DISCLAIMER: *uproarious laughter*
PAIRING: B/A (duh), references to B/R (blech), B/S, S/A (nothing explicit)
TIMELINE: Present
SPOILERS: Up to (and especially) BtVS: Into the Woods (which I still haven't watched -- YAY ME! ;), AtS: Reunion
SYNOPSIS: Buffy reflects on her feelings for Angel, and what ties herself, him, and Spike together.
DISTRIBUTION: My usual archivists & all list archives, please feel free. Everybody else, just ask. I'm cheap and easy. *grin*
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a sort of excerpt from a **VERY** NC-17 B/A/S (yes, SLASH... ;) series I've been working on, over in the Dark Realms (*insert creepy music here*). I figured that this version stands as a nice B/A version of Angel's troubles all on its own. If you're interested in the full series, and are OF AGE (over 17), I'd be happy to forward it. The poem is by e.e. cummings -- I'm not sure it has a title. Also, be aware... I've rejected the silly idea of Dru being Spike's Sire, and stuck with Joss' ORIGINAL version. ;)
FEEDBACK: You guys know me better than that by now, don't you? *grin*
RATING: Slightly over PG-13 - references to sexuality (including vague references to a m/m relationship), and possible bad language.
DEDICATION: To Shirley Ujest, cuz feeding the monster is so much fun, and denial an art form. Love you, woman! Many thanks for the inspiration given by Kita and Maayan -- This "GAH"'s for you!
Big hugs and naked Angels also to my dedicated betas, as usual, for rocking beyond all belief! Love you, guys! :)

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go.

I remember, when I was little, my mom and dad used to read me fairy tales before bed. I'm not sure why -- some kind of weird brainwashing thing? I don't know. But the stories always promised every little girl that she was a Princess. That she would have One True Love. That the handsome, pure Prince of her heart would always come and rescue her from the Scary Things, carry her off on his magnificent steed, and they would live Happily Ever After in the castle.

I love my parents. I'm glad they're alive, and that I have them. I'm glad I didn't kill them -- directly or otherwise -- unlike some vampires I know. But I still have to wonder, what is it in them that decides it's okay to never tell us everything?

For instance, Mom never bothered to tell me that sometimes the handsome Prince has a delicately tethered demon living inside of him, or that the Scary Things win just as often as they lose, or that Happily Ever After is a lie.

Is riding off into the sunset a lot to ask, considering? With everything we've suffered, shouldn't we get that Happily Ever After? Shouldn't his eternity, and my short life, include each other? Don't we deserve at least that much, after everything we've done for the world?

And under what circumstances is it fair and right for the Prince to decide that he's just not good enough for the Princess, and instead of carrying her home to his castle to be blissfully happy forever, he turns and walks away, disappearing into the smoke of an apocalyptic battle with her blood in his veins, and her heart crushed beneath his feet?

Mother Goose must have forgotten that part. Just like she forgot the story where the Princess ends up driving a 50-year old tank of a car with no power steering that she can barely see through the windows of, because they're blocked out with black paint to protect the car's vampire owner. Barreling into the night with the Prince's immortal demon Childe and lover passed out beside you on the seat because he drank a stolen quart of your mother's whiskey in under 20 minutes. They never tell you that you might sleep with said demon because so much of you is so desperately empty for the Prince, that you'll do anything to be close to him.

They never mention that the Prince might go insane and disappear, and that the Princess will be forced to relive every sweet and painful moment they spent together, and realize, maybe too late, just how hard she should have fought to keep him by her side.

Then there's the part about the Prince spending 500 years in Hell because the Princess loved him and had to run him through with a sword. And how the Princess followed the Prince's imperative to find someone who could "take her into the light" and "make love to her", and that was about all she ended up with. The stories never mention the other prince and how his kind, loving soul got crushed in the process for the crime of not being Him.

Riley was right -- I never loved him. I never should have let him fall in love with me in the first place. But something inside of me--maybe that poor, disillusioned Princess who's still waiting for the fairy tale to come true?--remembers what it was like to watch the Prince walk away, and maybe I just didn't want another man to disappear from my life. I didn't want to always be the one left alone.

So I ran after him. It was too late, though, and now I think maybe that was for the best. What would I have said to him, tonight? "Angel's flipped out and disappeared, and I swear this doesn't have anything to do with us, but I have to go and rescue him." Probably wouldn't have made Riley feel too good.

He just wasn't my Prince, no matter how hard I pretended he was. No matter what I told Angel.

