// - denotes flashbacks


When I wake up, the shades are down and I'm lying in bed, the sheets pulled around my naked body. For a moment I think I'm still with Angel and start to smile. Then I remember I'm at home and roll over, my bones aching with the strain of pretending and I can feel between my legs is sore and it feels strange. Mike never makes me sore. He sort of… passes through me and I hardly feel it the next day. Angel fills me up so much it hurts. And I love the hurt.

Isn't that sad? I want to laugh but I'm so afraid I'll cry.

A cup of coffee is set down on the bedside table. Glancing up with wary eyes, I lock gazes with my fiancé, who looks sort of suspiciously at me and says, “Where were you last night? I was worried.”

“Sorry,” I answer glibly and shrug. “I took a walk by the Seine and stayed to watch les bateaux mouches. You know I'm obsessed with them.” For a moment I think it should horrify me how easily the untruths trip off my tongue, but it doesn't, so I banish the feelings and take a sip of the hot brew.

He pecks me on the top of the head and ruffles my hair affectionately. “Could ya take walks when I'm there, Buffy? You had me frightened, babe.”

Whatever, is what I want to say. He was sleeping deeply when I strolled through the door. Sometimes I wonder if Mike really sees me. Or he's just content with the blonde chick he has on his arm. When we go to the dinners held by his investment buddies, he likes me to dress in slinky black things and he usually keeps his hand on my thigh all night. I can practically see the “Look at me, with HER” signals he sends out at times. It's not fair, to say that, I know. I can't attack him because I'd rather be in the circle of Angel's arms right now, breathing his sweet breath and hearing the dreams he spins with his voice.

“Are you going to work now?” I ask him and he shakes his head.

“Nope. Day off…” he grins and then kisses me, his hand slipping beneath the covers. His thumb is on my nipple and I should be feeling something shouldn't I? Anything? I want to scream with this helplessness. How can he have done this again? Came into my life and turned me inside out… so nothing's real anymore?

I read this book once… the real version of Alice in Wonderland called Through the Looking Glass. Alice walks through the mirror and nothing's right. I'm Alice. And Angel's the glass and we're both spinning towards each other- like we're meant to collide. I can't do it anymore. But I also can't let Mike make love to me right now.

“Honey,” I laugh half-heartedly. “Can't today. Got my monthly friend.”

He laughs to. He's used to all that stuff and so he kisses me again and smoothes my shoulder with fingers that feel wrong somehow. “That's ok. Want to go for a walk?”

“Ok,” I reply and get up, taking a shower and pulling on capris and a tie front top. It's still hot out, I can feel it from the heaviness in the air, and sure enough, when we walk outside, the heat hits me like a solid wall. Flexing my fingers, I feel their ache and realize with something approaching terror that they are stinging for Angel. I need to touch him. It used to feel like this back when I was sixteen and stupid, but maybe… I thought it'd be different now. With twenty-seven years under my belt and a few lovers and a new life… shouldn't it all be changed?

But it's not changed. I should have known that by now.

Mike swings my hand as we walk and I feel like a little girl. Paris is sweaty today and the buildings look wilted and limp. My Mom once told me she always wanted to come here. “Just for a walk by the river,” she'd say gaily and I'd roll my eyes at her Mom-ness, secretly thinking that I'd never get to go to France because I had a sacred duty and I was supposed to stay. I would have never admitted to anyone that the knowledge relieved me. Going places seemed scary. Better, safer just to stay where I was.

Now I walk where Mom wanted to be, and I hear her footfalls in every move towards the river. Sometimes I hear her voice whispering in my ear- like a lament- you're so grown up. Just a walk by the river. Could you zip this dress up for me please, Buffy? Just a walk by the river… by the river, Buffy. Paris in Springtime… how lovely…

It's funny how the harshness has sort of faded away as the time inevitably passes. I miss her- I miss my Mommy- still, after all this time- but it's the small moments I remember now. Her gentleness- her eyes when I was a child… the hugs and the tender look reserved just for me.

