Part 18
With the slamming of the front door still echoing loudly in her ears, Buffy stood trembling in the now deserted study. Standing alone with just her troubled thoughts for company, hot tears pressed behind her eyelids and her throat grew tight with frustration as the nightmare that had become her life since the accident, grew even darker.
Once again, the fragile world that she had awoken to just a few weeks earlier had crumbled into total confusion, suffocating her with new deceptions.
For a short period, Buffy had really tried to believe that the worst part of losing her memory was finally behind her, that her life couldn't possibly get any more surreal. What a mistake that had been. In a single second, a blink in time, her troubled world had once again been turned on its head.
**You just left, Buffy. You didn't give me the chance to understand. You. Just. Left. **
As Buffy stood listening to the sound of her own heartbeat, Angel's sad words echoed through the room and reverberated right into her soul.
**From the pain reflected in his dark, lonely eyes, Buffy was shocked to learn that her husband really didn't have any idea why she had abandoned him three months earlier. Liam Angelus seemed as much in the dark about her reasons for leaving him as she was**
As the frightened young woman struggled to come to terms with the new turn of events, Liam's small study seemed to close in all around her, mocking her with its familiarity.
A familiarity that, try as she might, she still couldn't place ever being apart of. At that moment in time, all Buffy could feel was an awful emptiness, as if her brain was hollowed out and that this was as good as it ever gets. Once again, the fear that she would stay like this for the rest of her life returned and immediately all the colour drained from her face, leaving only a ghost of the beautiful young woman she had once been in its place.
Apart from her dreams of burning alive, this was the nightmare that haunted Buffy's sleep night after night. The real terror that if her memory never returned, the rest of her life would be lived in limbo.
Buffy trembled; just the realisation that part of her life could be forever shrouded in darkness, sent a cold shiver down the length of her spine.
Desperately trying to shake the icy visions from her head, Buffy fought to pull herself together, but the small study surrounding her had other ideas. Slowly, from every corner of the room, subtle images of the happy life she and Liam had built together over the last two years silently called out to be remembered. Photographs and mementos from a lost past did their best to jerk a reaction from the frightened girl, but no matter how many smiling faces called out from their frames, each failed miserably to bring a response.
**The nightmare was indeed coming true, she was going to stay lost in this darkness forever**
Standing all alone in the now empty room, Buffy suddenly understood what it felt like to be abandoned.
**What if this time it was Angel who didn't come back? What if William told him the same story he had told her?**
With the idea of losing her husband, Buffy found a deep ache form in the centre of her chest. Liam had only been gone for a few minutes but already she was missing him. As her eyes once again drifted to the two golden rings lying abandoned on the wooden desktop, Buffy swore a light of recognition fought its way through the darkness.
Deep inside her head the sound of trapped memories, lost in a distant corner of her mind rattled angrily against their prison walls, desperate to be free.
While struggling to hold on to her sanity, tiny whispers from Buffy's past teased her tired eyes with flashes of colour. Without any warning, feelings of anger and bitterness shot to the surface of her subconscious and her slight body shook with the force of their escape.
**I'll never forgive you for this**
With a gasp of disbelief, the blackness that had filled her mind since the accident momentarily lifted and Buffy actually tasted the hatred she had felt writing those very words. Gripping the edge of Liam's desk for support, she watched her shattered mind replay the events of a few months earlier. Buffy witnessed despair as she ripped the gold wedding band from her third finger, she felt both anger and betrayal flow though her veins like iced water, as she had turned on her heel and walked out of the front door for the very last time. With a flash of pain, her heart was flooded with a terrible sense of loneliness as she then watched herself sitting on a greyhound bus heading for a new life in New York.
As the vision before her faded Buffy realised she had been very alone on that bus. She fought to hold onto the picture for as long as possible, but just as suddenly as it had started the memory was over.
On reflection it had only been the briefest flicker into her past, but Buffy staggered as she realised the memory was real. It wasn't wishful thinking any longer; she really had started to remember.