God, I'm so sorry for what I said that night in the police station. I'm sorry I didn't apologize when he did, and he didn't even have anything to apologize for. But no... everything between us has always been about me. Angel always put me first, and so did I, from the moment I first saw his face in the shadows behind the Bronze, to the night we made love (God, was that the only time I ever really made love?) to his leaving the only home he'd known for a hundred years. Always about me. I would take it all back , if I could, if I knew then what I know now. I would have done everything so differently.

No. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't change a moment of it. I'm still that selfish.

And now? What's the result of me only thinking of me? The Sire Angel killed to save my life was brought back from Hell, and... I don't even know what happened. It's been so long since he and I really talked. I remember how he used to sit there, his eyes shining with something I didn't understand, and listen to me go on and on about... what? I can't remember all those problems and complaints that used to be so earth-shattering, anymore. That's how really important they were. But Angel always listened patiently, and soothed and held me, imparting his sweet wisdom... He knew everything about me. Everything. He always knew exactly what to say, even when I didn't listen.

And now I realize I never knew anything about him at all but what he did or didn't feel about me. Typical.

Spike snorts in his sleep, as if to remind me that he's still there. A walking dead reminder of every goddamned thing that's ever gone wrong in my life. I want to blame it all on him, I really do, but I can't. Because I'm the Princess. I'm the blind, selfish moron. It's my fault, and nobody else's.

It's my fault that Angel's disappeared, and that he's lonely and hopeless, and that Cordelia was crying so hard on the phone I couldn't understand half of what she was saying.

My fault. Mine. All me.

So, I drive. It's time for me to be the Slayer, to really take responsibility for my place in the world. To show my Prince that I love him and only him, and all the rest was a lie. To show him that I was listening, and maybe now I'm starting to understand.

"We there yet?"

Impatient, slightly drunk, really scared, sleepy voice from beside me in the dark. Spike's a child, not just a Childe. A little boy who had everything stolen from him, too. He never apologizes for who and what he is. He never regrets. He loves me, in his own way. But it wasn't until tonight that I really understood why.

There are things that my friends... maybe even my Watcher... don't really know about vampires. I don't think they know about the Blood. All they know is that when you can see it on the outside, it's Bad. They don't know what it feels like to have your lover draw it out of your veins in a pulsing rush. They don't know that it tastes like new pennies suspended in corn syrup. And they certainly don't know that it binds people so tightly together that nothing -- not a hundred years, and certainly not 200 miles -- can separate them.

"No. We've still got about a half an hour, I think. We have to stop and get gas again," I tell him.

"Shoulda stolen a Hyundai," he grumbles. It's the second time we've had to stop this heap already.

As I watch the numbers on the pump crawl by, I think... every second we're standing here is one more second that Angel is in pain... every minute, we're closer to losing him forever.

Spike looks up from the gas nozzle. His face is perfectly impassive, telling me nothing about how he feels about all this. Two hours ago, it was screwed up in agony and ecstasy, and there were tears pouring out of his eyes, and he was sobbing Angel's name as he screwed me.

It was good... not poetry and flowers good, but... "I hurt inside and only you can heal me with this pain" good. It's really hard to explain. But the one thing I got out of it is the realization that no matter how much he complains about Angel, he still loves him.

"We'll find him, Pet. We'll bring him back," he promises. His cold hand rests on my shoulder, and I can feel 62.3 degrees of worry right through my coat. "Don't worry."

Don't worry. Don't worry about that pesky oxygen, Buffy. You'll only die if you can't breathe.

"I know," I reply. I can't even let myself imagine that he is wrong. Angel can't disappear forever. He can't die. The idea is too painful to let into my head. A world without him walking somewhere on its face just isn't a world worth being the Slayer for.

We'll find him. I don't know how... or where... or what condition he'll be in. Right now I don't care.

* "Buffy, it's Cordy. I... There's, um...can you come... *SOB* Buffy, he's... he's GONE! He fired us all and he's gone totally crazy and nobody's been able to find him for days! He fired us! *choke* and D-darla... They brought her b-back... *Sob* and she was in his dreams, and he wasn't sleeping, *snuffle* and he just... He bit Kate and then Drusilla turned her, and he let them kill all the lawyers, and now he's GONE!"*

Like one piece of really confusing bad news right after the other.

The funny thing is, I already knew. I knew that something had gone wrong with him. I felt it in my bones. In my blood.

See what I mean about the Blood?

Which means that Spike knew, too. I wonder if he was ignoring it as hard and as purposefully as I was? For weeks, I put that weird tickling, itching in my skin off to exhaustion, to stress, to my sister, my mom, my Duty, my period. Not enough protein. Not enough green vegetables. Not enough aerobic exercise. A nightmare. A sad movie. It couldn't be Angel, because, after all, I was living a normal life, right? He was of the past.

