Rating: PG-13
Summary: Buffy's POV, roughly during Season 2, about the conflict between her love for Angel and her nature as a slayer.
My website isn't working at the moment, but eventually this story will be up at http://www.gryphonsheart.com
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all characters and situations from the series are the intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner Bros., Fox Television and Mutant Enemy, etc. Buffy logo copyright (c) 1997 The WB Television Network.

Once upon a time there was a normal, happy teenage girl whose life consisted of shopping, cheerleading, sunshine and giggling over boys. (This girl also had a room full of well loved stuffed animals she hugged at night when her parents were fighting, but that doesn’t come into the story). And her name, of course, was Buffy. Me.

Back in Los Angeles, before I became the slayer, staying up late and sneaking around at night was my rebellion, my little piece of the forbidden in my safe world. Sometimes my friends and I, running around L.A. at midnight, which we were not supposed to be doing, would play at making scary noises and sneaking up behind each other. I giggled and laughed along with the rest, shivering slightly, even then, at the tingling sensations the night would evoke: the darkness, the moonlight, the haunting shadows and frightening noises. None of us, least of all me, of course, had the slightest idea of just how dangerous the darkness was.

But it went too far one night. One of my friends, Olivia, was one of those quiet, giggly, nervous types. She hung around with us but never initiated anything on her own. One night Natalie—who had actually charmed a bartender into getting her ever so slightly drunk—snuck up behind her. We all noticed, and tried to keep Olivia’s attention up an entire block while Natalie slunk behind her. Finally, just when we turned past on of those old graveyards with the huge tombstones, Natalie gripped Olivia’s shoulders from behind and hissed.

We all shrieked in half laughter, half fright for a few seconds, while Natalie dissolved into giggles, until we suddenly realized Olivia hadn’t moved.

I know you read stories, every once in awhile—those goose bumps books where skeletons crawl out of the ground and eat you—where inevitably someone is found who was frightened to death. For the first time in my life I thought I was seeing just that.

Olivia’s face had gone completely white, her eyes open as wide as they could possibly go, motionless and staring into the darkness. Two seconds later she collapsed.

I wasn’t allowed to see her after that night. She was out of school for about a month and when she did come back she was a shadow, hiding her face and never talking to anyone. Her mother, grim faced, would come to meet her every day after school and throw such a look at me that I could only stand frozen, looking down in shame.

Ever since then and when I became the slayer I hated and feared the darkness. I fought it as an enemy, as a bad dream to be kicked and beaten and forgotten in the light of day. I love meeting Xander and Willow at school, and even though I swear I try to concentrate, obviously most of my time is spent writing notes to Willow and avoiding spitballs from Xander. I guess it’s the way guys express their appreciation.

But then I fell devastatingly in love with Angel, and everything changed. Angel, in his kindness and heartbreaking sadness, did something extraordinary. He made the nighttime beautiful.

There is power in the Slayer. A power that sometimes feels to me like I’m two entirely separate beings: the Slayer, and my normal Buffy-self. The Slayer shines like a white hot, radiant star. The sort of force that can compel a girl not even seventeen to walk to her death to save the world, or thrust a stake into the heart of a friend she saw only yesterday at school, said hello to, only because now she has ridges and fangs and is trying to kill you instead of pick up the pencil you dropped.

And there is power in Angel too, of a different kind. The vampire in him is like fire in the darkness, hot and burning, dark and deep. Angel’s soul shines too, but it’s different than that flame the Slayer in me wants to destroy. The light behind his gentle eyes is smaller, quieter, calmer, like a blue flickering candle.

He tells me stories sometimes. Not all the time. When I first see him, and we lean in for that first, sweet “hello” kiss, he wants to know normal things. Sunshine things. Things like what color fuzzy sweater Willow wore to school, what disgusting food I ate at the cafeteria, what goofy thing Xander said. I try to be thorough, because I know what he’s doing is soaking up all the lightness and absorbing it through me.

