“Buffy, love,” a voice floated out to her. Strangely familiar, hauntingly comforting.
“Angel?”
The voice was different than his counterpart’s, softer, filled with love not possession; a gentle benediction that always made her soul soar. Not as harsh as Angelus’, not as commanding; hesitant, caring, full of wonder. Opening her eyes, she looked around her. Gone was the harsh reality of hell, the smell of sulfur and brimstone – what did that smell like, anyway? No longer was the sun eclipsed by red haze, the green land converted into scorched earth.
In the bright sunlit field, standing under a copse of weeping willows, Angel waited for her.
“Angel,” she repeated with a smile, and walked towards him with a light in her eye long missing. “Where are we?”
He shrugged, stepping out into the sunlight just at the edge of the trees. He waited for Buffy to reach him, to stare up at him in awe. Her small hand lifted and traced his face, in longing, yearning for what was with all her heart. Buffy noticed that even here the ring Angelus gave her still lay on her finger, not the one her sweet Angel had; that probably meant that the other signs of his possession also adorned her body, but Buffy didn’t look. She wanted to focus on Angel’s face, on his smile, on the look of pure love in his eyes.
So similar to Angelus’, yet so very different. The sun shone brightly down on them, highlighting his handsome features, his eyes, his hair. He wore blue jeans, something she never thought to see him in, and a silk shirt with the top buttons undone. His feet were bare, toes digging into the soft grass.
He was utterly gorgeous. Leaning closer, Buffy kissed his lips, feeling their softness, their response.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
“And I you, my love.” Angel clasped her hand, leading her along a trail she hadn’t seen before, around the weeping willows. “You have to be safe, Buffy,” he told her.
“Aren’t I, here, with you?”
“This isn’t real, love, and you know that.” It broke Angel’s heart to tell her that, but there was no way not to. She needed to know what kind of danger she faced, the realities of ruling by Angelus’ side.
“Can we pretend it’s real?” His only response was to bring her hand to his lips and kiss her palm. It was something Angelus had done on several occasions, and Buffy realized that it was because he knew she loved it when Angel had done it.
“I don’t want to wake up,” she whispered as they stopped by a large soft-wool blanket, tugging Angel down with her. “When I do, he’ll be there and I won’t have you. Let me stay here with you,” she pleaded, “Let this be our world.”
“I’ll always be with you, Buffy. I love you; nothing can change that.” He lay down with her, gathering her close to his side, cheek resting against the crown of her head, hands holding her as possessively as Angelus ever did.
“How could you?” She asked, tears pooling in her hazel eyes. “Oh God, Angel I killed you! And I relive it every time I close my eyes, it was so beautiful, our night was so perfect and so beautiful. And it killed you.”
His lips found hers again, and he kissed her quiet. “Shh, love. Don’t think about that. What happened was meant to be, there was nothing you could do to change that.”
One tear slipped free, and Angel caught the drop with his thumb, watching it as if that single drop held answers he long sought. Buffy fought to keep her tears at bay, but she couldn’t. For months, all she wanted was to be in Angel’s arms again, to have him hold her and tell her that everything was just a nightmare, a horrible nightmare that didn’t really happen. Now that he was there, that he was holding her, all he could do was tell her that it was meant to be.
“It was meant to be that I killed you?” she cried. “No, I don’t believe that. Someone fucked up, someone screwed with us, they messed with us, and now you’re paying the price! What kind of God let’s something like this happen?”
Giving her a sorrowful look, Angel held her closer. “Never doubt that I love you, Buffy. I always have and always will. But this is reality now, this is what you have to face. I can’t be with you; you have to be strong on your own. You have to live for me!”
“I can’t,” she tearfully admitted, “Without you I can’t.”
“Yes you can,” Angel insisted. “You are the strongest person I know. You can because I love you, I believe in you just as you believed in me. Baby, I love you so much that my demon wants you as well.”
