FIC: "Five Places Buffy Summers Never Met Nina Ash" for marenfic
TITLE: Five Places Buffy Summers Never Met Nina Ash
AUTHOR: Lamia Archer
RATING: R
PAIRING: Buffy/Nina, some Buffy/Angel and Nina/Angel
WORD COUNT: 5,259
SUMMARY: Travel the world and the seven seas; everybody’s looking for something.
SPOILERS: Post-“NFA.”
PROMPT: For marenfic, as per her request in the femslash_minis Round 20. Maren wanted music and a non-US locale.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Endless thanks to omankoshojou and myhappyface for beta reading. Also, parts of this were kind of weird since my BFF's name is Nina. Just saying.
London
Buffy is happy for Willow. Really she is. She likes Kennedy, and she thinks it’s great that Will’s got someone special in her life, especially after all the bad that happened with Tara. And, you know, the whole Sunnydale being sucked into hell thing.
But she’s a little worried about how her friend is getting into the “lifestyle.”
“I’m not gay,” Buffy says. She’s said it so many times that the words are beginning to lose meaning.
“Buffy, come on,” Kennedy says in her no-nonsense voice. “This isn’t an intervention. Or, you know, a recruiting office. We’re not saying you’re gay-”
“Setting me up with a girl is saying that I’m gay,” Buffy says numbly.
“No!” Willow says. “Well . . . maybe a little. But we just thought that maybe, since you’ve been having not the best luck with guys-”
Buffy’s eyes widen. “You think I should quit? I’m so bad with men that I should just give up?”
“It’s not like you have to get freaky with her on the first date,” Kennedy says. Buffy is not feeling reassured. “It’s just-you know, it’s nice to have someone you can talk to, connect with. You know?”
“Plus, you did always have that weird bondy thing with Faith-”
Buffy’s eyes grow ever wider. She feels like the Fly. “I was never gay with Faith!”
Willow and Kennedy exchange a look. Buffy frowns.
“I’m not gay,” she says again, petulance creeping into her tone.
“I think you’ll really like Nina,” Willow says, smiling, completely ignoring her friend’s pre-tantrum assertions of heterosexuality.
***
Buffy shows up for her not-a-date with Nina. It’s not until she’s sitting in the booth at Friday’s (who knew there were T.G.I. Friday’s in England?), waiting for the girl to show up, that she realizes she could have just not gone. She grabs her purse and jacket and is slipping out of the booth when she realizes someone’s looking at her.
It’s a girl, around her age. Blonde; with long, thin limbs and large breasts. She is dressed in that hobo chic style Buffy was sure was over, and she’s smiling.
“You must be Buffy.”
Buffy settles reluctantly back into her seat. She rests her jacket and coat on the vinyl beside her, but doesn’t release her grip on them.
“Yeah. Are you-”
“I’m Nina,” the girl says, and scoots into the seat opposite Buffy.
“Should I have pulled out your chair?” Buffy asks. Then frowns. “Well, I mean, we’re in a booth, but-”
“First gay date?” Nina asks, eyebrows slightly raised.
Buffy blushes. “Is it obvious? I feel so lame. I mean, I’m good at normal dating-not that this isn’t . . . normal . . .”
“We should get some drinks,” Nina says, and hails their waiter.
***
Nina is funny and cool and, as much as Buffy hates to admit it, she really enjoys spending time with her.
Walking to her car from the restaurant, the late night sky inky black, the pregnant moon hovering overhead, Buffy surprises herself by blurting, right in the middle of Nina talking about something completely benign, “Maybe we could do something tomorrow night.”
A tectonic shift moves Nina’s features almost imperceptibly. Ostensibly, the expression is the same, but there’s a dark dourness there now that wasn’t there before. Too subtle for a frown, a grimace; more like the underpainting of one.
“I can’t tomorrow.”
Buffy is stung. It’s not like she goes around asking girls out all the time, you know.
Not that she was asking Nina out. She was just . . . well, asking her out, but not, like, in an asking her out kind of way . . .
