Amy Harvey

NOTE: This is just a story of mine I wanted to put here, I have plenty more, but this is one of the shortest. I’m taking this Intro. to Journalism class and I want to try to put out something of my own for fun because I can’t take the actual newspaper class until next year because my schedule filled up really fast.

Title: Not What I Had Expected

Author: Amy

Rating: PG – Slight hanky warning!

Summary: Angel thinks back on this last year without Buffy

Spoilers: All of BtVS Season 4 and Angel Season 1

Disclaimer: I am making no profit on this story, and am not anyone who has anything to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and or Angel the Series, or even Fox and Mutant Enemy.

I had expected to see a spitfire girl whose poweress would make a grown man run away with his tail between his legs. I’d even expected to her to knock me around a little. But I was in no way prepared to fall head over heels in love with her as she pushed me to the ground. The affection I felt for her was almost instantaneous; she was like a poor little angel trapped on the wrong side of the fight. I didn’t expect to be so madly in love with her that I would throw all caution to the wind and get involved in her life - I wasn’t even supposed to let her see me - but I did. I shouldn’t have touched her, but I did. Eventually it got so bad I thought I would die from not seeing one of her amazing smiles, or tasting her sweet lips.

She was always so shy when we were together, a pretty blush would taint her peaches and cream skin when I would kiss her, and she would giggle softly, her scalding breath warming my icy cold lips. I loved to kiss her until she was breathless and she would fall into my arms after. It almost made me forget who she really was. Almost…

In the battlefield, there was nothing shy or demure about her. It was a war zone and she was the center of it, fighting her heart out to keep mankind safe for another night. She would charge into a fight with her head held high, never knowing if this one would be her last hurrah. She always treated it as if it were; life was a precious and delicate thing. She was so vibrant, but her eyes showed otherwise, they were the only thing that showed how jaded she was towards others because they were still blissfully unaware that she risked her own life to ensure that they would live to a ripe old age. From the moment she had been called, she’d known that she would die a young and gruesome death, that she was not allowed the happiness and families the other children would have.

I think that’s why we were such a matched set. I had not lived in the world for a long time; and I too had been denied a family and a love. Our love was such a delicate thing; the outside world constantly threatened to tear apart our children’s play acting of joy. We had both known from the beginning that we could never have the happiness that we so desperately wanted, her even less if she was with me.

I guess that’s why I left, even though it tore me apart to abandon the first woman who had ever shown me such love and passion despite the monster that lay deeply buried inside of me. It took more than two hundred and forty years, and my mortal enemy to show me what love was. And it had taken every ounce I had of my love for her to let her go. I could never give her the things she wanted; I could never give her children or any of the other things girls her age dreamed of.

When Spike had told me of the man she’d run to, it was like acid dripping onto my poor, tortured soul. I had set her free, and she hadn’t waited more than two months before taking a mortal lover. I suppose I couldn’t begrudge her anything, especially her own happiness. And then when Doyle’s vision sent me home to help her, I couldn’t bear to see the life she’d created without me, so I stayed to the shadows. Which had turned out to be a bad idea, she found out and came to see me here in Los Angeles, ripping a strip off of my hide as she scolded me for doing that to her.

Then Morha burst through my window, and one of the most amazing days of my life began to unfold before my eyes. His blood made me mortal, and I was allowed one beautiful day with my love before the reality of it set in, if I was not strong enough to help her, then she would die. The sadness on her face as I told her that I was having the Oracles take back the day still haunts my dreams as she does. Even when I can’t see her face, I know she’s there. I’d left Sunnydale to get away from this torture, but it had followed me anyway.

I saw her again, when she came to warn me about Faith and found her in my arms. I had been comforting the Slayer, but Buffy had translated it into a betrayal, and in such informed me of her steady relationship with a man named Riley Finn. I met him once, he was a nice boy, not too smart, but nice. He cared deeply for Buffy, but one look in my beloved’s eyes showed me everything she would not give him, he may have her heart for the time, but he would never have her soul. She’d given that to me the night of her seventeenth birthday, the night I’d given her the claddagh ring, our wedding night. And she gave it again when she submitted fully to me, giving up her life’s blood so that I would see another day. I can still taste it, though the thought sickens me. The sweet, incredibly powerful blood that ran down my throat as my fangs pierced her once perfect skin.

