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Title: Lonely Stranger
Author: Ashley
Author’s note: Written for the Not Fade Away Ficathon hosted by Kristi on LiveJournal.  “Lonely Stranger” by Eric Clapton.  From the CD Eric Clapton Unplugged.
Summary: Angel reminisces on the anniversary of the ‘final battle’.
Disclaimer: Neither Angel nor any of his minions belong to me.  Thanks to god…er, Joss for the inspiration.  All dialog from the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel belong to their respective writers.
Feedback is craved, and thanks to Kris for the quick beta. 

You kick the pile of rocks that sits at the end of the alley.  It’s quiet here now; no sounds from the street penetrate back this far.  The place looks vaguely the same, and yet so different.

Let’s go to work.

Only you stand here now, the others scattered or dead.  You don’t think about Wesley, or Fred, or Cordy.  You can sort of stand to think about Spike, and that makes you laugh to yourself.  He’s in … Paris?  Amsterdam?  You can’t remember.

Had you known what was coming, what you would have to endure, would you have agreed to help?  Would you have made the same choices?

I want to help her.  I want – I want to become someone.  I want to learn from you.

But I don’t want to dress like you.

Somedays Whistler pops into your memory, and you smile at the thought of the loudly dressed demon who had shown you the path.  And somedays you imagine yourself smashing his brains in, ripping into his neck, butchering him for the awful hell he hadn’t told you was coming.

That’s the demon talking.  But instead of ignoring him, or pushing him embarassedly to the side, you stop, acknowledge him, and go on.

That really pisses him off.  And it makes you grin – which is unfortunate when you’re walking by yourself down the street, because people tend to give you a wide berth when they notice your ample smile.

Just let me be, you think, avoiding the eyes of the curious that take in your all black attire, your leather coat in the middle of summer, your dark sweaters and pale, pale skin.

Visiting Ireland for a while had been fun, but you found you couldn’t identify with the place anymore.  Truth is, you can barely remember being Liam – your personality now is a mish mash of characters and feelings that seem almost forgeries and people stolen from a book of cheesy gothic plays.

You move slowly down the alley, that alley that no one really knows about.  To the residents of the city you’re currently in, it’s just a tiny, dirty street; a way to get rid of trash, or to get to one’s destination faster.

To you, it’s the last memory of time spent trying, trying so hard to do what you should have done a long time ago.  The effort you had made with Buffy had barely scratched the surface of what had needed to be done, and the things that had happened in that alley – they had been almost too big.

From a small podunk town in California to the devil’s hot seat – you sure got around.  And what’s funny is that most of the stuff you had done that had mattered took place in the span of perhaps ten years.  Considering your age now, and the things that had happened to you in your previous experiences, that seems rather remarkable.

The flowers in your hand feel silly, but you stop in the dead center of the alley, and place them reverently against the brick wall.  It had been raining then, and it’s beginning to rain now.  The sun’s long gone, but you don’t feel any chill.

You shut your eyes, and picture them all there.  All of them.  Not just the ones at the end, but the ones that had been there from the beginning.

The little red headed computer nerd who had grown to be a powerful witch.

The enigmatic musician-cum-werewolf who’s courage was way larger than his stature.

The sidekick, the donut buyer, the one who had actually stood by you in the end.  The boy who’s heart would probably always belong to Buffy, somehow.

The watcher.  The technopagan who’s soul you had taken with glee.

The rogue slayer who just might’ve made it.

The brunette, who went from cheerleader to just plain leader – and took a bit of you with her when she gave everything for the cause.

The Irish half demon.  His blue eyes still sparkle in your memory.

The Texan.  The fop turned cockney vamp.  The other watcher – the truest hero you have ever known.

Your impossible, improbable son.  Child of two sinners, who had triumphed over the history of his parentage.  On dark days you’ll take out his old letters, and cry over them in your tiny wood home in the hills of northern Oregon.

And then, Buffy.

Or actually, from the beginning, from the always, Buffy.  The girl who had been responsible for the turning of your destiny.  Whistler would like to say that it had been his doing, and yes, the demon had brought you to her, but you like to think that even without his intervention, that somehow you would have found her yourself.  You know that’s a stilly thought, but you like to entertain it anyway, especially on this day.

It’s been over seven decades since the ‘final’ battle, and it’s just you, now.  Even your golden girl has gone on, to her family and friends, who you are sure were waiting for her with open arms and tears in their eyes.  She’s where she’s supposed to be.  You’ve never been more certain of anything in your long life.

She had come to you then, a few weeks after that fight in the alley, and you hadn’t said anything, you had just gathered her in your arms, and held her.  Breathed her hair, soaked in her scent, felt her hard but pliant body pressed against yours again.  And you found that despite the profound happiness this brought you, some little bitty bit inside you was still dark.  And in that moment, when you held Buffy again, when you sobbed out your frustration and heartache at the loss of your dear comrades and friends, when she had petted and shushed you, you knew.

Despite the all emcompassing love you held for her, still hold for her, something in those final seconds of existance at Wolfram and Hart’s mercy had stolen away just a little piece of your true happiness.  Be it their treatment of Connor, or Fred’s possession by Illyria, or Wesley’s death, or your hopelessness, whatever, you knew you’d never find that definition of what the gypsys called ‘perfect happiness’ again.

Was it just Wolfram and Hart?  You don’t think so.  You think it had a lot to do with them, yes, but you also think it was the culmination of too many years of having your chain yanked by whatever power decided they wanted you on their side on that particular day.  Too many years of not being sure.  Of coexisting with a monster that you finally, fataly realized was embedded in you.

And no matter what happened, or what was going to happen, it was too late to bring that innocent, bristling, overwhelming emotional attatchment to Buffy back to where it had been.  You had – have no doubt that she is your soul mate, but being in possesion of only 9/10ths of your soul made it hard to feel that obsession again.

She was everything to you, would always be everything to you, but in your heart of hearts, down in the bowels of what you liked to refer to as the ‘angelmachine,’ that essential little piece would always be missing.  You would give her all of yourself, if only you were in possession of it all.

You would rage against Wolfram and Hart, the Watcher’s Council, the First Evil if you thought they would be able to give you back your perfect happiness.

But the truth is, you’re not sure where you lost it.  And that makes it impossible to get back.

You stand as the sky goes totally black, and the lights in the alley come on.  A stray cat yowls, and knocks over a trash can.

The alley is just a way to get from point A to B again, and not the site of some long ago magickal final battle, where you might or might not of lost something.

Your booted feet echo on the dirty concrete, and the flowers you left stand in silent testimony to the life of one ancient vampire, and the friends who went before him.

~end.