The idea is as funny and sad now as it was two years ago. God... has it been two years?

Shouldn't it have stopped hurting by now?

I look at Spike, the way his face looks paler than usual in the fluorescent lights of the gas station, how sad his eyes are, even as he smirks at me like he knows my every dirty little secret (which he does), and I remember:

A century later, it still hurts him. A whole human lifetime, plus thirty years, and his heart is still broken. I couldn't exist that long feeling like this.

We have to find him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I once asked Oz why he was so quiet all the time. He gave me that "too wise for a guy my age" look, and said, "I'm listening to my inner monologue."

I wondered what he talked to himself about, because everything that came out of his mouth was either wet-your-pants funny, or so important to what was going on, you couldn't ignore it. There's no one left in our group now with that kind of blunt wisdom. There's no one left who says those things that should or have to be said, but never are.

Except Spike. Where he used to spend all his time practicing to be the very best Big Bad he could be, now he's becoming a Master Button Pusher.

Like tonight. They way he just picked and poked at me when I didn't want to think about or feel that nagging sensation that something was... off. The little voice inside me that kept insisting Something way beyond the fact that my lover left me... something below my sister being some kind of an otherworldly force, or that I didn't finish half my classes last semester, or that my mother could have died of brain cancer, or that my father didn't even bother to call and see how she was... and, oh yeah, the fact that there's a powerful "She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named" Demigod Demon Chick out for my blood. This was something else that I didn't even want to acknowledge, and there Spike was, forcing it all out of me...

Moping is my favorite way to not cope. It's an escape. Playing chess with one part of my brain, and not thinking with the other was a really good way to forget that what was wrong with my world was something that came from deep in my cells. I don't need another crisis to deal with, I kept telling myself. I don't want to think about my abandonment issues, or how much I miss Angel, or the fact that by losing Riley, I had failed him, somehow... or that something was really, really wrong.

But Spike couldn't just leave me to my denial. He had to make me process, make me listen, make me feel, and all of that just exploded out of me and ended up making me rip his clothes off, right there in front of God and all the dead people in the cemetery. He always does those things... those annoying things that make me want to take his head off with a butter knife, at the same time that he makes me feel better. He drives me up the wall.

And somehow, I still care about him. He's my... friend... sort of. Part of me, and part of Angel, too, and now... now he's technically my lover, even though I really don't think that what we did had as much to do with him and I as it did Angel.

Exit 24, "Silver Lake." I pull off the highway, and whack Spike on the arm.

"HEY!" he yelps, sitting bolt upright. "What?"

"Which way?"

"Which way what?"

I sometimes wish my glares were solid. And made of pointed wood. "The directions," I snap, "In your hand. Which way do I turn???"

I'm all out of patience. We just don't have time for him to be groggy. He might be immortal, but all the forever in the world won't save our hearts if Angel is gone.

"Take a right, here. Next light, left. Go eight blocks to the..." he reads.

"Hold it. One turn at a time. Just... please. Stay awake."

He grunts and sits up in the seat, blue eyes straight ahead on the road. He's suddenly not smiling anymore. Can he feel them? His family? His sister-lover, his Sire-lover, his GrandSire-- were they lovers too? Is lover even the right word for what they are?

Oh... my... God. I had sex with Spike.

Spike and Angel were lovers.

Spike loves Angel.

Three realizations -- or maybe, first really realized realizations-- like three rapid, full-strength punches to my gut, and I almost drive right off the road with the stunning jolt of it.

"Bloody Hell, woman!" Spike bitches, yanking the wheel back, "Arabs got it right -- birds shouldn't be allowed to drive! Pull the Hell over!"

I do, but not because he said so. I do it because I'm suddenly shaking so hard, I can't keep my hands on the steering wheel, and if we have a wreck and die, then there'll be no one left to find Angel.

Spike doesn't waste any time arguing or comforting me. He drags me up over his lap and dumps me in the passenger seat beside him, and takes my place driving. Fast.

That saying from sex ed --- you know, the one that sounds like that old shampoo commercial? "You're not just sleeping with one person, you're sleeping with everybody they've slept with, and everybody they slept with, and so on and so on and so on..." It just took on a whole new, really unpleasant meaning... And the Blood Ties thing makes my head spin.

I had sex with Spike. Right there in the graveyard where Angel and I used to hunt and neck like horny teenagers... only with stakes and vampire dust and stuff.

