AN: Here is a treat for my birthday-
Buffy
"Our love made his soul permanent..." That sentence keeps running through my head as I run down the streets of L.A. I am just urging my legs to carry me. I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins as I push myself faster and faster. I don't know where I am going but away from this revelation. I should have known. I should have known I keep saying in my head. Come on Buffy run don't stop. My vision is blurred. I am not sure if it's from the tears or the rain that has started to fall. Why does every major event in my life involve rain or sewers? I think as I feel the water soak through my borrowed clothes. I feel my lungs ready to explode, my head is throbbing, but I refuse to stop. I want those legs to carry me as far away from that place as possible.
Suddenly I start to loose feeling in my legs and instead of feeling the prickle of rain on my face, I feel contact with a hard surface. I had just fallen on the floor. I tried to get up but doubled over, throwing up. Suddenly, I feel a cool hand hold my forehead as I give out all the contents of my stomach, which was not much. I tried to push Angel away but I have no strength left. The minute I had felt the touch I had known it had been him. Why couldn't he leave me alone? As if to answer me I felt him pick me up. One more time tonight I was helpless in his arms and I hated it.
"Put me down Angel!" I screamed. As he carried me he didn't say anything, his face was unreadable under the pouring rain. "Put me down!
"As you wish" he said finally and I felt him let go of me. I just had enough time to be surprised before I was engulfed in water. As the water got in my lungs, I reached out and grabbed on the first thing I could find. I felt it bring me back up to the surface.
"What are you doing?" I raged as soon as I was able to stand water reaching my waist. I look glance around to get my bearings and notice that we are at the beach.
"You tell me, Buffy?" he asks me upset.
"You just dropped me in the water. Didn't I looked soaked enough to you? Are you trying to kill me?" I asked advancing towards him trying to look menacing but his height was giving him a very unfair advantage.
"Well I am just helping you I guess. You asked me to drop you and I did." Angel's voice is cutting through me like ice.
"I never said in water." I retort trying to not show how much his tone is hurting me. How much what he just said "helping you" makes me feel sick inside. Does he know? Does he know how much I welcome death? How tempting it's been to just let go and die? He know I did not want to get out of the coma, but that is the extent that he knows; Don't be paranoid Buffy I say to myself.
"Well the sand might have hurt a little more than was necessary." I hear him whisper, sadness in his voice.
"Why did you follow me?" I said fuming, my anger still vibrating through out my body. He was getting on my nerves. Look at him coming a knight in shining armor to save me. I didn't need saving. Why was he so righteous?
"Buffy you are not well. You just came out of the hospital. You shouldn't have run out of the hotel like that.
"Well your future wife was flaunting how perfect your love was? How your soul was permanent because of that love. I am sorry if I couldn't' take it. I am sorry that I had to hear that your soul was permanent and that you never told me. How could you not tell me?
"I didn't think it was important" he replies.
"Wow, Angel this was the major hurdle that we could never get past. That you could revert to Angelus if we were ever together, if I made you even to happy just being with you that Angelus could rear his ugly head...
"Buffy..." He started but I was not going to let him say anything not until I added: "Don't you think I would be relieved to know that Angelus would never come back.
"I didn't think it mattered anymore Buffy. You were living your life and I was living mine as we both had agreed.
"You should have told me..." I started.
"Why Buffy? Tell me why I should have told you? Why is it always me that have to tell you everything about my life but you can safely keep yours away?" Angel looked at me frustrated.
"I..." I didn't know what to answer. Angel looked upset. He started walking to shore leaving me in the water.
"You know Buffy, I know what I am going to say is going to hurt, but when it comes to love, you are selfish. Or maybe when it comes to me, you always were. You come here and almost get yourself killed before my wedding and here I am in the rain having this conversation with you. You can't tell me why you are here. You LIE to me and I am supposed to take it all in and say Ôokay Buffy, it's okay. But I don't remember you calling me and telling me things that were happening in your life. You kept me out. You shut me out...
"It's not like you volunteered events in your life. You kept things from me. You never told me about Connor. You left me..." I say walking to shore as well. I wanted to get in his face. How dare he call me selfish?
"I came back to you, Buffy. After you came back, I went to you. I wanted to be with you regardless of everything ... But you shut me out." He said softly, pain written all over his face.
"I couldn't, I was still hurting from being brought back from heaven. I told you that. I didn't want to be here and you just made me want to be here..." I whispered softly, placing a hand on his shoulder.
"And what was wrong with that Buffy...
Angel
I feel her hand on my shoulder. Even though it is cold and I am soaked, I can feel her warmth go through me. Buffy could always warm me up. I wait for an answer to my question. I face her looking at her intently. I don't know what I am expecting her to say, but what comes out of her mouth next feels like a knife to my heart.
