DISCLAIMER: Forgive Joss, for he knoweth exactly what he does and is mean.
TIMELINE: After 'Spiral' and 'Over The Rainbow'.
SPOILERS: As above.
SYNOPSIS: Buffy's catatonia bears an uncanny relation to sleep. At least in my 'verse.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: As with the last one, the fact that all these eps are cliff-hangery carry-straight-on types will be quietly ignored.
FEEDBACK: *Dignified begging*
RATING: PG

Slayers aren't known for their running away. It's less 'he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day' than 'she who fights and dies doesn't really matter because there'll be another one along in a minute'.

So, the running-away isn't really a big part of the Slayer mentality. But surviving is. Making sure my family survives is. So running away was actually easier... if not, in the end, safer. You can't run away from stuff that'll just run after you.

I guess someone will come after me. Or, just come for me.

* * * * *

A while ago, a couple of kids died, only because this is the Hellmouth they weren't kids and they were a demon which had my mother under a spell to try and burn me at the stake. I guess I repressed that part, because my standout memory of that time is sitting quiet with Angel, on a bench in the park, and him telling me I'd taught him he had to fight because there were things worth fighting for.

I remember feeling both skeptical and flattered at the time... he's so old, so smart, and he was telling me that *he'd* learned from *me*. Buffy Summers, dread student and rogue Slayer; but Angel had learned from me. I never told him how much I'd learned from him.

Maybe he could teach me what I'd once taught him, and reminded him of not so long ago... things were worth fighting for and I could fight for them.

Somehow, even the hard things were easier then. I saw it all differently: things were good and I could help them or they were bad and I could kill them. Angel was my grey area, my exception; if he were in my life now, that'd be the norm. He'd probably be better in my life now.

I guess that was my associations with that place - being taught, being helped, being given strength. Just being with Angel.

It's a pretty nice area. It's even nicer with Angel in.

By the time I slept with him, we weren't normal couple-y in the sense that we'd go on dates, and eat off each other's plates (if he ever ate off a plate), and be able to pick a decent movie to watch together, but we were comfortable with each other. Okay, we usually met in the cemetery, but we'd go straight into each other's arms... we wouldn't hang around and make awkward conversation the way we once would have.

This was like then. The moment I saw him I stood up, and before I knew it I was held tight against his chest with his smell of leather and soap and some slight fear all around me, and suddenly I could breathe again.

He couldn't chase it all away forever... but he could make it okay for a second or a minute or however long I stayed wrapped in his arms, and that was all I ever wanted. Somewhere - someone - I could run to so the world couldn't get in for a while.

And when it did get in, he could tell me it was okay and I was still a good person.

"Dawn's gone," I mumbled tearfully.

He led me over to the bench and sat me down, like a kid. It wasn't patronising - it felt nice. Safe. The past few weeks, I've been a mom, a Slayer, a rock on which everything else rests and I have to carry the burden. Angel was treating me like something precious that needed looking after. His treatment felt like someone taking the weight off my back for a while and then taking some of it away... so when I got my problems back, because I had to, it'd feel lighter and I'd know that at least there was someone else helping me carry it.

"What happened?" he asked, pulling me close again. He's not a tissue carrier, but he's always been good about letting me snivel into his clothing. He had on a soft, black shirt and the smoothness of it against my cheek made me cry harder... here I was, dreaming with the man I loved, surrounded by softness, while my sister was God knew where in the clutches of a crazed hell goddess.

"Tara told Glory Dawn's the Key. We had to run... and these knights came and tried to kill her and Giles got shot by an arrow and we called Ben and he was Glory and she took her," I rambled.

"Ben?" he asked. I was surprised he understood the rest... he's had practice.

"He's a doctor... training... I was trying to save Giles, but he shares a body with Glory and then she was there..."

It adds up, really. I never meet new people but that they're somehow connected to evil. I never *like* a guy but that they're somehow connected to evil. Angel, who fights the most intimate link to it I know of; Parker, who was evil, if only in a frat-boy kind of way; Riley and the Initiative; Ben, Glory's other half.

I always feel like I should *know*, and I never do... but how could I have known about Ben? The knight didn't even tell me there was a guy involved until now, and how could I possibly have...? But Ben knew. I trusted him, and he came knowing he might be putting Glory right next to Dawn.

"It's not your fault," Angel soothed, rubbing my back in light, sweeping circles.

"She's my responsibility," I protested. I should have gone further, gone earlier, done... *more*. My baby sister. I let her down.

"You'll get her back," he said. Right. Because Glory's a god I can't beat; but Angel knows better than anyone how far I can go when I have to.

I just don't know if I can anymore.

"I don't know how to face her," I said. "We were lucky, or we wouldn't even have been able to run." That truck; it was like divine intervention or something, bearing down on her, taking her away from Dawn and me. I hoped she'd be crushed against the windshield like a bug. She wasn't, of course.

She lived, to tell the tale in blood. We weren't the only ones to suffer. Those knights - whoever they were - they wanted to kill Dawn. They would've killed her, because she's the Key and they only see that, they don't see the way she giggles when she hears music she likes and watches thunderstorms avidly, but with one hand clutching a stuffed toy. They don't see her as *her*.

Maybe it'd be easier if I didn't. Giles said he was proud of my heart... I'm all heart. Broken, bleeding heart. Broken, bleeding knights scattered all over the road. They didn't deserve to die like that; oh, it was probably quick. But it was probably just one quick sweep for her, like they were nothing. Not a chance to go down fighting. They spent their lives warring against her... we were on the same side, really. We were just coming at it from different angles.

