Disclaimer ~ Joss is
an evil heartless bastard, but that doesn't change the fact he owns all the
characters mentioned and I don't.
Notes ~ Oh look, it's
another post-'The Gift' Angel mourns Buffy fic, only this one's slightly (not
hugely) different. It's mega-dark, and I mean this girls and boys – Buffy's
dead and Angel's world collapses (even I got teary re-reading this and I cry at
practically nothing). The 'R' rating is for somewhat violent and sexual imagery.
And now that I've totally put you off reading it, I'll shut up…
Without You
I love you. I don't think I ever told you that
enough. I don't think I ever told you half the things I wanted to, like about
our forgotten day. Now I wish I'd done things differently, that I hadn't turned
back the day. I did it to save you; I gave my life in return for yours, like a
deal with the Powers. But they pretty much reneged on that agreement, didn't
they?
I
should be angry at the world. At first I was. I dealt with my emotions the only
way I knew how – I went out and ripped the heads off a couple of things. The
emphasis here, though, is on things, you'll be glad to hear. Those
demons didn't have a clue what hit them.
They barely got a chance to fight back before their bodies were in
pieces on the floor all around me. I stormed in to see the new Oracles,
demanding that they bring you back, that they take me instead, that they do
something, anything, so that the world doesn't have to live without you. So I
don't have to live without you. They just gave me their 'what is done cannot be
undone speech' and threw me out.
Then
I found I wasn't angry anymore, the pure, senseless rage was gone, to be
replaced with a crushing pain. I thought I knew suffering. I thought I had
experienced heartbreak, but I had no idea – none at all. I started crying then.
Huge racking sobs that shook my body and made my chest ache. And once I'd
started I didn't think I was ever going to be able to stop. Blood tears fell in
rivers from my eyes until everything turned red around me. I couldn't see
anything but I didn't care – you were gone and there was nothing to see anyway.
I
think I wondered through the caves and the sewers under Los Angeles for a
couple of weeks. Time has never meant much to be, considering I have an
unlimited supply of it. But when Wesley and Gunn finally found me they said I'd
been missing for a while and that they were worried. When they spoke to me it
was difficult to even understand them, it was like they were talking in a
foreign language. I barely even recognised my own name back then. I had been
starving myself alone in the dark for so long, trying to withdraw into my head
where I could be with you, that the outside world meant nothing to me anymore.
They
insisted that I go with them, however, and they led me back to the hotel. They
tried to talk to me in sympathetic voices that I all but ignored. What could
they possibly say to make me feel better? Eventually, they got the message and
left me alone. I switched the light off and sat in the darkness, thinking of
you.
I
thought a lot about how I wasn't there. I had promised to protect you always,
to never let anything happen to you. But in the end I couldn't even do that for
you. I should have been there helping you battle Glory, there to give my life
for yours, but I wasn't even in the same dimension as you at the time. Maybe
that's why I didn't know, I didn't feel you leaving me, like I always thought I
would. Why I never got the chance to say goodbye.
I
wondered if, given the choice, I would have gone to help you. Would I have left
Cordelia in Pylea in order to save you? Could I have exchanged her life for
yours? And I could never come up with an answer. Of course I thought, yes, I
would do anything, give up anything in this world to get you back. But Cordelia's
life isn't mine to bargain with, and if you'd just asked me for help dealing
with Glory, then I probably wouldn't have gone. You had your own friends to
back you up, we weren't a part of each other's lives anymore, were supposed to
fight battles on our own and I was in the middle of one for Cordelia at the
time.
I
suppose, in the end I was glad I never got to choose, because I'm sick of
making life and death decisions. I've had enough of it all. I want to tell the
powers to shove their redemption, because it doesn't mean anything to me
anymore. There won't be a Shanshu now, because I won't be working
towards one. I won't save the world again – it's not worth it. There's nothing
left I want to save.
There's
nothing inside me anymore. There used to be a space where I kept all my
memories and love and burgeoning humanity, but now that's gone. It's hollow and
empty, and I'm just left and emotionless shell. It's like being Angelus again,
except without the evil depravity and the socio-psychopathic leanings. It's
sort of similar to how I was over Darla. I just stopped caring about everything
and everybody. Now, though, I don't even feel the guilt that was my constant
for so many years. Those hundreds of thousands of lives I took don't mean
anything to me, because life as a whole now seems pointless.
Why
do we bother? Why does anybody bother? People are born to die. They enter this
world, have a few sad times, a few happy times, then they leave it again.
