Rare and Graceful Things

Author: Ducks
email: ducksfanfic@yahoo.com
website: http://ducksfanfic.denialbubble.com
LiveJournal: http://theantijoss.livejournal.com
Pairing: B/A
Rating: R-ish for mild smut
Pairing (s): Buffy/Angel
Timeline: By request, after Empty Places
Spoilers: Up to Empty Places/Peace Out, AU After that
Summary: It's just one of those things.
A/N: Backup for the B/A Ficathon, requested by fickledame. Sorry the smut isn't more explicit, honey, and that it's so late. *smooch* Requirements at the end.
Dedication: To The Artist Formerly Known as Vatrixsta,( jade_okelani) because just thinking about "Hard to Forget" makes me cry. It was perfect, love. Thank you. Now we shall fly our asses to LA and tattoo the text in its entirety onto Joss' chest. Did I say that out loud? *G* The same lady also beta-ed it, AND helped me figure out who I forgot to send an Angelthon assignment too (Sorry, raaven)! She rocks muchly. The loverly beta bunnies trea_incident, Jacqui, Hope, and Shirl came through in a pinch as usual. Thanks, guys!

**

~
And when the world despises--
When Heaven repels my prayer--
Will not mine angel comfort?
Mine idol hear?

- Emily Bronte, "If grief for grief can touch thee"
~

It's one of those things that just happens sometimes. Moments of Grace, of faultless cosmic accident, the one thing that can make all the bad things vanish, exactly when you think you just can't take anymore. In Vegas, the odds against them are so astronomical that even the kings of risk wouldn't bet a penny on one. So improbable, so close to impossible, that Buffy has never even entertained them for the barest cold sliver of moments.

But on those rare occasions that she does consider the strokes of luck that have painted her life in its spectrum of light to dark and back again, she can list only three as true heralds of metamorphosis: whatever twisted lottery made her the Slayer, the creation of her sister, and meeting Angel.

The three most important, most agonizing, most joyous moments of her life, and she either didn't know, or didn't appreciate how momentous they were at the time.

Now here she is, wandering through the chaotic exodus that consumes her usually deceptively sleepy hometown, and she's without a place, without a family, without a purpose, and about to have another one of those accidents that changes her life forever. Or maybe it's the same accident, just happening again, the Fates hoping beyond hope that this time, she'll finally get the message.

She's not thinking about Grace, only condemnation, bad judgment, and the fact that no matter how crushed, pureed, sliced, diced or chopped her heart becomes, she still keeps on walking, keeps on fighting, keeps on getting up and doing it all over again. Even now when she's forgotten exactly how or why. Even death hadn't stopped her, really. Or losing everything over and over again. Why should this time be any different?

It's one of those moments -- the perfect thing at the perfect time. The one thing you need to happen that you would bet everything you had (which wasn't much at this point, in her case) could never, ever happen.

She leaves the house after they abandon her, dismiss her, judge her unworthy, toss her out. She wanders aimlessly through the streets, watching the Pandemonium with a sort of numb, detached fascination, and the sensation of déjà vu makes her chuckle bitterly. She isn't really wondering where she should go, or what she should do; just staring, mind empty, like watching a disturbing TV show starring Christina Aguilera or something.

The sound of a car pulling up behind her makes her jump a little, and she hears it as though it's on the other end of a long, empty tunnel of fire and darkness and shouting. A door slams, echoes the same weird way in her head, and some tiny part of her Fight or Flight wonders if she should turnfearrun. Footsteps coming closer, the fear nibbling a little harder on her consciousness, but she doesn't turn around. She knows her instincts will tell her what to do when the time is right.

"Buffy?"

That one word in that one voice. One of those things...

But didn't he have his own apocalypse to clean up after? And hadn't they decided it was best not to see each other, because even all these years and disasters and losses and deaths and holes-in-the-heart later, it's still just too hard?

Maybe harder than ever, as the need got bigger and the emptiness... emptier.

"Buffy, wait!"