Not that there would have been much co-operation going on, considering I killed a bunch of them. Self-defence is an excuse, but it's just barely adequate... they were human. I've never been so directly responsible for human deaths before... and it didn't even occur to me, as I kicked them and killed them off the Winnebago.

They probably had mothers. Like I once did.

There've been ones I've wanted to kill... but it never really lasted. Except for Faith.

I guess I finally joined that club I threw at Angel. I murdered somebody. A lot of somebodies.

Will he think differently of me? Will he love me less, now I'm not the spotless champion of the innocent I'm supposed to be?

I never loved him any less for those he killed.

"The knights..." I said, looking into his eyes. "I killed some of them."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "Humans?"

I nodded wordlessly.

His eyes filled with a deep sorrow... but he still looked at me with love, and I understood he was feeling *for* me. It never goes away, that stain, I know from him. It changes you. He would have liked me to be spared that.

He kissed me on the forehead.

"Sometimes... it has to be done," he said slowly, and I realised he'd done it too. Killed people that, by rights, he should have protected... does being human alone automatically mean we have to protect someone?

Maybe it shouldn't, but for us it does.

He must have read my thoughts. "It's hard to accept. But some people... humans, don't want protection. I don't know if that means they don't deserve it, exactly, but... if they're doing harm... killing..." I heard a rueful laugh. "I know I sound kind of like a cult. But some people, you don't have to protect."

"It doesn't make it easier to kill them," I said. "Or have killed them."

He said, "If it did, then you'd be in trouble. You'd start judging who did deserve it. That's not our right." He smiled sadly, his eyes soft and deep. "I realised that."

The lawyers... that seems like a long time ago. I feel like a different person to the one that was so shocked to hear of that. I see the point more... the need. And also, the horror.

"Did you find Cordy?" I said, playing idly with one of the buttons of his shirt. I felt - not better exactly, because words and hugs, even Angel-words and Angel-hugs, don't soothe guilty-murderer-dozens-dead feelings, but a little lighter. He got through it... I can do it too.

Lighter enough to tackle his problems, at least. I wonder if it helps him the way it does me, to have this place for just us... when I dream with him, I feel better about things. His perspective reassures me and his love calms me. He gets it, gets me, in a way nobody else has really managed. Swoony romance-novel hyperbole, but... a night when my soul meets Angel's is a night when I sleep well.

"Yeah, and she didn't need the worry," he said, sounding faintly disgusted.

"What?" I said, surprised. He'd been pretty worried last time I saw him. Other dimension, pretty scary stuff.

Okay, no thinking about other dimensions. That way lies badness and making Angel's shirt even soggier.

"They made her a princess or something," he explained.

Cordelia as a supreme ruler? It doesn't bear thinking about. Because it makes me think - high school.

So I picked the other disturbing part of his sentence.

"They?"

"The demons of Pylea," he said, like that made sense. Well, it did... there was portal stuff a'happening and Pylea was probably where Cordelia had gone, and thus where he had gone after her and call me selfish but what if he couldn't get back?

Granted, it would appear the Dreams Network runs off an inter- dimensional satellite dish, but while Angel's soul is the best part of him, it's not the only part I'm fond of. Maybe it's part of super- sensitive Slayer senses, but... however hard I try to pretend he's the person holding me, I never can. Even in here, some part of me realises, acknowledges, that this body isn't Angel, not in the classical sense. Who he is here is mostly Angel's soul and partly my memories of him, I think, and it's not physical, so while this is the only substitute I'll accept... it's still just a substitute. And okay, the real thing is usually a couple of hours away, but he's *there*. I know I can hop a bus or call and... he'll be there, to look at me the way he does and hold me the way he can and make it okay.

It's not something I think about. It's just something I feel better for knowing.

"Pylea, huh?" I said, "and they made Cordelia a princess. I bet you can't wait to just hurry up and stay."

"It has hidden depths," he said dryly. "Our native hates it there. I don't want to stick around to find out in any more detail why."

"Where'd you get a native?" I said curiously. I had a bad feeling he was going to say something like 'lives in LA' and then I'd have to feel mad because doesn't Earth have enough of our own demons without importing?

"He lives in LA," Angel said, and right on cue I felt mad. "I've told you, I think... kareoke demon? Green, loud."

"Right," I said slowly.

"They don't love the humans in his home dimension," he filled in. "We're not staying. Although..." he sounded wistful.

"What?" I asked, a little alarmed.

"Their sunlight doesn't harm me," he said quietly. He stroked my hair as if on a reflex... he said to me once that I was his sunlight. I think he meant 'warm and bright' rather than 'I get burnt'.

But my sunlight-ishness aside, I've always known how much, of everything, he misses the sun. It reminds him, more than anything else except the feeding, how human he's not; everybody else gets life from the sun, he gets death.

I don't know that I'd really be able to blame him, in my heart, if he chose to stay somewhere where one of his fondest wishes is a reality.

"Maybe you *should* stay," I suggested tentatively.

"No," he said, but he still sounded a little sad, "it's not where my work is."

"You could find new work," I said, "for the chance to be in the sun."

He stayed very still for a moment. Then he ran a finger down my cheek, tilted my face to his, and kissed me very gently on the lips.

"What's sunlight worth if you're not in it?" he said, and then he was gone.

When Angel slipped out of the dream, I waited for a while and then made a command decision; not to follow.

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