Then we move into more serious things. Like what he did after I went to bed the night before, what new big bad Giles is researching, what books I read in school and his tiny smiles as I try to explain my history homework to him. I’ll bet my mother has no idea that my history tutor isn’t just a hunk of gorgeousness in Junior College (and if she actually believed that. . .) but a living, breathing, textbook himself. Sometimes when the slaying has been light, we go back to his place to cuddle together on his couch. And then, after we’ve snuggled under Angel’s red velvet blanket and he’s brought me hot chocolate, the real stories come out.

It depends on what mood he’s in. If he’s happy and the closest to laughing he ever gets (lots of sweet, goofy smiles that I love) he tells me stories about his boyhood—the girls he used to chase, the time his sister pushed him into a lake, what Ireland looks like under the sun. When he gets nostalgic he would lapse into this incredibly sweet, soft accent—call me lass and throw in strange words I know are the Old Irish he used to speak. But sometimes he’s dark and velvety and very vampire and he gets this dark, penetrating look on his face that makes me hot and trembling and wanting. At those times he pulls me very tightly against him and kisses me hard, his hand firm on my chin and his tongue swirling desperately into my mouth, and I press myself against him, wanting to be so close to him, and not knowing exactly how. Invariably he presses me down on the couch, and I can feel him growling as he kisses me, as I slide my hands under his shirt and press them against his smooth, cool flesh.

Finally he pulls back and I can’t but actually gasp at the look on his face, his lips pulled back into the slightest sexy smirk, his muscles absolutely taught, his eyes, oh so dark and fiery, boring into mine and I know that if I was his victim I would willingly die in his arms.

Someday Angel won’t stop, and I’ll have the courage to lean up and kiss those lips, and he’ll burn me from the inside out with that freezing fire of his. Not just now. Now I’m afraid and shivering at the remembrance of the primal want of that look. I’m getting closer though, I think, closer and closer everyday to the fulfillment of that desire and longing.

In his vampire moods Angel transforms from the brooding, sad man I love to a creature I suddenly remember is a two hundred year old master vampire—with a soul. He pulls me back against him, on his lap, and holds me in such a way that I know when it comes to our lovemaking, for once I’ll submit to his mastery and experience. He cradles me like a possession, like an animal curled around its mate, and he begins to tell me, not about his house under the son or even about the black times he spent as Angelus, but the tales he used to tell his sister, the old legends of Ireland. In his low voice he would whisper strange poems about trees and birds and the ocean, about wailing banshees, about midnight at Halloween when all the otherworldly things walked.

Outside at night sometimes the Slayer instincts in me, and even more in Angel, start to rise, like a deep burning itch under the skin, and when his eyes bore into me and start to flicker gold, and his kisses turn hungry, none of us are happy until we’re running outside, dodging through the tombstones, Angel the hunter and I the prey, for once, and there’s a real fear coursing through my veins, beating wildly in my heart, burning in the pit of my stomach as I hear his footfalls behind me. And then I run faster and faster, crashing through shrubs and bushes because some part of me knows that the demon behind me wants to catch the Slayer and tear her open and feast on her blood, and perhaps the souled vampire wants the same of Buffy, and what might come if Angel bears me down and pins me with his weight makes my head feel strangely dizzy, and a chilling fire burn into my guts.

But of course Angel would catch me. I have to say, no matter how confident a fighter I am, he truly is my match. I remember asking him once if he wondering what would happen if it came down to us—me Slayer, him Vampire. And a glint, just a hint of gold, flashed in his eyes for a nanosecond before he got himself under control and told me off just like I deserved for being such a bitch. Even though it was a deliberate attempt to keep my friends safe and out of my life . . . but Angel dug the whole mess out of me, and now I think he understands all my reasons and motivations better than I did. Or do. For all his brooding and skulking in the shadows, my vampire boyfriend knows just how to dig those nasty, frightening thoughts out of me until I break down and tell him everything.

