One Clear Shot

Email: queenboadiceaoftheiceni@yahoo.com

Spoiler Warning: BtVS various episodes and season seven episode "Empty Places"

Summary: Buffy is given a glimpse at a horrifying future. Now she has just one chance of fixing things...

Disclaimer: This belongs to the great and powerful Joss and the usual gang of idi…uh, geniuses. Xena, Hercules and Harry Potter don’t belong to me either. Just ask Rob Tapert and J.K. Rowling.

Feedback: Do your worst—it can’t compare to my worst ;)

Pairing: Buffy/Angel

Notes: Extended passages in italics are journal entries. The lyrics in chapter five are from Billy Joel’s song "You May Be Right" from his album Glass Houses (1998)

[thoughts]

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Part 1

The voices were incessant now, pounding in her brain, threatening to strip away her sanity. She shook her head in an attempt to escape but it was useless. They tumbled meaninglessly inside her, one melding into another, the scream of other people’s thoughts battering at her defenses.

Her mother stood beyond her bedroom door, terrified and helpless to stop what was happening to her baby girl. She thought the distance kept Buffy from hearing her thoughts but it didn’t. They were too close; they were all too close.

Buffy clapped her hands tightly over her skull; her eyes squeezed shut as she attempted to barricade herself inside her own head. She plunged into her mind as a shield against the mental invasion brought on by the demon’s blood.

Her own inner voice opened in a howl as she sank into the darkness…

Buffy opened her eyes warily. The voices were gone and she could have wept with relief. She sagged against the hard floor, relaxing in the blessed silence. The next moment she looked around in puzzlement.

She was lying in a hallway, surrounded by shattered glass, and she winced as one carelessly placed hand landed on a shard. Sitting up, she pulled the offending sliver from her palm and then tried to survey her surroundings.

Where was she? By all appearances, she was inside the school. But it looked slightly different somehow. She didn’t recognize the hallway she was in. The corridor colors were brighter as if recently painted. The whole place had a feeling of newness. And yet, she could see signs of destruction everywhere she looked.

Every clean surface had been scrawled on with childish graffiti interspersed with what looked like mystic symbols. There was broken furniture strewn about, doors pulled off their hinges and, of course, the glass that looked like it came from one of the windows opposite her.

What had happened? Where was everybody? And what was she doing here?

She stood up and brushed the glass gingerly from her clothes. She looked down at what she was wearing and frowned. The jacket, top and pants were completely unfamiliar to her. They were also totally not her style. It seemed the school wasn’t the only thing that had changed. What was going on?

Giles—she’d go to him. He’d have an answer for all this. The last thing she remembered was that he’d been at her house with her mother waiting for Angel to come bring her the demon heart to drink.

Buffy walked through an eerily quiet Sunnydale. The streets appeared to be completely deserted and she was becoming more terrified by the minute. Had the mayor put his plans into action? What was it Faith had said? He’d built the entire town to feed on and, come graduation day, he was getting paid.

Was that what all this meant? The empty streets, the destruction at the school? How long had she been out? What about her friends, Angel, Giles…?

"Mom," Buffy whispered. Seized with dread, she began running as fast as she could towards her house on Revello Drive. She tore into the house and stared at the living room. The low table was gone and other pieces of furniture shifted as if some major redecorating had been going on.

"Buffy?" She whirled around and smiled giddily when she saw a familiar face staring at her. She stepped towards Giles and the words of greeting died on her lips.

Giles was wearing a turtleneck. Her Watcher did not wear turtlenecks. As far back as she could remember, he’d never sported anything but his customary tweed. He also looked old. Well, he’d always looked old but now there were drawn, weary lines about his forehead and eyes that she could have sworn weren’t there this morning. "Giles? I-is that you?"

Giles frowned at the sight of his former protégé. There had been such a joyous look in her eyes, something he couldn’t remember seeing for ages. She’d actually appeared glad to see him without the looks of suspicion and near-hatred that had become habitual with her since he’d tried to have Spike killed.