What's the point of it all? I used to think that life was all about moments,
that what made it worth living were the little things. Like the way your hair
smelled of kiwi fruit after you'd washed it or how my dead heart seemed to come
to life again when you smiled at me. I could suffer hundreds of years of pain
and torture and Hell – in fact, I did – if I could just see your smile one more
time…
But
there aren't going to be any more smiles. No more moments shining like
diamonds, like stars in the night sky. All there is now is the darkness, the
pitch black of my world, my heart, my soul. You were my rose tinted glasses.
With you in my life I saw the best of everything, because you saw the best of
me. Your beauty reflected on the surroundings and your light illuminated even
the darkest shadows. You gave me the ability to hear laughter, to see
happiness, to touch other people and to be touched. The world was a wonderful
place just because you were in it.
Now,
everything is ugly. The streets are dirty and pollution hangs in the air.
People I meet are callous and uncaring. Evil spreads like a cancer throughout
my city and I've given up the search for the cure. All I can do is stand back
and watch people suffer and die. Even then they are luckier than I am, because
in death they have their final escape, they don't have to fight their way
through the pain and the heartbreak of life anymore. They are released. I long
for that – for the oblivion of not existing, for an end to everything and
everyone. There would be no you, but there would be no without you either. That
is what I work towards now, not humanity, not happiness, just nothingness.
I
would kill myself to achieve it. I would walk out into the sun in a second if I
knew it would end everything. I would drive a stake into my own heart without a
moment's thought if I weren't convinced the action would send me straight into
Hell and to even greater torment than I could possibly face on earth. In Hell I
would have to suffer your death over and over and over again, and I'm having
problems enough dealing with it happening just the once. I remember more of
Hell than I ever let on, mainly because I didn't want to hurt you by describing
sufferings your hand had ultimately condemned me to. And I suppose I got good
at pushing these memories to the back of my mind – there was always something
bigger, something more immediate to deal with. The First, leaving you, Darla,
they all consumed my thoughts with a sharp pain that far overshadowed the dull
ache of Hell.
But
now I've shut life out. I live inside my dreams and my memories, because
there's nowhere else for me to go anymore. Maybe it makes me worse, more
depressed and more insulated from the world, but I don't care. I have eternity
to waste, I'm not going anywhere, so I may as well wallow in pain and self-pity
while I have the opportunity. Perhaps the pain will fade one day and the break
inside me will gradually be mended. Perhaps my memories of you will slip away
and things will start to resemble okay again. Somehow I doubt it, but this is
the excuse I use when concerned people come to bother me. Cordy, Wesley, Gunn,
Willow, Giles, even Spike, they have all tried to talk me out of my fugue
state. I always respond the same. I offer polite reassurances. No, I am not
going to attempt suicide. Yes, I know you're all there for me. I just need a
little more time…
Strangely
enough Spike was the only one who understood well enough to leave me alone and
to advise the others to do so too. He even stopped Cordelia from coming,
something I am grateful for. Seeing her awakened the last vestiges of the person
inside me. I couldn't bear to look at her strained face as she took in my red
eyes and my even paler than usual skin. I hated the hurt she projected when she
saw me, her empathy towards my grief. I don't need other people to help me get
over this. There is no getting over this.
And
Spike, to my amazement, gets that, I think because he is a vampire like me. For
humans life is short. Everything that they do or feel is finite. They are going
to die someday, often someday soon, so they cannot possibly pledge anything
forever. Vampires, however, have eternity to play with, there are no
constraints on what they spend their time doing, because time is the one thing
they will never run out of. Humans rely on the maxim that time heals all
wounds. That's not true. It is the lack of time that heals most wounds.
People are afraid that they'll squander their short existences on grief or pain
or other things that their meagre life experience tells them are not good. It
is fear of dying without having accomplished anything, fear of the
pointlessness of their own lives that makes them forget. They push the hurt
down in their own mind so that they can leave it behind them and move on to
bigger and better things.
But
vampires don't forget. We spend huge chunks of our unlives replaying incidents
in our heads, revelling in our glory, cursing our failure, generally
overanalysing every memory and experience. We can forge alliances that last for
centuries and hold grudges for even longer. While I was Angelus, I spent
literally years fixating on how I murdered my father. I relived the moment over
and over again in my head, savouring the taste of his blood in my throat,
resenting the way it turned bitter when it was all over, trying to understand
his hold over me. I even passed on this obsessive legacy to one of my childer –
Penn. I never told you that story, did I? The way he recreated the deaths of
his family, trying to get back that same high, but also trying to correct the
many mistakes he made with them.
That's
what vampires are – fanatical, fixated creatures. That was never something I
let you know, because I thought it might scare you. I didn't want you to worry
that you were just another one of my obsessions, that you replaced the
screaming voices in my head that I'd been hearing ever since I regained my
soul. I know that Spike loved you like that. He obsessed over you, he had to
possess you, he was fascinated by your power and beauty. I can't honestly say
that it wasn't the same for me, at least partially. Maybe that was all it was
at first, another attractive woman in the long line of them I have had over the
years. I was like a moth to a flame, throwing myself at your light. But later
it was different. Things changed. I loved you like a man not a demon and it
made it too complicated. I wasn't a man so I had to leave. It wasn't about what
I wanted anymore – it was about what you deserved.
