Fading Footsteps
By Passion Angel

Summary: Set immediately after the last scene of "Lover's Walk". Buffy has just left after telling Angel that they can't see each other anymore.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, or anything else BtVS related. They belong to Joss and his Hollywood pals. I'm just a humble and penniless fan of B/A angst, so please don't sue!

He sat there staring sightlessly, frozen in a scream of silence.

Stillness. Everything was stillness. Stillness that echoed with the fading footsteps of his world that was walking away from him forever.

This numbness, it was comforting in a way. But slowly his mind began stirring with thoughts, and the pain seeped inside. Their meeting played over and over in his memory until his entire mind became one awful feeling of despair. She was gone... because he loved her.

But how could he have possibly denied that love out loud? It was painful enough not to tell her every second that he loved her. But to actually say that he did *not*... the mere idea made him tremble. For she was the air he could no longer breathe. The curse may have given him back his soul, but she had returned to him his humanity.

All this time, he had deluded himself that he was her guardian Angel. But she had never really needed protecting; Whistler had brought him to her because he knew that she was Angel's only hope.

But in solitary moments such as this, he knew that he would forever be the demon that he loathed so desperately. He would have sought sanctuary in sunshine long ago, had it not been for her saving light. She was the sunlight that he could never bathe in. The sunlight that would set him on fire. And kill him.

What was it that Spike had said? "Love isn't brains, children, it's blood, screaming inside of you to work its will." Angel knew that the "just friends" facade would crumble eventually, but he had not expected this total separation. Perhaps if they had sat down together at the beginning and seriously discussed their feelings instead of playing this game of denial...Oh, so many regrets.

He could understand why she had left him. An Angel like her can't stay long in Hell. Her life could be so much better without him. She had her friends, school, and now a whole new range of possibilities for the future. A bright future that his shadow would only darken. Like she had said; he could never give her what she wanted. She could be normal again, live a normal life...with someone who was normal. She had a right to move on...to the living.

God, how much pain had he caused her? He, who loved her so intensely that just to think of her left him breathless. Had he not yet learnt that everything he touched, he was doomed to destroy? He was gifted that way; a natural talent, no curse necessary.

So it was best that Buffy escape his claws before he inflict any more suffering. He only wished that it were possible for him to do the same. But that was his punishment: eternal torture in the prison of his damned soul. And now that he was alone he could no longer hide from Fate. He would return to serving his sentence, alone in the familiar darkness. But this time there raged a torment worse than all those that ordinarily plagued him. Worse than the terrified cries of centuries of innocent victims, or their callously mocked pleading. Worse than his own screams of unendurable agony, or the disgusting whimperings of the shell he had become. Now there was a new sound that rang mercilessly in his ears, against which, all the other noises melted to soothing music. It was the cry of fading footsteps.

The End