DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'em... if I did, a story like this would NEVER be necessary, dammit!
TIMELINE: Ten years after Graduation Day -- Nothing after that ever happened
SPOILERS: None, really
SYNOPSIS: It's ten years after high school. Buffy now lives in the snowbelt of the North-Central U.S., possibly Wisconsin or Michigan.
DISTRIBUTION: Feel free, just let me know!
AUTHOR'S NOTES: The song is by Sarah McLachlan, from the CD "Rarities, B-sides, and Other Stuff", and belongs to Sarah and her record co. colleagues. I highly recommend the CD... the music is haunting, and a must for Buffy/Angel fans. The song is really central to getting the true feel of the story!
FEEDBACK: But, of course!
RATING: G

Buffy poured herself a glass of wine, settled into the windowseat she'd arranged with velvet cushions, and looked out on the midwestern winter night. Snow drifted softly across the rolling lawns, which were so green and carefully manicured during the summertime. The night and the light of the moon reflected off the snow, casting a cold grey glow across everything within her vision.

She had grown to love winter... It seemed to allow everyone to take a break from the hustle of the everyday, a chance to be quiet and reflective, even melancholy, if they felt the need. She appreciated the peace of winter as a special gift -- one only a person with a chaotic past could fully appreciate... it gave her time to look back with calm on the tempestuous years that had brought her here...

And then there were times like tonight, when she got one of his occasional letters, when the winter seemed to insulate her from the sharp edges of pain she still felt for missing him, all these years later.

Buffy sipped slowly on her wine, holding the fine parchment in her hands like a cherished friend. She let her eyes sweep over his fine script, letting the deep pine smell of the incense he always burned waft off the page, almost conjuring a vision of him, sitting beside her in firelight, watching the snow softly fall. She could only remember the him of ten years ago, of course -- she had never lay eyes on him since the night he left Sunnydale. He wouldn't have changed, really, the undead never do. He would still have that smooth, pale skin, those intense, brooding eyes, that careless chocolate-brown hair, that crooked smile...

She began to read, and the apparition beside her spoke in his downy, soulful voice:

"Dear Buffy,

Merry Christmas."

The sentiment itself made her stop to chuckle. She wasn't feeling terribly merry, and she wasn't much into Christmas. She knew he felt the same way, but that he ignored the irony to share a warm sentiment...

He went on:

"Los Angeles is the same, be it May or December, the only difference being the ill-dressed Santas sweating on every street corner...

Each year at this time, I almost expect it to snow, like it did that night all those years ago... But it never does, and the people here seem somehow out of sorts, despite their insistence on Christmas cheer."

She looked up from the letter, remembering with bittersweet fondness that night that had brought them at least nominally together, after so long apart. Thinking of how they had struggled together that year tugged at her heart.

"Ten years lends a softer edge to all of the memories...the hardest times seem somehow less hard, the good times so much better than they could have been... I often wonder about the pliability of human memory... the way we re-write our own histories to better suit who we imagine ourselves to be today..."

She knew what he meant, despite her memory always feeling as clear as a bell. She found she remembered his easy smile, his loving touch, more clearly than his murderous leer, or the times when that touch had hurt...

" I dragged out the old box of pictures I've kept, yesterday. I look into the eyes of the 17 year old girl I fell in love with, and wonder how much you've changed..."

She had, and she hadn't. She looked older, she knew, but softer somehow too, free of the heavy responsibilities she had borne back then. Her hair was longer, darker, her dress more subtle and casual, but she knew she was also different in the ways that he really meant, but didn't say...

"Do you still believe in fairy tales? In battlements of shining castles, safe from the dragons that lie beneath the hill? Are you still a Russian princess, rescued by a gypsy dancer... to anyone who'll listen, is that a story you still tell? You live a life of fantasy, your diary romantic fiction..." - Fish, "A Gentleman's Excuse Me"

She wasn't that little girl anymore, the little princess who, deep within her heart, thought that Angel was her Prince Charming, and that someday he would sweep her up and whisk her away on his white horse... or maybe it would be black...

Now she was a woman who knew better... who knew that love was not a mighty warrior that could conquer all... Now she knew that loneliness was a more faithful and constant companion, that demanded nothing but that you feel it's pain...

Now she felt more sorrow for Angel than she ever had, knowing that his isolation would stretch over millennia, while hers would only last a short human lifetime...

"George Bernard Shaw once said: 'Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.' I think about that line often when I reflect on my life... this crazy, fuzzy time of year is so often a catalyst for rumination... it sometimes depresses me that I will have more and more time to remember, but less and less worth remembering. And that really does make me feel old and sad...

But still, the few years we spent together, despite all the pain, remain the moments of my greatest clarity, my most complete joy. And for those I'm glad I'll have an eternity to remember..."

Buffy blinked back tears at the unexpected candor of his confession. He rarely shared the products of his seemingly fathomless introspection. In her youth she had been a doer, not a thinker, and he had always treated her that way, even in his occasional letters over the years. He always wrote of things he'd done, places he'd gone, people he'd encountered. But it was rare for him to share his most intimate depths with her...

He must be feeling the same as she, lonely and missing the old days, when she was focused on a future ripe with possibilities, rather than on a past already experienced. Hope was now that the rent would be paid on time, that her favorite TV show wouldn't get canceled, that someone would find a cure for cancer... But then, Hope was a shining Goddess, holding a cornucopia overflowing with shiny trinkets, all hers for the choosing, each one a promise of love, of joy, of song and dance and touch...a promise of possibility...