Now,
though, I am obsessed once more. With you, with everything about you. Your
life, your death, what it felt like to kiss you, what it felt like to bite you
and drain that magnificent life force from you. I examine all of my feelings
for you. The soul deep, pure romantic love, the unwavering certainty that you
were the One, my other half, the only person who could complete me and give me
a reason to carry on in this world. My lust, red like passion, burning my body,
my heart. Angelus' urges – his desire to harm, to kill, to taste your blood, to
take you and make you his for eternity. The protective instincts I possess, the
way I want to wrap you up in my arms and stop any dangers ever reaching you
again. My anger, my pain at the times you hurt me – when you promised never to
forget then you did, when you threw your relationship with Riley in my face,
just because you wanted to look into my eyes as you did so and see my heart
break there.
All
these emotions mingle together, so I don't know where one ands and the next
begins. I love you. I hate you. I want you in my bed, in my arms. I want to
kiss your pure white skin and revere you the way a goddess should be revered. I
want to taste you like vanilla and honey, like warmth and sunshine. I want to
rip your throat out and drink the red river that pours from it. I want us to
curl up together and fall asleep with one another, a picture of contentment and
love.
I
think of you tenderly, gently, softly – my love, my little innocent girl. I
imagine you violently, hurting you, taking you sexually. If you knew, if you'd
ever known some of the dreams and fantasies I had even with a soul about you,
you would have staked me on the spot. But you always refused to see that
darkness inside of me, always just loved me blindly, so how could I not have
loved you back equally? I want you to know now, now that I'm laying the whole
of myself bare to you, that I never would have hurt you like that, I never
would have acted upon any of the dreams. Because my soul understood where the
limits between us lay. These aren't my soul's urges that I speak of, but the
demon's. The demon loves you too in it's own way, in the same way it loved
Darla and Drusilla and abused them as a result. Vampire relationships have so
many levels, so many facets to them. Some I let you see, like the fiery passion
and the eternal loyalty – other's I kept hidden, like the bloodplay, the submission
and the domination, the violence and the claiming. I would afraid you wouldn't
understand, afraid you'd shy away from me – maybe I underestimated you, it's
too late to ever know now. It's too late for anything.
I
have so many regrets. Too many to count even. But I've stopped even caring
about the biggest ones, like letting Darla turn me, or losing my soul with you
again. I think some things are so huge and unchangeable that they must have
been predestined, like my being cursed. Sometimes I even wish that never happened,
because if I'd just stayed as Angelus I would have been spared so much pain and
grief, but then I wouldn't have met you either and how can I possibly regret
that? But I'm getting sidetracked, what I wanted to tell you was that I wish I
never left you. That I'm sorry, I was wrong and you were right – we weren't
better off apart. I wish we had those last two years together, that final extra
bit of time. I wish I'd never changed the day back, that I'd stayed human and
we'd been together. I only did it to save you and if it didn't work then I may
as well have stayed mortal. At least we could have had some brief happiness
before the inevitable happened.
I
think it was inevitable. I've been thinking a lot about fate recently, about
the idea that our lives are controlled by outside forces. And I've concluded
that they must be. I know there's no way I ever would have chosen for my life
(or unlife, if you want to be exact) to turn out like this. If I'd had a choice
I never would have fallen in love with you. I never would have let you fall in
love with me. I wouldn't have hurt you. I would have killed myself that
Christmas on the hill above Sunnydale. But whatever, I tried to do to change
things, however strongly I tried to exert my freewill; there was nothing I
could do to stop it. The whole of your life was building up to that moment when
you sacrificed yourself for the world. All the hurt and the pain and the love
and the joy and the friendship you experienced it was all to make you strong
enough for that single second. It was all to make you the kind of beautiful,
noble, passionate woman who would give away the greatest gift she ever
possessed, all for another.
I
regret hurting you, I regret leaving you, I regret not being there to help you
at the end or to say goodbye, but I don't regret what you did. You wouldn't be
the woman that I love with my entire being, the one thin thread that still
binds me to this earth and stops me slipping away completely, if you hadn't
jumped into that portal to save Dawn's life. I always knew that would be how
you'd die, that it wouldn't be old and riddled with disease or unsung in a dark
alley. I knew you'd go in a blaze of glory, saving the world. And if it's
possible I love you even more for it.