His footsteps - silent to anyone but a creature with supernatural hearing - catch up with her in less than a cycle of her heartbeats. He's a shadow, a night breeze, a whisper in her very center, the depths of her being...

Strong, big, gentle, firm, loving, forbidden hand on her arm, and she can remember precisely what the smooth palm felt like on her skin. She once asked him how he could wield a sword so often and never develop calluses. He'd explained that he got them, but they healed over quickly. Every time he used a weapon was painful, his flesh a little raw, ripped open again like one small punishment for the violence he is forced to commit now, and the ones he loved to commit then.

She shouldn't be able to remember that, should she? Not three partners (she can't even say 'lovers' in her head) and a dozen lifetimes later.

Should she?

She looks up at him, feels the fathomless, ancient brown of his eyes searching her face for clues, but finding only glass in which he can't even see his own reflection.

She's forgotten what she's for, but she's learned to hide the pain as long as no one throws rocks.

"Hey. How are you?" she asks him - the polite thing to do, after all, when the love of your life appears like magick in the middle of Armageddon and is by far the most beautiful, heart breaking thing you've ever seen. But realizing her utter lack of sense under the circumstances, she feels both stupid and relatively reassured that she is only in a little bit of exhausted shock, not gone totally around the bend, and she won't be waking up in another mental hospital anytime soon. She hopes.

"Buffy, are you all right? What's going on? Are you hurt?" He turns her this way and that, sniffs at her for blood, almost makes her laugh and get all creeped out at the same time.

"Hurt? No, not hurt. Exactly. Not really new hurt, anyway." Does he really make the night darker? He's so big... had he always been that big? She has to look so, so, so far up from down here in the bottom of this pit to see him, and she's tempted to shout to make sure he can hear her. He blots out the fire and the moonlight, the chaos and the holocaust and the end of everything. You know how it's like that with some guys? ((When he's around, it's like the lights dim everywhere else.))

Or... maybe she's gonna do something stupid and girly like faint. She can't remember the last time she ate, and she knows it's been way longer than that since she slept. The First isn't the only thing that lives in her nightmares.

"Just walking," she adds. Or at least, that's what she thinks she says. She really can't be sure because his expression of fright doesn't change.

Has she ever seen Angel look scared, even when they thought he was about to die?

"We need to get you home," he observes, ever and always Mr. States-The-Obvious ((because he has centuries on all of them, and so they all must be simple and need talking down to and explaining to and leaving-for-their-own-good)), and gently starts to steer her back to his big muscle car idling a few yards behind them.

After a moment, she digs her heels in. "No, you can't. I mean... I can't. Go back there."

He pauses and his expression darkens. It's like, when he's angry or upset, he draws all the light out of the space around him. He's like a big, beautiful cool shadow, protection from fire and other frigid things. "Why not? What's going on here, Buffy? I mean... besides the obvious. What are you doing wandering the streets in the middle of all this? Where are the girls? Giles said he was bringing some Potentials back from Europe, but that was a while ago."

She can't look into his eyes, because she *knows* he'll see her shame. He always saw it, even when she didn't know it was there. Angel knows everything there is to know about Wrong and Broken and the things that go bump in your head. He knows Alone, Despised, Damned. She wishes she could have gone to him last year, the last time she was lost, and she wanted to feel, because right now she feels *everything* and it's just too much.

Maybe she can hide behind her expression, maybe she can lie to him, but he can still look into her soul and *feel* her.

It's not right that they're not allowed to be.

"They're here. Everybody's alive. Mostly. Xander lost an eye." She shrugs. "They fired me. Faith is in charge now."

She hears herself chuckle bitterly at the twisted irony of it, and realizes the sound is cold and tinny, again from the end of that tunnel. Angel *is* making the night darker... the spots in her vision prove it.

He curses as she falls into his arms, and her last thought is wondering if she's ever heard him swear before.

~

She wakes in a strange bed in a strange house with unfamiliar shadows bearing down on her from every empty, hopeless corner.

