DISCLAIMER: Nah, I can't think up something like that, I'm a fluffer. Ask Joss about it.

TIMELINE: During 'The Weight Of The World' and after 'Through The Looking Glass'. SPOILERS: As above.

SYNOPSIS: Slightly different; Buffy and Angel meet in her subconscious. Hopefully it'll be self-explanatory.

FEEDBACK: You know how dehydrated people like water?
RATING: PG-13 for possibly disturbing imagery.

There's nothing that is capable of caging a Slayer except herself. Other people? I blow right through them. Bend metal... contort my body into fantastic positions... fight me into a corner and I use it to gain purchase to hit back from. All in the name of freedom.

Freedom of body, but never of self... duty, Slayer and sisterly, binds me more surely than chains ever could.

One moment. One moment when it was all clear... it would be easier if Dawn were dead.

I killed my sister.

* * * * *

I turned away from my mom's bedroom - did she always sleep in a grave? - forgetting that still-fresh agony for a moment. I already quit on Mom; Mommy's already gone. Free.

It's a relief; one less to worry about. One less to give up on. Why do I protect all these people when I can't even protect my own sister? Not from Glory. I've been hoping, avoiding what I know is true... the best fighters know their limitations.

I've come up against mine, and they hit like a two-by-four to the head. Every time, she beats me. She snatched my sister out from next to me, from under my wing.

And it was *okay*. I wanted it. I let it happen.

My fault. Go *away*, Willow.

There's one place I know I can be safe from her; the one place she can't follow me, because she never could. She listened to me talk about it, rejoiced and sympathised with me at appropriate times, but she never understood why I was there. Why I kept going there, going back only to stumble out, confused and hurting and... loved.

I stepped inside my room - teenage room, exactly as it was before the scent of my pain hung bitter in the air and the ghosts of our giddy happiness lurked, tangible because that happiness was killed so comprehensively - and he was there.

Half my Angel, saddened by leaving me, and half hers, not realising he'd ever have to.

Safe haven, who knows about killing your precious, baby sister.

"What's going on?" he said warily, watching me with hunger and a little, uncertain fear.

I ignored his words... when did we ever communicate best with words? Our lips met and our tongues twined and our hands explored, voracious in delicious, forbidden recklessness.

What's one more of my loved ones dead to my failings?

At least this fire will burn hot and ecstatic before it burns out.

Dawn barely burned at all... she was just learning how to, how to live, before my flames consumed her. A Slayer burns bright and furious and scorching before the fire is extinguished... it attracts others, and that it attracts it destroys.

My mother, dead. Dawn, dead. Giles, Willow, Xander; their lives given up to mine, to what was made of it, forced into it, against my will.

Angel, his skin almost warm under my touch, bleeding the living fire out of me and replacing it with one, deep in my belly, that screams only for him. His life taken long before I was a flicker in his being, but his soul - his eternity - sacrificed to my greedy, limited mortality.

Out, brief candle.

He would die for me gladly; die for me and around me and because of me. If I killed him now, with a stake or with my flesh, heart, soul melting seamlessly, blissfully, into his, he would not object; would even hand me the stake, or lie calm-needy beneath me while I took my fill of his body.

I know it as surely as I know that if he needed it, desired it, I would lie motionless and rapturous as he drank away my lifeblood.

He pushed me away and I could only imagine the picture I made; my black tank rumpled, caught up and exposing my stomach - a sign of submission in dogs and wolves, I remembered vaguely from some documentary, showing the animal had given up - where my jeans were half-unbuttoned and riding low on my hips.

A picture, I should think, not so dissimilar to his. His shirt was ripped straight down from top to bottom, hanging off his broad shoulders, exposing a scratched chest. I stepped forward, back into the circle of his arms, if he'd lifted them to me; he didn't, just groaned low in his throat when I bent my head to the shallow wounds I'd inflicted and slowly licked the welling blood from him.

He was as agitated as me, as desperate to give and take back what I had given to and taken from him; more so, because my uneasiness was lifting as I slowly realised the truth. Death is my gift and I offer it around myself freely, to my natural, intended enemies and those who I have been fool enough to allow myself intimacy with.

It left an eerie calm descending over me, over the scene. The only sound, which until now I hadn't realised had been corrupted by my heartbeat sounding unnaturally loud in my ears, was the soft laps of my tongue and the rumbling I could feel deep in his chest.

Eventually, he set me away from him, keeping a firm grip on my upper arms... whether to keep me close and in contact or hold me away I don't know.