Angel. It all comes back to Angel. Earlier tonight, last week, last year, four years ago, a hundred years ago, right now... it's all about this one vampire that we love. We're all caught in this web together, and I have no idea how we could get out, or if we could, or if the platinum blonde vampire son of the Great Love of My Life and I even want to.

We have to save him, because I don't know what will happen to us if we don't.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Angel used to love to give me poetry. Sometimes he would read it to me in front of the fireplace at the mansion. Sometimes I would find little notes in his old-fashioned handwriting on heavy parchment paper, tucked into my locker at school when I got there in the morning. Once he gave me a book. I lost it, just like I lost him. I bought another copy, just to know what he was thinking, but it wasn't the same. He told me once that I was poetry, to him.

I never understood. How could I? I was a little kid who'd never been outside California, except for two weeks in Michigan every summer. I was 100% American teenager... I liked "Beverly Hills: 90210." I flunked French. The only unusual blip in my life was the fact that I killed vampires and their assorted Hellbeast buddies for a living. Poetry, to me, was Backstreet Boys' songs. What did I know about love? About finding that one other person in the universe who completes you? The only one who can always make you laugh or cry or sigh... How could I have known how precious his loyalty, friendship, and love really were?

He was 243. Two. Hundred. And. Forty. Three. He had seen every square inch of the world. He met the poets, the authors, the composers. He saw the plays and the operas during their first runs. He told me that he once laughed in Bram Stoker's face. He'd tasted the wines of a hundred countries. Drank the blood of a dozen cultures. He had been utterly and completely alone but for his guilt and his ghosts and his self-loathing for a hundred years. Ten times my life span, almost.

Alone, until me.

Of course I couldn't understand. Maybe I still really don't. Like the difference between knowing why he left me, and believing it. I never forgave him that. I forgave him Angelus, and all those months of torture... how could I not? But I never forgave him for shattering my fairy tale. For not staying and trying. For smashing my heart into little pieces.

I wish I could tell him. I wish I had told him. I hope I'll get another chance. I promise I won't waste the next one by being angry and talking without thinking first. I need this... maybe he does, too. However it happened, he is in my blood, just as he is in Spike's, and I need this chance to make things right between us.

There's this one poem he read to me... right now, my heart remembers it, as I think of this man that I love, and all the things that tie us together. All the things that keep us apart. I look at Spike, driving with his brow furrowed, an unlit Marlboro clenched between his teeth, and I think about how the same barriers to Angel are reversed, for him. For both of us, the soul is the thing that is always in the way. The thing that has robbed us of what we love. But the Blood still ties us together, and we all understand and know each other, somehow.

I remember as we drive to search for him. To save him. I wonder if Spike has things he left unsaid. I wonder if he was remembering and regretting when he was inside me, and he called out Angel's name.

This poem... this one little song... its all about him, and us. I think about it, and I watch the last miles to Cordelia's house pass, and I pray as I recite it. Please hold on, Angel. We're coming. We love you. Don't leave us again.

*somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience,
your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which I cannot touch because they are too near.

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose.

or if your wish be to close me, I and my life
will shut very beautifully,
suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow
carefully, everywhere descending.

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me
with the colour of its countries; rendering death and forever
with each breathing.

(I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;
only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.*

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He's so still... so silent. If he was human, I'd be sure he was dead, but as it is...

As it is, I don't know what he is... or where. I just know that his body is here. He's solid, not dust, and that one small thing, at least, is of the good.

I sit here on the edge of his bed, watching absolutely nothing happen. He's clean, now, and we fed him as much as we could... physically, I don't think there's anything else we can do.

God, he's so thin. I can see his collarbone poking right through the skin of his shoulders. It rips me up inside to see him like this, when he's usually so big and healthy and strong. He's so pale, paler even than usual, lying there... no sign of his usual habit of breath. Not even twitching movements of nightmares. Just... nothing. And me? I do what I've been doing for years, now. I cry. I hold his cold, bony hand, and I cry.

I wonder, sometimes, if there's a limit to the number of tears you can cry for one person. You know, like, "You get 4.2 million for Person X, 5.6 billion for Person Z," and when those are all used up, you just go dry and feel nothing for them anymore at all, no matter what happens.

Well, if it's true, then I must have a pretty close to infinite supply for Angel, because I've cried a hundred oceans for him, and it never feels like I'm even close to being done.

