The bus took so long. I should really learn to drive. I should, but I'm so old. So old, that I can't bear to give up the things that make me young. Young people don't know how to drive.
He's already here, waiting.
It's strange to be here, halfway between nowhere and everywhere. But it's the only place I want to be, because it's our place. Because he's here.
He's sitting on the low bench with his back to me. His head half cocks to the side and I know he can feel me, he's just questioning if I'm real.
I'm questioning if I'm real.
I travel around him and once I reach his side, we lock gazes until I'm standing right between his legs. I look down at him with my hair falling around my face and I'm really scared now because I'm starting to think that maybe he's the one who's not real. And if he's not real, there is no point.
I reach out with a trembling hand and gently lay my fingertips to his lips. The sensation forces a sob from my aching chest up through my hoarse throat. He is real. He is.
His hands find my thighs and I wish I could remember how to cry. Instead my knees buckle and slam into the soft ground beneath me.
We're face to face now and it's so hard to look at him. He's so beautiful. He could make me so happy and it hurts so much.
"Buffy," he whispers. I feel his cool, sweet breath tickle my face and a jarringly deep ache spread through my chest.
"Angel."
It seems fitting that we greet each other as we always have, an exchange of names so simple that it amounts to an infinite amount of unspoken words that we cannot bare to give voice to.
"Will you be okay?" He asks softly.
"I don't know," I answer honestly. I really don't.
His hands are cradling my hips and I can't seem to help pawing his chest with weak fingers.
"I need to tell you something," I whisper.
"What?" He whispers back.
"I tried Angel, I tried so hard." I pause scared of being honest with myself, but I have to tell him. He has to know in case…just in case…
"Tried to what?"
"To move on, to forget." I choke on the word that had once been his. "But I can't. And before I start lying to myself again to make things easier, I want to have said…for you to know…that I tried. I hated it, but I did…Since the first time I…I lost you, everyone told me, 'You'll get over him Buffy. First loves don't last forever Buffy. You'll love better Buffy. One day it won't hurt anymore Buffy.'" I pause briefly clouded by the memories of years gone by. Years filled with desperate attempts to be to the girl that friends and family wanted me to be, to fool myself into believing I was the girl they wanted me to be, the girl I wanted to be able to be. I tried to be normal. To love normal, without intense pain. And I did because that kind of pain only comes alongside true pleasure, absolute happiness. I knew those with him, but never again. We're not allowed to have that ever again. "Everyone lied Angel. Even you." I give him the faintest hint of a smile, but he just looks so sad. "I love you. Only you. Always have. Always will."
"I'm sorry." It's such an Angel response.
"Don't be."
"But I am, I'm sorry life…" he begins, fumbling for un-clichéd words, but I interrupt with them anyway…
"Isn't fair, I know."
"But it…"
"…should be," we both say in unison. And in this moment I don't think I've ever hated the world more. It's a hate filled with the debilitating knowledge that there is nothing we can ever do to change how we fight and sacrifice and bleed and cry and scream, to save this world that screws us over. That makes us pay for things that are not our fault. It placed happiness before us and it let us partake without warning us it was forbidden…Without warning us that it would leave such jagged, un-healing wounds that we'd have to hide away from prying eyes who don't want to see. Including ourselves.
"I didn't mean to fuck up your life." It's the first time I've ever heard him swear and it dumbfounds me for a moment.
"You didn't Angel. You made it bearable." He gives me this heart-wrenching look that tells me he doesn't know how he could believe me, but that maybe, just maybe, he does. "You gave me what everyone dreams of, the fairytale love that's infinitely beautiful and all consuming. You warned me we wouldn't get the happily ever after, and you were right..."
"I didn't want to be," he says interrupting me.
"It doesn't matter. I wouldn't trade what we have, what we have had, for anything in the world. You know that," I say like it's the most obvious thing in the world and the glint of surprise in his eyes guts me.
I should have told him before.
We get so quiet for a moment. The silence is ringing in my ears.
"You didn't fuck up my life Angel. Life fucked up my life. Besides…if it makes you feel any better, my life, it ain't over," I say wanting to sound flippant, but I end up sounding disappointed. And scared.
He cradles my chin and looks right into me. "One day it will be," he tells me.
It is the most comforting thing anyone has ever or will ever say to me.
"Promise?" I sound so much like the child I wish I were.
"I promise," he says. He knows me so well, even when I barely know myself, and that knowledge newly ignites a warmth deep within me that was long ago smothered. For a moment I remember how to cry as a single tear slips from my eye and trickles down my face.
My arms snake desperately around his chest and I hold onto him so tight, so tight I know I'm probably hurting him. But I need to hold on so tight.
"Thank you," I mumble into his neck. "I love you Angel."
"I love you Buffy."
When I'm with him, I may still not know who I am, but I know it's okay to be who I am. That means everything. It's everything that I need. It's everything I'm not allowed to have.
"I miss you."