So much happened between those moments, all of it better left unsaid for lack of a non-horrific way to tell it. Sufficed to say that I have been sent to hell at the end of her sword, and I have put her through the same despite the joy she has shown me over the past few years. I’m doing well here in Los Angeles; I don’t lack for money or companionship. Cordelia Chase, my link to the Powers That Be, is one of two links I have back to Sunnydale. I like having her around, no matter how much we tend to squabble; she has a rather humanizing effect on me. As does Wesley, the ex Watcher who often provides us with the research we need to complete our missions.

No matter how many friends I make here, nor how many years I may spend here, Los Angeles will never be home to me. No where is home to me but the circle of her arms as they close around me. The warmth of her kiss, the flecks of silver in her blue eyes, the softness of her lightly bronzed skin, even her silky golden hair, this is what I belong to. I could spend hours loosing myself in her eyes and curling my fingers in her hair. It’s like being handed a precious jewel, and then losing it in a sea of pebbles. It’s madness being near her and not being able to touch the passionate fire buried deeply inside of her. It’s agony being close enough to smell her, but not allowed to taste.

When we’re together, everything else falls away, and colors swirl, as we stand in a world of our own. In a room together, I see only her as my soul finds hers in a sea among many. Alone, she does not escape my thoughts; she plagues my mind every waking minute, and every second of my sleep. I look back on the beginning constantly; our first meeting, our first kiss, and I don’t regret any of it. But when Whistler sent me to her all those years ago, this was not what I had expected at all, but I would not have it any other way. And I have learned not to expect any certain thing from life.

End

Title: The Rosy Glow Of Play Acting

Author: Amy

Rating: I’ll try to make it PG-13

Summary: Buffy’s thoughts on this last year without Angel. Sort of a companion piece to Not What I Had Expected. Sorry if it’s crappy, I just got braces and I’m feeling pretty…well crappy. Writing cheers me up, so this is what I’m doing.

Spoilers: Right now, everything is fair game.

I knew it couldn’t have worked, but by the time I was approached by it, I was so far into my role of denial that his words ripped my heart out. I couldn’t believe that it was going to be over so soon, that the love of my life was going to be ripped away from me again. This time for good. He said he wasn’t good enough for me, that I deserved more. I’d never wanted anything but him, and a chance that maybe the awful clause in his curse could be destroyed. In my dreams, the sight of his back disappearing into the smoke of night still haunts me. I can’t sleep without seeing that sight, and his beautiful face.

I remember the first time we met. I’d known someone was following me, so I turned into a dark alley and vaulted up into an inverted position on a street lamp. When the dark figure came under, I swung down and trounced him to the ground. He was gorgeous, a timeless face like sculpted glass and eyes of the darkest chocolate. The gift he gave me put me in awe, an elegant silver crucifix on a delicate chain. I wonder if he’d known that it would save my life a few hours later. Maybe he did, he always seemed to have a sixth sense about those things.

It was a cruel truth the night of our first kiss, when his face changed into the snarling visage of a vampire. The very creature I’d sworn to wipe off the face of the earth even if it meant giving up my last breath. But he was different than the others, he’d always been so kind to me. I couldn’t kill him, but I couldn’t make myself stay away. When I found out about his soul, it was too late, I’d already fallen so deeply in love I was willing to sacrifice everything for him.

And so we pretended that things were okay and that we could have a future together. Though nothing could prepare me for the night I lost him for the first time. The night that soul of his disappeared because of the untainted happiness he’d felt for a moment. He killed my friends, and stalked me, trying to break my courage. But just when I got him back again, I had to shove a sword into his chest, sending him to eternal punishment in hell with a kiss from my lips. When he came back was both the happiest and saddest day of my life. Things would never been the same. The rosy glow was already slightly tarnished.

Freak show… He called our relationship a freak show, and even though he said he didn’t mean it, I knew that deep down inside he did and that’s what stings so bad. My friends tried to accept him again, they really did, but everyone still blamed him for what had happened. It was my fault really, if I hadn’t been so needy he wouldn’t have lost his soul. I can still see the look of hurt on his face as I let it slip about my relationship with Riley. I lied to him, there is no one in my life I love, I love only him.

I’ve lied to him, to Riley, and to everyone else. Especially myself, because in my dreams, that glow is still there and there is no right or wrong when I’m with him. Only peace.

The End