Buffy flinched, and Angel kissed her forehead, “I’m sorry, love, but it’s true. You know it’s true; and you know what he is and what he was. God, you don’t know how extraordinary that is, to know something like that, to hold that in your hand. He wants you all to himself; he doesn’t want to lose you, just as I didn’t. Oh, baby, I never wanted you tainted by what I am. I hoped you would never know…never understand. But here it is, and now there’s no escaping it. Now you know.”
Buffy snorted, and closed her eyes, lying her head on Angel’s arms and trying to delay reality for one more minute as he wiped the tears off her face. “Where are we, Angel?” She asked again, leaning into his touch, his scent. It was the same as Angelus, but there were subtle differences. The tenderness, the affection. Angelus showed he wanted her, showed her how much, but it wasn’t with the same…need, the same feeling that Angel always did.
“We’re in a future, a possible future that once was.” It broke his heart to admit that, to tell her what he knew. He didn’t want to burden her, no more than she already was, but to keep something like this a secret, to deny her that which she longed for, what they both did, what they both dreamed of…? He couldn’t do it.
Buffy’s breath caught, and her eyes shot open. Her anguish was clear for him to see, and Angel wanted to take back all the words he just told her. “This was…what we could’ve had?”
“A possibility of what we could’ve had,” he corrected gently. “For every action, there are an infinite number of reactions. For every choice we make, there are an infinite number of consequences for that choice. This is merely one of them.”
He didn’t want to tell her of others he saw. Of the world where she was dead at the hands of the master, where he was unable to save her, where she was forced to kill him because the world was endangered. Where she died saving the world from a hell goddess, where they weren’t together because they were both too stubborn to admit to mistakes and right the wrongs they both knew they did. Where they were together, but the world was a dark place, and they were the only ones left to fight for it.
Or, worse, where they were together and the world was at their feet, the most feared rulers of the land.
In some scenarios, it was she and Angelus who ruled. In others, it was he, Angel, who decided that redemption wasn’t to be had, and he had forsaken that path to be with the only one he loved. In still others, they were together, human and in love, and neither ever knew of worlds where that wasn’t to be.
“But here,” she said, her voice hopeful, her eyes holding love and trust, a faith in him Angel wasn’t sure he deserved, not after what he’d seen, not after what he left her to, here and now. “Here we’re together. Are we…are we happy?”
“Yes, beloved,” Angel whispered, brushing a lock of hair off her face. “Here we’re very happy.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say to that, didn’t know if there was something else to say.
He leaned is forehead against hers, trying to gain the strength to set her free to do what must be done. “You have to be prepared, beloved,” Angel whispered, trying to move the conversation to where it needed to go before Angelus returned. Once he did, Angel knew that the demon (god, whatever) would want Buffy, and the soul would lose his chance.
“Prepared for what?” Buffy didn’t want to be prepared. She wanted to stay here with Angel, in this idyllic interlude forever. She didn’t want to wake; she didn’t want to return to the real world. She wanted to stay here and be with the one she loved.
“Angelus,” Angel whispered, “He wants you. Drusilla told you that he remade the world just for you, and she’s right. But I don’t think even she knows just how close to the brink of destruction he came. Then again maybe she did,” he murmured thoughtfully pondering everything that had to happen for them to be right where they were today. ”Maybe she did know just how unstable he was becoming.”
“I know,” Buffy sighed. “He did it because I couldn’t, wouldn’t, live in his world, and he refused to live in mine. I know, he told me this.”
“But do you understand? Beloved, please, listen to me.” Angel insisted, and forced Buffy’s chin up so their eyes met. Unable to resist another taste, Angel leaned in to kiss her, tongue probing the heated depths of her mouth, committing her taste to memory this one last time.
Breaking off, he held her closely for several precious moments he wasn’t sure they had. “Angelus wants you,” he finally said.
“He wants you to the exclusion of all others, but that won’t stop him from taking other lovers.” Buffy flinched at that, and hated that she did. Angel said nothing, simply held her tighter.