The only thing she knows is the figure sitting guard in the plush chair beside the bed - and she's not sure if he's real. Far too big and brawny for the tiny space, a darker shadow than any trick of the light could manage, until he sits forward. The dim moonlight from the window behind her sets his pale skin silver, and it's all she can do not to reach out and trace his regal cheekbones, his full lips. She realizes, as she does every time they see each other again, that she's forgotten how beautiful he is. Like a statue somebody brought to life. He hasn't changed. He never will. And that's why he had to go.

She knows that now, and it doesn't make it any better than when she thought he just didn't love her anymore.

"I thought I dreamed you," she tells him.

The shadow shifts a little closer, elbows braced on his knees and big, gentle hands folded, giving her that small, tender expression she has come to remember and cherish as Angelsmile. She knows behind it is his worry, his fear, his curiosity, and that he'll keep them all at bay to protect her.

"If you did, you might want to let up on the chaos and destruction a bit. I love a good end of the world nightmare as much as the next guy, but not mixed in with my romantic melodrama."

She can't help her own ghost of a smile. It drifts stiffly across a mouth that hasn't formed one in such a long time that she's started to think she's forgotten how.

"If you think me fainting in the middle of the street is romantic, you may be living in the wrong century."

He reaches out and takes her hand, a gentle, familiar gesture that brings her back to days when she took for granted so many others exactly like it.

God, how she misses them now. And the people who used to make them, those innocent children, so long dead.

"That's what I keep saying," he replies.

Silence settles after the light-hearted intro dialogue, as they're both filled with déjà vu - bringing one another comfort after pain, calm after a riot of emotion. Touchstones.

He completes her, just like that, she realizes for the millionth time, and she's reminded yet again how deeply Fate and Destiny hate her. It's just one of those things.

"Hey," she gives the old greeting again, hoping maybe she sounds a little saner this time.

"Hey," he returns it, and the inflection is as rich with layers of profundity as it's ever been. He never changes. They never change. She's the only one who's been warped by time. But here, when she's part of this forbidden 'Us', she can almost pretend she hasn't been. They still remember their dialogue. She imagines they always will.

"So," he goes on. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

She frowns at him. "Not really."

He nods, but doesn't push, knowing she'll talk when she's ready. She always does. "I found some bottled water in the basement. It looks like the owners of the house have been gone for a while. Why didn't you tell me what was happening here?"

"Why? You couldn't have done anything. We couldn't get through to you anyway."

"But you tried..."

"Yeah. A couple of times. Circuits busy, blah blah blah."

"I'm sorry. Things were..."

"Insane in LA? Color me shocked. I think you might have taken part of the Hellmouth with you when you... left." ((Along with my heart.)) "But not enough."

"Buffy..."

"I said I don't want to talk about it."

Rapid fire, and here they are, back at the old impasse again. He frowns a little to signal his recognition of the stop sign, and it leaves them with nothing to do but bear the silence that remains pregnant with things they can never say. The fork in the road where the only choices are endure or leave.

She never could stand the limits of those options -- especially since they always have to take 'leaving' - or the look in his eyes that confirms that he already *knows*. He knows, and she can't hide, and he can wait forever until she tells him in her own words.

"They fired me," she says, hoping simple is enough, because she's not sure she can find any other way to say it that won't gut her utterly, once and for all.

He sighs softly, one of those weird habits of breath he has that's only one of a million ways that he's different from Spike. Spike never bothers to breathe, unless he's smoking or they're...

She pushes the thought away. There's too much to the 'Here, Now', to go There. Complicated in a very different unpleasant way.

"So you said. And that means..."

Buffy shrugs and looks away from his omniscient gaze. "It means what it sounds like. I was the General, now I'm not. Faith is."

"Why?"

Now... that's the real question, isn't it? The one she doesn't think any of them have really asked themselves. Especially not her. Why had things gotten so bad that she was slamming doors in Giles' face and watching Willow turn away and hearing her baby sister tell her she had to leave her own house?

