Disclaimer – Alas Santa has once again failed to bring me Angel for Christmas. Complaints will be made to the appropriate North Pole authorities. Until resolution of this issue, you can assume I don’t own anything.
Summary – Post Graduation Day II. Buffy realises she can’t just let Angel walk away from her.
Notes – This is my explanation of B/A’s ‘special place’ mid-way between Sunnydale and LA, as made infamous in ‘Flooded’.
Apologies – I know I haven’t written anything new in practically forever, but life has somewhat been getting in the way of my fic writing recently. I hate it when that happens.
Dedication – For Molly, in lieu of the story my computer ate.

Everything is quiet now. Almost eerily silent even, after the chaos of earlier. The fires have all burnt themselves out and only a few fire crew remain watching over the smouldering embers of my former high school, stamping their feet impatiently. They have to wait in case something is still alight in there, in case there’s one final spark, enough to send the whole place shooting up in flames once more. But they should just go home to their beds and their lovers – there’s nothing more left to keep them here tonight. The fire’s dead, like everything else that passed between the walls of Sunnydale High.

I tear myself away from the sight of slyly curling smoke and blackened rubble – the ruins of my adolescence, my youth – and begin to walk aimlessly through the streets. I can’t quite bring myself to go home just yet, not like my friends who peeled off in their separate directions, shaken but smiling. We did it. It’s over. The Mayor defeated, apocalypse averted, High School vanquished. And to them it’s a true victory, they’re all looking forward to the next challenge, to bigger and better things. Xander’s got his trip across the country all planned, Willow can’t wait for the entire summer free to spend with Oz, and even Cordelia is bouncing back and moving on, heading off to LA to try and become a famous movie star. But the only direction I’m looking in is backwards.

I don’t want things to be over and I don’t want to move on. I want time to stand still in a time I felt secure, happy, in control of my life and able to deal with everything it threw at me. A few weeks ago I thought I was so strong, invincible, and now everything that’s left of the person I was is crumbling inside and I’m stuck desperately trying to hold it all together.

And if I went home, then I’ll think I’ll fall apart completely, because then I’ll have no choice but to face the end. Of school. Of the security of the familiar. Of having my friends around me everyday. Of Angel and I.

Of course, that’s all it boils down to really. That’s what’s hiding at the heart of my fears. While I’m still out here, dazed by the fire and the smoke and the sudden shock of it all, then I can pretend. I can still cling on to the remnants of our relationship. I can still feel the wrench in my heart as it broke when our eyes met for that final time before he walked away. I can still be the High School Buffy with her tragic romance with the vampire boyfriend she loves with all her heart. While my life remains here then he’s still a part of it.

But when I go home, then I’ll have to begin again. I’ll have to start a new life that he won’t be a part of. Tomorrow when I wake up he won’t be there, nor will he be there any of the tomorrows after that. Angel will be a part of my past. Over, gone, history to be forgotten. And I can’t stand the idea of that. I’d much rather stay out here where the pain belongs to now and our relationship is a reality rather than just a memory.

I glance upwards, suddenly aware of my surroundings. I’m outside the mansion, I realise with a bitter laugh. How typical, how ironically cruel that I end up here, that my feet lead me to his door even without me telling them to go there. That this place, which has become virtually my second home in the last few months, is still my magnetic North, even when then reason for its attraction has gone.

The house is darker now, I notice. Colder, more foreboding without a fire burning in the grate or the warm presence of ownership. I peer in through the windows, hoping to catch a small trace of Angel, some evidence that he was actually here at all, and I didn’t imagine this entire affair, a cross between my sweetest dream and worst nightmare. But there’s nothing – the drawings from the walls, the antique ornaments and well-read books, the piles of discarded clothes I always used to steal shirts from, because I liked the feel and scent of him against my skin, they’re all gone – just bare and empty rooms away. And for a second I hate him for taking all the little reminders away, for erasing himself completely from Sunnydale and my life.