“Oh,” she says, trying, and failing, to come off as hip and nonchalant. “That’s fine-”
Nina’s eyes widen; her mouth puckers into a cartoonish ‘o.’ She could be an damsel-of-the-week on Scooby-Doo. “Say, Scoob-oh no, the ghost of the forbidden mine!”
“No!” Nina protests. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, okay, I did mean that I can’t tomorrow, but not that I don’t want to see you again. I just . . . I’m out of commission for the next couple nights, is all.”
Though Nina keeps chattering on, Buffy is silent for the rest of the walk. Apparently, she sucks at dating girls, too.
Rio de Janeiro
Brazil is hot, and Buffy is getting pretty damn tired of it. Hello, she’s from Los Angeles; it’s not like she’s Nanook of the North. But Brazil is much hotter than California. Jungle hot. She sweats all the time, her body constantly trying to rid her of the invading fever, and she’s getting pretty damn tired of that, too.
It’s even hot at night, which makes slaying a little more lethargic an activity than usual. Of course, occasionally the heat helps: people wearing more than sixteen ounces of clothing are either sans-body temperature or people of the cloth. See a jacket: get your stake.
Tonight, Buffy is strictly not of the stake. She’s been working hard in the insufferable heat, and she deserves a little party time. The South American ex-potentials - they really need to come up with a new name for the brand new Slayers - pouted excessively when she told them of her plans (especially when she made it clear that no, none of them could come) but she’s already over their puppy dog eyes. Life only gets more exhausting if you don’t leave room for Me Time.
The bar Buffy’s chosen is open to the night air, and patrons spill out of the densely-packed building and out into the courtyard, still drinking and chattering their quick, foreign tongue. Still swaying to the bass-heavy music that the bar’s giant speakers are throbbing into the waiting night, like something injected directly into the bloodstream. Pulse pulse pulse.
The crush of dancing, drinking bodies is the hottest place Buffy’s ever been, and she thinks of the Hellmouth. Not the one on Sunnydale, the real Hellmouth, but what Giles first said when he told her about it, about the Spanish calling it, “Boca del Infierno.” The Mouth of Hell. In her experience, hell? Not all that hot. But mouths are amazingly hot; they open to the body’s heat. Steam the air, scorch the flesh. She thinks of that, now, in the throng. The wet, intense heat of Hell’s mouth.
Buffy is enjoying this thought, and the throb of the music through her. The beat reverberates all through her, the excess bass collecting behind her breastbone, a second heartbeat. She is a part of the music, just as she is a part of the crowd. Her head swims pleasantly with cerveja, and her mouth is dry with limes. The sweat doesn’t even bother her now; it feels strangely appropriate, since everyone else, here in this communal pulse, is sweating, too. She’s merely another cog in the machine, properly lubricated for maximum partying efficiency.
There is a slick, slow tickle down Buffy’s bare back. She ignores it, at first, because in this dense party machine, she is constantly being touched, grazed, jostled. She doesn’t mind that, either; in fact, she is exhilarated on a primal level by the wordless human contact.
But then Buffy feels a slight tug, finger beneath what little shirt she’s actually wearing, and she turns, ready to tell off whatever cocky Brazilian wise guy has chosen the wrong girl to anonymously fondle, but then she’s met by a shy smile, and laughing eyes, small shoulders, small hands.
“Sorry. I was checking your tag,” the girl says, her voice a husky, young whisper, like a schoolgirl imparting a secret as the teacher turns to the chalkboard. “We’re wearing the same top.” The girl grins, her teeth glistening. “I think it looks better on you.”
Buffy doesn’t know what to say. Her righteous anger has been defused, leaving her empty but for the second pulse the bar’s speakers are still pounding through her body. Behind her sternum: throb throb throb, like she’s the Grinch, like her heart has grown three sizes and is now threatening to break that little heart-size measuring device and escape her chest.
“I’m Nina,” the girl says. “You want to get a drink?”
