Title – Home again

Disclaimer - not mine.

Rating - PG

Spoilers - everything ever.

Pairing - Buffy/Angel.

Synopsis – just read:).

Feedback - always.

AN – this part is again, smaller. It's Angel's pov at the beginning, Buffy's at the end.

I just stand there and look at her, look at the face that has been engraved in my memory even before I started getting all of it back. I know they're all looking at me, six pairs of eyes are focused on me, but I don't see them. I only see her. I never told anybody about these memories, I never told anybody, not even my closest friends, that I had clear images in my head of people I never knew, people I never met, people even *they* didn't know. I never told them I saw myself in times, two hundred and fifty years, I was not supposed to be alive during. I never told any of the women I've been involved with why our relationship never lasted, that there was a face in my mind, some cruel game my imagination was playing with me, that didn't allow me to fully give my heart to another. I never told them because I thought it was all a lie.

When I started receiving those pictures in my head about two years ago, I thought I was going insane, that I was losing it. But I had no one to share it with. At the beginning, they would come and go, the good ones were dreams, the bad ones, nightmares. For a couple of months I could barely sleep because these flashes of pain, suffering, blood and death kept mounting up. And what's more, they refused to go away this time, they wouldn't disappear after I woke up like they used to when it first started. I didn't feel any personal connection to them, even after I became accustomed to the fact the person, *vampire*, committing these terrible crimes was wearing my face. What does it mean when one constantly dreams of death and darkness? And what triggered it, why now? I didn't have any answers. And I knew no one could help me because as time went by, I realized I didn't need that kind of help, I wasn't crazy like I thought at first. Very soon, these pictures were accompanied by feelings, sounds, and once that happened, I knew they were memories.

I have a friend who's been practicing the black arts for a long time, so when I didn't know what else to do, I turned to her. But even she couldn't help me. She couldn't explain monsters, or vampires, or anything else I knew then I was a part of. She couldn't explain why a life I never lived was clashing with the one I was living, why people I didn't know were mingled with those I did. When I brought up past life as a possibility, she said it couldn't be, because I remembered too much and too clearly, and other things happened instead of those I claim did.

She suggested I looked for these places, these people, and it was what brought me to LA, but only to be disappointed again. I found the place called the Hyperion Hotel, but it was long abandoned, for a year at least, no one lived there. And no one lived in that city going by the names Cordelia Chase, Wesley Windham Price, Charles Gunn... No matter where I asked, where I looked, it seemed the ground had swallowed them. Some people even said they heard of them, some seemed to recognize me, what threw me even more, but no one could point out even a potential lead for me to follow.

And then my best friend sent me a picture of him and his girlfriend.

And his girlfriend had the face that haunted me seemingly forever. I remembered her eyes, I remembered her smile, her touch, the sound of her voice, I remembered everything of her more clearly than I remembered anything else. I even remembered how her skin felt to my touch, how her lips felt on mine, I remembered the salt of her tears and the spark in her eyes when she smiled. I remembered so many things I was sure even *he* didn't know. And she was real. Buffy. Buffy was real, I knew it then, because I knew that picture could only belong to one person.

And then I secluded in myself. He invited me so many times to visit them in that place called Sunnydale, but I could never show my face there. I knew if I ever did, there was no way back for me after. I remembered the old mansion, the warmth of the fireplace as she lay curled up in my arms, falling asleep to the sound of something I was reading to her. I remembered how her head rested on my chest on that bed, and how her soft breath caressed my skin, how her hand lay upon my still heart and made it seem like it was beating. I remembered the love in her eyes when she looked at me and the touch of her hand when it stroked my face. I even remembered the way her eyelids twitched in her sleep when I knew she was dreaming about me because I watched her and studied her so many times.

But she was my best friend's girl, she wasn't mine anymore. And I wasn't really in the position to be angry with her for not keeping the promise of always she'd given me.

And then she was his fiancée, and still, he knew nothing about anything, she never told him. She never made it his business to know I was ever in her life. It wasn't hard to understand when he told me about his precarious relationship with her 'brother', whom I knew to be my son. That was another face I could never bring myself to see. I asked him for a picture, using some lame excuse I don't even remember anymore, but that was as close as I could get to either one of them. Whenever I asked him anything about them, he either didn't have much to tell me or was avoiding questions, hiding something all the time. I knew what he was hiding. He was hiding from me a world I didn't even know existed up until about a year ago. How could he know I already was so much more a part of it than he ever would become?

So I don't know why after months of resisting, I couldn't endure it anymore and I came to this party. I don't know what I was thinking, what I was going to do. I don't even know why I said what I've just said. Whether it was an impulse, or some other reason drove me to it I'm not even aware of, I don't know. All I know is that I've been watching her all evening, and I've known all along she sensed I was there, just like she always did when I was out of sight. One time she even walked past me just a couple of feet away and I shrunk into the shadows so that she wouldn't see me. I didn't know how to approach her, I didn't know what to say. I spent the evening alone, watching her, watching my son. I didn't even tell my friend I was there.

But I couldn't let her marry him either, no matter who he was. An inner voice, stronger than any loyalty or friendship refused to let what's mine slip away. And *she* was mine. And she was real. And the hell with the repercussions, I could never let her go again.

She's still looking at me, with those tearful eyes, filled with so much agony, love, perplexity, and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and protect her from all the bad in the world. I want to feel her again, to claim her, to gain back everything I lost. But as I look into her eyes, I know she doesn't even believe I'm there.

"Buffy," I say her name again, and while nobody moves, she just stares at me for another second, then her eyes narrow in even more confusion, then open up again. She laughs, a dry laughter that quickly turns into a sob, as she presses the back of her hand to her lips and pushes her way past me, murmuring that I'm not real.

Before I know what's gotten into me I grab her by the arm and roughly pull her back to me. Without even looking her in the eyes for any sort of confirmation, I wrap my arms around her and kiss her.

My body is completely numb and it feels as if all life left it, for that single moment when his fingers close around my arm. He hauls me to him, so abruptly and possessively I don't think even he controls himself anymore. I know for sure I lost all control I had over my body or me emotions because I no longer care, about anything. I don't care whether he's real or not, and I don't care that dozens of eyes, my fiancé's including, are focused on the two of us right now with only one question - what the hell is going on.

I don't think I'm even conscience enough to *think* at the moment. His lips capture mine and they're soft, and warm, and they're just like I remember them from a day I'm not even supposed to remember. He holds me so tight it hurts and I'm crying, but I'm not crying because of the pain because I don't even really feel it. I'm crying because it's him, and the more he kisses me, the more I know, because no one ever kissed me like that, not even him in my dreams, not like that. And I'm also crying because he's crying, too. I open my mouth and invite his tongue inside, I rise on my toes to be even closer to him and his strong arms reinforce their so familiar hold around me and draw me up. As I wrap my arms around his neck, my breast is pressing against his chest and I can feel his heart beating perpetually in accord with my own.

I cradle his face in my hands and comb my fingers through his hair, finding everything just like I remember it, finding *him* just like I remember, with the steady heartbeat being the only evidence to that something has changed. My wrenching sobs increase until I can no longer kiss him and our lips part. I lay my head against his chest and, trembling, I let his shirt soak my tears and my pain die in his arms. And I let him hold me and love me, the way only he can do.

And just for a moment, there is no reason, no questions that need to be answered, no conscience, no care in the world. There are no people surrounding us, and I'm not supposed to be celebrating my engagement to another. There is just me, and there is him, holding me. The only thing I feel is his heartbeat, and the only thing I hear is him whispering to me that he loves me.

Just for a moment, before I have to wake up.

THE END