DISCLAIMER: I own nothing, I’m just riding on coattails.
RATING: PGish?
DISTRIBUTION: Fanfiction.net, BA Fluff, Adult BA, SFA. If you want it, let me know.
A.N.: This was kinda inspired by Yahtzee’s fiction, “Lifespan” and mostly by the song by Incubus, “Wish You Were Here.” If you want to know one or the other, I’ll include links at the end.
SUMMARY: Angel. Shanshu. Sharon Jane’s first attempt at a songfic. Of sorts.

The sun slid lazily down towards the blue ocean, tingeing both the sky and the water with reds and oranges. Higher in the sky, the wispy clouds were stained gold, some with ruddy halos ringing them. Not far in the distance, a kite cut through the wind, the whistling sound of it irritating the seagulls, screeching their indignance at the interloper into their world.

The steady sea breeze swept away most sounds, carrying only the sound and scent of the ocean; a sound of water, rushing endlessly towards the shore and then rolling back out again, only to throw itself back upon the sand; a particular scent, nothing else like it. Though the sun set, people were still on the beach, enjoying the last official day of summer. Surfers rode the curls, oblivious to the dangers inherent in doing so, girls in bikinis sauntered along, garnering approving (and sometimes not so) attention, kids chased each other down to the waves and back, shrieking.

He stood in the powder-soft sand, staring out at it all, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Slowly, almost as if in ritual, he leaned over, untying the laces to his shoes and pulling them off, then his socks. He left them where he’d removed them, walking slowly down to meet the ocean. He had to sidestep a trio of screaming children, one of them, a little girl, nearly knocking him over when she ran into him.

She bounced off, landing on her backside in the packed, damp sand, glowering up at him as if it was his fault. Without an apology, she pushed herself to her feet and charged off after her companions. She reminded him of Cordelia, a little bit, who would be telling him to at least roll up the sleeves of his shirt if he didn’t take it off, to get some sun on his pale skin. She always wanted to see him with a tan. As if obeying the voice that nagged affectionately in his head, he shoved at his sleeves, managing to push them up his forearms and continued towards the water.

The hard sand felt cool and smooth under his feet and he dug his toes in as he walked, marveling to himself at the crust he dug through. He knew if he dug far enough, he’d hit water but it wasn’t an experiment for today. Today was about watching the sunset; his first sunset since he’d destroyed the Gem of Amara.

He reached waves and waded out into them, letting the cool Pacific run up over his feet. The hems of his trousers were soaked with the first splashing, easily ignored in the beauty surrounding him. Seagulls, sandpipers and pelicans vied for his attention. Surfers in brightly-colored wetsuits bloomed on the tops of waves, perched there with an uncanny grace he thought he could never understand and disappeared back into the sea whence they came. The setting sun gilded everything rose-orange; the water folk, the birds, the crests of the waves. Even his ivory skin benefited from the sun’s dying stain.

Opening his mouth, he let the taste of the ocean blossom in it, carried by the spray, carried by the wind and thought, I’m happy. I am here and I am happy.

He stood in the water for a while, watching the waves rush away from him as the tide went out. Dusk swept along the beach, slowly chasing the remaining people from it until he was alone and the planets, then the stars crept out of the sky to watch him. He was more accustomed to them than the gaudy light of the sun but wondered if the night would still accept him. Jets sailed far overhead, their vapor trails faint etchings on the sky, their lights blinking down like UFO’s. He wondered at that image, deciding it could have only come from Fred, maybe even Xander. Making his way back up to the softer sand, he lay down in it, pillowing his head in his arms. The moon trailed her slow way across the sky as he lay there, listening to the waves crash, letting all the thoughts stream through his mind. They would wonder where he was, his friends, his family, they would try to reach him on his phone and worry when he didn’t answer.

But the night belonged to him this one last time and tomorrow was soon enough to go to them and tell them it had finally happened; the prophecy was true.

He was human.

It had seemed a dream for so long, almost a memory of a dream, that the vampire with the soul would live to die. He could still hear Wesley’s voice, reciting those words in his mind. He had never feared death. But now, to have a chance to live…he gently set those thoughts aside. The night was his and belonged finally to memories.

As he lay in the sand, he took them out and sorted through them, almost as if they were folded pages in his head. They remained ever bright, glowing brighter even than the sun in his mind’s eye. His father and mother and little sister, Kathy, whom he might now have a chance to see again and beg forgiveness of. Darla and her cold beauty and the two gifts she’d given him. Drusilla; lovely Dru, with her visions and her insanity and her love of her ‘Daddy’. Spike; William the Bloody; poet and foe, his dangerous companion. Penn and Elizabeth and James and all the others that he had made and ran with during the time of his demon.

That chapter reviewed, he moved onto the next. The command of a demon working for the powers of good to see a girl echoed in his ears. The girl herself, sunlight encapsulated and the effect she had on him, then and still. Her friends, for a time his, until he left them the first time to the predations of his demon. He returned eventually, a very long time later, and slowly rebuilt his relationships with them all…in time to break the girl’s heart and leave her.

In leaving her, he found his own; a family of good friends, a son to raise. He’d accepted these gifts willingly, realizing what he had to give up to keep them. If a part of him still mourned for a day that never happened, he understood that he couldn’t survive in a memory, of a dream of that day.

The moon bathed him in its silver light and he stared at it unblinkingly, wondering if it remembered pledges made beneath its glory or whether he was now the only one with those words seared into his heart, like a cross pressed against his flesh.

He and his family became a force of good, something to be reckoned with and their name grew with each adventure. Still, the past sometimes had a chance to rip into his present, the first time with the appearance of a lovely redhead, her expressive eyes welling with tears, to tell him that his sunlight girl had sailed away. The second was when his child was taken, vanished into a place he couldn’t follow. Though both eventually returned, the girl was never his again and his son grown nearly to manhood and years, precious years lost between them.

But he survived. He endured. He went on.

And he had been happy.

He thought he could almost feel the world turn beneath him as he lay in the sand, the way he’d felt time sliding by. He’d watched his friends, his family grow up; grow old. He watched and mourned, knowing that they would someday leave him. And slowly, then more quickly, one by one, they did.

There were replacements; another seer, another genius, another warrior; another villain, another demon, just one more apocalypse, and finally, finally, he was the only one left who personally remembered two British Watchers and a renegade; the werewolf and the witch; a seer and a genius and a street kid; the boy who loved seer and witch and Slayer, all and the son who never should have been born.

And the Slayer, his sunlight girl.

He thought she would smile to know him human, at last. And he was happy.

But he wished she were here.

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