The Angel's Knight #22 - The Talk

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Los Angeles, October 15, 2017

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Faith told me I could find Diana down in the basement, the training room to be precise. Not the big one we use for the combat classes, but the smaller, personal one. Faith and I have spent many an hour honing our skills in here, seeing as we both have trouble finding other sparring partners that can match our strength and speed.

Apparently Faith rose early today, an amazing occurrence in itself, to train with Diana. When the meeting was called she left her down here, told her to train some by herself, try out a few of the weapons. Slayers, I know, have an instinctive knowledge when it comes to using weapons. Give them a few minutes of practice and they can expertly use just about anything from a crossbow to a rocket launcher.

Memories again! I was going to stop that, wasn't I?

Diana is standing in the middle of the room, her young face frozen in a mask of concentration. One of her hands gingerly holds a knife by the tip of the blade, her eyes are resting on the wooden target dummy in the corner. The air around her all but hums with her concentration.

The tension snaps as she lets the knife fly, but it buries itself in the wall about an inch to the left of the dummy's head. Diana wrinkles her nose in frustration and she looks so incredibly cute doing it.

I close my eyes, chasing those thoughts away. Get yourself together, Angel! You are nearly three centuries old. Someone your age should have his hormones under control.

When I open my eyes again Diana is looking at me, her large brown eyes shimmering with conflicting emotions. I wonder what she sees when she looks at me. Faith told me that she figured out my being a vampire thanks to some clues dropped by Cordelia. Apparently Cordy told her the rest as well, though, seeing as she is not busy attacking me right now.

What do I see when I look at her? A bundle of sensations that I thought forever buried somewhere deep inside my heart. Most of them are painful due to the memories they bring with them. I look at this girl and my mind brings me back to a sunlit day here in LA when I drove past a school building and saw the girl that was to become my destiny. Oh, if only I had known what kind of destiny it was to be.

Sixteen years ago I started building a wall around my heart. No, that had actually begun much earlier, the day I realized that emotions like happiness and contentment were not for me, could never be for me. The day I finally understood why the Gypsies were so insane as to put an escape clause into my curse. I was supposed to know. I was supposed to be told that, should I ever overcome the guilt and remorse I felt for all that I did, then I would turn back into this creature I once was, the creature I hate more than anything in the world. The clause was meant to make me fear contentment. Make me afraid of happiness.

Too bad Darla, Dru, and Spike killed them before they could tell me that.

Sixteen years ago this wall, the one that would protect my heart from emotions and thereby the world from the consequences should I experience them, was finished. The death of the one person who could make me feel human was the final stone. Some nights my thoughts take perverse paths and I wonder whether I didn't do exactly the wrong thing. With Buffy gone the wall served no purpose anymore, did it? She was the only one who could possibly make me happy. With her dead I could let as many people inside as I wanted for none of them could possibly make me feel like she did. Instead the wall grew higher.

I once told Buffy that I loved exactly one person in my entire life. That hasn't changed and it never will. Not even if some girl I have only just met seems to bring my dead heart back to life for the first time in nearly twenty years.

"Angel?" she asks, looking up at me. God, even the way she speaks my name sparks memories I can't afford, memories I don't want. I'm not stupid, I recognize the similarities. A young girl, suddenly immersed in a world of demons and monsters, so innocent, and quite beautiful as well. And here I am, trying to help her through it. This is all too familiar and I don't want it to be. I can't allow it to be.

"Hello, Diana," I greet her, walking down the last few steps. "I just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes. Is that all right?"

"Sure!" She takes a step back, motioning at the room around her. "Be my guest. Or ... let me be your guest, seeing as this is your house, right? Mr. Pryce said that you own ..."

"Yes, I do," I stop her ramble, once again fighting myself as I look at her.

"Good! I ... I should probably thank you for taking me in, right? So ... thank you. And thank you for trying to help me figure out what happened to me. And thank you for ..."

"There is no need to thank me, Diana," I interrupt her again. Ever since I came down those last few steps she has refused to meet my eyes and made a step back for every one that I took towards her. "And no need to be afraid of me, either."

She finally looks up, her eyes so full of life, of emotions, that I feel the chill inside myself all the stronger in contrast. So much energy, so much life. All that I am thirsts for it, though for different reasons. I push it all back down into the dark, trying to concentrate on the reason I came down here for.

"I... I'm not. Afraid of you, I mean. It's just..."

"What?"

She blinks and looks away, wringing her hands. "It's just... I know nothing about my life except what some social service file says about it. I'm told I'm some kind of mystical warrior against creatures that I didn't believe in less than two days ago. I'm doing stuff I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be able to do, not even if I spent the entire seventeen years of my life I don't remember training. And on top of it all..."

Her voice trails off as she looks at me again.

"On top of it all," she begins again, "I have the feeling there is more. That there is something else I should be doing. Something I should know, should remember, but I can't."