“It won’t stop him, because he feels, deep down, that it’s the only power he has to fight what you feel for me, and your continued denial of him. To force you to admit what you feel for him is no less than what you feel for me. He knows that if he does, if he takes other lovers, then he’ll play several cards, and you won’t deal with that well. He knows this and is willing to give you some leeway; Angelus wants you to go to him willingly. But he won’t wait forever for you, Buffy; and if you wait too long, you’ll lose all power you have over him. Continuing to deny what he knows you feel for him will have consequences you don’t want to pay, love.”
“Power,” Buffy scoffed. “What power? I don’t have any power; Angelus holds all the cards, Angel. He’s got everyone in his dungeons, keeping them there so that I don’t fight him.”
“You know what power,” he looked at her, hands combing through her hair, “You’ve sensed it yourself. Angelus wants you; he changed the world just to have you. Now he’s more powerful than ever, more powerful than any being on the planet. But you are his weakness. Without you, there would be no Acathlan Hell. Without you, he…” Angel paused, looked at his lover.
“Without you he’s much like I was. We’re lost,” Angel admitted something he never, ever wanted to. He never wanted to know Angelus as well as he did; now, now that they were no longer sharing the same body, the soul learned things about the demon he never wanted to consciously realize. He never wanted to admit, to realize, that he and his demon had a lot more in common than vampirism. And he certainly never wanted to admit any of this to Buffy.
“We’re so very lost, because he is me.”
Buffy stared at him incredulously; he couldn’t be saying that, she wouldn’t believe it. “No…Angel,” she shook head, “No.”
“Yes!” He insisted, gripping her shoulders tightly, trying to instill the truth into her in the short amount of time they had remaining. It wasn’t enough and wouldn’t ever be. Eternity wouldn’t be enough for them.
“God baby, you don’t know the nights I battled against taking you and running; screw your destiny or mine, screw the Chosen babble, screw the star-crossed vampire and slayer in love bullshit. Nights where I yearned for the freedom of a world where there was nothing but you and me. Days,” he murmured, his touch gentle along her arms, slowly caressing her skin, arousing with so simple a touch, with the intensity of his look, with the fire of his words.
“Days when I’d wake alone in my bed, scared that something had taken you from me while I waited for the sun to set. Thoughts, feelings, fears that go bone deep to the core of who I am, who....we are. A love for you so deep that it changed me. And changed my demon. The soul didn’t prevent the selfish longing…the desire. It just gave me the ability to choose. I knew you needed to stay, so I stayed for you. Once Whistler gave me you to live for, I couldn’t have gone on without you.”
She knew she held some power over Angelus, knew that because he’d gone to such lengths to change everything for her, to kidnap her friends and family and keep them safe. That there was a bargaining chip here. What she never would’ve guessed, never suspected, was that Angel and Angelus both loved her – her Buffy Summers, seventeen-year-old slayer – enough to cease existence in the event of her death.
It was overwhelming. And Buffy wasn’t sure she really believed it, nor yet that she wanted it.
“You’re lying,” she whispered, accusing Angel of something she never would’ve have suspected. “You…” and now there was curious acceptance in her voice but she still hated it. “You’d die if I were dead?”
“Buffy,” Angel admitted, “When the Master killed you, if Xander hadn’t been able to revive you, I would’ve been ash on your tombstone.”
Wrapping her arms around his waist and pulling him closer, Buffy hugged him with all her love. “I love you, Angel. Please don’t forget that. I never wanted you to die for me; and it’s I who should be punished now.”
“Don’t think like that,” he snapped eyes angry at her admission. “You didn’t know! I didn’t know! We fell in love, and as long as I was in control of Angelus, it wasn’t an issue. If I had had a choice, if there was ever a choice, I’d always chose to let you live, to have you suffer the least. If I could take away any of your suffering, Buffy, I would.”
He pulled her close to him, burying his face in her hair, breathing in the delicious scent of her, the love and arousal that radiated off her, the comfort and acceptance. “If I had known of the clause, I would have left to spare you this pain, rather than endanger you. But the odds were against us, beloved, and you did the best you could.”
