Not mine.  Not yours.  They belong to Joss, the WB, and FOX.  This is a not-for-profit fanfiction.  No infringement is intended.   

NOTE

Just a little something I found while cleaning out my folders.  Unbeta'd, so there are probably mistakes. Written the summer after BS5 and AS2 ended. 

by Nymuë

dim the lights

lock the doors

spread your pictures on the floor

blow the dust off of our past

let it all come floodin' back

cause it ain't easy being strong

and when I cain't forget you're gone

I just surrender

and have myself a night to remember

--- Joe Diffie, "A Night To Remember"

Pictures.

Hundreds of them.

Memories are like pictures, too, you know.  Moments that are frozen in time forever, snapshots of an instant that we carry around in our heads until they fade away … but then they come roaring back.  Right now my table is covered with pictures of you, of us, and the memories I have are superimposed over the glossy images that stare back at me.  Thousands of little moments, fragments of time preserved in full colour forever … or until the paper wears away into nothingness.

Like you.

Damn it all, Buffy, I swore I wasn’t going to do this again!  The others, they tiptoe around me and cast furtive looks when they think I’m not looking.  Of course I’m looking, I’m always looking.  It’s not like the world stopped turning when you died.  Of course it didn’t.  That would be foolish.

Except it feels that way.  Every single damned day.

But I buck up.  I grin and bear it … well, I don’t grin but I still bear it.  Most days, anyway.  Lorne – you never met Lorne but he’s a great guy, err, demon, but who cares? – anyway, he thinks I should go away for awhile.  I’ve tried explaining why that would be a bad idea, but he just waves it away and keeps saying the same thing. 

Maybe he’s right.  Maybe. 

Because I try to be strong, to help the hopeless and the helpless, to do what you would want me to do, but every now and then it’s too much.  I have to stop, stop whatever I’m doing and do this.  I have to look at you, to remind myself that you lived, that you weren’t just a beautiful dream.

Dozens of pictures from your prom spill across my desk, all glossy bright images and sharp corners that cut the skin, their very presence both a balm and a dagger to my heart.  They remind me of your beauty, your light, your very soul – but they also remind me that you’re gone and will never return to me.  Was it only a year ago that I dreamed of a day when we would both walk beneath the sun in a world free from all this evil?  Only a year … and now you’re gone.

Gone.

Gone like my childhood, my innocence, like so many others …

Gone to some better place than this.  At least, I hope so.  I hear murmurs from Sunnydale sometimes, from Wesley, when he thinks I’m not listening, soft rumblings of “what if” possibilities …

I don’t like to think about those things.  I like to think of you all golden and smiling, laughing in the sun and happy.  Happy.  That’s all I ever wanted for you, my love.  To be happy.  You made me happy, Buffy, so very happy.  Did I make you happy?   You swore that I did, even without sunlight and heartbeats … but then you said, you said …

But you never said that.  Because that day never happened. 

So all I have are my pictures and my memories and my grief.  And my friends, who are standing in the doorway.

“Angel?”

Cordelia’s voice is hesitant, so unlike her.  She’s forward, fearless even when she’s scared to death, and this soft Cordy is a stranger. 

“Mmmhmm … Angel?  We need to talk with about a few things.”

That would be Wesley.  More to be point, but skirting the issue.

“Oh, he’s listening – ”

Lorne.

“And so I’m going to say this one more time, Angel-cakes.  You need to get away.  Soon.”

This again.

“This repressin’ thing ain’t helping matters any.”

Gunn too?

“Ain’t that the truth!”

“Cordelia!”

“Is this another intervention?”  Is that really my voice?  Am I really responding to them?  I was just letting it wash over me, but now …

Maybe they’re right. 

Maybe I need to go away.  Just for a little while.

“It’s good to remember, Angel, to grieve … but it’s consuming you.  You’re too close to it.  You need perspective, and you can’t get that here.”

He’s right, I know he’s right, damn Watcher’s right … but to go away, to stop fighting the fight …

“You can’t keep doing this Angel.”

Cordelia again.  She sounds different … angry and sad and scared and frustrated all at once.

“She wouldn’t want you to do this, Angel.  You go out, and fight, and then come back and lose yourself in these pictures.”

Of course I still fight!  I fight for you, because it’s what’s right, because it’s what you would do.

 “You need to grieve, Angel, to let it out.”

I am grieving.  Don’t they see that?

“She would understand.”

It’s no more than a whisper, but Cordy sounds so certain, so sure …

Do you understand, Buffy?  I need … I need to …

“I need to go away.”

But I still remember.  I still hurt.

How can I not?

FIN