Author's Notes: Finally, I revised part 4, sorry it took so long
(uncooperative muse). I ended up not revising much on this part, hopefully
it doesn't suck!
AN2: As usual, not beta'd, so that means mistakes are my fault.
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Part 4
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The next morning Willow awoke a little before 9am. She thought to herself that she could have easily slept another few hours, but with Angel having slept at the house, she figured that she better drag herself out of bed and check on him. So she showered and got dressed before making her way toward the room Angel had spent the night in. Upon arriving at his door she found that it was open and Angel wasn't in the room. She knew right away where he was.
Quietly, she crept down the hall to Buffy's room and found what she expected to find: Angel asleep in the chair, his head resting on the edge of the bed near Buffy's hand. If she hadn't been sure the previous night that he was still in love with her, she would have been now. Part of her was tempted to leave him there, but she knew he should probably eat something, and they also had things that needed to be talked about. Placing her hand on his shoulder she shook him lightly.
"Angel...time to wake up," she said softly.
"Huh...Willow?...What time is it? I must have fallen asleep," he replied, blinking his eyes at the harsh sunlight filling the room.
"It's almost ten in the morning. Why don't you come down and have some breakfast. You've got to be hungry, and Buffy's physical therapist will be here soon so you can't stay in the room anyway," Willow answered as she walked over and adjusted the blinds covering the windows.
"I'm not really hungry, but I guess you're right, I should have something. Physical therapist?" he asked looking up at her, wondering at the statement.
"Yeah, he comes by a couple times a week to work on her muscles. It keeps them from atrophying," she explained, wiggling her arms as if it would help show her point.
"Oh, okay. I guess we should get some breakfast then," Angel said and got up from the chair he'd been seated in for hours.
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They sat quietly on the patio with their breakfasts. Angel took an occasional bite out of the omelet that Willow made, but his mind was elsewhere, cluttered with a thousand different thoughts. Finding Buffy in a coma upon his return to Sunnydale was something that he had not expected at all. He couldn't get the sight of her out of his head, lying there pale and motionless.
Did she dream? Was she in pain? And then there was the part of his brain that was telling him that this was all his fault. He had left her without a look back, left her alone, to fend for herself. As a result she was now just a body lying on a bed, a shell of what she once was. His conscience kept repeating over and over that she wouldn't have been hurt if he had stayed.
"Are you okay?" Willow interrupted his thoughts.
"Yeah, it...it just hurts.to see her like that. She was always so full of life," he answered, not able to look Willow in the eyes.
"I know," she agreed, a tear forming. "It's still hard for me to look at her even after almost eight months."
"Tell me what happened, all of it," he asked firmly.
Willow inhaled deeply and looked up at him, not quite knowing where to start, or how to tell him all that there was to tell. It was going to be hard for him to hear, she knew that. But it was important that he know.
"There's a lot to tell you, Angel, and it's not all stuff you're going to like. But please, just listen to everything I have to say," began Willow, taking a sip of juice before continuing. "Things changed a lot after you left, Buffy changed. It took her the whole summer to get over you leaving. We tried to get her to go out with us, but she wouldn't leave the house most of the time. So we just tried to be there for her."
"School started in the fall, and she seemed a little better. She still didn't go out much, but she was doing really well in her classes. The summer after freshmen year she moved back in with her mom. She would hang out with us once in a while, but mostly we had to go to her house to see her," Willow paused and looked toward Angel. This is where things started to go downhill, she still wasn't sure he was ready to hear it all. But he nodded so she went on.
"Then not long after sophomore year started, she met a guy, bumped into him in the hall, I think. They started hanging out and she was almost like her old self. But he just up and dumped her after...well...after he got what he wanted from her," she looked pointedly at Angel to make sure he understood the connotation. His head drooped slightly showing he got the meaning. "She was crushed, to say the least. Everything that she'd built back up in her life just came crashing down."
"For a while we hardly saw her, she skipped classes, never answered the phone. But then all the sudden she seemed to, I don't know, get over it maybe. We were all so worried about her, and so relieved when she stopped hiding herself away," she sighed, running a hand through her hair. The toughest part was coming up. What's she'd just told Angel was bad, but the worst had yet to be told.
"Go on," Angel requested, although dreading whatever was left. He couldn't believe that some guy would just use her like that. If he ever found out who the prick was, he was going to pay him a little visit.