I was the only person who made it back at dawn, and that made me feel worse. The others were still out looking, really caring about him, and screw what we agreed on. I was just so tired...tired and empty and aching inside. I spent the whole night walking from one end of Los Angeles to the other, crying and remembering, and found nothing. Came back with nothing but bruised knuckles from clocking some idiot would-be mugger on Sunset Strip, and a big, gaping hollow in my chest where I'm pretty sure Angel used to be. A perfect California day was dawning, and all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and die.

When I walked into this place, I was just... stunned. Huge and old-fashioned, and it smelled like him -- like cool skin and spice, old books and leather, and when I stood in the lobby and looked up that the mile-high ceilings, I started shaking. I could feel him, now... everywhere. In every shadow, in the air, in my blood and my bones, and I just collapsed there on the foyer steps and cried.

A hotel...a home with plenty of space for his pain and his ghosts and his utter loneliness. How fitting. How like him. God.

I don't know how long I sat there, mourning and regretting, and letting him wash through me. It was like everything we'd been through since I was Called came and sat on my chest like a ton of the biggest, ugliest monster I'd ever battled, and even those tiny good moments that we'd shared in between just vanished under the weight of it.

I love him, God, and I would do anything... give up everything... to feel him inside me again, his strength and his love and his spirit filling me up the way it used to. I've been so empty for so long...

Somehow, I thought that once I was out on the streets, out in the smoggy air he didn't need to breathe, that I would just know where to find him. We've always been connected like that, so that I could feel his presence from a mile away -- it was like we weren't really separate people at all, it was so strong. Sometimes I imagined I could feel him even when he was here, and I was in Sunnydale. It always made me feel good... safe... just to know he still existed, even if I couldn't see him or hear him or touch him. I could always feel him. It made moving on -- even just the pretense of it -- almost bearable. Almost.

He's in my blood, and I'm in his, and nothing can ever change that.

But as I wandered a dozen streets that all looked the same, peering in every alley, at every shadow, under every fire escape, doorway and sewer grate, I felt nothing. Not even that itch under my skin that had been nagging at me for weeks. Like he was suddenly just gone.

But, no. More than anything, I'm certain I would know if his soul left this dimension again. I think his Final Death would rip me wide open from the inside, and I would probably die right along with him. And maybe (God, I hope...) we'd be together wherever it is we ended up after. Maybe that's wishful thinking, on my part. Maybe it's more of that fairy tale stuff that just won't go away. I don't know, and I don't care. When you live a life that's as outside of normal as I do, you hold on to every little thing you can to give you hope.

Like Riley...

But... I can't think about that, now. It's not important. I know I owe him a lot-- an apology, at least -- but it's too late for that. It's not too late to save Angel, and that's all I can care about. His pain, my pain, even Spike's pain -- they're all the same, and it's got to stop.

I know I felt him the last time we were close, standing there outside my dorm room with all our history screaming between us, my heart full of fury, and Riley standing like Captain Braveheart inside. I never got any closer than a few feet from Angel -- it hurt too much to be even that close -- but even so, I could feel his every movement and word and unnecessary breath as if I was holding him in my arms.

It's always been like that, with us. That pull, that irresistible draw that wrenches us together no matter how hard we try to fight it. It's like he's the sun, and I'm a planet in his solar system, eternally trapped in his gravity.

While we were standing there, making small talk meant to give us some ridiculous illusion of closure, I couldn't think about anything but the depth of his eyes... how soft and delicious his lips looked, crooked in that half-grin that is so uniquely his. I'd forgotten how big and powerful his body is... the way he commands all the space and the light and shadows around him, even when he just stands there, doing nothing but talking and being so damn sweet and beautiful and sexy...

I wanted so badly to feel his strong arms wrap around me the way they used to. I wanted to snuggle into his broad chest, and hear him tell me how much he loved me, and know, just for that moment, that I was absolutely safe and cared for. I wanted him to tell me how much he missed me, and how sorry he was for leaving. I wanted to kiss him, slow and deep... get lost in his cool, wet mouth. Tangle my hands in all that thick, careless hair. I wanted to strip him and strip me and just be naked and keep him safe inside me, where he belongs...I wanted to forget about our past, and the Hellmouth and Adam, and my friends, and yes, right then, even Riley.

I wanted a lot of things. But I didn't tell him a single one. He used to want them too, and I know that's a big part of why he left. Because if we were in the same town together, there was just no way that we would be strong enough to fight that natural gravity in our cells.

I was thinking about that when the basement door exploded inward, and Spike came barreling through it, screaming my name. As soon as I saw them...

I felt him, then. I felt both of them, in fact. Pain and anguish like getting hit by a Mack truck. Spike was crying and filthy, carrying this... broken thing in his arms like a giant, wasted infant, and God... no... that can't be Angel... can't be...