I wish the memories of Dawn were like that. But they're not… they're dark and blood-stained.

When Spike killed her I sort of lost it for a while. It's not like she was my real sister, and that almost made it hurt more. I felt like I had no right to mourn. She wasn't even real. Willow was grieving over Tara and Xander over Anya… and as I rammed that stake through Spike's heart, I cried for all of us. For me, because I lost my family, and because I hated that I was someone Spike loved enough to kill for. For Spike because he was stupid and fucked up. For Willow and Tara because they never got to be in love enough to last a lifetime. For Anya and Xander. Because he threw up when he found her body and he held her and I realized that I had dismissed them and that it was something real… that they had something true. In that moment I was selfish and cried because I saw pieces of myself and Angel in her fallen figure and his sobs…

And for Dawnie because she was never allowed to be real and because I loved her with the burning sisterly love that's volatile and tempered with the tenderness I had when I stroked her hair and kissed her baby-soft cheek.

As we continue walking in silence I realize I'm crying and surreptitiously wipe my face with the back of my free hand. Throngs of people pass by us, all dressed in black or white or red. I'm in silvery blue because I used to think I was fashionably different. Now I just feel foolish and distracted. Lately I think more and more of the people back in Sunnydale. Of the people I used to know so well, and love so much. Of those buried in the cemetery where Jenny Calendar and my Mommy and Dawn rest. That's where Tara and Anya are too. Sometimes Will calls me after she makes a trip and her voice sounds like it's going to break.

“Want a coffee?” Mike inquires, interrupting the long period of silence between us, with a smile. Looking up at his blue eyes, I nod.

“Thanks.”

I hope he'll take a while and amble towards the river. It's a strange colour between blue and green and grey. When the rain hits it's surface, the little waves and ripples look silvery. I love to watch the river. I'm not sure if I do it for my mother or for me, sometimes. She wanted to see it, and now I have, so I suppose in a way, I gave her something back.

Turning slightly, I feel a tingle in my stomach and glance up.

Angel.

Damnit. He's there. Walking down the road by the bakers, with a bag underneath his arm, his gaze downcast. He doesn't see me yet, and even though I'm thinking, “Oh, I hope he doesn't,”- I don't move and hope he does.

When his eyes don't stray from the ground, I start to walk towards him. I've forgotten about Mike, back somewhere at a vendor, buying coffee in those ridiculous paper cups. Tensing and trying to breathe, I reach out and my fingers encounter his bare arm. He stops and growls, “I was going to pretend I didn't see you.”

“Why?” I ask and the shadows of the buildings cloak us for a moment as he grasps my arm and pulls me into an alcove.

“Because you're with your fiancé. You can't be seen with me.”

He's angry. I realize it and almost laugh. He's also jealous. Angel doesn't know how to deal with jealousy- never did. Tilting my head, I let my fall of golden hair drift over his bicep and purr, “You're jealous.”

“Don't do this,” he mutters in disgust. “Don't play this role. It isn't you.”

“What isn't me?” I snarl softly, unreasonably furious. I hate the way he sees through me.

“Whatever whore you're trying to act like,” he says insultingly and then immediately his expression crumples into one of regret. Damnit. Why can't he ever just hurt me without being sorry? I don't want his pity. I don't want his apologies.

“Buffy…” he reaches up and his thumb curves over my cheekbone. “I'm…”

“Don't…” I immediately whisper and cup his face between my hands and kiss him. The wall crumbles and everything whirls. We're in each other's arms and spell again.

He grabs me and pulls me into the ally beside us. It's deserted and dark, and it smells like salt. I wonder inanely for a moment whether or not the sea covered it thousands of years ago, and then he kisses me and nothing matters but his lips. “I smell like you,” he groans against my mouth and I moan in response, because I know. Because I had to lather with soap myself three times to wash him off.

