expanse of churned mud and rock, the scarred landscape the only evidence of where it had been.  Of the people who had been there where the disaster had struck, only Buffy herself had survived, digging herself out of the rubble to find herself in an alien world.  For several hours she had simply roamed aimlessly through the rubble, battered and bleeding, an ugly wound in her side seeping sluggishly, too shocked and disbelieving to think, unable to accept that everything she knew was gone, everyone she cared for was dead.

If the sky opened up for me
And the mountains disappeared
If the seas run dry, turned to dust
And the sun refused to rise
I would still find my way
By the light I see in your eyes
The world I know fades away but you stay

(As the earth reclaims its due
And the cycle starts anew
We'll stay always)
In the love that we have shared before time

Gradually her aimless wandering became more purposeful, her steps more certain as an inner compulsion guided her away from the ruins of what had once been a town.  She walked for hours, almost unaware that she did so.  Her mind was filled with the echoes of the past, the sounds and faces of her friends and family echoing through her mind, so vivid that it seemed impossible that they were not real – that they would never be real again.  She had seen too much, lost too much, in the eight years since she had been called as the Slayer and to face the truth of what had happened, to accept that she was completely alone, would be to fall from the knife-edge of sanity on which she was balanced.

So reality was dismissed, a pain too great to be endured, and she walked onwards in a comfortable daze, oblivious to everything except the dream of better times and the need to be…somewhere.

Gradually the faces changed, instead of the friends with whom she had shared so much, she saw another face.  A face that she had not seen since just after the death of her mother four years before; a face that still haunted her dreams at night and entered her mind at odd moments every single day.

With his face before her, her steps unconsciously quickened, carrying her onwards faster and faster until she was almost running.  Darkness fell as she scrambled up the slope before her but she didn't notice, she was blind to everything in her need to get to…

Him.  The city lay before her and in some distant part of her mind she realised at last why she had come, what it was that she was searching for.

If the years take away
Every memory that I have
I would still know the way
That would lead me back to your side
The North Star may die
But the light that I see in your eyes
Will burn there always
Lit by the love we have shared before time

She didn't see the carnage, didn't feel anything at the sight of so much destruction, all she knew was the she had to find him.  The feeling that had carried her here was stronger than ever, urging her down off the hill at a dead run, skidding and stumbling on the uneven footing as she plunged into the ruins.  Not even hearing the cries of the wounded, she ran on.  It wasn't long before the streets became almost indistinguishable from the remains of the buildings around them, and she was, of necessity, forced to slow down as she climbed over the rubble.

It took her almost four hours to travel two miles into the city but she was no more aware of the passage of time than she was of the exhaustion that tugged at her.  All that mattered what that she keep going.  Night turned to day, and then back to night and still she pressed on.  Shivers racked her constantly, though the weather was warm, but she ignored them as she did everything else.  When she could go no further, she slept where she lay, sprawled uncomfortably over the stack of concrete that she had been trying to climb, only to wake a few hours later to renew her journey.

It was three days after she had left Sunnydale when she finally stopped.  The heap of concrete before her appeared no different from the hundreds that she had climbed over in the past two days, but she knew differently, she knew that she had reached her goal.  Without pausing to rest, she began to clear away the rubble before her, lifting aside stones that were well over four times her weight as though they were no heavier than pebbles.  When she encountered something that was too heavier for her to lift, she would roll it aside, straining to move impossible weights.  She worked until her hands were as bloody as raw meat and only she reached the end of her strength did she rest.  For two days she toiled away at the mountain of concrete and just after midnight at the beginning of the third day, she finally found what she had been searching for.

As she rolled aside a huge block of concrete, a voice echoed up out of the hole that she had revealed, "Help!  We're in here!"

Buffy's ragged breath caught in her throat at the sound of that beloved voice and she attacked the remaining concrete like a woman possessed, crying out as she did so, "I'm here, Angel!  Just hang on!"

There was a moment of disbelieving silence and then a hoarse voice questioned brokenly, "Buffy?" and at the same moment three other voices, rough with exhaustion and pain exclaimed in unison, "Buffy?  Oh thank God!  Get us out of here!"

"Buffy, it's certainly a great relief to hear your voice!"

"You the Slayer chick?  Man it's a good thing you came!"

It took less than half an hour to clear a space large enough someone to get into or out of the building.  Cordelia was more-or-less unhurt and was able to climb through without much difficulty, informing Buffy as she did so that Angel was trapped, they thought that Gunn had broken several ribs and that Wesley had a broken leg.

It was as black as pitch inside and Buffy had no torch but her feet carried her unerringly to Angel's side.  Her hand grasped his tightly, bringing it up to her face so that she could rub her cheek against it, the touch of his skin against hers the first real thing that she had felt since the world had fallen apart.  He stroked her face softly for a moment, savouring her presence but worried by fact that she didn't smell right; there was blood and dirt and the indefinable scent that was Buffy's alone, but overlaying it all was another smell, a smell that was familiar from many of the deaths that he had witnessed during his long life – the smell of infection and sickness.  Reluctantly, he said nothing, knowing that in his current position there was nothing that he could do and that, no matter what he said, she would not leave him there.

"Help the others," he said softly, "they'll be easier to get out than I will."

Reluctantly, because the others still didn't seem real to her, Buffy did as he had said, recognising dimly that he would not change his mind and not wishing to have him be disappointed in her.  With more haste than care, she hauled first Gunn, then Wesley to the hole, hoisting them through it and carrying them to where Cordelia was waiting anxiously for them.

