DISCLAIMER: Well, Angel is finally human and Buffy is with him... Do you think Joss would have done it?
TIMELINE: Months after 'Will It Be Enough?'
SYNOPSIS: Angel is thinking about his life. Fluff, fluff and FLUFF!!
DEDICATION: To Ali, who requested this sequel and who is helping me with my pet-project, aren't you, Ali? :o)
DISTRUBUTION: If you want it, take it. But don't forget to e-mail me the destination.
RATING: Plain PG. I'm sorry for it, too.
FEEDBACK: I like FEEDBACK, I love FEEDBACK, I want FEEDBACK, I NEED FEEDBACK (Get my point?)

She is laying by my side. Her head is cushioned on my shoulder and though the circulation in my arm is about to be broken I just can't bring myself to wake her up. I still am not used to her presence at my side. When I wake up before the dawn - like now - I have to remember myself to be still as a shadow. Sometimes she has been waken by the slightest of all sounds, a bird chirping, a child talking... I'm thankful that she can't feel me looking at her.

How did I ever get so lucky? Her arms are resting across my stomach, her head just centimeters away from mine and if I´m still enough I can even feel her breath hot against my skin... She is a miracle, I decide, and she is mine alone.

I remember going out for a walk all those months ago. It should just have been a stroll through the park like the ones I did everyday. In those last years I had defined a clear path near the lake and I never went out of it. God bless the second my feet changed their normal course. Maybe I'll never know what possessed me to enter that unknown passage, but I'll never be thankful enough for it.

There she was, sitting on a bench. Cutely asleep under the sunshine. The strange white clothes she wore and the bright shade of her hair gave her the impression of an angel, or of a sleeping goddess, maybe. I knew then that being an angel she had been sent to me, and been asleep she was waiting for me to wake her up.

It sounded like the most logical thing in the world.

Now, I don't know how I gathered the courage to actually walk towards her. I've always been a shy guy, eternally fearing stranger's reactions, especially when they were so beautiful. But before I knew it I was right in front of her and I was actually speaking to her and she opened her green eyes and locked them with mine and I was lost.

Utterly and irremediably lost...

...and so was she. Literally.

She said she didn't know where to go. She also said that she didn't know her way back. That is her only secret. Even so much time afterwards she still refuses to tell me where she comes from. She just states that she has always belonged to me and who am I to discuss what I already know to be true?

So now she belongs to me, to my house, to my heart and to my bed. She is mine just as I am hers and neither of us would ever dream of complaining.

How can I be so sure after so little time? I just am.

I remember going for coffee with her that day. Or better said, I went for coffee and she drank an iced tea. After a long silence I asked her what plans did she have for the future. She just looked into her empty glass and shook her head lightly. In less than a second I had already decided I would always care for her. As always with her, it was the most logical thing to do. Now you will say that I am wrong, maybe even crazy. Why should I care for a stranger? But I did. And I did because deep down she was no stranger. Somehow I knew what her next reaction would be and meanwhile I realised that she could read me better than anyone - even my own mother - ever could. So she was no stranger and I was her self-appointed protector. The feeling was so new that I was surprised at how fast I assimilated it. Shouldn't my new 'heroism' have been greeted with pride and astonishment in my inner self? It was not, at that moment I only felt an odd relief, as if a missing piece of myself was finally returning to my soul.

Conversation followed innocently enough. She asked the usual questions about my work, my friends, my family... she wanted to know every little detail about my life and each answer seemed to give her a new joy, as if she were getting something she never believed would ever become true. The problems began when her questions stopped and I began to ask mine.

"Where do you come from, Buffy?"

She just gazed at me with that troubled and fearful gaze of hers and that was her only answer.

Even now she won't tell me. But doesn't mean that she has stopped thinking about it. Sometimes I see that far-away look in her eyes and I know that she is thinking about her past...

Now she stirs lightly in her sleep. Her mouth opens and closes over and over and I know that she is having that nightmare again. The one from which she'll wake up sweating and screaming and calling for an angel. I like to think that she calls for me. She doesn't like to talk about her nightmares, either. She just says that at my side they don't matter. I don't know how she can say that when she's only known me for some months. I can understand her, though. I also feel that everything fades away when she is with me.

