Every time I think of you,

I always catch my breath.

And I'm standing here,

And you're miles away,

And I'm wondering

why you left.

And there's a storm that's raging

through this frozen heart tonight.

--Missing You

Chapter 1

The Slayer ran through the cemetery. After all of these years, she could feel her heart pound during a hunt, still felt the release when she staked a vamp and dust fell around her hand.

She pumped her legs faster. She knew this cemetery better than some of the rooms in her own home. She was forcing the vampire into a dead end.

He finally stopped when he saw the wall. Turning, he hunched into a fighting stance as she caught up to him. "You're dead, Slayer," he growled.

"I think you'll find that by the end of this, you'll be deader," she said with a cocky smile.

He lunged at her and she used his momentum to grab him by the shoulder and shove him hard to the ground. While he was still on the ground, she kicked him in the kidney and then dug her heel deep into his back.

He twisted far enough to grab her leg and push her upward, making her lose her balance. She hit her head when she fell. He leapt on top of her, pinning her hands behind her head. "Who's deader now, Slayer?"

She head butted him and then rolled her hips to make him tumble head-first over her. "Still you, dumb ass."

She picked her stake off the ground and gripped it tight. "Let's make this quick, okay, pal? I've got places to be." She spun into a roundhouse kick and grabbed the front of his jacket as he stumbled backward. "This is you dying. Enjoy your after-life." She furrowed her brow as she rammed the stake into his heart. "Well, your second after-life, I guess."

She turned around as the vampire turned to dust. Her cell phone started to ring. "Hello?"

"Where are you?" the voice on the other line asked. "We start in 20 minutes."

"I'll be there," she said, walking to her car. "Have I ever been late before?"

………………………………

The Slayer walked fifteen minutes later into the classroom. She walked up to the woman who had called her, Tina, a short blonde with a big, toothy smile.

"Didn't I tell you I'd be here?" She softly elbowed her as she took her book from her backpack and put it on the desk. Her soft brown hair wisped around her shoulders as she turned to her friend and said, "The midterm is next week. You ready?"

Tina cocked her eyebrow. "Are you asking me if I'm ready for the midterm on statistics? Do you want to calculate the odds of me failing it?"

Cagney Carter smiled. She could have died tonight and not even her best friend had a clue as to who she really was. Passing a statistics course at UCLA was the least of her stressful activities. "Well, lets just get through this boring-ass class tonight and then we'll worry about next week."

Tina waved her hands. "Sounds good to me. If you can keep me awake, there's a pizza box with your name on it."

Cagney raised an eyebrow. "If it's pepperoni and onion, you've got a deal." The 22 year old junior majoring in psychology took out her laptop to take notes.

She had no idea what was coming.

…………………………………

Angel rolled over, opening his eyes. He stared at the dark, paneled wall. Glancing at the clock that was blaring, he saw that it was 6:32. Sunset. He reached over and shut off the alarm.

He laid there naked in the small, one room apartment. Sighing, he thought about all of the things he needed to do.

Which was absolutely nothing.

It had been eighty years since he had tried to take down Wolfram and Hart. He, Spike, and Illyria were the only to survive. They had gone their separate ways a few weeks later, once they had healed enough to move.

He saw Spike from time to time as he drifted from one state to the next. He had met a few acquaintances over the last eighty years, but those friendships never lasted long and were not close. He never again got close to anyone as he had Doyle, Fred, Wes, Gunn, and…Cordelia.

His son had lived happily, got married, and died about twenty years ago. Angel now had two grandchildren, a boy and girl, but he had never met them. And he never would.

He had kept track of Buffy over the years but she never did stop baking. She finally gave Xander Harris what he had dreamt about for years: they dated for several years and then got married. They had three children who were all older now and had grown up fairly well-adjusted and normal.

Buffy died thirty-two years ago and was buried as close to her mother as possible. Xander died a few months later and was now resting next to his wife.

But as he got up to take a shower, Buffy was not the person on his mind. Finding out seventy years ago that she had gotten married—to Xander Harris of all people—cemented what he had known for some time but had never really accepted: he and Buffy were over. It had almost been a century now since he had been in love with Buffy Summers.

As the water rushed over him, he closed his eyes groggily. He was bored stiff. He had no relationships. No friendships. The only thing that connected him to the world was the visions Cordelia had given him. Because he was the only one left, there was no Angel Investigations. It was just him, going out each night, stalking the demons of St. Augustine, Florida, which seemed to be crawling with the evil beings. He was out every night as he had been before he had met Doyle.

If Doyle were there, he would tell him that it wasn't healthy. That he needed people. That he was going to become dangerous if he didn't start interacting with things with pulses.

He didn't care. He wasn't going to meet new people and he sure as hell didn't want to.

Stepping out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around him and headed for the chest of drawers next to his bed. His apartment had old sketches and paintings, but the one picture he had setting out was on this chest of drawers.

As he did every evening when he got up, he stared at this photo, his hand squeezing the towel around his waist. It was of him, Wesley, and Cordelia.

But of the three people in the photograph, he only stared at one. Only thought of one for several minutes until his heart ached so badly that he had to get dressed, putting his stake mechanisms around his wrists and picking up his broad sword. He bolted out the door without looking at the person in the picture again.

Cordelia.

After eighty years, Cordelia Chase was the woman he couldn't stop thinking about. He had finally let Buffy go, but Cordy was still in his heart. He couldn't shake her. After all of this time, he still needed her. He could hear her voice, the lilt it had when she got excited or was joking. He missed her calm and reasoning, her bounce as she walked, the elegant way she moved when she fought. She was the one woman that guided him instead of made him crazy. She expected him to do better, to be better, to keep fighting. She had been his rock and she was gone.

He had failed her. When he couldn't stop her from becoming a higher being, he didn't save her. That night when they were supposed to have met and didn't, that sealed their fates and he couldn't stop it.

Even now, the days leading up to that moment when Connor sunk him to the bottom of the ocean and Cordy had ascended to the higher planes—those days, every moment haunted him. Almost every day, he tried to come up with ways that could have prevented it, could have stopped both of them.

But he couldn't change it.

And he couldn't have Cordelia.

As he walked to his car, he gripped his sword tighter.

He needed to kill something.

TBC