✟ the lover that you hold is no more than a ghost;

[todoright]

BUFFY ANNE SUMMERS
BELOVED SISTER
DEVOTED FRIEND
SHE SAVED THE WORLD. A LOT.

When Angel first saw it there in the caves, his first thought was that it must be wrong. It had to be wrong - perhaps another example of the Island's terrible sense of humor. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew that denial wasn't going to change anything.

Comments

[chose]

It was difficult to tell where things had gone wrong. Angel's arrival or Spike's? Angel kissing her or her kissing Angel? Spike's rant or her slip up? Her mind told her to circle E for all of the above. The past few weeks had been nothing short of insanity, but as bad as things could get, Buffy never would have believed that Angel would take up the silence treatment with her had he not just passed her by without so much as a glance.

Maybe she should be sympathetic - Angel couldn't understand her and Spike any more than she could understand, say, him and Darla - but the sight of Angel's back turned to her did nothing to quell her anger.

"Nice to see you to," she spat from her seat under a large palm tree. So much for a quiet afternoon of nothing but sand, wind, and a stack of fashion magazines.

[todoright]

His silent contemplation was cut very short when it was interjected by a voice he knew so very well. One that currently sounded angry, for reasons he couldn't fathom right now. It felt like he was being haunted, dogged at his every step - but then again, he had returned from the dead, hadn't he?

Slowly, Angel turns halfway around to face her - maintaining a neutral face, but his voice was even quieter than normal. "Buffy. I didn't see you there." he offers up, his excuse at fixing what he guessed was making her angry.

[chose]

As observant as she knew Angel to be, it seemed unlikely that he could walk right by Buffy and not notice her. Years ago, she had told him that it threw her when he was around, that even when she couldn't see him, she could feel him. He had said that he knew the feeling and she had to believe it was still true - it was for her.

His reasoning, then, only alarmed Buffy. It took a lot to distract Angel so completely. A lot more than Spike.

Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

"Sorry," she said, tossing a dated issue of W aside as she stood to her feet. "That was purposelessly snippy. It's just that... things around here, they've been a little... tense. It's not just me, right? They've been tense?"

[todoright]

"It isn't just you." although as far as perspective went, this level of tension was becoming more and more normal for Angel, especially given the past couple of weeks back home. Someone like Buffy, used to spending months on an idyllic tropical island, probably wasn't used to familiar people landing on the island in about the course of a week.

This isn't about Spike, though. Although a sharp jab of anger builds in the bottom of his stomach as he thinks about him and Buffy. The emotion is momentary, though, when he realizes that it was Buffy's choice. And Buffy chose Spike.

Today, however, he's got bigger things on his mind than his century-old thorn in his side.

[chose]

"Good! I mean, not good in the sense that it's in any way positive, but at least we're on the same page. That's something." Even as she said it, Buffy had to admit that it wasn't much. It wasn't enough.

Which meant, of course, that she would have to go on rambling uncontrollably.

"Angel, I'm sorry," she blurted. "I never thought that you'd show up here - I used to dream about it, sure, but I never thought for a minute that it could actually happen. It was... it was too good to be true. And when you did and you didn't remember anything, I just... I freaked. I didn't know what I should tell you. Then Spike came and I didn't remember, and you two showing up so fast like that, it threw me. I'm sorry."

She stopped to catch her breath. Barely.

[todoright]

What exactly was she apologizing for? Stating the truth? The irony of it was not lost on him, but he wasn't angry. Or at least, not at her. Buffy had accepted her fate a long time ago - all of it, even the knowledge that she would probably die young, and violently. But that didn't make it any less real, because special or not, she was still a Slayer.

He was angry at fate, perhaps. Or the Powers, even though he knew that the things that Buffy was undoubtedly fighting for was worth the sacrifice. It's what champions did.

Or maybe anger wasn't the word to use. Maybe it was regret - retrospect. Sadness. A mixture of all of them and some he doesn't care to name even if he had the words. Knowing that their lives were so completely separate now, because years ago Buffy used to run to him with her secrets.

Apparently not anymore.

"Buffy. I'm not angry at you. You don't have to apologize for anything."

[chose]

"You're not?" Buffy was taken aback, and visibly so. Angel was understanding, sure, but he was also... well, human. As relieving as it was that he wasn't angry at her for keeping quiet on the Spike issue, that didn't explain all the tension. "Not that I'm not happy to hear that," she went on, "I am. It's just that you kind of seemed... I mean, you're not the most easy to read but you have that face like something's bothering you. It's only slightly different from that face like nothing's bothering you, but it's there. All in the brow."

[todoright]

"Nothing's bothering me." the lie is practiced and automatic, a reflex. It's out of necessity. Perhaps Buffy doesn't yet know that she dies in the future, and therefore by keeping it a secret he's protecting her. That isn't something anybody should have on their minds. Like her forgotten day, it's a secret that he's prepared to keep. In order to do that, he's going to have to be a lot more convincing than this. He might fool the untrained eye, but Buffy knows him a lot more than anyone else has ever known him. Angel tries for a look of non-chalance, smoothing out the furrows in his brow.

