Angel Rising
by Lesley

He came to her in the dead of night. The Betrayer. All these months he had sought her out all these weeks he had stalked her unseen, watching her every move. Observing her every meeting. Learning to know whom she knew. Now he was close to her standing at the end of her bed, he was almost close enough to touch, and he caught the lingering scent of her perfume rising from her sleeping form. The sensation in his exhausted mind was almost overwhelming. A strangled sob came from his throat. And one word.

"Buffy..."

At the sound of his voice, she moaned, tossed uneasily in her bed, twisting herself within the sheets.

Perhaps, he thought, the sound of his voice had evoked a nightmare of her nightmare past. Or perhaps some sixth sense - her greatly developed sixth sense - was telling her to wake.

The Betrayer didn't want her to wake. Not yet. He only wanted to watch her sleep. Over the past weeks, watching her had been his only pleasure. His only pleasure in... how long? Too long. He didn't want her to wake, not yet. Her waking would almost certainly spoil his dreams of their reunion. She would take one look at him and tell him to get out. To get out and go back to Hell from whence he'd come. And maybe then, she'd slay him. Again. For as many times as it took to ensure he was properly dead. Not that he could properly die...

So he backed off, wrapped himself in the heavy cloak he wore, and merged with the deepest shadows of her room, only wanting to talk to her, to touch her. Putting off the inevitable because he knew the pain to come. And because he couldn't bear to let her see him like this.

But she was stirring anyway now. Her senses, developed to a degree that few humans managed, had alerted her of danger. Struggling out of sleep, she threw back the bedclothes, sat up, her eyes searching the room. Still, The Betrayer kept himself invisible from her eyes. Still, he postponed announcing the news of his return.

"Who's there?"

Ah yes, she knew that something lurked in her private room. And she sounded not afraid - had she ever truly known real fear? - but angry that someone had dared to intrude on her sleeping hours.

"Who the Hell's there? Speak or..."

He faded out the threat that they'd be sorry, only listening to the sound of her voice. It had changed, her voice, from teenaged West Coast Californian schoolgirl, to something more mature, less sharp. More womanly. But of course, he reflected, even as he felt her searching eyes sweep the room again, she was a woman now. Over five years had passed since he last spoke with her and five years was a long time in anyone's life, let alone a life like hers. He found himself faintly amazed that she had lived so long.

His eyes studied her, drank her in now he was close, he could examine her properly. She looked more womanly too. Always beautiful to him, the years had only added to the enchantment she had always held over him. Blonde hair trailed over her shoulders, well cut and shining. Her full mouth, open as she breathed in the night air, trying to sense whatever lay in her room with her, was just as kissable, and for a second, he allowed himself to remember how he had kissed that mouth. How he had...

But no... This was no time for such remembrances. Would there ever be such a time again? He couldn't allow himself that luxury. Still, the sight of her slim body, well-honed and athletic, clad in jersey T-shirt and shorts, made him wish...

"Buffy," he whispered again, and this time she heard him. Had he wanted her to?

"I'm telling you, show yourself. Aren't you brave enough to face me?"

A careless taunt, flung out into the night. He saw her reach out, to the bedside table immediately beside her. On it a silver knife gleamed, a knife he hadn't seen before. He watched as she sat up until she was on her knees, holding the knife, ready to throw it at the least provocation. And he knew she would reach her target she was deadly accurate.

"I can't show myself," he said, and he saw her eyes, gleaming in the darkness, narrow with fierce concentration. Did she recognize the voice? he wondered. Doubtful: he sounded nothing like his old self these days. Truth to tell, he could barely remember what his old self had sounded like. Hopefully Buffy could help him find out.

"Why can't you show yourself? Are you afraid? You should be afraid."

He smiled a twisted smile before he replied. Had he believed, even for a second, that she had mellowed over the years? If he had, he had been wrong. She sounded, if anything, more cutting than she'd ever sounded before. Many times, especially at the end of their time together, her words had cut him, deeper than any weapon could have.

"Yes, I'm afraid." Admit it, he told himself. He was afraid. He was weak, lonely, a mere shadow of the creature he once had been, with barely any of the powers he'd taken for granted. Of course he was afraid. But mostly, he was afraid of her, and what she would say when she knew he was back.

"Afraid of me? Very sensible." He thought he heard a smile in her voice. He knew that smile: mocking, contemptuous, a smile that said she was in charge and whoever was messing with her had better stop it. "I'm getting tired of this. If you don't want me to impale you on the business end of this knife, because believe me, I can hit you, even if I can't see you, then you'd better tell me who you are and what you want. Quick."

"Buffy, don't you know who I am?" One last attempt at reprieve, one last moment before he saw the disgust on her face. Before the knife flew from her hand right into his blackened heart.

"Quick."

"It's me, Buffy. Angel..."

He closed his eyes, waited for the burning of the silver in his flesh, knew he would suffer the pain, and gladly, in atonement for the way he'd left, and the way he'd returned. But no pain came. He saw Buffy drop the knife from suddenly nerveless fingers, heard her gasp of shock, felt an evil little thrill of delight that he'd managed to shock her out of her oh-so cool attitude.

"You don't sound like Angel..."

"If you knew what I'd been through, the last few years, then you'd understand why."

