Authors Note: Sorry once again for the delay. School has been hell. I feel like I'm sounding like a broken record here. Anyways, I kept trying to write the next chapter and everything I wrote sucked. So tonight I just decided to randomly start writing something and this is what came out. It has completely changed my idea's for the ending around and has added something kind of twisty to the story. Hope you guys like. It goes a little fast in my mind but I don't feel like trying to slow it down anymore for now.

Chapter Eight

Forever Young

Punch, kick, stab. That was the mantra that I currently had reeling through my head. Over and over again I'd repeat this, coinciding my actions right along with them. I was pissed. I was mad at myself, at the world… God, I was pissed at the fly that buzzed by my head earlier. So here I am now. Punch, kick, stab. What else was I supposed to do at the moment.

Hollywood I think has ruined me forever. The actors and the directors with their stupid little movies and their two-hour conflicts. You see if my life was a movie, Angel and I would be perfectly happy right now. We'd be lying on a beach somewhere wrapped in each others arms and he'd just be able to kiss me and say "We'll get the bad guys," and "I love you" and you know what? My life would be absolutely perfect from that point on because that's where the story would end. You leave the theater feeling happy with your stomach filled with popcorn and candy, and then you sigh to yourself and just wait for the day that you find your own true love so that you can have romantic lines wash over you night after every damn night. Well guess what? Reality sucks. Reality isn't anything like that. Not mine at least.

Sure, Angel and I aren't fighting anymore. We can be in a room with one another without saying anything that could be taken as offensive. But that's just it. There are no lines of poetry. There are no moonlit walks on the beach. There's nothing. We hardly talk, we hardly touch, we hardly even make eye contact. We sleep in the same bed but on opposite sides and when we finally do get around to saying a few words to each other, it's all business. And I hate. He hates. We both know our mutual disdain for how our relationship is going, but do we try to fix it? Do we make an effort? No. We go through out our days living lives that we know we can make better but don't even try too.

The truth is, we're both scared. We're scared we're going to get attached and then ripped from each others arms once again. I mean isn't that the Powers That Be's favorite pass time, fucking up our lives? Now we just carry out our life as a couple, choosing not to even kiss. We stopped fighting and chose to do a complete one eighty and just stop doing anything all together. So punching, and kicking, and stabbing are the only things that are on my agenda at the moment, because that seems to be the only thing I know how to do. The thing that pisses me off the most though, is the fact that I'm accepting this instead of doing something about it.

Movies and TV shows cram as much drama and angst into their designated time slot as humanly possible and in the end they sum it all up in two minutes. In two minutes the world is right again and soul mates unite to be together for eternity. I don't care who you are, if you're a vampire slayer or an everyday human being, life doesn't work like that. I wish it did. More then anything. But happily ever after can be summed up in two minutes let alone two hours. It takes some people half their life to actually be happy with their love life. Until then we all live the fantasy dream that Hollywood offers us.

More dust settles in the alley as I kill my seventh vampire this hour. Looking over at Angel I catch the tale end of another vampires death as he plunged the stake into the creatures dead heart. All I wanted at the moment was to go over and hold his hand. Just for a second. Contact. That was all I was asking. But with just one look into his eyes, seeing exactly what I was feeling reflected there, I knew it couldn't happen. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I closed my eyes trying to fight back the tears, feeling the weariness in full effect now. One moment I was standing there trying to figure out my pathetic life, and the next I was laying flat on my back hearing Angel yell my name before I blacked out.

"Buffy…" The voice sounded far off and distant. "Buffy…" But it persisted as gentle tapping could be felt on my cheek. Groaning, I peeled open my eyes, greatly aware of the little dwarves hammering away inside my head.

"Hey, you okay?" Angel loomed over me brushing a strand of hair out of my eyes.

"I'm… fine." I managed.

"You had me worried there. What happened?"

I sat up with some difficulty. "I don't know. One moment I was looking at you and then the next… I think somebody hit me or something."

He looked at me concerned. "You and I are the only ones here."

"Then why were you yelling?"

"I wasn't yelling." He said slowly, helping me stand. He had to hold onto me a few minutes longer as I swayed on my unsteady feet. "We were walking and then suddenly you fainted."

"Walking? Angel we were in the middle of fighting vam…"

"Buffy!"

I froze. I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating, every ounce of me wanted to turn around and look at who had just called my name, but I couldn't. Because when I did, she wouldn't be there. Her voice would just be some figment of my imagination.

"Hey, what are you guys doing out here?" I took a sharp intake of breath and closed my eyes. I couldn't be. It just couldn't. I saw her die. Julia showed me her death. She wasn't…

"Buffy are you okay?" Angel's voice came back to me once again, grounding me with his gentle concern.