"It only lasted for about a month. Then she just disappeared. No one knew where she was for maybe two weeks. When she came back she was completely different. She wouldn't tell us where she had been, what had happened, nothing. Finally, she dropped out of school and just stopped talking to us altogether. We tried to keep being her friends but after a while we gave up. We couldn't force her to be friends," taking another sip of her juice, she glanced again at Angel. He looked just as perplexed as they had been back then at the changes in Buffy.
"The things that happened afterward we're not real sure about, some of it we only heard from others, or saw glimpses of. From what we know she met some guy named Mark at a bar and started dating him. People told us that he was bad news, drugs, illegal stuff like that-"
"What?" yelled Angel, shocked by the revelation. "Buffy hated drugs. She never would have gotten involved with someone like that.
"I know Angel. It didn't make any sense back then and it still doesn't now. I tried to confront her about it once and she went off on me. Anyways, they were together for two years on and off. We ran into her a couple times and she didn't look good. Once she had a black eye and scratches on her one arm. It was obvious that he was abusing her, but she didn't care about anything we said to her or our offers to help," stopping for a moment, Willow gave Angel some time to take in what she had just said. It had been hard for them back then, she could only imagine how Angel was taking the news.
"About a year ago she just showed up at my room one day, crying. She never did tell me why, except that she was scared. She never came back after that night. Then she was attacked," Willow reached over to take Angel's hand, hoping to offer him some comfort. But he quickly pulled away from her touch.
Angel didn't know what to think. The Buffy he knew would have never gotten herself into a situation like that. He couldn't even comprehend the idea of her being in an abusive relationship with a junkie. It just wasn't her. What had happened to change her? And then there was the voice inside him telling him that none of it would have happened if he hadn't broken up with her and left. How could this not all be his fault?
"W-what happened with attack?" Angel choked out, hardly able to form a complete sentence. His mind was just too overwhelmed, his heart broken for all that Buffy had been through.
"The police don't really know what happened since she's been in a coma and couldn't tell them. But we're all pretty sure about who attacked her. All they officially know is that someone called the police after they heard shouting and what sounded like a fight in an alley behind a bar, and when they arrived they found her lying there unconscious. No one claims to have seen anything or know anything. That's pretty much everything I know," Willow finished and looked down at her hands. She handed realized she'd been wringing them through the whole speech.
A full five minutes passed and Willow just continued to sit there watching Angel, waiting for him to say something. He hadn't looked up since she'd finished telling him everything. He just sat there, staring down at nothing.
"Angel?"
"I-I...." he still couldn't find the words to say anything.
"It's a lot to take in, I know," Willow sighed, wishing she had better things to tell him.
"I didn't know, about any of it," he replied, a solitary tear falling down his cheek.
"We figured that last night when you mentioned her. That's why I brought you here," she stated, pulling her sweater tighter around her.
"It's all my fault," Angel cried out, feeling completely overcome with guilt. Every single thing that had had happened to her was all on his shoulders. None of it would have happened if he hadn't done what he had five years earlier.
"What? Angel, no," she replied gently, knowing what he was thinking.
"If I hadn't left none of this would have happened," he almost shouted at her.
"Angel...no....this is not your fault. I can't tell you that what you did wasn't wrong, but you didn't cause this," she disagreed. They'd all tried to take the blame for Buffy's situation at one point or another.
"How can you say that? It is. It's all my fault," he retorted and hastily got up from the table.
"No. Yes, you hurt Buffy... a lot... when you left like you did. It destroyed her. We tried to help her, but none of us understood why you did it. But it's not your fault she went down the path that she did. She's responsible for her own actions," Willow tried to explain, receiving no response whatsoever from Angel.
"You leaving may have been a catalyst, but she's the one who made the choices she did. We're all to blame, you for leaving, her for the decisions she made, even us. We knew she was in trouble, but we just stood there and watched. If we'd have tried harder maybe we could have prevented it. Don't blame yourself Angel; it's not your fault. And even if it was, blame isn't going to change anything now," Willow said trying her best to comfort him
Angel didn't reply, he just sat back down at the table and poked at his eggs. He knew there was logic in what Willow was telling him, but it didn't stop the guilt. It didn't stop the feeling inside telling him he was responsible.