She fell silent as she digested the fact of his return.

"The Betrayer," he heard her whisper at last. Saw her reach down to grab the knife from the mattress, apparently recovered enough to want the secure feel of the weapon in her shaking hands. "The Betrayer."

Angel was astounded to hear the bitterness in her voice. Was that really how she thought of him then? As The Betrayer? Was that what he had become to her?

"Get out. I don't want to see you, or hear you, or..." Words failed her apparently, for a few seconds anyway. "Do you want me to kill you?"

"Again?" Angel queried, remembering the last time, almost feeling it. Silence from Buffy.

Then: "I had to do that. To close the Hellmouth. You know I did. It hurt me. But not as much as you hurt me later. When you returned and then left again."

"I thought you understood..."

"So did I." A pause. She shifted the knife in her hands she was, Angel could tell, still poised and ready to throw it. "But the years since have taught me what you really were, Angel. No better than the rest of them. You took me and you used me and then you discarded me like an empty candy wrapper. Just as well have killed me, Angel. Might've been better." She took a deep breath. "So again. Why are you here?"

She made to move from the bed, made to move toward the shadows in which he had hidden himself. Could she see him? Angel wondered. No. Not with the cloak with which he had shielded himself.

"Please. Don't come any closer to me." His voice was perilously close to begging and he felt the halt of her progress. She stood in a pool of moonlight, a golden, avenging goddess. Suddenly he felt sick with wanting her.

"Why not?"

The wanting became a deep shame.

"I don't want you to see me... like this."

"Like what? Angel, stop with the stupid games." Impatient again, angry again.

"I'm not how you remember me to be."

"Oh, is that right? Face of an angel, heart of a lying, betraying..."

"Buffy..." The pain came out in the sound of her name: Buffeeee... The sound of a man dying. Who was, he reminded himself, already dead. Undead, anyway.

Perhaps the hurt in his voice softened her heart a little. The hands gripping the knife loosened a little. She still held the knife, but it dangled by her side now. Her face, although still watchful, mistrustful, had at least lost its hard uncompromising look.

"I need your help." Sensing that she was perhaps willing to listen.

"Where were you when I needed yours?" she retorted, but the anger had all but drained away. Only sadness remained.

"You know I had to go."

"Yes." More sadness. "Yes. I know. And now you're back, and now you want my help? How can I help you, Angel? We can only destroy each other. You told me that."

"I was right. Then. But like I said, a lot's happened since then, I guess to both of us, or else you wouldn't be here, in Rupert Giles's London home, away from your friends and family."

"My friends and family were suffering because of me. I had to leave." She paused, shrugged in the old way he remembered, smiled reluctantly. "Yeah. Okay. I get your point." A sigh. "What do you want from me, Angel? How can I possibly help you? And why can't I see you?"

How to phrase this? How to maintain the uneasy truce that had developed?

"I'm... damaged goods, Buffy. You wouldn't like what you saw."

She laughed harshly.

"How bad can it be, Angel? I've seen things a normal person wouldn't believe, you know that. You can't show me anything worse."

"You loved me once, Buffy. That's why I don't want to show you."

"Well I don't love you anymore, so if you want my help - and I'm not promising I'll give it - then you'll have to show me." Uncompromising again. The stubborn girl he'd known so well.

He took a deep breath it rasped in his chest, his throat like a death rattle. Standing, he let the heavy cloak fall to the floor. Moved toward her until he almost touched her the need to touch her was an agony. He looked at her face in the moment she saw and the look slayed him as he was once slain at the end of a stake through his heart. His lying, betraying heart...

"Oh, Angel..." She wanted to look away, he could tell, but she wouldn't. Buffy was courageous he knew that well, from the old times, but he knew that looking into his ruined face took more bravery than anything else she had ever done before. It was he who turned away first, unable to bear the pity in her shining eyes.

"Now you know." His turn to be bitter. "I've wanted to come to you so many times. I've watched you, Buffy. For a long time. Yes, a long time, but I haven't dared come before. Because I knew I couldn't stand for you to look at me like that."

"So what changed?"

"Finally, I couldn't bear for you not to see me. And because you're my only hope."

"Your only hope. Is that supposed to be flattering or what?"

"It's supposed to be the truth, nothing else." He moved away, back into the shadows where his ravaged, decaying features were less evident. "You can restore me, Buffy. I can't do it myself. Believe me, I've tried."

"Yeah. I bet you have. Look, I don't know what's happened to you to make you like this, and I don't know if I want to, but you can't come in here after five years away, knowing the way we parted, and expect me to just cave in and help you. Besides, what do I have to give you that others don't? Others of your own kind?" She spat the last words from her mouth. Your own kind. Well, he could understand her hate.

"Can't go to them. I'm outcast from them."

"Yeah? Betrayed them too? Poor Angel." Just as he believed they'd made progress, so she was back to her defensive self again. Angel was beginning to despair.

"All right. I'll go then..."

Hiding his face, he made for the door. As he turned the handle, her voice called him back. It was choked with tears. Suddenly, it seemed, she'd cracked.

"What d'you want me to do?" she asked, and he closed his eyes with relief, then closed the door again, went to her.

"I want you to let me feed from you," he told her, and waited for the laughter that he knew would follow.

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