Chapter 3
Love's Bitch; The Morning After
Buffy hung up the phone that sat on the nightstand in her apartment in Rome. Dawn had sounded so happy, and she had managed to put a damper on it as usual. Buffy sat silently on the bed wondering why it was that she always did that. And it wasn't just with Dawn, but with everyone. However, though she tried to push it back from the surface, she knew the answer. She was the slayer. She had never had the chance to have a real adolescence. No matter how much she had tried, she had never been able to escape her duty and become the regular girl she so longed to be. She knew many would envy the power she possessed, but ironically the normal were the ones she envied. Her friends knew what she had been through, the struggles she had fought to overcome. The apocalypses were easy in comparison to the disaster that was the miniscule real life she was able to etch out for herself. Normalcy came along and she still managed to blow every situation into a life and death struggle that rivaled her demon battles.
Buffy walked over to look out the window as the sun set behind an ancient city. Angel had been here once, when he didn't have a soul. According to Giles he had torn his way through this city as he had all of Europe prior to regaining his soul through the magic of a gypsy's words. A curse that had seemed more like a gift at one time, for it was what had allowed her to fall in love with him, and him with her. But the gift disappeared as quickly as it had been bestowed, the night they had finally made love. Angelus had reemerged and there was no doubt as to the nature of his ensoulment, or lack there of.
Angel was her first disaster of a relationship. She loved him from the first moment she met him and he had thrown her the velvet box containing the cross she now held in her hands. Of course at that time she had no idea he was anything other than a beautiful man. With their first kiss came the knowledge that he was a vampire, and thus began the struggle their relationship would stumble through, again and again. Even after she had to kill him, to save the world, she couldn't release him from her heart. She had watched him die, had run the sword through him as she kissed him goodbye, but still couldn't stop loving him. The sword had not taken one, but two, with it into hell that night. He had regained his soul as she watched the world begin to fall into hell and had sacrificed him for the greater good; one to save millions. It sounded so obvious, not a choice but a given. However he wasn't a given, he was her love.
When he had returned to her, from the hell dimension she had sent him to, she thought fate had finally decided to shine down on them. But of course, in the Greek tragedy that was her life, this was not the case. They couldn't stay away from one another, and ached to find solace in each others embrace. A longing to give over to the passion that emanated in heady waves between them. All the while knowing to do so would risk Angel's soul, and thus the fate of the world. This was a price beyond estimation. Their desire to be together couldn't hold a candle to it. Their relationship had been about sacrifice, and always would be. There was no changing fate.
And then there was Riley, whom she had never given the chance to enter her heart because Angel still filled it completely. She liked to believe that they had broken up because of his indiscretion, but she knew the truth. She had let him go long before he finally left all because she would never fully give herself to him, and he knew it. He had been able to capture her body, but he knew he would never possess her heart and soul, for they belonged to another. In truth, Riley had simply been convenient.
Enter Spike. She had come to finally understand her relationship with him, acknowledging that it had been rooted in desperation, pain, and the need to escape. When she had come back from heaven, she had felt lost, and Spike was the only one who understood the darkness that consumed her.
When she looked back over the violence that had encompassed their sexual activity, it was as if she were watching someone else. She couldn't be that girl reveling in the pain he so willingly gave her because she had asked him for it. The pain she had needed just to feel, to feel anything. Yet the stranger she watched in her memory had been her, she had been there willingly, and she had scathingly used him. She had continued to do so, all the while knowing that he loved her, as much as a soulless creature of the night could that is. Theirs had been a relationship of self-gratification.
So who was she to tell Dawn how to live her life? Buffy only hoped that Dawn had better luck with guys than she ever had. Now Buffy was alone. It was the first time in seven years she had been without a man in her life. Perhaps that was where all this self-actualization was coming from. Buffy lay down on her bed, still clutching the cross in her hand, and fought back the tears that were attempting to surface from the well in which they'd been stored. She knew it wouldn't be long before the well swelled over and she finally gave vent to them.