Eclipse
by Mistress Eden
Disclaimer: I don't own it. If I did, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction.
Summary: When you spend your life waiting for that perfect moment, sometimes you lose it.
A.N.: Just a bit of angsty drabble do to a request from a dear friend who misses my tear your heart out and jump on it buffy fic :)
Buffy/Angel
They sit side by side in the cemetery, staring at the moon, just as they had done a hundred times before. As comfortable with the expanse of graves as they would be with the empty innocence of a park.
"What are we going to do about us?" she asks with a sigh.
He doesn't look at her. "I don't know."
"I know." she says, not looking at him. They both know that she isn't referring to the 'us' that always hangs heavy between them, but his own confusion.
"I wish I could tell you..." he trails off.
"You've told me a lot of things over the years." she says softly.
"I know." He says his gaze dropping to his hands, and the bare ring finger that once bore a simple claddagh.
"Do you still love me?" she asks, in much the same tone she asked if he wanted to sit down.
"...Yes." he says, and they both hear the pause before the word.
"That wasn't supposed to be a hard question." she says in the same tone, but with just a touch of wry wistfulness, so slight that he barely notices its there.
"I do." he says, "But it's just so..."
"Complicated?" she offers.
He nods.
"But then again it always was. In one way or another." she says.
They are silent for long minutes before he asks, "Do you still love me?"
She doesn't answer at first, and he cautiously glances at her, to see her looking at her hands, rubbing her bare ring finger.
"That wasn't supposed to be a hard question." he says, his attempt at humor glimmering through the tension in his voice.
She looks at him, and he's caught by her eyes, just like old times.
"Always." she says, "That's the hard part."
She dropped her gaze again, "I tried to get over you, not because you told me to, even though you did, but because I wanted to prove to myself I could. But I couldn't." she says softly.
"Did you love them?" he asks. Easier to think of them as nameless faceless 'them' then as the men she has dated, lain with, possibly loved.
"In some ways, but no, not really. I wanted to though..." she says thoughtfully.
"But you didn't." he says, it's not a question. "Not even the college boy?"
"No." she answers simply. "He knew it to. That was what eventually drove us apart."
He is silent, waiting for her to continue.
"He wanted more then I had to give. He once told me, quite out of the blue, 'That no man can serve two masters, no woman either.' I knew then, that he knew the truth. I could give him my body, pretend I was his girl. But we both knew it was an act, that was all I had to give, because in my heart. I was always yours."
She looked at him thoughtfully as she plucked a blade of grass, idly twirling it between her fingers. "I hated you for that."
"I hated you for letting 'them' touch you." he said. "Even though I told you to move on, I hated that you did."
"I hated it to." She said softly. "I hated knowing about your women too." she added, pointedly.
"I knew that you were trying to replace me, to let me go. I couldn't let go of you, and it killed me that you were trying to push me away."
"I couldn't replace you." he said softly. "I wanted to. I pretended I could, that you didn't matter anymore, but it wasn't true, no matter how much I wanted it to be."
"We are a sorry pair aren't we." she said, the mixture of pain, resignation, and humor combined. "A therapist could have a field day with us. Love, hate, trying not to love, pushing each other away, and only succeeding in hurting ourselves as much as one another."
He stays silent looking at the fading stars. "Maybe it's fate, maybe it was never the right time, the right alignment. Like the sun and the moon, only together in an eclipse, when it's darkest."
"I always wondered what I had done to deserve this. Why, with everything I fought for, everything I sacrificed, I wasn't allowed to have the one thing I really wanted." she says absently.
"I'll have to go soon, it's getting lighter." he says his eyes locked on the sky.
"I know. What are we going to do?" she asks again.
"I don't know. I guess I keep waiting for things to change, for it all to get better."
"Things rarely get better on their own." She says sadly.
"I know, but I keep waiting for that right time, that perfect alignment, he says as he holds up his palm, hiding the moon from his sight.
"The problem is, things just got worse." she pauses looking at him, until he makes eye contact. "And sometimes, you wait, and you wait and that perfect moment never comes. Then when it does... it's to late."
He hangs his head, as the moon fades from the sky and he says, "I'm sorry Buffy."
When he raises his head, he's looking at her grave, and the single white rose laid across it's soil.
The sun comes up, and he smiles.
The End
(A.N.: I deliberately left the ending ambiguous. This story could take place in canon, after the show. Or just about anytime really. In the end, does he die? Is he human? I couldn't decide so I leave that up to you dear reader. Thank you for reading, and I promise I will finish my ongoing stories sometime soon!
Eden)