“Uh, Buffy,” Buffy says. “Listen, sorry, but I’m not-I’m not gay . . .”
“Me neither,” the girl says. She’s still smiling, a predatory, hungry smile. “But I’m thirsty.”
For a moment, Buffy is worried. Could she have gotten so careless as to let a vampire sidle right up beside her, put their hands on her, and not notice? But then she studies Nina’s face, notes the flushed cheeks and the glisten of sweat. Remembers the feel of her fingers against her skin: warm. Hot.
She just means regular thirsty.
“Okay,” Buffy says.
Nina starts to walk through the crush of people to the bar. Buffy follows her, but it’s tough going, maneuvering through all these gyrating bodies. The words to ask Nina to slow down, to wait for her, are rising in her throat when the girl, without turning, thrusts her hand back through the crowd and captures Buffy’s. Her hand is small, and hot, and soft. Buffy can’t always see Nina for the people moving around them, but she knows that she’s going in the right direction, because Nina’s got her.
Rome
Europe is so damn crowded.
Even in its metropolises, America’s greatest luxury is space. Only three hundred million people on almost four million square miles. That’s more than a square mile per citizen. It doesn’t always work out that way, but for moderately wealthy white people, you can usually count on at least that much elbow room.
Europe doesn’t have that. You’re lucky to get a square foot to yourself. The apartments are smaller, even expensive buildings cramming units together like so many sardine cans. In public, people swarm the restaurants, the busses, the streets-two o’clock in the morning, and the streets are still full of people. Buffy is reminded forcefully of teeming insects; there are so many people, they could be coming up from under the earth. Where else could hide them?
She never enjoyed her space until she didn’t have it, and now she is extremely conscious of being pushed in a crowd, stepped over at the café, hearing her neighbors argue and cook and shower and fuck through the walls of her apartment.
There’s a ridiculously charming outdoor café less than a block from Buffy’s apartment. Buffy spends an inordinate amount of time there, being lazy and getting fat on gelato and designer coffee.
She’s sitting in the café late one afternoon, the insistent sun making her pleasurably lazy in its heat, when she realizes that she’s being watched. Buffy frowns, and looks around for the culprit; she really dislikes the whole you can’t see me, but I see you thing.
Across the café, sitting alone at one of the small, round tables, is a blond girl in sandals and a cream-colored sundress. There’s a tablet, a thick wedge of papers, hiding the bottom half of her face, but the girl’s wide, blue eyes are on Buffy.
Buffy frowns.
For the next ten minutes, Buffy casually observes her. She catches the girl surreptitiously glancing at her. Not just once, but over and over.
Irritation burns at Buffy. There’s no damn privacy on this continent.
Buffy slams her macchiato to the table, sloshing dots of espresso to the table and making a chaotic blur of the delicately-crafted white leaf marking the surface. She storms over to the girl, who is for once not gawking at her.
“Listen,” Buffy says, hoping the girl speaks English, because there’s no way her anger will support fumbling through Italian, “I don’t know why you keep staring at me, but you need to just . . . just knock it off! I’m not a freak, and this is not a show, and-”
The girl looks in no way shamed. To the contrary: she smiles.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you all crazy and insecure. I just needed a model.”
Buffy is confused, and the rage slips away, leaving her deflated.
The girl picks up the tablet in her lap, then turns it around and holds it up for Buffy’s approval. It’s a pastel rendering of her, looking cranky over her macchiato. Cranky, but still endowed with the kind of unbelievable, fairytale cartoon beauty that a good piece of art creates. The pastel sun dances off her blonde hair, and her eyes are wide and shining, her mouth a beautiful, sensuous curve.
Buffy feels flattered, and very foolish. She blushes.
“I’m so sorry. I just-”
The grin grins. “Maybe I should have asked. But I don’t speak Italian; I’m doing this study abroad thing, and I ordered Italian for Dummies for my iPod for the plane ride over, right, but they accidentally sent me Croatian for Dummies, and I didn’t think that would be quite the same . . .”