"ANGEL!" His name just ripped from my chest as I ran to them, and Spike -- "I don't give a toss, because I hate you both" Spike -- was standing there, holding him, shivering and sobbing like a wounded child.

"He...he's... he..." he spluttered, and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't move. It was like a nightmare, that frozen, helpless feeling, when all I could do was stand there and stare at what was left of my heart's mate.

Then, in the next moment, time shattered, and it was like everybody appeared out of nowhere, and everything became a blur of panic and horror and time moving too fast and too slow all at once. Wesley stood there, and stared with wide, horrified eyes, saying, "Oh, my dear God," over and over again. I remember shouting orders at people... some part of me that wasn't crumpled up and wailing in pain stepped forward and gave everybody chores, tasks... something, anything to bring order to the chaos. Spike and I carried him upstairs... the others followed, and they were shouting and scrambling and crying, too. Someone built a fire in his rooms... we warmed up bags and bags of blood from his refrigerator, and forced them down his throat. We carried him into the bathroom and stripped off what was left of his clothes and tried not to fall apart to see how bloody and torn and emaciated he was.

We filled the tub with scalding hot water, both of us sobbing senselessly as we washed all the blood and gore off him... We called to him, begged him, told him how much we loved him. The others came and went every few minutes, but never stayed long -- whether to give us privacy in our very private grief, or whether they couldn't handle seeing him like this either -- I don't know.

Then, when he was clean at last, we dressed the worst of his wounds and put him in his bed like a sick child, and just kept talking to him and feeding him, touching him and hoping... praying... I think even Spike was praying, although I could have been imagining it.

He has to live. He has to keep being. We need him. The world needs him. He can't give up, not now. Not when he's done so much and come so far. Please...

Now it's quiet, and there's no sound or movement but the crackling fire, and he and I in this room. The others are somewhere else... sleeping or... I don't know what. Spike finally left, cursing and saying he was bored and hungry and tired, and he was going out to get a bottle of something. He griped like he always does, but I could feel his absolute devastation at everything that had happened. He couldn't handle it, either. And I could feel his shame over his weakness. Shame that I had seen him fall apart like that over someone who's supposed to be his worst enemy. He bitched at me, and snapped at me, and then stomped out like we had done all of this with the express purpose of upsetting him.

Doesn't he know? Doesn't he know that I understand? That being naked beneath him last night opened some kind of link between us, and now we three are just one complete circuit, like that Eternity snake thing that swallows its own tail, and his pain, and my pain, and Angel's, are all the same? How could he not know?

I wanted to stop him. Tell him that I understood. That it was okay for him to feel the way he does. I wanted him to stay with us, so I could keep leaning on him... keep drawing on his strength... feel Angel through him... so both of us could bring him back together.

But... no. Spike needs his denial, I think. Just like I used to need it. In a way, he's in a far worse position than I am, because his Angel really is gone forever (God, I hope) and he can't deal with the fact that he still feels the same way about this one, who he is convinced is the symbol of everything boring and bland and bad in this world that he loves so much.

I can't even imagine how much he must hurt. So I let him play his game, and I promise to stay and take care of Angel while he does whatever he has to do (drink, probably). I don't respond when he says, "Yeah, whatever," like he doesn't care, and I pretend I don't notice that one long, last, lingering glance he gives to Angel before he turns and walks out.

I'm almost as tied to Spike, now, as I am to Angel. And, believe it or not, it's not as disturbing as it sounds. In fact... it's almost comforting.

So it's just Angel and I and the fire, and the bowl of cool water, and his bed... and this is a deja vu I never wanted to have. The last time he was dying... the last time I was wiping his brow like this, knowing that one way or the other, he would leave me.

No. He's not leaving me. Not this time. And I'm not going anywhere, either. Not until he's well and safe and strong again. Let the world go to Hell. Let Glory get Dawn... no, I don't mean that. But if I can help it, I'll sit right where I am for as long as I have to, until I know that he can stand on his own again. Until I get to tell him...

"I love you, Angel... so much..." I whisper, "I'm sorry about everything that's happened. I'm sorry about Darla and Dru... I'm sorry about Riley... I'm just... sorry...Please don't leave me."

Great speech, Summers. Where did all my words go? All the things I wanted to say... that I'd been practicing and going over and over in my mind since we left Sunnydale last night? Why can't I remember them anymore?

Words. Just words. Forget the words. They never did us any good, before. Words can't really heal... not the way he needs to be healed. Words are just words, and I think that might be why they're gone. He needs more from me than stupid words. Aren't they half of what wrecked us to begin with?

