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Fifth

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The words had slid over her tongue as easily as anything she had ever said in her entire life. As though they had been waiting on the tip of it for that moment when it was win or lose, life or death, love or let go. The simplicity with which they had been freed into the air was what had her close to petrified. She almost wanted to reach out her hands and try to snatch them back, imprison them again and have the fright pull back deep within her, where she wouldn’t have to acknowledge it.

But still, a larger part of her wanted the statement gone. That part was filling with a trembling, successive and slow, yet very obvious relief.

It had been the one thing she never would have thought she would say to him. All those times when he told her how he felt she hadn’t for one split second imagined she would ever return those emotions. She had looked at him and felt nothing. Until that day when he stood before Glory and took a round of such torture that it would’ve made anyone less of a man confess anything the hell god desired to know.

That day he had earned a small shred of trust, of gratitude, of grace from the Slayer. He had abused it, of course, as was his nature; but it had still been there. She had been able to look at him as something not as dark and dirty; still she had never admitted him as anything else. No, she knew she had not.

Her faith in the fact that he truly loved her was something she hadn’t been able to give him. She had thought it simply impossible looking back on the two split personalities of Angel and Angelus. She had learned her lesson right there. Demons could not love. End of story.

What had driven her into his arms then? What had it been that had attracted her to him? How long had she not wanted him? She had been able to fool herself for a very long time, or rather persuade herself that what she wanted wasn’t what she wanted. She knew, though, that that flicker of danger in his gaze had always had her close to sweating. Those blue eyes of his could hold such a knee-bending, overpowering expression – and she had never encountered anything like it.

Her Slayer side – the warrior, the fighter, the adventurous, the killer – that side had been drawn to him like a bee to a cube of sugar. He was everything she should definitely not crave, and the high of confessing that she did, got her to crave him all the more.

She had been out of control those months she had spent with him filling her every sense, and though she had had things to blame it on, things that would even justify her actions to her ever doubting conscience, it had still been something more. Something primeval, a need rooted so deep within her it was the darker part of her it stemmed from. To own something so untamed, to have it become part of her, to let it inside. And wouldn’t have been just any vampire, it couldn’t have been. It had to be him. Somewhere she must have always felt it. The pull to explore such traitorous territory.

And as they shared their first kiss that night outside the Bronze, she had been attacked by the undeniable truth of having wanted that kiss for far too long. Trying to brush it off hadn’t worked, no matter how she had struggled. And when he finally moved within her, when she finally got to feel his skin against hers, right then she had known that she had made her choice. And that that choice would damn them both.

She had fought against her wanting for so long, and so, when she finally let herself go, she could do nothing to stop the riptide. In truth, she hadn’t wanted to fight it. She saw her chance like a bright glitter of sun on a wave and she had let it carry her away. Had let him take her and bend her any which way he pleased as he used her obvious desire against her. She had been so weak. He had made her so incredibly weak.

And then she had slowly grown sickened with herself; as she came to understand that there was nothing different about her she had at first been confused as to why she could let him close to her at all, and then she had been appalled with the fact that she actually had wanted him, needed him to feel alive again. Yes, the only time she had felt anything had been when he was kissing her, touching her, lifting her up and up until she thought for sure she would never come down again.

And she had been using him. Abusing him the way she always stated that he did her. And she had realized she couldn’t do that anymore. And she had ended it.

And she had driven him out of his mind.

And then out of his nature as he left Sunnydale to restore his soul. For her. To change everything – for her. To sacrifice himself in spite of his existence for the past century, in spite of what he had always stood for to her – selfishness, recklessness, evil – and in spite of his knowledge of what it would do to him, what he had seen it do to his grandsire.

When he left her two months ago she had spent one day convincing herself it was for the best, a second day telling herself that what she felt wasn’t loss and a third day battling back the growing urge to pack a bag and leave Sunnydale to trail his footsteps, find him and make him come home.

After those three days had passed, the numbness crept into her and she felt as though she was suffering from insomnia: one half of her was asleep, the other in a hazy state of awareness, and she seemed to simply drift through the motions of her everyday.

But how she had missed him.

And as she had looked up earlier as she came down the stairs, and rested her eyes in his it had hit her, like a pang in her chest, how much she needed him in her life.

That was the origin of the ache, of the tread which had spun a net around her heart and now, at last, with him before her, had begun to come undone. Its twists and turns no longer needed to protect her.

And yet it hadn’t been until now. Not until this very moment that she had come to understand how much she had grown to love him. The feeling burst through the shell she had enclosed it in and she bit her lower lip hard as it gently consumed her, washing away any shred of doubt.

Oh, dear God.

A sense of some kind of happiness tweaked her heart as she was defenseless against her own emotions.

All of this ran through her mind in the matter of a few instants. She took in his back, waiting for her statement to fly across the room and make a home for themselves in his head and hopefully his heart. He had to trust her now. She wasn’t sure that he would.