It makes me so mad at him. It makes me blaze with fury, because if I don’t – if I don’t rant and rage, scream and shout – then I’m just going to start to die inside. If I don’t channel all this soul-deep hurt and heartbreak into some form of righteous anger, then I’m afraid I’m going to start to cry and never be able to stop. My emotions will tear me apart at the seams and the pain will drown me completely. I’ll disappear into its mists, just like Angel vanished today – never to be seen again.

Willow took me aside tonight, after the fight was all done, and whispered conspiratorially in my ear. She and Oz made love, she wanted me to know. She couldn’t wait to tell her best friend, the only person she could talk to about it, the only person who would understand how amazing it was, how she’s never felt that close to a person before, never had such a sense of peace and contentment inside. And I just smiled and said “That’s great, Will” and squeezed her hand. But what I was really thinking was how unfair it all is. How she gets to be with the man she loves, to kiss him and hold him tight in her arms, and dream with him about the future, when all my dreams have been shattered so cruelly. I never asked for much – just to be with someone, to love them without consequence – but I can’t even have that.

Acrid tears sting my eyes and blur my view of the abandoned mansion. I want to hit something, to feel bones crack underneath my fists and flesh turn to dust at my hand. I want to deal out some of this pain I’m feeling onto somebody else.

I don’t even know where he’s going, whether I’ll ever see him again. There are so many things left unresolved between us, so much I still want to say. I never said how sorry I was I sent him to Hell, how it nearly killed me to do it, how much I wanted to throw myself in there after him. I always wanted to tell him about when it was I first knew that I loved him – that it was more than lust at first sight or a teenage crush – when he got hurt saving me from the Three and my heart beat so fast I thought my chest would burst, because I was more afraid for his safety than I was for my own. But more than these things I want to tell him I love him one last time, just so he knows, just so he can carry it with him always. And I want to hear him say the same to me, to have him kiss me again so I can memorise every little detail, every exquisite sensation and make them last for the rest of my life.

I snap suddenly, sharply into awareness. What I want really is the goodbye he cheated me of. I want the pain of his leaving slicing into me as sharp as the knife I used to stab Faith, because even that has to be better than the aching loneliness that is beginning to creep over me, pervading my every cell and settling in my body like ice, now that I know he is really gone for good.

I have to catch him, to see him one last time and play this little drama right out until the end. Maybe if he knew what he was doing to me by going, how his absence is draining my life force away as surely as he himself was last night with his fangs in my neck, then he might even change his mind.

I break into a run, flying through the streets as fast as I can go, my mind whirling as I do so. He can’t have gotten far already. He was here just a few hours ago, turning away from me in the smoke of the fires. And he will have needed time to clean out the mansion since then, to pack his stuff carefully away and load it into his car. So, if I hurry then I should be able to catch up with him, meet him somewhere along the only road out of Sunnydale that heads anyplace worth going – the coastal highway to Los Angeles.

Minutes later I am pounding on Giles’ door, not caring if I wake up the whole neighbourhood. He answers quickly, wearing pyjamas and hastily added robe.

“Buffy?” he peers at me in surprise, fumbling to put his glasses on. “Is everything all right? There wasn’t another problem at the school was there? Or with Faith…?”

“Keys,” I steamroller over his questions. “I need to borrow your car for the night.”

“Well…um…yes…I-I suppose,” he stammers. “But whatever for?”

I shake my head pushing past him to snag the keys from their regular spot on the hook next to the entrance. “No time to explain now, I’ll let you know in the morning.” I rush back out of the door, shouting thanks over my shoulder.

“Buffy, wait!” Giles seems to gather himself together as I climb into the car and turn the key in the ignition. “Can you even drive?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I mutter to myself, yanking on the gear stick and pulling away from the kerb with a loud squealing of tyres.

* * * * *

I never understood the fuss people make about being able to drive. It’s easy really – all you have to do is keep your foot down hard on the accelerator and avoid hitting other cars, which on deserted roads late at night, isn’t exactly a problem. As long as I keep steering in a straight line then I’m fine, which is good, because I’m not sure I could manage anything any more taxing at this point. All I can focus on is getting as much distance behind me as quickly as possible and that means driving along at a steady 75 miles per hour, since this seems to be the terminal velocity of Giles’ rust-bucket of a car.

