Rating: PG-13
Pairing: B/A
Improv

18: reckless -- false -- pallor - spice
Disclaimer: None of this is mine. Since the real owners were good enough to kill off my main character (sarcastic voice), I'm just playing here.
Author's Notes: Spoilers for "The Gift." The song is "My Skin" by Natalie Merchant.

//Take a look at my body
Look at my hands
There's so much here that I don't understand//

He didn't believe it was really me. And why should he? I didn't believe it most of the time. I walked about in a daze: is this real? Is this true? Is this who I am? Is this what I am?

What am I?

I walked past a young black man at the front desk. He stared at me, as if he almost knew me, was trying to place this slip of a girl in the too-big leather jacket (it's like my safety blanket now - I wear it to remind me of who I am, as if it's mine and not his - and what does that mean, that it's his things that make me me?) The black isn't a good color for me now, I know; emphasizes the pallor that's marked my being since I . . . since it happened. Like all my blood really is gone.

Who's to say that's not so? Oh, no literally. I'm alive. I'm breathing. I'm walking. I've got a heartbeat, and blood pumping through my veins, but I'm not . . . Well. It's hard to explain.

I walked past the guy, and it took him a minute to realize what was happening. At first he thought I was coming to the desk, like I needed help. Maybe I did, but not from him. Not from anyone in this building. Maybe from myself.

What did they say? We help the hopeless.

"Hey!" he called as I neared the stairs. I'd never been there before, but I knew where Angel was; I could feel him, now, this mass of anguish. It'd been calling me all the way from Sunnydale; this close, it beat through my veins, like a substitute for all that blood. "Where do you think you're goin'?"

I glanced back at him as I stepped onto the stairs, and caught his eyes. I don't know what he saw in mine, but it silenced him somehow. I think he placed me finally, and let out a long breath. "Be good to him," he whispered before our gazes broke apart and I continued up the stairs. The words caught in my mind, a mantra, a promise already broken.

Be good to him. But who would be good to me?

//I'm a slow-dying flower
In the frost-killing hour
Sweet turning sour and untouchable//

He didn't believe it was really me, but I knew it was him. He sat on a window sill, the room dark and full of LA wind. When I opened the door it threatened to overwhelm me for a moment; his grief, complete, immediate, more painful than death. I should know.

It took him a moment. First he just sat there, staring out the window, as if I wasn't there at all. He didn't bother mistaking me for someone else; no one moves like me. No one feels like me, not to a vampire. Especially not to Angel (do I feel different now? I haven't bothered to ask. I suppose Spike would have told me, if I'd wanted to know. I didn't).

"You don't look so good," he told me, his eyes taking in the leather jacket, my skin so pale it almost glowed. "You usually look more lively."

"Do I visit you often?" I asked, only a little curious. His mouth twisted a little, and I could see that he'd been crying. I couldn't even tell if it moved me; my emotions were dwarfed beneath his own. What did I feel that he did not feel stronger, at that moment? I'd only died. He lived on.

"You never leave. Funny thing is, I see you far more now than when you were alive." I winced at that; maybe I should have called more. I was busy.

"You're the one that left," I reminded him. He lost the bit of a smile, and the hurt in the room doubled, tripled. I could hardly stand beneath its weight. He turned away again, out into the night. How long had he been sitting on that window sill? I wondered. A day? Two? A month? Did he ever move? Did Cordelia bring him blood in a cup twice a day (Cordelia, I supposed I'd have to see her too. I didn't look forward to the meeting. I had a feeling I would get yelled at for Angel's present state of mind. Like I'd chosen to die. Okay, I had. That wasn't the point.)

"Angel," I ventured, stepping farther into the room and closing the door behind me. "It's me. Really me this time. I'm alive. I'm . . . I'm not dead anyway."

He didn't even bother to turn. I think he believed if he didn't listen I might just go away, stop tormenting him with false promises. How false were they? What if it was all a lie? Maybe the shades that haunted him were all like me. Perhaps they all believed they were alive. Perhaps that's all I was; a ghost, come to haunt him.

I didn't feel like more than that; and yet, like everything.

I walked closer yet, and closer, each step a journey of its own.

"Angel," I whispered, and for the first time I needed him to turn back; not for him, so that he would not feel this crushing pain that bent my knees and hurt my head, but for me. If he looked at me, and knew me, perhaps I would know myself.

