Date: July 26th, 2001
Disclaimer: I'm just Numfar's bitch. Joss owns all.
Spoilers: Through The Gift and There's No Place Like.
Summary: Expectations and growing up.
Rating: G
Pairing: Buffy/Angel in a past tense kinda way.
Notes: Written in about 20 minutes. Unbetaed. It shows. More Post-The Gift tripe.
Improv #21: Happy Ending..by someone's definition....

~~~~~

"In what 'whole thing?' This is the stuff I'm supposed to get invested in. Going to a formal. Graduating. Growing up." - Buffy, The Prom



Nothing is ever happy ever after.

In the end, the princess may get the prince but she's walked over plain sisters and life twisted stepmothers to do so. Not everyone got the happy ending, not everyone walks off into the sunset with the one they love.

Not everyone. Not me.

I didn't expect it. None of it. And I know that's a lame excuse for not leaving this room for a month. But I don't care and I don't intend to leave until this makes more sense.

She's dead.

At 20, I expected several more years of whoring and drinking, broken up by a marriage to a dour-faced, prissy little Irish girl, who loved God and did her duty. Then, after having fully disappointed family and friends, I'd tumble into the grave as unrepentant as I shot out of the womb. Uncaring what effect I'd had on anyone's life.

That's what you get when you expect things.

Blood and dark pink roses, thorns prick tiny bits of blood from my dead flesh as I roll into the undead. Life means more, grander on a scale I didn't think about when I said I'd always wanted to see the world. That wasn't what I had in mind. Wasn't for over a hundred years before I cared. Before I thought about expectations again.

//I want to help her. I want to. . . I want to become someone. I want to help.//

Until I drove up to a modern monstrosity of an American High School. Saw her skip down the steps, embraced in the tragic mediocrity of teen life. Bright, and fresh, and unknowing. Poised on the cusp of womanhood. About to fall into duty and sacrifice.

I loved her.

She had no idea who she was or what. She was 15, she was invincible, and everything important was right in front of her. Vague ideas of marriage and babies and a happy life. She had boys who fawned after her, friends who fawned after her, and parents who loved her.

Right there in that moment, I wanted her. That dream she represented. Cotton candy and sunshine. Untouched by petty annoyances of every day mortal life. Before all that security and trust broke down into parents divorcing, destiny, and endings. Before she knew what it meant to love. Long before she understood what it really was to lose someone you love.

//I don't know how to live in this world, if these are the choices, if everything's just stripped away then I don't see the point. I just wish... I wish my mom was here.//

No expectations.

I crashed into her. She was a little bundle of everything I'd never done and would never do. I wanted to protect her and savor her youth, her inability to believe that there was something she *couldn't* do. That wasn't possible and she didn't waste time thinking about it. She hadn't learned to worry yet.

I worried every second of every day after I met her. Couldn't comprehend her loss and didn't want to. So lost in her concerns and life that I became what she thought I was. A lonely, brooding vampire who loved her.

She wasn't entirely wrong.

I did love her.

But calling me lonely and brooding is to only see the surface. I'm more than that. I was more than that. I like to sit alone and read. I like to think. Quiet contemplation does not quid pro quo mean I'm depressed. And eventually, her expectations for me broke me.

She frustrated me. I couldn't empathize with her childishness because I couldn't remember feeling that way. Maybe I did. If so, it was so long ago that now it's crumpled under the weight of 240 some years of memories. She made me mad. Furious in a way I hadn't felt since. Before I had a soul and cared for little blonde girls. She wanted me to be her everything. An everything I didn't know how to be.

I had to be silent, understanding, loving, sexy, brooding, gentle, and love her. All but the last got annoying. Loving her was easy. Living with loving her presented a greater challenge.

//I just gotta... I gotta walk away from this.//

// "I don't love Xander." "Yeah, but he's in your life. He gets to be there when I can't. Take your classes, eat your meals, hear your jokes and complaints. He gets to see you in the sunlight."//

// "I want my life to be with you." "I don't."//

The crux. The critical point at which I made a decision. Walk away, stay. Stay and let her wishes and needs cover me. Watch her grow and change and fight and die.

I didn't want my life to be with her because I didn't *have* a life with her. I wasn't sure what a life was. I'd spent so long lurking in her shadows that I only knew I loved her. Nothing existed outside of that and suddenly it terrified me. Because she would die. And I would be without what made me become..what? What had I become? A nameless savior? The Slayer's boyfriend?

Leaving her ripped new wounds inside, but it also gave me a chance to grow. To change. To become a better whatever I am. Vampires do change. Two years ago, if someone had brought me blood with cinnamon on top, I wouldn't have even understood the caring behind the gesture. I didn't think I wanted them, but I got a secretary, a partner, a second partner, and friends. I have friends now. We've gone around the bend and back together. They know me better than Buffy ever did.

But I still love her.

I hope she knew that. Love doesn't die, it doesn't end. Turns, twists, flows in and out of favor. It's like molecules. Divided into their parts, their atoms still remain the same. Oxygen is part of hydrogen peroxide, but it's not the same. Not quite.

For the last two years, I was her ex. Her former true love who lived in LA. I was the stumbling block in her growing up and finding new loves. But eventually she broke down the block into little pieces and made her way into adulthood.

She grew up.

She learned the value of sacrifice. That sometimes, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few but that doesn't mean you listen. There's an inner voice that will tell you if you'll listen: this is the way, this is what you were meant to do.

The sun's casting slitted shadows on the wall. I study the cast of light on my bedside lamp, the way the shadow falls into the creases in the bed sheets. Simple things. Thick clear glass keeping me from the outside and the outside from me but permitting the sun and sight to pass.

I'm glad I knew her. Because I will live a very long time. Regardless. And my memories will live with me.

Tomorrow, or maybe the next day/week/month or year, I'll walk out of this room. Feel the creep of the sun at my toes, reminding me that I'm not invincible. I'll amble downstairs and absently ask Cordy if she's made coffee. Brief moments of adjustment and things will continue on until I'm gone or they're gone or we don't manage to save the world. But I'm not ready just yet.

Not yet.

~end~