I kiss her lightly on her temple and her cheeks and her mouth. that calms her down for now and she then is sleeping quietly besides me again.

She is the girl of the many secrets, the one that bares her naked soul to me but hides herself in the shadows. She is my light and believes herself to be a shadow. She says she loves me but sometimes looks at me with tears in her eyes. She says she'll stay but she acts as if she were afraid of this life dissolving into nothingness. I am still looking for her missing pieces. An instinct tells me that she can be better than she already is... and considering that she is perfect now then that is a lot to say.

Where do you hide, love? Why can't you let me love you as I want to? What don't you let me see?

Whatever it is, it won't take me apart from her. She has confessed that that is her deepest fear. To be without me. As if I ever could be without her...

"How could I ever leave you alone?" I asked her.

She just looked at me with sad eyes. "Not even for my own sake?" She countered.

Apparently she already knew the answer because she just kissed me when I didn't respond. Could I leave her? I wanted to shout: 'No. Never. You are stuck with me until time ceases to be'. But is it the truth? Her words taunt me, rendering me speechless in their magnitude. 'Not even for my own sake?' I realised then that I would do it. If she were to be better off without me I wouldn't even doubt about it. Not even if it broke every cell inside me, not even if it broke hers, too.

"I won't live without you again." She said two weeks later. She was in my arms about to fall asleep when she suddenly raised her head and gazed into my eyes. "I.won't.live.without.you.again." At first I wanted to laugh. How could she say that only two months after meeting me? I could say and mean it. But it was different. I am older and I know what the words mean. But does Buffy know it too? Now I don't even doubt it. I didn't then after looking into her yes. They held such intensity in them that I knew she had planned carefully each word.

I Won't Live Without You Again.

What I still don't know is what possessed her to say such a thing. I had just been talking about our living arrangements. The small bundle of clothes she had brought had rapidly grown with the help of her salary in the library. Who would thing that a girl like her would be so interested in history? But, well, I had been talking about buying a new closet, a small one, just for her; and maybe a bigger mirror for the bathroom, too. And then it happened. She raised her head and she said the words and I gazed into her eyes and I was lost again... and this time I knew she was as lost as I was.

How can we love so much in so little time? That's something I'll never have the answer to. I love her like I love the sun on my skin, I need her to fulfil every dream and passion and to see me like only she can do it. I need her to love me and I love to need her. How crazy is that? Not even six months of knowing each other and I'll ask her to marry me.

Does it really matter if her past remains a secret? It is only her - our - future what matters and her future is written right next to mine. She knows it as much as I do.

Buffy is the girl of the many secrets. Ones I'll never even guess about. But she is also the girl of my every dream and wherever she came from just directed her to my arms. Isn't that enough to bless whatever secret her past contains?

She finally awakes and gazes at me with a sleepy look. After some seconds she is awake enough to take matters into her hands as she takes mine to guide me to the balcony. She has liked this spot since I brought her to live with me. She likes to sit here and look at the sky for hours on end. Then I'll drag her for dinner or for a film and she'll protest smiling and I'll know what happiness is. She once told me that the stars contained the secrets of her future. When I asked her what those secrets were she just told me I should already know them. And the strangest thing is that I actually do.

She was there for me when I wasn't even looking for her and she stayed when I sincerely doubted it. If that doesn't mean that we are destined to each other then I don't know what else could it mean.

"Do you like the view?" She asks and furrows deeper into my embrace.

"Yes." I tell her though I know that she is speaking about the scenery that can be seen from this balcony. Or the one I could see if I wasn't so concentrated in catching that unique scent of hers, the one that smells like Buffy and like me and like all those little things that made her life mine and mine hers.

"I love you" I tell her though I know she already knows it.

"I love you too." Her words are left unsaid but I still hear them in her kiss.

I'll ask her tonight and her answer won't really matter 'cause she's been mine since I saw her under the sun on that October day.

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