**For a split second It was all there in black and white, She really had left him, but...** Buffy shook her head trying to break through the fog that had returned to cover her mind. From the words she had written in her note, the reasons for her leaving were still not explained. All Buffy knew for sure was the pain she had felt in her heart that day had been unbearable.
Dropping her eyes, Buffy looked down again at the crumpled note lying abandoned on the study floor. At last the first tiny piece of the puzzle had started to fall into place and with that realisation, a shudder of fear ripped right through her heart.
**It wasn't love that had chased her away that day, it was pain.**
Struggling to come to terms with this new information, one thought refused to leave Buffy's head ** Someone had to be lying to her**
**Only three people had entered her life since returning to Sunnydale, and for whatever the reason, Buffy knew one of them had to be lying**
Liam, William Pennington or Darla Penn
One of those was an outright liar, but which one? And more importantly, why?
Buffy closed her eyes as the question she couldn't even begin to answer pounded at her exhausted brain.
Her husband was the first person to slip into her mind.
**No. We're not friends, Buffy... You're my wife...**
Liam was the most complicated of the three to understand. One moment he was so cold and the next...
**Buffy I want you so much I'm physically in pain.**
Buffy had felt the emotion of their past radiating from his body like heat on a warm summer's day. At times, when he spoke, there was real passion in his dark eyes, both passion and tenderness. When Liam touched her skin, her mind might not remember him but her body did. His kisses were remembered, not in her memory but deep in her heart.
Buffy sighed; she still couldn't remember falling in love with this man the first time he had entered her life, but she certainly knew the second time it had happened. Looking back, she realised with a shudder that it started the instant she had opened her eyes in that hospital room. Whatever fate had in store for her, it seemed Buffy was destined to love Liam Angelus whether she wanted to or not.
But Liam wasn't the only man in this equation, there was also William Pennington and no matter how much she wished she could deny it, Buffy knew that the sweet looking guy, with the shock of bleached hair and mischievous blue eyes, seriously cared about her. The hurt look on his face when she failed to recognise him was genuine enough, Buffy was positive about that, if nothing else.
The thing that scared Buffy most about William was, if she believed the story he had told her, not only was she an adulteress, it also proved that Liam Angelus was certainly no Angel. **Buffy, I think that knock to your head did more than just wipe out a few memory cells. What on earth's gotten into you? I've already told you that we're lovers, I've had you on that office floor more times than I can count and now suddenly you can't bear to even kiss me.....
**When you come to your senses, hopefully you'll remember that I love you much more that he ever did, and when he breaks your heart again. I'll still be here and Buffy, I'll still love you.** As Buffy shook her head to clear William's declaration of love, her thoughts then turned to her so-called best friend.
**Darla**
Buffy still didn't trust the blonde female; who Liam swore was her best friend, as far as she could throw her. But sadly, whether she trusted her or not, Darla Penn backed up William's story to perfection and William's story destroyed any future she might have with Liam.
**Buffy, my brother loves you and inside your mind, underneath all that confusion, you feel the same way about him**
Buffy shook her head again and ran her fingers through her silky blonde hair in frustration.
"But that's the trouble, I don't. I don't love William, I love Liam." A soft sigh slipped into her voice as she picked up the rings again from the desk and held them in the palm of her hand. As Buffy started to slip the gold wedding band back over her finger, her words from her past came back with an icy blast.
** It's over. Don't even think of looking for me because I'm never coming back. I never want to see you again, not as long as I live. I'll never forgive you for this... **
Buffy's heart sank as the rings once again fell to the desk.
"Or at least I thought I did..." As she regretfully accepted that Liam was the one most likely misleading her, Buffy remembered where her husband was heading.
**Buffy, William Pennington is nothing but a stalker. He made your life hell for weeks.
This time I'll kill him. I promised that bastard if he ever went near you again that it would be the sorriest day of his life**
"Oh God!"