"Yes, of course it’s me." The next moment she flew into his arms and hugged him tight. He stiffened in shock and then relaxed. Ah, she must have feared that he was the First creating an illusion; the touching was just her way of confirming his identity. When the hug was prolonged past the point where it was necessary or even usual, he frowned again and gently disengaged himself, searching her face for clues to her suddenly altered behavior. "Buffy, are you all right? Is something wrong?"

She wanly smiled into those questioning green eyes. "I’m okay. But something weird’s going on. The streets are, like, totally empty as if there was an air raid or national emergency declared. Has Mayor Wilkins done something?"

"Mayor Wilkins? Buffy, what on earth are you talking about?" Giles was baffled by the strange turn of the conversation. Why would she mention the Mayor? She was also limping and he could see cuts and bruises about her face and neck. "Are you hurt?"

"Yeah. Another spike on the Buffy weird-o-meter. I was upstairs getting mental zings from everybody in a ten-mile circle and then, the next thing I know, I’m waking up on school grounds covered in glass. Care to explain that to me, Watcher mine?"

Watcher mine? She hadn’t called him that in ages and he experienced a welcome rush of gladness at the return of the old nickname. He pushed aside the feeling to pursue the mystery of her odd question. "I-I’m not sure I understand. You said you were upstairs? I was under the impression you went to the school to clean out your desk."

"Clean out—but it’s not graduation day yet! I’m still in school. Unless…Giles, just how long was I unconscious? I mean, what day is this?"

"It’s April 29, 2003. You don’t know what day…?" His words trailed off as he saw all the blood drain out of her face leaving it stark white. She swayed and he darted towards her in alarm, worried that she was about to faint.

She held up one hand to fend him off and then staggered blindly to the couch. "This is a joke, right? Some kind of wacky Watcher humor I just don’t get. I mean, that can’t be right. It was September 1999 when I went to bed. Unless I’ve been in a coma all this time from the demon blood." A panicky expression appeared on her face and she looked up at Giles. "That’s it, isn’t it? I woke up from a coma—inside the school decorated with spangly glass bits like a fallen Christmas tree… No, that doesn’t make any sense either."

Her eyes darted around the room and she noticed the eerie stillness in the house. She jumped up and ran to the stairs. "Mom! Mom, where are you?"

He stood and ran after her, trying to forestall her efforts. "Buffy, wait!" He came up the stairs, albeit more slowly, and saw her standing motionless as she stared into what used to be her mother’s room.

He noted her rigid posture as she stepped slowly into the space, her eyes taking in all the changes in her mother’s bedroom. She swung around and glared at Giles. "What is all this? Whose stuff is this, Giles? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?"

He adopted an air of calm detachment as his traditional defense against his Slayer’s temper. "I think something very odd has happened, Buffy, only it’s happened to you not us. You need to sit down." He gestured at the bed behind her.

Buffy picked her way carefully over the scattered pieces of clothing. Girl’s clothing, she noted, and none of it hers. Who was in her mother’s room and why did she need so much stuff? She was kinda sloppy, too, by the looks of it. Various tops, skirts, pants and shoes lay tossed every which way. The clothes all seemed to be in different styles as if this girl had one for every mood. She swept aside the rumpled coverings and waited mutely for Giles to speak.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and she noted again how tired he looked. She hadn’t seen him this worn and stressed since Jenny Calendar was murdered. [Oh no, is that it? Did someone die?]

"Buffy, before I continue, I need to know what is the last thing you remember. I mean, the very last thing."

"That’s an easy one. One of those mouthless demons I fought infected me with its blood and I was going crazy from all the thoughts I could hear in other people’s heads. Xander thinking about sex all the time, Cordelia thinking the same stupid dribble that comes out of her mouth. You were getting Angel to help me. Did that work? I mean, it must have since I can’t hear your thoughts any longer."