He paused, looked at the setting sun. “Our time is almost up, and there are still things I have to tell you.”
He rubbed his thumb along her lower lip, eyes following the movement. There was so much he wanted to tell her, but he was limited in time and needed her to be safe. It was all that mattered now, the only thing he cared about.
“Angelus changed everything for you, including himself. He wants you, and doesn’t care what he has to do to get you. Your friends and family don’t understand that, they think nothing has change. Everything has. They think with him gone there’s a magickal fix for the world; there isn’t. Even if, by some miracle, he could be defeated – which isn’t possible, not now – the world won’t return to what it was.”
Angel watched her eyes, saw that she knew this already, she just couldn’t accept it. She didn’t want to, and he couldn’t blame her. She was a young woman, only seventeen, and even if she was the slayer, it didn’t change the fact that she was extremely naïve about many things. He never wanted that naivety to go away, never wanted her to lose that; for her soul to diminish in brightness and pureness.
Fate had other ideas, and if Angel could figure out how to find them, he would and make sure they understood what they’d done. What horrors they brought to his love.
“The more you try to protect them from that reality, from this reality, the more they’ll resent you for it; they have to change to survive. Beloved, please be careful. I know…I know what happened, and I don’t blame you; it’s the source of my greatest triumph and shame. That you accepted me unconditionally, demon and man, loved my demon and soul for all that I am. We loved…”
There were tears in his eyes, but Angel refused to shed them. There’d be time enough for that, later. When she wasn’t with him, when he was alone again, when he had nothing but time to think on things and look at the past, to see so many possible futures for the two of them.
“Oh, God how I love you, baby.” His lips found her for a brief moment. ”There is no shame in that, you did nothing wrong; it was the most precious moment in my life. You gave me things I’ve never had. And because we loved…” he swallowed painfully and admitted in a quiet voice, “Now he loves you. In his own way, but he loves you as well. It is the source of his greatest conflict. You told me you loved all of me. Now I’m holding you to that. Take that, use it; love him because Angelus needs that. Needs to believe that you will eventually love him as much as you love me. Do whatever you must to survive, understood? Live for me, for us!”
Buffy nodded, tears again slipping down her cheeks. “I don’t want to leave you, Angel.”
“Shh, love, it’s okay,” he promised, and tried to finish what he needed her to know before their time was up. “He won’t wait forever for you to commit to him, Buffy. He wants your willing capitulation, but that won’t stop him.”
“I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t commit to him, everything…being with him, agreeing to all this, it’s…” She looked away from Angel’s understating eyes and whispered. “Angel, it feels like it’s all some betrayal of you.”
“No, Buffy,” he all but yelled, terrified she’d do something stupid to herself. Turning her gaze back to his, he added in a softer tone, “Don’t think like that. I love you, and I know you love me. Don’t ever forget that. Angelus wants your love. I...I know you Buffy; if you didn’t care at least a little, you couldn’t have ever…” he swallowed and finished. “If you love him in return, then you’ll always be safe.”
“I don’t want to! I don’t want to love him, I don’t want to need him, I don’t want to crave his body and what he does to mine. I don’t want to leave you!” Her cries were uncontrollable now, but she couldn’t help it. Her heart was breaking, and it felt a thousand times worse than when she first realized it was her, her love, her insistence they make love that killed her lover.
She couldn’t leave him again.
“No. God, Angel, please don’t make me; just because I have your permission won’t make the hurting any less. I can’t do it. Please let me stay here with you.”
His heart breaking at how young she sounded, at the plea in her voice, Angel insisted, “You have to, love. You have to commit to him, or everything will fall apart. I know-” he cut himself off, unwilling to reveal what he knew of her situation. There was no other choice, and the sun was almost set now.
“I know what you’re feeling; I know what you think of him already. Nothing,” he insisted when he saw the horror in her gaze, “Nothing can change the way I feel for you, but I need you to accept what you know, what you really feel.”
