Chapter Fourteen

Buffy figured that she couldn't get lost walking on the beach, no matter how distraught and distracted she was. She left William's house and headed north along the shore until she got to a large piece of driftwood coughed up several storms ago. She sat on it and stared out at the ocean. She let its rhythms soothe her until her pounding heart picked up on the gentle coming and going of the waves. Starlight sparkled on each crest and the sea looked like a spangled velvet blanket.

Then she ducked her head, pressed her fists against her mouth, and she howled.

She howled for all the things that she'd said to Spike the many times they were together. She howled for every kick, every punch, and every slap. She wept for every verbal jab and every form of abuse she'd rained down on him. And finally, she wept for the last time she'd seen him, for waiting so long to realize her feelings, to trust them, for waiting till the end to tell him how she really felt.

He was gone and he was never coming back.

And she was going to have to learn to live with her biggest regret.

There would be no chance for redemption.

She sniffled and wiped her tears. Looking up at the stars, she closed her eyes and made a wish. It was childish, and Buffy had long ago said goodbye to childish things, but she did it anyway.

"Buffy?"

Stiffening in surprise, she spun around and peered into the shadows of the sand dunes.

"Angel?"

He stepped from the dunes and walked across the sand towards her. In the moonlight he looked like something from a romance novel. Tall, dark and dashing in a long black coat. His chiseled features wore their customary brooding frown. And as he approached her, he seemed to do so hesitantly.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked.

"I came with Giles. I had to wait at the airport until the sun went down," he explained.

"Giles didn't mention it," she bit out.

"I asked him not to."

She turned away from him and crossed her arms. Staring out at the sea, she asked, "Why are you here?"

"How can I not be here? If there's a chance that he's alive…"

Buffy shook her head, wiping away a tear. "He's not alive."

"But – "

She turned and lashed out. "He's not ALIVE! Whoever it is in that house may look like Spike and may at times talk like Spike. BUT IT IS NOT SPIKE!"

Angel stepped forward and grabbed her by the arms and she fought him. She pulled and tugged, trying to get away from him.

"Let me go!" she yelled, sobbing and pounding his chest. "Let me go! I don't want you here!"

He ignored her screams and her struggle and he drew her to him, wrapping her in his arms.

"Why wasn't it you?" she sobbed against his chest. "Why wasn't it you?"

Angel bowed his head, pressing his cheek against her hair. "I don't know Buffy. I don't know why he died that day and I didn't."

"I want him back," she sobbed. "I need him to know that I loved him."

Angel rubbed her back soothingly. "I know, I know you do."

"I hate you," she whispered tearfully.

He laughed roughly. "I know. There are days, more than I can count, where I hate myself."

"What am I going to do?" She looked up at him, her eyes swollen from her tears, her hair a mess, looking about twelve years old. "I had banked everything on this last chance. I'd come here and find him and apologize and make it all up to him and he would know that he was forgiven and loved and we would live happily ever after. It would be like a fairytale."

Angel brushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ears. With his thumbs, he gently wiped her tears away. "Would you agree that I know a thing or two about redemption?"

She nodded, biting her bottom lip to stop its trembling.

"Living a life built on the idea of trying to make amends for the past might work in the movies and books but Buffy, it's a futile existence," he murmured. "You end up spending so much time looking back, that you lose out on the present and any possibility of a future, and you hurt the ones who love you. It's not a life, it becomes a sentence."

He sighed and looked up at the stars. "I've made a million mistakes and there are not enough stars in the sky for me to wish them all away. I've spent over a century trying to do good to make up for all the bad I've done, when what I should have simply done, was good for goods' sake."

"Do you regret it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I don't regret any of the good I've done, how could I? But I'm starting to realize that the only way I'm ever going to achieve any sort of atonement or redemption is not with one little battle after another, but by dying."

"Angel," she said.

He frowned. "I'm not ready for that yet. And until that time comes, I've got to just keep going." He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You've only got one life, Buffy. You've got to do more than just keep going. You have to live it. You have to let the past go, bury those regrets, and move on to some sort of happiness."

"Well, well, well. Isn't this a touching scene," a sarcastic voice spoke.

Buffy stepped from Angel's arms and turned to William.

He eyed the vampire from top to bottom. "I'm guessing by all the dark broodiness that you're Angel, the big, sad, vampire."

"William," Angel whispered. He stared at William as if he'd seen a ghost.

"Are you here to comfort Buffy in her great loss?" William lashed out. "Planning on trying again?"

"William!" Buffy said angrily.

He looked over at her. "What? I came out looking for you, to see if you're alright, if you need anything. If you needed m-" He shook his head in disbelief. He gestured to the two of them. "And I find you all cozied up with this ponce."

"He was simply trying to do the same thing," she explained.

William exhaled, seeming to deflate; his features looked drawn and exhausted. Buffy couldn't remember having seen Spike looking exhausted and she realized just what a human condition it was. And in that moment, she understood the true depth of the situation and saw it in a new light. Spike, as strong and invincible as he'd been, was gone. How much more fragile was this human flesh standing before her.