I
wish I could kiss you just one more time, could feel your soft lips on mine,
entangle my hand in your hair, inhale your sweet scent. And then I'd know that
it was the last time, I'd know to make the most of it, to commit every little
sensation to memory, to psyche myself up to the prospect of living without you
forever. I never thought there would be no more kisses. I told myself over and
over again that I'd left you for good, that we couldn't be together, that our
relationship was doomed, but I never once truly believed it. There was always
this spark of hope buried deep inside me that one day all the obstacles
surrounding our relationship would be removed. And that spark only got brighter
once I'd found out about my possible Shanshu. My heart's faith in our
love never once dwindled and I always thought there would be another time, a
brighter future for us.
It
was like the night of your prom, when I held you in my arms and we danced
together. At the end of the evening we kissed, softly, sweetly, with tears in
our eyes. It wasn't a frenzied kiss or a hungry one, it wasn't desperate or
passionate as if our lips would never meet again, because we both knew that
they would. Then we didn't say goodbye, just goodnight.
And
of course, we were right. Things didn't end there. We couldn't just stop loving
each other, and wanting each other, and needing each other, just because
we thought we should, or because other people thought we should. There were
more kisses, dozens of them on the day that never happened, the day that I hope
you remember now and forgive me for. Then there was that night after your
mother's funeral, the time we spent sat together underneath the tree. You asked
me to stay forever and then you kissed me. We kissed. The Last Time. And I
didn't know. I just smiled at you and brushed away your tears and left again
like I always leave. I didn't know it would be the last time I ever saw you.
It's
strange how people always think the most important moments in their lives – the
ones that define them and that they'll remember for the rest of their days –
should always be the biggest things, the most significant things. But they're
not. I hardly remember anything from that night Darla Turned me in a dirty
alley somewhere. I just have vague images of pain and blood and sex. Everything
is fuzzy and indistinct. I can't even recall what it feels like to die, other
than the experience of a hollow, dizziness and the world fading to darkness.
But that night when I kissed you with a brief touch of our lips (nothing
compared to the passionate embraces that have gone before, or the nights of
soulless sex with multiple partners) – that I can remember with perfect
clarity. That single second, seemingly insignificant at the time, is burnt upon
my soul.
I
go to Sunnydale a lot now. Cordelia used to beg me not to, to get on with my
life, that there were other people who needed my help, needed me to be more
than just a broken man obsessing over his ex-girlfriend's death. I never listened
to anything she said after that. I knew then that she didn't understand, she
could never understand. So, I just pushed her away and went to Sunnydale. I
pushed them all away eventually. Now they don't even bother coming to check on
me anymore. They've just given up on me and I like it that way, because I
already gave up on myself.
I've
thought a bit about moving back to Europe, there's lots of towns there to get
lost in, nobody notices another passing tourist. I could travel from city to
city, flitting through countries I haven't visited in one hundred years, none
of which have the vaguest association with you. Maybe even the colour of life
there would distract me for a while, away from the greys and the blacks that LA
is cloaked in. But I can't bring myself to leave here, to get too far away from
the place where I met you, where we shared so much together, where you rest now…
Many
nights I used to stand in that patch of cemetery where we saw one another for
the last time. I watched over that spot where you stood at your mother's grave,
waiting for me to arrive and I waited for you to come back. I thought that if I
waited long enough you'd be there, standing with your head bowed, knowing I was
there without even being able to see me, because you could feel my presence,
like I can feel yours. Except I can't anymore, because you're not here to feel,
or you are here, but it's not really you, it's just the shell of who you used to
be.
You
never appeared standing above that grave, so eventually I came out of the
shadows. I stopped waiting for you to come back and I walked over, past the
tree where we kissed for the last time, on to the headstone with your name on
it. Buffy Anne Summers 1981-2001. It's really you under all that earth.
I can't believe it, but it's true. It's really your body rotting away, your
beautiful face distorted with decay. I saw the words, I traced them with my
fingers, as if to make sure they actually said what I thought they did, because
I couldn't believe my eyes anymore than I could believe my heart. You're not
dead – you couldn't possibly be dead. I thought you'd live forever, because I
could never bring myself to contemplate the alternative.
But
now it's not an alternative, now it's a reality. You're dead and I'm standing
at your grave. I'm falling to my knees, because my legs won't hold me up
anymore. I'm covering my eyes, because I don't want to see, don't want to be
faced with the harsh truth. And I'm not crying because I have no tears left
inside me, I'm empty now. Without you.
I've
seen so much death in my life, caused so much. I should understand it now. But
there's one thing I will never comprehend. How can you possibly be gone? How
can the world carry on without you in it? How can I survive another day,
another hour, another minute… knowing I will never see you again?
I
can't.
Fin.
"The stars are
not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon
and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the
ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now
can ever come to any good."
'Funeral Blues' –
W.H.Auden