I slowly move towards her again, the need to comfort her somehow almost overwhelming. At least she doesn't inch back from me this time, but I can see it's an effort for her. She's immersed in a world she doesn't understand and every instinct within her is probably screaming right now to either stake me or run away. She does neither, just looks at me.

"I think there is a reason you are here," I say, looking back at her. "Something big is about to happen. None of us is quite sure what it is, but I do know that we are going to need all the help we can get."

"Help? You mean..."

"I refuse to believe that a new Slayer just happened to be called by accident, Diana. There is a purpose to it all, even if sometimes it's almost impossible to believe. I think you are here because we need you."

The smallest of smiles plays across her lips. It's incredible how often people just need to hear these three little words to feel better. We need you. It's what brought Faith back into the fight on our side. We needed her. It's what brought me out of a century of depression. Buffy needed me. Maybe it's a flaw that we have this desperate need to be needed, but I like to think of it as a sign that human beings can, in fact, be good. Many years ago someone tried to tell me that all people were evil, but I don't believe that. Not when I look into the eyes of this girl before me.

"Can I ... ask you something?" Diana says after a moment, her smile vanishing again.

"Sure."

"I ... earlier today I met Cordelia and something ... something strange happened."

Her meeting Cordelia was something I would have liked to avoid for some more time. This poor girl has had enough to worry about without learning that someone foresaw her coming. Then again, maybe that actually helped. Maybe knowing that she destined to be here helps her make a little more sense of the world.

"What happened?" I ask her.

"She ... she had one of her visions and ... and I touched her. And suddenly I was inside this ... vision thing. I saw everything she saw and ..."

She hesitates a long moment, giving me time to process her words. She shared Cordelia's visions? I don't think this has ever happened before. It's not like none of us ever touched Cordelia when she collapsed from having a message from the Powers sent into her brain. Could it be because she is a Slayer? No. I distinctly remember that Faith caught her a few times when the visions overcame her and she never said anything about sharing it, either.

"I saw a girl," Diana continues. "Cordelia said her name was Buffy."

What? "You ... you saw ..." I can't put the sentence together. She saw Buffy? Why would she see Buffy? Why would she share a vision with Cordelia that showed Buffy of all people?

"Cordelia said I should talk to you about her," Diana continued, clearly trying to get all the words out before her courage fails her. "She said you ... that you would want to know what she saw and that ... that she felt I should be the one to tell you. Not sure why, but that's what she said."

Some days I do not know why I haven't killed or fired Cordelia a long time ago.

"What did you see?" I finally ask, deciding to get this over with as fast as possible.

And she tells me. Describes the scene I have seen in my mind's eye a thousand times every single night since it happened. Buffy jumping off the tower, diving head-first into the dimensional tear in order to save the world. The night I should have been there, but wasn't. The night I failed her. The Oracles once told me that Buffy would die unless I was by her side and they were right. I should have been there.

Diana stops and I realize she must have seen the tear I feel trailing down my cheek.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ..."

"It's okay," I tell her. "Not your fault."

She looks at me for a long moment. "Who was she to you?"

And I don't know why, but I find myself answering her question. "She was the light of my life. The only person who ... when I was with her I could believe that I was something else. Something better. Not just a monster."

Why am I telling her this? I don't even know her and she doesn't know me. This is definitely not the time to create some kind of connection with some girl that appeared in my life out of nowhere. It's not right.

"Well," she suddenly says, smiling again. "I can't really say for myself, but ... after hearing what all the other people here have to say about you, I really don't think you are a monster. The way they all talk about you ... I think you're a really good guy."

I can't help but smile in return. "Thanks."

There is something of an awkward silence between us before she speaks again.

"Why ... why do you think these ... Powers wanted me to see this?"

I wish I knew, Diana. I wish I knew. The things she saw at the end, Buffy's body falling to the ground but some part of her remaining behind in the swirl of energy ... I don't know what to think about this. Especially after what Maryke told me, after Cordy's vision that said Buffy would be there to fight against me in the battle to come.

I remember how, after learning about her death, I was in a state of denial. I couldn't accept that she was really gone. Hadn't I sacrificed my humanity to keep her safe? The concept of a world without her in it was too much for me to handle. It took me months to accept that she was really gone, that she was dead and would never return to me.

Now, for the first time in sixteen years, another notion enters my mind.

Buffy didn't die under even remotely normal circumstances. She died by diving into a swirl of energy, a rend in the dimensional walls. Glory, a god, wanted to use this portal to return home. Instead Buffy closed it, closed it by sacrificing herself. Her body was there, lifeless.

But what if that was the only thing that died there? Her body. What if some part of her survived, was somehow preserved by that strange energy Glory called into being that day. What if she never reached the heaven I always knew she had a place in?

What if Buffy never really died?

TO BE CONTINUED