Chapter 20: Even Sleeping Beauty Had to Wake Up
Standing in the foyer of the hotel Faith squinted against the bright halogen lights. She'd forgotten how bright they could be. As things came into focus she saw the familiar faces gathered around, staring at her. Fred, Wesley, Connor, Cordelia. Heavily pregnant Cordelia…what? Willow had said she hadn't been gone very long.
Her surprise fell flat when her eyes met his.
The person she most dreaded seeing.
Liam's face, frozen across the ages, dead, inhuman.
Her face was wet with tears, she was still wearing Liam's wedding shirt, could still smell him all around her. This felt like a bad dream. It was a bad dream, one she knew she wasn't going to wake up from. Faith was looking directly at Liam's fate. Her heart broken, she had dreaded seeing Angel, seeing all the parts of Liam which had been taken. She felt shame to her very core. She hadn't even said goodbye. Hadn't warned him. Hadn't done a thing except for run. The urge to run back, to fix it, to tell Liam she loved him was overwhelming.
She couldn't help but stare at Angel.
Gone were the freckles.
Gone was the tan.
He'd been dead for centuries.
Faith crumpled, falling to her knees sobbing. Repeating apologies into her hands, apologies which were too late and too far removed from the situation to make sense or be of any use.
Confused faces watched her nervously. They had no idea what had gone on, no idea what she'd been through. As far they were concerned they'd rescued her, not damned her. How could they understand that Liam had loved her, broken, wicked her?
"Guys, can you give us a minute?" Angel's voice cracked, she heard it, he was barely holding it together. One person understood. There was a collective hesitation, Faith had been to a new time, of course, they had questions. She didn't have answers. She hugged her knees, buried her face and wished she had died.
Angel looked at her, she looked exactly the same as when he last saw her. He remembered the cold walk back to his house, shirtless, confused, scared, knowing something had happened but not knowing what. He'd thought it was just her being her. Slightly irritated at being left alone, in the dark. Then he'd put on his shoe, felt the sharp pain. When her ring, stone-cold, had dropped into the palm of his open hand he'd known. Not knowing what exactly happened, but known instinctively that he was never going to see her again. And yet here she was, grass-stained knees, muddy limbs, dishevelled hair and his shirt. Standing in front of him, what? Mere hours since she'd left him. His Faye, his wife. Broken and sobbing on the floor.
He didn't know what to say, he knew what he should say, but he didn't know if he could. He'd been planning on what to say to her should she return since he'd gotten his memory back. He'd known she would leave him, he hadn't dared to hope it was because she'd come back though. Angel had thought she died. Now he had the chance to tell her how much he'd loved her, how good the memories were, how he understood why she'd gone. But seeing her here now he understood with a certainty he didn't understand that she wouldn't hear it.
She couldn't understand it.
Not yet.
He dropped to his knees in front of her and pulled her soaked, tear-stained hands from her face, forcing her to look at him. The sobbing slowed, wet, remorseful eyes holding his steadily. He'd had a month to remember this loss, to come to terms with it, and that itself was stretched over the course of centuries. Her heartbreak was fresh.
She lunged at him, lips on his with a desperation he hadn't felt in years. This wasn't passion, this was her clinging to sanity, clinging to the last vestiges of a man she loved more than life itself. He knew he should push her off, but he couldn't. He had too many feelings of his own. This was too confusing, too much. He'd worried about getting too close, about risking losing his soul, but as amazing as it was to have her back it was also the most painful thing he'd ever encountered. It was the epitome of bitter-sweet. There was little danger of him losing himself completely in her.
She was his first love, he'd married her, he'd ravaged Europe trying to cope with losing her.
As she wrapped herself around him Angel picked her up easily, Faith buried her head in his shoulder as he walked, running her hands over his icy skin.
He was as strong as she was now.
They got to his room and he backed against the door to close it, Faith wriggled down and painfully smashed her hands into both of his shoulders, slamming him hard against the solid wood. Angel frowned, pulling her hands, she swatted his hands away and slammed him back down. Her eyes were hard, determined.
Something deep in Angel understood on a more fundamental level than even she did. She was testing the differences, she wanted to see, wanted to prove to herself exactly how far gone Liam was.
This wasn't happily-ever-after sex, this was closure.
This was goodbye.
