Buffy was afraid to open her eyes, afraid that if she did, the sight that greeted her would not be the one she so desperately wanted to see.

But if she could not see, she could feel. The wounds and bruises that had been inflicted upon her were all gone, her pain no more than a too-vivid memory. Strong arms were around her, holding her close to a body as naked as her own, a body she knew intimately. She was being rocked tenderly, soothed, reassured.

Cherished.

"You needed to see. You needed to know. I’m so sorry, love, so sorry. . ."

She knew that voice, in all its incarnations: every nuance and intonation conveyed to her a world of meaning beyond the sense of language alone.

"We can only come to you when he isn’t near, and there’s so much you have to understand."

"Angel?" she whispered, still afraid to hope for so much. Was this some hideous new torture Angelus had devised for her? There was no use delaying: she had to know. Buffy opened her eyes.

She was not in the suite of the hotel. Nor was she in the bed she shared with Angelus at the cottage. She knew this place: Angel’s apartment, where they had made love on her seventeenth birthday. She couldn’t really be there, of course. Angelus had moved most of the apartment’s contents to the mansion, and Angel had retrieved whatever had been left, packing it off to his new home in L.A. Yet Buffy now found herself in the bed where she had given her virginity to Angel, unwittingly releasing Angelus into the world.

But it wasn’t Angelus who held her in his arms, not Angelus who soothed away her tears. It was her own lost Angel gazing down at her in concern, his dark eyes grave and intent. She stared deeply into those eyes, intuitively recognizing the soul to be read there, knowing that this was no game, and Angelus was not with her.

All the pieces fell into place.

"I’m dreaming." It was a statement, not a question, and she didn’t really need Angel’s nodded assent for confirmation. Her prophetic Slayer dreams had always been possessed of a quality of immediacy--of reality-- that normal dreams lacked. Angel looked at her sorrowfully.

"Yes," he said. "I’m sorry." For a moment, she thought he was expressing his regret for what Angelus had subjected her to in the dream, but then she understood. Angel had no need to apologize for what Angelus hadn’t even really done . . .unless he were apologizing for subjecting Buffy to the vision, in the first place.

"You . . .you did this to me?" She tried to pull away from him, shocked that the man who loved her so much, whose love for her had been her main source of strength to endure whatever Angelus dealt out to her, had somehow subjected her to such an horrific experience, real or not. Confusion and hurt overwhelmed her, and she struggled to get free. But Angel tightened his grip on her, and pulled her back into his arms.

"I’m trying to keep him from doing that to you," he said fiercely. "What you saw, what you dreamed . . .if you try to escape him, that’s what will happen. Every blow. Every cut. Every torment."

The only thing more horrific than the vision inflicted upon her was the idea that she might actually have to live through the experience. Buffy’s anger evaporated, and she collapsed back into the arms of her lost love. "No," she said, shivering against him. "I can’t--"

"You won’t," Angel said firmly, holding her close, drawing her head down to rest on his shoulder, then caressing her soothingly. "You’ve beguiled him, my love," Angel reassured her. "Your willingness, your yielding intoxicates him so that he’s enjoying being tender with you. It’s a novelty for him. You’ve made him forget how much he likes pain. I don’t want you to make him remember."

"Not kill, at least, not innocents. He won’t feed." Angel chuckled wryly. "He’s taken too much of your blood. It’s ruined him for anything else. He’ll be able to tolerate animal blood, but human blood will taste like garbage to him, now that he’s become used to the elixir of Slayer’s blood that runs in your veins."

"That won’t stop him from killing people for the fun of it," Buffy pointed out.

"No, it won’t," Angel acknowledged. "You’ll have to persuade him not to do that."

"Is that even possible?"

"It has to be. Everything happens for a reason, Buffy," Angel said earnestly. "Some of the things he said to you, the things you didn’t want to hear . . .he wasn’t wrong. But, he didn’t get it all right, either. You’re beginning to understand that. You’ve already realized that if you were made for him, then he was made for you. But, he was wrong when he said that my only purpose was to lead you to him. It wasn’t. It isn’t."

Buffy raised her head from its comfortable position against Angel’s shoulder and stared deeply into his eyes once more. "You’re saying that there’s a reason why I’m supposed to be with Angelus. That there’s a purpose to all of this. Does that mean . . .are you saying that you can come back to me?" she breathed, almost afraid to ask, afraid to have this sudden, unexpected and fragile hope dashed. Angel held her gaze, but his expression was somber.

"I don’t know, Buffy," he told her. "Where I am . . .I haven’t been given any promises. Just a few hints. I only know that you have to trust, have to have faith. There’s a reason why you and I were brought together, and a reason why Angelus is obsessed with you. Find that reason, Buffy." Angel’s head suddenly turned toward the door.

"We don’t have a lot longer."

"No!" Buffy said in alarm, sitting up, clinging to him. "I can’t . . .I need you."

"Buffy . . ."

"It’s not enough time," she insisted. "I can’t just . . .get you back for a few minutes, and then lose you. Please!"

"It isn’t the same," Buffy said sadly. "Even when he isn’t hurting me, Angelus likes things I don’t think you would ever ask me to do."

"No, I would never ask you to do them," Angel said wryly. "But, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy them if you did them without my having to ask."