Buffy smiles awkwardly. “It’s okay. I mean . . . sorry. Again.” She wraps her arms around herself, hoping for some sort of comfort from the situation. “It’s very pretty.”
The girl’s smile widens, her whole face lighting up. “Thank you! I think I just had a good model.”
Buffy doesn’t know what to say, just feels her blush firing up to full flame.
The girl sets the tablet down on the table. “I’m Nina. Maybe you could finish your drink with me, and we could talk about how awkward we both are? You’re my first and only Italian friend.”
“I’m not actually Italian-”
“Which is good, ’cuz as I said, I only learned the Croatian.”
Nina is still smiling, even through to her eyes. And what the hell. It’s not like Buffy has that many Italian friends herself.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll just . . . get my coffee . . .”
“I’ll just be here,” Nina says.
Buffy smiles.
***
Nina pays for the coffee, and insists that, in order to repay her, Buffy should model for her again. Buffy is embarrassed, but also enormously flattered, so she agrees and the two of them walk back to Buffy’s apartment.
Nina helps Buffy make a light dinner, and they eat and have too much Italian wine, and then too much Italian dessert, and then they leave the dishes on the table and go into Buffy’s sitting room, and sprawl leisurely on the couch. Nina gets out her supplies.
They can hear the couple next door watching soccer and screaming at the referee in vulgar Italian. Nina giggles.
Buffy frowns. “Thin walls.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Nina says, and Buffy believes her. “It’s like you’ve got a little slice of Americana right next door. You don’t even need TV.” She frowns. “What’s the Italian version of Americana?”
Buffy takes a sip of wine, the fruity warmth of it heating her chest, her cheeks, making her lightheaded. “No idea. My Italian sucks, too.”
Nina flips her tablet to a clean page, props it upon her knees, and begins sketching.
Buffy frowns. “Oh, don’t, I-I’m not ready . . .”
“You’re always ready,” Nina says, ignoring her. The little crayon moves faster and faster, scratching up and down the page. A smear of color begins to collect on the pinky side of Nina’s hand. “I guess maybe to do this right, you should be naked . . .”
Buffy blushes, not from the wine. “That’s . . . well, I actually did that once . . .”
Nina’s eyes leave pastel Buffy for the real thing. “For real?”
Buffy grins into the wide mouth of her wine glass. “I had this boyfriend who was . . . he drew a little. He wasn’t really artist, but . . . he could draw. And one time he asked me to . . .”
“How was it?”
Buffy doesn’t answer, just laughs. The sound echoes in her glass.
***
Buffy is unsure of how she ended up in this position. She’s almost positive Nina didn’t talk her into it.
“You have to stop moving!”
“I’m not!”
Nina fake glares at her from over her tablet. “Laughing counts as moving!”
Buffy tries not to giggle, but it’s not really working. When she works on not giggling, all she can think about is how serious she must look, and how funny that is.
Nina’s probably not working on her face, anyway.
The pastels scratch over the paper, and Nina’s face is scrunched in concentration. Buffy wonders what she’s working on: her shoulders? Her legs? Her breasts? Buffy imagines Nina’s clever fingers forming her naked body from white paper and soft crayons, the curves, the-
Buffy realizes, suddenly, that she’s beginning to get uncomfortable in a very private place, a place even Nina can’t see. She shifts to try and quash the tickle, but it doesn’t really work.
“Buffy! You’re-”
“We have to stop.”
Nina’s brow creased in concern. She sets down the pad, her pastels.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Do you-”
Buffy forgets about posing, crosses her arms over her chest. Nina’s face is raw with concern; she abandons the couch and comes over to comfort her model.
“I’m really sorry, Buffy; I didn’t mean to make you uncomfort-”
Buffy does not know what she’s doing, doesn’t think about it at all; her body moves automatically. Her hands close around Nina’s shoulders, draw her in, and then her mouth is crushing against the other girl’s and Buffy doesn’t even think it’s weird, because it helps. It’s helping a lot.