[chose]

"Really?" Asked Buffy, not bothering to hide her disbelief. Unlike so many other things, it was no secret that Angel had a habit of hiding truths. His heart was always in the right place and so Buffy tried (really, really tried) not to begrudge him the lies, but the fact remained - she knew they were there.

"I have about twenty different things bothering me at any given time," she confessed, raising a challenging eyebrow in his direction. "Like the fact that I can never manage not to get sand in my shoe, or how the Clothes Box has this tendency of throwing the prettiest, least practical items of clothing at me, or how it seems like every other guy on this island is either gay or a stripper o-or sometimes both! And there's absolutely nothing bother you? You're just happy as a clam?"

[todoright]

Happy as a clam. He'd never understood the emergence of phrases like that, even if they were a fairly recent thing and the same in every language. Same with 'easy as pie' - pies weren't necessarily easy, and clams couldn't be proven to be happier than any other living being. But Buffy's Sunnydale bantering had never really made much techncal sense to him regardless.

"I'm happy enough." Angel replies non-commitally, making no promises in his answers, leaving no clues with which to abate her skepticism. "Being human is taking some getting used to, but not all of the changes are bad." That's it. Nice and vague. Not at all letting on his feelings of doubt about his purpose as a human, or even why he was sent here in the first place. From the sound of it (excluding the stripper thing) Buffy sounds like she's got enough on her plate already.

[chose]

"No," she she has to agree, "they're not." Buffy herself lost more than she gained by coming here - or, at least, it certainly feels that way - but she can't help feeling that the balance has been settled now that Angel is on the island. Having never been a vampire herself (save for that one nightmare she never wants to relive) she can't say for sure, but chances are that Angel would agree that being human trumps sticking to the shadows. The benefits outweigh the losses. She's sure of that.

"I used to - I used to have these dreams where you'd suddenly show up in the courtyard at school in the middle of the day, or on some quiet beach where the sun had just started to set. Seeing you here, out and about in the sunlight, it's kind of like this weird deja vu effect." Buffy lowers her gaze for a moment, feeling yet again like a lovesick schoolgirl. Angel has a way of bringing that out in her - it's one power the island hasn't managed to stamp out of him. "Sometimes I actually fear I'll wake up and that's all it'll be. Another dream."

[todoright]

"Used to, but not anymore. That's good, Buffy." it's a sign other than Spike that she'd managed to get over him in some way, although he'd still been struggling with his end of the deal. Better for the both of them - it had become something of a mantra of his.

"I was only a kid when I died. Twenty-six years old, a stupid punk that never got a chance. That was two hundred and forty seven years ago. I don't remember what it was like to be human anymore." At least he wasn't like Darla, with her humanity so far gone from memory that she no longer remembered her human name. Strangely enough, Angel's own name - Liam, was one he shared with Spike. A variation of William.

One of the only things they shared, he'd like to believe.

[chose]

"Is it?" The dreams, all but gone in the years since Angel left to Los Angeles, had become more frequent after the Claddagh ring appeared to her out of thin air. It feels now as if they never stopped, as if they were always looming somewhere in the back of her mind, along with all the omens and prophetic nightmares that came out to disturb her sleep every once in a while. The line between what's good and bad, healthy and dangerous, has always been blurred when it comes to Angel.

"You'll learn again," Buffy insists, one hand reaching automatically for his. It's still a shock when his palm doesn't feel as cold as ice - a very welcome shock, that is.

[todoright]

"Nobody wants to be haunted." Angel replies, the tone of his voice making it all too clear that he knows how it feels. The past always resurfaces, no matter how long it may take - Penn, the killer he created, was proof of that. Slayer's dreams often have signs of prophecy - but nobody could have predicted this particular turn of events.

Her hand hasn't changed, even after all these years. It's still delicate, small and surprisingly soft for someone who used to spend so much time fighting.

No, it's his hand that's changed. The speeding up of his heart rate in his chest -that's also changed.

[chose]

"I wouldn't call it haunted," Buffy reproves automatically, on principal and without regard for even her own thoughts. Somewhere deep down, she knows that the world 'haunted' is not at all a stretch for how she felt after Angel left. Stirring in the shadows put her on edge, even more so than it had before, and she kept her eyes peeled for figures concealed by bushes and trees, for tall, dark men in long trench coats. A not-so-small and very naïve part of her had yet to give up hope that he would return to her, that he'd find life in Los Angeles unbareable and make his way back to Sunnydale. Wishful thinking, dreaming, daydreaming

[todoright]

"I would." he knows how Buffy felt, simply because he had felt those things so acutely himself. He'd still dreamed of Buffy- or at least at first, and he remembers when every turn of blonde hair had caught his attention, and that part of him had hoped that it was her. It never was, and perhaps that was all for the better. Angel had tried to distract himself, knowing that even if it had been her, nothing could ever happen between them again. The prospect of eternal solitude was bleak, and the only refuge was his mission.

The silence stretched out between them, nearly tangible but so fragile. Angel doesn't let go either, and instead wills his skin to memorize each curve of every callous on Buffy's hand, because he knows this can't last.

But for now, for the time being, he doesn't let go.