Chocolate Chip Shanshu: Nine
by Poison Pen
Six months passed since the day he moved in with Nina, and still, he waited for the bomb to drop. He prepared himself for every eventuality. He lived out hundreds of scenarios in his mind. Whatever they threw at him, he’d be ready.
But when the bomb finally did drop, it wasn’t like anything he’d imagined, and it took him completely off-guard.
Two months before, He found a job cashiering, days, at the Seven-Eleven on the corner of Seventeenth and Pleasant. He had to make a living somehow, and since he was no longer a vampire Champion, he learned he was qualified to do absolutely nothing. He spoke seven languages fluently, and read nine, but without a degree, he might as well have been mute and illiterate. There was more history stashed in his head than in all of the books in the Los Angeles public library put together, but again, without that stupid piece of paper, he might as well have been born yesterday.
Working at the Seven-Eleven sucked beyond the telling of it. It also ate up the better portion of his research time. After six months, he was no closer to finding the answer to his existence than he was since he’d found out Spike was human.
But he wouldn’t allow himself to mooch off Nina. Not much, anyway. He did what he could.
The bomb dropped after his shift one stormy Thursday afternoon, and it wasn’t delivered by a demon, or Wolfram and Hart, or by some other big nasty, but by Nina, herself.
He walked into their bedroom to find her folding his clothes into one of her good suitcases.
“Hey. Are we going somewhere?”
“Not we. You.”
“I am? When?”
“Right now,” she said, shoving down on the suitcase and closing the clasps.
His stomach clenched. His blood heated and ran faster. “What is it? Did something happen?”
Nina’s laughter dripped with hurt and sarcasm. “You mean, did I find out the great, grand answer as to why you’re breathing? Sorry, no. Are you asking if I met this imaginary evil that supposedly brought you back as its pawn of destruction? Again, sorry, but no. I deal in reality, not illusions of grandeur.”
“Nina, what’s . . .”
“But I do know something,” she said, calming, despite the tears trickling down her cheeks. “A few things actually. And I did discover something—though I guess it’s not much of a discovery. Somewhere, deep down, I always knew.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me clear it up,” she said, grabbing a large envelope off the dresser and handing it to him.
He looked at her, worried and confused.
“Just open it.”
Angel flipped back the unsealed flap of the envelop and pulled out the contents; a phone bill with six calls to Italy circled in red, five hundred dollars in cash, and an open one-way ticket to Rome, which bore the same name as that on his fake and outdated passport.
The answers to his questions.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me too. Go to her. Forget the rest of the bullshit, and just go.”
“Nina, I’m sorry. I do care about you. I do. I lov . . .”
“Don’t,” she said, cutting him off with a raise of her hand. “Don’t say it. You don’t. You never did. If you loved me, Angel, you would never have come here.”
She was right. He wouldn’t have. He felt like an ass, and he knew that’s exactly what he was.
“I wondered for weeks why you came to me instead of going to her. You’re alive. There’s nothing preventing you from being with her . . .and then it came to me. It was so obvious, so. . .”
“Nina . . .”
“I guess I’m pretty slow. But you’re so convinced that you’re back because some evil force wants you back, and you wouldn’t put her in danger. Not Buffy. But me . . .that was an acceptable risk, wasn’t it?”
“No. I never meant to . . .”
“Just shut up and go.”
Angel shoved the contents back in the envelope and held it out to her. “I can’t take this.”
“You can, and you will. I’ve known what the deal was for months, but I just kept hoping that if I gave you enough time . . . I consider it the price of my stupidity. Paid in full.”
She hefted the suitcase and threw it at his feet. “Now, get out.”
Angel picked up the suitcase. Five minutes later, he walked north up Harrison Avenue in the rain.
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