✟ the lover that you hold is no more than a ghost;

[todoright]

BUFFY ANNE SUMMERS
BELOVED SISTER
DEVOTED FRIEND
SHE SAVED THE WORLD. A LOT.

When Angel first saw it there in the caves, his first thought was that it must be wrong. It had to be wrong - perhaps another example of the Island's terrible sense of humor. But the more he thought about it, the more he knew that denial wasn't going to change anything.

Comments

[chose]

It was difficult to tell where things had gone wrong. Angel's arrival or Spike's? Angel kissing her or her kissing Angel? Spike's rant or her slip up? Her mind told her to circle E for all of the above. The past few weeks had been nothing short of insanity, but as bad as things could get, Buffy never would have believed that Angel would take up the silence treatment with her had he not just passed her by without so much as a glance.

Maybe she should be sympathetic - Angel couldn't understand her and Spike any more than she could understand, say, him and Darla - but the sight of Angel's back turned to her did nothing to quell her anger.

"Nice to see you to," she spat from her seat under a large palm tree. So much for a quiet afternoon of nothing but sand, wind, and a stack of fashion magazines.

[todoright]

His silent contemplation was cut very short when it was interjected by a voice he knew so very well. One that currently sounded angry, for reasons he couldn't fathom right now. It felt like he was being haunted, dogged at his every step - but then again, he had returned from the dead, hadn't he?

Slowly, Angel turns halfway around to face her - maintaining a neutral face, but his voice was even quieter than normal. "Buffy. I didn't see you there." he offers up, his excuse at fixing what he guessed was making her angry.

[chose]

As observant as she knew Angel to be, it seemed unlikely that he could walk right by Buffy and not notice her. Years ago, she had told him that it threw her when he was around, that even when she couldn't see him, she could feel him. He had said that he knew the feeling and she had to believe it was still true - it was for her.

His reasoning, then, only alarmed Buffy. It took a lot to distract Angel so completely. A lot more than Spike.

Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.

"Sorry," she said, tossing a dated issue of W aside as she stood to her feet. "That was purposelessly snippy. It's just that... things around here, they've been a little... tense. It's not just me, right? They've been tense?"

[todoright]

"It isn't just you." although as far as perspective went, this level of tension was becoming more and more normal for Angel, especially given the past couple of weeks back home. Someone like Buffy, used to spending months on an idyllic tropical island, probably wasn't used to familiar people landing on the island in about the course of a week.

This isn't about Spike, though. Although a sharp jab of anger builds in the bottom of his stomach as he thinks about him and Buffy. The emotion is momentary, though, when he realizes that it was Buffy's choice. And Buffy chose Spike.

Today, however, he's got bigger things on his mind than his century-old thorn in his side.