Disclaimer: Not mine, don’t sue.
Rating: PG-PG-13
Spoilers: Um, general for seasons 1-7 BtVS.
Pairings: B/A
Lyrics: Dare You to Move by Switchfoot.
Distribution: Want. Take. Have. Just tell me where it’s going.
Summary: Written for Jade’s B/A angst-a-thon written for Miss Jones. Requests: Alternate ending to Buffyverse (i.e. Chosen), restrictions: no slash. After “Chosen” Buffy doesn’t know what to do.
Feedback: Yes, please.

//… Welcome to the planet, welcome to existence
Everyone's here, everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now, everybody waits
for you now
What happens next? …//

Where do we go from here? I remember singing that once but never have I let the possibility of it actually enter my mind. For the first time since I can remember I am free to go and do whatever it is that pleases me. I remember telling Willow once that Disneyland didn’t sound so bad, I still wouldn’t want to live there after all it would get boring after awhile. But I could ride the tea cups, spin until I can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy, spin until my thoughts all jumble together and I can’t think, just feel. I could travel the seven seas, see the world. No longer did I have the burden of the world on my shoulders; no longer was I the chosen one, or even the chosen two. For the first time since I can remember I am just Buffy Summers. My destiny still out there waiting for me.

I’ve faced countless demons, have died and risen, have felt so alone, have been betrayed by the people closest to me, averted apocalypses; but for the first time in my life I’m scared, really scared. I don’t have my calling to fall back on as an excuse for my failures in the real world. I can’t use it as a way to single me out. If I decide to go back to college, because I can now, and I fail, which I am really scared will happen I can’t use the fact I’m a slayer as my reasons for failing. No, I failed because I’m not smart enough, not fast enough. It’s not the slayer that failed me it’s the girl.

As I look back on my life, I have to say I’m not too proud of the girl I am. Of course it depends on where I decide the girl starts and the slayer ends. Was it the girl or the slayer that let my relationship with Spike go on for so long? Was it the girl or the slayer who sent the first man I’ve loved go to Hell? Was it the girl or the slayer who let Jenny Calendar die? I had to kill Angelus but I couldn’t not when he shared the face of my lover. Was it the girl in me of the slayer who went downhill after my mother died? Of course I remember the girl I was back in Los Angeles, and I still feel I made Cordelia Chase look like a saint. Stealing lip gloss for kicks, making sure the so called dorks knew their place. I can’t help but shudder at the girl I once was.

Los Angeles might have been the place I resided for the first sixteen years of my life, but Sunnydale was where I grew. Sunnydale provided me with the people and experiences I needed to become the person I am today.

Giles, I’ll admit he was not my favorite person in the beginning, I think I have a diary entry full of the annoying things Giles would make me do, the stuffy British man that owned nothing but tweed and drank tea like his job. But he was the father I never had, sure Hank was a sperm donor, but Giles he was my family. He showed me compassion and understanding when no one else would, or should. He taught me responsibility, and of course how to use a cross bow.

Then there’s Willow and Xander. Sunnydale would not have been Sunnydale without them; I wouldn’t be Buffy Summers without them. I’ve never seen two people so willing to put themselves in harms way to help out a friend, and of course the world. Yes, maybe in the beginning Xander had gotten involved for a slightly different reason than today, I think, remembering of his feelings for me. They taught me how to be faithful, how to be a friend. Because even though I had more so called friends in Hemery than I could have counted on my hands I never had any real friends until these two crazy people came into the picture.

I’m rushing through Giles, Willow, and Xander, I know there is so much more to them, and I’m not trying to disgrace them because they will always be in my heart and I don’t even know where I’d be without them. But you see I feel the biggest factor in my growth, my human growth, wasn’t even a human. He was a vampire cursed with a soul. My lover, Angel.

He understood me completely. When the others turned their backs to me, which I don’t blame them, I can’t, because they didn’t understand, Angel was there. He understood me not only because he was my other half but because he was just like me. We were two misfits floating in the world trying to find our place, our purpose. I was a teenage girl by day, suffering with bad skin, school, boys and all the associated feelings and then at night vampire slayer the one girl in the entire world with the strength and skills to fight the demons. Willow, Xander, Oz, Riley, Giles, and Tara they all would never understand. It wasn’t their calling. If they wanted out, they got out. Their scared destiny didn’t follow them around. It was more of a hobby, I guess you could say. Now Angel didn’t have a scared destiny but he knew how it was not to fit in. A vampire cursed with a soul. Full of human emotions and urges yet secluded from the daylight. He could walk like a man but he wasn’t. Because of this we were the perfect pair. And what a pair we were, going against everything destiny had set up for us. Me the slayer him the vampire. He was my enemy, the thing I was born to kill, yet he was the one man I’d ever loved completely and fully.

Angel, my guardian angel, was the man or vampire how made me the woman I am today. Yes, me experiences played a part, yes my family and friends played a part, but Angel held the lead. I learned how to love someone unconditionally; I learned how to love someone so much it hurt, so much you couldn’t think. I learned what it felt like to lose the one person you love. When I was seventeen I sent the person who took my virginity to Hell. Not his other half, him my love. When I was eighteen I learned what it felt like to have you heart broken, what it felt like to not be able to breathe. Months after our split I felt like I couldn’t go on, I was going through the motions that was it.

