The Soulmate Series

Lost Things

Angel walks down the stairs, careful to be calm and sure and unthreatening in his demeanour, readying himself for his imminent meeting. He can feel Willow’s terror of discovery through the bond but he doesn’t share it. His mind might not be completely restored and whole, but he knows about Slayers, what they can and cannot do. That much memory is within him entire. And he knows about this Slayer - that in sharp counterpoint to her astounding success is the fact that her ability to even sense his kind is less than most of her forebears. To sense a mortal? Some slayers, he recalls, have been that finely tuned, but not Buffy - no, not Buffy. So he’s unflustered, and he hopes that Willow can feel it and that it will still the heart he knows is racing back in what he now can’t help but consider their bedroom...their bed.

“Angel?” Buffy calls out once more, still not sensing his presence in the shadows just outside the front room.

“Buffy?” He responds, his tone matching the uncertainty of hers, though he knows full well who it is. Something in him says she’ll be soothed by his failure to remind her that his senses, even now, are so much better than her own. He walks into the room, making sure she can see him before he speaks again.

“Hi.” It’s not much, but it’s innocuous enough to serve and he’s surprised that she doesn’t relax so much as a fraction of an inch. He allows his shoulders to slump slightly, his mien as non-threatening as he can manage while still maintaining any sort of readiness for unexpected danger. She stays on her guard and he can tell that she’s aware of escape routes and potential weapons.

“Hi,” she replies. What this conversation lacks in eloquence, it makes up for in predictability and a simplicity that will go a good way toward concealing the fact that Angel isn’t quite all the way back yet, so he’s grateful.

She moves back a bit when he approaches and it hits him: she’s wondering how he broke out of his chains and thinks it might mean he’s a threat. He struggles to keep the irritation he suddenly feels off his face. It’s not helped by Willow trying to project what she thinks he should feel for Buffy through the bond. As much as it pains him to do it, he shuts down the link to his love almost completely. The distraction is too risky right now. He needs to be on his toes and in the moment, not caught up in his repulsion at Willow’s desperation to reunite him with the girl he no longer loves.

“I was hungry.” He hopes the brief shred of an explanation will work as he takes the risk of inclining his head towards the empty bags on the floor. Will she assume there had been a cache here? “I understand, you know? It’s okay.” He indicates the chains. “I wasn’t myself. You did the right thing.”

It’s funny: when he still experienced the prodding from Willow, the only emotions he felt for Buffy were annoyance and revulsion, exactly the opposite from what Willow wanted. But now, now that it’s just him, just his own feelings? It’s very different. Oh, it’s not that he loves Buffy, but he feels...pity. He can see the warring emotions playing across the face of a girl who should never have loved him to begin with, who so obviously loves him still or her fear would have driven her away, and he aches a bit for her. She’s a casualty of the war between his demon and his soul and he wishes she didn’t have to suffer. Still, it can’t be helped. Someday, not today, but soon, she’ll have to be told that Angel’s heart belongs to someone else. But not now.

Buffy finally replies. “Well...you seem to be doing a lot better.” Angel doesn’t chuckle at her understatement or at the fact that it’s so obvious she doesn’t want to know what went into making him the feral creature she’d seen less than a day ago. The uncharitable side of him says she’s avoiding the hard realities because she’s not Willow, that for all her supernatural powers, she hasn’t a bit of the other girl’s strength. But the side of him that feels sympathy for the Chosen One living a life that even now is so foreign to the person she would have been if just let be can’t help but understand her fear of the guilt and horror that teeter on the verge of overwhelming her, that she can only just keep at bay...as long as she doesn’t fully know.