That done, she returned to Angel's side and, using only touch, began working out the dimensions of the object that had him pinned.  It was an iron girder; he had taken its full weight in the chest as he shoved the others out from underneath it while the building came down around them.  It was not all that large compared with some of the things that she had moved to reach him, not large compared with things that he had moved in the past, but it lay across his chest and legs, pinning his left arm beneath him and giving him no leverage with which he could attempt to move it himself.  Taking a firm grip on it with both hands, despite the slickness of the blood that covered them, she hauled it to one side with a single smooth movement.  Despite her care, Angel could not suppress a groan of pain as it shifted and Buffy cringed at the sound.  His pain was all too real to her.

Dropping to her knees at his side, she carefully ran her hands over his body, searching for injuries.  There was an alarming softness to the left-hand side of his chest, his ribcage had buckled when the full weight of the girder had struck him and Buffy was grateful for the fact that he was a vampire – a human in the same position would have been dead within minutes.

With infinite care she lifted him into her arms, staggering slightly with the awkwardness of his much larger form, and carried him out of the shattered building.  She was only just in time, moving the block that had held him had destabilised the ones around it and, a few seconds after they emerged, there was a sudden groaning noise and the rubble collapsed inwards, filling the space where they had been.  As she lowered him gently to the ground, a dull gleam of silver caught his eye and he glanced round to see what it was.  Despite his pain, satisfaction filled him at the sight of a battered metal W that lay amidst the wreckage – all which remained to show that the pile of debris on which it rested had once been the most powerful law firm in the city.  Then he looked back at Buffy, and Wolfram and Hart were forgotten.

Even in the pale light cast by the moon, he could see her clearly and his heart clenched with a pain worse than that of his body.  She looked…old.  Her face was haggard and far too thin and the scent of blood and death clung to her like an old friend.  Her clothes were little more than rags, the only reason they did not fall from her body was the dried blood, which glued them to her skin, and the look in her eyes was…lost.

Ignoring the agony that surged through him, Angel propped himself in a sitting position and held out his arms to her, sensing that what she needed more than anything else was to be held.  Like a bird finding its nest, she went to him, pressing herself against his right side and burying her face in his shoulder even as she took care not to put any pressure on his injuries.

The relief was indescribable; when she felt Angel's strong arms close around her, Buffy finally knew to the very depths of her soul that she was no longer alone.  With that knowledge came awareness, the memory of everything that had happened crashed over her like a wave, and, with the broken words, "They're gone Angel!  Everyone's dead except me!"  Buffy finally wept.

She had no idea how long she cried, all she knew was that Angel was there with her and her own devastating sense of loss.  He made no effort to stop her tears, knowing how badly she needed the release that they offered, he simply held her, allowing her to use his strength now that all of hers was gone.

A slight change in the light caught Buffy's attention even through her grief and she lifted her head from Angel's shoulder to look at the sky.  Her worst suspicions confirmed, she surged to her feet, intending to carry Angel to shelter but, as she tried to rise, weakness flooded her and she fell back against him as pain shot through her side, radiating through her body until every nerve throbbed with an agony she had never before experienced.  Gritting her teeth, she tried again, but he strength was gone, depleted by the exertion of the past few days and burned away by fever, and she could only lie helplessly and watch as the eastern sky grew ever lighter.

Desperate, she looked to the others, but there was no help there; of the three of them, only Cordelia remained mobile and even at full strength there was no way that she would have been able to move Angel's large form alone.

The taste of defeat was bitter in her mouth as she pressed herself against him, drawing comfort from his nearness.  She had wanted him to live, though she knew that she, herself, was dying – the putrid odour rising from the wound in her side and the cold, heavy weakness of her previously strong body told her that – but she had wanted him to have a chance to find his redemption, find peace.

It's all right, Buffy," he told her quietly, sensing, as he had always done, what it was that she was thinking, "Better together than apart."

His words told her everything that she needed to know; he knew she was dying – the smell of gangrene was not one that he could ever forget – and he would rather be dead than face a world without her – just as she would a world without him.

"I love you," she said softly, "Nothing can change that…"

"…Not even death." he completed the words he had spoken so long ago, "I know."

As one they moved closer to one another and their lips met in a long sweet kiss that contained all of the love that they had held in their hearts for so long.  As the kiss ended, the first rays of the sun's light broke over the horizon and…

…Angel gasped for breath.

Buffy's eyes widened, even as she slumped bonelessly against him, control of her body gone.

Blood bubbled up from Angel's lips as his lungs filled with the blood that was flowing so unexpectedly through his veins; his humanity had come to late – for both of them.  Against him, he could feel Buffy's heart slowing, see her eyes begin to glaze as the life fled her body and he spared a brief, hopeful thought for the possibility that, with his redemption, there was a chance that his soul would be able to join with hers in heaven.  Then the darkness around him pressed closer, familiar from the last time that he had died.

As one, their bodies succumbed to the darkness and, at the same moment as the sun cleared the horizon, with their last breath each spoke the others name.  Their souls soared free of the earthly shells that had caged them and kept them apart for so long and united at last in ecstasy.

 (When the forest turns to jade
And the stories that we've made
Dissolve away)
One shining light will still remain

 (When we shed our earthly skin
And when our real life begins
There'll be no shame)
Just the love that we have made before time

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