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TITLE: Scars Of Our Youth
AUTHOR: Tesla
RATING:
SPOILERS: Post-"Not Fade Away"
CHARACTERS: B/A, S/B
DISCLAIMERS:
SUMMARY:
NOTES: This story is for chrisleeoctaves, and I've been thinking about it for some time, although I'm not a Classic B/A Shipper (tm).
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Buffy had a lot of time to think, on the jet to Los Angeles. She'd read her magazines, or rather, stared unseeingly at them. Finally, she'd plugged in her earphones and pretended to sleep. She had to say that the new and improved Watchers Council, under Giles, didn't stint at paying the expenses for the One and Only Original Slayer. First among equals, that was her.
"There's a report of a soulled vampire in Los Angeles. Our Watcher wasn't able to get more than a short call to me, as she thinks she's under surveillance."
She hadn't mentioned if it was Angel or Spike. Seems like it would be important.
"He said your name before he passed out. He hasn't regained consciousness."
So it was definitely one of them, unless someone was going around vamping other old boyfriends and ensouling them. If it was Parker, then this was definitely a wasted trip. But, no. There had been a terrible fight, a Hellmouth-type battle, all sorts of demons; the law office building had disintegrated(of course, CNN reported it was an earthquake) and the Los Angeles River had flooded, due to torrential rainfall (Seasonal weather patterns shifting). No mention of two teenage Slayers staking vampires in West Hollywood with their Watcher.
"A demon of some kind, a woman with blue skin, dumped him off at my feet when she saw that I had a crossbow."
So, lots of time to think, lots of things to think about.
She'd never been good at articulating her thoughts. It was one of the "ifs" in her life. If she'd finished college, if Joyce had lived, would she have learned to explain things better? She did feel things deeply, she did think hard about her feelings, but when she tried to talk, it came out all wrong. She sounded superficial or cliched. God, that last summer in Sunnydale, trying to lead the troops, trying to be a general and a speechmaker, when she wasn't either one.
But she had liked college, and she liked to read. She'd read something that Willow or Joyce or Giles had mentioned, years ago, and think, Oh, wow. Yes. And she'd watch Dawn, or Willow, at the computer, writing essays or papers and envy them. Then she'd go slay something, or have a quick little Diana 'n' Dodi thing with someone like The Immortal who could cope with the Slayerness, and push away her thoughts about being under-educated. God, though, even Faith had stopped reading comic books and had taken her GED.
So, there was Buffy, who had died, come back from the grave, seen her hometown fall into a pit, and, oh, yeah, put a sword into one lover and seen the other turn himself into living flame. You'd think she could tell someone about that. Write a journal entry that didn't read like she was still fifteen and totally unaware of how it felt to sleep with a dead man. How it felt to have your lovers die.
When Joyce was so sick, and they were all so scared, Buffy had talked about Angel to her. There was just enough distance that she could talkabout him, now, and, anyway, with her mother dying, her broken romance seemed less important. It was something to talk about that was real, but not the thing uppermost on their minds.
"Do you think you were looking for a father-figure?"
"No, Mom, that's Giles."
And Joyce finally told her that she had prompted Angel to leave Sunnydale, leave Buffy.
"Mom, he was so good. He took care of me, and he did everything he could to help me, even when I was awful to him. And I was pretty awful."
She had been so young. She didn't understand what he was trying to tell her, with the Claddagh rings; didn't understand the Victorian cadences of Sonnets from the Portuguese, until later, much later. Hadn't comprehended how very good he had been to her, until she started sleeping with other men.
And he had come to her in the last days, offered to fight at her side. She had to admit that she had felt, a little, avenged when she sent him away.
She had owed Spike that much. Spike had been by her side, gone and got a soul, turned himself inside out, offered everything he had to her and had stayed. She did love Spike; not the same way she loved Angel, and not in the way Spike loved her, but she did love him. She felt about him the same mysterious feeling she got when Giles had said, "We few, we happy few," and when she read the ending of the Declaration of Independence, the part about "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Spike had stood with her and fought and stayed for nothing in return; had even told her to kill him. So she owed Spike, owed him loyalty at the very least.
But what had she said? She'd talked to Angel about oil. Talked to him about cookies and baking, for God's sake. She bet Angel had driven back to LA, wondering, "What the fuck was that ?" She knew he'd been shocked at how thin she was, how sharp her face was, how unlike the young girl he'd loved. She had bet he was secretly relieved to be sent back to Los Angeles, or so she'd told herself.
She had meant it when she told Spike she loved him. She had. Angel had derailed her train of thought, been an interruption in the fight, had been, almost, a stranger---but she had spent almost two years thinking about his kiss.
And about how she never could express herself. No wonder Willow and Giles, and the Watchers thought she was all "hit first, talk later." And she even made jokes about it, and got mad when new Slayers took her at her own estimation.
Of course, if she'd had her normal life of prom and formal dresses, of sorority bids and fraternity boys, Mom would still have been gone, she wouldn't have ever had Giles or Dawn (and she would die without Dawn) and she wouldn't have had two heroes who loved her.
So she thought, on the red-eye, all the way across the Atlantic and the sleeping continent, all the way to California.
In the taxi on the way to the Watcher's nondescript house, she wondered who she really wanted it to be. Faith had once said, "If you have a really big decision, get someone to flip a coin. As you're waiting for them to tell you, you find out what you're wishing for."
"He's come around," said Tarnika, the Watcher, greeting her at the door. "I got him in through the garage, and I've got the room darkened. I got some human blood for him, but he didn't want to drink it, until I said you were coming."
"He's awake?" Buffy asked, setting down her carry-on. "Has he said anything?"
"Just your name, again," Tarnika said. Buffy tried not to shove her out of the way and run down the tiny hallway. She opened the door.
Dark room, long lean shape in the bed, smell of blood, tingle of awareness that said vampire to her, and oh God it was him.
"Buffy," he whispered. She never thought he'd be so weak he couldn't sit up or say her name, but she didn't care, she didn't care, she was beside him on the narrow bed, and she could feel that his face was broken and still healing, but she could also feel him smiling.
"Angel," she said.
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