Author's hideous rambling: Ok so NFA is like a sore I can't stop picking at. My belief is that Joss will, at some point before I die or climb a tower, TELL US what the four-letter word happened in the alley... but until he does, I keep dancing around the thing, trying to be reasonably logical and tell a story about what happened without actually saying what happened as I don't really know what happened... Yeh, that made sense. Anyway, this is a postscript to "From The Desk Of Angel".. kinda... I left it out of "From The DesK" for now as I sorta like it on it's own... I may merge them at some point, I don't really know.

Post Script

Undead.

That's the common term for my kind. The vampire way of existing. My heart doesn't beat. The blood that flows through my veins… well how that works is anyone's guess. I never really thought about it. I walk, I talk. I can whistle, if I were the whistling type. I can even breathe although it's just a reflex and has nothing to do with keeping me in the condition I'm in. I am physically somewhere in between what is considering living and dead. So, they came up with "undead". I guess "unliving" just sounded weird.

I've been a vampire for a long time. I've seen so much, done so much. And in all that time it never occurred to me to wonder about how to define my situation.

Basically, I figured that the definition of undead was pretty much the way it was.

When I was a human lad back in Ireland, I ran around like I wasn't part of the life around me.

I did what I wanted, when I wanted. With who I wanted. Nothing really mattered. I kept waiting for… something. I don't even know what it was but everything that happened was just a way of killing time until whatever it was showed up.

And then… there was the alley… and Darla.

I was a fool. I had so many years to cherish what I had and I had so many more years that I could have cherished. But I wasted it all and I tossed my life down an alley. What I had just couldn't compare to what I thought I could have.

Liam died that night. A life wasted because of an inability to see what is truly valuable.

Angelus started his undead existence and the waste of life became the only thing he valued.

The gypsies… well somehow I'd learned my lesson because by the time they had shoved my soul back into my body, the boy who had wasted his life had realized what was precious. And all those precious lives Angelus ended, came back to me. I knew what I was responsible for. I knew what I could never, ever give back.

I have wondered why I didn't just stake myself. I don't really have an answer except that maybe I thought it would be redundant. I was dead inside, not just physically anymore, but emotionally.

Or maybe I wanted to punish myself for all I'd done.

Or maybe I was selfish and really just wanted to hang on to what little semblance of life I had.

I don't know but I didn't and for a long time I just… existed. Truly and completely undead as any other vampire.

And then… there was the alley… and Whistler.

Buffy. He showed me her. I had a chance to be something other than what I had become. All the years since I was cursed I'd been just … waiting. Waiting like I had been in Ireland. And now, here was a chance.

So, I took the chance and I wasn't just existing anymore. I was doing things that made a difference.

Not that anyone could tell but I felt pretty good about it.

Most of the time anyway. Sometimes it hurt. A lot. But at least that dead feeling was gone.

But then… well it didn't last and although my soul was restored, yet again, it wasn't the same as before.

I wasn't alive and I wasn't ever going to be alive. I was a vampire and undead and that was how it was going to be.

Except that maybe it wouldn't be.

Shanshu. Wesley… it's hard to write about him now after all that's happened… Anyway, he said I would die. It didn't bother me because I wasn't really alive anyway. I did my job, I helped the helpless… I was a vampire. A vampire with a soul but a vampire nonetheless and so, I was undead and not alive. Why would dying bother me? It's not like I hadn't done it before. It's not like I hadn't put myself in the position to die, again, more than once. Why would it bother me to know that at some point my undead existence would come to an end?

And then he said that first… I would live.

Well, that certainly changed things. At least, my way of thinking of them anyway. Because now, I had something to look forward too.

I would be human again. I would be able to live and breathe and hurt and die…

Like a living being.

I would get a chance to have that life that Liam wasted.

Shanshu was on my mind ever after that.

Everything that happened, I'd relate to how it would be after the Shanshu happened. Connor could have a human dad… how I'd have to figure out how to handle what was happening with Cordy and me… and Buffy. What would I do about Angel Investigations?

But… it didn't happen. Connor was taken away and returned. Cordy… is… gone. Buffy, who knows what will happen after all this.

The Shanshu…. I made a choice and I gave it up.

Do I think those idiots in The Circle were actually capable of taking it away? I don't know. None of them are around anymore and so their contract is probably invalid anyway.

What I do know is it doesn't matter. My job was clear and I did what I had to do and made the ultimate sacrifice.

And then… there was the alley… and Wolfram and Hart.

We went in knowing we were probably not going to walk out. I was ready to go by myself but I knew my friends well enough to know I wouldn't be.

I stood with them and watched the wrath of Wolfram and Hart coming down on us. I felt them move close to me, knew they were there and that what we were doing was good and right and necessary. We knew that we might all die, probably would die.

And I realized in that moment that I was alive. Not in the sense that we thought the Shanshu meant. I still didn't need to breathe, my heart didn't suddenly start beating… but I was alive in my soul, in my mind.

All these years I had been working to do what was right. For Buffy, for The Powers That Be, for the world, for my friends… and yet I never thought of myself as part of what I was fighting for. I was willing to put myself on the line again and again because I only thought of myself as a weapon. My undead existence was to serve others.

And then…. there was the alley… and the dragon.

I remembered Liam, waiting for something… and I understood I had been doing the same thing.

All the years I'd been with my soul, I'd been waiting for something else and not realizing what I had.

I had a life. I just didn't know it.

But in the alley, I did. I looked around and saw my friends and knew what they meant to me. I thought about Connor and Buffy and how I'd never see them again.

I thought about Doyle, Cordy, Fred and Wesley and how they needed to be remembered.

The Hyperion is so quiet now. I know I'm not the only one who made it. I can't write about that now, so much of it is a blur that I'm not sure I can explain it.

But the question keeps repeating in my head; how did I get out?

I don't know.

I can only say… I was fighting for my life.