Nina is still for a moment, and then her hands slide around Buffy’s naked waist, and she’s kissing her back, and it’s good. It’s really good.
Buffy drives them back to the couch. They trip over the coffee table; Buffy’s knee sings in protest, but she ignores it as Nina’s soft body falls beneath her; the sofa catches Nina and Nina catches Buffy. Buffy writhes desperately against Nina, trying to silence the feeling between her legs that is now the only one she’s able to deal with, until Nina revolves their world, pushing Buffy to her back on the sofa and crawling on top of her, a mirror image of just a moment before. And Nina’s fingers are all over her, her thighs, breasts, mouth, inside of her, and the girl’s fingers leave bright pastel colors all over Buffy, war paint, and the last thought Buffy has before she isn’t able to think at all anymore is that it’s about damn time the neighbors had to listen to her have sex for a change.
Cleveland
Buffy is restless. She has all but dropped out of school, and more often than not she sleeps at Merrick’s so she doesn’t have to hear the constant stream of castigation and pleading from her mother’s weak mouth. She sleeps during the early morning, trains until it gets dark, and then she hunts. As long as nothing fucks with her routine, she’s more or less satisfied.
There are problems, though, when people fuck with her. You’d think everyone would have learned by now-even God, or fate, or whothefuckever sets all this shit up.
Cleveland has been almost totally bereft of demon activity for over a week. Buffy does not approve.
Merrick is concerned that this is a sign, that something so hugely dark is coming that any unhuman of any merit or brains has either packed up and left or is underground, planning and plotting.
Blah blah, end of days, blah blah. Buffy doesn’t care. She welcomes it. It’ll give her something to do. She just worries that they won’t come back.
Buffy is restless. Restless isn’t a good color on her. She puts two would be purse snatchers in the hospital, not realizing for a good two minutes that they’re just human punks, and not caring - not stopping - even after that. She breaks the punching bag in Merrick’s basement for a third time and he insists that she’s been training enough; maybe she should spend some time with her mother? Out of his house? Buffy leaves, but she doesn’t go home. She sleeps in the university library - soft couches, lots of empty space to avoid people in - until she’s too manic to not be moving. It’s still light, so she prowls the empty stacks, conserving her energy for nightfall.
What the hell is the point of all these books? There can’t be this much information in the world. Why don’t they just have one book with everything, and save some damn space?
The stacks rise around her like a redwood forest, reaching impossibly high. Jungle canopy high. Like there’s something up there for them beyond that ugly ass ceiling. It’s the most silent Buffy’s ever experienced-even graveyards have noise. Wind blowing, distant traffic, crickets. Grave soil sliding from newly-risen vampires. This, this damn no noise quiet, makes Buffy anxious. Like she’s being hunted, some weak prey completely unaware of the danger it’s in.
Buffy doesn’t really do unaware, and - frankly - the implication that she would really pisses her off.
She wants to leave the stacks-even though it’s still light, too early for her; even though she’s got nowhere to go. But she’s lost now in this maze of endless, towering shelves; she has no idea where she is, where she’s going, where’s she’s been. Everything looks the same: a prison of monotone. These books, with all their stupid knowledge, cannot help her. They cannot free her.
Buffy thinks, briefly, of just knocking a shelf over - they’re crowding her, inching in on her, and they’re tall as forever but she’s strong and sure she can fell them - but they wouldn’t all fall away, like dominos, and if they do maybe there will be police again, and she fucking hates dealing with the police. Daring escapes expend too much energy.
Buffy is lost, alone, in the library prison. In her frustration, she selects one of the useless books - they all look the same. Light-faded cracked jackets holding snug pages that might as well be blank - and throws it, as hard as she can, into the train tracks eternity of stacks stretching out to the horizon. She is pleased with the violent sound it makes, the tearing of the air, the crash of landing; it breaks the silence.
