Shifting in my seat, I sip the steaming coffee handed to me by Willow only a few short minutes ago and watch her rock Katie tenderly in her arms. Tara slices some of the vanilla frosted cake I brought over, with a gleaming knife, her pale hands moving swiftly as she places pieces of the dessert onto plates and hands them out to us with her gentle smile.
When she sits down, she glances at me pensively. “So he just keeps showing up? Without calling?”
I sigh heavily, shrugging. “That's Angel. He likes to make with the stealth. He always has.”
Willow nods. “Ain't that the truth.”
“I think he thinks it adds to his edge,” I joke miserably, poking at the cake without any enthusiasm. It tastes like ashes crumbled in my mouth and I stare at the metal prongs of the fork, wondering if it's possible to have no appetite at all. “I just think it's creepy and annoying.”
“Except you don't think it's creepy or annoying,” Willow adds, her fingers carefully smoothing back wisps of Katie's buttery blonde curls. “Because it's Angel.”
“Will,” Tara cautions.
“No, it's ok,” I protest serenely. “Seriously, guys, I don't even know what he's doing here… he just seems… quieter, somehow. Different.”
“He wasn't exactly man of a thousand words before,” Willow points out, as Tara tickles Katie's feet absently. The little girl giggles, her mouth blowing tiny milky bubbles with each breath.
“True,” I acknowledge.
“Is it…” Tara pauses. “Is it ok to ask?”
“Ask what?”
She looks worried. “Are you… are you still in love with him, Buffy? I can't believe I just asked that. Say you'll forgive me.”
“I don't know if I can. That sounded like a Willow question, Tara,” I grin, and she adopts an offended expression.
“I'm not nosy!”
“Who said I'm nosy?” Willow cuts in and I laugh softly.
“I don't think there's any reunions left anymore,” I answer her question without any more preamble, catching my bottom lip between sharp teeth as I stare at a fixed point between the ceiling and the start of dark purple wall. “Or any happy endings. Especially not for Angel and me.”
The Witches exchange a look, and then Katie opens her mouth in a giant yawn, and I coo gently, reaching over to lift her welcome weight into my arms. “May I put her to bed?” I ask her two mothers, and they nod. They both look concerned, and I choose to ignore it. Everyone always looks concerned around widows. Pretty soon you learn to block it out.
Katie sucks her thumb, her squashy little body in a yellow jumper plastered across my chest as I ascend the stairs of Willow and Tara's home, the pale green walls upstairs, soothing my nerves with their familiarity.
I switch on the night-light in Katie's room, the watery golden glow casting strange shadows over us as I pad over to her bed, drawing back the thin covers and placing her beneath them.
“Nighhht Buffny,” she slurs slightly in her toddler voice as one of her hands keeps a firm grip on my hair. Then, more clearly: “Love you.”
“I love you too, Katie Watie Bo Batie,” I tease her, and her tiny giggle is smothered against my lips as I peck her gently and then lower myself down upon the carpet, listening to her breathe as I think vague thoughts of Winnie the Pooh and my Mother.
Mostly I think of the child I should have had.
The little girl that didn't last three months in my belly, much less three years in the outside world.
Unconsciously, I touch my stomach and stare into space.
~ ~ ~
The house is quiet when I return, and no red lights blink on the answering machine. For a moment I consider going upstairs and opening my bedside drawer, where I have a little container of tapes. Each one is filled with random, meaningless messages. “I love you” and “Want me to pick up a carton of milk?” and “for crying out loud, don't forget to call the plumber again cause I'm *not* fixing the shower, Danny”. Those kind. Hundreds of them.
I didn't keep them for any sentimental reason, which is ironic when I look back. I simply didn't know which garbage they went into – recyclable or normal refuse, and so every single time the tape got full, I'd toss it into a drawer and forget about it.
After he was killed, I came home and found one on the machine from him. It was small, and very, very nondescript.
((Did you pick up the balloons for the barbecue? If not, I'll do it on my way home. I'll call tonight, love. The taxi's coming in an hour to pick me up. Be a sweet wife and leave the door unlocked. No one wants a repeat of last time. Especially not the neighbors, I'd imagine. I miss you, Love you, bye))
I fell on the floor as I was listening to it (everything else is hazy about that day, but I remember that) and screamed and cried and threw anything I could reach against the wall. But I kept the machine tucked against my heart. It was all I had left then. Just a little bit of his voice.
