A/N: This is a part Angel reality story as seen in the prologue but it's mostly AU. If you're not familiar with the Buffy episode "Surprise" doesn't worry I'll give a brief explanation in the next chapter. Please review even just to tell me that you read it!
At certain points in life we come to a fork in the road and we must choose which path to travel. Sometimes we just can't help but wonder how things would have been if we had chosen the other path. The longer you live the more forks you come too, the more regret you hold within your heart.
He lies awake at night sometimes, thinking if he had done something different would the results have been any better. This particular night he was wondering what would have happened if had gotten out of Sunnydale with the Judge's arm, if he had never slept with Buffy, never lost his soul in a moment of true happiness. That is where I came in.
"Who are you?" he asked propping himself with his elbows up from his bed.
I glanced at my image in the specially tinted glass. I'm barely visible in the reflection, ghost-like. My pale hand pulled a silvery-gray strand of hair away from my fiery red eyes. His subconscious had picked the form I would appear to him as. It's a Banshee or at least very much like one. Why couldn't he have picked something nicer, like a fairy or a nymph or a normal human? But no, he picked the announcer of death. It must have been the little bit of Irish mysticism left in him.
"Who are you?" he repeated louder, getting out of his fancy bed in his fancy penthouse. All he was wearing were boxers, showing off what I have to say, was a very impressive body.
Don't drool, I thought. After more than two hundred years he still gave me that butterfly feeling, and now he was no longer that obnoxious pub hound I knew. Then again, back then he had been so full of life, mostly drunken, but life nonetheless. Now he seemed to brood a lot. I forced myself to focus at my task.
"I'm here to show you what has been-"I began my signature explanatory speech but he cut me off.
"So you're what, the Ghost of Christmas Past," he remarked, clearly angry and annoyed.
"No, more like the Ghost of Christmas What-If," I smiled, "And not just Christmas but of particular events in one's life. I'm here to show what has been and what could have been."
"And what event are you talking about?"
"The one you were just thinking about,"
He looked a bit shocked, "How?"
"I know these things; the Powers That Be give me certain knowledge."
He was quiet for a moment, "So then you know all the aspects of it, all he consequences?"
I paused, I didn't know. So I peeked my head through the fabric, well for me it's more like a curtain, of time and saw what could have been.