"Mr. Angel." He glanced up at the woman, wondering what would happen if she ever smiled.
"Yes, Ms. Richards?" He had made the mistake of calling her "Lydia," "Mrs." and "Miss" only once each before he'd learned better. The quest to make her stop calling him "Mr." was a futile one.
"You have a visitor." Her voice was tight with disapproval. He shifted in the ergonomic desk chair that did nothing for a corpse, stretching his back to relieve phantom creaks from two centuries before.
"Human, or not so much?" He glanced out the window, the marvelous Wolfram & Hart sun-protective window. Evening was just settling over the city, but there were shadows enough for a careful vampire or demon to move.
"Human." Weary of questions, she edged back to the door. "A young woman with no grasp of the concept of an appointment."
He shrugged. "Not so good with that myself, as you've pointed out a time or two. Send her in." The door closed; a moment later, it opened again.
Had he breath, he would have forgotten to breathe.
"Hello, Angel." Her voice was still light and sweet and clear; her hair was still soft-spun gold. Her eyes held a few more shadows than when first they met, her face a few more lines, but she was his girl, all right, and no other.
"Buffy." She smiled at him. His heart utterly failed to skip a beat, but not for lack of trying. "You're...here, what brings you here? I haven't seen you since Sunnydale."
"Sorry I didn't call ahead." She was still smiling, but it was a tight one that didn't reach her eyes. "I told the gang I was coming to visit my dad, but I just...I wanted to see you, Angel. I want to talk to you about some things, to ask you something..." She brushed her hair back out of her face and glanced around the office. "But it can all wait, a bit." She fell gracelessly into one of the stiff office chairs. "So how are things?"
"Fine, I guess," he said, studying her carefully. Something was subtly but very wrong. His nostrils flared involuntarily, the beast in him searching for something matching in her. "Been a little slow lately. California's appeal has faded just a little with the end of the Hellmouth."
"Aw, demons don't like plastic surgery, beaches, and inflated property values?" Her sarcasm came quickly, reflexively, but her eyes were distant. Her heart wasn't in this.
"And you?" Angel asked after a moment of stillness. "How have you been? And Dawn, Willow, Xander, everyone?"
"Fine," she said, idly running her fingers over the upholstery. "All of those, and the Slayerettes, and Giles, even Faith. We set up around the other Hellmouth." Her lip curled. "In Cleveland."
He nodded. "Midwestern weather. Unfortunate."
"They have this fixation on dairy products. And hockey." She scowled at her reflection in the surface of his desk. "I hate it."
"Sorry to hear that." They sat in silence for another long moment. The anger and tension rising from her could've powered the building. "Buffy, let's cut the small talk. It isn't working anyway."
"No, I guess not." She kept staring into her reflection's eyes. "We never could have an idle conversation."
"Well, we're important people with lots on our minds." His joke floundered in the choked office air, expired, and drifted away unnoticed. "Buffy, what IS it?"
"I..." Her hands convulsed on the arms of the chair, and she pulled them into her lap, where they twisted together awkwardly. "I've been thinking, a lot, and Angel..." She trailed off, then lifted her head and finally looked at him. Straight into his eyes. "Angel, it all comes back to you."
Exultation warred with confusion and finally backed away. "What does?"
She shrugged helplessly. "Everything. And I tell myself it's impossible, for all the reasons we ever said, but it doesn't go away." Tears glittered in her eyes. "I love you, Angel."
"Buffy..." He was around the desk, holding her, kissing her, before he knew he'd moved. She kissed him back hungrily, gripping and twisting his shirt in her fingers, pulling him so close he thought she wanted to merge their skins. For a moment, he let himself go, let himself love her without worry...
And then his soul burned him again. It was all just too suspicious to be safe. Too perfect. He pulled back, just a little, but she felt it and stiffened.
"What's going to be different now?" he asked wearily, letting his arms drop away as she stood up. Now she was tense with anger again, pacing around the room. He remained on the floor, leaned back against the desk, closed his eyes. Hated himself. Time is not our friend, Buffy."
"You're so fixated on that!" She threw her hands up in frustration. "We'd have years, Angel, years before I'd grow old." She paused and stared out over LA. "And I wonder which one of us that would really bother anyway."
"What?"
"You always say it wouldn't be fair to me, for you to stay young while I get old and gray, but I think it's really that you'd be jealous."
"Jealous." He stared at her. "I'd be jealous of you growing old."
