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AUTHOR: Faith
DISCLAIMER I don't think I own any of these characters, but I could be wrong so if you see a name you don't recognize from the shows, it's my character.
SPOILERS Buffy's resurrection and shanshu. That's it.
FEEDBACK alwaysluv@lycos.com
RATING G all the way
AUTHORS NOTE Feedback is motivation.
SUMMARY Life altering traffic watching. Sounds lame, but I bet it's not what you think. B/R->B/A
Buffy Summers sat across from her boyfriend whom she had gotten back together with just two months before. He was going on and on about something in Iowa and she was leaning back in her chair, the fingers of her left hand strumming on her flat stomach and those of her right hand combing through her to rid it of knots as she stared out the window of the quaint little coffee shop and watched the traffic while only half listening to Riley's story. She had tried to listen at first, tried to appear interested, but the more he talked the more boring it got and she realized that he didn't care if she seemed interested or not he was just happy to talk. And she was quite happy with that. So, she sat back in her chair, her mind in the past on what could've been her future had a few things gone differently. She always pictured a return from the dead to be more exciting, but it was just like it had been before she died. As soon as Riley found out that she had been resurrected, which he had learned about five minutes after he found out that she had died, he had begged her to give him another chance. To her defence, she had been rather disoriented and probably would've agreed to anything at the time. So there she sat across from a man who claimed to love her even though she couldn't seem to care as much about him as she did about Mr. Gordo, her stuffed pig.
Nothing interested her since her return from the grave. Not Riley, not that he had interested her much before her demise, not Willow's problems with Tara or witchcraft, not Xander's upcoming wedding, and not Spike's proclamations of undying love for her. Nothing caught her attention until a large black car drove by. Suddenly she was sitting up straight in her chair straining to see it. She knew that car. There was no other like it, not even in LA. Finally something got to her and she couldn't help but see that Riley didn't notice the sudden change in his girlfriend. But she didn't have time to car about that. She was feeling, finally, and she liked what she was feeling. Memories flooded her. Memories of rides in that car, of making out in
that car, and of doing a lot of other things in that car. Memories and feelings of the owner of that car also flooded. She hadn't felt one emotion since she returned, other than self-pity and pain, and suddenly she was overcome with a boatload of them from love to anger, utter adoration to hate, blissful happiness to a pain no one should ever have to feel. And she loved it. She felt herself smiling her first true smile in almost two years.
But that smile soon faltered when her hope flickered. There was no way he could be driving that car, it was the middle of the day, a hot and sunny day, and he had destroyed the Ring of Amara hadn't he? So, he couldn't possibly be driving that car, his car could he?
"Riley," she interrupted him in the middle of one of his `back home' stories as she hurriedly gathered her belongings. "It's been well, I guess it's been nice, but" She trailed off as she quickly shrugged into the oversized leather coat that she never left home without since her resurrection.
"But? But what?" The Iowa farm boy asked as his girlfriend started to leave the table.
She paused beside him and looked into his soft blue eyes and almost wished that she loved him and not a ghost from her past and a possible shadow of her future. Almost. "But could you eve be happy with `nice' when you've had `amazing'?"
She rushed out the door before he had a chance to reply, leaving him very confused and wondering if they were still going to the movie that night, and she prayed that the little delay had not cost her the greatest hope of her life.
An iron hand squeezed her chest when she stepped out into the oddly calm afternoon and found the old car to be nowhere in sight. This couldn't be happening to her. Not about to give up, she ran to the corner, still unable to breath under the grip that immoveable hand had on her chest and heart. And then she spotted it parked across the street and down a bit and she drew a deep steadying breath that caught in her throat as she watched him walk out of the deli, a large brown bag in his hand, and into the sunlight without so much as a twitch as the sun's rays reflected off his dark glasses and chased all the shadows from his still pale, handsome face She admired him as he looked around him in search of someone (her?), gave a slight, dismissive shrug and opened his car door.
The sound of the door closing jolted her into action and she raced down the block, knocking over some freaky looking kid who yelled and swore at her, bounded over the passenger side door and landed smoothly in the seat beside him.
His head whipped around in surprise and she almost laughed at the expression on his face. Before he could speak she gave a bright smile and sweetly told him to drive.