He turned and looked; whether he believed or not, I don't know. There were tears in his eyes, on his face. I reached out and brushed one away, gently, quietly. His mouth parted, as if to take an un-needed breath and something new entered his eyes; hope, or knowledge, or wonder.

"Buffy?" he whispered, and all the weight that had borne down on me was gone in a moment; all the despair, the agony, the bone-crushing heartache, gone in a moment.

I had touched him, and in a moment, he found life again. Why was it so easy for him, and so impossible for me?

"You never touched me before," he murmured, gazing up at me.

He meant, of course, as a ghost. None of my ghosts had ever touched him. But for a moment, I thought he meant so much more. I never touched him before.

I bent and kissed him, untouchable as I was, unreal. His touch gave me life; with the taste of his cool lips, I was warm again.

//I need the darkness,
The sweetness,
The sadness,
The weakness
Oh I need this//

It was a reckless thing to do; a reckless touch; a reckless moment in a life of careful ones.

It was reckless, and quite probably stupid, but I needed to touch him; to be touched in return.

His lips were salty, with tears. I'd always had this idea that vampires couldn't cry; I suppose because no matter how terrible things were, Angel never had before. It was easier to think that it was a physiological fault than that he didn't care enough to cry (it's always easier to blame something else - tear ducts, detachments - than myself). There was the faintest hint of something else too, the spice of desire perhaps. I was needy, but he was needier. We embraced each other, drew each other in, and his tears kept falling but none of mine joined them. I had not cried since I came back. I don't think I knew how too. Everything was so calm inside me, like there was nothing there. I felt what others felt; I knew their silent cries, but none of my own.

I'd been so cold since I came home (home, what a word, is it really? Is it mine? What am I?) Angel wasn't exactly warm, but he was faintly warming, more than anything else I'd tried. I could taste the need in his kiss, I could taste the despair, the loss, the finding.

I could taste myself on his lips.

His hands spun themselves into my hair, pulled me down, gently, until I balanced on his lap, dark room on one side, dark city on the other, spread beneath us, an entire world so far away. I'd come back for it and yet it hadn't touched me, or I hadn't touched it. Even that wasn't true: I felt the world as I never had before. Every person around me touched me; every human that laughed or cried or sang or died touched me. I was filled with them. That was my price. I lived, but not as myself, as all of them.

I didn't taste all of them in Angel. Only me.

"You're alive," he whispered into my mouth, devouring me, searching for evidence that it was true, I was concrete, solid. We were looking, I suppose, for the same thing. "You've alive. Alivealivealive."

My arms slipped around his neck. I could feel the little hairs on his nape; the softness of his lower lip, so contrary to the hardness of the rest of him; the brush of my leather jacket (his) against my cheek. I had sensation; I was hungry for sensation.

"Hold me," I begged, and he did, teetering on the edge of the world, ready to fall to the lights below. I knew all about falling, but not quite enough about balancing.

//I need a lullaby,
A kiss goodnight,
Angel, sweet love of my life
Oh I need this//

We balanced, somehow, holding on to reality, braced between the sides of the wooden frame. We devoured each other like two hurricanes meeting, feeding on one another to become a storm of epic proportions. I'm not sure whether he really believed yet, that I was real. Perhaps he didn't care any longer; perhaps he just wanted to believe. Perhaps I just wanted to.

"You're here," he whispered, kissing my throat, my cheek, my ear, whatever parts of me he could reach. I was flesh and blood, however pale, however cold and small.

"Am I?" I appealed. "Promise me I'm really here."

He stopped and held my face between his hands, and looked into my eyes. I gazed back with all the emptiness that was left to me; I could feel myself fading before his eyes. I could feel everything I was quieting before his worry, his joy and concern, mixed in equal measures.

"Buffy, what happened?" he asked in a harsh whisper, appealing to me to make it better, tell him that what he knew was so; that this was not another ghost. Yet I didn't even know it, not for sure. Maybe it would be better if I was a ghost. Leave my grave as it had been. Leave my memory undisturbed. Then I would have been, forever, what I was before. Whole.

// I'm a slow-dying flower
Frost-killing hour
The sweet turning sour and untouchable//

I settled back, fitting the curve of my back against the opposite edge of the window. We were mirrors then, one leg propped up, the other dangling on the inside, a tacit reminder that we did not really wish to fall. Our legs hugged each other, as if we couldn't quite give up contact. One of his hands captured the bottom of the jacket, stroked the leather (mine? His?)

"They brought me back," I said hollowly, staring out into the stars.

