DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters. They belong to Joss. I do, however, own the apartment, pillow, the glassware, and the dining room chairs.
TIMELINE: A few months after the end of Seasons 5(BtVS) and 2(Ats).
SPOILERS: Nothing really specific, aside from "The Gift." Slight, slight references are made to the third season.
SYNOPSIS: Someone comes to see Angel.
DISTRIBUTION: Feel free, but give me a heads up, :o)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is my first `published' fic, so if there's anything wrong with it, blame it on inexperience. Also, if some of my text translates into strange symbols, sorry~
FEEDBACK: That would be nice. especially if it's positive! But I'll take negative stuff, too. Any little bit helps :o)
RATING: hmmm, perchance it's PG13-15? There's just a smidge of cursing.

There was a pounding sound in Angel's head. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness, despite his vampiric vision. He very nearly panicked, but realized that it was just a pillow over his face, and that the pounding was someone banging a fist against his door. Half-demon, half-man, he lurched out of bed in confusion, unable to decipher time of day, quantity of sunlight, or scent of visitor. It wasn't usual for him to be so disoriented, but it had been happening more and more. lately.

Angel felt vaguely sick, couldn't remember why, and ignored the sensation as he fumbled through his home. He felt lost, the apartment was new, and it took him longer than it should have to realize where he was and why there were boxes everywhere. He tripped. His lack of coordination was unsettling, but Angel was used to being unsettled. lately.

He made it to the door and struggled with the unfamiliar locks, calling out "Just a second, one sec," to silence the furious beating of his brand-new door. His sleep-thickened fingers managed to make the knobs and chains click and catch and open. He sighed, pleased with his hands' work, and pulled open the door.

"Buffy?" he asked in surprise. Before him, in fact on his `unwelcome' mat, stood the lovely slayer herself. She looked the same, Goldie-locks hair, trim, small body, pretty face intact. No new scars, or wounds, or fading black eyes, he noticed. He wondered why he didn't feel more shock at seeing the girl who basically kept the blood moving through his system, but his head was still muddy from sleeping and whatever he had been dealing with.lately.

"Angel." It was then that he noticed how angry she looked. Her mouth was pale and set in a grim line. Her eyes appeared darker than the last time he had seen her, though, if he remember correctly (and he did) her eye color was always subject to change. They appeared furious from under her eyelashes. He got so lost looking into her eyes, which seemed dark blue-black at the moment, that he didn't see her fist coming. He'd been missing a lot of things. lately.

Then he found himself on his back, crushing two boxes of glassware with a shatter, his jaw throbbing. Angel really didn't have much time to ponder what had happened. Buffy had him by the throat and was lifting him off the floor, and then he was crashing through a stack of dining room chairs. They splintered, and he was only vaguely worried about getting staked through the heart. Obviously, she wasn't at all.

"Do you know what this feels like?" Buffy growled, baring her teeth. He regarded her warily as he rolled onto his back, wincing. He was still confused. "This- this pain I have. Here." She crumpled her hands against her chest, her expression changing from anger to anguish. "I don't know why I'm here!" Buffy exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air. "I don't have any idea who I am!" She sunk to the floor next to him and helped him, gently, to sit up.

"What's going on?" Angel asked her, being fairly slow on the uptake. She caught his hand and pressed it to her heart. He felt it thudding, racing at an almost worrisome speed, and yet it was the most comfort he had know. lately.

"You don't-" she started, then threw his hand down. Buffy backhanded him. "I'm back where everything started, Angel. I'm back, and have barely any idea how I got here. Why I came *here*!" Getting to her feet, she threw him up against the wall and held his face there. Even though he was much taller, she stared him down. Angel tried to read her eyes but found it impossible. That had never happened, and suddenly there was something niggling in his head, something important that he couldn't understand.

"After everything I've been through," she hissed. "After life! And I'm back here, with you, because this is all I can feel!" she yelled. "All I have, all I know, nothing makes sense! Angel, NOTHING!" Her hand tightened on his throat, and Angel knew that if he didn't do something soon, she was going to really hurt him.

"Buffy," he rasped, trying to get her hands from his neck. He opened his mouth to say something, but couldn't think of a damn thing that would help. That happened. lately. She dropped him to the floor.