"Guess he has more a right to comfort you than I do," William said. He turned to walk away.

"Wait!" Angel said. William stopped and turned back.

Angel walked over to him. His gaze searched William's face and he shook his head in amazement. "I can only imagine how incredible this must all seem to you," he said.

William had lost all his cockiness. "Yeah, you could say that."

"And I know that, even imagining for one second that you were a vampire, must be a disturbing and difficult thing."

William stared at him, listening and wondering where this was headed.

"But I want you to know that there were times when we were friends," Angel said softly. "We fought together, side by side, and we saved lives and we did good things. Spike's life was not all about chaos and destruction. It wasn't all about blood and killing. Spike was a good friend and there were people who cared about him. Fred, Gunn, Lorne, Wes, and me. It wasn't perfect, but it's not a legacy to be ashamed of either."

"Thank you," William responded.

Angel held out his hand. William gazed down at it for a moment, then reached out and took it. Angel leaned forward and lowered his voice.

"You have an opportunity here that neither, Spike nor I, ever had. Don't blow it," he murmured.

Angel straightened up and looked over at Buffy. "I'll be at the Holiday Inn by the airport if you need me. Let Giles know that our flights have been scheduled for two in the morning on Friday."

She nodded.

In a blink of an eye, he was gone.

William shook his head and glanced around. "So it's true, he can just go 'poof' and he's gone. Just like that?"

She nodded, sitting back on the driftwood. "Vampires are pretty quick."

"Did you love him?" he asked suddenly.

She exhaled deeply. "I was sixteen. I loved him as much as a sixteen year old could love a man."

William looked thoughtfully back at the last place he'd seen the vampire. She might be able to use her age as a means of belittling her feelings for Angel, but Angel had been a man of years and experience. He suspected that theirs had been a great love, the kind of love that books are written about.

"What happened?"

She looked down at her feet and absently drew hearts in the sand. "Angel was cursed with his soul. And if he ever experienced a moment of pure happiness, then he would lose that soul and return to his evil, soulless state. Which, not exaggerating, made Freddy Kruger look harmless."

William winced. "And let me guess, he experienced that moment of pure happiness with you?"

She nodded. "Yeap. Goodnight Angel. Good morning Angelus."

"Pretty difficult to have a relationship under those circumstances," he replied. Christ, he thought to himself, how the hell could he compete with that kind of romantic, tortured passion? To add more fuel to the fire, he asked the inevitable question. "And Spike?"

Buffy wrapped her arms around herself and glanced over at him. She really looked at him. In the moonlight, the light by which she'd often looked at Spike, she truly saw the differences.

William's skin had a healthy, almost ruddy tint to it and his eyes were dark blue in the moonlight. His hair, a soft honey blond curled a little and there were fine lines around his eyes. Laugh lines. Lines of experience.

She shook her head. "I couldn't tell you the moment it happened. One day he was the pain in my ass, and the next day I wanted him with a fierceness that surprised me. I was going through a very dark phase and there was something about his own demons that drew me to him."

William's eyebrows arched in surprise. "That doesn't sound like love, sounds more like lust."

She nodded. "In the beginning, for me, it was about lust. And in the end, he was my only friend."

He was surprised. He'd expected another great tale of love's, labors', lost and he got a sense that it was more about labor than love. "Did you love him?" he finally asked, needing to get to the bottom of it.

"It's hard to explain," she began. "I needed him and I couldn't imagine my life without him because he'd simply been there for so long. And no matter what I did or said, he stuck by me."

"Sounds like he loved you," William said.

She nodded. "He did, but I never understood. Part of it was that I couldn't understand how anyone could love me. And, I didn't understand how someone without a soul could love anyone."

"Lydia seems to think that there was something there." William said.

"Yeah, there was always something different about him. And then he went and got his soul and I had no excuses anymore, no defenses." She stood up and rubbed her arms against the chilly, night air. "Before he got his soul, my relationship with him was strictly physical. After he got the soul, our relationship became more one of the heart and, well, of the soul."

William's heart sank. She hadn't answered his question outright. She hadn't come out and said that she'd loved Spike with the same intensity that she'd loved Angel. She had done something worse. She'd painted a picture of a relationship devoid of romantic fantasy but built on plain old complicated reality. In her very short life, Buffy had already managed to experience both great passion and great love. How could a woman who had loved and been loved by two supernatural creatures ever settle for someone like him? Especially now that there was nothing to tie them together, no past, no shared memories.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so bleeding sorry."

She looked over at him in surprise. "For what? You haven't done anything."

He walked the last few feet to her and gently caressed her cheek. "I'm sorry for not being him."

Tears filled her eyes and fell down her cheeks.

"Thank you," she whispered.

He drew her to him and tucked her against his chest. With their arms wrapped tightly around each other, they looked out at the sea.

TBC