My fingers tap the steering wheel of the car impatiently as darkness speeds by on either side of the car. What if I’m not going fast enough? What if I can’t catch Angel? What if he just disappears into the night and I never see him again?

The last possibility panics my already frayed nerves even further and I stamp uselessly down on the gas pedal, gunning the engine. Then to my absolute horror, something inside the car begins to splutter and choke and suddenly I notice a rapid drop in speed, the sides of the road closing in on me once more. I slam my foot on the break, glancing up at the fuel gauge and noticing its needle is well into the red, almost touching zero.

“Shit!” I exclaim loudly, aware of the bad language I’ve undoubtedly picked up from Faith, but beyond caring at this point. Every single second that passes takes Angel further away from me and more surely out of my life, and I’m going to lose him forever just because Giles is too damn cheap to keep a full tank of gas in his car.

Hot tears begin to slide down my face as the car finally comes to a stop. Not only do I have to admit defeat and realise that I’m never going to see Angel again, that the one truly beautiful thing I ever experienced in my life is now gone completely, but I’m also stuck with a hike to the nearest gas station before I can even get home away from this nightmare.

I climb wearily out of the car, not even bothering to lock the door behind me. I’d like to see someone try and steal a car with no gas in it anyway. The ground by the side of the road is rough and I stumble as I try to walk, my eyes stinging with the tears I hate myself for shedding, my chest aching with pent-up sobs. The night is cold and I can feel myself shivering, my muscles literally shaking with fatigue. I’m exhausted physically and mentally, too tired to head on but unable to go back. All I want to do is to lose myself in the desert somewhere, to walk out into the wide open night and disappear where there’s no hurt, no heartache, no tomorrow to worry about.

I notice a glimmer of artificial light in the distance and the hope of escape dies. I can’t just slip out of existence like that – there’s always going to be tomorrow and it’s always going to start without him. The sooner I get home and start accepting that, then the less painful it’s going to be.

The light turns out to be a gas station, the weather-beaten, peeling paint type with two pumps and an all night attendant, with a name like Bud, who is so used to being held-up that he carries a gun under the counter and would blow a hole in your head if you so much as looked at him wrong. But it sells gas and that’s all that really matters to me. As I approach I rub my eyes viciously, removing all traces of tears from them and catching a glimpse of highly polished metal and chrome as I pull my sleeve back away from my face.

My heart rate seems to pick up a little and I literally stop and stare. How many black, classic convertibles must there be out here in the centre of nowhere, in the middle of the night? And how many more of those have tall, dark-haired owners with leather coats that swirl gracefully around their ankles as they move.

For a while staring is all I can manage as my formerly quickened heart seems to stop beating completely. Oh God, it’s him, and he’s really here, within shouting distance, within touching distance. And he hasn’t seen me; he’s getting into his car, ready to drive away, without even realising how close I got.

Even as my body jerks into action and I start running, the engine of his car starts and I start to scream my head off. “Angel! Stop – Angel!!”

He freezes, tension filling his entire body, arresting his previously fluid movements; then he turns, achingly slowly, to face me. Our eyes meet and we gaze at each other in the same way we did just hours earlier before he left, communicating a thousand different feelings without a single word. For a while I am unable to move again, the connection between us taking over my mind and body and making all other thoughts impossible. But then the spell breaks and I am running towards him, my whole body suddenly infused with energy, and I throw myself straight into his arms. He catches me – like he always has done – and I feel his body physically shaking as it presses against mine.

“I couldn’t just let you go,” I shake my head wildly, grasping the front of his shirt in my hands. “I couldn’t!”

“Oh, Buffy…oh God…Buffy…” he murmurs, pulling me close to his chest, then pushing me away again, his voice cracking as he speaks. “You shouldn’t have come.”

I jerk quickly backwards, filled with painful outrage. “I’ll do whatever the Hell I like.”

