Notes: Another piece inspired my some of the reading form one of my English classes. Quotes are from lines 94, 104-105, 400-401, 432-433 of Book II of Milton's Paradise Lost.

I finally got around to finishing this peice and editing it yesterday. I'm still working on the next chapter of The Dying of the Light, though, and hope to have that up in less than a week.

Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious air

To heal the scar of these corrosive fires

Once she thinks to call him she hardly falters, almost unafraid, not even put off by the prospect of his disappointment, his knowing, his leaving her after, for he always seems to be leaving her. It doesn't occur to her to fear his demon.

They meet at night in the middle of nowhere. There might be a joke in there somewhere. She isn't laughing.

He arrives in a beautiful car, sleek and old. She has enough presence of mind to think that it suits him. He is fluid as he exits the vehicle, levering himself out with a kind of natural, predatory grace. His movements, as he approaches her, are controlled. His eyes are dark and silent but something stirs in them. She remembers a saying about still waters, and an underground lake. She drowned in one once. Drowned in them. His eyes. They track her movements, not unlike they did in the early days, or rather, the nights. He followed her invisible shadow in graveyards. Now it is all that is left of her.

"Buffy."

Her name falls from his lips, sweet and foul. It takes her a beat too long to respond. She can hardly bear to look at him. His chest, silk-clad, is in front of her suddenly. She looks up slowly and he gently, surely runs a hand down her back, just barely touching her. Her heart flutters painfully against her ribcage.

He does not embrace her. His arms are steady around her as he moves her back to his car and they settle into the spacious front seat. It seems heartbreakingly familiar. It has never happened before. After they settle in, he doesn't let go of her, for which she is grateful and confused. He's got her head tucked under his chin, in her familiar spot, and his arms stroke up and down her body with familiar rightness. He hasn't touched her like this since before her seventeenth.

"Angel," she whispers then. A beloved name. A beloved lover who has hurt her beyond her imagining and who she will always, always crawl back to. Besides, she has found there are worse things than broken hearts since her resurrection.

"Mmm," he says then, shifting closer and burying his face in her hair, at the junction of her neck and shoulder. She can feel him inhaling deep lungfuls of her, taking in her scent. She must smell like gravedirt. It's so reassuring that she can't help but start to sob. He pulls back a little and lets her cry it all out, holding her tenderly, stroking her hair with infinite patience. When she is done, her breath beginning to slow, he pushes her back a little and takes a firm hold of her chin. Her eyes are wide and red as she allows him to turn her head and stare into her eyes. This feels real. But she doesn't.

"Tell me everything," he orders softly, and it's so unlike him that she pulls back a little, reanalyzing every detail she was too damaged to miss earlier. Her heart seizing in her chest. How will she possibly bear this pain? Before she can pull away entirely he snatches her up and holds her close. This time she fights, kicks at him and thrashes as he squeezes her with arms like iron. She gives up only when she is exhausted, which is a lot sooner than it might have been a year ago. Would it really be so bad to let him kill her? She can go home then. Her breathing subsides and his grip loosens minutely. When he is sure she will no longer fight him, he relaxes even more, and returns to stroking her hair.

"I meant it," he tells her. "Tell me what happened."

"Why?" she whispers, uncaring of the tears in her voice. Long ago she had tried to learn how to hide her pain from him.

"Don't you know?" he replies, continuing to run a hand soothingly down her back. Tension returns to his body and briefly, she feels the power coiling in his muscles. But then he relaxes, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Buffy is unbearably confused.

"Tell me," he urges again. She does.

When she mentions heaven him, his arms tighten around her before relaxing so suddenly she is unsure if it happened at all. Her voice is flat and emotionless. She might as well be reciting grocery lists rather than explaining the details of her private hell to a demon. When she finishes, he doesn't move for a long while and with her adrenaline crashing and her system still suffering from the nightmares she almost falls asleep before he begins his piece.

"In that first moment, I was too selfish to care what you might have suffered. And that was enough. He called out, but it was late enough that no one was nearby. It was much quicker this time. A few moments and he was gone, and I – well, I knew."

She is silent, and so he continues.

"Affection, friendship, love," he says, hissing out that last word like a curse, "they blind us to the faults of others. They're weaknesses I don't suffer from. I knew that your little friends would have needed to use the blackest of magic to pull their savior back. And I knew what it might have done to you. You're lucky in a way," he continues.

"Lucky," she cuts him off, half-hysterical, and tries again to pull away.

"Not to have suffered worse, yes," he insists, rendering her efforts futile. "You may recover, in time, and don't for a minute think those interfering idiots aren't going to get what's coming to them."

"Why do you even care," she wails, interrupting him again. It is an attempt to stall. She knows. Perhaps she has always known.

He kisses her then, and there is something of the old desperation she used to taste in the mouth of a man who had endured much before she met him, and of a demon who would rather see the world burn than endure their intimate, undecided battles. There is longing, but beneath that there is grief, and she can no longer deny what it means. He leaves her breathless.

"I've seen what the world is like without you in it," he says, voice savage. He's hurting her, and now just with his words. She lets out a little cry and he immediately loosens his grip on her, pushing her back only to grab hold of her shoulders and check her for signs of hurt. There is concern in his gaze and she allows herself to believe in it. What madness her death seems to have brought to the vampires who once made it their aim.

She thought she had cried herself out earlier, but it appears that she did not, and again, she softens and weakens in his arms, and again, he looks after her with the kind of care she had only before seen from his precious soul.

"I will never lose you again," he snarls, and it is half-threat, half-vow. She must be mad to feel so cherished by the dangerous affection she is being shown, but it has been so long since she has been held in these arms, so long since she has felt safe, protected.

"Cross over to me," he begins, and she shudders and shakes her head. He lets out a real growl this time, that animal sound that sends shivers up her spine. "Cross over to me," he rumbles, his now-golden eyes boring into hers, "and leave this all behind."

"No," she whispers, afraid again, "I can't."

"What can be worse," he whispers, "than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, condemned to a life of pain, and sacrifice, and drudgery. I can set you free, Buffy."

The truth is that she longs for him even more than she longs for peace. This way, she may get both. She could argue that he didn't need her to grant him permission, didn't need the whispered 'yes' that fell from her lips, as damning as any evidence of a fallen woman. But he wanted it, he asked for it, in his own way, and nothing more than that incredible, impossible truth seems to matter in the moment.

When he kisses her lips, she thinks only of him, and feels something approaching the bliss she has lost. And if it tastes faintly of blood, then it is of little consequence to her, after all she has endured. He is urgent, and clings to her as tightly as she does to him, whispering her name like a prayer, like he had in another life so long ago.

She spares a brief thought for Dawn, and the others. They will likely die soon. She may have a hand in their deaths. But Angelus makes her forget everything but him, the taste of him, the comforting feel of his weight on top of her in his dark car. Soon he will ferry her body away, and she will awake again, a new creature, a demon. Perhaps then, living in the permanent gloom of the night, she may find some happiness. That is what he promises her throughout the night, and once last time as he pulls her life out of her, replacing it with something else entirely. She feels very distant and remote, and for the second time in her life, she finds herself falling, flying away, higher, and higher with his name on her lips. In the end, love, even unnamed, makes death seem almost easy. And if life is what must be sacrificed to gain stolen happiness, then so be it.

…long is the way

And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light