Angel grabbed her wrists in retaliation and spun them, pressing her front into the door. There was a part of him, a part that remembered how frustrating it was to be so much weaker than her, that desperately wanted to even the score. Sliding his hand up the back of her legs, under the hem of the shirt, an action he remembered doing so many times. What he didn't expect was the sharp elbow into his ribs. He stumbled backwards, Faith lunged at him, knocking him backwards onto the floor. Hand around his throat she kissed him. It was sheer ferocity. He kissed back for a minute before using the strength of his legs to push her off and over his head. She hit the sideboard hard but was up on her feet at the same time he was.
The fighting went on until they were both too sore. Bruised and bleeding the fight for dominance had suddenly become so much more. The last blow and Angel could no longer hold back his demon face.
Faith came face to face with the thing which had killed her husband.
The monster who had hollowed out his body and made it his home. Only then did she grab him, roughly pulling him to her, lips meshing against lips, his fangs drew blood from her lips as they fell back onto the bed.
They fucked until they were too exhausted to move.
Then they just lay, next to next in Angel's bed. Staring at the ceiling numbly.
"You're cold," Faith observed in a neutral tone, Angel almost apologised but she spoke before he could, "I expected it but..." and she trailed off.
The silence resumed for a while.
"I'm sorry," she was the first to speak again, Angel was trying not to overwhelm her with all the speeches he'd planned in his head. He was trying to let her take what she needed, "I should've said goodbye. I was scared."
"Of me?" Angel choked, then swallowed back his emotion as quickly as he could. He wanted to know why she'd just vanished.
"Of me." Her voice was broken. "It took everything I had to leave. I wasn't sure I was going to manage it."
"I understand," he said, then decided that lying wasn't what she needed and added a very honest "now."
"And then?" She was asking not for his feelings, but because in her head she was picturing what Liam was going through. Trying to piece together the ending that she had run from.
"Then? Then I hated you. I hated myself. I hated my father. I hated everything and everybody because nobody was you, and everywhere reminded me of you."
He heard Faith swallow and stayed quiet waiting for her speech. It took a while.
"How were you turned?"
"I broke into my father's study, read up on the things you were reading. That book you had, remember, the one I offered to read with you?" She looked at him with such heartbreaking recollection, he continued without letting her speak. "I hoped I'd find you, I was convinced my father had sent you away, made you go. I stayed out all night, I went drinking. Stayed out at night. Waited for death. I was numb. Lost. Drunk. I sold all of his silver, to pay off our tab and get more…a lot of drinks were free. I was the laughing stock of the town." Angel paused. "I found her in a bar…of all places."
"-Her?-" Was that jealousy? Angel had to remind himself it was jealousy for Liam, not for him, so the warm feeling he got was irrational.
"Darla. I followed her, asked her to turn me, and she did."
"Wait...Darla, the tiny blonde?" Faith's eyes widened. All the time that was the one who destroyed Liam? She swallowed trying not to betray how sick she suddenly felt "well you certainly have a type." He didn't offer the information that he and Darla had been involved for a century afterwards, or that they'd had a son.
"I guess you were the exception."
"Maybe I was just the first," she reasoned. Angel wanted to tell her she was so much more than the others, she said the first as if it were a consolation prize and he'd not had a choice. She was so, so much more. He didn't though, he had a feeling it would fall on deaf ears. Instead, he moved to the next logical topic, the foremost question he had needed to ask her. Was he going to lose her again?
"What will you do now?"
"Go to Sunnydale I guess, see if they still need me. Help save the world. Try and atone." He could hear the quiver in her voice, smell the salty tears sliding down her cheeks, he dared not look at her. She didn't need to see him cry too. Very few people had ever seen him cry.
"And then?" He was definitely scared of this answer.
"Honestly? I don't know. I need to sort my head out. This is just, I feel like I'm dying. Like I can't breathe."
"I know." He really, really did.
"Right now, killing things, drinking a lot, killing some more things. I can't process beyond that."
"I understand." More silence. This was becoming a pattern, Angel had never paid quite so much attention to his ceiling before. "Will you ever come back?" It was an unfair question. A selfish one. But a part of him felt like she was leaving him again, leaving him again without consulting him, without letting him have any say in the matter. No matter how childish that sounded.
"I will," she answered eventually, "I'm not sure what for, or when, but I will come back. As long as the feds don't catch me first."
There was no more talking, eventually, the sun rose, he could smell it through the heavy curtains. He stayed silent as she got up, watched as she grabbed his shirt again and slowly began putting it on. Bruises were already blossoming along the pale skin of her back.
He'd marked her, again.
He wondered if the scar was still on her arm.
"Goodbye," she said softly, he repeated the word wondering whether he would ever see her again. And then she was gone and once again he was left to adapt to life without her. Hopefully this time he would do better than the last.