Summary: Epiphanies abound as both Buffy and Angel discover some inner truths as well as their way back to each other.
Rating: Pg-13/T . for now
Author's Note: This is the first fanfic that I've been really serious about writing. I've had this idea floating around in my head forever and I've finally decided to sit down and write it. It breaks off from canon in roughly mid season 7 of BtVS and mid season 4 of Ats. I am probably playing with the timeline a little bit but its my story so suck it up. Angel has just fought the Beast and Buffy is rallying against the First.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to the evil Joss.
Angel didn't know what to do. His life was in shambles and he didn't have the foggiest idea of how to fix it. He had just had his ass handed to him by a giant horned rock and then had to witness the woman he was supposedly in love with rutting with his son.
Angel laughed derisively to himself as he trudged through the underground of LA. His life was a fucking joke. Some champion he was. Everything was falling apart around him and all he wanted to do was to crawl into a hole somewhere and stay there. He wanted to wake up and have the last couple weeks, hell the last couple years, be a dream. He was so tired of it all, all he wanted was to have something he could really believe in. He had come to the realization that somewhere along the way he had lost the mission and in doing so, himself.
Looking back on his time in LA Angel could recognize his slow descent for what it was, a descent. He had had such a sense of purpose when he had arrived here. He had wanted to make something of himself, be better than what he was. He wanted to make her proud. Her... Buffy. She was the reason he came to this city, because he left her, because this city was the farthest he could force himself to be from her.
He hadn't thought about Buffy in months, it was too hard to think about her, too confusing. Add to that that for the last few months he had actually believed himself to be in love with his seer and that he had felt guilty about thinking about Buffy when he was supposed to be thinking about Cordy. What a joke! The whole idea was ridiculous! Feeling guilty over thinking about his own soul mate. That is exactly what Buffy was, his soul mate. Screw kyrumption, what the heck was that anyway? Buffy could never have done what Cordelia had just done. To sleep with his son was the ultimate betrayal and it just served to prove that Cordelia's feelings for him, whatever they were, were negligible.
Without conscious thought angel found himself back at the Hyperion. Looking in through the glass doors from the garden, he could see the others scurrying around patching wounds and cleaning weapons. While Angel was glad to see that they had all made it back he had no inclination to go inside and join them. He was coming to realize that the wounds on his soul greatly eclipsed the mess that was his body and none of the people in the lobby could patch them up. There was only one person who could do that. One person who could make him completely forget this mess of a night.
He silently entered the underground garage and got into the belvedere. Navigating his way through the panic stricken, fiery streets was a challenge but before he knew it he was on the highway headed north, headed home.
