It's the next night when he finally returns. It occurs to her that this is his house in a way, and he could simply kick her out. It's not like she would be homeless- she would just return to her own home, empty and silent. Her mother is away, in Michigan for a month. She made it clear that she didn't want Giles checking up on her, not matter what he promised her mother. She hasn't seen him for a couple of days- school has broken up for a week and he is under the pretence that she is ill. She will return to school better, happy and healthy. As long as he doesn't visit.
She doesn't like being in the house anyway. She has so far managed to keep up something of a normal front with her friends, something she recognizes with some sort of twisted pride. They don't know about her life away from them, away from school, and training and patrolling. They are one part of her life. Needles and injecting in the musty bathrooms of filthy bars is the other.
Angel is firmly in the middle.
She is in his bed when she hears footsteps. She knows it is him, she can sense it. She makes no attempt to sit up as he walks into the bedroom silently and lies beside her on top of the sheets, fully dressed.
He knows she is faking. An awkward silence fills the air, so Buffy can barely breathe. Reluctantly, she rolls over onto her back and tilts her head to look at him.
"How did all this start?" He asks her and his face matches his voice- dull, void of any emotion. She fiddles with the covers.
"Does it matter?" She begins and with a growl he gets of the bed, pacing the room. His back is too her, as he fiercely runs his hands through his hair.
"I can't talk to you. I can't even look at you." She sits up timidly. "How can I even be near you, when I know you're high on drugs?" He turns to look at her, and the look of disgust on his face shocks her. "It hurts being around you. It hurts, seeing what you've become."
She starts to lose her temper.
"What I've become?" She interrupts, "Whatever I am, whatever in me that you hate, you made it." She laughs bitterly. "That's how this started. With you. You made me like this." She looks away. "You might as well have killed me. I should have gone to hell instead of you."
"No." He says immediately. "No. You ..you wouldn't go where I did. You couldn't. I wouldn't let you."
"Because it's such a bad place, huh?" She snaps and in a second she is out of the bed and glaring at him. "Fire, and blinding torment, right? Sure it was bad for you. Sure, you went through a lot. And yeah, it was all my fault-"
"It wasn't your fault-"
"It was!" She screams, "It was my fault. I hated you for leaving me, but I killed you, I made you go! I hated myself for losing you, for…doing what I did-"
"What you had to do." He tried to console her, whilst keeping his distance.
"I didn't! I could have found a way, there is always a way! But I… you trusted me…" She screws up her face as the memories intoxicate her. When she speaks, her voice is distant, but more revealing than before he came back. She is barely aware that he is there, watching.
"I told you to close your eyes… you reached out for me, and I watched you go." There is a silence. He thinks she has finished, but she is still in her trance like daze, and telling him things that, though he urged her to reveal, he at the same time dreads hearing them.
"And I left, I couldn't stay here, with them. I couldn't go back and tell them all that I killed you, have them understanding…how could they understand??" Her voice is thick with tears she doesn't cry, and grief. "And when I came back, and I found out…that Xander knew they were going to re-soul you, but he didn't tell me…and then you came back." She stops and sinks onto the bed. "You came back."
"You don't remember, but you were a mess. You…didn't know me, you didn't understand…I looked after you, I tried to keep you here, safe. Your nightmares-" She gasps as she remembers. Angel waits silently, stricken. "You were in so much pain. You cried, you pleaded…you called for me, and I was there, but I wasn't the girl you were calling for. Not any more. "
"Then, there was this guy at school, and he was taking. He invited me to this party, and, stupid me, I go alone." She pauses and looks up at him. She seems afraid to continue, but forces herself to. "I didn't realize it was basically full of junkies. And it seemed stupid not to…I didn't want to be there, I was worrying sick about you, and the drugs…they made me forget."
The words that were flowing out in a painfully slow torrent stop and she sits, alone and shivering, in a tank top and sweats, her arms clumsily bandaged.
"Does anybody know?" Angel asks in a low voice. She looks startled.
"No. Nobody. They don't know and I can't tell them." She swallows. "You. You can't tell them. You have to promise me."
"Buffy-" He begins, but she gets up and walks towards him.
"Promise me. Swear that you won't."
"I can't promise that."
"Swear on my life that you won't tell anybody." She stares at him pleading him silently.
A minute passes. Two. Three.
He looks down at her arms.
"Wait here. I need to re-bandage your arms."
He faces a nightmare when he returns. She lies, crumpled on the floor, syringes scattered next to her unconscious body.
He grabs her, turns her over, looks at her. She's breathing but only just. He pleads with her even though he knows she can't hear, he says he loves her, and begs her to wake up.
He grabs the syringes. How much has she taken? Enough to…in a split second decision, he lowers his head to her neck and smells her poisoned blood. His human features slide into his vampire face and he bites down, hard.
He does his best. The taste of the drug makes him want to be sick, but he continues desperately. He tries to separate the blood from the heroin, to keep her alive, but he ends up draining her blood a little despite his best efforts. She lies, her breathing shallow, but steadier than it was before.
When she wakes up, he is there beside her, holding her hand, and watching her. As she forces her eyelids open, he tells her the only thing he knows will comfort her.
"I promise."