ethrosdemon ||| Buffy & Angel

My Dark Life Take Two
by ethrosdemon

EMAIL: naturallycalm@yahoo.com
Distribution: Ask me, and I will cry from joy.
Disclaimer: Joss made it up, too bad he is an incompetent ninny. Mutant Enemy and others own the rights. No suing please.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Major for "Disharmony" and "Forever"
Dedication: To Lar, dear lord, it's an Improv written just for the Improv, who woulda thought? To Rabbit for reading it when I forced it on her.
Notes: unbetaed 15 minutes fic may contain many errors, all mine. Angel POV. My first Improv fic ever was called "My Dark Life Take One", this is a second one, same general theme.
Improv fic: hidden, jade, memento, possession

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Real and imagined the theme for the night. The cold, jade circle real as anything sitting in my palm, the silk thong lost somewhere in all the moves, movement in the last hundred years. Riding along with me in my pocket, unbroken line of remembrance of the last night with Darla. Not the last night now. The second to last.

Cherry lip gloss still echoing on my tongue and mouth, more ephemeral memento of the other Love Of My Life. Pants still secreting away grains of sand and pieces of dirt collected under the tree at the graveside of Her Mother. They'll fall out and collect in the creases of the chair beneath me. Grain by grain to be found days and years from now, spelling out the hollowness one bit at a time.

So many kisses between me and the Two. Why now does the hidden truth seek me out? My own petty psychology strangling me as I roll the circle between my fingers? So obvious, my love for Darla finally dead, ashes and smoke consumed in the consummation of the obliteration of everything that could have been us or we. With it falls the other love, the replacement. Sunlight and gold to stand in for moonlight and silver. That one returned when I always assumed the other was not. Wrong on so many fronts that all the nuances will take another century to find me.

Chasing what I thought was The Ultimate possession. Being in love. Scourge of Europe, Saviour of the Innocent, and still trapped by the fairy tales and the mythology of valentines and sugar-sweet romance. Almost gave up the real, quantifiable kind of love twice, once for each of the Two. Obsession sliding under my skin and into my veins, Darla. Off-handed invitation and needful open mouth, Buffy.

All the while, the unconditional love of friendship trodden underfoot. For so long just a burden in my mind, three breathing, sweating, whinging possessions keeping me moribund with regret and mindful of what I was and still am. So many nights I planned detail by detail extinguishing them, whether by fang and fist or by word and deed. Came so close with both plans.

And here I am now, them downstairs, me up here. Wanting nothing more than to have that time back. To have seen in Buffy's eyes the truth before last night. To not have had to reap the Darla whirlwind to see that fixation and loss of self is not love. Sharing burdens and easing of solitude, exchange of laughter and knowledge of mistakes made, forgiveness, that's love. Three to take the place of two, and it should be enough to fill the void, but somehow I just don't think it ever will. The promise of love so much richer in the imagining than the having of the real thing.



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