“I can’t,” Buffy cried.
“Then you’re dead.” It was flat, emotionless, though his eyes told a totally different story. “Be strong, my love, stay true to yourself, it’s what drew him to you to start with; he hungers for your light, you are his,” Angel paused and amended, “You are our light. Do it, and you will live. Your friends will never see that, they’ll blame you, and accuse you; accuse you of things you’d never do. They won’t understand your…relationship with Angelus; then again, they never understood, anyway.”
He cupped her face with his large hands, his thumb gently tracing her brow down to her cheek before lightly caressing her bottom lip in a gently soothing motion. “If you survive, then I do as well. Angelus needs you as much as I ever did. Remember that.”
He pressed his lips to hers again, one last time. One more touch, one more taste, one more memory for the long days in the aether where nothing was real but everything was, and only hope survived. If it was heaven, it wasn’t Angel’s. Not without Buffy by his side. So he endured the endless days of nothingness, and waited for a time when he would forget. And fought against a time when he wouldn’t remember.
“Angel,” Buffy murmured, and opened her eyes into the dim stone room. “Don’t…”
Drusilla stared back at her with an ancient knowledge in her dark, hooded eyes. Buffy’s breath caught as she realized where she was…and what had happened. She knew. Dru knew that Buffy was dreaming of Angel. (Angel, I miss you so much. Why couldn’t I stay there? We’d be together…)What would she-
Just then, the door opened, and Angelus entered. He looked between Buffy and Drusilla, watched as they stared at each other in some kind of silent communion. Frowning at this, at the knowledge that passed between his childe and his lover, Angelus nodded his dismissal to his childe. She left without a word, leaving the pair alone in their room, distant from the crowd of eager disciples.
For long minutes, Buffy stared at her captor, her lover, and yes, even her prisoner. Angel was right, Buffy realized. She remembered Lilah, how the bitch wanted Angelus, and yet the question was: did the demon do something, show the slightest interest in the human, before or after Lindsey started hitting on Buffy? Staring at him watching her, she knew that there were others out there who wanted what she’d been handed.
Angelus, power, authority, worship. The power over life and death, the power over Angelus. They wanted him, to be the one in his bed, to be the one he held above all others. They wanted her gone, because they knew she had that, and all without doing more than fight him on a daily basis.
She believed this because Angel told her, and she loved and trusted him more than anything or anyone.
So if she believed that, then she also believed everything else he told her. Angelus wanted her willing capitulation, he wanted her to eagerly accept all he had done for her; he wanted her to know, to realize, to recognize why he had done all of it. He couldn’t admit the why, not to her, not yet. He couldn’t admit that he wanted her…that he loved her. That wasn’t in his nature, and Buffy wasn’t sure she was ready to accept that, anyway.
“Feeling better, lover?” He asked, and moved slowly and fluidly into the room.
How long had she been asleep? How long had she been in that perfect dream world with Angel?
“Yes,” she nodded, her voice low and husky from sleep. “I feel much better now,” she smiled at him, and discovered it wasn’t that hard to do. It felt almost natural, smiling at the demon, the creature, the lover before her. Almost. Would that get easier? Yes, if she let herself accept it, then everything would be easier. She hoped.
"I’m hungry, though. I guess it’s too much to hope for some Chinese takeout?”
Angelus laughed at that, pulling the rope beside their bed. Eyeing her figure, covered by the green satin material she chose, the former vampire sat on the bed, facing her with a curious air. She didn’t move when he sat down, his knee nearly touching hers as she sat cross-legged on the bed and that, too, stirred his curiosity.
There was something different about her, but he couldn’t place what. He’d tried to see into her dreams, while he listened to several of his Acathlan Nobles speak to him about moving the rest of their people here. Angelus had wanted to perhaps join her there, but found he couldn’t. It wasn’t something he liked, being blocked from her; even in so insignificant an aspect as her sleep.