"Because they don't trust me anymore," she says and truly understands in the same moment. After all the death and loss and destruction, after tower-jumping and soulless demon-screwing and doing nothing about almost getting raped, or the former-almost-rapist committing mass-murder under compulsion or so many other things where she should have been the leader or at least *tried* to explain herself and never was. Never did. "I think maybe they're right."

Angel flinches noticeably. One of the only times she can remember seeing him out of control for even a moment. He's always so tightly leashed, unless he's hurt or frightened or... feeling ways she can't think about because she needs him so much she could just start screaming and never stop if he doesn't just. Touch. Her.

It's not fair.

He moves in that strong, quiet way he has, from the chair to the bed beside her, and her heart pounds in response to his proximity. Too close. Too close. Too close.

He doesn't look directly at her. "I think that's a little harsh, don't you?"

She laughs. "You haven't been around much in the past few years."

"No. But I have ears. And an astoundingly acute sense of smell."

Her eyes snap up, wide with shock and chagrin. She knows exactly what he's saying, but she asks anyway, "What?"

Angel smirks, but there's Hellfire raging in the dark of his eyes. "Unless you started smoking recently."

Now it's she who can't quite look at him, so she examines the expensive cut of his slacks and wonders how he can afford to drive into an apocalypse in Italian silk.

Vampires are so funny about their clothes. Especially with souls. The vampires, not the clothes.

"No," she says.

"I didn't think so. But I can't imagine this happening just because you... made some questionable choices in lovers."

Buffy shoots him a glare, but the anger putters out before she can take another breath or think of a snide comeback. After all, whether it's his place to say so or not, he's right.

And she remembers - she did come back wrong. In more ways than any cellular suntan could ever explain. But she was wrong long before that, wasn't she? So much of her had already been broken because she'd just lived way too long, lost way too much, and knew about way too many things that she wanted and could never have or didn't want but had a damn abundance of.

Like him, and them, normal, house, minivan, dog, 2.5 kids, Christmas Trees and Saturday mornings in bed and... curses and Hell and love isn't enough.

All those things she never let herself long for or regret anymore. It was the dreaming part of her that was broken. It snapped the night she realized he'd become a monster because of her, because she loved him *so* *much*, and it had only been deteriorating since. Now all that's left of her hope is a pile of dust on the floor of her soul and the surety that underneath, she is not much more than that creature molded of terror and magick a thousand years ago by men who didn't even speak English, because the rest of her is supposed to be dead.

Who was the monster now?

"No... it's more than that," she whispers, and she feels the tears rushing up from where they'd gone to rest while she slept. "I think... I don't think I'm supposed to be here anymore. I think I'm just redundant. And because I keep forcing myself back in to the spot I used to be in, things keep... breaking. People keep getting hurt, or dying."

She looks up at him again, and his neutral mask has been replaced by an expression of quiet horror.

"What are you saying, exactly?"

The salt of her pain spills over, rushes down her cheeks in a torrent of things she's never said to anyone before. "I wasn't supposed to come back, Angel. I should be dead." She crushes her hands together in her lap and watches the tears splash on the bruises that fade even as the droplets dry. "I was never supposed to come back the first time, when you and Xander found me after the Master. I'm screwing up the world. Everything I do falls apart, and everybody around me gets sucked into the quicksand of it. I'm not... I don't want to kill myself or anything, I just... I don't have anywhere to go or anything to be, so I keep thinking, of course they're right. There's no point to me being here. Nobody needs me... or wants me, really."

"Stop," he snaps, bringing her tearful gaze back to his face... and finds that he's crying too. "Don't you dare say that. Any of it. If you weren't here..." He shakes his head and stands, begins to pace the room, with those beloved hands shoved deep in his pockets, and she can't help but notice that his legs are so long, they eat up the tiny space in only a couple of strides.

She wishes she could taste the backs of his knees, and wonders if maybe she has gone crazy after all.

"I realize there are a lot of things we've never been able to say to each other. A lot of things I wish I could have told you years ago, but..." He swallows the same lump of joy denied that she feels lodge in her throat every time she looks at him. She can still feel his sorrow... feel the sadness so deep inside him trembling against her heart. It breaks for him like it always has, and it breaks for her that she can't do a thing about it. She can't even fix herself, how could she ever...