"The . . . the Scoobies . . . ?" I glanced at him, startled. They would not be so foolish my friends; or perhaps they had been. Perhaps it was their doing, in some way. I never asked.

"Oh, no. The Powers. Sent me, I suppose I should say. They sent me back." He did not smile, or offer congratulations. I supposed I should bless him for that. My lips curved a little, sarcastically. "Not the same, of course. Close enough, I guess they thought it wouldn't make much of a difference."

"What's happened to you?" Angel asked, and I turned my head to look at him, straight at him, letting him see again, what I had become. I smiled.

"I died, or hadn't you heard?"

//I need the darkness,
The sweetness,
The sadness,
The weakness
Oh I need this//

"What's happened to you?"he repeated, as if I hadn't said a word. Maybe I hadn't. Maybe it was all in my head. I looked away again.

"I . . . I think perhaps I didn't come back. Not all of me. I think when they sent me back they . . . missed part. Or just replaced it with something else."

"What?"

"I don't know."

"Buffy." I turned at the command in his voice. He was drinking me with his eyes. What would my blood taste like? I wondered. Should I over some? See if I had any left to give? Would he take it if I offered? "You died. But you're alive again, now. You've got a second chance."

"A third actually," I offered, "if you'll recall. Though that was a less obvious intervention."

"You came here. That means you still care."

"Does it?" I asked, really rather curious. "Tell me Angel. Tell me what it means. I'm . . . I'd like to know. Prove to me I'm real."

He didn't tell me; he reached out a hand, and I took it, and he pulled me close again, fit curves to curves, and touched me. You can't touch a ghost, can you? I always thought they were insubstantial. So maybe he was right.

//Well is it dark enough
Can you see me
Do you want me
Can you reach me//

If the first kiss was reckless, uncaring about consequences, this one was positively negligent. As was the next. And the next. And then Angel's hands were slipping away the leather, my shield, my net, and I melted, nothing holding me together anymore. The lights all over the city were going out, one by one, leaving us with darkness, only darkness, a city, a sea of darkness.

Angel was all around me, and I encompassed him, begging for a chance to feel, to touch, to be human, alive. I'd died, and one day I had woken, and stepped out of my grave like so many that I had killed, but no one killed me, no one stopped me, no one named me a monster.

Was I a monster? A girl? A ghost?

And somewhere in that dark night, balancing on the edge of nothingness, I felt something. It was only for a moment, but maybe a moment was enough. Beneath his hunger, beneath his desperation and his love, total, profound, I found a place that was my own, a feeling that was mine, and mine alone.

An illusion, perhaps . . . a wish, made reality by my desperate mind . . . but there.

If I had to name it, I think it would have been sorrow: this was what I needed to feel. This one, forbidden thing.

I cried, and listened to what he felt, and at least the sorrow at the end was for my own emptiness, and not his.

//Oh, I'm leaving
Better shut your mouth,
And hold your breath
You kiss me now,
You catch your death//

"Shh," I soothed, when it was over and he cried for joy and terror. "Don't worry. You're safe. I promise you're safe."

"You have to go," he told me firmly, desperately.

"Yes," I agreed, "I do. But not for the reason you think." His eyes questioned me. "You never had a moment of true happiness Angel. I can promise you that."

"How do you know?" A small smile touched my face; one thing, I knew. Not my own reality, but his at least.

"A gift, if you will. To make up for things lost, or perhaps in place of them. I don't know. But you need not worry. Not about that." I bent and kissed him, one last time; his lips held the same salty sweetness, and the same spice. They always would, I decided. What did my lips whisper of?

"Where will you go?" he asked, capturing one of my hands. I could see myself through his eyes as my thin shoulders gave a little shrug, one slender hand pushed back hair pale in the starlight.

"Away. Somewhere where no one else feels, so I can see if I do." He did not understand, that was clear, but I didn't need him to. I needed him to be there, if I ever came back. I needed him to make me feel just enough to believe it possible.

"Come back," he told me and I smiled at him, bittersweet and trailed fingers down his face, memorizing its look.

"If I come back to life," I promised, and turned to go. He pulled me back, left me with a kiss. I took the gift, the life that came with it. If I felt less empty, did that mean he felt less full? Would I leave him as I had come, a pale ghost with a false promise of reality?

"Come back to me," he repeated, and let me go. I stooped, picking up the leather jacket he gave to me two lives ago, slipped it around my shoulders and walked out, back the way I had come, unreal, untouchable still.

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