HOPELESSLY DEVOTED
By
Nikki Harrington
It's dangerous, but they still keep on doing it.
An established relationship story.
Written: November 2014. Word count: 2,020.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
Too much history.
Too much intensity.
Too much hope.
Too much hopelessness.
Too much past.
Too much pain.
Too much hatred.
Too much blood.
Too much danger.
Too much love.
Too much devotion.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
It was dangerous; it was very dangerous. Each time they did it they risked so much. They risked one another's lives; they risked the world; they risked Angel's soul; they risked their love. They risked everything. But they couldn't stop. Their love, their devotion, their want, their need, their shared past meant they couldn't stop.
It was wrong; they knew it was wrong. They were being selfish; they were risking so much; they were putting so many other people at risk just because they couldn't stop. Couldn't stop the thing they had started all those years ago.
All those years ago. They can both still remember the first time; the first time they made love. The first time Buffy had ever made love. They can still remember what that wonderful, that perfect night had cost them - had so very nearly cost the world.
Buffy remembers every second of it; both the night and what happened because of the night. She remembers Angelus. She remembers how love turned to hate, the kind of hate you can only feel because you still love. She remembers how more than once she had had the chance, the opportunity to rid the world of Angelus, but she couldn't do it. She couldn't kill the only person she would ever truly love. Even as Angelus caused havoc and destruction, killed, maimed, destroyed, taunted, teased and tested her, she had known she would never love anyone in the way she had loved Angel.
Angel who had been taken from her. Angel who, because of his love for her, because of the intensity of his feelings for her, had experienced that one moment of true happiness and had become Angelus again. Angelus the most feared, most reviled, most hatred, most devastatingly destructive vampire. Cruel beyond the meaning of the word. He didn't just kill; he destroyed and took great pleasure in doing so.
Angelus who . . . Angelus who finally, in the moment Willow had been successful with her spell, once more became Angel. Angel the person she loved with all her heart, soul and very being. Angel who she killed. She hadn't been able to kill Angelus. She had been able to kill Angel and not only kill him, but also send him to hell. In doing so had killed herself, even though she had continued to live; she had been dead; dead inside. Only Angel made her alive. Only his ultimate return gave her her life back.
Sometimes, as they lie together, risking so very much, she wonders, she allows herself to wonder, what she would have done had Willow's spell worked minutes before it did? Would she have still been able to kill Angel? Would she still have been able to kiss him and then stick a sword through him, kill him and send him to hell simply to save the world? Would she?
She likes to think she would have had the strength, the mental and emotional strength, but even now, some fifteen years later, she doesn't truly know if she would have, if she could have, done it. She's never told Angel and she never will. He made her promise, when they came back together, when they admitted they were, as the Powers That Be had said: 'stronger together than apart', when they recommenced their dangerous relationship, that if the day ever came when he once again became Angelus that she would kill him immediately.
It was a promise she knows she won't be able to keep, not even to rid the world from the monster that is Angelus. Instead she made Willow teach her the spell and provide her with the orb she needed, so that she would be able to once more restore his soul to her. Yet deep down she knows that won't happen, because Angelus would kill her before he would let her turn him back into Angel. And then Angelus would once more walk the earth and it would be her fault. Her fault for loving him so much, for being so devoted to him.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
Too much history.
Too much intensity.
Too much hope.
Too much hopelessness.
Too much past.
Too much pain.
Too much hatred.
Too much blood.
Too much danger.
Too much love.
Too much devotion.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
Angel remembers too. He remembers their first night, their first time, the wonderful beyond reason, beyond words, beyond expectation, experience of making love to Buffy. Even all these years later he still doesn't really know what made it so wonderful. She had been so young, young, innocent, a virgin. He had made love to her; he had been the first person to penetrate her, the first person to hear her cries of pleasure, the first person to feel her. It had been so wonderful, so very wonderful. And so very deadly; so very costly; so very, very destructive.
It had been so good it had given him what no one had expected: a moment of perfect happiness, and in that moment his soul had been snatched from him and he had once again become Angelus.
