Disclaimers : "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Angel" and its characters belong to Joss Whedon ::grr::. I think he should sell them to the fans. We'd treat 'em better <g>.
Note : That ending. Was. Awful. I was crying my eyes out, throwing pillows at the TV, and eating Oreos to console myself. I really don't have a life. This is for the 'lics and the Spectrum kids, as well as Lauren M. and Missy.

He thinks I don't remember it, any of it.

Something went wrong, I guess.

I'm glad it did. I don't care what went wrong. All I care is that I still have the memory of those precious few perfect moments.

Everything I've ever dreamed about, feeling that way. Perfect.

Too good to last. I should have known. Nothing good ever lasts long for me. Funny. You'd think that with the whole pain-misery-early-death thing I have going, maybe I'd get a little something good thrown in.

Not for me. Nope, no happy for Buffy.

Except just that little bit of time. Those almost-surreal moments. I even said that. That it was like a dream. Now that's all it will ever be. Lost time.

Time that's a day from now.

Time that will never really happen.

All because he thinks he has to protect me.

God, he's such a guy sometimes. He feels like he has the right to make decisions like these for me - for my protection, of all things.

He said he did this to save my life. That I'd die if he was weak, if he was human. I don't care.

I'd rather be dead than never feel that way again.

So many decisions he's made for me. Decisions that hurt me more than anything that would happen if I'd made them.

If I'd made the decisions, he wouldn't have left me to begin with.

I hate this. I can't live like this, half-empty inside, constantly trying to fill the gaping hole inside of me and never succeeding. And I think maybe before I was on the way to moving on, if not in my heart then in my mind.

But now I'm back to square one.

Because now I know that it's possible to feel that way. Now that I know that feeling, I don't think I'll ever be able to let it go...let him go...'cause I know I'd never feel that way with anybody else.

That feeling, it wasn't just happiness, bliss, because I know - at least, I hope - that I'll find that again. It was the feeling you get when something utterly impossible happens. Something you've never even dared to dream, because you know that if it did happen, that's all it would be. A dream.

All that this is, now. A dream.

But maybe, maybe if neither of us forget it - I know I won't - then it will still have happened. A rip in time that Angel created, a rip that shouldn't have existed, because if the whole human thing happened to begin with, it was meant to be, wasn't it?

It's nice to think it was meant to be.

To think that maybe the so-called 'powers-that-be' finally thought that we deserved a little happiness.

It doesn't matter now, though. Angel destroyed whatever chance we might have had. He destroyed something that mattered to me - it mattered a whole lot - and didn't even tell me until there were too many words left and no time to say them in.

Now I'll never get a chance to, because I don't want him to know that I know, that I remember. Whatever reasoning he came up with is, I'm sure, viable to him. No need to ruin it for him.

I sigh. Too bitter.

Maybe.

But I guess it's pointless to dwell on the impossibilities. To tour the wreckage of everything I - we - almost had.

Maybe, someday, I really will forget. Really will move on. It's nice to believe that.

But I don't.