Buffy enjoys her triumph over the silence for a moment, and then resumes her search for an exit. As she continues winding through the endless shelves, she grows uncomfortable, needled: she can feel the silence creeping up on her again. The silence grows louder, whipping around her, and as it roars by her ears, its claws grazing her face, she whips around to face it-
“Books are our friends.”
Buffy is unsure of how to react. There is the book she threw - she supposes; they all look the fucking same - and it is being held by a girl, a girl with wide eyes and clear skin, shiny hair, pretty clothes. She has other books, large picture books with brightly-colored covers, clutched in her other arm, held close to her chest. She’s smiling.
Buffy lowers her fist.
The girl proffers the book. Buffy stares.
“I totally get it,” the girl says. “I mean, midterm hours in the library, the crazy kicks in-”
“You’re not a cop,” Buffy says.
The girl blinks. “I-no-”
The girl is wearing a soft, v-necked sweater. It reminds Buffy of her old cheerleading uniform. Push ’em back, push ’em back, push them waaaaaaay back! Buffy shakes the image from her head. That was some other girl.
“Then why do you care?”
“I-I don’t. I’m not here to come down on you or anything; I just thought you might need it-”
She holds the book out again. Buffy frowns.
“I don’t.”
The girl’s mouth folds in indecision. “Okay. Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your studying-is-evil time. I’ll just . . . I’ll put it here, okay?”
The girl sets the book upon an already bursting shelf. It disappears into the chaos; Buffy couldn’t pick it out if she needed to.
“So . . . okay!” the girl says, still sounding light, sweet. Like she is completely unchanged from this encounter; Buffy will immediately and completely leave her mind once she’s no longer in sight. “Bye, then. Happy studying.”
The girl turns and leaves. Buffy watches her go, but doesn’t follow. She can find her own way out.
Los Angeles
The city is so damn dirty and constantly under renovation that it takes her a long time to find the alley.
She hasn’t heard from Faith in almost a year, and then all of a sudden she gets a call out of the blue. Faith and the echo of a transatlantic connection.
“You bitch,” Faith says. It’s the first thing she says, immediate and angry, completely devouring Buffy’s attempt at hello. “He loved you more than anything, and you’re in fucking Rome.”
And then she talks for a full two minutes, mostly completely veil-less threats and more attacks on Buffy’s character, and this is how Buffy hears about what’s happened to Angel.
Less than a full day later, and Buffy is on her hands and knees, pulling up broken slabs of asphalt from the wreckage, throwing them behind her, in areas already searched, like they weigh nothing. She doesn’t hear them crash to earth. Her hands are bleeding, but the pain is more a numbness than a hurt.
Faith is below, in the sewers. Buffy suspects that, although the coming-at-it-from-both-sides approach is probably a good idea, Faith is still mad enough at her that she wants the distance. Buffy doesn’t blame her. She’s mad at herself.
Furious at Angel, but mad at herself, too.
Buffy’s hands are bleeding, and she has been digging for an unmeasurable time-time minutes, five hours, five years. The city noise has long since receded into the periphery of her consciousness; she could be anywhere.
(She has been anywhere, everywhere, in the world and out of it, and always the constant of chasing Angel.)
After a while, she realizes that the rubble is being cleared at nearly twice the speed it has been. She has help. Buffy looks up, expecting Faith’s scowling face. But it’s not Faith; it’s a skinny, dark-haired boy with an open face and bright blue eyes.
Buffy stops digging.
She wonders how long he’s been there.
“Who-”
The boys stops, too, sits up straight and looks at her. “Sorry. I probably should have said hello or something, but you looked pretty focused, and I didn’t want to bother you. I’m Connor. Are you the girlfriend?”
Connor. Angel’s son. Buffy has been warned; Faith filled her in during her you’re in fucking Rome diatribe. Warned that, hey, Angel’s got a kid! With Darla! And he’s Dawn’s age! Surprise!, and also that she should expect to meet the bouncing baby miracle, since he’s been in the alley every day. Looking for his father.
