SERIES: Only When I Sleep 9
DISCLAIMER: Listen closely ... they're not mine.
TIMELINE: After 'Listening To Fear' and 'The Trial'.
SPOILERS: Yes. Go away if you don't want to be spoiled on what's just been shown.
SYNOPSIS: Buffy and Angel dream. About each other.
DISTRIBUTION: If you want it then please ask (I'll say yes), unless you have others, in which case, take.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: 'Lives a dream' is a line in 'Eleanor Rigby'. Still listening to that Beatles album.
AUTHOR'S NOTES 2: Not my best, I'm afraid - the episodes didn't seem to offer opportunities for anything but major angst in areas I can't really do anything but guess about. I did my best :).
FEEDBACK: Well, that depends on whether you want them to share dreams during repeats *evil grin* ...
RATING: PG

I wasn't much surprised to open my eyes (well, not my real eyes, but my eyes in the dream, so ... yeah) and find myself on the hill outside the mansion. It's not a place I associate with happy memories, for obvious reasons. It reminds me of terror, and desperation, and watching the man I love nearly throw his life away for reasons I knew but could never fully understand.

But it also reminds me of hope. Of the spectre of death banished in a flurry of pure-white snow. And of miracles.

Maybe whoever, or whatever, started creating these dreams in us took pity on me tonight; saw I needed, more than ever, to remember miracles can happen.

Or maybe the creator took pity on us, because Angel was sitting on the ground, staring out over the vista of Sunnydale, and just the slump of his broad shoulders revealed to me the depths of his despair.

I walked over and dropped next to him. He reached for me without prevarication, pulling me tightly to him, enveloping me in his arms and burying his face in my neck. I wrapped my own arms around his back, finding the same solace in him that he seemed to be needing from me as he enfolded me in a tight grip. I felt him tremble in my embrace and stroked his hair, feeling his answering caresses on my back as we rocked wordlessly together.

It was almost a relief to put my own worries away for a moment; not forget, I couldn't forget, but to just comfort Angel. To hold him, and to let him hold me.

After a long, cathartic while, he lifted his head from my shoulder and gave me a weak smile.

I smiled back, letting my hand slip around to his cheek. 'You okay?'

'Not really,' he said, 'you?'

I looked out over the panorama of Sunnydale town. 'Not really.'

I felt his long, heavy duster settle over my shoulders and reached up to pull it closer around my neck. My fingers brushed his, gripped them, and I drew comfort from their coolness.

He shifted up next to me and I laid my head on his shoulder, our entwined hands resting between us as he settled his chin on the top of my head.

'Want to tell me about it?' he asked softly.

I gave a half shrug, 'More of the same,' I said quietly. 'Mom's sick with a disease I can't fight, Dawn's prey for some psycho chick I can't fight. I'm in the best shape I've ever been in, and suddenly,' I gave a bark of bitter laughter, 'I'm assailed with stuff it's useless against.'

'Maybe this isn't supposed to be your fight,' he suggested gently.

'Maybe,' I agreed, my eyes flooding with sudden, unbidden tears, 'but everything else always has been.' He wiped away the tears as they slid down my cheekbones, but his tenderness only increased my sobs. 'I can't stand feeling this helpless!' I wailed abruptly.

'I help the helpless,' he quipped sweetly.

'I know you do,' I said, sniffling and quieting. 'But Mom and Dawn are even more than me. Mom's sick and Dawn's just a kid. The tumour is causing personality changes, and Dawn can't handle that ... and Mom didn't even know what she'd been saying ... and I ...'

'Have to be strong?' he guessed.

'What have I got if I'm not?' I asked him honestly.

'Love?' he offered.

'That doesn't help them,' I said.

'Your love for them,' he said, 'your friends' love for you. They're there for you, if you need to let it out. You know that.'

'I do know that,' I told him, 'but I can't. I won't.'

I felt him give a frustrated sigh against my hair. 'You can.'

'I can't, Angel,' I repeated, 'I ... they ... I just can't.'

'Is this about your Mom or Dawn?' he questioned.

'I won't over Mom,' I said firmly, 'I can't over Dawn.'

A sudden breeze washed over us.

'Your Mom knows about Dawn,' Angel stated, with a far-off lilt to his voice.

'The personality changes I mentioned?' I said. He nodded and I explained, 'She's seeing things as they really are. She knew Dawn wasn't her daughter.'

I noticed I felt better talking about the supernatural of Dawn than the emotional. So long I spent wishing I'd never heard of the Slayerhood and all that came with it; and now I'm preferring thinking about it. That's irony. Or, depending on whether your glass is half- full or half-empty, poetic justice.

'How did she take it?' he asked.

'She told me to look after her,' I said with a fond smile.

'What did you say?' he said.

'I said I would,' I said, a little affronted he even had to ask. 'I guess family's what you make of it.'

'I guess,' he agreed with a wavering inflection.

'What's happened with you?' I said with sudden concern that almost rivalled that for my mom, not recognising his tone but understanding the weakness behind it.

'Do you remember meeting Doyle?' he asked, his gaze fastened on a middle distance.

