{buffyverse} always & forever
Title: Always & Forever
Author: Aaronlisa
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel
Characters: Buffy Summers, Angel, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce with mentions of other canon characters
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Rating: FR13
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel belongs to Joss Whedon and company.
Prompt: Don't go in there from love-me-a-good-prompt.tumblr.com
Notes: Written for the 2018 IWRY Marathon
Notes 2: This takes place post-BtVS Season Seven and post-ATS Season Five. It's not comic compliant but there may be a few elements from the comics.
Summary: She's at the Hyperion to find a book when she encounters him again.
Word Count: 2476
"Don't go in there."
She freezes with her hand holding the doorknob. His voice is flat, dull and lifeless. Once upon a time, it would have been full of emotion. She knows that there's too much time between them for happiness, but she'd settle for the anger that he had the last time that he spoke to her instead of this dead voice.
She's about to turn to face him when she realizes that her hand is stuck on the doorknob. Even now, there's a part of her that wants to panic. She doesn't panic instead she sighs and relaxes her tense muscles before trying to let go. It still doesn't work and she's not foolish enough to try to pull her hand off of the doorknob by touching the rest of the door.
With a sigh, she softly tells him the problem.
"I don't think I have a choice."
The room is silent and still. For a moment, she thinks that she had imagined his voice. (It wouldn't be the first time and she doubts it'd be the last time.) Just before she's about to pull her cell phone out of her pocket to call in the reinforcements, there's a soft rustling noise behind her.
His footsteps are quiet and steady. She wonders if he's making the minimal noise that he's making so that she can hear him and won't startle when he's right behind her.
"I got you."
Even now, after so many years, after everything that's happened between him, those words send a frisson of delight down her spine. There's a secret part of her that knows that one day they will be back together again and it will finally work for them. It doesn't matter what she's told him or what he's told her. In the end, she'll always be his girl.
Before she can respond, his hands are gently gripping her waist and he's trying to pull her backwards and away from the door. However he can only pull her so far before it becomes evident that she's stuck. She bites on her lower lip to stifle a cry of pain. She might be a Slayer but it still hurts to be tugged backwards to the absolute limit of her reach when she's stuck. He sets her back down and braces himself behind her.
He feels different. She can't quite figure it out and he's gripping her wrist and murmuring in her ear that she needs to pull so she can't focus on him, just on the effort to release herself from the doorknob.
It doesn't work. Nothing that they try for the next five minutes seems to work. All that happens is that her arm hurts. And finally she's had enough.
"I don't think I have a choice," Buffy tells him. "I think the only way is for me to open the door. What's behind it?"
He grunts in response. She had thought that he'd know since this was once his hotel even though it's abandoned now. Now she wonders if he has any idea. Before she can say anything on the door, he's knocking on it. Gently rapping on the door twice. And then he's calling out.
"Wesley, let her go."
She's confused. Wesley is dead. She knows this for a fact. But the door springs open and her hand is released from the doorknob. Inside is an office. There's a weapon cabinet and shelves full of books. She thinks that Willow would be delighted to see all of these books. And then the smell hits her. The books are decaying. She can see that there's a water leak on one wall. And sitting at the desk is a very dishevelled Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. She's about to ask what's going on when she realizes that he's rather transparent.
The ghost looks up at her sadly.
"Hello Buffy, has Willow sent you here?"
She's not sure what to say. In reality she had been sent here by the witch on the off chance that a rare book would be in Wesley's former collection. But now she doubts that the book will be in any condition to take home to Willow. She nods at him.
"I'm sorry to say that my books have seen much better days," Wesley sadly tells her.
He looks her up and down and gives a sad smile.
"Come in, Buffy, don't be afraid," Wesley tells her. "What book is that Willow needs?"
She mumbles off the name and Wesley tells her where to find it but it's Angel who looks for it and takes it from the shelf. The book seems to be in one piece and she hopes that Willow will be able to use it.
"Thank you Wesley," Buffy mumbles, unsure of what to say to him.
"My pleasure," Wesley tells her with another sad smile. "Let Willow know that she's always welcome to any of them."
"Sure," Buffy says.
"Did you need anything Angel?" Wesley asks him.
"No Wesley, but I will be back later tonight," Angel tells him.
For the first time, Buffy detects emotion in his voice. It's thick with regret and grief. He guides her out of the room and closes the door. And he guides her further away from the office and towards the centre of the lobby. There's no where to sit that doesn't look like it's mouldy. So she stops moving and stands still. She has the feeling that if she doesn't push the issue that Angel will guider her out of the Hyperion and out of her life.