It’s strange. He doesn’t love her anymore, but he realizes that he knows her better somehow than he did in the days when she was the sun of his universe. All the illusions are stripped away, leaving a girl he wishes he’d been wise enough to befriend. He’d have done her far greater service as a mentor and comrade in arms than he ever did as a lover and he almost mourns what might have been if he hadn’t selfishly needed to be adored by the one girl in all the world. The lost look in her eyes - he put it there and it’s no fit expression for a warrior against the darkness. It’s not just Buffy he’s hurt with his foolishness; he’s endangered everyone by compromising her. He’s not the only one to blame though and he’s not going to allow himself to wallow in guilt. It’s finished between them and she’ll get over it; he already has. Somewhere inside, he knows this isn’t what he’d have felt before, but it’s what he feels now, who he is now. However, this is not the occasion to drop the mask. He opts to stay the safe course.

“Yeah, I’m...better.” He feigns the same aversion to plain speaking that she has evinced; mirroring her emotions seems an effective tactic.

She’s shifting her weight from one foot to the other; he wonders whether she realizes how unsafe it is to display her nervousness so obviously for any demon to see. But then it comes to him: she’s not thinking of him as a demon, she’s thinking of him as her one-time lover and it’s the man whose reactions she fears even more than the vampire. He asks himself how she would take it if she knew how much sympathy he feels for her. The answer is swift and sure: she would hate him for it, would find it an insult to her own still-burning passion and a slap in the face to what it’s so plain she still sees as their identity as a couple. That’s a shame, really, because compassion is all he truly has to offer. Since she isn’t ready to accept it, all he can offer is deception.

“It’s good to see you.” He steps closer as he speaks. This time she doesn’t back away, but she does wrap her arms tightly around herself and look everywhere but at him.

“I...I really have to go. You know, slaying stuff. There’s a new baddie, he’s killed a few people already... and...um...Faith and I have to go after him.”

Angel quirks an eyebrow at her, trying to rein in his curiosity at hearing mention of a new player in the evil-fighting game but still hoping she’ll be forthcoming with more information. He’s not disappointed.

“Oh, Faith? She’s the new Slayer. She was called after Kendra...you remember.”

Buffy’s tongue-tied with the effort it takes to avoid mentioning anything that might bring up the topic of Angelus and Angel once again finds himself torn between amusement and pity. He’s almost surprised that pity continues to win out.

“Well, anyway, yeah, she’s the new extra Slayer and...”

“You’d better go, then. I wouldn’t want anyone else to die.”

Without replying, she suddenly and hastily turns and walks to the door. But then she stops and turns around, facing him once more.

“I’ll be back, okay? I just need to...I guess you’ll need some rest anyway and...”

“Yeah, I need to rest, get my head together. Maybe clean up a bit. It’s been awhile since the maid’s been here.” He’s aiming for a bit of Buffy-style levity. Clumsy though it may be, it seems to work. He’s surprised, actually, at just how quickly his ability to parry words in a conversation has all come back to him and how much of his memory is obviously serving him on some level. Is it the urgency he’d felt, the exigencies of the current circumstances that have restored him so expeditiously? Or is this just the normal way of things after being freed from Hell?

Buffy smiles, nervously and it doesn’t quite reach her eyes; still, it is a smile and it shows that he is where it best serves him to be with her right now. Later on, he will worry about truth and revelations and the tough choices he is making that aren’t his to make at all and the consequences of which will be felt least by him. Now, he gives Buffy an exact replica of her tentative smile as she leaves and waits ‘til the sensation of her presence fades away before opening up the bond with the girl he loves again.

Willow is calm and seems relieved about something. Given the way he’d shut her off from his feelings during his just-concluded encounter with Buffy and her lack of enhanced senses with which to hear even a scrap of their softly-spoken conversation, he has no idea what could possibly have given her such a sense of confidence and well-being. That is something he knows he should worry about given the way she sees things between them at present. He nearly runs back to the bedroom. What greets him when he opens the door is Willow, standing right in front of him, wearing some of his clothes and ready to follow Buffy out his door. Only he knows that Willow, unlike her friend, has no intention of coming back and will make every effort never to see him again. Angel can’t let that happen.


Tbc...