"Yeah, just hearing voices." I looked down at the ground and laughed softly. "Looks like you and I have something in common."

Silence resounded around us as Angels hands still stayed firmly on my arms. "Sweetie maybe you should sit down or something."

"Angel I'm fine. Really. It's just the past coming back to…" I looked up, and when I did my eyes were greeted with the hazel eyes of my best friend. "haunt me. Willow?" I chocked out after a minute.

"Yeah." She said slowly, not quite understanding why I was looking at her the way I was.

"Willow? Oh God, it's really you." I flung my arms around her neck, hugging her and holding on for dear life.

"Um… It's good to see you too Buffy." By the tone of her voice I could tell that she was giving Angel one of those looks over my shoulder. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I…" And that's when I realized it. I was standing in the middle of a cemetery. Not just any cemetery, but Restfield cemetery. The place that I patrolled for five years. The place I grew up. That wasn't possible though. Backing away from both Angel and Willow I started to shake my head. They were getting to me. Someone was doing some sort of hocus pocus on me and it was working. They were causing me to open up to people that weren't even supposed to exist. Only one thought was racing through my head.

Leon had found out. He had found out that I was a slayer and…

"Buffy?"

"Stay away from me." And I darted. I ran in-between grave stones and mausoleums until I exited out of the grave yard, and I just kept on running and running until I couldn't do it anymore. I had to keep repeating to myself that none of this was real. The images were so vivid though that I was having to fight to keep my eyes from shutting against the unwanted pictures. I had to go somewhere to think, somewhere to figure all this out. Because I'm telling you right now there was no way in hell that I was back in Sunnydale again. Someone had put a spell on me. Probably the same someone who knocked me out. That had to be it. The last thing I remember was being hit from behind right? Well who was to say that after I blacked out they didn't take me back to their place and put me into some sort of drug induced sleep. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened to me. Hell, not even a few weeks ago I relived parts of the past. I gritted my teeth as I sucked in more breath and continued to run. From what? I'm not exactly sure.

When I finally stopped I was standing outside of my house, my heart pounding steadily against my rib cage. But it wasn't my house. That thing was long gone by now. There's no way in hell that a house could stand for over three hundred years. But it looked exactly the same as it did the last time I saw it. Whoever was doing this, whoever was fabricating these images of my past, definitely did their homework. Everything was the same, down to the smell of the flowerbeds outside the windows.

Who knows what made me go in, what force was pulling me towards the front door. But before I knew it, I was standing in the foyer of what used to be my home.

"Buffy," A shadow of my past came walking out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an old dishrag. "You're home early. Did you decide not to go to the movies?"

I starred at her. I couldn't move even if I wanted to. I missed her so much. She died before this all happened, before my own death, and the last image I had seen of her was of her lying on the couch cold and lifeless. But now she was standing before me and… A sob ripped out of my chest before I even knew it.

Immediately her arms were around me. "Buffy what happened?" I couldn't speak though. I just stood there crying on my dead mothers shoulder. What was I supposed to tell her? That she wasn't supposed to be here? That none of this was real? So I stood there crying because there was nothing else I could possible do.

Long hours later I was sitting up on my bed staring listlessly off in the distance, clutching my old stuffed pig in my hands.

"Buffy?"

"I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up." I said without turning. What was the point? I knew what I would see. He'd be sitting there at my window with that questioning worried gaze of his. The gaze that he wasn't even allowed to give me in the reality I was supposed to be in. To look at him and see how we used to be would just hurt too much.

"I wanted to give you some time." The bed sunk a little as he sat down behind me. I still wouldn't turn though. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"It would be pointless."

"What happened tonight Buffy?" Concern laced his every word

"You tell me."

"Hey," He touched my arm causing me to turn at the sudden contact. "If you want me to leave just say so."

"Leave." He looked at me with that wounded puppy dog look. The one I couldn't resist. "I'm sorry." I sighed. "There's just… Some stuff is going on right now and I kind of need to figure it out. Alone."

"You were perfectly fine until Willow showed up. What suddenly changed?"

"Angel… I can't talk about this with you."

"Give me one reason why."

"I just can't okay!" I stood up from my bed, running a tired hand through my hair.

He looked at me and I could tell by his clenched jaw that it was taking everything inside him to keep himself sitting on that bed instead of running over and taking me into his arms. He always hated to see me cry.

Nodding his head once he stood. "Okay. You know where to find me if you need to talk." It was a whisper and nothing more. Walking over to me he gently kissed the top of my head, leaving his lips there a second longer, not wanting to pull away.

"Angel," I called out as he was finally climbing out the window.

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you one question?"

"Anything."

I took a deep breath. "How old am I?"

He looked at me strangely, his brow knitting together. "Sixteen." He said after a beat. And my heart fell.