Finally realising the seriousness of the situation, Buffy pulled open the top desk drawer and removed a large address book. As her slim fingers quickly skimmed through the pages, she didn't even question how she had found the book so quickly. Turning to the page marked with a large dark P, Buffy knew in her heart that the name Pennington would not be there, but as her fingers slid down the long list of names, the second name on her lips was..
Penn.
Darla Penn.
Snatching up the receiver, Buffy pushed the numbers and waited with panic building as the phone continued to ring unanswered. Then, just as she lost all hope of preventing a bloodbath the sound of an annoyed female screeched into her ear.
"This better be important, I was in the shower"
Buffy sighed as she recognised Darla's voice.
"Darla, Thank God you answered, I didn't know who else I could ask"
"Buffy? Honey, I'm soaking wet here. Ring me back in an hour will you?"
"I need to find William, like yesterday" Buffy demanded, ignoring the other woman's request
At the other end of the phone line, the dripping wet female smiled as she clutched her towel closer to her body. The panic in the Buffy's annoying voice wasn't missed and a warm glow of satisfaction started to spread slowly through her cool veins.
Although Darla had planned for Liam to eventually find out about her brother's *affair* it seemed the news had broken much quicker than even she had thought possible. After her lunch date with Buffy, Darla had been worried that all her scheming had been for nothing, but now, much to her delight, it seemed the stupid little bitch hadn't keep her mouth shut after all.
Studying her reflection in the bathroom mirror and taking a deep satisfying breath, Darla transformed herself into Buffy's sympathetic best friend
"So, you finally came to your senses and realised where your heart really belonged " She started softly, her voice laced with fake concern.
Buffy was too worried to notice the treachery in the other woman's voice. All she could see was Liam and William coming to blows and she was terrified of the outcome.
Real fear started to twist knots in her stomach as her patience ran out.
"Darla, I haven't got time to go into the full story, I need to find William immediately. Liam knows I've seen him and he wants blood"
At the increased panic coming from Buffy's end of the line Darla grinned and played the part of a worried sister to perfection
"Buffy, what the hell have you done. Will's no match for Liam. Why on earth did you tell him, why couldn't you have just disappeared again?" Slowly, Darla's voice started to rise as she acted out her concern for her brother's safety. Not that William needed her concern. William Pennington had a strong reputation of being able to look after himself, not that Buffy remembered. If anything, Liam was likely to end up on the wrong end of a real beating.
Darla grinned. **And I'll be the one to kiss him better**
As the evil smile on her face widened, on the other end of the line, Buffy's beautiful features creased into a worried frown.
**This was all her fault. If either man was seriously hurt she was the only one to blame**
"I.." Buffy started.
But Darla didn't give her victim time to think about an answer, she continued her attack, wearing the already guilt ridden girl to the bone.
" William would've happily given up his life here in Sunnydale to have gone away with you.
When are you going to accept that you don't belong here, Buffy? You should never have returned"
Running her fingers through her hair with frustration, Buffy shook her head. Darla was right, she really should never have come back to Sunnydale.. It was a mistake, and now blood was going to be spilt.
As the consequences pounded her head Buffy finally snapped.
" Dammit, I haven't got time for this now. Look, I still can't remember where William lives and Liam is already on his way. Just give me the goddamn address"
Darla paused for a moment for effect and then reluctantly answered
"Crawford Street. William owns the large mansion on Crawford Street...." She didn't have time to finish her sentence before the phone was slammed down in her ear. Buffy had all the information she needed and didn't have time to waste on long *good-byes*
The blonde, wrapped only in a towel, replaced the receiver while a large satisfied grin covered her smug face. Everything was going better than she'd ever dreamt possible. This time the little cheerleader's marriage was well and truly history.
Meanwhile
Back at Ravello Drive, Buffy was out of the front door and half way down the road before she'd even released that she didn't have the slightest idea where Crawford Street was.
