Chapter Seven
Buffy was still muttering angrily to herself as she made her way down to the library, key in hand after a frustrating ten minutes trying to dig it out of Statue Willow's pocket.
"The stupid spell could have backfired and left Wesley free, or Fred, or Willow, or ANYONE BUT ME! But no, of course not! It had to be the one girl in all the world who can't even learn Internet abbreviations, let alone a DEAD LANGUAGE!" She took out a minute sliver of her frustration by kicking open the library door.
"You know, I tried to teach you once, but you were more interested in... other things at the time."
Her head snapped up, and the most beautiful sight she'd ever laid eyes on sat before her, the scroll and another copy of the key spread out on the tabletop before him.
"Angel," she gasped, "You... you're not frozen."
"Neither are you," he observed, "Which, if Wesley's translation is even close, is exactly the way it's supposed to be."
He nodded slightly to her right, and Buffy turned to check out what he was gesturing at. Wes stood stone-still not three feet away, obviously about to grab for the door. His empty left hand was clutched as if he was holding something important, and the expression on his face was a mixture of victory and grim determination. Buffy wondered if she'd hit him with the door on her way in.
"I had to pry the scroll out of his hand," Angel explained, "He must have figured out the answer, and was coming to tell us."
"Maybe to warn us the spell might backfire?" Buffy asked dryly.
"We should have known, considering the energy imbalances we've been seeing," he replied with a shrug.
Buffy went over to sit beside him at the large table. "How far have you gotten?"
"Not far. I wish he'd taken some notes. But what I can tell you is..." his eyes rose to meet hers. "This is about you and I, like the others have been saying. No one else can intervene."
He pointed to the verse he had scrawled on a memo pad. Buffy read it, and sighed. "Little late for a warning label."
"I think I've suspected this all along."
"That it's too late for a warning label?" she tried to divert.
He smiled. "A very smart young woman I knew a long time ago once told me that."
"And boy, was she right," Buffy responded sadly. "So, okay. Faith said we have to make a connection. I think all this bashing our heads against the wall demonstrates the very "Not-that-Simple-ness" of the situation."
Angel chewed the inside of his lip as he nodded at her statement. "But there are some things between us that are. Maybe that's the truth we need to get to. The connection."
Buffy laughed bitterly. "Angel, there is *nothing* simple about us. There never has been."
"I'm still in love with you. That's simple."
She tensed at his soft, almost off-handed declaration, backing away from him defensively. He was slamming straight into the brick wall around her heart, skipping all the heroic climbing business, and she knew for a fact she wasn't ready for that dam to burst. She'd drown in the deluge for sure. Angel was a bulldozer operating without a permit.
She got up, escaping to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, avoiding his intense gaze.
"That's not simple, either," she corrected him.
"Why not?" he questioned bluntly. There wasn't time for the gentle ease he would have preferred to utilize. Charging into the breach was the only way to go. He knew, above and beyond, in spite of everything else, that this much was Truth. Absolute. "Right now, it's the only thing I know for certain."
She spun and nailed him with a hard look. "How can you say that? You hardly know me anymore! God, I hardly know me! Weren't you there for the whole lame cookie dough thing?"
"I was there. And you're right, partially. We don't know all the minutiae of each other's lives anymore. But I know *you*. Inside. The core of you, where it counts."
She wanted so badly to believe him. But she had seen, done and lost too much for the happy, quipping little girl she knew he was referring to to exist anymore. "No. You don't. You don't have the first clue what I've become since you left me. All you've gotten are snapshots of my life! You think I'm still all sunshine and light on the inside, right? That paragon of goodness and virtue and laughter you'd held up on a pedestal all these years? Well, I'm not! Not even close! I've done things that would make you *sick*! That make ME SICK! I've lied, and I've killed, and I've betrayed, and I've used people who cared about me. No, you don't know ANY part of me anymore!"
Her anger took him by surprise, and he was unable to leash his own temper because of it. "What? You think I don't know what walking through the darkness inside does to you? Please, Buffy! I know that feeling better than you do!" He got up and approached her once more. "It does change you. Of course, I know that. But I can see your heart as clearly today as the first time I ever saw you. I can still feel your soul. You *are* good. No matter what you've done. In the end, you always do what's right, no matter what the price. You're strong, and giving, and unselfish..."
She cut him off with a bitter laugh. "Oh, you think so? Unselfish and strong, huh? Do you know what I did when I came back from Heaven, after I saw you, and you pushed me away – AGAIN? I FUCKED SPIKE. Yeah, that's right, evil, soulless monster Spike! I let him do things to my body... I can't even SAY! But pain was something. It was REAL! And I needed it! I craved the bruises and the welts and the aches. I relished pounding on him and then fucking him into the floor. I savored making him tell me that he loved me! And do you know why I did it? Because I COULD! BECAUSE I KNEW HE WOULD NEVER, EVER LEAVE ME UNLESS I TOLD HIM TO!"
