DISCLAIMER: No, not mine, except in my heart and I not only stole Sarah McLachlan's song lyrics, but also her title. (I *heart* Sarah's music, I swear she writes it for BA.)
SUMMARY: BA's meeting after Buffy came back from the grave
FEEDBACK: Yes please, be gentle, I'm new at this
RATING: PG - 13
DEDICATION: For Tango, for her `push'. Only thing better than Tangofic is Tango herself. (AMAS, right? *g*)
(lyrics are in *s)

*I have a smile stretched from ear to ear to see you walking down the road*

I feel my face change expression of its own volition. My lips are curving into a smile. Not that I'm trying to stop them. You've always had that effect on me. A lot of times my smiles only showed on the inside. But this smile is so broad I can feel it splitting my face in two.

Until this moment I hadn't believed that you were back. Even seeing you walking towards me, I still don't really. What if this is just a dream, an illusion? What if I've lost my mind and this is all that's left? Can I stay here forever? If I've lost you, what would it matter? I've lost everything without you. There was nothing before you. There hasn't been anything since you've been gone. No thought, no feeling, no emotion, nothing.

I've been so empty since that moment I felt you gone from this world. There is no `me' really, not without you. Since the first time I ever saw you, licking a lollipop in the sunshine, there was no longer a `me'. I told you I saw your heart and wanted to keep it safe, wanted to warm it with my own. Did I tell you then my heart was already yours…forever? Or did you just know. There was no choice, no decision; love isn't a matter of will. Love you? With everything within me, from that second until right now and forever, that will never change. Except I love you more every day, even when I don't see you.

And something else I've always known. I knew in that first amazing moment you were my destiny. We were meant to be together. Even in an alternate universe I know I would have found you. I would have known in an instant we were made for each other. I would know you and love you anywhere. So how could you be gone? Maybe from here, from this reality. You will always be somewhere. I knew, deep down, even when I couldn't feel you the way I usually could, it still wasn't over between us. It will never be. We're eternal - you and I.

*We meet at the lights, I stare for a while*

But you're here … now. You're so real. I can reach out and touch you. The light is glowing over every beloved line and curve of you. No matter how carefully I studied you, drew you, drank you in, the reality of you never ceases to astound me. Memory can only ever be a poor second. Besides, you're always more beautiful every time I see you. And I thought I'd never see you again, not here.

It's amazing to me how a mind and body can go on without anything inside it. How a shell can continue to function - move, hear, see, even talk. Mine's been doing that for months now.

When I saw Willow, I knew. It was proof of that dark, cold, empty loss of feeling deep inside me, even before we got back from the other dimension. You were still inside me, but you seemed so very, very far away. I told myself it was just from jumping from one reality to another. Or was even that denial?

Denial. I've lived my whole life in one form or another of denial. Denial of who I was, as Liam, a drunken, no good lout and womanizer. Denial, as Angelus, of anything to do with humanity, other than destroy it. Even making its destruction an art form.

But with a soul, I've come to know every nuance and shade of denial that exists, or I thought I had. You dying showed me there was a depth to it I still hadn't known.

I was used to denying myself feeding off of humans. The alternative, killing and taking their blood, made my soul shrivel so badly even at the thought, that ignoring the need became second nature.

Denying the need for companionship, be it vampire or human, was more difficult. My heart doesn't beat, not physically, but my soul makes it bleed in other ways. Loneliness is the scariest thing there is. Remember I once told you that? It will drive you to do things you would never even contemplate otherwise. I know. I lived alone, with almost no contact with anyone for ninety years and ended up with only rats for company and for food. Not the sustenance of life, rats.

You're the epitome of life itself. I couldn't deny you. I tried to. First I denied I loved you. But that one kiss, I knew then. If you hadn't already been entrenched so deeply in my soul, that proved it. Then I tried to deny your company. I couldn't do that either. You drew me - draw me, like a magnet, like a moth to a flame. You have such a force, an energy, that I couldn't stay away. Thinking of you fills me, being with you overloads my senses, touching you is like an electric current. It flows through me, through you and back to me. It's hard to deny that kind of power.