I ease down beside him on the bed. I don't know why... I just... need to be close to him. Maybe will my life force into his soul like I once forced him to drink my blood? I reach up and caress the planes of his beloved face... he's so beautiful, even like this... like his splendor really is more than skin deep... like even when he's so far away, his soul lights him from within. His beautiful, precious soul...

I touch him without fear, without reservation... just let my hands wander over his painfully thin and wounded body. Places I've only touched once... some I've never touched at all. It's not about sex... not even about love. It's just a reassurance... to me, to him... that he's still here, and his body is whole, and the rest will come, in time. He will survive. He has to.

I let my hands speak where my mouth always fails. I touch the healing wounds. I can hardly believe how desperate I am to put my hands on him... and so terrified, at the same time. Do I have the right to do this? Is this beautiful, broken body in any way mine to experience? I don't know. And here I go, being selfish again, but... I don't care. I need to feel him. I have to.

And part of me can't help but think... maybe this is what he needs. Maybe he's so far away, so defeated, so alone, because he's forgotten... made himself forget... that to be close, to let people near you, can be a source of strength. Of healing. To love isn't just about pain and loss... it's about being connected. About being part of the world. Ties that time and space and even Death can never destroy. It's about being whole.

I wonder if maybe this is a lesson I need to learn myself.

I let my hands wander softly over his mending skin... cool, smooth, pale satin, wounds pulling tight to silver scars, then vanishing before my eyes... under my fingertips.

His body is magic. A spell of flesh and blood and bone that was cast on me only once, but has never let me go for a moment since. I smooth my hands over him, spread all the warmth and love and missing and needing him over his form... He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. Doesn't respond at all, beyond the slight tightening of his brow, but somehow... I know he knows.

I remember every inch of him. From only that one night, my hands and mouth and body took him in and kept him in the deepest, darkest core of my being, and now...this re-awakening of desire is like wildfire under my skin. That gravity, that pull, will always be, just like my love. I can close my eyes, pretend it's not there, but like the rhythm of breath and heartbeat, it will be a part of me until the day I die. I can live beyond it... below it... around it... but never, never can I truly leave it behind.

I kiss him. Forehead... cheeks... lips and jaw, throat and shoulder, chest and belly... I kiss the fading hurts and wish that I could kiss the ones I can't see... I love every inch of him, inside and out, and the throbbing, soothing ache in my own body tells me:

I need this healing, too. And wherever he is, I need him to come back, because I have to tell him. He has to know...

I love you.

I touch him, I tell him... I heal him and heal me... and I cry until I finally fall asleep, curled up tight against his chest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere, I am dreaming. I don't have a lot of happy dreams, anymore... not for a long time. I usually dream about the same things I deal with every day: monsters. The end of the world. Darkness and death.

Angel is no stranger to my dreams, good or bad. My favorites are ones like these... bright, sunny afternoons, birds singing, fields of green grass as far as I can see in every direction. And he's always alive, tanned and heart-beating in the sunshine... and he always wears white. He smiles a lot. We eat fruit and cheese we've brought in a picnic basket... we talk about nothing. Sometimes, like now, we don't talk at all. We don't eat, either. He just leans toward me with this heartbreaking light in his eyes...a glimmer of something... miraculous and beatific. God, his eyes... rich, and deep, like fresh earth, and I can see myself so clearly in them... and he reaches a big, gentle hand up to touch my face. His lips brush mine, and they're so warm... his tongue so wet and sweet...

Did I ever kiss anyone else? Were we ever anywhere but right here in this meadow where there's nothing but us and the way we should have been and the sunshine? I can't remember.

I never think about pain or vampires or death, when he's kissing me. I never did. I never think about being without him, either. I can't remember anything but his love...his mouth... his hands... that look on his beautiful face...

And as he lays me down in the soft grass, he sighs and closes his eyes, and we're nothing but skin and breath and touch, and it's like coming home. Like being born again. It's like... everything. No. It is everything.

I remember every tiny detail of the one night Angel and I were together. I slept with Riley a hundred times, and all of that's just a pleasurable blur I've labeled "Good Sex" somewhere in my memory. But those few precious hours with Angel... I can relive every whisper... every kiss... exactly the way his hands and mouth felt on every inch of my body. And I do, here... I remember, and I relive it in his arms... he tastes like chocolate and peanut butter. He tastes like life and love and hope... and sunshine. He tastes like dreams come true, and laughter, and he feels...

