Yet another POV piece—I just can't seem to escape from them.
I remember the summer after graduation when Xander went to go "find himself." I still wonder which summer was worst: the one where I knew Angel was being tortured in Hell courtesy of my hand, or the one where he sent me there himself. I got numb that summer, slowly reverting into someone I didn't know. I suppose I tried to turn back into that girl I was before the slayer. Shallowness was always so much easier than opening my heart to hurt and pain. It would never happen again, because I had given my heart to Angel, and he had ripped it to pieces and thrown them in the filth of a sewer.
Somehow that all seems so long ago now. Like a story from a fairytale. There was Buffy, and then there was Buffy the princess, the beloved, the heroine, the heartbroken girl, and then there was just Buffy again. I think in those early years Angel could have brought me out again. He was always in love with my normality. I was his golden girl, his goddess, the girl who loved clothes and dances and was a superhero all without breaking a sweat. But that day he had that talk in the sewer, of all places, everything changed. He wanted to separate the girl from the slayer. I think part of him wanted to take that girl he saw walking down the steps of Hemery and preserve her forever. But she had died when I was Called, and nothing would ever bring her back.
Those three years in high school turned me into something so very superior to anything I had been before. My adoration of this beautiful vampire who worshipped and hurt me consumed my entire being until every part of me was linked to Angel. It's almost impossible to remember what it was like to care so deeply about anyone. When Angel left all those cords that bound me to him were torn out and I was left with the jagged pieces of a soul that was dead.
I think of the years after he left and they fly by like rushing wind. Hurt, pain, disappointment, but above all gaping holes of loss and everything I clung to vanishing from my life. My friends always claim my strength comes from their support, and I survive because I have them, have connections, have love and back up. But somehow, they keep insisting on leaving me "for my own good." I've learned nothing more than how much easier life becomes not caring about anyone. In the end, there is only pain and nothingness.
Not that I'm wallowing in despair now. No. I just left.
It happened gradually. Once I took a trip out to Normandy and went to the cemetery at Omaha Beach. The entire shoreline was completely deserted, the beach flat nearly half a mile until it hit the surf. The cool breezes swirled around me, the huge puffy clouds playing hide and seek with the sun, and I began to feel. The beauty of the place, rather incongruously, reminded me of Angel—the breath of his shoulders and his deep, dark eyes. Having wandered the endless rows of white crosses just hours ago, I was oddly comforted by the reminder that I was not the only warrior in the world. Thousands had come here years ago, died and suffered and fought in this place. I thought how it seemed my life meant nothing without the annual heartbreak and world-ending-saveage, and realized that others had been forced to give up their lives and hopes and dreams for a greater good as well.
I went back to the cemetery and placed wildflowers up one soldier's grave. He had been only eighteen when he was gunned down. I kissed the cross and sat on top of one of the burned out bunkers, just gazing across to England and listening to the wind and waves.
Angel had always found me on the ocean. That one summer of utter hopelessness I spend every dreaming moment wandering the Santa Monica coast at sunset, waiting for him to come up behind me and wrap his big strong hands around me, finding and saving me. And every horrible morning he was gone. I wondered sometimes if he was really in my dreams. We never talked about his experience in hell, but I always knew, somehow, that those appearances in my dreams were real. Maybe he was acting out his anger towards me—maybe he was only able to comfort me to a certain point before the demons turned his love for me into torture for him.
I loved him more than I could, ever would, ever will love anything in this world. I told Willow that, and it's always been true. I had to bury it for so long, those feelings. Feelings are of no use to a fighter. As time went on they only seemed to cause me extra pain and grief. But that doesn't mean they disappeared. And I think, sometimes, in the quiet and peace here, that I might just have thawed enough to let them come flooding in all their warmth and sweetness out into the open again.
Not all at once—certainly not that quickly. But that's okay. For the first time in my life I'm not in a hurry. There are no demons here. Oh, occasionally I'll see a vamp and take care of it, but it's nothing more than picking up trash. Just my civic duty to keep the city clean and pretty.
Angel wired twenty thousand dollars into my bank account. He never said anything, but I know it was him. I've been using it all. Not outrageously, but what I need to heal. I know that's why he gave it to me. Take it, Buffy, I could almost hear him saying. Do whatever you need to. Spend it as you want. I want you to be happy.
So I spend some mornings pampered at a spa, getting facials and massages and pedicures, sipping lemonade and talking about the latest fashions with the rich American ladies next to me. I have stilted conversations about the weather with the French women, because that's all I can say as yet, but I'm learning fast.
The sunny days I spend shopping and walking along the Champs D'Elysees, and then walk to the Seine, watching the children throw pebbles into the water. I think of playing Anywhere but Here with Willow a thousand years ago, and feel a pang for those glorious days when we were all young and innocent, when my love for Angel was a bright bud just beginning to unfold under his tender ministrations.
When it rains I think of my birthdays. I think of Angel sitting there in the mansion looking forlorn because I was worried about losing my slayer powers, and the conversation we had that made me fall so deeply in love with him. Angel thinks of that year before he left as an exercise in futility, but I think it was that year that I learned to love him as deeply as could every be possible in the world. I remember Xander telling me how dull it was to sit next to Cordelia, talking of nothing, and thinking that the times I spent rainy days curled up in his embrace, the two of us just communing silently, were little slices of bittersweet heaven.
The bitterness is beginning to fade. Willow is working on Angel's soul. I figured a witch who can destroy the world would be capable of binding Angel's soul to his body. Wesley is looking in the vast resources of Wolfram and Hart. I really can't think why we never looked before. Everything then seemed so hopeless and world-ending. Angel never seemed to believe that he was worthy of my love, and his pessimism rubbed off on me. But I'm not clouded anymore.
I think that my beloved souled vampire needs to be here as well. When was the last time any of us had a vacation? Angel may have developed something like a sense of self esteem, but it all lies in his longing for humanity. He has the most forgiving and tolerant heart of anyone I know, but in himself the world is black and white—demon bad, human good. He has never accepted that what he is—a demon with a soul—is a valid entity. I loved him as a vampire, and still do. I loved his growls, his purrs, his golden eyes and demon face and his fangs. I loved that he was cool and clean and smelled like the stars. If he had been human he wouldn't have understood the otherness of my life, and we couldn't have had the depth of love that developed between us. I don't think he ever understood, but now its time that he did, and now that I can look beyond my own pain and helplessness, I can start to work on his.