Sunnydale Wholesale Beauty Supply, Ch. 34


That night, Sunny was running through a deep, old forest that was
curiously Olde England, like the old movies Meena liked to watch.
There was a path, actually, carpeted by old leaves, so she couldn't even
hear her footsteps. She couldn't hear birds, or traffic, or anything but the
her own heartbeat, in her ears. Because it was night, but a moonlit
night, it was still Sunnydale.

So she ran.

She burst out into a clearing, more like a broad, open space like a soccer
field, and she wondered if she was in a park, but there were no lights,
no picnic tables.

Just the silver moon reflected on the oval of a little pond.

She realized where she was, and stopped running, and bent over, hands
on her thighs, getting her breath back. She straightened her back, and
walked over to the pond, and to the edge.

A silhouette detached itself from the dark treeline framing the clearing,
and resolved itself into Angel. Angelus.

Him.

"I thought the spell was broken," she said, to his reflection in the pond.
He was looking at his reflection, too, again, with the same wonder as
before. "Is this an Aesop's fable about going too often to the well?" She
saw the reflected face look up, and she looked up, too, across the pond.

She swiped her hair from her face. "Or am I dead? Did I jump off the
roof, for real?"

"You jumped off the roof," Angel said, shaking his head. Sunny's knees
got wobbly, and she sat down on the grass with a graceless thump.

Which hurt.

"You jumped off the roof and I got you. Are you going to do that again,
just to fix me?"

"What's the diff, if I do it myself, at least I have control over when
something gets me. You do remember where we live?" She knew she
was full of shit even as she said it. "I mean, if I'm Airmed reincarnated,
she'll just find some other poor clueless life, won't she?"

He took a step around the little pond---the well---and stopped. "I'm
Catholic. I don't believe in reincarnation."

"Well, I was baptized Catholic, but I think the fam kinda dropped the
whole----and do you know how weird that is, to hear a vampire say he's
Catholic?"

Angel came all the way around, and dropped beside her with a boneless
ease. "I'm not the vampire," he said. "I'm the other part." He took her
hand and put it against his other wrist. "Still dead, though."

There was no pulse under her fingertips. Which was, uh, oddly familiar
and comforting.

"How fucked is it that I'd have been really freaked if your heart was
beating?" she asked him. "So why am I here? So you can lecture me
about suicide and reincarnation?"

"So I can tell you that you're not Airmed, no matter what kind of spell
she put on your family and you." He put her hand back on her lap. "I
knew her, and you're not." He leaned back on his elbows, looking at the
moon. "I don't know why she did it."

Sunny felt her throat get tight. "Because she loved you and wanted to
save you?"

He gave her a direct look. "She was a pagan. She wasn't interested in
my soul."

"Maybe she wanted to make sure you'd go on. That you'd be protected."

He shook his head. "That's you. "

"You know, I get enough lecturing---"

"Be quiet. This isn't a game."

"But I thought it was. " Her voice was getting high. "I thought that was
the point. I'm a fucking pawn in the game, right? In your game with
Buffy."

He just stared at her for a moment, until she dropped her eyes, watching
her hands tear at the grass.

"Buffy....can take care of herself," he said, eventually. "You can't."

"So I'm just the victim in the alley. " She thought for a moment, and
blushed.

"Stay out of alleys," he said drily. He stood up, and held out his hand.
She put hers in it, and he pulled her to her feet. For a moment, she
thought he was going to kiss her, but no, that was evil Angel who did
that.

"You're not a pawn," he said, looking down at her. He touched her hair.
"You're a player."


Someone was tapping on her bedroom window. 

She sat up, tears running down her face. 

The tapping continued. She threw off the quilt and pulled aside the
curtain.

In the alley below, in the half-light of almost morning, stood Brooks.

"Let me in downstairs, before I fry. I have to tell you something."

"Okay," she said.