Angel stepped away, reeling from the anguish in her words – and the tearing sensation they wrought in his heart.
"How's that for good and strong and unselfish?" she shrieked on, "Huh? And do you know what else? Part of the reason I made you leave that night before we battled the First was because something inside of me KNEW that whoever wore that amulet was going to die! And I couldn't stand the thought of it being YOU! So after everything Spike did for me – after he traveled halfway around the world to get a SOUL FOR ME, I KILLED HIM! Is that unselfish?"
"Stop it," Angel demanded.
"NO!" She shot forward and grabbed his arm, forcing him to continue facing her. "You wanted to play therapy, so here we go! Take a good look at me, Angel! You know that 'sacred calling' I've always hated so much and fought so hard? I finally won that battle, didn't I? I GAVE THAT SAME FUCKING CURSE TO HUNDREDS OF GIRLS WHO NEVER ASKED FOR IT! I ruined their lives so MINE would be easier! And my friends – what have they lost because of me? Their childhoods, their friends, their TOWN! All I've ever done is hurt the people who care about me, Angel! You of anyone should remember that!"
He confronted her at last, his features twisted in rage. "You are NOT the only person in the universe who's done things they're ashamed of! I've perpetrated things in the past few years WITH my soul that would give you nightmares! I've killed and lied and betrayed, and broken hearts, too! Christ, Buffy, do you really think anything you can throw at me would change the way I feel about you NOW? I didn't intend to fall in love with you in the first place! God knows I've spent the last six years trying to stop, but I CAN'T!" He shook her off and paced across the cavernous library. "I tried other women. I tried losing myself in vengeance. I tried hiding, I tried pushing my family away and I tried to tie them to me in ways that didn't make any sense... But it never stops. You're still there, inside me, at the center of me, and all the things I've been through these past six years haven't faded it one bit. Listing all your supposed sins sure as Hell won't. So save the speech for someone more easily impressed!"
Buffy stared at him, lip trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Which other women?"
Angel stopped. "What?"
"You said you tried other women. Who? And how?"
He smirked at her ironically petulant tone. "That entire sermon, and 'other women' is all you got from it?"
With a shrug, she reminded him, "I'm single-minded like that. And also persistent, so you might as well tell me so I can get a head start on hunting her down and killing her."
He waved off her question. No use telling her that Darla was already dead. "It's not important. The point is... what we've done doesn't change who we are, in our innermost beings. That's the part in each of us that's bound. Forever. That's the part of me that's always missed you, even when I knew leaving you was the right thing to do. The part of me that shriveled up when you died. That never really recovered, even after you came back. It's easy to forget that tie is there, with all the events that go on in our lives. But when we remember..." He sighed and sank onto the couch beside him. "Something always feels off-kilter."
Buffy remained silent, just watching him as the time kept ticking by. "We're not getting anywhere," she groused, defeated. "We can't connect like that anymore, Angel. We see things too differently now. Maybe we always have."
He leaned his elbows on his knees, covering his face with his hands. "And the pressure doesn't help."
Her heart wrenched to hear the weariness in his voice. The same hopelessness she was feeling... something so familiar to their relationship. The other night on the phone – that effortless camaraderie she thought lost long ago, and now suddenly regained – was a fluke. Just like she had told Faith (God, was that only yesterday morning?) the minute she and Angel stepped into the hairier areas of their relationship, everything just fell apart. She took the seat beside him.
"There's just too much..." she whispered through her tears. "There's too much, and too much time has gone by for us to just... be that way again. I think we should look for another way to stop the vortex."
He nodded and finally looked at her again. "I guess we'd better."
They gazed into each other's eyes for a brief stretch of eternity, all those unspoken words choking their voices, until finally Angel broke the silence and abruptly rose, returning to the table. "Let's check the Vatine Chronicles for references to fire devouring fire. That's a place to start."
Some part of Buffy wailed in grief at how easily they both gave up. But that was the part she'd kept locked in the dungeon of her being since the night he walked away from her, and though that stone cell was a little leaky from the past couple of weeks he'd been back in her life, she didn't think it would be too hard to lock it down again.
She'd lived without him and his fairy tale illusions for a long time. No reason to stop now. Since they probably didn't have much time left, anyway.
~
They had been scouring the archives for hours when they heard the sound... a din like the universe had torn wide open and spilled every storm that ever struck out onto the earth at once.
Buffy jumped up from her place on the floor and ran to the windows on the east side of the library.
"Oh my God... Angel..." she gasped.
He joined her at the window and beheld the same horror that had bleached her skin to nearly as white as his own.
The void was moving forward again, faster now, and it had grown to the point where it blotted out their entire line of vision. Nothing as far as the eye could see.