It was several blocks later when her heart finally slowed to its normal pace, well what its normal pace was around him, and she was finally capable of speech. And, so, she started her tale. "There's this girl, you might know her, anyway, one day she's sitting in the cute little coffee shop with her nice and normal, if annoying and boring, boyfriend. He's telling her some god-awful Iowa story that she's heard at least two dozen times since she started dating him again two months ago, boring as can be, and she's staring out the window watching the traffic and thinking about what was and what could've been if she just went after what she had always wanted. This huge, black convertible catches her eye. She recognizes the car even though she hasn't seen it in almost two years. But it's not the car that grabs her attention, it's the owner, who couldn't possibly be driving it because, well, he has major issues with sunlight and all that fun stuff." He watches her out of the corner of his eye as she tells her tale and his heart melts to see the serene little smile on her beautiful mouth. "Now, as a girl who has died and been brought back not just once, but twice, she knows that nothing's impossible, so she has hope and, as a girl who has never seen a single one of her wishes come true, she has immense doubt. But, the hope is so strong and all of her dreams might finally be within her reach and that's all that she needs. She can't just ignore that she saw the car and there's no way she could ever ignore what she felt when she saw it and nothing could ever make her pass up a chance at her happily ever after with the most amazing man she has ever met.
"So, she breaks up with her normal boyfriend because, well, he's nice but he isn't amazing, and she runs out of the coffee shop, but the car is nowhere in sight. The car and the driver could be long gone, but she refuses to give up, she always refuses to give up when it comes to him. She runs to the corner and finally sees the car parked across the street and she's so happy that she feels like she might faint right there. But the driver is nowhere to be seen. Then, as she stands frozen to the spot, he comes out of a store and her heart is racing and she fears that she just might faint and lose him again. She watches him get into his car and when he closes to the door, she finds herself running down the street, knocking down some puck teenager with the pink Mohawk, gross tattoos, nose ring, everything, and let me just say eww!"
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth and he lets his lips curve into a smile. How he had missed her. But he didn't have time to take a stroll down that path, she was continuing with her story.
"When this girl finally gets to the car, just in time, by the way, she jumps in without a word and when he looks at her, she just smiles and tells him to drive and then starts rambling on when all she can really think about is how beautiful he looks in the sunlight and why he isn't on fire." She finally turns her eyes on him and delights to see a once rare smile on his delicious lips and aches to kiss him.
He steals a quick glance at her. "Good story, very interesting. You say I might know this girl?"
"Angel!" She cries in mock annoyance and lightly slaps at his arm. "How are you living and breathing and all that fun, wonderful stuff that you always wanted me to have?"
"Subtle." He says with a smile. And at her glare decides maybe it's best to just answer the question. He reachesover and takes her hand in his larger, warm one. "It's a long story." He says. "Do you have a while?"
She grins. "Well, since I'm no longer the slayer, the whole dying thing kinda wiped that out, I'm thinking I have about another fifty or sixty years."
"Okay." He looks over at her as he stops for a red light. "How about we go for lunch, I know the perfect spot for picnic, and I'll tell you the whole story."
"And then?" She asks in a whisper and held her breath while she awaited him answer.
He turned left and drew a deep breath before answering. "And then, we make love in the sunlit field, kind of a recurring dream of mine, then we get married, have three maybe four kids, and grow old together finally."
She giggled joyously at his plans for their future together. "Two rugrats and a dog." She compromised.
"Cat."
She grinned. "Both. And a SUV, not a van. I will not drive a grandma mobile, not even when I am a grandma."
He laughed. "It's a deal."
"Feels like a dream." She said on a happy sigh.
"But it's so much better." He whispered and gently squeezed her hand. "It's the rest of our lives."
Her thumb stroked his hand as she pulled it into her lap and rubbed his arm with her free hand. "Start your story."
He drew another deep breath and she thrilled with the knowledge that he finally needed to breath. "I guess it was almost a year ago that Wesley found the scroll, a prophecy about my redemption-"
"A year ago?" She interrupted. "Where you ever going to tell me?"
He shook his head without hesitation. "We didn't know when it would happen. I didn't know if you'd still be alive and then you kinda, well, died. I didn't want to get your hopes up for something that might not happen in your lifetime. Although, apparently I could've brought you back when it did happen."
She smiled softly at his joke, but it quickly faded. "What about this?" She indicated him and his obvious humanity. "Where you going to tell me about this?"
He took his hand from hers and lifted the paper bag between them. "Stopped to get lunch on the way to Sunnydale."
She smiled and this time it stayed. "How long ago did this happen?"
He looked at the clock in the dash. "Just over an hour."
"Oh." She breathed. "Back to your story."
He chuckled and took her hand again, holding it tightly in his, wanting any amount of contact with her he could get. "So, Wesley found this scroll"
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