"It doesn't matter anymore." How could she stand in front of me and tell me that. I can't help what I say next or the accusatory look I give her.
"Well to me it did. I had to find out that you were with Spike so that you could feel! SPIKE of all people.
"Who told you that?" I don't know what makes me madder, the fact that she doesn't deny it or that she needs to know who told me. I don't want to think about the day that I found out that my Childe and Buffy were lovers. I thought for sure that I would have killed Xander when he had told Cordelia and I the news a couple months ago. I had seen red but I had shown no emotion. I had felt numb all over as soon as the flare of anger had subsided. Than it had been easy to rationalize why I had such a reaction to the news as vampire territorial issues and nothing more.
"Never mind who did Buffy, I was hurt that you rather be with a soulless vampire than with me. That anything was better than being with me. I thought you loved me. God I would have given up anything for you and you went to him." I said to her.
"I couldn't come to you..." She looks at the sand and takes a hand from my shoulder. I feel a slight pang in my heart because of our lost of contact.
"Than why do you think I had to tell you that my soul was permanent?" I ask her.
"You should have told me!" She says looking up a strange fire in her eyes.
"Why Buffy? WHY?" I scream, throwing my hands up in the air.
"BecauseÉ.
"Because of what Buffy?" I demanded wanting her to tell me the truth. But I never expected to hear what she was about to say.
Buffy
I can feel his frustration in my lies and I don't know what to say. I don't know why? I keep stuttering and than the words come out as I feel warm tears run down my cheeks.
"Because I love you, because I still love you, and I always will love you. You are in my soul. Don't you get it, you not telling me, is like finding out that all my wildest dreams came true and find out Éthat it got snatched away from youÉ one more time. I came to terms with you becoming human and giving it back for me Ébut this feels likeÉ this was a second chance and once againÉ I just blew it again." I want to stop talking. I have to stop talking before I say anything more. But what worse can I say I just admitted to him that I loved him. "I even came here because I love you. I couldn't let you go through marrying Cordelia without you knowing that I was still in love with you. When I heard that you were actually getting married, I felt like everything I ever wanted was being taken away from me. Screw the normal life, Angel. All I ever wanted was you. You were the best thing that came out of my life as the Slayer. I always had the hope that one day we would be together, maybe not in a white picket fence house but at least fighting side by side with creepy things that go bump in the night." As I am saying all of this I keep my eyes locked with his, but they are expressionless. I have no idea what he is thinking as I am revealing all this to him.
"Why were you at the bar?" Well that wasn't the question I was expecting from him.
"When I got to L.A., I could not go through with this. As much as I wanted to tell you how I felt, I thought that I had no right to destroy your happiness with Cordy, for a maybe with me. So I had a few drinks, than on my way out of the bar to head back to Sunnydale, a demon attacked me. I knew that I wasn't in the right state of mind to fight him but I was hurting and the battle was tempting. For a moment during that fight I lost my will to live when I thought that I had lost you forever, it was just enough for the demon to take the upper hand.
"But you killed it" he said getting closer to me. His voice was void of emotions as he let this talked to me. I turned away from him walking a few steps away. I didn't like the reaction he was having.
"I am the slayer Angel. If I was going to go down, I was going to take that foul demon with me. The last thing I thought about when I felt myself fall to the floor was that I would not get to see you again and tell you how I feel.
"You thought about me?" He asked. The tone of his voice made me look at him. His brows were furrowed. He was deep in thought.
"I called out to you.
"I felt it." He whispers
"What?" I looked at him. How could he have felt my thoughts?
"The night you almost died, I felt a pull on my soul as if I was loosing part of it. As if I was loosing my soul all over again. It led me towards Caritas. I didn't think much about it after I saw you on that stage bleeding. All I could think about was that my Buffy was dying and that there was nothing I could do for her.
"My Buffy" did he just say my BuffyÉI can't help the racing in my heart. Is it possible that there might be a chance for us still?
"BuffyÉ. You called out to me. I felt that part of me was dying but I didn't think much of it when I got there and saw you. It all stopped when I got to the hospital and didn't think much of it
" I don't understand," I say. Maybe that was what Lorne was trying to explain to us before Cordy started telling me off for clinging on to Angel. We are so close all of a sudden. I reach up to his face and place my open hand on his cheek. I see him close is eyes as he takes in the little warmth my body has to offer under the rain.
"We are each a half of a whole, AngelÉWe are soul mates" I say to him. His eyes snap open at those words and he says to me pushing my hand away.
"You are wrong Buffy. Cordy is my soul mate." I can't help the small whimper that escapes my lips. But I don't let more emotions show.
"How can you say that?" I ask. Doesn't he see the proof, he felt me dying.
"I am sorry, É" He whispered to me as he walked away from me and disappeared in the shadow. I felt nausea overtake my senses; my dream had just come true.
TBC