Summary: Angel remembers how he got to where he is today
Rating: Pg (maybe Pg-13 to R but I doubt it)
Spoilers: Specifically Becoming I & II, Graduation I & II, The Gift but everything up to and in between is fair game
Disclaimer: Joss, Mutant Enemy, Evanescence and Co. own BtVS and Lyrics. In short I’m broke and get absolutely nothing.
Feedback: Flames if you must but little ones please, my ego is fragile
AN: Alright I know this is a little late but Vanessasky birthday just passed and even though I’m a little late this is for her. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
(Besides it gave me an opportunity to try writing a post Gift BA Fiction)

//how can you see into my eyes like open doors
leading you down into my core
where I’ve become so numb without a soul my spirit sleeping somewhere cold
until you find it there and lead it back home//

A shadow sat in the dark listen to the rain beat against the window pane. The sun had set long ago and the moon now lit the darkened sky. He sighed softly as he watched the water rivulets run down the window in uneven patterns. He’d been in the same position since the small red head returned to the Hellmouth a few hours before. Upon entering the hotel earlier that day just about everything was right with his world but all that came crashing down around him when he found a small red head standing in the middle of the lobby with tears in her eyes.

//(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)//

He can still hear her words running through his mind. At first he didn’t believe what she was telling him. It just couldn’t be; he would’ve felt it if she died. There was just no way his Slayer; his Buffy was gone from this world. But the look on the red heads’ face and the dried tear tracks that marred her cheeks suggested otherwise. His team stood behind him in shock and disbelief. Wesley pulled Cordelia into his embrace and they held one another as they both began to cry. Gunn and Fred didn’t really know Buffy but the pain was still there. Their friends…their family was hurting and so were they.

Angel slowly walked down the steps of the Hyperion dropping his weapons along the way not caring where they fell or if they were damaged in anyway. He walked to the center of the room and silently and just stopped. Willow moved away from the eerily silent vampire. Then just as suddenly he let a roar of pure anguish and began to rip the lobby apart. He couldn’t feel her anymore, though he didn’t feel her leave this world he just realized the gentle hum of her life that was always with him was absent and it hurt his heart more than he could bear.

At that moment he hated ‘The Powers’; he hated Whistler and ‘The Oracles’. All who said that if he did what he was told Buffy would live. She would survive and eventually receive the normal life he so desperately wanted her to have. All he kept thinking was…

‘I should’ve been there with her…for her. I left her to die…alone. I promised her that I would always be there for her when she needed me and where am I when she needs me most…saving Cordelia from becoming a princess!?!’

//call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become//

Angel was brought back to the present by the sound of someone banging on his door. It sounded like Cordelia but he wasn’t too sure nor did he really care. Buffy was gone and his reason for redemption was taken away. Oh he knew that he was here in L.A. for more than just to make amends but his main reason for it all was so one day he could return to a small blonde only a few miles away.

A crash of thunder followed by a crack of lightening illuminated the dark room in which the ensouled vampire brooded in. His features were ragged and he seemed even more pale than usual. Though it had only been a few hours he refused to feed and it was starting to affect him. He promised to always be there for her, to always be where she needed him. His golden haired beauty had saved him more times than he could count.

//now that I know what I’m without
you can't just leave me
breathe into me and make me real
bring me to life//

He still remembers the day that changed everything, the day that brought him to her. The smell of death and vermin was still fresh in his mind, his clothes were nothing but dirt filled rags and his hair was ragged and greasy. It’d had been like that for years. There was no real reason to clean himself up; he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He didn’t deserve to be a part of the world, if he could have he would’ve stayed hidden for eternity but someone decided his destiny was greater.

The look of disgust on Whistlers’ face was something he’d never forget but when the demon told him he could go either way and that he had to show him something had the vampire so intrigued he followed him across the country to see a Slayer being born.

He watched in awe as a small blonde bounced down the steps and said goodbye to her friends. Her long golden hair shimmered in the sunlight and her sun kissed skin only added to her beauty. At that very moment he felt an emotion he thought long dead and buried. In over two hundred years this slip of a girl brought forth something in him he never felt for anyone. Love.

