Untitled

Author: Chryss

Pairing: W/A friendship

Disclaimer: characters and storylines are not mine they belong to Joss Whedon and UPN/WB

Distribution: Ask

Feedback: Umm . . .Please? chryss33@msn.com

Spoilers: Season finales of Buffy and Angel

Summery: What happened when Willow told Angel the news of Buffy’s death. I tried to make it realistic, I hope it doesn’t seem far-fetched.

Authors note: This is just a 1 parter I may continue. I tried writing a real fic before. FD_LF but that wasn’t very successful so I thought I’d practice with shorter stories, so you may see a few in the near future. This is only my second fic, so bear with me. If you have suggestions about my writing technique, please e-mail me. I promise you won’t hurt my feelings.

Willow’s POV

I sat in the Hyperion Hotel. I can’t believe I’m here in L.A. after all this time that they have been gone; I have never come to visit. I should have. I shouldn’t have let my insecurities get in the way of friendship. I realize that now, but it’s a little late in the game. I know that Buffy knew I cared for her, I know she knew I loved her. But lately I hadn’t shown it much. We were drifting apart at home. Why did she have to go when we were drifting apart. It made it seem so much more painful to lose her when I know that we could have been so much closer. So many things could have been different and maybe that could have changed everything. I tried to accept that it wasn’t my fault that there wasn’t anything that I could have done. Buffy knew what she was doing, it was her destiny, just as it was her destiny to be a Slayer.

But now I sit here at Angel Investigations, the bearer of bad news. How do I say it? How can I make it less painful for them? Why did I have to be the one to come? I guess the others just aren’t strong enough right now. And the news of the demise of the greatest slayer ever to live was great enough to give in person. No one deserved to hear it over the phone. I had to be the one to come. Things between Cordelia, Angel, Wesley and I were unfinished. Maybe they didn’t need closure, but I did. Any one of us could die at any moment and I still would have that rift between Cordy and I. Angel still would have left Sunnydale without saying goodbye, and not knowing it was me who restored his soul. Wesley would never witness my respect for him. And as I sat there lost in my thoughts I saw them enter the lobby. They were so happy, about what I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t fathom there being joy in the world when Buffy Summers wasn’t.

I know I must look run down. I see it in their faces the moment they see me. Angel rarely smiled, and he was just fully joyful, and I had to be the one to steal that moment from him. I stepped forward hating this moment not being able to foretell how it would affect the lives of the ones here. New faces that I had never seen, never heard of, and I had to break the news of the death of a stranger to them. It just didn’t seem right that they wouldn’t shed a tear, they wouldn’t know what a wonderful creature they had missed out on meeting. They wouldn’t know how empty the world was without her; they couldn’t understand that she had saved them time and time again. But when I looked into Angel’s eyes I knew he knew.

"It’s Buffy."

At first I couldn’t speak, not because I knew it would hurt them too much, but because I knew it would hurt me. I had never said the words aloud. Never made it real. I didn’t need to say anything, they already knew, at least Angel did. My heart broke all over again. As it has so many times already. It broke when my first love betrayed me with my enemy. It broke when my childhood was lost in the death of a best friend, Jesse. It broke when my "true love" found another, then again when he left me. It broke when I lost the mother that meant more to me then my own. It broke when my new love had been lost to me. It broke when I lost my best friend to the world I still live in. It broke when I saw Spike; his love, his hope destroyed. And again it broke as I saw Angel the one usually so stoic, had bared the weight of the world and decided now that it was just too heavy. I saw in his eyes the moment his world shattered. The same moment my heart did. I could see into his soul. I could see that he had lost his will, his strength, his hope. Now my heart lay bleeding and broken on the floor in millions of pieces I could never reassemble. And at the moment, I didn’t see the see the need to.

Angel’s POV

Buffy was gone, and at the moment I didn’t want to know how. I stormed into the office that used t be mine brushing past the bearer of bad news. Don’t kill the messenger they always said. But I almost felt a hatred for her, just because I wanted for a moment to believe she was lying to me, but I knew she wasn’t, she hadn’t even spoken a word. The eyes are the windows to the soul and hers was battered and broken just as mine is now. There was no innocence left in this young girl at all. She had an old soul with the wisdoms of the world, complete with all its sorrows.