"Fred's team's out there!" Angel cried, bolting for the door, "We have to get them out of its path!"
The pair tore into the fading night, both pouring on their preternatural speed as they ran straight toward the hole in reality. It was no longer pitch black and silent, but instead had become a maelstrom of fire and lightning rolling across the lawn as though making up for lost time.
Buffy and Angel moved in silent, automatic tandem, each slinging a guard or two over their shoulders and sprinting the quarter mile back to the school, where they deposited their statue-like burdens in the foyer and ran back to do it all over again.
It took close to an hour, but by the time the vortex had swallowed the area where the team had been standing, no one and nothing had been left behind, including the heavy equipment they'd been using.
Finally, they both stood on the top step of the entranceway, Buffy bent over desperately gasping for breath, with Angel beside her watching the chasm moving toward them.
"I know what we have to do," he finally announced, raising his voice a little to be heard over the increasing bedlam.
Buffy peered up, hopeful. "You do? Oh good."
He nodded, his expression grim. "Carrying the flux disrupter made me think of it. What if we created another vortex, this one on an opposite energy spectrum?"
She blinked. "A who in a what?"
"If we reverse the polarity of the disrupter, instead of it tapping into the void's natural energy pattern, duplicating it, and turning it back on itself, we could create another vortex of the opposite polarity, going in the opposite direction in time-space..." he mused aloud.
"Oh, well, since you put it that way."
Angel was actually half-surprised he understood what he was talking about himself. Hurrah for photographic memory. "Basically, we turn reality inside out so the hole devours itself."
Now she got it. "OH! Oh! Yes! Okay, let's do that!" She ran toward the enormous generator, but Angel reached out to pull her back.
"There's a problem," he informed her.
"Of course there is," Buffy groaned, "Why wouldn't there be?"
"If I'm right, the two voids will cancel each other out... but they'll also erase everything in the immediate vicinity of the disrupter when they collapse."
She heaved a great sigh. "Including whichever about-to-be-dead people are running the... thingy."
Holding her gaze solemnly, he nodded.
"Oh good. Because I haven't experienced nearly enough impending death in the past couple of years," Buffy turned to look at the vortex once more. "Well, we better get to it, then."
Angel squeezed her hand. "No 'we'. Me. You're staying here."
She yanked away from him. "Like Hell! This is my school! My home! Everything I've got! If anybody goes alone, it's ME!"
He shook his head and gave her a resigned smile. "Even you can't carry that thing alone. And you don't know how to operate it. I can do both."
Standing full to her suddenly regal 5'4", Buffy notified him, "Then we both do it." Angel began to argue, but she immediately cut him off. "Listen! Your nobility would be really sweet if it wasn't pointless AND putting the world in danger! So shut up and help me get this thing back out there!"
Without another word, the pair grabbed the sides of the two-ton generator, hauled it up, and began making their way back into the storm.
The sound was deafening, and Buffy could barely hear him shout, "HERE!" when they were less than a hundred yards from the sucking end of everything. Angel immediately began pushing buttons, pulling levers, grasping at every shred of memory he retained of Fred's demonstration at the disrupter's unveiling – and performed it backwards.
All the green lights went to red, and the machine began emitting a pained whine as he turned to stand in front of Buffy once more. The vortex was moving even faster now, barely 40 yards away. He rested one hand on the activation key.
"We have to do it now!" Angel bellowed into the wind.
Buffy nodded, swallowing stiffly, and came to stand beside him. She grabbed his free hand tightly.
"I always knew it would end like this! Me and you, I mean!" she shouted.
He nodded, smiling, and pulled her under the shelter of his arm.
"Buffy, I do love you. If we don't end up together on the other side, please, never forget that, okay?"
Her eyes filled. "I love you too. I always have, and I always will. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."
He glanced at the rapidly advancing vortex, then back at her again. "See?" he said with a small smile, "All it took was the end of the world. Simple."
She laughed. "Angel?"
"Yeah?"
"Could we quit with the speechifying and move on to the last-kiss-before-we-die portion of our program? Please?"
The first of his tears spilled over as he leaned down, capturing her warm, soft lips with his own. It was just the same – like being struck by lightning. Like falling into a bed of fluffy clouds – your own bed, after a long, hard journey. Like everything else in the cosmos just stopped, and there was nothing but her sweet mouth and the gentle cadence of her heartbeat. No past. No loss. No pain. Nothing but peace. Home.
They drew apart slowly, still lost in one another's eyes, for a long, last moment.
"Angel..." Buffy whispered.
Whispered. He stood up straighter and turned.
The peace wasn't only in his heart. The vortex had vanished, and only the pristine grounds of the Slayer school remained, shining a dull silver-grey in the first light of pre-dawn. There was nothing of the fissure in reality that had been there a moment ago.
Buffy and Angel looked at one another... and laughed.
~
TBC...
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