Disclaimer: Joss, David Greenwalt, and associates own all. I'm just messing around.
Distribution: The usual. Send me an addy if you don't already archive me.
Spoilers: The Gift, There's No Place Like Pltz Grb. My version of the obligatory Angel post-Gift fic. It really, really sucks.
Feedback: Sure.

"It's Buffy."

//Can't feel her, god, can't sense her, cold, lonely, no, no, no, it's dark in here, give her back, give her back, giveherbackgiveherbackGIVEHERBACK!//

"No..." I whispered, even as I felt the cold certainty sinking into my flesh and eating away at it, like a cancer, like acid burning through the layers of my heart and soul. "No."

"Willow?" Wesley asked uncertainly from somewhere behind me. His voice sounded warped and foreign to my ears, like a vinyl record melted in the sun. Like how Buffy insisted her first grade teacher spoke.

Buffy. God, my Buffy, my girl, my life and light.

I didn't need Willow to confirm it. Buffy was -//Do you think I want anything to happen to you? Do you think I could *stand* it?//- gone.

Gone. Gone with every dream and wish and waning hope of light. Gone with the only sunshine I'd ever feel upon my skin. Gone.

Willow was sniffling, her eyes wet and -//You'll take the world with you, when you die//- lips trembling. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out as her face crumpled and she started to sob.

The scents of my friends -//in the end, I'm all I got - leave me the hell alone.//- crowded into my senses and my head began to throb with the saccharine sweet stench of them. I felt bile rise into my throat, and swallowed it down, feeling it burn like -//When...When I found you, the place smelled like sulfur...//- fire. Like hell.

I felt Cordelia shaking behind me, and was vaguely aware of Wesley, and maybe Gunn, moving to comfort her, but I couldn't take my eyes off Willow. Couldn't take my eyes off a piece of the puzzle that was -//all that was left//- of Buffy.

I wanted to comfort her, to tell her it would all be -//It's never over!//- okay, but I couldn't. I couldn't even move, couldn't overcome the screaming that had overtaken every cell of my body, soul and -//beast//- demon. Willow looked at me with those big, trembling eyes, and then moved past me, to Cordelia. I felt her mind brush mine, comfortingly, soothingly, almost mothering me, and then she focused on Cordelia, and I was all alone in that head of mine.

-//I'm trying to think with my head, instead of my heart.//-

I curled my hands into fists, feeling borrowed blood seeping over my clenched fingers as my nails -//claws//- penetrated my flesh. I didn't feel the pain.

"Angel?" I heard Fred's gentle twang at my side, and she took my hand, leading me into the office, away from all the others, away from the people I'd chosen as distractions from the pain of missing everything that was home and comfort to me. Buffy.

Fred sat me down at Wesley's desk, looking at the blood covering my fingers for a moment, then into my eyes. Part of me rebelled against her attentions, remembering the flutterings of affection I'd felt towards her -//before//- only a few hours ago, when the world still made some semblance of sense. Now, now that Buffy was gone, now that I knew she'd - - - she'd died, and I wasn't there, I felt sick rage at myself for ever thinking of anyone but her.

What was I doing as she - - - died? Was I flirting with Fred and playing the hero? Was I wallowing in the darkness, afraid of the thing that lived inside my bones? Was I basking in the sunlight?

Did it hurt her?

"What's a Buffy?" Fred asked me, gently, her mind still too lost in the pain of the past four years to truly comprehend what was going on.

I heard the laughter, but it took me a few moments to realise that it was bubbling forth from somewhere inside me, dizzy and sick , borne of pain and rage and fear, rather than mirth and love and light. Born of the certainty that I'd never truly be whole again.

-//Buffy!//-

I felt my dead heart keening her name, a wailing song of loss at being denied the feeling of her spirit, the general sense of her soul nestled somewhere next to mine like it normally was. Like it was supposed to be.

"She's the sunlight," I choked out between gasps of laughter, "She's the sun."

I laughed crazily for a few more minutes, and I felt Fred's hand stroking my hairline. Buffy used to do that, and grin, and berate me for using gel, because she couldn't run her hands through my hair the way she wanted to do. She used to do lots of things, and now...she doesn't. And she won't again.

I'll never be warm again.

I barely tasted the vomit as it spewed past my lips, crimson red and smelling of copper and acid. I wasn't even aware that vampires *could* vomit, but honestly, I didn't care.

Buffy.

Fred looked at me with wide, concerned eyes, and for a moment my vision swam, and her eyes slid from chocolate brown to -//greengreybluebrown//- hazel, blinking at me teasingly, laughter shining -//Buffy//- upon my and over me and in me. For a moment, Buffy was in front of me.

And then she was taken away again.

"Angel," a voice whispered, and with a start, I realised that sometime during my laughing fit, Willow and my crew had gathered in the office. I was surrounded by people. People I loved. People I always loved. People I'd learned to love. People I'd once hated.

One by one, I'd watch them die. I'd lose Buffy over and over again as one by one, they all slipped away.

I looked up at Willow, my chin covered in blood vomit, and she trembled, then slid into my lap, burying her head in my neck just like Buffy used to do. She held me tightly as she started to cry again, whispering that she was sorry, that she tried to save her, that she let her die, and that Buffy loved me.

That Buffy loved all of us, but she was just too tired to stay with us.

I started to shake with Willow, and for a moment, it was like the earth itself was trembling in grief.

Buffy.

Willow curled in my lap, as if I were a beloved friend instead of someone she barely knew, and sobbed.

That Buffy loved all of us, but it had just gotten too hard.

That Dawn was alive, but wished she wasn't.

That Sunnydale was overrun by demons, and she couldn't bring herself to care.

That nothing would ever be right again.

Nothing will ever be real again.

I held Willow for hours, shaking with her, desperately wishing I could cry and find the same release in my tears that she seemed to, but my eyes remained dry, my throat parched, my skin too tight and pricking with needlepoints of pain.

The world would never be right again, and I was beyond crying.

Inside, little by little, I shattered and blew away with the wind.

Everyone has me on suicide watch, but they needn't bother.

I died the moment I felt the empty spot where Buffy's soul should be.

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