I'll think about him.
What is he doing right now? Is he sleeping? Dancing? Feeding? Who is he with?
Angel.
Angelus.
It makes me feel so dirty when I think about him being inside of me. I'll shudder, and the spell will be broken. I'll fall out of the mirror and back to earth...back to the emptiness that is inside me now. That isn't entirely true, I guess--in the emptiness or rather, wrapped around it, is pain.
Today is Valentine's Day. He didn't forget me. The flowers -should- have been lovely...and to my mother, I think that they were. They smelled sweet to her. But I knew as soon as I saw the box that they would be neither sweet nor lovely. The scent they gave off was absolutely stomach turning--the smell of death, intensified.
They smelled like a funeral. My funeral, maybe.
"Soon," the card read, and I could hear his voice saying the word. If I can't punish myself enough for making such a stupid mistake, Angelus will be there to remind me every day of what I did. He was the one that I had taken my chance on, after all.
For so long, I have been "the Slayer." Like some famed, mythological creature that has no other name, I was supposed to stand tall and powerful against all evil. And it seemed that, after awhile, that was all I was anymore. I wasn't a woman, or a teenager, or a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Catholic, or a Jew...or anything else. I was just the Slayer. And I realize now that that was the one thing I had hated Kendra the most for. I'd felt such pity for her, not so long ago, when I'd thought about how empty her life must have been. I'd felt really superior, because I had friends. I had a family. I had people that loved me and needed me around, unlike Kendra. She had devoted her life to being the Slayer...and I'd found that so sad.
Yet that was what I had turned into, totally without realizing it. No matter how many people surrounded me, no one could really be in my life. They stood on the fringes while I was the main attraction. It was my love for Angel that made me realize it. He broke into the center ring and joined me, taking away some of my loneliness. Suddenly, he was there--and he was promising me a wonderful love and wonderful future with a man who would never, ever die. With him, I wasn't the Slayer...I was the woman that he loved. He wanted to know me: the deepest cavities of my soul were his to explore, and he offered me that same intimacy. Then, just when we were finally getting to see those depths, just when we were sharing more than we ever had before, Angelus reappeared.
And...God! The guilt of it all! If I had only stopped myself that night. But I needed him so badly...I don't honestly know if I could have stopped. I had come so close to losing him forever, and my heart reacted to the near loss in a violent way. I wanted to be inside him and to feel him inside me.
That was what ruined it all, of course. As soon as he got inside me, he destroyed me. I could feel the hatred and the anger in him. He was unable to hold those things back at such a close range. I'd never felt his capability for evil more strongly in my life than I did when we were making love.
I have been carrying myself pretty well, up until now. I've been strong. It was the flowers that tipped me over the edge. Just knowing that he had been so close to my home, so close to my mother, so close to me, was enough to make me realize the consequences of my actions in a way that I never had before.
I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel rage, or terror, or disgust. I felt undiluted helplessness. I had lost control of the situation, and there was no way to regain my advantage. He'd put his evil inside me, and I knew that I would be helpless to destroy him--helpless until I was able get that evil out of my body and out of my soul. How, though? How could I do that?
I pull a rose out of the box that sits on the dressing table in front of me. I wrench the petals off of it, spreading them out on the table, ignoring their beauty. A thorn on the stem cuts into my hand, but it does not hurt. There is a slight wetness, and become aware of the blood running down my fingers. I push myself back from the table, moving away from the cursed mirror, and begin rummaging through one of the drawers for a bandage of some sort. I find one, peel the paper off the back of it, and lay it over the wound on my hand. That's better. I can't stand the sight of blood these days, even if it's my own blood.
Sweeping the flower petals into a little pile, I gather them in my palm and prepare to throw them away, along with the rest of the box of roses. My mother will want to know why I got rid of them, but I can fake some explanation later on.
I hear my mother's voice calling me. Her voice snakes its way up the stairs and into my room: "Buffy? You have a phone call."
"Alright, Mom!" I yell back, leaving my room and padding down to the kitchen.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Buffy!" It's Willow, back from her evening with Oz.
"Hi, Will. How did things go tonight?"
I hear her sigh happily. It must have been wonderful. "That good, huh?" I ask. My dark mood lifts just a little.
"Oz is perfect!" she squeals. "So talented, and so cute, and so sweet! I've never had a better Valentine's Day in my life."
"Great," I say without much enthusiasm.
I can practically hear Willow's mouth curving into a frown. Her voice comes through the phone, filled with concern: "What happened, Buffy?"
"Oh...it was Angelus, as usual. It's nothing that I really want to talk about, Will. I mean, thanks for asking and all--but I'd rather hear about your evening. Tell me all the details!" I throw some fake cheer into my voice.
"Alright...but I hope that you know that you aren't fooling me, Buffy. I know that you're upset. Still, if you want time, then I'll give it to you."
"Thanks, Willow. Now, tell me everything!" I am genuinely interested in hearing about someone else's life for a little while.
"Well, you wouldn't believe what happened with Xander and Cordelia tonight..."
I smile, freeing my mind of Angelus. Well, at least for the next hour, anyway. Take Me Home!!!