Part Two
Watching,
I keep waiting, still anticipating love,
Never
hesitating to become the fated ones.
Turning
and returning to some secret place to hide;
Watching
in slow motion as you turn to me and say,
“Take
my breath away.”
In the nearly two hundred and fifty years that had passed since Angel had risen from the grave a newborn vampire, the cemetery had grown and the town had grown around it. Standing inside the front gate, with Buffy at his side, he froze. An odd, distracted part of his mind noted that this was the first time he could remember entering a cemetery to pay his respects to the dead, not to deal with the undead. This was the first time he’d seen a cemetery in daylight.
Buffy’s hand was on his arm, gentle and reassuring, and Angel sighed. She was right – he needed to do this. But standing here now, all Angel found himself remembering was his own grave, rising confused and hungry, and Darla watching pleased as he made his first meal of the groundskeeper. He shivered slightly at the memory.
“Hey,” Buffy’s voice was soft, concerned. “You okay?”
Angel nodded and swallowed before he could trust himself to speak. “Memories,” he said at last.
“You weren’t the same person then that you are now,” she said confidently. “Surely they know that as well as I do.”
Angel nodded slightly, not telling her what he’d actually been thinking about. The closer he came to living a normal human life, the more unsettling such memories became. One moment he was content in the company of his new wife, the next he was remembering what it felt like to crawl from the grave. There was a headstone with his name on it – his human name, unused for centuries – in this very cemetery. He could think of no other living being that could say the same.
And then, as if Buffy’s words had triggered it, Angel’s mind went to the death of his own family. At his hands. His victims. While intellectually Angel knew those actions were the fault of another, the demon that still shared his flesh, that did not change the fact that he could still remember how their blood had tasted…
Buffy squeezed his arm. There was little she could do to comfort him at the moment, but her presence here was enough. It was unlikely he’d be able to go through with this without her. Looking down at her for a moment, Angel forced a smile.
Buffy was visibly relieved. “So,” she said at last. “Where exactly are we going from here?”
Angel was flustered for a moment. “Uh…I don’t know, exactly.”
“’Cause I’d rather not wander the cemetery aimlessly,” Buffy pointed out. She looked up at him for a second with an odd grin on her ace. “Is it just me, or is it weird to be in a cemetery in the daytime?”
Angel smiled very briefly back. “If we can find the older sections of the cemetery, I can find them,” he said at last. That of course assumed they’d been buried together. Please, let them be buried together. In truth, Angel didn’t even know if they’d been buried, if they’d had a proper funeral. There had been such fear in the village by the time he took his family’s life….
He forced his feet to move along the cemetery path. He had to find them. Somehow, he just had faith that he would.
“Can I help you?”
It was a sign of how preoccupied Angel was with his thoughts that the older man startled him with his presence. He was dressed in plain clothing that was dirt spattered, and Angel guessed he was the groundskeeper. Immediately Angel’s mind went back to the groundskeeper when he rose; his first victim.
The expression on Angel’s face must have been peculiar, for the man looked at the two of them uncertainly. “You looked a bit lost. You looking for something?”
Seeing that Angel wasn’t going to answer, Buffy smiled at the man. “Some of his ancestors are buried here,” she lied easily. “We were hoping to pay our respects, but we don’t know where their, uh, family plot is.”
The man smiled slightly. He turned from them and called out to a barely seen person a short distance away. “Shannon!”
The woman in question weaved around some shrubbery to join the man on the edge of the path. She was a bit older than Buffy and had a large camera slung over one shoulder. “Yes?”
The groundskeeper turned back to the two of them. “Shannon’s a bit of an amateur historian,” he explained. “If anyone can help you find something, she can.” He looked at the woman hopefully. “You got time to help…” he paused and looked back at Buffy and Angel. “I didn’t get your names.”
“I’m Buffy, and this is Angel,” Buffy explained easily.
“They’re looking for ancestors,” the groundskeeper said to the woman.
Shannon smiled. “Sure, I can help,” she said.
The groundskeeper smiled back at her and returned to his work.
“So,” Shannon said at last, “what are you looking for? What time period?”
Finally Angel managed to bring himself to speak again. “1753,” he managed.
Shannon looked at him a bit wide eyed. “A lot of deaths that year,” she said.
Angel winced. The smell of fear, boarded up windows, old myths thought incorrectly to protect, and Darla’s laughter…
“I wonder what happened that killed so many?” the woman was still saying to herself. Then she smiled. “Well, no matter. I can get you to the right general area. I hope that will help.”