"Good Lord," Giles muttered quietly. He tried to marshal his thoughts. She was waiting for an answer and he wasn’t sure what to tell her. Apparently Buffy had lost all her memories of a little over four years and it couldn’t have happened at a worse possible time. It must have something to do with whatever incident took place in the school. "Were you alone when you woke up?"

"Alone is an understatement. There was nobody in the school and the streets are as quiet as the Bronze on a Monday night. I’ve barely seen anybody. What’s happened here, Giles? Where is Mom?"

"Buffy, I think—judging from your memory loss and the state of your skin and clothing—that you were attacked in the school. Someone or something has robbed you of your memory. Why you were given amnesia instead of merely killed is beyond me. Does your head hurt?"

"Well, yeah, it does, now you mention it." She reached behind her head and winced as her fingers encountered a sizeable lump.

"Then perhaps the amnesia is a result of a head trauma rather than a supernatural assault. It still poses a problem, however."

"You’re darn right it does! And you’re ducking my question, Giles. Where’s my Mom? She was here taking care of me and trying to drown me with pillows and extra blankets and now there are obviously strangers living in her room…either that, or we’re housing a girl band. Are you gonna tell me what’s the what here?"

Giles took a deep breath and began. There were numerous interruptions although they became less frequent as his tale progressed. Buffy became ominously silent as he told her everything he knew: her recovery from the demon’s venomous blood, Faith’s attempt to kill Angel, their subsequent defeat of the Mayor and the bare highlights of the subsequent years. He steeled himself for the inevitable barrage of questions.

"M-mom’s dead? Of an aneurysm? H-how could that happen? Why didn’t anybody—why didn’t I notice anything?"

"The doctors explained this to us. Aneurysms are like minefields lying hidden in the brain. You can’t predict where they’ll be, if they exist or who might have them. The doctors had assured everyone that she was fine after the operation but I guess they missed this. Your mother’s death was a complete shock to us all. But she didn’t suffer, Buffy, I assure you."

"And Angel left me after graduation? He wasn’t here for any of it?" This was the hardest to bear. The relationship between her and Angel had been rocky since he’d come back from hell and his playacting with Faith had been really tough on her. But she’d just been reassured of his love and now she was told that he’d abandoned her. She averted her head from her Watcher and swallowed hard, blinking furiously to banish the tears.

Giles watched her, torn by his helplessness to ease her emotional distress. He’d once told her that he was loath to cause her pain. But here he was digging up old wounds that had long healed—or so he’d hoped. For him, these events had taken place almost four years ago. But she had no recollection of them and the anguish must be all the harsher since it had none of the softening of distance or time.

The next moment he saw her straighten her shoulders. She turned back to him and he saw the resolute expression on her face. He knew that look: Buffy had made up her mind to face her troubles, no matter how bleak or overwhelming. It was that core of inner strength in her that never failed to move him. His Slayer would handle this as she had handled so many other trials life had thrown her way.

"That’s not the worst of it, is it? You say we defeated the Mayor. So why are the streets so quiet?"

"We’re up against the First Evil. You might remember it…"

"No need to remind me. It came, it picked on Angel and then it disappeared. I remember it as being kinda chatty and given to wearing other people’s clothes. You telling me it’s back?"

He couldn’t believe her blasé attitude. Had Buffy really been that flippant back then? He replied in stern tones, "It is the supreme evil, Buffy. It never truly goes away. But at this point in time it has become openly aggressive. Apparently it means to destroy Sunnydale and then the world. It is non-corporeal so it has recruited human agents to do its dirty work. Somehow they infiltrated the Watchers Council and demolished it with several well-placed explosives."

"The Watchers Council is gone? That’s…" She cut herself short as she noted the grave look on his face. "Terrible. Just awful. Wow, no more Council of Watchers looking out for Slayers. Travers must be mundo upset."

"Actually, Travers was caught in the blast along with most of the other Watchers, those not in the field at any rate."

Buffy didn’t know what to say about this. On the one hand, she hated Travers with a passion that she normally only reserved for her enemies. But she realized what a loss this must be for Giles. Still she knew she couldn’t express any kind of sympathy that would sound convincing so she wisely held her tongue.