A knock sounded on their door, and Angelus rose to take the tray from the vampire there. Carrying it to her, he placed it on the bed and continued to watch her. She dug into the lo mien with relish, humming at the taste of the noodles.
“Where did you get this?” She wondered, sipping at the glass of clear water. She’d have preferred something caffeinated, but Angelus was on this healthy eating kick for her – no, she didn’t know why. So water was the best she ever got. “I didn’t think there was a Chinese restaurant within a thousand mile radius.”
Angelus chuckled at that, “For you, my love, anything is possible.” He brushed a lock of hair off her cheek, and Buffy was struck by the similarities between he and Angel. No, Angelus wasn’t sweet, he wasn’t tender or gentle, but he was passionate, and he wanted her. He was there, and he wanted her, and if what Angel said was true, and Buffy believed that it was, then he wasn’t going to wait for her forever.
And once he no longer wanted her, once he no longer waited, then she lost all leverage with him. It probably wouldn’t happen right away, Angelus went through a lot of trouble to make all this happen. Her mom, friends, Acathla, wooing her, it wasn’t something he did lightly. But if he was patient to begin with, then he wouldn’t have opened Acathla in the first place.
Buffy moved her gaze from the demon before her to her plate, concentrating on her lo mien and chicken.
“Why-” she wanted to ask about Lilah, about why Angelus did what he did with the pretty lawyer. But she didn’t want to know the answer. “Lilah,” she tried again, and couldn’t keep the anger – the jealously and hatred and resent – out of her voice. “Why…?”
“Why did I taste her?” Angelus asked, his dark eyes piercing hers. “Why did I even pretend to fuck her?”
Buffy didn’t answer right away, she couldn’t. What was she supposed to say? Yes, she wanted to know all that. But she didn’t want to, didn’t want to know. She was still so innocent of many things involving Angelus; what he wanted, how he acted, that she was afraid of the answer.
She was so young and naïve, Angelus thought as he watched her struggled with an answer. It was delicious, the way it hung heavy in the air, the way it made him want to destroy it and savor it all at once.
“Yes, damn you,” she hissed, and was surprised that she did. “Why?” Her gaze was a light silver, angry and suspicious. “Why did you drink from her, why did you touch her, why did you-”
“Fuck her?” Angelus asked, amused when she didn’t finish her questioning. “But I didn’t, my dear,” he said, and stood smoothly. “I didn’t fuck her as you were whoring yourself out to that lawyer.”
“Lindsey?” Buffy asked, not at all appeased.
“Yes,” Angelus growled, “Who else?” He gripped her chin in his large hand, “You shouldn’t try me Buff. You’ll never win.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, slipping it off his body with a grace Buffy wouldn’t have thought one could have. But he did have it, and she’d seen it, felt it, wanted it for hers, wanted him (Angel) (Angelus) for hers. His marble skin was beautiful, smooth and pale; the muscles hard and firm, so cool to the touch if she’d only reach out and do so.
Eyes still angry, hungry and angry and predatory, Buffy did just that.
She didn’t want to be reminded of Lindsey and the sacrifice she made for a man she didn’t know. She didn’t want to think about what he represented, a human willingly working with the demon community for profit and prestige. She wanted to forget, she wanted to forget this world and her place in it, and the only person who could do that was before her.
The one who made it her world, who made her place in it, who did this to her. The irony was not lost on either of them.
When Angelus leaned down to kiss her, when he swept the half-eaten tray of food off the bed, sending it crashing to the far side of the room, strong arms trapping her within his embrace, Buffy didn’t resist. Was she damning herself in giving into him? Yes. Was she willing to do that just for a little peace, just to forget, just to feel? Yes. Was she doing this to save her family below? No, Buffy had to admit. No she was not.
She was doing this for herself. She was doing this because she wanted to, because she wanted him.
This time her arms wound around his body immediately. This time she leaned up to meet his lips instantly. This time she responded wholly, without his prodding, without his teasing and tormenting.
“Angelus,” she moaned, and arched beneath him, kissing the lips that growled their approval at her response.
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