In the dim light from the glass front doors, she can see that he's different. He's older. He's filled out a bit and he has some grey hair. There's also stubble on his face. It doesn't make sense. Not with everything that she's learned since the downfall of Wolfram & Hart. Angel's still a vampire and he shouldn't look any different than he did when she first laid eyes on him when she was sixteen years old. And then it hits her, he's standing in a weak beam of sunlight and nothing's happening.
"How?" Buffy demands.
There's a part of her that's so angry. He had always stayed away because she was a Slayer and he was a vampire. Now it looks like that problem is gone and he's not tried to reach out to her and instead he looks like he just wants her to leave. They were supposed to have a forever kind of love. Not something that was so fragile that it broke when she told him she wasn't ready for him when Sunnydale was on the verge of being destroying.
"Does it matter?" Angel asks.
His voice is cold this time. It hurts that he's trying to dismiss her. And she has to swallow down her anger. No matter how much he's changed, she can tell that he's itching for a fight.
"Yes, it does," Buffy tells him.
"To make a very long story short, I couldn't sign away something that wasn't mine to give away."
It tells her nothing about what's happened to him. And she knows that he's trying to push her into a corner where her anger will get the better of her. But she's not a child anymore. She's an adult. So she tries to think of what to say. Something that won't sound trite or insincere. In the end she asks about Wesley.
"And what happened to Wesley?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Angel asks cruelly. "He died and he couldn't let go so he haunts his former office, trying to figure out to save Fred."
He steps towards her and she holds her ground. Angel may be a human but he's still menacing. A shiver runs up her spine, this time it's one of fear. She wants to run but she knows that if he's human, she will outclass him. He stops when the toes of his boots touch the toes of her shoes. It forces her to look up at him and she hates how he's trying to play some sick power game. For a second, she thinks about knocking him to the floor. She resists that urge for now.
"We begged for help. For anything that you or Giles could send out when we found out that Fred was tainted. And then we begged again when things were going down with Wolfram and Hart and you ignored us."
"You were working for an evil law firm," Buffy bites out.
"After all these years, you're so sanctimonious."
"I wasn't the only one who made the decision."
"Is that how you see it?" Angel asks. "That it wasn't just your decision? Do you really think that no one speaks to me?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's curious how Willow was off in some other dimension dealing with a crisis and Faith was off in Australia collecting wayward Slayers so it was just you, Dawn, Xander and Giles around to make the decision."
"You were working for an evil law firm," Buffy spits out again. "Our Intel wasn't sure where you stood."
"There was a time when you would have trusted me with your life."
She sighs and pushes down at the anger that wants to rise up at his accusation.
"And there was a time when you trusted me with your life but you came to LA and you started keeping secrets from me. You didn't even tell Willow and Xander about Cordelia!"
"As if either of them cared!"
"How do you know? Willow did keep in touch with Cordelia and Wesley. Maybe they weren't best friends but she did her best to keep in touch with her."
"So maybe I owed her an explanation but as far as I can tell I didn't owe you or Xander a thing."
"You were busy with your thing, I was busy with trying to rebuild the Council and save a bunch of girls who suddenly had demons gunning for them. What did you want me to do? Drop everything to see if you had gone rogue or just had decided to become a lawyer?" Buffy angrily asks him.
She can't do this anymore. They've both made mistakes. Neither of them were perfect.
"I came when you needed me Buffy. Every single time, I dropped everything, no matter the risk to the others. All you ever had to do was crook your finger at me and I came running. The two times I needed you and your help, you refused me."
She wants to argue with him, to give him the explanations that had made sense ten years ago but she can't. If she's honest with herself, part of her reluctance to help him was pettiness. She was angry when she had found out that Angel and Spike had coming running to Italy when they had heard the rumour that she was dating the Immortal. And she was angry with his reluctance to turn Dana over to the Council. The Slayer was dangerous but she belonged with her own kind instead of being locked up and drugged up again. There were things that Andrew had said that she hadn't been happy about but in the end he had only voiced everything that they were all concerned about.
"I am sorry," Buffy finally says.
It will never be enough. She could say the words over and over again but she knows that it won't heal the wounds that she'd inflicted on him with her pettiness or jealousy. She had moved on with her life and she told him that on that night when she last saw him in Sunnydale. She could have sent Willow and Faith to him both times when he had asked for help. Instead she had turned away, focused more on her concerns and told herself that Angel was a big boy.