"I can see you’re really devastated about this," Giles remarked. She grinned feebly at his wry tone; guess she hadn’t fooled him after all.

"Nope, not really. Travers was never on my list of favorite people in the world; you know that. But this must be a real blow for you."

"Yes, it’s quite a setback for all of us. We’re low on information and resources and your house is full of potential Slayers in training who are up against a truly formidable force. Given their recent disastrous sortie against the enemy, it’s clear they’re not up to the task."

"Slayers in training? In my house? So that’s who all these clothes belong to!" Buffy grimaced at the idea of her house filled with anonymous girls.

Giles quickly sketched in the remaining details including the horror of her friends’ disintegration after she’d been brought back from the dead, Spike’s involvement with the group, Faith’s reformation and assistance. It took a considerable amount of persuasion from Giles to convince her he wasn’t joking about the newly ensouled vampire and the rogue Slayer.

She heaved a sigh and attempted to get things straight in her head. "Let me see if I’m all caught up here." She held up her fingers and ticked off what she knew. "After Angel left, I took up with Parker Abrams. I can’t think why I’d do that. Everybody knows Parker is the biggest male slut in the school! Then I go out with this Riley guy who’s got some covert military dealie called the Initiative. But I guess being with him was a good thing since we learned about that Frankenstein monster freak."

"Ah. I never saw of it in that light." At the time, he’d been more than a little irked at Buffy’s blind obsession with her muscle-bound boyfriend. Professor Walsh and her psychoanalytic bollocks hadn’t helped to dispel his irritation either. But in retrospect he saw how her romantic entanglement with Riley had been useful in enabling them to penetrate the Initiative before it was too late to stop Adam’s plans.

[Everything happens for a reason.] Shaking himself from his introspective musings, he focused on Buffy’s continuing recitation of the past few years.

"I’ve got a sister made of mystical energy who I died to protect. Willow’s a lesbian, which I so didn’t see coming." She stopped and recalled Willow’s gay vampire double she met because of a botched spell between Anya and the redheaded wicca. "Okay, maybe I did. Xander was involved with that Anya woman even though she wanted to get her amulet back and go back to butchering human males. Boy, Xander really knows how to pick ‘em. Here I thought Cordelia Chase was the bottom of the barrel and Xander Harris decides to go scraping under it."

Giles’ answering smile was faint but definitely there. "Well, Anya has changed a great deal in the ensuing years. S-she’s dedicated herself to helping us even if she and Xander are no longer together."

"She sounds like a real trooper. Makes me wonder why…" She cut herself off and he guessed what she was thinking. Anya stayed even if her romance was over. She probably wondered why Angel hadn’t done the same.

Buffy began pacing in the room, heedlessly kicking aside the scattered clothing. With a visible change of subject, she said, "Speaking of devotion, how could you just run away like that? You must have seen how badly things were going—how badly I was doing. How could you take off and leave us high and dry? Did your Watcher’s license run out with my second death?"

He closed his eyes in pain, distressed by the ugly reminder. Her death fighting Glory lacked any kind of emotional resonance for her. She certainly hadn’t seen the grief her friends and he had suffered during those wretched summer months.

He removed his glasses and took refuge in the soothing act of cleaning them. "You were relying too much on me. You were depending on me to settle disputes with Dawn and take care of your financial problems. That’s not what a Watcher is for and certainly not duties I was ever meant to handle. I thought, if I left, you would learn to stand on your own two feet. Judging by the chaos I found when I returned, it would appear that I was mistaken."

She snorted. "Well, that’s a huge understatement with a side order of ‘duh!’ Giles, I don’t know what coming back from Heaven must have been like but I’m betting I didn’t just roll over and say ‘Hey! It’s good to be alive!’ Besides, I’m a Slayer. Where does it say that a Slayer is supposed to handle money woes and raise younger sisters? I must have been close to crazy from taking on that load. Willow was probably showing signs of magic overuse way before then and anybody with half a brain could have told you that Xander’s role in ‘I Married a Demon Man-Hater’ was a sure recipe for disaster. And you thought that chucking it all up would make things easier?"