Grazing my finger down the side of the counter, I cough at the well of dust in the air and make a mental note to do some cleaning tomorrow. Yawning, I walk up the stairs and into my room, breathing out in a jumbled rush as I look at the window.
“Hey,” Angel says quietly, not turning. “Sorry to startle you.”
“You should be,” I snap. “I think you took twenty years off my life just now.”
“Don't lie,” he whispers. “You knew I was in the house. Unconsciously.”
“Why? Because we have some mystical connection?” I toss off bitterly. “Give me a break. I think that boiled down to one thing. Slayer. Vampire. Neither of which applies to us anymore so—“
“Why are you so angry?”
“You really have to ask me that?” I murmur, falling back into the shadows to lean against the wall.
He sighs. “I guess not. I just thought—“
“That time heals all wounds?” I finish wryly. “Never thought you'd be one for cliché.”
“Maybe I thought that we could start again.”
“With what?” I ask. “Because there's nothing left to start with, Angel. And I certainly don't want to be friends.”
He turns suddenly, and grasps my arms lightly with his palms. Shivering involuntarily, I gaze up at him. “Friends?” he repeats, and I nod, a ghost of a grin playing on my lips.
“Maybe I don't want a friend.”
His mouth slides over mine as he murmurs, “I could never be just your friend.”
Pulling away slightly, I look directly into his burning eyes. “Maybe that's the problem.”
“Buffy…” he begins and I cut him off with a kiss, our first is almost ten years. Not since our meeting when I came back from Heaven have I kissed him. Clinging to his arms, I lean in, smelling his sweat and tasting his breath as we move together like one body over to the bed ((new bed, new sheets, new blankets, new pillows.)), his forehead pressed against mine.
My clothes come off easily and so do his. I discover a new scar when I drag my hand over his hip, and I'm sure he notices the faded weal on my finger ((from where Natalie's dog bit me five years ago)) as he lifts my hands to his mouth. I don't stop to think if this is a good idea as he kisses my lips and strokes my cheeks, and I whisper – AngelAngelAngel- as he slides inside me and makes me see bloody stars and candles dripping with glittery wax. Everything shifts and breaks and I bite off a groan as he rolls off me and takes me with him, the sheets in a messy tangle around us.
Closing my eyes, I don't think, I just sleep, and I hope that he'll be gone by the morning and that this all a bad dream.
~ ~ ~
When I wake, he's looking at me. For a moment, I'm disoriented, my eyes slightly fuzzy and I whisper, “Morning love---“
Love.
No.
It's not the man I called “love” each morning.
“Never mind,” I finish. “I'm sorry.”
His hand cups my shoulder. “Let me make you breakfast.”
“What's my favourite breakfast, Angel?” I inquire quietly.
His eyes shutter. “I don't know. I'm sorry.”
“So many sorry's,” I mock. “We're a sad pair, aren't we?”
“Buffy…”
“What was Cordelia's?”
“Buffy,” he repeats, but warningly this time.
“What was it? I know you know.”
He sighs and flops back, staring blankly at the ceiling for a moment before replying, “Melon and coffee. Black, no sugar.”
“Danny's was chocolate chip pancakes. He liked them with freshly squeezed orange juice but I never made that unless it was his Birthday. Too much work,” I respond, without any inflection in my voice. “Isn't that funny. That I still remember.”
“No, it isn't funny,” he answers huskily. “And I see your point. I see what you're getting at. We don't know each other at all.”
“We have a winner,” I sneer, sitting up and getting out of bed. “And what do we have for him? Right. A one way ticket out of town.”
“Just like Danny's huh, Buffy?” Immediately, his voice breaks. “God, that was unforgivable. I'm sorry.”
Without turning around, I snarl so quietly I'm surprised he can hear me, “Get out. And don't ever, ever come back.”
Faint rustling sounds come from behind me, which I know are him making the bed and pulling on his clothes. Finally, he says, “Before I go, I have something to say to you.”
“What is it?” I ask, my voice crackling with suppressed rage.
“Buffy, please… turn around.”
“Say whatever you have to say, Angel,” I snap, horrified at the sudden sting of tears at the back of my throat. “Then leave… please.”
“I was there,” he says.
“Where?”
“I was there. At the airport, the night Danny's plane crashed.”
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