***

As her words found their course through his head he closed his eyes, trying to stop the flow of memories deciding to throw a parade in flashes against his eyelids. They danced for him, teased and taunted him, as they always did.

Buffy.

She was his all. She was what stood for the good part of his life and now his souled being turned to her as a flower turns toward the rays of the sun. Which was a rather ironic analogy.

The first time he saw her had been at the Bronze. He could see her the same way she had been then whenever he pleased, because he had stored her safely into the banks of his memory. A treasure that was his to keep. No one could ever take her away from him as long as he could close his eyes and see her.

She was dancing now, with Willow and Xander in front of the stage. She was smiling. Enjoying herself. And he stared at her.

Taken.

Taken with her vitality and bursting force of life that lay as a breathtaking white shimmer around her. With the power he could sense flowing out of her and the obvious challenge that came with it. And taken with her beauty. With her sensuality and clear innocence, no matter who she was and what she stood for he could see she still carried her human innocence around her neck as a piece of jewelry, languorously it hung down her back and swayed with each new graceful move that she made.

It had come to annoy him, grow on him as it came to stand for all the reasons why he could never have her. He had tried to rip it away from her, to strip her of it and make her realize that she didn’t need it. But her death had done most of the job for him, ridding her of too much of her frailty. He wanted to wince each time he even thought of that fact. Of how her death had stood for his failure to protect the only woman he had ever loved purely and fully, and how her death had robbed him of the only real happiness he had ever known.

She was gut-wrenching, coursing pain. She was what hurt him the most. But she was also that bright star guiding him forward. And when her light was extinguished he wanted nothing more than to drown in the darkness that was her only legacy.

Then he had remembered – Dawn. The Scoobies. Sunnydale and the still at work forces of evil.

Her real legacy had been the history of her life, of her destiny, of the Slayer. And he had wanted to honor her. He had honored her. At least he had hoped that was what he was doing as he kept his promise about the niblet, and looked out for her the best he could during those three months while Buffy was gone. As well as keeping the fighting of the nasties up with the Scoobs.

Nothing would ever come close to the feeling rising within him as he watched her carefully, hesitantly come down the stairs that night. Her knuckles bloodied, her eyes so vacant and lost, so searching for any sign of why she was back. He had never wanted to protect her from the big shadows surrounding her as much as he wanted to right then and there.

When she kissed him outside the Bronze he hadn’t been foolish enough to actually believe that everything would be riding down Pleasant Street from that moment on. But the fact that she had opened herself up to him enough to admit to the attraction between them had kindled the fire of stubborn hope which had always been sizzling inside him.

And when her eyes grew as they stared at each other, her thighs against his waist and his hands supporting her as their battle in the condemned building abruptly had turned into that dance they did so well, he had known that this was it. She wasn’t going to be able to turn back now. No more excuses, no more dismissals – she had wanted him for just as long as he had told her she wanted him and now the wall separating them was crumbling between them.

How many times had he not let her trample him? Even when he said that he was through being her whipping boy that statement had tasted bold and bitter on his tongue. Once he had told her and Angel “I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it.” Had he truly realized the meaning of that sentence?

Drusilla had known he loved Buffy long before he did himself. He guessed it had been what really drove them apart. Had Dru not seen it, perhaps he wouldn’t have returned to Sunnydale at all. He might still have been with her. Had he not come back for the gem of Amara he wouldn’t have seen Buffy again, and perhaps without constant run-ins with the petite blonde he wouldn’t have ever realized that he loved her.

Then again... He wondered why all his paths had suddenly seemed to lead him straight back to a place which had been the background setting to some of the heaviest ass-kickings – the ass being his – that he had ever been forced to tolerate.

Why hadn’t he been able to kill her? As much as that question had vexed him back then, it was clear to him now. Because he felt a connection. Undeniable and strong. Perhaps not right, maybe not good – but true, and in that truth invincible.

When she had broken him in more places than one, when she had told him all she had wanted him for was her own personal inflatable doll – not that she had put it in those exact terms. That had been what had made him snap. He didn’t blame her. He felt sick to his stomach even thinking about what could have happened had she not been strong enough to stop him. But in light of the course of that year, she had been part of what had driven him far over the edge and that was just simple fact.

She had also been the reason for him to want to change. To make her see. To make her believe him. Because above anything else he needed her to understand that what was rooted deep within him wasn’t a mere shadow of something as fickle as an obsession. He needed her to recognize his love for the strength that it carried and for what it did to him. For how it truly had made him into a different being.

He thought she had seen it, when he came back messed up as hell. She had treated him more softly, though she hadn’t been able to stand his touch... That memory hurt him badly.

It had changed, he supposed. With time, slowly, minute by minute.

And then he had left again... Had made himself leave her.

Could she, after everything that had happened between them, truly be standing behind him, saying words she knew he had been desperate to hear her utter for so many years, without meaning them?





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