I knew Buffy and I could never have been together. But she was the love of my life. Even if she hadn’t been I would have been depressed to lose her. She was my strength, she was the strength of the world and only us few lucky people knew it. I sat and wondered how I could have changed things. I was falling so deeply into myself I knew that I would probably never find my way out, and now that didn’t seem so bad. I had built my own personal hell, worse then the one I had really been in before. I couldn’t even cry, I wasn’t strong enough too. I felt the needed to punish myself, and not indulge in the luxury of tears. I was so unaware of the things around me, it was as if nothing but me existed; me and this tormenting soul of mine. Then I knew from this moment I must be destined to spend the rest of eternity inside myself, in hell. I fell apart; my heart was now shattered. There was not a soul in all the world, that could bring me solace.

Willow’s POV

I knew Angel had retreated into his-self just because of what the look in my eyes had told him. It was the way he was. Everything wrong in the world to him was his fault. I wanted to yell at him and say it wasn’t, but how could I when sometimes I felt just the same. I knew for him it had to be worse. He had experienced so much more than I could ever imagine. With something deep inside me buried under everything, I could sense him. It was like some untapped power. Before I had spoken to Spike in his mind, but I hadn’t seen anything past the surface, nothing he didn’t show too all the world. But this thing I was feeling, it was different. It was overwhelming. It was emotions that were crushing my insides. I felt like I was turning inside out, like some one had discovered the broken pieces of my heart and pulled them together only to rip them apart more than they had been before. I felt like some one was dancing and stomping on what little I had left of sanity. And in that brief moment of clarity and confusion, I knew I had felt Angel within me. I could reach so far into him, past the walls he had built and reinforced himself.

In some distant part of my mind I noticed every one had left and I was alone in the room. I could faintly hear Cordelia sobbing in the distance. It was too much. My world, my life, it was too much. I just wanted it to stop. I could feel him spiraling out of control, and it was hurting me, I just wanted it to stop. And so I slowly thought, "Stop, it isn’t worth it, this isn’t how it should be, this isn’t how she would want it." That only seemed to be causing more pain, like adding fuel to the fire. Everything I had been through became too much. To much magic, too much pain, too much heartache, too much power to fast and I let out an earth shattering scream that resonated in my mind and slowly I could feel life fade away.

Angel’s POV

"Stop, it isn’t worth it, this isn’t how it should be. This isn’t how she would want it." I could hear the words in my head in what little consciousness had left It was true. I knew it; she wouldn’t have wanted it this way. This ending would have only caused her more pain. And yet I couldn’t stop. It only pushed me further that in death I still betrayed her. I couldn’t stop I only retreated further and faster. Then I heard it. A scream I heard it within my mind, and not with my ears. No, I didn’t just hear it, I felt it and every emotion it conveyed. It was filled with love, honesty, despair, hopelessness, guilt, tragedy, and so many desperate emotions I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. The scream was so soul shattering it was enough to shock me out of wherever I had been heading. It seemed so final. The scream held such a sense of ending. It felt like a souls last cry before the darkness could swallow it whole. Willow. Somehow I knew. It hadn’t come from me but from her and I rushed to the lobby to see what had happened.

I opened the door and saw her pale form ungracefully crumbled on the cold unfeeling floor. She was nearly glowing with the passions of her being. I rushed to her side, for a moment forgetting. I collapsed near her and dragged her body against mine in an embrace of something beyond description. I was holding on, some how I knew I had too, if not for me, then for her. I crushed her beneath me and some how found it in me to draw her soul fully into this body. Her heartbeat, slow but steady, echoed in my mind. I grasped her and could feel the warmth of her glow surrounding me, engulfing me. And as I lost consciousness with her I knew when we awoke that the lives that just ended would somehow, live again. And if some one felt the need to save these two battered souls, there must be a reason. They must live on. They would save the world once again.