The Things That Can't Be Said
by
Princess McPhee
Disclaimer: Not mine. Joss Whedon, UPN, Fox. Not me.
Author's Note: Can you guess what I've been watching? Plus, I'm an old B/A shipper, and while I liked the idea of S/B at the beginning, I have gotten so bored with it that I was looking back over my tapes, and noticed this one.
Summary: How can anyone ever forget all that wasn't said at the end of 'Becoming, pt. 2'?
Rating: PG
"Close your eyes."
A knife floats through the air and stabs me through the chest. I look down, but it's not there. It's only my imagination, making up realities for the pain that is winding through my heart. I can barely breathe.
I can't do it. This is it. The Powers That Be have asked too much. Their precious Slayer is going to fail them.
But I have to. Because I can't live without Angel, but I can't live with him, either. If I get sucked into that portal along with every other human on the planet, I won't live. I'll just die a slower death.
I draw the sword back, and make ready to aim for his chest. He doesn't open his eyes, so secure is he that his faith in me is justified. And I reassure myself that his faith is justified, that it isn't being so terribly trampled on. Because, after all, I'm doing what he would want.
Aren't I?
Every muscle in my body protests as I start to urge the sword forward. It makes a sick kind of squishing sound as it enters his body, and then it's out the other side, tethering him firmly to the open portal gushing from Acathla's mouth before he can even open his eyes in surprise.
There's a world said in them. Even as his lips are moving so slowly, only able to get one word out in the shortest moment of time I have ever spent with him, his eyes convey the meaning of a thousand words in each nanosecond. I connect with his eyes, I touch his hand gently and step back away from him, every step away, farther from saving him, or at least trying, driving the knife in deeper.
The shock plain in his gaze hurts me, makes the pain worse than I ever thought it could be. I don't scream, because it's too intense to be conveyed that way. The second he is gone, I know I'm going to collapse. My body is full of lead, and my head is spinning with the speed of light.
I watch his lips part so incredibly slowly, betrayal tainting his gaze at the last moment of his unlife. "Buf...fy..." He says, so painfully slowly.
I'm doing the right thing.
And then the portal starts to draw in on itself, taking him with it, taking my only lover, my only love, and my only real boyfriend into it as it closes with a terribly ominous whooshing sound, taking away the only thing I've ever wanted more than my own life. The only person in my life I'd ever felt anything like this for.
I guess for some, it's good that I couldn't exchange myself for Angel, because I know if I could have, I would have. But for me, it's all the torments of hell being away from him, even as now it's only fractions of a second since those enormously deep chocolate eyes disappeared from my world. I guess shock goes away fast in Slayers, just like everything else.
I only wish it would take the pain with it.
I'm hyper-aware of the world going on around me. All those children, all those people unaware of how close their lives came to visiting a real hell today. All the demons who had celebrated Angelus, probably shaking their heads a little over the loss of a leader, and moving on. Maybe following Spike and Drusilla.
Nothing has changed for ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of this dimension. But as I stand before the again still statue of Acathla, our discarded swords lain haphazardly on the cold stone ground, I don't know why my legs don't give out, and I don't know how come the minutes keep going by, as much as I will them to disappear.
My body is stiff and straight, though I feel like I have no control over it. I'm not trying to stay standing up, I'm not proud in this moment. I don't even know what proud is in this time and place. But I remain, rock-hard because of the shock and sudden tensing of Slayer muscles.
Tomorrow, maybe even later today, everyone will praise me for destroying Angelus, and tell me that they know I loved him, but that I'll get over it. That I'll move on, because I'm not meant to be unhappy forever. Not meant. Hah.
Not meant is a gyp. What the hell does 'meant' have to do with anything? If things that are meant to happen are the only things that do happen, then the world is clearly years and years beyond insane. Several billion.
I can't face my friends and tell them that it was Angel I killed. I can't face them and watch Willow as she struggles to deal with the fact that her biggest spell yet was a bust, when I don't tell her the truth. I can't watch Xander insult Angel's memory, and I can't listen to Giles comfort me as his quiet fury burns inside.
God, Cordelia's probably the only one I could stand right now. That's a scary thought.
Well, and maybe Oz.
I know I won't go back. I don't know what I'll do, maybe I'll just pack and leave. I can't go home. I don't have school anymore. Any one of my friends would let me stay with them, but I couldn't take that right now.
I'm seventeen. I can pass for eighteen, the magic age. Maybe I'll go somewhere and get a job.
Maybe I'll just stand here and see how long I can survive this burning pain through the middle of my chest.
Maybe I'll die here. Have a heart attack and pass on, just like that. I'd probably be the only Slayer ever to die of such 'natural' causes.
Then again, I'm guessing I'm the only Slayer in history to have to send their vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend to hell, in exchange for the world staying as it is, in our dimension.
Right now, it's not seeming like such a good decision.
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