I feel his hands, desperate- inside my capris. I don't know how they got there. I bite his shoulder, sinking my teeth in deep and feeling the hot drench of blood in my mouth. He whimpers into the pulse at the base of my neck and his fingers wrench down my panties.

“Angel…” My voice is more a sob than anything as he slams into me and my head knocks back into the wall. I can feel my back being scraped by the brick and it hurts. But it would hurt more to have him stop, so I say nothing except whispered breaths and choked screams. His back is slick to the touch and I grip him with fierce fingers. I hold him against me and open my eyes in a dizzy haze to see him watching me with a hunger I'd forgotten. Suddenly panicked, I wriggle closer to him. I can't let him go. Not ever.

His breath exhales between my lips and teeth as I feel the hot rush dripping down my legs. “Angel…” I murmur, stroking his neck, feeling him shudder against me.

My face hurts and so does the skin of my back. Relaxing my forehead and leaning into his weight with a weary gentleness, I say quietly, “Angel…”

He looks up and his eyes are wet with tears of something. Grief… love… regret… sorrow? I don't know. “I love you, Buffy,” he sighs and touches my bruised and swollen mouth with his finger. “Oh… beloved… why do I do this to you?”

With a bolt that feels like lightening, my head flings back, hitting the knotty bricks with a crash and it plays behind my eyelids…

// “Why do I do this to you?”

I'm not sure why he does. But if he wants to hundreds more times, he can.

“Oh, Byrony,” he moans and kisses my neck and the hollows behind my ears with hot lips. But no hotter than the sky we meet under. It may be dark, but the red sun only hides.

My arms and legs are open for him, and although I know he'll fill me up with his seed and his child and make me his forever… I can't care. I want to be his forever. Damn the angry voices that would try and silence our love. Damn those who want me to marry where I do not love. Those who would keep us apart because he is from the shadows and I from the light. I don't care. I cannot care when he is above me, his flesh hungrily seeking solace with mine.

“Alesso…” I scream out, into the sky choked with stars and dead planets and those who have gone before us. “Oh please… oh God please….”

I run my hands down his shoulders and feverish belly, moulding the skin beneath the tips of my fingers, attempting to memorize the feel and texture, so that when I am alone in my bed… the white sheets billowing around me like swans, I will be able to remember this. Remember the sand scratching my back, the stillness of the air, the taste of his tongue drowning in the caverns of my mouth. I will remember.

He kisses me with tender whispers and runs his hand down to my sleek stomach. “You are the sun, Byrony,” he tells me, as he always does, and I nod, choking back tears of bittersweet pain.

“I love you,” he reminds me firmly and his eyes are pinpricks of light and moon. I see his quest in those eyes. I see my future and my past and my eternity in those eyes. “Nothing can ever sway that… nothing, do you hear me? Not even death.”

“Not even the death of all things…” I murmur dreamily, and turn my head to look at my arm extended along the sand, towards a cluster of stars. We are on the edge of the world. My breath turns to dust as it hits the musky air and floats away, into the universe, to be breathed by others for thousands of years to come.

“They will never let us be,” I utter without expression or nuance. Some pain is too bleak for that.

My love draws me onto his lap and strokes my hair with his palms. They worship me every night and still I know not every line of them. I want to. Know every hollow and curve. Realizing that I will never be given the chance is too difficult a thought for me to master. Leaning into his chest, I content myself with his soft caresses and the kisses he drops on my forehead.

“Perhaps we are not meant to be left alone,” he muses.

“Perhaps,” I echo and shiver.

With his thumb, he traces the line of my midsection. “You will have my child Byrony,” he speaks tenderly. “And he or she will be a ---“//

“BUFFY!”

I come back to myself with a bang, and a blinding headache that seizes my temples with white hot force.

Angel is holding me on his lap, cradling my head. “What happened?” he asks me, his eyes wide and confused. “You just stopped… being you. It was like you were possessed.”

It's as if someone walks over my grave. Clutching my stinging forehead, I look up at him with green eyes that I think may be more ancient that I'd believed. “We should call Giles.”

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