"I get what you don't. Life. A lifespan." Her lips twisted in a bitter grimace that he could never call a smile. "I would think you'd be happy for me, Angel. I'll be the first Slayer ever to grow old."
"That's true," he said carefully, looking up at her. "You gave the world all the others, gave humanity an army instead of a doomed champion. Gave every Slayer a better chance."
She laughed out loud, a harsh sound he'd never heard from her. "Is that what I did, Angel? Well, that's not all of it. I did so much more!" She walked over and pressed her hands against the window, looking out over the city. "I gave hundreds of little girls enemies they don't know about and can't see. I gave them strength they can't control. I sent at least a dozen into asylums with dreams that drive them mad, and twice that to their graves, because I made them into targets for every vampire on Earth. They don't have Watchers, Angel!" She slammed her hands against the glass, then turned to him. Her eyes were wild and anguished. "I always gave Giles such a hard time about Watchers being useless. I was so wrong..." She laughed weakly and shook her head. "They train, they guide, but mostly they assure you that you're not crazy. They tell you that it's real; they reassure you that there really are enemies in the dark. They hold you when you cry." She turned back to the window and stared out over the city again. "They ground you."
"Okay, so they don't have Watchers...but they have you, and Faith. You've been through it, you can at least help the ones you can find."
She snorted and shook her head. The set of her jaw startled him- he had never seen such contempt and anger on her face before. "Why should I? I didn't have anyone to help me through it. No one held my hand. Giles told me I was sane, but he'd never had the dreams. His life wasn't forfeit by a spell cast at the dawn of time. Why shouldn't they learn the same way- the hard way? Why should they be so damn special?"
"And there it is." He smiled despite himself. "I wondered when it was going to come down to that."
She glared down at him, her hands clenched in fists at her hips. "To what?"
He gazed up into her hard, angry, beautiful face, unafraid. "You always bitched and complained about how much you wanted a normal life, Buffy. About how awful it was, bearing your burden alone. But the flip side of 'alone' is 'unique,' isn't it? Special." He paused, watched his words sink in. "Now you're one of many. Not special anymore."
"No." She turned on her heel and walked back to the window. He watched the line of her back, watched her tremble with confusion and rage. She wanted a problem she could fight, her clenched fists and tense muscles begged for one, but all she had was an enemy within. "It was awful, isolated, lonely. Don't try to twist my pain around."
"There's the rest of it," he said, quiet but relentless. "You cut your martyrdom out from under yourself, Buffy. And how you loved playing the martyr." He watched her carefully, gauging her reactions; she spun to face him, openmouthed with shock, and he pressed on. "You can't go on about how hard it is anymore, how no one understands, because of all those girls who do understand- your beloved feeling of moral superiority has been taken away from you- "
She came at him then, fists and feet flying. He dodged as many blows as he could, absorbed the rest, and eventually got his arms around her, to pull her down into his lap. He held her close to him while she cried.
"I hate it when you're right," she said at last. Night had come fully outside; they lay together on the office floor, gazing out the window at the moon. He held her a little tighter but kept silent, savoring the smell of her hair.
"Angel...I came to ask you something. You're not going to like it, but at least consider it, please?" She didn't turn to face him; he could tell that this was something she could only say if she couldn't see his eyes.
"I'll try," he murmured into her hair. She was still for a moment, and he could feel her body grow tense again.
"I realized what it means to be the first Slayer to grow old," she said in a flat and empty voice. "Angel, I'm only 23, and already...my edge is starting to go." He felt tears run down her face, back along her cheeks to where his hand stroked her hairline. "My strength, my speed...I can't keep it up, Angel, not forever. But the vampires are going to keep coming, especially after me because I activated all the Slayers. I won't be able to protect myself from them, or my family..." Her voice trailed off. "My friends. I won't leave them for other Slayers to protect...they're my responsibility...but I'll be too slow, and the vampires never age." She twisted slightly in his arms to face him. "They never slow down."
He looked at the face he loved, at its now-steady eyes. "What do you want, Buffy?" A terrible feeling inside him suggested that he knew. He pushed it away, watched her lips, waited for an answer. It came in a rush, the words tumbling out to be heard before he could stop her.
"I want you to make me. To sire me, whatever the verb is, bring me over, bite me...Angel, make me one of you." She tightened her grip on his arms as he pulled away in horror, then let her hands fall as he shook her off. "Give me eternity."
"Have you lost your mind?" He was fighting for control, but it still came as a shout. She didn't flinch, just stared up at him as he paced around the office.
