Fallen Angels

By Kristi

Coping

@--Buffy--@

I lay in our bed. The sheets smell like him. I sleep all day and most of the night. I get to dream of him that way. I know Fred is mourning Gunn and Willow, Xander. Dawn is mourning everyone. I can’t get past my own pain to care. He’s gone, he left me and I don’t know how I’m supposed to live without him. I can’t breathe. My chest is too tight. We came so close to having everything I ever wanted.

Giles comes in twice a day and leaves me a tray with food. He talks to me, but I don’t hear him. Willow comes in too. She cries and tries to get me to talk about Xander, or Angel or anything at all. I just stare into space. I can see Angel diving into the portal, Dawn’s blood, Summers’ blood running through his veins.

I don’t know long it’s been. Did I mention that I can’t remember how time works? It doesn’t really matter anyhow; I’ve got to spend the rest of my life without him so days, weeks, months and years aren’t important.

Giles walks in. He doesn’t have the tray of food with him. That’s okay. I won’t eat it anyway. He pulls open the heavy black drapes across the windows. I duck under the blankets as the harsh, bright light hits my eyes. He strips the blankets off the bed and leaves me no where to hide.

“Buffy, you are going to get up and take a shower and get dressed. Then you are going to come downstairs and have lunch with us.”

“Fuck off, Giles.” I spit. I’ve never talked to him that, I hope it will make him leave.

“Using foul language won’t get rid of me, Buffy. I’ve used plenty of it in my day. There is a 17 year old girl down there that needs you. Angel went back to Hell to save her, for you. Do you think he’d be happy with the way you are belittling his sacrifice?”

I sit up, anger taking over me for the first time. “You don’t know anything! You hated Angel! I love him more then I will love anything else in this world or the next! He saved me! He made it okay that Willow ripped me out of Heaven! Who is going to make it okay now that he’s in Hell again! And that it’s all my fault, mine! Do you know what they did to him the first time he was there? He wouldn’t tell me it was so bad. Now he’s going to spend an eternity down there, with his soul intact. They have fun with him, Giles.”

I break down into great, heaving sobs. Giles sits down on the bed next to me and puts his arms around me. Patting me awkwardly at first and then just holding me.

*

After the dam broke, I started at least making a show of living again. I got up most mornings. I took showers and got dressed. I pushed food around on my plate so that no one would notice I hadn’t really eaten. I didn’t have an appetite anymore; everything was ash in my mouth.

Dawn is doing good. Willow, Wesley and Fred are home schooling her. Giles and Faith went back to Sunnydale, but they come back to the Hyperion every weekend, as long as there isn’t an apocalypse in the making. Everything is much more serious these days without Xander to crack the jokes. There’s also a lot less junk food now.

I walked in on Willow the other day. She was in Angel and my room; she had pulled the sheets off the bed. I screamed at her and then lovingly remade the bed with the same sheets, the sheets Angel had slept on.

I won’t let Wesley throw the blood out of the fridge, even though I know it’s going to go bad. I won’t let them take his voice off the answering machine. I sneak down there in the middle of the night and listen to it. I don’t want to ever forget what he sounds like, what he looks like or what he smells like and I’m so afraid I will.

We’re still doing Angel Investigations. I’m still slaying. I don’t know what else to do and it’s a way to keep Angel alive. Wes told me about Angel’s shanshu today, the one he never got on account of going to Hell, again. I won’t let myself think about that now. If I do I’ll break down and Dawnie is just beginning to smile again. I think I heard her laugh the other day.

*

It’s been 6 months. Dawn got her high school diploma in the mail today. She aced the tests. Willow is prepping her for SATS now. She wants to study art. I’m so proud of her. She’s doing all the things I wanted her to do.

I’m okay, as okay as someone can be when they are dead inside. I slay, I talk to Dawn. We still have our Monday Movies and Pizza night. It was really hard to get through at first. Every time someone mentioned our Monday Movie I would bust into tears, thinking about Cordy calling it Monday Make Out session. Cordy moved away, New York I think. Apparently the Powers decided if Angel wasn’t there she didn’t need to get visions.

I brood a lot. I’m trying to perfect it the way Angel had. I read his books. I wear his clothes. I even put on his cologne. I know I smell more like him, then me. I don’t care. I’m doing the best I can. It’s got to be enough, because there’s nothing else left. Wesley tells me about all the years I wasn’t here. It’s nice to hear stories. I tell him about the Sunnydale years. We talk a lot about Xander and Gunn too. It hurts and we cry but it’s good too. It’s a way of remembering, making sure no one ever forgets.

*

Dawn is going to college at UCLA. She wanted to be close to all of us. We’re so much closer now, all of us, then we ever were before. She lives at the hotel still. We’re all making it. I’m lucky, Angel left some money. In his will, he left everything to me, his will that dated July 15, 1999, two days after he left me in Sunnydale.

Its Thanksgiving weekend and I really don’t want to be here. I want to spend this day of Thanks locked in the room I shared with Angel and remember. Dawn and Willow insist.

“Will, don’t you remember the indigenous people who died?” I argue, trying to remind her of that Thanksgiving the Indian spirits rose and Angel came to my rescue.

“I do. It’s not about Indians. It’s about being together, Buffy.” Willow says. There is a tremor in her voice I can not tell no.

I nod. “Okay,” I agree reluctantly. I still don’t want to be here, but I will, for them. Everything I do these days is for them, because if it were left to me I’d curl up in our room and die, so that I could go be with him. He promised to wait for me. I know he will. Sometimes the urge to run to him, where ever he is, even if it’s Hell, is so strong I have to hang onto something until it passes.

The night before the Thanksgiving togetherness, I’m sitting in our room reading a book of Byron’s poetry. He used to love to read Byron to me and tell me about the nights he spent with Lord Byron. I’m wrapped in one of his sweaters. I have just taken a shower and used his hair gel and sprayed his cologne on me. There’s something missing to the smell. It’s the smell of Angel, completely unique to him. I can never recreate that smell, no matter how many times I try.

There’s a crash in the lobby. I pick up the stake that is always close to me. And creep down the stairs barefoot. I really hope it’s nothing terribly nasty. I’m not in the slaying mood.

The moon is full. It’s shining through the frosted glass panes of the front doors. There are soft lights on in the lobby. I can see in the semi darkness there’s something on the floor. My throat tightens and my first thought is Dawn.

“Dawnie?” I whisper and creep closer.

I can’t breathe. The room tilts and I struggle to stay upright. I only partially succeed. I fall to my hands and knees and crawl over to the form on the floor.

“Angel?”

He’s lying naked on the stone floor. There is a scorch mark around his entire frame, just like when he returned to the mansion. I carefully, slowly reach out and touch his shoulder. He groans and turns partially on his back. He coughs and his eyes open just a slit.

“Buffy,”

He says it like he expected me to be there and yet he’s still unprepared. I pull him into my arms sobbing silently. He hugs me so tightly I’m pretty sure he cracked one of my ribs, but I don’t care. I wouldn’t ask him to let go for the world. I tilt my head back so I can look at him.

“Angel, how-I don’t care. I don’t care. You’re here.” He kisses my hair and pulls me against his bare chest. I stop breathing for the second time that day.

-Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump-

“Angel?” I look up at him, afraid to hope.

He’s overcome with tears. They fall down his beautiful face. I kiss them away. His skin is warm. He’s breathing in and out.

I have so much to be thankful for.

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