Now That You’re Gone
Buffy sighed and absently threw her Psych textbook onto the desk, letting her head sag for a moment before standing and wondering through to the main room of the mansion. She usually got a lift from seeing how she, Willow, and Xander had put their own imprint on the mansion, but she didn’t even notice this time.
She drifted over the room Giles had appropriated for his books, and trailed her fingers along a shelf. She was glad that Giles had taken to the idea of using the mansion as the new Slayerette Central after the destruction of the high school, when Angel had given her the deed, right before he left Sunnydale.
She and Willow had moved in over the summer, and Xander had joined them when he’d returned from his road trip - it wasn’t like they didn’t have lots of room. Buffy had been determined from the start, however, that no one else would have the bedroom that had once been Angel’s.
//There you go again, Buffy. Stop that!//
She couldn’t stop thinking about Angel tonight. No matter how she tried to distract herself, her thoughts inevitably turned to her gorgeous, brooding vampire.
She looked over at the phone longingly, ticking friends off in her mind. Oz and Dingoes Ate My Baby were playing a gig in a club an hour up the coast, and Willow was with him in a rare weekend trip. Xander was out with Anya, and judging by the way they’d been arguing when they left, he’d be spending the night at her place. Amy, after finally being returned to her human body, had apprenticed herself to an excellent white witch and moved to Connecticut. Even Giles was out on a date with Joyce, who Buffy had finally resumed speaking to a month after Angel left.
She was so tired of being the one left alone. Even if that was how the Slayer was supposed to be.
Groaning at her self-pity, she stomped back into the big main room, and turned on the radio.
"I’ll remember you…"
//The song that was playing at The Bronze, the first time we said goodbye. //
Buffy punched the button to search for another station.
"Wild horses couldn’t tear me away…"
//The song we danced to at the Prom? //
Buffy punched the button again.
"In the arms of the angel…"
"That’s it. Three strikes, I’m out," Buffy muttered to herself. She threw herself on the couch and viciously jabbed the remote.
On the screen, two of the Salingers were bemoaning the latest crisis, and Buffy let her mind drift to her own relationship troubles.
She’d always known that her love for Angel was a part of her, but in his self-imposed exile - so near, yet so far - it had grown. Once a matter of instinct, it had now also become a conscious choice. After she’d sent Riley Finn back to Great Britain with his tail between his legs and a threat of castration ringing in his head, she’d calmly and objectively decided that she had never found a man to match Angel in her first nineteen years of life, and wasn’t likely to find another. Angel was her mate for life, and that was all there was to it.
Time seemed to pass so slowly, now, she found herself hoping for a supernatural menace, just for something to fully occupy her. Days were bad enough, when she had classes and friends to hold her attention, but nights were even worse. After the mansion was quiet, she would lie in bed and try to imagine what Angel was doing. Angel and Cordelia’s weekly letters were bursting with details, but Buffy still hungered for more.
Worst of all were the nights when she tortured herself with images of women that Angel met, and wanted instead of her. After a while she would turn to her memories of their love, searching for proof that the feelings between them wouldn’t just go away, wouldn’t just crumble on either of their parts. Strangely, she always ended up with a wave of calm certainty washing over her that she was in Angel’s thoughts as much as he was in hers.
But it didn’t stop her senses from dulling in a world without him. All but the most flavorful food tasted bland. She’d tried using alcohol to block the pain exactly twice - the first time she’d started sobbing so desperately that Willow and Oz had had to take her home, the second time had almost gotten her killed by a vampire that crashed the party.
No matter what, she couldn’t help feeling that her world wasn’t complete without Angel.
*
The light turned green, and Angel let his black BMW take off with a screech of tires. Once he’d driven a few blocks, he slowed down to just above the speed limit. He couldn’t exactly afford to get picked up by the cops.
When he’d turned up at the detective agency tonight, Cordy had taken one look at him, shoved his keys back in his hand and told him to take the night off. So he’d started driving, and kept driving. He had been through half of LA already, and not wanted to stop anywhere.
Nothing in the landscape and no one in the crowds looked familiar. He didn’t see anyone he knew. He’d even looked through the crowd for a stray vampire he could beat up, but came up empty.
As he turned onto the base of Mulholland drive, he let his thoughts drift to the one who seemed to be the default subject for his brooding. Buffy.
Angel caught his breath as the pain lanced through him. Familiar, but no less agonizing for all that. He’d been tortured for one hundred years in the demon dimension the Christians called Hell, but it wasn’t much compared to the torture of living without Buffy. Sometimes it reminded him of that fairytale Buffy had told him once, about the little boy with the shard of glass in his heart. But unlike Kay, Angel was aware of the shard every moment, and how much it hurt.
With her, he was constantly aching, reminded of how they could never be together in the way they both longed for. Without her, he was lost.
In some ways, he loved her more now that they were separated than ever. Before when they’d parted, it was because of circumstances they had had no control over - custody agreements, lost souls, saving the world. But just when they were closer than ever emotionally, that same closeness forced them to separate.
Time dragged hopelessly without her presence. The nights were bad, even when filled with helping innocents threatened by the world of the night, and occasionally refereeing a verbal battle between Cordelia and Doyle. The days were worse, filled with dreams of his beloved. Dreams of a life with her, fantasies of making love with her, or memories of the one time they had joined their bodies the way their hearts still were. The recollection of when she had freely offered him her blood, to save him.
Angel swallowed hard, as the memories came flooding back hard and fast. The way her skin had tasted, slightly salty from the exertion of her fight with Faith. The ease with which her skin parted under his fangs. The taste of her blood.
Angel trembled, and nearly fishtailed the car on a sharp bend of the road. All the blood he had fed off since that night tasted flat and stale compared to Buffy’s. He could still taste the exotic flavors; the power of the Slayer, her fear. But most of all her love and passion for him, building as he fed. When she had orgasmed from the feeding alone, he had too. Nothing tasted like her. Nothing.
It felt like a piece of him was missing. Without Buffy, he couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong.
On one of the highest curves of Mulholland drive, empty of loving couples for once, he finally stopped the car. Angel climbed out and sat on the hood, staring at the sparkling lights of LA below him as Sarah McLachlan played softly on the CD player.
*
Each lost and lonely soul called out to it’s missing piece, and was answered instantly.
*
Buffy and Angel froze, feeling the new resonance in their hearts. Both closed their eyes and concentrated on the slow warmth uncurling from itself, and identified it as the one they loved.
Buffy felt her pulse pounding through her entire body, and lightly rubbed the small scar on her neck, left by Angel the night she’d cured him of the poison.
Angel felt the power he’d gained the night he fed from his love running in his veins, and unconsciously licked his lips, suddenly starving for her all over again.
Both shuddered, as they finally comprehended the link between them.
Angel had taken Buffy’s blood the night they made love, but it had only been a few small sips. When he’d been shot with Faith’s poisoned arrow, he had drunk deeply from Buffy, to the point of danger. The power in the blood of a Slayer had saved his life. The need, longing, and passion in his lover’s blood, sweetened by her orgasm from the feeding, had linked them forever, heart to heart.
No wonder they were both so depressed - they were feeling each other’s desolation, as well as their own.
Now, both instinctively sent a pulse of love along the bond, and felt the other absorb and reflect it.
Both smiled, at peace at last. At least for tonight.
The End