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TBC.feedback.yes, please :)
AN2: As usual, not beta'd, so that means mistakes are my fault.
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Part 4
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The next morning Willow awoke a little before 9am. She thought to herself that she could have easily slept another few hours, but with Angel having slept at the house, she figured that she better drag herself out of bed and check on him. So she showered and got dressed before making her way toward the room Angel had spent the night in. Upon arriving at his door she found that it was open and Angel wasn't in the room. She knew right away where he was.
Quietly, she crept down the hall to Buffy's room and found what she expected to find: Angel asleep in the chair, his head resting on the edge of the bed near Buffy's hand. If she hadn't been sure the previous night that he was still in love with her, she would have been now. Part of her was tempted to leave him there, but she knew he should probably eat something, and they also had things that needed to be talked about. Placing her hand on his shoulder she shook him lightly.
"Angel...time to wake up," she said softly.
"Huh...Willow?...What time is it? I must have fallen asleep," he replied, blinking his eyes at the harsh sunlight filling the room.
"It's almost ten in the morning. Why don't you come down and have some breakfast. You've got to be hungry, and Buffy's physical therapist will be here soon so you can't stay in the room anyway," Willow answered as she walked over and adjusted the blinds covering the windows.
"I'm not really hungry, but I guess you're right, I should have something. Physical therapist?" he asked looking up at her, wondering at the statement.
"Yeah, he comes by a couple times a week to work on her muscles. It keeps them from atrophying," she explained, wiggling her arms as if it would help show her point.
"Oh, okay. I guess we should get some breakfast then," Angel said and got up from the chair he'd been seated in for hours.
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They sat quietly on the patio with their breakfasts. Angel took an occasional bite out of the omelet that Willow made, but his mind was elsewhere, cluttered with a thousand different thoughts. Finding Buffy in a coma upon his return to Sunnydale was something that he had not expected at all. He couldn't get the sight of her out of his head, lying there pale and motionless.
Did she dream? Was she in pain? And then there was the part of his brain that was telling him that this was all his fault. He had left her without a look back, left her alone, to fend for herself. As a result she was now just a body lying on a bed, a shell of what she once was. His conscience kept repeating over and over that she wouldn't have been hurt if he had stayed.
"Are you okay?" Willow interrupted his thoughts.
"Yeah, it...it just hurts.to see her like that. She was always so full of life," he answered, not able to look Willow in the eyes.
"I know," she agreed, a tear forming. "It's still hard for me to look at her even after almost eight months."
"Tell me what happened, all of it," he asked firmly.
Willow inhaled deeply and looked up at him, not quite knowing where to start, or how to tell him all that there was to tell. It was going to be hard for him to hear, she knew that. But it was important that he know.
"There's a lot to tell you, Angel, and it's not all stuff you're going to like. But please, just listen to everything I have to say," began Willow, taking a sip of juice before continuing. "Things changed a lot after you left, Buffy changed. It took her the whole summer to get over you leaving. We tried to get her to go out with us, but she wouldn't leave the house most of the time. So we just tried to be there for her."
"School started in the fall, and she seemed a little better. She still didn't go out much, but she was doing really well in her classes. The summer after freshmen year she moved back in with her mom. She would hang out with us once in a while, but mostly we had to go to her house to see her," Willow paused and looked toward Angel. This is where things started to go downhill, she still wasn't sure he was ready to hear it all. But he nodded so she went on.
"Then not long after sophomore year started, she met a guy, bumped into him in the hall, I think. They started hanging out and she was almost like her old self. But he just up and dumped her after...well...after he got what he wanted from her," she looked pointedly at Angel to make sure he understood the connotation. His head drooped slightly showing he got the meaning. "She was crushed, to say the least. Everything that she'd built back up in her life just came crashing down."
"For a while we hardly saw her, she skipped classes, never answered the phone. But then all the sudden she seemed to, I don't know, get over it maybe. We were all so worried about her, and so relieved when she stopped hiding herself away," she sighed, running a hand through her hair. The toughest part was coming up. What's she'd just told Angel was bad, but the worst had yet to be told.
"Go on," Angel requested, although dreading whatever was left. He couldn't believe that some guy would just use her like that. If he ever found out who the prick was, he was going to pay him a little visit.
