It doesn't take much, barely a push, and she can see one foot move in front of the other. There's a pale glow off to one side, but when she looks, it disappears, and she feels empty with the loss of the unknown.
She raises her hand and she can see through it: thinking, "Oops, there it goes again;" and she feels faded and paper-thin, worn and troubled and oh, if she could just sleep peacefully for once.
Instead her waking dreams are plagued by characters of long-forgotten plays. Xander is at her elbow, guiding her along with a feral smile, and she steps away politely, her fingers trailing along his arm. When she turns, Angel is there, half-dead and rotting, and still she can't say no when he asks her for a dance because he will leave if she doesn't, but he will anyway, so why does it matter? She doesn't have an answer.
But there's the glow again, and when she turns she sees the remnant of spiky black hair and a name that chokes her throat; it overshadows the glow which is really the too-bright glint of Spike's hair in the fluorescent sunlight.
She feels thick, fat raindrops splash against her arms, and she nods to Spike when he leads her away; why is she always being led? She never lets men lead; they're stupid and mishandle the directions, scratching the merchandise and threading holes through her stomach. She looks down and sees a familiar well of blood rise from the scar that keeps her from bikinis now; she squirrels away these secrets and scars of a life that followed her wherever she went like Angel tamping down his devil.
She looks up, and there is Spike, an open friendly look on his face that is so out of place against the vampire facade. She knows she shouldn't trust him, because even in this half-dreaming state she remembers who is bad and who is good, because there are no grey lines here except the ones colouring everything.
Even so, there's nothing stopping her except Angel's hoarse, flesh-rotten voice, and it fades to a distant songbird, out of tune, in her ear.
She follows, careful princess steps she copied from her mother, watching secretly behind the door and remembering every part of how she looked that day, crying and miserable, and Cordelia vowed never to be like her except in the ways that were important; it seems that tears were important, because they follow her around like a plague against the bright fake backdrop of Hollywood sign. She cries for everything she's lost, the things she can't name and the things they won't let her name, the words that bar her voice like a werewolf behind a cage and no matter how she beats against the bars, she'll only end up a bloodied mass of fragile flesh, laying in a hospital bed like Faith, like Faith and Buffy and all the other women who were taken out by Sunnydale and Sunnydale's kin.
Oh, she wants to sleep; she wants to rest. There's a patch of moss, and she rips herself away from Spike who's begging her with pleading words, harsh and uneven around his sharp demon-teeth, but she doesn't listen, because who ever listens to Spike? Love's bitch and that's all he is, all he'll ever be, and she pulls her hand from her stomach and sees the blood paint her fingertips. She shivers, but the feeling doesn't go away.
She lays down carefully but rashly, like she has done for everything in her life; she knows better than to throw away what she's come to hold dear, and she's a far different girl than the lucky little bitch queen of high school. She didn't check the moss, and now it's enveloping her; but it's warm and soft and *bright,* ohchrist--
A thousand expletives spill from her soundless lips and she feels herself arch up in phantom pain, echoing in the reality she barely knows exists, and images explode in her mind. She curses the Powers That Be, because she was almost done; and this must have been how Buffy felt, from the faint words and stories related by Xander, by Tara, by Giles in his dry letters that matched his dry mind; dead, gone, finished--but not, because in her universe there is always one more way to fuck a girl hard, and that's to bring her back from her half-life, from her death, from her peace, and make her dance against fate and destiny again.
These non-dreams bring a hard reality that forces her dream-world into sharp contrast, and she sees a pale displeased face in the corner of her room, walking away with a pointed clicking of his heels, and she'd apologise but it wasn't her fault. Doyle helps her sit up, brushes the hair from her eyes, and she wants to say "You're not real" but the words won't come in light of how beautiful he looks alive, or dream-alive, and she will hate to wake up if it means giving him up.
But her eyes open, and she sees the blank tile of the ceiling and feels her heart beating, and there's one more push and when she is thrown out of her physical body, when time and reality is shifted slightly to accommodate for her in her new form (and isn't she sick of new forms; she wishes so for her old one, unchanging and familiar, beautiful and consistent) her lips form "Angel" when she doesn't breathe.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.