He looks up, and she's fascinated by the emotion in his eyes. She once would have given everything she had, everything she was, to know what he was thinking, and now...

"You still don't understand how important you are, do you? And I don't mean just because you're the Slayer." He takes a deep, unnecessary breath, steadying himself. Sharing never did come easily for Angel. When he looks at her again, she feels it in the depths of her heart, still raw and bleeding from every other time she's loved him this much. It never fades. She puts it aside, walks around it, pretends it's not there, but it's never stopped or gone away. "You are... Everything I am is because of who you are. Who you made me want to be. Everything I have is because of you. Your courage, your love, your compassion..." He crouches before her, but she can't see him anymore through her tears. She can only feel the ironic warmth that fills her as his cold hands wrap around hers. "It wasn't that long ago that there was nothing left of me but pain. Hopelessness. Regret. That's all I had to look forward to for the rest of eternity. But then, do you know what happened?"

She blinks away some of the ocean in her eyes, and she can see him again. Smiling at her. She shakes her head and squeezes his hands, holding on, holding on to the ruins of hope long dead and gone, because even that is better than nothing at all of him.

"I saw this beautiful girl walking in the sunlight. I saw Fate plow her life under. And I saw a heroine rise from the ruins. But she looked so fragile, and she was so... new. So innocent. I couldn't bear the thought that all the horrors I'd seen and visited on this world would ever touch her. I thought - if that little girl can stand up, then why can't I? So I did. And I've been standing ever since. Because of you. So please, don't ever say that you shouldn't be here. Or that nobody needs you. Because I do. Even if you're a million miles away, just knowing that you exist makes it that much easier for me to remember why I still do."

Buffy cries then, for the beauty of what he's given her, and the same old bittersweet pain. "I love you," she tells him before she can stop herself, and the words tumble out in a sob. "Why can't you be here all the time?"

She breaks, and he catches her, and they hold each other and cry while the world falls apart around them.

It's one of those things that just happens sometimes, those rare and Graceful things. Their lips just find each other, and lips become tongues gently entangled, become hands softly wandering, and the fire and moonlight watch them step over lines that for this moment alone, no longer exist. Clothes are gone and words of love and longing and desire whispered, and all the worrying and curses and horrors of yesterday or tomorrow in the world can't stop them now.

He kisses her everywhere, and each place that his mouth blesses is resurrected with searing electricity and yes, she knew it would be like this. As she tangles her hands in his hair and whispers his name like a benediction, she wonders how she could have lived all this time without his touch and God, isn't this what she's been missing, and how will she ever go back to living without it again?

He looks into her eyes as he rises above her, poised to make this one mistake that she knows won't yield monsters this time... only comfort for now and grief for tomorrow, and maybe the strength to rise again.

"I'll always love you, Buffy. No matter how many years go by. No matter how far apart we are. Never forget that."

And they fit together, just like that. So perfectly, so very, very wrong and completely, utterly right. She wraps around him and he's part of her and they move together like a song. Like a storm growing, friction and lightning and tossing on tidal waves. A dance of love and need and it'sonlyfortonight and yesI'mstillyoursI'llalwaysbeyours.

They make it last forever before they burst into starlight and Never Again.

~

She wakes late in the morning to a quiet world, and he's gone. If she didn't ache from lips to fingertips to soul, she'd have to wonder if she dreamed him. But what he left for her is so precious, what he filled her with so exactly what she needed, there's no doubt in any part of her that he was here, and now she knows exactly what to do.

He knew. He always just knows her. She smiles and gets out of bed, and when she sees him again at the temple, she doesn't ask if it really happened, she just flies into his arms and kisses him like...

Like they saved each other again as they always had, and hopefully always would.

The End.

~

Requests: B/A set after Empty Places. Must have smut. Please be angsty.
Restrictions: No B/S or A/C.

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