Title: Ciao
Author: Emily
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Rating: PG 13
Summary: "In Italy hello and goodbye are the same thing."
Spoilers/Timeline: Post Chosen.
The sun is always in my eyes
I lie out in the sun all day waiting to get burnt. I keep expecting to get burnt. Nothing has ever been this simple before, I am a girl in a city and that is it. In Italy hello and goodbye are the same thing. Or, the word is the same. Ciao.
Angel called last week, I said "Ciao" automatically - Dawn and I are oh so cosmopolitan nowadays - and he said my name and I just felt this sadness. It is not so simple. Hello, goodbye and they all blur together into a rush of memory. I don't need to get sunburnt, I am burnt enough and these fragments of my old life keep haunting me.
That however is a lie, it's more like I invite them back in. Lying is a habit I seem to slip into in order to avoid the issue. I call Angel every second week and he calls me every first week. I whisper "Ciao" as goodbye and feel that if I went outside the wind would blow me away. There always comes a point when the conversation dies to an uncomfortable silence. I imagine I can hear him breathe in it. One of us lies about having to go somewhere to do something and relieved, we say our goodbyes.
I go out and lie in the sun for six days, it dazzles my eyelids closed and I can't see but that's okay. Dawn tells me I will get skin cancer when I'm old cause she saw some TV show. I smile because I never thought I would get to be old and that is a hello. Then on the seventh day, the phone rings and it is Angel. I know it is just another part of our prolonged goodbye. "Ciao", I say and I blink back tears because there is a difference between hello and goodbye and this is goodbye.