Buffy took a moment to digest that. "Oh," she said in a small voice. The idea wasn’t as upsetting as it should have been. The truth was, when he wasn’t hurting her, there wasn’t anything Angelus had done that he hadn’t made her thoroughly enjoy. Would some of those things be even more delightful if she were doing them with Angel? She hoped that someday she would find out.

"At sunrise, he’ll leave Mai and return to you," Angel told her now.

"Faith said you couldn’t come to me when he was near by."

Angel nodded. "No, we can’t."

"So, we can only be together until sunrise."

"When you go back to him, I don’t want you to suffer. I don’t want you to torment yourself with thoughts that you are betraying me. You aren’t."

"Because he’s part of you?"

"Because he’s part of me." Angel looked away again. "The sun will be up soon."

"How much longer?" she asked fearfully, clinging to him.

He closed his eyes, as if communing with some unseen presence, and when he opened them a moment later, he smiled at her tenderly. "We still have a few more minutes before sunrise."

"Good," she said, pulling his head down to hers and covering his face with kisses. "Good . . ."

It was a dream, but it wasn’t. Buffy knew that she was with her lost love in a way that transcended physical reality. It wasn’t everything she could wish for, but it would have to be enough. She slid her hands down his chest, resting them above his unbeating heart.

"How much time?" she asked.

"Enough," he assured her, and brought his lips to hers for a gentle kiss.

It wasn’t enough time, though: not for everything she wanted from him. She suspected that even eternity wouldn’t be enough.

But what time there was, she would take for her own.

As Angelus possessed Angel’s memories of what she had enjoyed, so now Angel possessed the memories made by Angelus. Thus, he knew the way she craved his touch, the perfect place to taste her. And yet each action, no matter the physical similarity, was infused with a different sensibility. Alike, and unalike, with only one thing unchanged: her absolute and unquestioning need of him.

She needed the gentleness of his kiss, and she needed it to stop being gentle. His need, as ever, perfectly mirrored hers, and they were soon devouring each other’s mouths, hands frantic on each other’s bodies. She wanted the pleasure of undressing him, of being undressed by him, but she didn’t need it: she needed the satin slide of his skin against her own, the dominant weight of him upon her, and those she had. She needed his strength and his adoration, neither of which he stinted her. She needed him to remind her that she was his, and that the more she gave herself to Angelus, the more she belonged to Angel.

Angel took what was his, kisses moving from her lips to trail down her body until he rested between her thighs. She moaned as his tongue laved the swollen heat of her center, arched into his teasing fingers, whimpered at the blunt pressure of his teeth. As she felt her pleasure mount, she tried to draw him away, wanting him inside her. But he growled warningly, not to be denied the honeyed taste of her ecstasy. His tongue lashed her into a frenzy of delight, and within moments she was crying out her release as rapture burned along her veins and set fire to her flesh.

Angel proved himself as ruthless as his darker half: he kept up his delightful attentions, sustaining her at the peak, easing her down only slightly before making her peak again. And again. And again. Not until she sat up, pounding on his shoulders to make him stop did he relent, and kiss his was back up her body.

Buffy parted her thighs wider, cradling his hips, feeling his manhood hard and cold at her too-hot center. He pressed his steely length against her outer lips, rubbing the slick little pearl of flesh, making her whimper and grind against him. She was hungry for him, and they had so little time . . . Buffy pushed away the unwelcome thought, and concentrated on the present. She tilted her hips, enticing him onward, and he accepted her invitation. Angel slid into her welcoming heat, and she discovered, to her immense delight, that her dream self wasn’t the least bit sore. A moment later, she discovered that her dream self was untouched by Angelus. She gasped as Angel came up against the remnant of the barrier that had been left after their first tender tryst. She felt him shudder in reaction, and force himself to go so slowly, so delicately. She didn’t tear at all, just yielded, infinitely, until her own beloved Angel was seated deeply inside her.

"I love you," she said.

"Always," he answered. The kisses he gave her were tender, worshiping, and the love he made with her was as deeply tender as it was consumingly passionate. She knew he wanted to draw out their joining, and she wanted him to do so.

But, there wasn’t enough time.

She wanted sweet and slow and forever, but forever was being denied her. And because it was being denied her, she needed hot and fast and now. As ever, her needs were his own. His gentle strokes became more powerful, his tenderness yielded to the force of his passion, and in moments they were writhing together in a tempest born of the fire in their blood and the love in their hearts and the desperate knowledge that that sun would soon be rising.

He was deeply inside her, angling for the sensitive tissues and delicate nerves that would ensure her continued pleasure. Buffy lifted herself, wrapping her legs tightly around his hips, trying to get him ever deeper, harder, faster . . . Angel slid his hand between their bodies and caressed her clit as she moaned against his mouth and raked her nails down his back. Buffy didn’t fight the sweet rapture building in her veins, simply accepted it, rode it, crested with it. She used her body to worship him, to make manifest the love she had for him, and accepted his own cresting pleasure as a tribute of his love, in return. And when they reached their peak, together, they held onto it, and onto each other, for as long as they could.

Neither Slayer stamina nor vampire endurance was illimitable. Eventually, the tempest spent itself, leaving them wrapped together in each other’s arms, warm, sated, and at peace. Buffy wanted to hold on to Angel, to fall asleep in his arms, and to wake up with him once more.

But, there wasn’t enough time.

Their bodies still joined, Angel turned his head toward the door, sighed sadly, then turned back to her.