"What is this?" he said, his tone a gravely mixture between anger and want. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I was going out the way I wanted to; taking him with me. I ran a finger down my neck, lazily circling the racing pulse at the base of my throat. His gaze followed, like hot, bruising fingers against my skin.

Is happiness here happiness there? The only thing I can think of that would eclipse Glory is Angelus. If he came for me...

I deserve no other death than to see the face of the man I love contorted in hatred as he rips out my veins. If Dawn is dead, there's no reason I shouldn't let him.

I don't want to tell him that. I don't need his pity; I don't want his comfort.

I don't want to be understood, to be told it's okay, it's understandable. I want to *forget*... to slip into darkness and have it slip into me and never slip back into just barely existing. To cauterise this wound, counteract this fire that eats me up inside to out. I want to escape.

I don't want to leave this place.

"You," I answered succinctly and kissed him again. He was hard against me, all of him, exactly as I craved... I've never been soft, I don't need softness. I need to be taken.

I need someone else to be in control, even if all they're controlling is me.

He growled against my mouth; this time I was the one who pulled back. He was in game face, fangs glinting in tandem with golden, fierce eyes. I smiled in satisfaction... as long as it's not his face, the angelic face I associate with nothing so much as love, this doesn't have to be emotions.

Guiltguiltshameguiltterrorguiltguiltguilt.

Was this what he felt when he screwed Darla? This overwhelming need for oblivion... why can't he recognise it in me?

"Do you know what the demon in me looks like?" he asked. He wasn't touching me now - in fact, he seemed to be avoiding me, my touch, my gaze. We were circling each other; slowly, but like feral predators. Like wary, frenzied lovers.

"I'm looking at it," I told him. What sort of a question is that? I know the demon that lives in him as intimately as I know the man.

He laughed harshly. "This isn't the demon, Slayer. Not as it truly is. I saw that today."

He darted in, grabbed me; in one swift, fluid motion he had me turned around, my back pressed to his front. My hands were captured in front of me and I stiffened against him... I don't know if it was in terror or delight.

Then it *was* in delight, as he bent his head and nosed at my throat, where his mark still remained. He licked up the column of my throat once, sensuously, making me conscious of the rough, velvety texture of his tongue on my skin, preparing me for his teeth in my flesh.

His lips were at my ear. "And you're not ready for it," he breathed.

He let me go; I turned, confused. He was still close but his face was smooth again; human, unwelcome.

This face makes me feel again; makes me want to cry. Makes me not want to give up.

That's what I'm not ready for. Trying again.

"This isn't who you are, Buffy," he said. "You're a Champion."

"You don't know who I am," I hissed, "not anymore. You have no idea what's happening to me out there."

"Your friends are trying to get you back," he said. He reached for me; I jumped back, like a spooked rabbit, evading his touch. "It's not over yet."

I stopped, looked at him. "Only on a technicality. Glory has me beat, Angel."

"Only you has you beat at the moment."

I barked-laughed, the sound loud in the still room. The atmosphere was charged, still, but not with the electricity it had been... with his tension, as if he were fighting for something. For me.

It wasn't working. "I need a little more than fortune cookie wisdom," I said bitterly.

He reached for me again and this time I let him touch me. The contact was soothing... and inflaming, as always. Passion, my other constant; something to live for, perhaps.

Just not enough. Not without him to share it with.

"You have everything you need," he said softly, persuasively.

Everything I need... once, I would have said that was him. My strength and the one I turned to for his strength; the smarts to balance my energy.

But if I no longer had the energy to go on, I no longer had the energy for this fight. I nodded, once... acquiescing, if to no more than one last try.

He took my hand and led me out of the room. We watched Buffy - me - replacing books on the shelf. Pausing. Thinking... what I thought, the bad thing. The thing that doomed Dawn. When I killed her.

I pulled my hand away from his, half-hating him for making me come back to this - for reminding me that everything since then comes back to this - half-loving him for the same reason. He faces the worst parts of himself every minute; why should he allow me anything less? Why should I allow myself?

He cupped my cheek in one hand, turning me around to face him.

"Go with Willow," he commanded softly. "Trust her. Trust me."

Then he was gone and she was there again, calling for me.

I answered.

* * * * *

He gave me the strength to hear Willow, in the end. I cried in her arms, wishing they were Angel's... but for once, it didn't matter all that much. I didn't know where Angel was; but I knew it was with me.

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