Creative Works   

Memories Recalled
By Jessi Knorr

Summary: Ten years in the future, Angel regains his mortality but loses his memory. Can Buffy remind him?
Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be. They're Joss', aka The Devil. I own Sage, Summer, Tia, Cora and all the other weird people, plus the plot.
Author's Notes: Set a decade into the future; Angel was given back his mortality by Willow, but as a side effect of the spell, it erases his memory. All of it."Memories Recalled" details a twenty eight year old Buffy's struggles when Angel appears for the first time in eight years with two girls, his with another young lady. She tries to avoid him, but when that fails, she tries to get him to remember his past and theirs together so she can reclaim the only real love of her life.

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Prologue

The familiar mists surrounded his half naked body, the dew collecting on his skin and sprinkling his hair. He knew this scene, this dream. Like in most, the air swirled in small circles before flowing into the form of a slender young lady. Her cottony dress blew around her body and her blonde hair blew in the same direction. He so desperately wanted to go to her, talk to her. But he knew he wouldn't able to move. The girl seemed to float off the ground as her lips moved. She was talking but no sound came out, no sound could be made.

He read the girls' lips perfectly, deciphering what she was saying. "Angel? What ever happened to us?"

He tried to respond, but nothing in his body would move, only his eyes. When he didn't say anything, the girl looked sadly to the ground and disappeared back into the mist.

"No, don't go!" he finally yelled. But instead of the mist filled void, he was back in his bedroom; his body was covered in a light sweat.

"Daniel?" asked a faint, wafting voice. The raven-haired young lady beside him moved beneath the sheets and her face poked out from the hole in the comforter. She sat up when seeing Daniel awake and sweating. "What happened?"

"It's... it's the dream again. The girl, the mist... " Daniel squeezed his eyes and pulled off the blanket.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to take a walk. You get some sleep Cora, you've got a long flight in the morning." Cora nodded and slipped back into her dreamless sleep as Daniel left the room in his sweatpants. He walked down the small series of carpeted steps and stopped outside another door. Inside was a pair of beds, two small bodies wrapped in their blankets. Summer and Tia, his daughters of 8 years. The only thing they'd inherited from him was the eye color and the stubbornness. Maybe Summer had his integrity too. Summer... why did that name suddenly strike him as more than his daughter's? Daniel shook his head and walked down some more stairs, to the kitchen, through that and into the parlor. One door led to the front of the house, the other to the backyard. He slipped through the glass plated entranceway and out into the warm spring night. The velvet black sky was dotted with clusters of stars, like glitter on a piece of dark paper. The water in the pool lapped softly and cast soft reflections around the deck. An owl hooted somewhere in the distance and a dog howled somewhere beyond that. He looked back to the sky: a bright full moon illuminated parts of the shadows that surrounded the enclosed part of the backyard. Beyond the pool was his neatly kept garden of assorted flowers and trees, all set out around a bench that could be used for romantic purposes. It was where he'd taken Cora for their first date, after he'd fallen in love with her. Now eight years later, he still hadn't proposed to her. Daniel could see she was getting weary of him but she still hung on. But for what? For the sake of their daughters? She never said.

Daniel rolled has shoulders to try to loosen the tense muscles and padded to the side of the pool. In the faintly lit water, his handsome face and brawny torso filled the slightly broken surface. His chest was wide, his arms strong, and his shoulders broad and rounded. His eyes were a deep chocolate, his short, spiky, black hair tasseled from his restless sleep, his thin lips were spread in a casual expression. His face was a small oval, more squared at the chin and the faint stubble of facial hair was often evident on it. Daniel gave a deep sigh and stuck his right hand into the water enough to just penetrate the surface. The ripples distorted his reflection and he allowed them to wave off in circles as he stood up.

He gave his hand a shake to dry off the water and stood there once again, gazing to the full moon. His back, in the light that came from the lights outside, now sent the image into the water of the skin pulled taut over the muscles and shoulder blades. On the right blade was the tattooed image of a cat-like animal with wings, holding an 'A' in its sharp talons. Daniel lowered his head from the heavens, and without turning fully around, gazed back to the blue pool. When he first found himself on that strange hill so long ago, he'd staggered around a small town, trying to find any clue of who he was. Deciding he couldn't find a name, he'd settled on one that came floating up from some unconscious part of his cloudy mind, Daniel Cooper. When he'd gotten into a small room at a hotel and looked himself over in the mirror, he'd discovered a rather harsh sunburn blazed across his back on which was the tattoo, full and there. But Daniel had no idea where it could possibly had come from, where he'd gotten it.

Within the days to come after he'd gotten more into his life, a flush of recollection enveloped him for what seemed like hours each day, reliving his childhood. From the time when he was about 16 until his age he was certain was around 21, it was filled with a strange black cloud that hung on him. Strange thing was, Daniel had no idea what could have gone there. But about a year ago he'd started having dreams. Of this girl, very beautiful. In all she had flowing blonde hair, in all they couldn't speak. Or they could, they just couldn't hear each other. And in all, the blonde mystery girl called him a name that especially got him. 'Angel'. Why would she call him 'Angel'? Maybe the dream girl thought Daniel was her guardian angel? Or that possibly it was a piece of puzzle that represented the dark space, that he had another name and life where he'd gotten that sunburn and tattoo and in which she was part of?

Daniel gave a small scoff and chuckled to himself. He was getting delusional. He'd seen the best psychiatrists in the San Francisco area, perhaps in all of California, and still he was haunted by these visions. And he had the money to see the best one in the whole world; no one would deny the Bay Area's richest man help. But none of them had the answers. Maybe if he found out who this girl was, he'd be able to actually find out what she was doing plaguing his mind. Daniel gave another snort, in doubt of his real sanity, and trudged back into his fair sized estate to get some well needed sleep.

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