She sighs before taking a step backwards.
"I should go," Buffy softly tells him.
It's too late for them. Whatever is broken between them won't be fixed not today and probably not ever. She takes another step away but he grabs her upper arm. His grip tight around her bicep. She looks up at him.
"It'll never be enough," Angel tells her.
"I know," Buffy replies.
She understands a lot more about redemption than she ever did before.
"I still want you," Angel quietly tells her. "Its like you're a drug that my system needs. I've tried to forget you, I've tried to hate you. But I can't. I still want you, need you and love you."
Buffy looks up at him with tears in her eyes. She's never stopped wanting him even she told him that she had. But she knows that right now, they'd just destroy each other. The resignation in his eyes tells her that he knows the same thing. She looks down at the floor. She doesn't know how to be casual with him. She doesn't know how to be anything but some sort of messed up Romeo and Juliet, doomed to love him until it kills her.
"I wi-want things to be different between us," Buffy tells him. "But it's not ever going to be different is it?"
She thinks about what Spike once told them. How love wasn't brains but blood screaming in your veins. She hates that it's taken her this long to realize it.
"I don't know," Angel tells her.
His voice is full of defeat, all of the anger burned away. He lets go of her arm and she moves closer, sighing when he wraps his arms around her. For this moment and the next, she can pretend that they're normal. She can pretend that it hasn't been close to twenty years since they were in each other's life in a meaningful way. She misses being a teenager and all of the pain of it. She wants to wish things different between them, she's willing to tempt fate but there's too much for them to do. There's far too many miles to go before she can stop and rest.
She wants to cry but she doesn't. Just like her anger, her tears have no place here. Angel lets her go when she steps away from him. They don't say anything to one another as she walks away from him. And she knows the minute she's on the plane flying back to London, she will be sobbing her eyes out. But right now, she has to be strong. He doesn't say anything until, she reaches the main front door. Her hand about to push it open so that she can keep walking away from him.
"You still my girl?"
It breaks her heart but she knows his reasons for asking. And instead of lying. She pastes a smile on her face even though she doesn't turn to face him.
"Always."
((END))
This was originally posted on Sept 25 2018 at AO3. This was also cross-posted to DW.
Author: Aaronlisa
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel
Characters: Buffy Summers, Angel, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce with mentions of other canon characters
Pairing: Buffy/Angel
Rating: FR13
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel belongs to Joss Whedon and company.
Prompt: Don't go in there from love-me-a-good-prompt.tumblr.com
Notes: Written for the 2018 IWRY Marathon
Notes 2: This takes place post-BtVS Season Seven and post-ATS Season Five. It's not comic compliant but there may be a few elements from the comics.
Summary: She's at the Hyperion to find a book when she encounters him again.
Word Count: 2476
"Don't go in there."
She freezes with her hand holding the doorknob. His voice is flat, dull and lifeless. Once upon a time, it would have been full of emotion. She knows that there's too much time between them for happiness, but she'd settle for the anger that he had the last time that he spoke to her instead of this dead voice.
She's about to turn to face him when she realizes that her hand is stuck on the doorknob. Even now, there's a part of her that wants to panic. She doesn't panic instead she sighs and relaxes her tense muscles before trying to let go. It still doesn't work and she's not foolish enough to try to pull her hand off of the doorknob by touching the rest of the door.
With a sigh, she softly tells him the problem.
"I don't think I have a choice."
The room is silent and still. For a moment, she thinks that she had imagined his voice. (It wouldn't be the first time and she doubts it'd be the last time.) Just before she's about to pull her cell phone out of her pocket to call in the reinforcements, there's a soft rustling noise behind her.
His footsteps are quiet and steady. She wonders if he's making the minimal noise that he's making so that she can hear him and won't startle when he's right behind her.
"I got you."
Even now, after so many years, after everything that's happened between him, those words send a frisson of delight down her spine. There's a secret part of her that knows that one day they will be back together again and it will finally work for them. It doesn't matter what she's told him or what he's told her. In the end, she'll always be his girl.
Before she can respond, his hands are gently gripping her waist and he's trying to pull her backwards and away from the door. However he can only pull her so far before it becomes evident that she's stuck. She bites on her lower lip to stifle a cry of pain. She might be a Slayer but it still hurts to be tugged backwards to the absolute limit of her reach when she's stuck. He sets her back down and braces himself behind her.