//(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark//

His undead heart swelled with love for this girl. He watched as she was called by her first Watcher; Merrick. He waited until the sun fell behind the horizon and followed her out on her first hunt. The urge to run in and help her almost took over numerous times but he also knew the he wouldn’t always be there and that she’d have to learn on her own. Let alone the fact that he couldn’t go three rounds with a fruit fly as Whistler so eloquently put it later on.

His heart broke at the sight of unshed tears in her eyes. He cried with her as she listened to her parents arguing over actions as of late. Again he wanted nothing more to just whisk her away and protect her from all that was dark and evil. But then she’d be protecting her form himself as well. He knew that she would be moving on soon, on to the Hellmouth and he’d have to make arrangements to move with her. She unknowingly saved him from the darkness and began to make him feel alive again.

//(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become//

The night of her seventeenth birthday had to be the best night of his entire existence. Sometimes he wonders who was more nervous Buffy or him but then again it didn’t matter because they were together. Everything then was perfect, his relationship with Buffy was good and it brought out the best in him. He was truly learning to live again let alone love.

Of course then disaster struck, no one not even himself could believe the Gypsies put a clause in his curse. To experience one moment of true and utter happiness his soul would be taken from him. Making love with love with Buffy brought him that moment of pure contentment and that night his soul was ripped from him and Angelus was free once more.

Those months Angelus tortured and taunted the Slayer had to be the hardest of Angels’ life. He was there the entire time; watching everything his demon did. Though he was allowed one cold comfort; Angelus didn’t want to kill Buffy, he wanted to turn her. Another reason his demon was so vicious was because at every turn Buffy rebuffed his attempts at wooing her. Granted most were disgusting and grotesque it was a sign of true affection and devotion in Angelus’ eyes.

When he sent the two dozen long stemmed red roses to her home, he looked on in admiration as she wrapped her slender hands around them until the thorns pricked her skin. Though her precious White Knight intercepted him at the front door, he watched with lust filled eyes as she looked so helpless in her hospital bed but did not take her away into the night rather just left the white roses on her window sill for her to find come sunrise. Now he also knew that it wasn’t right for him to bring Willow into their courtship by stringing up her fish and understood that he over stepped his bounds and understood why he was banned from his beloveds’ home.

Angel remembered it all, the way he tried to lose himself in Drusilla but all it did was to irritate Spike all the more which gave him very little pleasure. All he wanted to do was lose himself in the warm and lithe body of his Slayer and he couldn’t even do that. Acathla was Angelus’ last resort. He knew that if he couldn’t have the Slayer then no one could. She was his and he just didn’t like sharing.

Both demon and soul were affected greatly by the tiny slayer and knew that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Even as a mortal Angel was just going though the motions and then Angelus continued to do the same with his time with Darla, both never knew what true pain and passion was until a little blonde Slayer entered their lives.

//(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become//

The rain continued to fall and so did the tears of an ensouled vampire. He just couldn’t help but wonder if he had stayed would things have turned out differently. Angel knew on many levels that a lot of what happened was h is fault and there was nothing he could do to change any of it now.

Sunrise wasn’t too far off now, he could smell it, feel it. The tingling in his skin was proof enough that a new day was on its way and with it new beginning. He knew now that though his beloved was finished, he however was not. There were still too many people that needed saving, too many sins he still hadn’t atoned for. Though knowing all this he still knew that he couldn’t be here without her. To fight for no reason, to fight without any drive would get him killed anyway.

The rain began to lessen and a soft glow began to light the sky. A new day was approaching, so he picked himself up out of his chair and walked over to the doors that led out to the balcony over looking the gardens. He slowly pulled back the heavy black material and looked longingly out into the day.

The banging on his door hadn’t lessened but continued until Cordelia, Wesley, Gunn and Fred fell through the door way. They all looked up at him simultaneously fear clearly evident on their faces. Angel just smiled softly at his family and turned to face the new day.

With one last of unneeded breath he pulled the curtain further back and stepped into the light…

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