DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Buffy, I don’t own Angel. I don’t own the song. OK?
TIMELINE: Who can say? This is pretty vague stuff. No spoilers to speak of, either.
DISTRIBUTION: www.clareworley.com, Land Of Denial, the usual.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: OK, I punched this out in, like, twenty minutes while listening to All Things Must Pass, which is by the way, one of the greatest rock albums ever. And I know I'm meant to be writing The Boys Are Back In Town and The Family Way, but this just kind of... happened.
FEEDBACK: Please feedback, I’d like to know what you think of this one.
DEDICATION: I know I don’t usually dedicate what I write, but this is dedicated completely and wholeheartedly to George Harrison, who I miss already. The world is an emptier place without you George. OK, I’m done with the sappy stuff now. Read on, MacDuff.

Buffy wandered idly through the streets of Sunnydale on her usual nightly patrol. Since returning from Heaven she had been filled with a feeling of discomfort, of unrest. She hadn’t been able to relax- not even in one of her epic baths. For her entire life she had been working up to the day that she would die. From the age of fifteen she had been forced to come to terms with the fact that for her, that day would come sooner rather than later. Of course, she’d always expected that once dead, she would stay that way. She had always thought that once she died she would go to Heaven and that would be it. After all, nobody came back from the dead. That was it, the end. The only people who came back from the dead were usually demonic in one form or another.

There'll come a time when all of us must leave here
Then nothing sister Mary can do
Will keep me here with you
As nothing in this life that I've been trying
Could equal or surpass the art of dying

She’d often wondered how she’d die. Drowning was less than glamorous, as she had discovered the first time. She had, of course, imagined dying in what a hack Hollywood screenwriter would call a ‘blaze of glory’ on the battlefield. Perhaps even saving some lives. The kind of honourable death reserved in literature only for the greatest of heroes. Her favourite of her death scenarios had involved dying in the arms of the man she loved. Dying in the arms of Angel, content at last. If she had to die- and she did, sometimes wanted to, that was how she wanted it.

Do you believe me?
There'll come a time when all your hopes are fading
When things that seemed so very plain
Become an awful pain
Searching for the truth among the lying
And answered when you've learned the art of dying

But of course, she’d died twice now and neither time had been how she’d really wanted. The second time, sure, it was heroic, but it hadn’t felt right. It felt premature, wrong, as if she wasn’t meant to follow her mother quite that soon. Maybe that was why she’d come back again. She wasn’t really sure of anything anymore, not even of dying. If Willow had brought her back once, what was to stop someone bringing her back time and again? Where was the honour in repeated resurrection? Where was the satisfaction or the peace? How could she fulfil destiny’s plans for her if she just kept on coming back? Or was that Destiny’s plan?

But you're still with me
But if you want it
Then you must find it
But when you have it
There'll be no need for it

Even Angel had returned- twice. First of course, he’d been killed then returned as a vampire. Then he’d returned from Hell. Perhaps it was their destiny to return and return and return until finally the two of them could be together as she was certain they were meant to be? Without the pain and tears they seemed to incite in each other, how could they appreciate paradise when they got it? Pain makes happiness that much sweeter, she thought. Then it hit her: perhaps finally, they would fulfil their dual destinies, attain the perfection they sought in each other and be, finally, at peace. And until then, they could always come back and try again at this so called Art of dying.

There'll come a time when most of us return here
Brought back by our desire to be
A perfect entity
Living through a million years of crying
Until you've realized the Art of Dying
Do you believe me?

Send feedback to Apollonia

Back to the Fanfiction Archive