“You should have just let me go, Buffy,” he sounds incredibly tired as he speaks – defeated almost. “You’re better off without me.”

“No,” I protest, tears rolling unchecked down my cheeks. “No, I’m not. I need you. Feel – ” I break off, grabbing his hand and pressing it to my chest. “Feel my heart breaking because of you, because you’re leaving.”

He shuts his eyes for a second, his face showing obvious pain, his hand heavy on my breast, then responds my taking my own hand in his free one and placing it across his torso. “My heart’s breaking too,” he says quietly. “Because I’m going.”

“It doesn’t have to,” I tell him in almost a whisper, edging my body closer to his, keeping the link of our hands on each other’s hearts. “You can stay.”

I tilt my face upwards for a kiss and he leans instinctively down towards me. Our lips move closer, inches, millimetres away from touching, his ragged breath cool on my cheeks, then he pulls suddenly away, shaking his head as if to clear it.

“No, I can’t.”

Our hands drop and the connection between us severs abruptly, like an electrical current short-circuiting.

“Give me one reason why not,” I plead. “And not children or sunlight or giving me a ‘normal life’, because I don’t care about those things.”

“How about because I nearly killed you last night,” he hisses in response, self-hatred flashing in his eyes.

I shake my head. “But you didn’t. I’m fine.”

“I could have,” he insists, grabbing me by the shoulders and roughly pulling me up close to him so he can lean down and whisper harshly in my ear. “I was so close to turning you last night.”

I shudder involuntarily as I thrill of excitement rushes through me. I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but there’s a part of me that gets off on this, that savours the extra dimension of my relationship with Angel. The danger of loving a predator, my mortal enemy. The exhilaration of surrendering myself to his deadly embrace, of losing myself in his arms and relying on him to let me out alive again.

“I trust you, Angel,” I return softly, soothingly. “I knew you wouldn’t have. I know you’d never do anything to hurt me.”

He lets me go, stepping slightly back from me, leaving my flesh tingling where his fingers had been digging into it. “Then why did I hurt you last night? Why am I hurting you so much now?”

I have no ready answer to that and silence hangs heavy between us, broken only by Angel’s eventual sigh. “I don’t deserve you. I’ve done so much in my life – maimed, killed, tortured people in ways you couldn’t even imagine. I deserve to feel the pain, to suffer.”

“What about me?” I ask quietly. “Do I deserve to suffer because of it too?”

“No,” he replies with a gentle smile. “No, you don’t. That’s why I’m leaving now. I’m setting you free, before you end up having to suffer even more.”

Our eyes meet and in his gaze I see the feeling behind his reasoning, the noble sentiment there and exactly how right he believes he is to be doing this, how convinced he is that this is the best thing for me. I turn away from him, suddenly aware that it is over, that he won’t be coming back to Sunnydale with me, nothing I can say will change his mind. And I’m horribly afraid I’m going to start crying right now and not be able to ever stop.

Angel reaches over and takes my hand in his, his skin warm despite his vampiric lack of body temperature. “Maybe we should go somewhere a little more private,” he suggests, glancing around at the audience we have created. I can’t find my voice to agree so I simply nod my head, strengthening my grip on his hand as we walk together towards his car.

* * * * *

Less than a mile down the road there’s a stopping place where the land drops away into cliffs and the sea stretches far out in front of you. We pull over here, climbing out of the car to sit on a thin strip of grass away from the traffic. Angel spreads his coat out on the ground and I settle down onto it, nestling close into Angel’s side. He puts his arms around my shoulders and we watch the waves break on the rocks below, the stars reflected like shimmering jewels on the black glass of the calm sea surface.

Everything is quiet, peaceful and still and I can almost imagine that nothing’s changed between Angel and I, that we’ll get up and walk away from this together instead of apart forever.

“I don’t want you to go,” I whisper, almost afraid to break the perfect silence of the moment.

“I don’t want to go either,” he returns, kissing the top of my head lightly. “But you know I have no other choice.”

I don’t even bother arguing with him. We could scream and shout about it all night and I still wouldn’t be able to change his mind. The only thing it could possibly achieve would be to ruin our last few hours together, and I don’t want to do that, not when these hours have to last us an entire lifetime.