*The world around us disappears*

Did I ever tell you the world always disappears when I look at you? Every time I see you it's like the first time. I fall into those grey-green eyes and never want to find my way out. My fingers burn to bury themselves in the cloud of silky sunlight that frames your face. Even at night your hair shines like the sun I can't see anymore. You are my sun. With you I never missed the other.

When you fight and slay, you mesmerize me. It's always a wonder to me how such a tiny, delicate-looking creature can be so deadly. The night you saw your first vampire, even when you didn't know what you were doing … you slayed it. If I hadn't already fallen in love with you and felt my heart break at seeing your life turned upside down in an instant, never to be `normal' again … I would have laughed at the look on your face when you killed it. The poor vampire wasn't any less surprised than you. I've fought against you and I know your strength. I've seen you wield a sword half as big as yourself with an ease and skill that's breathtaking.

I could watch you for hours … and I have. I'd sit outside your window and look at you sleeping. Deep in dreams, blissfully unaware. I always hoped they were dreams of me … of us. Do you know how hard it was every second I gazed at you not to open that window, slide into your bed and take you in my arms? Just to hear you breathing and feel the slight rise and fall of your chest. Just to curl around you and let your warmth flow through me.

*It's just you and me on that island of hope*

You are my hope. I had none before you. What was hope to something like me? Guilt, yes, but hope? I never even thought of redemption before you. I didn't want, no - couldn't bring myself to kill anymore. But that's not redemption. Even the guilt from seeing the faces and hearing the voices of every man, woman and child whose life I'd taken didn't move me to change what I was. It made me hate what I'd become, but not want to become anything more. You did that. I wanted to become someone because of you. Was that always the way of our destiny? TPTB had Whistler bring me to you. They must have known something would come of it. Did they know what would happen? Has our love stymied even them?

*A breath between us could be miles*

Seeing you now before me, if I needed to breathe, I don't think I could. I don't think I ever breathed before I met you. You've always made me take that unneeded air into my lungs. Yet, how strange it is that you've always taken my breath away. I'm afraid now that in even a breath you'll be gone again.

*Let me surround you, my sea to your shore*

And finally, oh, finally, you're in my arms. *In* my arms. Living, breathing, warm and soft… and right *here*. I'm trying, I'm really trying to believe it's real. It's been so unreal for so long. Even before you were gone. It's never been right since I left. These arms were made to hold only one person so perfectly. I want to wrap myself around you, like a cocoon. Just like your love is spun around me.

I'm afraid of how you've come to be here now. What happened to you? Where were you, my love? What was it like where you'd gone? Did you miss me as much as I missed you? Wherever you've been, it's changed you. I can feel the emptiness and cold inside you. My body might be cold and dead, but everything within me is still on fire for you. I can feel your cold melting as long as I hold you. I never want to stop holding you.

*Let me be the calm you seek*

I know I'm supposed to be that shelter for you in the storm. I can feel in my soul it's what I was created for. Why else would I feel you inside, no matter where you are? You're a living part of me wherever I go. Who else knows you as I do? Who else understands the darkness inside you as you understand the light in me? You were the only one to ever see it. Remember? No one else wanted me, but you. There is so much of us in each other that, sometimes, especially when we're close, I can't tell where you begin or I end. There's never been anyone else who understood me like you do. And I know no one can see the things in you as I do. They never could and never will.

Why, oh God, if there is one, why did you ever have to go anywhere to come back from? And why wasn't I with you? Why wasn't I where I was supposed to be? At your side, protecting your back. `Together you are strong.' Isn't that what the Mohra demon told us? Why did I listen to the Oracles and not him? All I've ever wanted was to be with you, protect you, most of all love you. The one thing in this world I'm not allowed to do … love you. The only thing I've ever wanted in my life is the only thing I'm not allowed to have … you.

*Oh and every time I'm close to you there's too much I can't say*

No words have been invented to tell you all that you are to me. None to explain what I want so badly to say to you. I want so much just to hold you, take you, keep you. I want to hide you inside myself and hide myself in you. So much has gone on between us and to us. All of the pain, all the anguish we've been through. Would it hurt less if I didn't love you so much?

I can't get enough of you. I never will. Eternity wouldn't be enough time in your arms. Your kisses are so, so sweet. Full, soft lips, a tiny pink tongue I have no resistance against. Small hands that can crush a demon, sifting so tenderly through my hair. Your skin so warm, so soft, so fragrant. Your scent has seeped into my being, as much a part of me as my own.