'Um, yeah,' I said, furrowing my brow, 'at Thanksgiving ... but when I came after Faith he wasn't -'

'It's just been the first anniversary of his death,' Angel cut in, his tone carefully emotionless.

I squeezed his hand and felt his absent, instinctive response.

'And I commemorated it by watching Dru vamp Darla,' he said, and now his voice shook perceptibly.

'Oh my God,' I breathed in shock, then realised and turned to him, swiftly bringing my hand up to cup his cheek. He closed his eyes and turned his face into my palm, his face displaying an abject misery which broke my heart a little more. I freed my other hand from the clasp it was in with his and cradled his face in my hands, pressing his forehead to mine and trying to comfort him with random murmurs and soothing inanities.

When he calmed, I waited hesitantly, wondering whether he wanted to talk about it, and whether I should make him if he didn't. He's not exactly Mr Share-a-lot, but I know how much of a toll holding stuff in takes, and I get the feeling Wesley and Cordelia haven't been the most approachable of people over Darla. I don't even really want to hear it; but better me than nobody.

'So what happened?' I prompted carefully.

'Darla was dying from a disease she had when she was human,' he recounted slowly, 'but she was just ... she was only just starting to get it, you know? She was feeling the soul ... and okay she wasn't really starting to get it because she was trying to get herself vamped by some idiot from a nothing bloodline ... but she knew she was dying. She didn't want to die.'

His eyes were bleak, and though it was my hand which was running through his hair, my fingers which were softly stroking his cheek, I knew it was Darla he was seeing; but that he would come back to me.

'Most people don't want to die,' I said gently, and for a moment he saw me, and we exchanged bittersweet smiles. We've both fought death. Together, in a lot of cases.

'I did the trials for her,' he went on, 'I thought she needed the chance ... and it wasn't even worth it.'

His face twisted in pain, and his eyes closed briefly.

'The trials?' I said.

'Challenges,' he said distractedly, 'three challenges where you gamble their life and yours.'

My fingers stilled and I swallowed hard.

'Gamble?' I enquired.

'You lose, you die, they die,' he said, unconsciously leaning his head back into my touch. I resumed my rythmic combing, but I really wasn't happy. Gambling his life - I trust his judgement now, and if he thinks Darla's worth it, then okay ... but I don't. He'll never believe it, but I don't think most people are worth it over him. It won't stop him risking it all, for Darla, or anyone else, probably; and if he was any other way he wouldn't be Angel. But I don't have to like it; nearly eighteen months away from him, a year with Riley, and the thought of Riley's death still doesn't strike the terror in me that Angel's does. It seems like forever means forever.

As if I ever really doubted that, deep down.

'I made it,' he said, 'I accepted death and I won, but he said she was living her second chance. And now she's not anymore. I would have turned her, but she was ready to go ... only she was so scared.' He leaned his head on my chest and I moved my touches to the nape of his neck. 'I would have stayed with her the whole way.'

'Except Dru's back,' I said, absently wondering if she'd be coming for Spike in the near future.

'It was revenge,' he said, his voice breaking, 'it was because of me.'

'You don't know that,' I said strongly. 'She just turned up? Was lucid for long enough to decide it'd be fun?'

'No,' he admitted reluctantly, 'she was with Wolfram and Hart.'

'You did everything you could,' I whispered, having no way to be sure, but knowing positively that he had.

'If I'd killed her earlier ...' he said.

'Don't get into "if", Angel,' I advised, feeling like the older between us, 'there's no point. You've got to deal with what is.'

'And what is, is that she's a vampire again,' he gave a bitter laugh I very much recognised from myself before. 'Sired by her own grandchilde. How's that for Springer material.'

'I think all of us would do okay on Springer,' I told him.

The sky was beginning to lighten; warning that the night was ending, here and in reality. We watched it dispassionately, loath to leave each other. I locked him in my embrace again, and we stayed motionless for long minutes, drawing love and strength from each other; then Angel pulled away, rising and walking to the edge of the hill, where a steep drop headed to the town.

He paused a moment, then turned to face me. 'I felt like she was *my* second chance,' he said pensively.

'No. You're your second chance,' I told him with certainty.

He gave a tiny half-smile, coming back over to me, leaning down and brushing his lips gently over mine.

'You're my second chance,' he said.

'Then be around to take it with me,' I said, looking into his eyes.

He walked away from me, then spun again as he reached the edge.

'I'll do my best,' he called back, before stepping fearlessly off the edge and disappearing in a fairly worrying manner, even for a dream.

Nice exit, but I wasn't about to try it; I just stayed there until I woke up, like a sensible person.

NOTE: Okay, I know I had that bit in my feedback plea about installments during repeats ... but I really don't think I'll do any, because 1. I won't have material from episodes to work with and they would therefore be short(er) and rather boring and 2. I'm writing another fic which is becoming quite long and I want to concentrate on that for a while. I'll do one after the tenth episodes air, and then I may do a Christmas special (how far do repeats run over Christmas?) with some nice fluff before picking up when the eleventh episodes are shown. Questions? Comments?

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