But there’s one question I do need to ask, one painful point I have to raise or the uncertainty of not knowing will drive me insane.

“Will we…I mean…will I ever see you again?”

He looks confused, his expression torn, caught between what he believes he should do and what our hearts are both screaming for.

“I can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it somehow,” I press.

His resistance crumbles, as I knew it would. Our fates are just too closely entangled, the pull between us too great for the connection between us to ever be completely severed.

“I’ll stay close,” he promises. “I’ll be in LA in case you need me.”

“Then, maybe – one day in the future – we’ll be able to see each other again…as friends?” Even I can hear the lie in my words. Spike was right – we’ll never be friends. Friendship implies some moderation of feeling, some weakening of the passion between us and I know that’s never going to happen. I can love Angel with my entire being and slide into ecstasy whenever he touches me, or I can hate him equally as strongly, feeling red anger that makes me want to kill him and black despair that makes me want to kill myself. But not care, to be casually unaffected by the things he says and does, or the way his eyes burn into me – I just have no concept of that ever being possible between us.

But he goes along with the charade, clinging onto a last fading ray of hope. “Maybe…someday…”

He pulls me closer to himself, and I snuggle into the security of his embrace, resting my head on his chest.

“You know, in the meantime – until then – I won’t be able to see you. I can’t…I can’t be around you, touch you, look into your eyes without…”

He trails off, but I know the end of the sentence from bittersweet personal experience and finish it for him. “Without falling in love with you all over again.”

I twist my face upwards, meeting his gaze and proving my point for what must be the hundredth thousandth time. Our lips meet in a kiss and it’s soft and sad. Slow and beautiful like a silently dying summer. Heady and sweet like the scent of roses by a graveside. And I feel my heart, which I already thought broken beyond repair, shatter into a million pieces once again.

I don’t even realise I’m crying until Angel is softly brushing away my tears.

“I love you,” I murmur close to his ear.

“I love you too,” he returns fiercely. “Whatever happens always remember that. I’m not leaving because I don’t love you. I’ll never stop loving you.”

“Write it down,” I say suddenly and he looks confused. “Write it down,” I repeat, warming to the idea. “So, I’ll never forget it.”

He smiles and acquiesces, taking a pen and paper from one of the deep pockets of his jacket and hiding the words he writes from me. He folds up the note and presses it into my hand, bringing our entwined fingers up to his mouth to kiss them as he does so. “Keep it,” he tells me. “Read it when you need to.”

I twist our hands, bringing them to my own mouth to kiss his fingers, then break away to slip the paper into my pocket. When I look up again, Angel is glancing anxiously at the lightening sky.

“I have to go soon,” he voices the inevitable.

I pull him closer towards me. “Just a little longer.”

He nods, kissing me deeply. “Just a little longer.” And we stay wrapped in each other’s embrace until the last possible second when the sky turns from pink to gold and the sun edges over the horizon with spectacular brilliance, signalling the start of my new life. Without him.

* * * * *

Achingly painful days pass into lonely weeks, into empty months and cold years. Life is a blur of greys and voices trying to reach me that I can never quite make sense of. There’s some warmth and some laughter. Some blackness and despair. Sometimes I hope, but I never dare to dream. Then suddenly it’s all over and there’s only peace. Peace and oblivion with an abrupt end jerking me back into harsh reality.

And yet the road leads me back here, back to this spot overlooking the ocean, back to his arms. But the sun comes again, like it always does and always will, and I’m left facing another dawn alone.

Sat down on the dusty ground once again I reach inside my pocket for that worn piece of paper, the corners crumpled, the edges beginning to tear where it has been folded and unfolded so many times. And I read the single word written there in beautiful flowing script, seeking the cold comfort it provides.

Forever.

As I think about that, about what the word means, how precious it is to me, I realise something, putting into place a nagging feeling I’ve had for over two years now. That goodbye I chased after Angel for, the one I wanted so desperately at the time – I never got it.

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