Shadowed Souls Part 4 Chapter 12, an angel fanfic

Disclaimer: See Part 1 Chapter 1

SHADOWED SOULS Part 4

Chapter 12

Angel turned as Buffy walked down the stairs, her face pale. He turned back to gaze at the garden, tense, having no doubt she'd heard the exchange and not really caring. He wasn't as forgiving as Spike, incredibly, seemed to be.

"I'm sorry."

"It's hardly me you should be apologising to." Angel retorted pointedly.

"No, I know…" Buffy wrapped her arms round herself, her reflection lonely in the glass doors.

Angel sighed. "Actually, I don't know why I'm so self-righteous. I'm just as guilty as everyone else is at taking Spike at face value. It was easier for me to just blame Spike for everything…like you guys all did."

"Yeah." Buffy didn't smile. "But you're right. He used me a lot less than I used him. I just felt numb inside…I just wanted to feel something, anything…Spike was always there for me, regardless of how bad I treated him." She sighed deeply. "Even…the rape…Rape is never the fault of the victim, but sometimes…when the only thing about you that's consistent is your inconsistency, you can't blame the man for not knowing where he's at…"

"I didn't mean that what he tried to do was excusable –" began Angel uncomfortably.

"No, but it was understandable." Buffy made the confession wearily, echoing Spike's earlier phrase. "You saw what happened…before. After they brought me back, I was such a mess inside I didn't know what I wanted, so why did I expect Spike to telepathically know what I wanted and needed. Buffy the Emotional Yo-Yo, that was me, one second pushing him as far away as I could, the next dragging him to the nearest bed…that night, when he tried…" Buffy shook her head, "…At that point I'd said "'No'" so many times before without really meaning it that it's hardly surprising Spike couldn't tell the difference when I finally did mean what I'd been saying for the past six months."

"Yeah," Angel agreed, but then gave a deep sigh, wryly commenting, "and yet for some reason the Powers That Be are depending on our totally messed up selves to save the world. Somehow that scares me more that the Oligarchs."

"Nothing scares me more than the Oligarchs." Buffy wrapped her arms around herself and hugged in the classic self-protective gesture.

"Buffy? Rutherford Sirk and his little coterie of egomaniacs? You've faced worse – I can list them, alphabetically." Angel frowned at Buffy's drawn face in alarm.

"I'm scared because…I've got too much to lose now." Turning away from her reflection Buffy went back to the centre of the lobby, sinking down on the grey pouffé, incidentally in exactly the same spot that the gang had tied Lorne when his memory-spell went kaflooey and reverted them all to seventeen-year-olds…

The spell that had awoken the dormant Jasmine, who'd stowed away in Cordelia's body for the trip back down from the higher plane…Shaking off the memories, Angel followed her, his expression inquiring.

"I'm legendary, Angel. I'm the Slayer who broke the rules and made a life for myself outside the Slaying…to quote Spike yet again, I'm the Slayer who insisted on having family and friends…but I'm not." Buffy raised sad eyes to Angel. "Nikki Wood was the pathfinder, she was the Slayer who had the courage to break the mould and try to have a life of her own…it was when I got to the garage, expecting to see a little pile of dust and a gloating Robin, when Spike walked out of there and I saw how beat up Robin was, that was when I realised how wrong both Nikki and I were in doing that…"

"Because you were Slayers?"

"Because we were the Slayer." Buffy corrected. "What Spike said about only letting people in so far, keeping a little bit of distance no matter how much you love someone…that's what The Slayer had to do to stay sane. I loved you Angel, with all my heart and soul, but in order to save the world, I had to send you to hell, and that's what the Slayer lives with every single day. Even my mom – Dawn the aeons old cosmic energy being loved Joyce Summers more completely than I ever did, or ever could, and to this day I resent that. Xander, Willow, Giles…Dawn…in the back of my mind there was always the knowledge that one day I might have to let them die for the greater good, for the rest of the world to survive…"

For an instant as her voice trailed off, Angel's mind's eye flashed back to what he'd seen on the Ghost Roads, where Wesley castigated Faith for not attacking Angelus even though the vampire would have killed Wesley…and how many more will he have the chance to murder because you let that make a difference?

"The Slayer has to view even the people they love most as expendable, because otherwise they can't be what The Slayer needs to be." Angel realised, only aware of uttering the words aloud when Buffy responded.

She nodded emphatically, "That's why you can't give everything of yourself to someone because if you do, and there comes a time when you have to make that decision, you're paralysed, and when that happens, you're not a Champion, just another helpless victim."

"I know." Angel sat down beside her. "We could have saved her – me and Spike. When Illyria was killing Fred, we could have got it back to the Deeper Well, but only by killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process. As Drogyn said, once Illyria was out of the sarcophagus it was the mystical equivalent of airborne. So I sacrificed Fred for the greater good, just like I was willing to kill Cordelia, despite my…feelings, to save the world from Jasmine. It's what being a Champion is about."