He taught me broken hearts mend, not completely but with time life goes on, and the hurt and pain will fade. He taught me that I don’t need him to survive, which was probably the greatest thing he’s done for me. He taught me to find the real me, to not just be part of a half, but to be a whole person. By giving me the freedom to do what I pleased to date who I pleased, Angel taught me that he was the only one I’d ever love. Riley, Spike they were nice, and as far as Riley was concerned yes I could see myself with him in the far off future, living the suburban American dream and I’d even be happy. Riley had been a nice guy, I even loved him. But he wasn’t and never would be Angel. It took me some time, but as I stand here watching the rubble settle and stare into the giant crater once known as Sunnydale I finally realize the precious gift Angel gave me those four or so years ago when he left me.

And I’m scared. Because part of the reason Angel and I were so perfect for each other was because of the fact we were misfits. Now that I was just average Joe, would Angel still want me, still love me? Would I still be able to accept him like I used to when I too was different? I realize I’m not scared of my future, because I can succeed, I don’t need the slayer, I don’t need the slayer to fall back on, I was wrong. I’m scared because without the slayer I don’t know if I need Angel. When I’m finally done baking, which by the way wasn’t my best simile, I don’t know if I’ll want Angel to eat my cookies, not when I can have the average Joe. I don’t know if it was the girl or the slayer in me that loved him. The one thing I do know is I’m going to find out. The world, Disneyland, sleeping for weeks, everything can be put on hold, if only for a day, an hour while I visit the man from my past. If only to tell him we survived, which he could probably already figure out. And I smile, because I know the answer to Dawn’s question. I know what I’m going to do now.

***

We don’t meet in Los Angeles; we meet the same place we did when I had come back from Heaven. A little town on the side of the highway where the only building in the town was a dinner and an abandoned warehouse, which was probably only still there because well the people had forgotten all about it.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust where my world was surrounded by darkness, the darkness I’d once been accustomed to. I could feel his presence before I even saw him. My thoughts jumbled together as if I were on the teacups, my throat swelled, and I found I couldn’t speak, for even if I wanted to I didn’t know what to say. But even if I did know what to say, it wouldn’t have mattered. Angel had encircled me in his strong arms and although the action startled me I didn’t fight it for in his arms was my safest place.

I felt the déjà vu, thinking I had done this once before. Although this meeting was completely different, the need, security, and disbelief of it all were still there, only this time was different. This time my life was just beginning.

“I’m scared.” I say, skipping all the formalities, we don’t need them.

Placing a gentle hand on each side of my cheek, Angel wipes the lone tear that has started its way down resting by my nose. He smiles. “Don’t be.” Is all he says, but I can hear his unspoken words. I know he is telling me I can make it in the world, and that no matter what happens to us in the future we’ll still have the past. But I don’t just want the past. And it’s not the slayer in me that is feeling that, it’s the girl.

I open my mouth to refute, but he places a finger over my mouth, quieting me. Pulling me closer to him, my head now pressed against his unbeating chest I listen to the soothing calm of his voice, the raspy and husky sounds he makes as each chosen word comes out. And I’m taken back to my birthday, when Angel told me how he could see my heart, that it wasn’t the slayer in me he loved, because he’d seen me before I was called and I was beautiful. And without even knowing it, my fears start to squelch. I don’t know what it is about Angel but he always has the right words to say, knows exactly what will make me feel better. I wonder if it’s all his years of existence that gives him his great insight or if it’s just that he’s the other half of me. I finally decide that it is a combination of both.

We stand in a comfortable silence, both revealing in each other’s presence not knowing when we will get this opportunity again. Because even if I don’t have a scared destiny anymore I’m still not fully cooked to go back to my metaphor. I’d say I’m about three-fourths done, my insides are still a little too doughy, but I know who’s going to be eating me in the end, I know what oven I’m in.

Stepping back slightly in his arms, I reach up to his face kissing him gently on the lips. I don’t know why I do this but I want to feel his lips against mine. The kiss doesn’t deepen; it’s much too special for that. It’s a kiss of the future, almost an unspoken promise between the two of us. As the kiss finally ends, for it doesn’t last long either, I give a soft sigh. I feel whole again, I feel like I know my purpose in life.

“Thank you.” I say, and Angel just smiles knowing why I thanked him without even questioning me. Because just like Angel knows what to say to make me feel better he also knows what I mean when I don’t quite make sense, or there could be just too many meanings. Was I thanking him for meeting me, for the kiss, for helping me, for soothing my fears, for out past, or even for our future.

I know our time is up. That once again we both need to face the harsh world known as reality, because as much as both of us would love to stay here to disappear from the world, we both still have things that must be done till we can finally be together. I need to make a place in the world as Buffy Summers, the girl and only the girl. And Angel must get his redemption, not from me or the world because he’s already earned that but form himself. He needs to feel as if he’s proved to himself that he is a thing worth saving. And once that is finally done we can be together. Will we find love, or partners along our way, I can almost guarantee that will be a yes, but we both know who we will be with in the end, and for now that’s enough to get me through.

“If you ever need-“

“I know.” I say interrupting him because I don’t need him to continue. I know what he will say, and I already know I won’t, or rather I can’t. We both have battles, and we must both face them on our own.

We walk hand in hand out of the warehouse, and I’m transported back to a time of innocence, when we were just to kids, well one kid and one vampire with a soul boyfriend on the hunt. Back when curses couldn’t break and love didn’t hurt. And I smile at our innocence and how far we’ve come since then. I don’t know when our journey will end but I know we’ll reach the end together.

“You still my girl?” I hear him ask as we reach the door.

“Always.” I answer. Always.

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