Disclaimer: Nothing is mine!
Rating: PG13 - but kind of angsty and CHARACTER DEATH
Pairing: Willow/Spike/Angel
Feedback - Always welcome
Comments - this is kind of deperessing - sorry! Please don't read if you're looking for happiness or smut cos there ain't none here.
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Well. Where to begin. You must be surprised to read this - perhaps as surprised as I am to be writing it. Finally writing it, finally trying to put the pieces together, hoping ... hoping? Perhaps that's the real reason, if I can put it all down maybe I can move past it, finally stop wishing I could change the past.
So, where should I begin? The day I was called? The day that my dreams of being a hero suddenly came true, and I found myself dreaming instead of being normal, of having the life I had previously scorned?
No, after that....
The day I met Angel? The day I realised I loved him? The day I sent him to Hell? Many, many times have I regretted loving him, and wished he had never existed, but would that have changed things?
So perhaps the day I asked you to help me with my homework? The lunch times talking and the nights researching, when you became my best friend, someone who knew and accepted both sides of me - Slayer and teenage girl? Was that the beginning of the end?
I wonder what you remember. I remember feeling betrayed. Waking in a hospital, and feeling - wrong. Everything was dimmer, I felt weak. My mother was there, but not Giles. I knew something was wrong straight away. No matter what our differences, Giles should have been there, waiting for me to wake. My Watcher and, I now realise, my friend, my guardian.
I called him. He sounded anxious on the phone, told me there was lots to tell me, and boy was he right. He spent two hours at the hospital. He told me everything. About you, Angel and Spike, about the demons that had killed Riley, about Faith... Faith! That you had chosen her as The Slayer, and I was now free to go about my business.
Never thought a Slayer could be laid off.
Of course I didn't believe him. If you knew how angry I was. I checked out of the hospital despite the protests of the doctors, and headed home. Mum didn't worry when I said I was going to patrol - I mean, how many times had I done it before. But the first fledge I saw; my first punch barely knocked him off balance. It was only years of slaying that helped me throw him to the ground, and - I ran.
Ran home, then left Sunnydale, running, running, running - but from who? My lost destiny, myself, the ghosts of what-could-have-beens?
I went to LA. I don't think you saw me - I was very careful, kept to the shadows, waited for three hours outside Angel's office before I saw you. You were irritated, and telling off Spike about something, and he was arguing back, but I could see the way he looked at you, the way he looked at me once, when he was bewitched ...
And Angel. I guess it's true, everything that Giles said about the three of you. I saw the way he was smiling as he watched the pair of you, like a father with much loved, mischievous children. And I hated you, all of you, but especially you, my Judas, who had stolen my past love and my could-have-been love, who had robbed me of my birthright, my strength and my skill, leaving me knowing exactly what walks in the shadows but unable to fight it.
Hated you.
And so I left LA, left the three of you there, together, hoping that something bad would happen, so you would understand what it felt like to lose everything you cared about. Even then I knew I couldn't do it myself. I wasn't even able to kill you. I would have tried, but Giles had explained the immortality thing to me - another reason to hate you, to have forever the two men that were denied to me for even a few years.
Hated you.
But it's true what they say, the more you hate the more hateful you become. I was obsessed, consumed by the wrongs done to me. When I heard that Faith had been killed I was glad, glad that she got what she deserved for taking my place. And when Giles died while working with her replacement, I didn't shed a tear. He turned his back on me, let you do what you did, and he also paid the price.
But still you lived, with your demons. I would visit LA every year or so, to check on you. I would wait, and wait - and there you were, sometimes with just one but mostly with both, forever young, and happy.
Hated you.
So the years passed. I got jobs, but nothing permanent. Got married a few times, but it never worked out. Too much hate, too much time spent looking over my shoulder instead of seeing what was in front of me.
Never thought I'd ever get to be old. I always expected to die before I hit 21, one apocalypse too many. And after, after I became Buffy, instead of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Well, worrying about the future wasn't really on my list of priorities. But time passed, and I guess I finally realised that whatever could have been - if I'd been quick to listen instead of act, if you had chosen me instead of Faith, if it hadn't been your destiny, if, if, if ... Anyway, there was nothing I could do about it now, just accept.
And so I wrote this letter, and gave it to a friend. Yes, I finally got friends, finally opened my eyes to what is rather than what should or could be. And I asked her to send this letter to you, when I died. It was expected you know - I must be the first Slayer ever to get to die of cancer, kind of ironic that after living so much longer than I ever expected I should finally realise just how much of my life I wasted.
But now, now that I fel I see things clearly, that I see with the eyes of wisdom gained slowly, and painfully, I wanted to let you know that I don't regret loving Angel, or Spike. I don't regret loving Giles as my father, or Xander as my brother. I know that the love you showed me before, before it all went wrong, that love could have still have been mine if I had acted differently, if things had taken a different course.
And I don't regret that I called you, for too short a time, my friend. My best friend.
Peace and love, Buffy