I've never written a first person story from him, so excuse me if it's not very good. This is a reminiscence about Angel and what he was feeling during the times when Angelus was trying to destroy Buffy, from our lovely, brooding vampires' point of view (season two). I hope you enjoy it, even if it's exceedingly short. Reviews are always good.

There were few times when Buffy let herself be weak. Most of those times were in my arms. Sometimes she just didn't know it.

When Buffy turned seventeen, my soul was torn from my body, but I was still present. I believe that somehow she knew it, too - I was in everything she did, in some little way.

I was in the way she twirled her hair to curve around her face; the way that I had twirled it on an uncharacteristically light-hearted date.

I was in the way that she always applied the lip gloss she had worn when I had first kissed her, that night in her room.

I was in the way that she poised herself, the way she held her stake - held to kill. The way I knew would have beaten me specifically, even though at the time I didn't think she would need to know it. It was a contingency, borne out of an overcautious and terminally volatile love.

I was in the way that she dressed in darker clothes, as though mourning the passing of a soul that was never really gone. The loss of a life. A lover. A friend. A future.

I was in the way she refused to wear jewellery after it happened, and I was in the way the piles of clothing built up in her room and buried the happier times; her clothes from Ms. Calender's funeral strewn over the ring I had given her, the smoky clothes; burned when she saved Giles from himself the night he sought fiery vengeance at the warehouse, strewn over those. Loss, upon loss, upon loss, piled up so high that she wondered if there had ever been anything else.

In the end it came down to one thing, over and over: I was in the way. But still, I was always there. When I saw her lying on the floor, surrounded by her web of loss and pain, I held her. She felt no physical sensation, none of my loving whispers audible, but relief washed over her. For a second, at least, she was granted reprieve from the throes of Angelus.

I felt that I was always in the way - that's why I left, but when Buffy truly needed me, I was always there, whether she knew it or not. I did what I could. I just held her.