He feels different. She can't quite figure it out and he's gripping her wrist and murmuring in her ear that she needs to pull so she can't focus on him, just on the effort to release herself from the doorknob.
It doesn't work. Nothing that they try for the next five minutes seems to work. All that happens is that her arm hurts. And finally she's had enough.
"I don't think I have a choice," Buffy tells him. "I think the only way is for me to open the door. What's behind it?"
He grunts in response. She had thought that he'd know since this was once his hotel even though it's abandoned now. Now she wonders if he has any idea. Before she can say anything on the door, he's knocking on it. Gently rapping on the door twice. And then he's calling out.
"Wesley, let her go."
She's confused. Wesley is dead. She knows this for a fact. But the door springs open and her hand is released from the doorknob. Inside is an office. There's a weapon cabinet and shelves full of books. She thinks that Willow would be delighted to see all of these books. And then the smell hits her. The books are decaying. She can see that there's a water leak on one wall. And sitting at the desk is a very dishevelled Wesley Wyndham-Pryce. She's about to ask what's going on when she realizes that he's rather transparent.
The ghost looks up at her sadly.
"Hello Buffy, has Willow sent you here?"
She's not sure what to say. In reality she had been sent here by the witch on the off chance that a rare book would be in Wesley's former collection. But now she doubts that the book will be in any condition to take home to Willow. She nods at him.
"I'm sorry to say that my books have seen much better days," Wesley sadly tells her.
He looks her up and down and gives a sad smile.
"Come in, Buffy, don't be afraid," Wesley tells her. "What book is that Willow needs?"
She mumbles off the name and Wesley tells her where to find it but it's Angel who looks for it and takes it from the shelf. The book seems to be in one piece and she hopes that Willow will be able to use it.
"Thank you Wesley," Buffy mumbles, unsure of what to say to him.
"My pleasure," Wesley tells her with another sad smile. "Let Willow know that she's always welcome to any of them."
"Sure," Buffy says.
"Did you need anything Angel?" Wesley asks him.
"No Wesley, but I will be back later tonight," Angel tells him.
For the first time, Buffy detects emotion in his voice. It's thick with regret and grief. He guides her out of the room and closes the door. And he guides her further away from the office and towards the centre of the lobby. There's no where to sit that doesn't look like it's mouldy. So she stops moving and stands still. She has the feeling that if she doesn't push the issue that Angel will guider her out of the Hyperion and out of her life.
In the dim light from the glass front doors, she can see that he's different. He's older. He's filled out a bit and he has some grey hair. There's also stubble on his face. It doesn't make sense. Not with everything that she's learned since the downfall of Wolfram & Hart. Angel's still a vampire and he shouldn't look any different than he did when she first laid eyes on him when she was sixteen years old. And then it hits her, he's standing in a weak beam of sunlight and nothing's happening.
"How?" Buffy demands.
There's a part of her that's so angry. He had always stayed away because she was a Slayer and he was a vampire. Now it looks like that problem is gone and he's not tried to reach out to her and instead he looks like he just wants her to leave. They were supposed to have a forever kind of love. Not something that was so fragile that it broke when she told him she wasn't ready for him when Sunnydale was on the verge of being destroying.
"Does it matter?" Angel asks.
His voice is cold this time. It hurts that he's trying to dismiss her. And she has to swallow down her anger. No matter how much he's changed, she can tell that he's itching for a fight.
"Yes, it does," Buffy tells him.
"To make a very long story short, I couldn't sign away something that wasn't mine to give away."
It tells her nothing about what's happened to him. And she knows that he's trying to push her into a corner where her anger will get the better of her. But she's not a child anymore. She's an adult. So she tries to think of what to say. Something that won't sound trite or insincere. In the end she asks about Wesley.
"And what happened to Wesley?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Angel asks cruelly. "He died and he couldn't let go so he haunts his former office, trying to figure out to save Fred."
He steps towards her and she holds her ground. Angel may be a human but he's still menacing. A shiver runs up her spine, this time it's one of fear. She wants to run but she knows that if he's human, she will outclass him. He stops when the toes of his boots touch the toes of her shoes. It forces her to look up at him and she hates how he's trying to play some sick power game. For a second, she thinks about knocking him to the floor. She resists that urge for now.
"We begged for help. For anything that you or Giles could send out when we found out that Fred was tainted. And then we begged again when things were going down with Wolfram and Hart and you ignored us."
"You were working for an evil law firm," Buffy bites out.
"After all these years, you're so sanctimonious."
"I wasn't the only one who made the decision."