TBC...
With the slamming of the front door still echoing loudly in her ears, Buffy stood trembling in the now deserted study. Standing alone with just her troubled thoughts for company, hot tears pressed behind her eyelids and her throat grew tight with frustration as the nightmare that had become her life since the accident, grew even darker.
Once again, the fragile world that she had awoken to just a few weeks earlier had crumbled into total confusion, suffocating her with new deceptions.
For a short period, Buffy had really tried to believe that the worst part of losing her memory was finally behind her, that her life couldn't possibly get any more surreal. What a mistake that had been. In a single second, a blink in time, her troubled world had once again been turned on its head.
**You just left, Buffy. You didn't give me the chance to understand. You. Just. Left. **
As Buffy stood listening to the sound of her own heartbeat, Angel's sad words echoed through the room and reverberated right into her soul.
**From the pain reflected in his dark, lonely eyes, Buffy was shocked to learn that her husband really didn't have any idea why she had abandoned him three months earlier. Liam Angelus seemed as much in the dark about her reasons for leaving him as she was**
As the frightened young woman struggled to come to terms with the new turn of events, Liam's small study seemed to close in all around her, mocking her with its familiarity.
A familiarity that, try as she might, she still couldn't place ever being apart of. At that moment in time, all Buffy could feel was an awful emptiness, as if her brain was hollowed out and that this was as good as it ever gets. Once again, the fear that she would stay like this for the rest of her life returned and immediately all the colour drained from her face, leaving only a ghost of the beautiful young woman she had once been in its place.
Apart from her dreams of burning alive, this was the nightmare that haunted Buffy's sleep night after night. The real terror that if her memory never returned, the rest of her life would be lived in limbo.
Buffy trembled; just the realisation that part of her life could be forever shrouded in darkness, sent a cold shiver down the length of her spine.
Desperately trying to shake the icy visions from her head, Buffy fought to pull herself together, but the small study surrounding her had other ideas. Slowly, from every corner of the room, subtle images of the happy life she and Liam had built together over the last two years silently called out to be remembered. Photographs and mementos from a lost past did their best to jerk a reaction from the frightened girl, but no matter how many smiling faces called out from their frames, each failed miserably to bring a response.
**The nightmare was indeed coming true, she was going to stay lost in this darkness forever**
Standing all alone in the now empty room, Buffy suddenly understood what it felt like to be abandoned.
**What if this time it was Angel who didn't come back? What if William told him the same story he had told her?**
With the idea of losing her husband, Buffy found a deep ache form in the centre of her chest. Liam had only been gone for a few minutes but already she was missing him. As her eyes once again drifted to the two golden rings lying abandoned on the wooden desktop, Buffy swore a light of recognition fought its way through the darkness.
Deep inside her head the sound of trapped memories, lost in a distant corner of her mind rattled angrily against their prison walls, desperate to be free.
While struggling to hold on to her sanity, tiny whispers from Buffy's past teased her tired eyes with flashes of colour. Without any warning, feelings of anger and bitterness shot to the surface of her subconscious and her slight body shook with the force of their escape.
**I'll never forgive you for this**
With a gasp of disbelief, the blackness that had filled her mind since the accident momentarily lifted and Buffy actually tasted the hatred she had felt writing those very words. Gripping the edge of Liam's desk for support, she watched her shattered mind replay the events of a few months earlier. Buffy witnessed despair as she ripped the gold wedding band from her third finger, she felt both anger and betrayal flow though her veins like iced water, as she had turned on her heel and walked out of the front door for the very last time. With a flash of pain, her heart was flooded with a terrible sense of loneliness as she then watched herself sitting on a greyhound bus heading for a new life in New York.
As the vision before her faded Buffy realised she had been very alone on that bus. She fought to hold onto the picture for as long as possible, but just as suddenly as it had started the memory was over.
On reflection it had only been the briefest flicker into her past, but Buffy staggered as she realised the memory was real. It wasn't wishful thinking any longer; she really had started to remember.
