DISCLAIMER: The characters belong to Joss, who I'm sure knows what he's doing with them. Sigh.
TIMELINE: After 'Checkpoint' and 'Blood Money'.
SPOILERS: 'Checkpoint', 'Blood Money'.
SYNOPSIS: Buffy takes the dreaming into her own hands. Figuratively.
DISTRIBUTION: If you have others then take it, and if you would like them, simply ask and I will slaver delightedly.
FEEDBACK: To coin a popular Sunnydale phrase - 'duh'.
RATING: PG-12

I had this epiphany. I have the power; the power is mine (God, I'm inches away from banners and marching, here). Not in a cheesy superhero-cartoon way - in a way that's about me being my own woman, being in charge, and getting what I want.

Which, right at this moonlit moment, happens to be my stubborn, beautiful, troubled vampire lover.

* * * * *

I even made a whole new place to go. A brightly lit meadow with dappled trees and a babbling brook meandering gently through the centre...

No, I'm kidding. There's not much call for brightly lit in either of our lives. Plus, I'm not even sure what dappling *is*. I created a training room - it wasn't supposed to be quite that, but I guess 'power' doesn't automatically equate with 'skill'. I've controlled this whole dream thing a couple of times now, but I've never actively tried to make a location before, and it's harder than it looks. It ended up as some kind of cross between the main room of the mansion, the library, the back room at the shop, and a graveyard.

I worry about the effect Slaying has had on my associations sometimes. This was a really weird looking room.

Not that Angel seemed to notice, when he finally showed.

I didn't notice at first; I'd been in the dreamscape a good hour, inasmuch as there is time in a place where I'm pretty sure time stretches like a cheerleader before the big game. Given so much empty time - it felt like a luxury, Buffy's Life has been a long round of fullness lately - I didn't have a lot to do, nothing I wanted to think about (negativity made the room shake, and then I felt nauseous), and so I began training. I'm pretty sure that won't make any difference out there, but it might be working on my brain muscles. Practise makes perfect, I'm pretty sure, and I am supposed to be on a strict schedule of rigorous mental and physical exercises: the one recommendation of our old friends the WC that Giles actually agreed with. Go figure.

I did almost ask them if *I* was going to get any retroactive pay. Slaying stops me having any kind of part-time job.

Oh, and school does. Especially now I'm making such a huge impression on my professors.

None of that seems to matter so much here. I don't know why, because I'm still me and I have the same problems and the same thoughts and everything; they just kind of seem to go blurry and distant.

So in the absence of company, I was training with the wide variety of equipment in the room, and may I say I'm proud of how much my subconscious has picked up while I wasn't looking, because I didn't actually know what some of the weaponry around was. Maybe I got a little help here after all.

It didn't take long for me to fall into my usual solo training routine, and even less time after that to fall into a near trance state. Kick, kick, punch, kick, jump... my body knows it, my mind can wander. Giles never lets me do that, he says to get used to losing focus during a fight is asking for trouble - he's right, but then I don't do it during a fight.

Which I proceeded to prove, snapping back to awareness instantly when I felt the first punch land.

I mean, I knew it was Angel - had to be Angel - but fighter's instinct comes above... any other instincts I may or may not have, and I fell smoothly into slaying technique. We sparred for long minutes, without exchanging any words, just the solid sounds of flesh on flesh and low grunting when a hit connected.

It wasn't like when we used to fight together. Angel never gave it less than his all practising with me, but even so there was always a little something he held back - not the strength of the blows. More the intent. Like, he wasalways trying not to hurt me. He still wasn't really trying to, but he was a little more violent than I was used to.

It was nice to be fighting with him again. I don't fight anyone who I can then sit down and discuss with anymore - well, Giles, those Watchers this week, but they're not up to my standard. There's always some restraint on my part, because I'm stronger than them; I'm stronger than Angel too, but there's no hesitation there because I know he'd rather spend his life aching from me than aching from being without me... okay, he's technically without me now, but not really. Not while I'm alive.

And he's got the whole vampire healing thing going on, so the only permanent damage to worry about is if he falls on a spare stake.

Giles' focus theory proved right: Angel executed a fast snap kick under my attack which was a spilt-second too late. End result? Being flat out on the floor, breathless and panting, with Angel sprawled across me, pinning me down, aiming a stake at my heart.

An actual stake... an actual, physical stake. A ripple of fear ran through me, gazing into his eyes. They looked black - all of him looked dark, silhouetted, blocking out the light from me; and where once there might have been a light, warmth, in his look, in his boyish triumph at having beaten me, he looked detached. Just another fight fought and won.

I wriggled and he grinned and got up in one fluid movement, tossing the stake casually over his shoulder and reaching down to me. I let him pull me up, keeping a wary eye on him. I wasn't sure how he was doing; but I knew that for the past couple of months, he'd been erratic, and I wasn't sure if this was going to be a weepy or a wild turn.

"Nice moves," he said, turning away and picking up a towel that he'd managed to make appear out of nowhere.

Okay. So he's together enough to wilfully affect our environment here.

"You too," I said. Too rattled by trying to predict the direction of his unpredictability, I couldn't fashion my own towel, so I used the other end of his, looking up from wiping my sweaty brow (you'd think *that* wouldn't happen here) to see him staring at me openly and appreciatively.

I blushed. You'd think that wouldn't happen here either.

"How are you?" I said, making a weak attempt to pitch my voice at comforting/sympathetic/non-patronising. Maybe I should have stuck with drama after all.

"Fine," he said, and didn't elaborate, which of course meant he probably wasn't fine.

"You were late?" I said awkwardly. God, can you say 'uphill struggle'?

"I was hunting," he said, sounding surprised.