"Is that how you see it?" Angel asks. "That it wasn't just your decision? Do you really think that no one speaks to me?"
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's curious how Willow was off in some other dimension dealing with a crisis and Faith was off in Australia collecting wayward Slayers so it was just you, Dawn, Xander and Giles around to make the decision."
"You were working for an evil law firm," Buffy spits out again. "Our Intel wasn't sure where you stood."
"There was a time when you would have trusted me with your life."
She sighs and pushes down at the anger that wants to rise up at his accusation.
"And there was a time when you trusted me with your life but you came to LA and you started keeping secrets from me. You didn't even tell Willow and Xander about Cordelia!"
"As if either of them cared!"
"How do you know? Willow did keep in touch with Cordelia and Wesley. Maybe they weren't best friends but she did her best to keep in touch with her."
"So maybe I owed her an explanation but as far as I can tell I didn't owe you or Xander a thing."
"You were busy with your thing, I was busy with trying to rebuild the Council and save a bunch of girls who suddenly had demons gunning for them. What did you want me to do? Drop everything to see if you had gone rogue or just had decided to become a lawyer?" Buffy angrily asks him.
She can't do this anymore. They've both made mistakes. Neither of them were perfect.
"I came when you needed me Buffy. Every single time, I dropped everything, no matter the risk to the others. All you ever had to do was crook your finger at me and I came running. The two times I needed you and your help, you refused me."
She wants to argue with him, to give him the explanations that had made sense ten years ago but she can't. If she's honest with herself, part of her reluctance to help him was pettiness. She was angry when she had found out that Angel and Spike had coming running to Italy when they had heard the rumour that she was dating the Immortal. And she was angry with his reluctance to turn Dana over to the Council. The Slayer was dangerous but she belonged with her own kind instead of being locked up and drugged up again. There were things that Andrew had said that she hadn't been happy about but in the end he had only voiced everything that they were all concerned about.
"I am sorry," Buffy finally says.
It will never be enough. She could say the words over and over again but she knows that it won't heal the wounds that she'd inflicted on him with her pettiness or jealousy. She had moved on with her life and she told him that on that night when she last saw him in Sunnydale. She could have sent Willow and Faith to him both times when he had asked for help. Instead she had turned away, focused more on her concerns and told herself that Angel was a big boy.
She sighs before taking a step backwards.
"I should go," Buffy softly tells him.
It's too late for them. Whatever is broken between them won't be fixed not today and probably not ever. She takes another step away but he grabs her upper arm. His grip tight around her bicep. She looks up at him.
"It'll never be enough," Angel tells her.
"I know," Buffy replies.
She understands a lot more about redemption than she ever did before.
"I still want you," Angel quietly tells her. "Its like you're a drug that my system needs. I've tried to forget you, I've tried to hate you. But I can't. I still want you, need you and love you."
Buffy looks up at him with tears in her eyes. She's never stopped wanting him even she told him that she had. But she knows that right now, they'd just destroy each other. The resignation in his eyes tells her that he knows the same thing. She looks down at the floor. She doesn't know how to be casual with him. She doesn't know how to be anything but some sort of messed up Romeo and Juliet, doomed to love him until it kills her.
"I wi-want things to be different between us," Buffy tells him. "But it's not ever going to be different is it?"
She thinks about what Spike once told them. How love wasn't brains but blood screaming in your veins. She hates that it's taken her this long to realize it.
"I don't know," Angel tells her.
His voice is full of defeat, all of the anger burned away. He lets go of her arm and she moves closer, sighing when he wraps his arms around her. For this moment and the next, she can pretend that they're normal. She can pretend that it hasn't been close to twenty years since they were in each other's life in a meaningful way. She misses being a teenager and all of the pain of it. She wants to wish things different between them, she's willing to tempt fate but there's too much for them to do. There's far too many miles to go before she can stop and rest.
She wants to cry but she doesn't. Just like her anger, her tears have no place here. Angel lets her go when she steps away from him. They don't say anything to one another as she walks away from him. And she knows the minute she's on the plane flying back to London, she will be sobbing her eyes out. But right now, she has to be strong. He doesn't say anything until, she reaches the main front door. Her hand about to push it open so that she can keep walking away from him.
"You still my girl?"
It breaks her heart but she knows his reasons for asking. And instead of lying. She pastes a smile on her face even though she doesn't turn to face him.
"Always."
((END))
This was originally posted on Sept 25 2018 at AO3. This was also cross-posted to DW.