**For a split second It was all there in black and white, She really had left him, but...** Buffy shook her head trying to break through the fog that had returned to cover her mind. From the words she had written in her note, the reasons for her leaving were still not explained. All Buffy knew for sure was the pain she had felt in her heart that day had been unbearable.
Dropping her eyes, Buffy looked down again at the crumpled note lying abandoned on the study floor. At last the first tiny piece of the puzzle had started to fall into place and with that realisation, a shudder of fear ripped right through her heart.
**It wasn't love that had chased her away that day, it was pain.**
Struggling to come to terms with this new information, one thought refused to leave Buffy's head ** Someone had to be lying to her**
**Only three people had entered her life since returning to Sunnydale, and for whatever the reason, Buffy knew one of them had to be lying**
Liam, William Pennington or Darla Penn
One of those was an outright liar, but which one? And more importantly, why?
Buffy closed her eyes as the question she couldn't even begin to answer pounded at her exhausted brain.
Her husband was the first person to slip into her mind.
**No. We're not friends, Buffy... You're my wife...**
Liam was the most complicated of the three to understand. One moment he was so cold and the next...
**Buffy I want you so much I'm physically in pain.**
Buffy had felt the emotion of their past radiating from his body like heat on a warm summer's day. At times, when he spoke, there was real passion in his dark eyes, both passion and tenderness. When Liam touched her skin, her mind might not remember him but her body did. His kisses were remembered, not in her memory but deep in her heart.
Buffy sighed; she still couldn't remember falling in love with this man the first time he had entered her life, but she certainly knew the second time it had happened. Looking back, she realised with a shudder that it started the instant she had opened her eyes in that hospital room. Whatever fate had in store for her, it seemed Buffy was destined to love Liam Angelus whether she wanted to or not.
But Liam wasn't the only man in this equation, there was also William Pennington and no matter how much she wished she could deny it, Buffy knew that the sweet looking guy, with the shock of bleached hair and mischievous blue eyes, seriously cared about her. The hurt look on his face when she failed to recognise him was genuine enough, Buffy was positive about that, if nothing else.
The thing that scared Buffy most about William was, if she believed the story he had told her, not only was she an adulteress, it also proved that Liam Angelus was certainly no Angel. **Buffy, I think that knock to your head did more than just wipe out a few memory cells. What on earth's gotten into you? I've already told you that we're lovers, I've had you on that office floor more times than I can count and now suddenly you can't bear to even kiss me.....
**When you come to your senses, hopefully you'll remember that I love you much more that he ever did, and when he breaks your heart again. I'll still be here and Buffy, I'll still love you.** As Buffy shook her head to clear William's declaration of love, her thoughts then turned to her so-called best friend.
**Darla**
Buffy still didn't trust the blonde female; who Liam swore was her best friend, as far as she could throw her. But sadly, whether she trusted her or not, Darla Penn backed up William's story to perfection and William's story destroyed any future she might have with Liam.
**Buffy, my brother loves you and inside your mind, underneath all that confusion, you feel the same way about him**
Buffy shook her head again and ran her fingers through her silky blonde hair in frustration.
"But that's the trouble, I don't. I don't love William, I love Liam." A soft sigh slipped into her voice as she picked up the rings again from the desk and held them in the palm of her hand. As Buffy started to slip the gold wedding band back over her finger, her words from her past came back with an icy blast.
** It's over. Don't even think of looking for me because I'm never coming back. I never want to see you again, not as long as I live. I'll never forgive you for this... **
Buffy's heart sank as the rings once again fell to the desk.
"Or at least I thought I did..." As she regretfully accepted that Liam was the one most likely misleading her, Buffy remembered where her husband was heading.
**Buffy, William Pennington is nothing but a stalker. He made your life hell for weeks.
This time I'll kill him. I promised that bastard if he ever went near you again that it would be the sorriest day of his life**
"Oh God!"