"It's why Nikki Wood was wrong to have her son, and why I was wrong to involve other people." Buffy said. "When you're Slayer, comma, The, you don't have the luxury of being able to indulge yourself like that. Robin should have been the most important thing in his mother's life, but he came secondary to her being the Slayer because she had no choice, there wasn't anyone else to save the world until she died."

"But things are different now…"

"Exactly!" Buffy laughed harshly. "That's what I can't lose, Angel. I know how selfish it is of me, but I can't go back to being comma, definitive article girl – because now I can indulge myself. Now if it comes down to a choice between the people I love and 'X' I can pick them and say: "Screw you!" because there are hundreds of other Slayers able to pick up my torch and carry on the fight. I'm not alone any more."

"That doesn't make you a bad person, Buffy."

"It makes me a bad Slayer, though. When Glory came after Dawn…None of them understood why I trusted Spike to protect my mother and my sister…that fight at the construction site…I sent Spike to save my sister because he was the only one I could trust to save her above any other consideration. Spike loved his Little Bit, and he didn't give a damn about saving the world or any of us, she was all that mattered…"

"…and you couldn't trust Giles not to kill her, if it became necessary, in order to save the world…"

"…Just like he killed Ben, who was an innocent victim, in order to kill Glory." Buffy finished and then went on, "That's Spike's power, you see, like perfect clarity is his gift. I didn't get it at first…but when he let Glory torture him, brutally, and he wouldn't give up Dawn…Spike doesn't give a damn about causes, he doesn't give a damn about some ideal…Spike gives his loyalty to people, not things. He would have died to save Dawn and let the universe be damned. That's why he's still here, Angel, not for the Shanshu. He'll grumble and groan and irritate and argue until he's as blue in the face as Illyria, but he's not motivated by the Shanshu Prophecy. He stayed because Fred Burkle risked her life to try and restore him to corporeal form and when he couldn't save her life in return he dedicated himself to doing what she would have wanted him to do…"

Buffy's voice cracked, and she concentrated on regaining her composure, unaware of the way Angel flinched, remembering the exchange he'd witnessed between Illyria and Spike in the training room at the time Illyria's power began to pulse erratically, sending the demon bouncing around Time:

"You had fondness for the shell, for Fred."

"Tons. Loved the bird…"

So short, so simple, so raw in honesty, so Spike…

Buffy finished softly, "He's here for you, Angel, because he does care about you, and he will pass up the chance to be a real boy again to give you the opportunity."

"I know." Angel confessed softly. "Though of course you can douse me in holy water and I'll still not admit it."

Buffy gave a hiccupping chuckle, her eyes sheened with tears. "It was horrible, Angel. Being The Slayer, the world's only line of defence against the nightmares. It was bleak and empty and lonely and painful. It was despair and hurting, all the time. But now I'm a Slayer. I'm only part of the defence; I can have a life instead of just an existence. All Slayers can. Faith's about to become the second Slayer in history to bear a child, but it's different now. It doesn't matter that she'll be part-time for a few years until her and Robin's daughter grows up a bit, because there are hundreds of Slayers to take her place. Thanks to Willow, a Slayer can have children and get married and take a real job…we can get rid of that last barrier between ourselves and the people we love…"

"I get that." Angel told her. "Wesley…Fred…Gunn…Cordelia…they age, whereas I don't. Wesley's thirty-seven this year…he's already starting a bit with the arthritis. Gunn's too vain to admit that he sometimes needs spectacles for the small print stuff. I wanted to go down to the beach at midday for a game of Frisbee like Wes and Gunn used to do, I wanted to try retail therapy with Fred and Cordy and finish off with lattes on the Drive. Most of all, I want to be able to care about them unconditionally instead of having to hold back and protect a little bit of my heart ready for the possibility of them dying of old age while I'm perpetually stuck in Season Three of Friends."

"You watched Friends?" Buffy raised both eyebrows.

"Jennifer Aniston." Angel shrugged. "What can I say?"

"I can't top that." Buffy stood up slowly, briefly laying her hand on Angel's arm and giving it a gentle squeeze before slowly making her way over to the stairs.

As she walked up she paused and looked back down at him, "I'm sorry I came down on you when you decided to join Wolfram & Hart. I didn't agree with it and I still don't, and I wouldn't have done it but I understand why you did it. You've helped many more people since you've been here than you ever could before. You learned the lesson that being a Champion doesn't make you infallible a lot quicker than Buffy Anne "President of the Pigheaded League" Summers did."

Angel smiled. "Not quite as catchy as Slayer, comma, The." He pointed out as he watched her walk up and away, finally leaving him alone with his thoughts.

Concluded in Chapter 13