Title: Crystalline

Summary: Uhm some kind of future type thing. Angst Buffy POV

Prompt: Am I reaching you now?

 

 

Once when I was little Dad took us all to Lake Tahoe for Christmas. It was the first time I’d ever seen snow and I was fascinated by it…the way the snowflakes stuck to the window. I’d stand there, my nose pressed to the glass, holding my breath so that I could see every intricate, lacy curve of the snowflake. Eventually I’d have to take a breath. It always melted the snowflakes into something much less magnificent and far more ordinary.

 

Every moment spent with Angel felt like that. If I took a breath…all the magic would disappear and leave something ordinary in its wake. It was okay, I couldn’t breathe when I was with Angel anyway.

 

Sometimes I wonder if it’s holding my breath that makes the moments crystalline. In any case they’re there, frozen in my mind just like those snowflakes on the window.

 

The last time I saw him….that’s more than snowflakes…it was an avalanche that still has the ability to sweep me completely under for days sometimes. I thought I’d drown, drown in perfect cold with sharp edges that cut, cut, cut and take my breath away.

 

Everything that led up to it is a blur. I know there was fighting…Giles has a detailed account of it. I’ve even gone and read it when the sharp edges were too much. I thought maybe knowledge would dull those blades.

 

It didn’t work.

 

There was fighting. So many vamps…demons. We were being overwhelmed and failing to hold our own.

 

And then it happened. The moment froze, my breath caught, I pressed my nose to the glass and I knew. I turned in time to see him reaching out to me…in time to hear my name and see the declaration of love in his eyes. We would forever be always.  I reached for him and I don’t know why. I couldn’t have stopped it. I couldn’t have changed it.

 

He’d already begun to turn to dust.

 

His ashes are in an urn beside my bed now and every moment with him is still crystalline.