Hope was once Angel himself...

"In 250 years, I have never felt safe, never solid, never real. But those days... those days we shared are the only ones I felt I ever lived. When my being was reflected in people I cared about... when my soul's existence could be confirmed simply by looking into your loving eyes, your trusting smile... Even when my reality felt an indestructible monster, your heart was a holy weapon you gave me to stave it off. It's a beautiful thing to be able to remember, even now..."

She had never loved again, the way she did him. Each relationship since felt only like a tryst, an activity to pass the time, to dull the pain of knowing her heart could never be given again the way it was to Angel. Eventually, she had given up, tired of hurting these well-meaning suitors, with their earnest feelings and attempts at winning her. She was unwinnable. Already won. And lost...

To be alone was better than to see the hurt in their eyes... the hurt she caused when she told them she could never love them...

"You once asked me if I didn't want to be with you... god, I remember that so clearly, it still hurts to remember the desperation in your voice, the pained look on your beautiful face... At the time, I didn't answer, because the truth would have made what I had to do so much harder for you... But, the truth is, I did. I always wanted to be with you, and I still do to this day. I wanted then just to fall into your arms, be lost in your eyes...tell you I didn't mean it and how much I loved you... And I have felt that keenly every day since. But I guess it's true, what they say, that the act of desiring something is always more intense than the requiting of it... that we are almost always sorry when we get what we think we want...

In our case, I think that would have been especially true. To want would not have made the having right. To have given in to that truth that I held back, at that moment, would have spelled eventual disaster for us...for you... and today? Who knows, today we might not even have the luxury of bittersweet memories..."

Buffy knew all of this. She knew he always stood by his decision to leave her, justified in his resolve that he was presenting her with a gift she didn't know she wanted, but truly deserved -- a normal life.

And in some ways, he was right. She did have a normal life, free of demons and nightmares and the constant looming spectres of death, danger, and darkness.

But something in her died because of his decision, too. Something shining and golden, that gave her exuberance and lust for life... that gave her fire. It had killed her passion for living... her ability to wonder... her high perch on the tallest mountain life had to offer...

When Angel left, he took the core of her with him, leaving her standing on plain, flat ground. And she had lived that way, ever since.

"Sometimes I still dream of a future that never could have been, between us... I get lost in little vignettes of a normal life... watching TV, eating waffles, making love, raising a family... And I can revel, guiltless, in these dreams, knowing I can have these beautiful moments with you without your having to pay the awful cost truly trying to live them would have demanded.

I hope enough time has passed now that you can understand what I was trying to do, by going away. I removed myself from your sight so you might be able to see light again... the light that was always shrouded by my shadow -- the ghost of my past, the limitations of my future. You deserved so much more than I could ever give you. It sounds cliche, I know, but its truth runs so much deeper, for us..."

When she lamented the loss of her only true love, Buffy often ticked down the list of those things he was talking about, that always stood between them, for herself... some pathetic confirmation that it was all for the best... But there was always that nagging voice in the back of her mind, one that still spoke to her, even now, that somehow, they could have found a way, if only they'd been willing to try...

"I know at least now, your days are filled with sunshine... that you are not constantly yoked by worry and regret... In time, Buffy, you would have grown to hate me... you would have grown to hate yourself for all that you missed, all the things you never could have experienced because you loved me...the damned... The curse I bear is more complicated, more multi-faceted, than even the Kalderash could have imagined, I think..."

Buffy thought, her heart heavy, of how long eternity must be, when it is filled with torment... with regret, with guilt, with missing things you can't do or have or share... The Gypsies certainly knew how to dole out a sound punishment.

"But I hope that you know. I hope that you have always known, and will always remember, that I love you with every cell of my being... I love you with a passion so deep, it spans my eternity... beyond even your life's time. You have immortality, in my heart, Buffy. And know that the only happiness, the only solace I have ever known is that, for a brief shining moment in my forever, that you loved me. That you gave me your smile, your heart, your body, even your life, because you thought I was worth it.

When a thousand years have gone by and I still walk the night, the memory of your kiss, your hand in mine, will stand always at the forefront of my memory, urging me on to do what I have to do. And each sunset, each moonrise, each rainfall, each summer wind, will speak your name. And the world will know... I will remember...

Always,
Angel"

Buffy cried for a long time when she'd finished, the sorrow weighing down on her like a ten-ton stone. She felt once again the infinite regress of the same old unsolvable dilemma... the problems that stood like a mountain range between them, separating them, as the Rockies now literally did.

How she missed him. How she missed the way he used to fill her, heart and soul, with joy, with purpose, with certainty. Her glass empty, the fire in the hearth dying, she looked out at the gathering snow and the looming dawn, and thought once again how it all looked so flat, so grey, so dead. No monsters there... only phantoms...

Some part of her knew she might never see color again, blazing in razor-sharp glory, the way she had seen it with him...

But some other, small part of her, awoke at reading his words, glad to remember, and did not regret. It wished quietly it could hold his hands in hers, but then it hoped, just a little...

Hoped for something a little more, as the dawn sparked pink on the horizon...

"If I could only have you near...
To breathe a sigh or two...
I would be happy just to hold the hands of love...
On this winter's night with you..."

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