"It must be like five in the morning," I said in disbelief. And sunrise at... about seven thirty, I think. I've stopped looking up the times of sunset and sunrise; my own body tells me far more reliably when one is imminent.

"I'm getting back on vampire time," he said shortly.

I caught my breath. I can't remember the last time he was on vampire time; probably because I didn't know him then. I do remember a time of vampire time; but not, strictly speaking, *him*. But being on the vampire clock is bad. Most humans can't take it; Cordy certainly wouldn't.

Which means they're still - we're still - losing him. And I'm too busy trying to make sure Dawn doesn't slip away to go stop him from doing the same.

"Tell me one good thing you did this week," I demanded, frantically and irrationally. I want to take back the words practically before I say them, but they're already spilling out... I have so little self-control around him it's almost comic. What the hell do I expect him to say? 'Well, I thought about killing someone, but didn't?' He's not doing good things anymore. I just have a desperate need for reassurance that somehow he's still my angel, my Angel.

I'm always the one erring on the side of selfishness. I should err on the side of right, of sensible; stop seeing him here or go to him there. It's that simple.

Only it's not: I'm too scared to go to him there and too addicted to stop with him here.

I was so busy hitting myself with a mental two-by-four I didn't notice that he actually seemed to be considering the question seriously until he answered.

"Gave
2,500,000 to a homeless teen shelter."

If that two-by-four had been real, I would have just brained myself with it.

"Where the hell did you get that kind of money from?!" I shrieked, trying to remember if I'd read any reports involving L.A, that sum of money, and probably mysterious circumstances.

And then it occurs to me that yes, I did. Something about a law firm, and a charity ball with those people from 'Life Lessons' to raise money for a... homeless teens shelter.

Sense, any time you'd like to drop in on this conversation?

"I robbed from the rich to give to the poor," he said calmly, with an ironic glint in his eye and a cynical smirk on his face.

"Did you now," I breathed.

"Yeah," he said, and he carried on without any promping... not that I was in any state to give that. "I wanted to push Wolfram and Hart a little, so I hired a guy to help and got the woman who ran it in."

Wolfram and Hart I recognised as the law firm involved, but clarity still failed to descend. I completely didn't feel like I was talking to Angel; which I've thought before this, but those times it may not have felt like him but it felt like something benign. Something decent. This Angel felt like a stranger. Angel never really felt like a stranger to me, even when he was.

"How much did the guy get?" I said, wondering what the hell I was saying.

Angel hesitated. "Actually, I had to kill him."

Speechless. This guy was probably underworld, possibly demonic. But to hire someone and then kill them... it's not done. And it's not done because it's not- well, *nice*.

"It was pretty much a him or me kind of situation," he said, and I heard the note of entreaty but didn't feel minded to acknowledge it just then.

"It was an old grudge, he let it go while we were working together and then he had to..."

"So you played him," I interrupted.

Another hesitation. "Yes."

"What about the woman?" I said through gritted teeth.

He sighed. "I played her. But I gave her more of the money than Wolfram and Hart-"

"Why are you so obsessed with this firm?" I said, noticing for the first time the vicious note his voice took on with that word.

"They made some things difficult for me last year... and they brought Darla back... and took her back." His tone almost wavered before it became flat.

I suppose I could take some comfort in this not just being random. I guess he's got a right to some vengeance for that... but then isn't this the man who told me I couldn't have mine over Faith? There's no comfort here.

"Why, what goodness have you precipitated lately?" he asked me with a barely concealed undertone of hostility and defensiveness.

"Kicked some Watchers' asses," I offered lamely, only half with him.

"The Watcher's Council is back?" he said in amazement. "They don't learn."

"They brought information on Glory," I told him, "just made me work for it."

"Work for it?" he said in a voice that said he wasn't really bothered, but while he was there he might as well listen.

"Physical tests, interviewing the gang," I said, ticking off on my fingers. I realised he wasn't listening, but the week kind of felt like a blur, and I really needed to go through for someone. And it wasn't like he was eager to share through his issues.

"And Glory is an insane god who came to see me, I had to leave Dawn and Mom with *Spike*, Glory has competitors for the Key but not in a sense that they want to snuggle up either, and I made a really good speech to the Watchers and they had to leave," I finished. Wow. I had a bigger week than I thought.

"You left your family with Spike?!" Angel said, shocked.

Okay, *that's* what he picks up on?

"This was not the most important point in there, Angel," I said, annoyed. "Did you catch the 'Glory's a god' part?"

"Dess."

"Excuse me?"

"Goddess... if she's a she then she's technically a..."

"Shut up!" Are some priorities really too much to ask?

"You're okay, right?" he said pragmatically.

"Yeah," I said, puzzled. This conversation was just going places I seemed to have no input in taking it.

"So you're doing okay," he pointed out.

"Maybe in the grand scheme of things..." I said.

"Ah!" he said, walking up to me, displaying the most passion he had yet. "But there is no grand scheme. If there's any scheme at all, it's not grand."

"Maybe it's not being great to you right now..."

"It never has been great to me," he said precisely, "or you. Why do you fight at all, Buffy?"

"Because there's things worth fighting for," I told him, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at me. His dark eyes pierced mine, hard and unforgiving. "You told me that."

He reached up and gently took my hand in his, away from his face. He kissed the back of my hand softly, making me shiver and stare at him in confusion.

He leaned close to me and my eyes slid closed, but the kiss I expected never came. I felt a stirring of cool, unnecessary breath on my cheek and then suddenly he licked up to my temple, his tongue rough and oddly warm against my skin.

"I was wrong," he whispered.

An abrupt, small push from him sent me tumbling out of the dreamscape and into That Buffy... the one who's kind of wondering how much she really needs sleep.

Go to the sequel, Dream To Me

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