Finally realising the seriousness of the situation, Buffy pulled open the top desk drawer and removed a large address book. As her slim fingers quickly skimmed through the pages, she didn't even question how she had found the book so quickly. Turning to the page marked with a large dark P, Buffy knew in her heart that the name Pennington would not be there, but as her fingers slid down the long list of names, the second name on her lips was..
Penn.
Darla Penn.
Snatching up the receiver, Buffy pushed the numbers and waited with panic building as the phone continued to ring unanswered. Then, just as she lost all hope of preventing a bloodbath the sound of an annoyed female screeched into her ear.
"This better be important, I was in the shower"
Buffy sighed as she recognised Darla's voice.
"Darla, Thank God you answered, I didn't know who else I could ask"
"Buffy? Honey, I'm soaking wet here. Ring me back in an hour will you?"
"I need to find William, like yesterday" Buffy demanded, ignoring the other woman's request
At the other end of the phone line, the dripping wet female smiled as she clutched her towel closer to her body. The panic in the Buffy's annoying voice wasn't missed and a warm glow of satisfaction started to spread slowly through her cool veins.
Although Darla had planned for Liam to eventually find out about her brother's *affair* it seemed the news had broken much quicker than even she had thought possible. After her lunch date with Buffy, Darla had been worried that all her scheming had been for nothing, but now, much to her delight, it seemed the stupid little bitch hadn't keep her mouth shut after all.
Studying her reflection in the bathroom mirror and taking a deep satisfying breath, Darla transformed herself into Buffy's sympathetic best friend
"So, you finally came to your senses and realised where your heart really belonged " She started softly, her voice laced with fake concern.
Buffy was too worried to notice the treachery in the other woman's voice. All she could see was Liam and William coming to blows and she was terrified of the outcome.
Real fear started to twist knots in her stomach as her patience ran out.
"Darla, I haven't got time to go into the full story, I need to find William immediately. Liam knows I've seen him and he wants blood"
At the increased panic coming from Buffy's end of the line Darla grinned and played the part of a worried sister to perfection
"Buffy, what the hell have you done. Will's no match for Liam. Why on earth did you tell him, why couldn't you have just disappeared again?" Slowly, Darla's voice started to rise as she acted out her concern for her brother's safety. Not that William needed her concern. William Pennington had a strong reputation of being able to look after himself, not that Buffy remembered. If anything, Liam was likely to end up on the wrong end of a real beating.
Darla grinned. **And I'll be the one to kiss him better**
As the evil smile on her face widened, on the other end of the line, Buffy's beautiful features creased into a worried frown.
**This was all her fault. If either man was seriously hurt she was the only one to blame**
"I.." Buffy started.
But Darla didn't give her victim time to think about an answer, she continued her attack, wearing the already guilt ridden girl to the bone.
" William would've happily given up his life here in Sunnydale to have gone away with you.
When are you going to accept that you don't belong here, Buffy? You should never have returned"
Running her fingers through her hair with frustration, Buffy shook her head. Darla was right, she really should never have come back to Sunnydale.. It was a mistake, and now blood was going to be spilt.
As the consequences pounded her head Buffy finally snapped.
" Dammit, I haven't got time for this now. Look, I still can't remember where William lives and Liam is already on his way. Just give me the goddamn address"
Darla paused for a moment for effect and then reluctantly answered
"Crawford Street. William owns the large mansion on Crawford Street...." She didn't have time to finish her sentence before the phone was slammed down in her ear. Buffy had all the information she needed and didn't have time to waste on long *good-byes*
The blonde, wrapped only in a towel, replaced the receiver while a large satisfied grin covered her smug face. Everything was going better than she'd ever dreamt possible. This time the little cheerleader's marriage was well and truly history.
Meanwhile
Back at Ravello Drive, Buffy was out of the front door and half way down the road before she'd even released that she didn't have the slightest idea where Crawford Street was.
TBC...