God, he feels so good. And I never want to wake from these dreams. I never want him to stop making love to me. I want that one night to go on and on forever. I never want to stop calling out his name in ecstasy, or him to stop calling mine in return... I never want his body to leave my body, or his arms to let me go, even for a moment. This is the only place in the whole world in my entire life where I've ever felt safe and whole... the only place I've ever just... been.

These dreams always come after my worst days... days when nothing makes sense, and everything around me hurts -- the whole world is just ugly and wrong. It's like the love he's given me lives somewhere deep in my heart, and when I feel like I can't go on anymore, he comes to me and makes all the pain, all the darkness go away... like my Knight... my sweet, brave Prince.

He's the only thing that's ever been right... in my life... in my body, my heart, my soul. Without that love, I can't live. I can't breathe. I can't fight or laugh, and my heart doesn't beat. I can't stand to go on without these dreams of him.

When I wake from those nights, I'm so happy, for a minute. I'm okay. I'm all right. Everyone and everything is fine, and just the way it should be, because he loves me.

A moment later, my heart shatters when I reach for him and he's not beside me. I remember mornings when I rolled over and found Riley, and for a second, I hated him. The wrong arms... the wrong body...the wrong eyes, the wrong bed, the wrong "Buffy..." the wrong everything. It wasn't his fault, and I was glad he was there... but my heart didn't care.

I started thinking it was better to wake up alone, because then I didn't have to explain to Riley why I was crying.

Of course, I guess that point's kind of moot, now.

Angel's lips... cool and soft... his hands... so gentle. When I woke, I could feel him all over my skin. Half of me rejoices that I've known something so powerful that it stays with me like that, even after all this time. But the other half... the other half is just broken, and a million years could pass, and I don't think it will ever be whole again.

When I wake from this night's sweet dream, and I feel his arms around me, for a heartbeat, I'm confused. I don't move, because I know it's him. I know that chest against my back. I know that unnecessary breath in my ear. I know those arms. And for that perfect moment, before I'm really awake, I feel tears start to well. The past two years have been the nightmare, and this... this is the only thing that's real. He's here, I'm here, and he's holding me, and yes... this is the way it was meant to be.

But then, of course, I remember. I open my eyes and see the strange, dark bedroom... the fire burning low in the fireplace. I smell all the blood we force fed him, and the antiseptic. I remember how we got here, and everything that's happened in the past few days comes rushing back.

But... I still feel okay. Because he's moved sometime while we slept. He moved enough to wrap me in his embrace and huddle close, burying his nose in my hair. He's breathing again.

Oh, God... he's alive. Thank you. Thank you.

And the tears come, but for the first time in as long as I can remember, they're tears of joy and relief, because yes, I will get to talk to him again. I will get a chance to tell him everything I never did. I will get to see him smile, and I am in his arms.

I turn over slowly, gently in that circle of love. He's still fast asleep, his pale, beautiful face still gaunt and healing, but peaceful... serene. The furrow of his brow has smoothed, and his lips are parted slightly. He looks like a little boy when he's sleeping. Like an innocent.

Like an angel...

I let those tears come, because I've held too many back... I've hidden too much of myself away for too long, and oh... I've missed this face... I was so afraid I'd never see it again.

I can't help it. I reach up and caress his cheek, and softly... so softly... kiss his lips.

He tastes like home. Like chocolate and peanut butter. Like being born again. Like hope. Like second chances. I have to choke back a sob. I don't want to wake him, he's still so weak, and he needs to rest, but... God...

Suddenly, I'm not so sure that I really am awake, because his eyes flicker open, and focus on me... and his mouth... those lips... almost smile.

I can't help but smile back, even through my tears.

Neither of us move for... I don't know how long. Forever, maybe. Forever and always we just lie there, side by side and face to face, his arms around me... so close I can feel the warmth of my breath on his skin.

Now I know why I lost all the words. His eyes say a million things, and I hear every one as clearly as though he has spoken. *I love you. I miss you. I'm so glad you're here. Buffy... I hurt.*

I do sob, then. *I know,* my heart tells him, *It's okay, now. I'm here. We're here to help you. You're not alone. I love you.*

We don't need speech, to hear one another. We never did.

This time, he kisses me... motion so slow, I'm sure it hurts him, and I know he doesn't care, because it's so gentle, and now we're both crying... great, gulping sobs echoing in the air, and I lose track of whose are whose. This pain is both of ours. The confusion, the weakness, all the pain and loss of hope...

We just hold each other and cry into one another's lips. It'll be all right now. It hurts. It's hard. But we'll be okay. I know we will.

I love you, Angel. I'm so glad you came back.

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