Angelus whose one desire was to hurt, to destroy, to maim, to stalk, to torture, to taunt, to kill. And yet he hadn't been able to kill Buffy. He'd had more than one opportunity, but he hadn't been able to kill her. Even now he doesn't know if his inability to kill her had been simply because before he killed her, he wanted to mentally torture her, to hurt her beyond measure, to maybe even drive her mad. Or had it been something else? Had some small, minute, unreachable part of him still been Angel? Had something in him still loved her? Her whom as Angelus he hated, hated with a hatred he had never felt for another. Buffy: his enemy; his lover. Buffy who had made him Angelus once again. Had he perhaps loved her as much as he hated her?
As Angel and Angelus he had known many women, many, many women. He'd loved some of them; he believed he'd loved some of them. Darla, Dru - but had he? They'd been his when he'd been Angelus; how could he have loved them? A black love, a dark, destructive love, they ran together, they had sex, they were bound together in a strange kind of evil - but was there love? Could vampires know love? He didn't know then; he still doesn't know.
All he knows is of all the women he had bedded and enjoyed, no one had ever touched him as Buffy did, in the way Buffy touched and still touches him. She's inside him; she's outside of him; she surrounds him; she shelters him; she makes him whole; she gives him hope; she gives him belief; she makes him.
It's wrong what they do. It's so wrong and yet so right, so beautiful - even though every time they come together he dare not allow himself to plunge totally inside her; to be swallowed up by her; to let her wrap herself around him; to almost become her. He dare not give himself up to the beauty of loving her as he did all those years ago, because to do so would once more make him Angelus. And he has no desire to return to being that evil person.
He knows, even though she promised she would, that if it happened she would not kill him; she could not kill him. He knows about the spell Willow so painstakingly taught her; he knows about the orb; he knows about her plans to turn him back, should the worst happen. He knows.
Just as he knows the first thing he would do if he once again became Angelus would be to snap her neck. Her pretty, white, delicate neck. Angelus would put his hands around it and snap it; snap it before she could make him Angel again. He knows this. Just as he knows he would then, just as he did before, drink from her; he'd drain her blood; the blood of a slayer; he would kill her, then he would drink from her. Then he would return to his life of evil and slaughter and destruction - stronger than he had ever been, because he had killed a slayer. Killed the last true slayer.
The fear that one day it might happen, that one day it could happen, that every time they played their dangerous game, every time they made love, every time they risked humanity, should have been enough to stop him from making love to her, from kissing her, from holding her, from caressing her, from loving her. But it isn't. Nothing is. Nothing could be.
He loves her more than he loves himself. As Angel he loves her more than he loves his life. He loves her more than he loves the world he once vowed to protect. He loves her more than he loves anything, more than he has ever loved anyone. And as long as he remains Angel he will never cease to love her. Even as she grows older and he doesn't, he'll still love her. He'll love her until the day he places her in her coffin; the day that coffin is lowered into the ground. On that day he will walk out into the sunlight because he cannot live without her; he does not wish to live without her.
The Powers That Be were right: together they are stronger than apart. They always have been, always, and they always will be. He no longer has a life without her, he's not sure he ever did - not even during the years he spent in LA.
A few years ago they had talked, one of the most serious conversations they had ever had. They talked about him turning her into a vampire so that they could always be together. She could then do as Spike did and do the quest to have her soul returned to her. Then they could have eternity together; nothing would ever part them.
In the end they had decided the risk would be too great. What if he couldn't control her once he'd turned her? They never had truly determined who the physically stronger was. What if she got free and went out into the world and destroyed, maimed, killed? What if she failed the quest? What if her soul was not returned? There were so many what ifs, they chose not to take the chance.
So instead they just continued doing what they did; being together, loving together, risking so much. It was so dangerous, so very dangerous, but they couldn't stop. Their love; their devotion for one another was too deep, far, far, far too deep. In many ways it was hopeless; it always had been; it always will be. But they can't stop. Hopeless or not, it was what they were; what they always will be.
Danger had always been a part of both of their lives; maybe they couldn't exist without danger. Maybe that's why they went on risking his soul, her life, the world, their love, their lives, everything. Maybe they needed the danger. Whatever it was they would go on doing it; they would go on risking everything. They shouldn't. But they would. It was what they were. It was who they were.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
Too much history.
Too much intensity.
Too much hope.
Too much hopelessness.
Too much past.
Too much pain.
Too much hatred.
Too much blood.
Too much danger.
Too much love.
Too much devotion.
There was too much between them for them to stop.
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