Fallen Angels

By Kristi

Found

@--Angel--@

The music is loud. I hate places like this. The smell of so many people crammed in one places, with all their individual smells blending into one. It makes my head hurt. Cordelia swears she had a vision about this place. I’m beginning to wonder if she doesn’t just send me out on wild goose chases just to get me out of the hotel and doing something besides looking for Buffy, especially when the visions are vague, like this one.

I don’t know what I’m looking for, or who. Only that I’m supposed to be here, some place called The Cell. I am trying to mingle, trying to blend in. I’d have to be stoned out of my mind to blend in here.

At first, I ignore it. It’s impossible after all. She would never be in a place like this. The tingling at the back of my neck is getting stronger. I gasp involuntarily. It feels like my heart is beating. I turn around wildly, looking for her. Maybe she’d gotten a prophecy dream and she was here for the same reason I am. I push through the crowds of people.

“Watch where the hell you’re going asshole.”

I froze. That voice, it was different but it was still the same. It was her voice. “Buffy?” My eyes alighted on the tiny blonde I’d just pushed almost down. I swallowed thickly. It couldn’t be her. Her beautiful hazel eyes were smudged with more black liner then Cordy had ever put on. Her lips were painted a hard bright red. “Buffy?” Maybe she hadn’t heard me over the music, or maybe I’d only said her name in my mind.

“A-Angel?”

It was a whisper, it sounded like thunder in my head.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice had turned hard, accusing.

“I don’t know. “ I couldn’t remember. “Looking for you.”

“Well you shouldn’t have. “ She turned to go. I grabbed her wrist. It was so tiny, so fragile. She punched me. She had lost a lot of strength. I didn’t let go.

“Buffy, please, come with me.” I begged her. It didn’t matter if she agreed or not. She wasn’t doing very well and that much was obvious from her pitiful thinness, the needle marks on her arms and the hollows under her eyes. She was coming with me, even if I had to drag her out of there kicking and screaming. I doubted anyone in here was sober enough to notice.

“Angel, you made the choice to not be in my life when I was 18. I’ve moved on. Let me go.”

At one time I couldn’t have stopped her even if I had wanted to, now holding her here was only a little more difficult then it would have been if she were a normal human woman.

“Buffy, what happened?”

“My name is Jane now.” She had stopped struggling to get away.

“I don’t care what name you’re using. Please come with me.” I’d much rather she walked out of here of her own willpower.

*

*

*

@--Buffy--@

He’s here. I’m not dreaming because my skin is itching, begging for the heroin that I need. In my dreams, I don’t need drugs. He’s my drug. He looks exactly the same and suddenly I’m ashamed of the way I look. I know my skirt is much too short and my halter top shows too much skin. I know I’m too thin and I’m wearing far too much makeup. I place my hand over the bend in my elbow, the place that is bruised and marked by the needle.

He wants me to come with him. I can’t go with him. If Angel walks back into my life for even a little while this carefully constructed façade that hides all the pain will be gone and I don’t know if I can do it again.

I try to pull away from. He was strong and I’m so very weak, in so many ways.

“Angel, I have to go.” I can see Mike coming over from his table in the club. If he finds me talking to Angel, things will not go well, at least not for Mike or for me, because I have to go home with Mike.

“Buffy, I’ve been looking for you for two years. I’m not letting you walk out of this club without me.” I could see anger tightening around his eyes and mouth.

“Jane, what the hell are you doing with this asshole?” Mike smelled like whiskey. Things never went well when he drank whiskey.

“J-just a very old friend.” I stammered.

Mike glared at Angel. I tried to stand between them. I wanted to tell Mike this was a pissing contest he couldn’t win.

“Jane, get your ass back to the table.” Mike spat.

“Just give me a chance to talk to my friend for a minute.” Angel couldn’t tell Giles and the rest of the gang where I was. I didn’t want to be found. I didn’t want them to see me like this.

“I told you to get your ass over to the table. When I give you orders, you obey them, bitch.” He slapped me, hard enough to send me reeling, after all I wasn’t the slayer anymore. I was just Jane.

Mike never saw it coming. Angel picked him up and threw him across the club. He flew through 2 tables, shattering them, before he stopped, slumped against the wall. The crowd parted for Angel. He was in vamp face. He punched Mike several times and then picked him up by the collar. He held him, feet dangling, above the ground.

“You will never, ever touch her again.” Angel growled. He always sounded scarier talking around his vamp teeth. He dropped Mike to the floor. Mike pissed his pants. “You’re lucky I don’t kill humans, but I can always make an exception. Remember that.” Mike was crying by now.

Angel caught my elbow as he walked by. He wasn’t even aware he was still wearing his vamp face. “Buffy, I love you.”

He wasn’t playing fair. Even in vamp face, he busted through my façade and sent all the walls I’d built tumbling down. I’d told him once that I didn’t notice his vamp face, that wasn’t entirely true. It just never bothered me. I loved everything about Angel, including his demon. The pain rushed over me, through me, like a tidal wave. I collapsed under it. He swept me up and carried me out of Hell.

@--Angel--@

She curled into me like a child. She didn’t let go even when we got to the car. I drove back to the hotel with her on my lap. We didn’t say a word. I carried her into the hotel. Cordy, Wes and Gunn were cleaning their weapons. They’d apparently just returned from a battle.

“Angel?” Cordy said as I walked through the lobby. I walked across the lobby and started up the stairs. “Angel,” Cordy said again, irritated that I didn’t answer her. “Is that Buffy?”

I turned and looked down on them from the upstairs landing, Buffy still in my arms. “Take the week off.”

I didn’t want to hear their protests. Buffy weighed so little it was an easy thing to hold her with one hand and open the door with the other. I kicked the door shut behind us. I laid her down on my bed. I had to pry her tiny hands off my neck.

“Please, please don’t leave me, Angel. It hurts too much.” Tears made black streaks down her face. How could I deny her anything. I would move heaven and earth to see her smile again. How long had it been since I’d seen her smile? Suddenly it was important that I remember. Did the Day that Wasn’t count? Since she couldn’t remember it, it couldn’t. The last time I saw Buffy smile was the morning we’d both waken up in the mansion, after our “post-slayage” nap. The last time I saw Buffy smile had been almost 5 years ago. How could I possibly have lived for 5 years without her smile?

I crawled into the bed with her and wrapped my arms around her fragile form. “Never again.” In my prayers I added just don’t let her die and I’ll stay for the rest of her life if that’s what she wants.

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