Disclaimer: "Buffy" belongs to Joss Whedon, "Name" to the Goo Goo Dolls.
Author's Notes: Woohoo! All done! Heh. ::dances::. Please send me feedback! I'll give you a cookie (::).
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Part Eleven
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Buffy strode into Vibes, finally comfortable in the dim, pounding atmosphere of the club. Buffy noted. A DJ with some expensive equipment sat on the stage, taking requests from the few people that bothered. Some of the regulars nodded to her from the bar, where they drowned their sorrows in beer and spiked Coca-Cola.
Drowning really would be nice.
So she had run away. Had she really accomplished anything?
True, Stéphan was dead, but it wasn't her who had killed him.
Aurélie was still out there, still doing whatever it was she did.
And, most important to her, she still hadn't gotten Angel back.
The only good thing that had come out of the whole escapade was her friendship with Jordan...but even that was tempered with regret. Because of her, Randy had been killed. So, guilt.
She looked at the faces around her. Sixteen-year-old girls waiting for their boyfriends. Thirty-year-old work-weary women with dark hollows under their eyes, sipping their decaf coffee and talking about nothing in particular.
Her eyes traveled to a dark-haired man standing in the corner, raking his fingers through his hair and glancing around the room.
Magnetized, Buffy walked towards him.
He noticed her, gaping, surprised.
Buffy looked at him, swallowing the lump - in her throat. "Hey."
He met her eyes. "Hey."
She reached up, touching a small scar on his cheek that she's never seen before. "Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.
Angel glanced over her wounds, his gaze lingering on the bandages on her neck and arms. "I think you're worrying about the wrong person," he observed.
"I'm fine," she assured him with a forced laugh. "A little worse for the wear, but hey...demon comes to town, I fight, I get hurt, I go home. Injury is in the job description."
Angel looked at her intensely and she turned away. "Buffy, you don't have to lie to me."
"You see right through me, it's not fair." Her voice cracked. "I wish I knew what you were thinking all the time." She met his eyes. "Maybe then I'd understand why you left...none of this would have happened if you hadn't left." she chided herself.
"Buffy, you know if there had been any way -"
"I've heard it, Angel," Buffy snapped. "I'm sorry I brought it up. Let's just...just not, okay?"
And even though the moment passed me by
I still can't turn away
Jordan stood leaning against the wall in Vibes, watching Nicole as she spoke to a tall, dark-haired man - Angel, he assumed.
He had thought that maybe he'd say goodbye to Nicole, but somehow he doubted they'd be done anytime soon.
He listened to the music. Goo Goo Dolls. Not a bad song, actually. He wondered who'd requested it. Just like him. He couldn't leave. Jordan told himself.
'Cause all the dreams you never thought you'd lose
Got tossed along the way
And letters that you never meant to send
Get lost or thrown away
Jordan had less then forty-five minutes before he was meeting Julie at the bus station. Both of them needed to get away, from memories and from the city. They didn't have a real definite idea of where they were going, but both agreed that wherever it was would be far away from southern California. Poor Julie...she'd lost so much. Her dreams, her money, and along with those, her life. When Randy had been around, he and Julie had been the odd couple, sure, but at least they had been a couple. Now Jordan was all she had left.
Nicole, too, had lost her innocence too early. Nobody should have to live like she did, no one should be dealt the cards she had been. Nicole was three years his junior, but so much older than him, so much harder than him...but she still had a kind of softness, a sort of kindness about her...it made her so different from anyone he'd ever met. So different from anyone he'd ever meet again.
And now we're grown up orphans
That never knew their names
We don't belong to no one
That's a shame
Jordan wondered what his name would be out east. Not Jonathan. Jonathan had been left behind four years ago when he'd first come to Los Angeles. Maybe he'd keep Jordan. The only three people that had ever known him, really known him, knew him by that name.
Maybe he'd change his name just because of that. Names were like ownership in some ways; if you knew someone's name you owned a part of them. Jordan needed all of himself just to get through each day.
Jordan wondered what Nicole's real name was.
And realized he didn't care.
But if you could hide beside me
Maybe for a while
And I won't tell no one your name
And I won't tell 'em your name
Jordan knew for certain now that he wouldn't get a chance to say goodbye. Quickly, he scribbled out a note on the back of an envelope in his pocket. He went up to the DJ, whispering something and then leaving the club through the back entrance.
For him, time to leave the place he'd been bumming around since he was seventeen was long overdue.
And scars are souvenirs you never lose
The past is never far
Did you lose yourself somewhere out there
Did you get to be a star
The DJ's voice came over a crackly, soft loudspeaker, and was barely heard over the music. "Nicole Rosenberg to the front, please, Nicole Rosenberg."
Buffy's head jerked around, and she jumped out of the chair, nearly knocking over she and Angel's cappuccinos.
She walked up to by the stage, and the DJ handed her a note.
Buffy swallowed hard and stuffed the note in her pocket.
He wouldn't look her up. Even if he did come back. Whatever had happened the past few days, whatever it was and whatever it could have been couldn't have been anything else. They both knew that.
Both of them would try to forget. Remembering hurt. Both of them had enough hurt in their life.
So the note was crumpled up in Buffy's jeans pocket.
She'd toss it eventually. She wasn't ready to yet.
And don't it make you sad to know that life
Is more than who we are
Buffy listened to the lyrics, and finally realized what she had accomplished. What she had learned.
She always liked to blame Fate, God, the Council, whatever, for everything that had happened to her. Buffy had always thought that it wasn't fair, that she wasn't the kind of person that bad things should happen to. Because she wasn't a bad person.
What she knew now was that she hadn't known who she was at all until she found out she was the Slayer.
What she had realized was that nobody was born a certain way.
A human being was made, shaped, by people, and time, and circumstance. Because of that, everyone always changed.
Everything always changed.
Because life, after all, was more than just who she was. Life was about everyone and everything around them.
We grew up way too fast
And now there's nothing to believe
Reruns all become our history
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio
And I won't tell no one your name
Buffy and Jordan were ever so much the same in some ways. Both had been forced to grow up too fast. Both of them had lost so much faith, in the world and the people in it. Both of them had run away, run away hoping not to be found. Making up a history and a person that never existed.
And I won't tell 'em your name
I won't tell 'em your name
Mmm, mmm, mmm,
I won't tell 'em your name…
Jordan found Julie waiting at the bus stop. She attempted to smile for him, but he shook his head. Neither one of them had a reason to smile, and both of them knew it.
Five miles away, Buffy walked back to Angel, who had left the table and was waiting for her on the dance floor.
"What was that all about?" he asked curiously.
Buffy sighed and shook her head. "It doesn't matter now," she told him, leaning her head against his chest and closing her eyes. Angel wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, pressing his cheek against hers.
She whispered into his ear. "Just dance."
I think about you all the time
But I don't need the same
It's lonely where you are come back down,
And I won't tell 'em your name
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