I told him once that the year I found out I was the slayer (and he watching me, although I didn’t know it), I came down with the worst flu imaginable. Brought on by stress I guess, since as the slayer I never get sick. For a week I was tortured by the most horrible sore throat imaginable. And the worst of it was that I had a cough with it—one of those disgusting, nasty coughs where your lungs are trying to get all this junk out of your lungs, but you can’t quite cough it up, and you’re wracked again, and again, and again and your lungs hurt and your throat is in agony and you can hardly breathe. Well, one time a coughing fit came on, and it just wouldn’t stop, but I tried to because it hurt so much, even though the gooey stuff was stuck halfway in my throat. But my mother dragged me upside down over a basin on steaming water, thumped me on the back, and ordered me to cough. Again, and again, and again. My eyes were streaming, and I could hardly breathe, and my throat was on fire. But finally I coughed up some nasty gooey mess, and I can’t tell you how relieved I was. Mom rubbed my back and gave me something cool to drink and tucked me in bed. I still felt miserable, but somehow relieved, like that tiredness after a good, hard workout.

After the Master’s death, after dancing numbly with Angel, after packing my bags and heading to L.A. the next day, I honestly thought I was okay. But I actually Died myself, and no matter how desperately I tried to ignore my nightmares, or the choking terror that would rush over me at random moments, it all came up to choke me when I came back to Sunnydale and Angel. All those poisonous feelings and thoughts had to come out, no matter how wretchedly horrible the process was, and it was Angel at the very end who forced me to bring it all up, cough and cry and moan over the Master’s shattered bones until I was utterly exhausted and empty.

And when I tried to explain this to Angel, he looked at me, in that way he has where I know he’s not looking at me, but through me, and he looked so sad and sweet and loving all at once. It’s frightening to me, sometimes, how powerful and understanding and unconditional his love is for me. What other person, boy, man, would know when to hold me so tenderly one moment, and when hunt me with the chilling dedication of a predator the next?

He crashes into me so fiercely that we both skid along the ground and I’m lying on my back with Angel completely on top of me, his heaviness pushing me down. I have one glimpse of his ethereal face in moonlight before he kisses me and I forget everything else except his cool mouth and his tongue and his fingers digging into my hips. I wrap my arms as far as I can around his huge shoulders and feel his muscles bunching under my hands. The funny dizzy feeling running through me stops in the center somewhere around my stomach, and I don’t want anything in the world more than to get closer to him, feel his wonderful cool skin, bury my face in his chest, keep feeling his weight, his strength, his Angel-ness around me and on me. Everything is completely dark around us, the grass admittedly rather wet beneath me, a cold breeze tickling my bare feet.

Everything is completely still around us, and I can see a tiny bit of dark sky and star above his shoulder.

Angel slows down for a moment, and I feel his fangs retract, his finger losing some of their frantic grip, but then he slides them around my shoulders, lifting me a little with his arms, and after kissing me deeply for a moment, finally pulls back and buries his face in my shoulder. I can still feel my body shivering a little from the run, and Angel is trembling against my own cheek pressed against his smooth chest.

Everything was silent and still for the longest time after that. I thought about how tomorrow I’d be off to school, or eating breakfast with Mom, laughing at one of Xander’s jokes, and how those things seemed to belong to a different life. That laying here, holding Angel and lying in his arms, the sky deep and black, the stars so bright and distant all at once, was an entirely different being. A demon could come up right now and we’d have to jump up and slay it, and that would be the normal world, but somehow, somewhere, Angel and I would still be laying here wrapped in peace and love, and nothing in the world could break us apart.

That feeling I had felt, peering into the shadows and looking up and up into the night sky? Perhaps I was looking for something that truly was there, something that was hiding, that could only be found where I couldn’t see, in the dark. The sun drives away the demons and the shadows, but at the same time hides the stars. Maybe Angel is like that. I know he lives in sadness and regret so much of the time, but it’s so easy to see his soul. Nothing covers up that nakedness, because he’s always in the dark.

I know Angel. I know he blames himself for every hurt he feels. But I also know that he has the truest, most compassionate, and beautiful spirit I know. His name can’t be a coincidence. He’s my own guardian Angel, but maybe I’m meant to help him as well. To expose what apparently no one else has really seen, much less Angel himself—the heart wrenching goodness in his poor torn soul, and the utter beauty in his darkness.

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