“Thank you so much,” Buffy said, smiling back. “I was afraid we were going to wander in here for hours.”
Angel said nothing, but followed the woman’s lead with Buffy’s hand tight in his own. He searched the surrounding area, searching his oldest memories for anything at all that looked familiar. All the grave stones looked so similar, blending together in his head… Conversation fell silent as they walked, and every once in a while Buffy would squeeze his hand in reassurance. Angel could not bring himself to smile at her in turn. He was so…nervous, he supposed.
“Well,” Shannon said after a little while. “This is the right area. Now, what’s the name you’re looking for?”
But Angel wasn’t listening anymore. He dropped Buffy’s hand and walked between the headstones, knowing exactly where he was going now. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He heard Buffy and their guide a short way behind him as he walked. He stopped abruptly, facing four headstones that were too familiar for all that he’d never come to visit there before. Weather had worn them away until they could no longer be read at all…but he knew.
Standing facing the graves of his family, Angel found he had absolutely nothing to say.
Buffy stood back, looking at Angel with absolutely nothing to say. They’d both known, when they’d chosen this destination for their honeymoon, that this was something they were going to have to do. Or, more precisely, something Angel had to do. Only he could make peace with the deaths of his family. No matter how much Buffy wanted to stand by his side, wrap her arms around him and make the pain go away, she knew that this was one thing he was going to have to do on his own.
Their guide through the cemetery had not left them when Angel had found the graves she sought, but stood a couple of steps to Buffy’s right. Buffy looked at her, and the young woman turned to meet her gaze. Quietly, Buffy closed the distance between them.
“So,” Buffy said softly, not wanting to disturb Angel, “you’re an amateur historian?”
Shannon shrugged. “Not really. I’m actually a nursing student. I just…have a thing for graveyards.”
Were the moment different, Buffy would have smiled. She knew how that felt. Instead she just nodded.
Shannon didn’t notice. She was watching Angel with a very peculiar expression on her face. Angel was now crouching over one of the graves, his fingertips just barely touching the weather-darkened stone. “Your ancestors?” she asked simply.
“His family,” Buffy replied, a total truth that could be easily interpreted differently from how it was meant. Buffy ached to comfort Angel, and was wracking her brain for any conversation to distract herself. “One of the headstones is damaged,” she said abruptly.
The one to the left of the one Angel was touching had a large crack down the middle, nearly splitting it apart. Shannon frowned. “It’s empty,” she said.
“What?”
Shannon shrugged. “There’s no one in that grave,” she explained.
Buffy shivered involuntarily. No matter that she knew Angel had a grave, that he had risen like so many vampires Buffy had staked on their very first nights. Hearing someone else confirm that grave was directly in front of her…just reminded her of how bizarre her life was. “How do you know?” she asked.
Shannon looked at Buffy again, and there were hints of embarrassment in her gaze. “It’s going to sound strange…” she began.
“Probably not,” Buffy replied. “You’d be surprised.”
Shannon glanced at Angel again, then nodded. “Perhaps.” She shrugged. “I…have a sense of the dead, I guess.”
Buffy cringed. “Wow. Morbid,” she said. She’d never heard of such a thing. “And yet you’re a nursing student?”
Shannon smiled. “Gotta have something to balance it out.”
Buffy watched as Angel stood, his shoulders slumped unhappily. She excused herself from the young Irish woman and no longer resisted the impulse to rush to Angel’s side. She stepped next to him, not touching him at first. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Angel did not look at her. He sighed, and Buffy gently clasped his hand, giving it a slight squeeze. He looked at her, then gave her a very slight smile. “Not really,” he replied.
Buffy understood. Or, well, not really, because she had never killed her family and outlived them by centuries, but it hurt her to see him hurting. She felt it. “I think they would be proud of you now,” she said. “I think they’d be happy for us.”
Angel smiled, a hint of humor in his gaze despite the pain. “I think my father would be absolutely shocked that I’m married.”
Buffy chuckled. Reassuring, she gave his hand a slight squeeze.
Angel nodded. “Thank you,” he said.
Buffy knew what he meant. “Always,” she replied.
Removing his hand from hers, Angel took three white roses from under his coat. Gently, he placed one on each of the graves, leaving only the broken, empty one bare and neglected. Buffy tried not to look at it as they turned away.
He nodded very slightly to Shannon as they passed, thanking her without words for her help. She nodded back.
It could have been Buffy’s imagination, but she could have sworn she felt the young woman’s curious gaze follow them all the way out of the cemetery.
On to Part
Three
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