"I've thought it through," she said calmly, picking at the carpet. "I know, the whole soulless ravenous evil beast thing...but we'll have Willow re-ensoul me right away. And then think about it, Angel." She reached out and touched his leg, and he paused to look down at her, attracted and repulsed by her words, torn in a terrible limbo. "We can be together. Forever. I can protect my family for a lifetime, and then it'll be you and me. Forever." She searched his face, desperate for him to understand. "All lovers say it, but for us it'll be real..." She stopped as he pulled away.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," he whispered, all he could manage around his growing rage. He wanted to paint the walls with blood. The demon howled inside him. "You've killed how many hundreds of vampires, and still you're fucking clueless. You're being selfish...you want to be the Slayer-who-went-vampire, to be SPECIAL again..."
She was standing now, and angry. "If you won't do it, I'll find another vamp who will. There'll be takers, I hear Slayer blood has a great kick."
"And once they've made you? And you're an animal like them...like us? All of us?" he shouted. "You won't WANT your soul back, Buffy! You'll shudder at the thought! You have NO IDEA how sweet a life free from guilt is!" His anger left him in a sudden rush, leaving a vacuum of sorrow. "And one of the girls you gifted with power will come slay you."
"It won't have to be that way," she said steadily, "if you're there to help me." She looked into his eyes. "I've thought it through."
"You're serious about this." He felt empty, painfully hollow, like someone had carved out his stomach with clawed hands.
Tears again. "You don't understand, Angel...what it's like to realize you'll get old and lose everything you are, after years of thinking you wouldn't because no Slayer ever has."
There was a moment of silence that stretched on for days. He could hear her heart beating. He could smell her sweat.
His heart didn't beat, but it broke.
"Let me think," he said finally, pleadingly, turning away. "Let me have a day."
She nodded. "Sure. Of course." She started for the door. "I'll meet you at that hotel of yours, the Hyperion, after sunset."
"All right," he whispered, watching her go. When the door clicked shut, he fell to his knees on the dark carpet and silently howled in
despair.
The moon shone down on his city, impassive.
***
The sun had set again, but it wasn't yet moonrise. Angel stood in the alley behind the Hyperion, waiting, listening to the creatures of the night hunt beneath the dumpsters.
There she was, walking through the heavy, smoky night air without fear, looking for him. What was left of his heart crumbled to dust; the cross she wore to guard her throat was gone. She had opened all of her defenses to him.
"Hey," she said. She was smiling.
"Hey." She stopped only two feet from him. Still smiling. "Haven't changed your mind, I see."
"No." She reached up and patted her hair; it was pulled back in a tight ponytail, to leave her neck utterly free. "Did you do all your thinking about it?"
"Yes." He watched her carefully, hoping for some sort of impact from his words. "I thought of one more important question."
She sighed impatiently. "What?"
"What about heaven?"
She grew very still for a moment, staring past him at something that wasn't there. Then she looked up into his eyes, and he saw a seriousness there. A resolve. He knew before she spoke. She'd do anything to hold back the all-consuming terror of being ordinary, and defenseless, and old.
"I gave up heaven once," she said quietly. "It's not so hard to do it again."
He bowed his head for a moment. Inside, he raged. She was throwing away his dearest wish. "You've chosen, then."
"Yes." She was firm. "Irrevocably."
"Yes," he said softly. "It is indeed...irrevocable."
He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently drew her to him, wrapping his arms around her in a lovers' embrace. She came easily, trying to smile, gazing up into his face with trust and fear. Even if she could have hidden her fear, he could smell it, rising from her like rancid perfume.
He bent his head and kissed her, running his tongue through her mouth. His hands held the back of her head, gently caressing her hair, and for a moment he hesitated. He remembered every vampire he had ever made, remembered their flesh beneath his lips as he drank from them and their tongues eager at his skin as they drank from him. He felt Buffy trembling under his mouth, in his hands, and he hesitated.
But there was no other way.
He kissed her deeper, and his hands moved- practiced, sure- and her neck snapped, and he felt her last startled gasp of breath flow into him. He drank her life's end with his kiss and knelt slowly, lowering her to the ground. He looked at her face, gently closed her eyes.
He felt so empty. Hollow.
He looked up at the sky, the millions of watching stars, the moon just beginning to rise over the buildings. Carefully, he gathered her into his arms again.
He would carry her up to the Hyperion's roof. They would look up at the sky, and out over the city, and together they would wait for the sunrise.
Feedback is like oxygen.
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