"It only lasted for about a month. Then she just disappeared. No one knew where she was for maybe two weeks. When she came back she was completely different. She wouldn't tell us where she had been, what had happened, nothing. Finally, she dropped out of school and just stopped talking to us altogether. We tried to keep being her friends but after a while we gave up. We couldn't force her to be friends," taking another sip of her juice, she glanced again at Angel. He looked just as perplexed as they had been back then at the changes in Buffy.
"The things that happened afterward we're not real sure about, some of it we only heard from others, or saw glimpses of. From what we know she met some guy named Mark at a bar and started dating him. People told us that he was bad news, drugs, illegal stuff like that-"
"What?" yelled Angel, shocked by the revelation. "Buffy hated drugs. She never would have gotten involved with someone like that.
"I know Angel. It didn't make any sense back then and it still doesn't now. I tried to confront her about it once and she went off on me. Anyways, they were together for two years on and off. We ran into her a couple times and she didn't look good. Once she had a black eye and scratches on her one arm. It was obvious that he was abusing her, but she didn't care about anything we said to her or our offers to help," stopping for a moment, Willow gave Angel some time to take in what she had just said. It had been hard for them back then, she could only imagine how Angel was taking the news.
"About a year ago she just showed up at my room one day, crying. She never did tell me why, except that she was scared. She never came back after that night. Then she was attacked," Willow reached over to take Angel's hand, hoping to offer him some comfort. But he quickly pulled away from her touch.
Angel didn't know what to think. The Buffy he knew would have never gotten herself into a situation like that. He couldn't even comprehend the idea of her being in an abusive relationship with a junkie. It just wasn't her. What had happened to change her? And then there was the voice inside him telling him that none of it would have happened if he hadn't broken up with her and left. How could this not all be his fault?
"W-what happened with attack?" Angel choked out, hardly able to form a complete sentence. His mind was just too overwhelmed, his heart broken for all that Buffy had been through.
"The police don't really know what happened since she's been in a coma and couldn't tell them. But we're all pretty sure about who attacked her. All they officially know is that someone called the police after they heard shouting and what sounded like a fight in an alley behind a bar, and when they arrived they found her lying there unconscious. No one claims to have seen anything or know anything. That's pretty much everything I know," Willow finished and looked down at her hands. She handed realized she'd been wringing them through the whole speech.
A full five minutes passed and Willow just continued to sit there watching Angel, waiting for him to say something. He hadn't looked up since she'd finished telling him everything. He just sat there, staring down at nothing.
"Angel?"
"I-I...." he still couldn't find the words to say anything.
"It's a lot to take in, I know," Willow sighed, wishing she had better things to tell him.
"I didn't know, about any of it," he replied, a solitary tear falling down his cheek.
"We figured that last night when you mentioned her. That's why I brought you here," she stated, pulling her sweater tighter around her.
"It's all my fault," Angel cried out, feeling completely overcome with guilt. Every single thing that had had happened to her was all on his shoulders. None of it would have happened if he hadn't done what he had five years earlier.
"What? Angel, no," she replied gently, knowing what he was thinking.
"If I hadn't left none of this would have happened," he almost shouted at her.
"Angel...no....this is not your fault. I can't tell you that what you did wasn't wrong, but you didn't cause this," she disagreed. They'd all tried to take the blame for Buffy's situation at one point or another.
"How can you say that? It is. It's all my fault," he retorted and hastily got up from the table.
"No. Yes, you hurt Buffy... a lot... when you left like you did. It destroyed her. We tried to help her, but none of us understood why you did it. But it's not your fault she went down the path that she did. She's responsible for her own actions," Willow tried to explain, receiving no response whatsoever from Angel.
"You leaving may have been a catalyst, but she's the one who made the choices she did. We're all to blame, you for leaving, her for the decisions she made, even us. We knew she was in trouble, but we just stood there and watched. If we'd have tried harder maybe we could have prevented it. Don't blame yourself Angel; it's not your fault. And even if it was, blame isn't going to change anything now," Willow said trying her best to comfort him
Angel didn't reply, he just sat back down at the table and poked at his eggs. He knew there was logic in what Willow was telling him, but it didn't stop the guilt. It didn't stop the feeling inside telling him he was responsible.
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TBC.feedback.yes, please :)