"What is it with this place? Why does it have to be this hard? Why the hell can't you just... You have no idea what this feels like. Do you?" She stopped yelling and looked at him, really looked, like she was searching for answers in his face or his hair or his stomach. Angel sat there, watching her watch him, and tried, desperately tried, to understand what was happening. "Why aren't you happier to see me?" she asked, quickly, as though it had just occurred to her.

And then it all hit him. The months of fucking god awful pain that liquefied his mind and his body and everything else that made him Angel, the vampire with the tattoo or whatever it was that he used to be called and he couldn't remember that because that wasn't as important or as terrible as what had consumed his un-life since `lately' had occurred. Lately had been whatever he had been doing since Buffy had died and everything just stopped because it wasn't worth it without.

He had images, like something he had watched on TV or the plays he had seen a trillion days ago, of her grave, and of leaving his atonement behind with Cordelia crying and Wesley trying to look brave even though he was terrified. Of moving away and finding this apartment and never unpacking because he didn't care and didn't plan to live. He saw scenes depicting his continued existence, even as that melted slowly away.

Forgetting the day, his keys, that he couldn't be out in sunlight, things that could kill him, not caring. He would wake up and not remember his own name, not remember that Buffy had ever existed. Angel had been drifting in that numbness for ages, not knowing up from down, darkness or sunlight, starving or feeding. It all left when she had died. She was speaking to him.

"I came back for you," she whimpered, angry tears (the ones he knew she cried oftenest) winding down her face. "Not for the world, not for my friends. only because you're still here. I can't feel anything but you, and it hurts so much," she whispered.

All the pain washed through him, fresh from being ignored, invigorated by the utter disbelief that she was actually there. He was remembering her all over again. He was feeling everything he had ever felt for her, from the first shocks of lust to the singing terrors of seeing her wounded to the irrational joy of seeing her walk into a room. There, suddenly again, was every ounce of jealously and hurt and anger over her moving on, the taste of her, the need to destroy something living when he thought about her finding something not of him, the need to destroy something living when he thought about her being unhappy. that single worst moment of his life that went on and on and on.

"Cause you came back for me," Buffy mumbled, and she reached for him and found Angel, held on so tightly he feared she would hurt herself. He tentatively picked up her wrist and felt for a pulse, which he did feel. Taking a deep breath, Angel sought her smell, which he hadn't fully comprehended, received, whatever word would translate well enough into language. She was there, it was she, and he could hear her humming in his ears and thrumming in his muscles.

"Thank you for coming back, thank you for coming back," he whispered, over and over, grabbing her up viciously and rocking back and forth, trying to make her part of him. She cried, but he couldn't cry. He was too confused to cry. After knowing her, and having her gone, forgetting, he couldn't process her being back, being home, even being his.

Because, lately. Nothing had made sense. He had no idea how to control any of himself, no clue how to calm down, to exercise the energy he felt. He didn't know what he would do, and only demons lived in that kind of chaos. Angel kept forgetting he was part demon. And he kept slipping, forgetting that it was Buffy he held so tightly, that it wasn't a phantom, that she breathed and beat and-

He opened his eyes and Buffy looked into them. He could read her, understand it all again, know again, without a doubt, that everything that had ever existed, ever happened, ever been thought, could be read from her eyes. Things started to make some sense, things started to lose the fog they had cloaked over themselves. The slayer, perfect in every imperfection, tilted her head back and leaned in to kiss him. He stopped her a hair's breadth away from touching.

"Buffy," he whispered, voice trembling, eyes dry, "If you kiss me, I think I might die," he said seriously, believing it, meaning it. She looked at him and shook her head slowly from side to side.

"Angel," she matched his voice in tremor and softness. "If I don't." She eased herself closer and neither closed their eyes.

Nothing had ever felt like that to Angel. Nothing had ever been anywhere near that kind of hope, that kind of peace, knowing that she was so close, getting closer, everything coming back full circle. Angel slipped into his Buffy again, into the eons of light she kept tethered behind her smile, and it broke him just like every time. He was nothing but her, always she, and let himself be absorbed in her hair, her nails, and her bones, let himself go. Angel dissolved into the seconds and forgot time, forgot blood, monsters, hell, and he forgot about the hell he was just now waking from. Angel forgot about lately.

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