She doesn’t think Connor looks like Angel. But seeing him, a flesh and blood piece of Angel when Angel himself might be a pile of dust beneath this wreckage, still hurts Buffy deeply, a sharp and stomach-turning blow to the breastbone.
“I’m Buffy,” she says finally.
“Oh, Faith’s friend,” Connor says, and he smiles.
Buffy isn’t sure how to react. She turns back to the piles and piles of broken asphalt, broken buildings, broken glass.
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”
Connor joins her. The apparent ease with which he tosses the debris aside gives her the first remembrance of Angel.
“I thought you might be his girlfriend,” Connor says conversationally. “Angel’s, I mean. ’Cuz of the small, blonde thing.”
Buffy’s hands still over the rubble.
“-I mean, I couldn’t really see an art student out here digging through all this crap-”
Buffy may vomit.
“Angel’s dating an art student?” She hopes her voice sounds normal, but there’s probably no way.
“Yeah.” Connor chuckles. “She made him a vase.”
“And they were so serious you thought maybe she’d come out here looking for him?”
Connor stops digging, too, and looks up at her.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t-I guess I don’t know how to conduct myself around Angel’s friends.” He grins a little. “Except Faith. Faith’s pretty easy.”
Buffy’s brow wrinkles, but it’s obvious from Connor’s earnest expression that he wasn’t double entendre-ing, so she doesn’t say anything.
***
They dig for days. Faith finds a body, a big black guy with a shaved head. She screams, and pounds the broken pavement with her already bleeding fists, and Buffy doesn’t know what to think. What to feel. Connor tries to comfort Faith, and earns himself a black eye. She takes the body, by herself, to be laid to rest properly.
Faith is gone the rest of the day, and after that, she’s sullen, drawn.
“Angel’s dead,” she says the next evening. “We’re not going to find him.”
Buffy doesn’t want to think that, doesn’t want it to be true. It can’t be true . . . Angel’s Angel, too strong to be wiped off the planet. Too ingrained in her to be out of her life for good.
Except for that one time. She killed him that one time.
Maybe she thinks she’s special, that she was the only one who could kill him. That he can’t be dead without her permission.
***
Almost a week after they find the body, Connor finds Angel’s sword. Buffy slips in a pile of ash coming to collect it, and after that they all stop digging. Faith cries, actually cries, and she hits Connor again when he tries to put his arms around her, but there’s no strength behind the punch. She leaves with absolutely no pretense, and this time Connor’s smart enough not to go after her.
Buffy concentrates on the weight of Angel’s sword in her hand. She thinks of the way his body moved when he fought. How he could pick up a sword, or her, like it weighed nothing at all.
“I’ll tell the girlfriend,” Buffy says.
Connor gives her a name.
***
Angel’s girlfriend is small, and blonde, and very pretty. Buffy tries not to be jealous - he’s dead. Angel’s dead. It’s not like he’s there to be boyfriendly with anymore - but she can’t stop it. It affects her entire body like a sickness, making her stomach churn, sharpening her tongue.
Buffy waits outside Nina’s art class, watches the girl - the completely normal, everyday girl who Angel chose - smile and laugh as she forms a lithe silhouette from a heavy chunk of cold, grey clay. She waits until the girl leaves, still smiling, still laughing, and then she intercepts her.
“Nina,” Buffy says.
The girl stops, turns. She smiles, and Buffy thinks for the first time that maybe this girl has absolutely no idea that something may be wrong with her boyfriend.
“Yes? Do I know you?”
“Angel’s dead.”
The girl blinks her wide blue eyes. Once. All the smile has leaked from her face; it’s just slack, lifeless, like a mask.
Her bright, happy voice just a whisper, a memory. “What?”
“Angel’s dead,” Buffy says again, and then she turns and walks away, leaving Nina standing alone, her face fallen, empty.
She could have told her another way. Softened the blow.
A flame of anger lashes Buffy, whip quick. No. She doesn’t owe that girl anything.
If anything, Nina owes her.