My hands can't stop wandering, exploring, discovering any and everywhere of you. I can feel the passion rising up and bubbling over in me, in you. The heat between us is so intense it burns to my soul. My need for you is overwhelming me. Even knowing the consequences of what would happen, you're clouding my judgement by the mere touch of your skin against mine. I know you need me just as badly, I can feel it and it's tearing me apart. I can't even offer you the comfort you desperately deserve me to give to you. How long would it be until it no longer mattered to either of us? It doesn't work for us now anymore than before, does it? No, not here, not now.

*And you just walk away*

We had to part again. Only this time you were the one leaving. I could see the cold filling back up in you as we stepped away from each other. I could feel the warmth from your skin already leaving me colder than before I saw you tonight. It doesn't make it any less painful that I understood why you were going. That being so close is more painful than having distance between us. It doesn't make it hurt less for either of us to know this tiny bit of time is all we're allowed to share right now.

My heart and soul are screaming for you not to leave. My body is throbbing for you. My mind is the only thing allowing my eyes to see you move further away and keeping my feet from running after you, my arms from reaching and pulling you back into them. How many more times, how much more pain until we're never parted again?

*And I forgot to tell you I love*

I was so taken with the sight of you, immersed in the feel and smell of you I never told you just how much I love you. Nor did I hear you tell me if you loved me still. I never doubted it. We didn't need words, we never have.

*And the night's too long and cold here without you*

Now I'm without you again. Back in LA, back to `my life'. What there is of it. Without you, there isn't much of one. I don't tell them that. I don't want to talk to them about you. You're too precious to me. They think they know … they don't.

My bed will still be as empty, my arms will still ache as much if you're not in them. Even more, now that I've felt that coldness in you. It's not right for you to have to fight it alone. It wasn't right that they brought you back. Yes, I missed you. Yes, I would give up nearly anything to be in your arms again…but not to see that pain in your eyes. To know you were wounded so badly by coming back to this sad excuse of a world.

Nothing is right. I shouldn't have left you to face everything alone. You shouldn't have jumped off that damned tower. And they shouldn't have forced you to come back. Everyone always thinks they know what's best for you … for me … for us. They'll think they know now what's best for us, they always do.

They've never understood. I can't stand to let them near what we have. I can't share you with anyone else. It's why I don't talk about you, why I hide you away. If I don't put you in that special place I keep you, it will be too hard to go on again without you. It's unbearable enough not being with you. You're safe in my dreams, it's the only place we have right now. Some days I can't wait to go to bed, just to look for you there. It's small comfort, but it's all I have for now.

*I grieve for my condition for I can't find the words to say I need you so*

I thought I was doing the right thing. A vampire, a thing of darkness had no right to a creature of light like yourself. The curse was proof of that. Even without the curse, as if it wasn't enough by itself, what did I have to offer you? My half-life of demons and night?

I wanted `normal' for you. I wanted sunlight and kids and white picket fences for you. That's why I left you. I wanted all of it for you … but I wanted it to be me with you. I didn't know then what I do now. You told me and it never got through to me that you could never have normal. Demons and night were as much in your world as mine. Although now I know I left for the wrong reasons, it still wasn't our time. No more than now is.

And that one time we came so close. And you don't even know. If only you knew how many times I've wondered if I should tell you. And wondered how I would if I did. What would you think now? Would you hate me? Would you understand why I had to do what I did? You told me then you did, even through your tears, you knew why. It hurts so much sometimes even now I wonder myself if I understand. But it wasn't meant to be, I know that now. Perhaps it was a taste, a promise.

Greatness exacts a higher, more painful cost. It will bring us that much greater a reward. We have a purpose, a reason. Each separately and together. It is our destiny, what we were chosen for. It will be worth whatever we have to endure. You're worth any price, my heart.

This is not our time. I don't know when it will be. The Last Days, after the battles are over and won? When I finally Shanshu? Maybe after that, long after. But I swear to you, love, our time is coming. I feel it in every fiber of my being, as deeply as our love for each other … our time really hasn't even begun, nor will it ever end.

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