The bitter, sarcastic rant seemed to take its toll on her already overtaxed emotions. She sat down hard on the bed and then flinched. Aches and pains from whatever had used her for a punching bag were waking up and demanding to be heard. But she ignored them and tried to concentrate on what her Watcher was telling her.

"Buffy, I believed that leaving you to solve things on your own was for the best. Besides, I’d taught you everything you needed to know. You had exceeded all of my fondest wishes and hopes; no Watcher could ask for a finer Slayer."

"So that’s all I ever was to you—a Slayer?" The hurt in her voice was very evident. "You were more than a Watcher to me. Well, you got to be more. I thought we were friends, too."

"About that…a lot has happened in the ensuing years. You’ve pushed us aside—not just myself but Xander, Willow, Anya and Dawn as well. Y-you’ve recently taken to favoring another over the lot of us and we’ve all seen it."

Another? "You mean Spike. You said Spike—of all the creatures—is in love with me. That’s why he’s helping us."

"Quite."

"And last year…he and I…we…" She gulped and couldn’t bring herself to finish.

"From what I understood from Dawn and the others, the relationship between the two of you was not a happy one. Apparently, it was a deeply distressing time for you and being with Spike was a way of, of, stemming your feelings of depression and anger."

"Yeah, recovering from being pulled out of the Great Big Slayer Field in the Sky had to be a big adjustment." She stood up and began pacing again. "I just can’t believe it. Spike and I hate each other. He killed two Slayers! Why on earth would he fall for me? Is it because of Angel? I’m betting that’s it. Angel took his girlfriend; this was just his way of getting back at him."

Giles wished it could be that simple. But he had to let Buffy know everything if she was going to cope with it all. "That may have been part of it. But no one can fathom Spike’s motivations. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d warrant that it was partially transference. With that chip implanted in his head by the government, he could no longer bite or kill you so somewhere along the line his feelings turned from hatred to love. It’s often a thin line between the two."

"And after I sent him packing, he took off and got himself a soul. What, was he trying to be like Angel? Did he honestly think I’d love him because of that?"

"Although he constantly states, very loudly to anyone who’ll hear, that he intends to be good and the soul is proof of that, I’m certain this is exactly his plan."

"Well, it’s probably failing like all his other stupid plans." Buffy plopped back down on the bed and witnessed the silence with which her Watcher greeted this statement. "Uh, Giles. You’re supposed to back me up here."

"Buffy, certain recent…events have shown that your allegiance to your friends is no longer as strong as it once was."

"What recent events?" Seeing his set, heavy expression, Buffy began to panic. "Giles, c’mon, share. What am I doing? I-I’m not having sex with Spike again, am I?"

"No. At least I don’t think so. But you show a marked bias towards him over those tried-and-true friends who have stood by you since your first arrival in Sunnydale. You have frequently put his welfare above those of your own companions."

"Examples being?"

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Part 2

Giles sorted through his recollection of events at which he hadn’t been present. "Xander says when he was attacked by a date who turned out to be a demon…"

Buffy couldn’t help it. She let out a whoop of laughter and shouted, "ANOTHER DEMON? Tell me he didn’t know!"

Although he attempted to be stern, she could tell by the glint in his eye that he was almost as equally amused as she. "He was ignorant of her demonic status but quite vocal about his poor luck with women when he returned with a stab wound in his torso."

This news sobered Buffy instantly. "He’d been stabbed? Where was I when this happened?"

"You were on a dinner engagement with Principal Wood."

An exaggerated shudder of distaste greeted that statement. "I’m dating a principal? Are you sure I’m not still crazy, Giles?"

"This principal is rather special…and, I assure you, no Snyder."

"Thank goodness. So about Xander and his demon date—what happened there?"

"Your evening was interrupted by news of Xander’s situation. Spike fetched you and the principal and, according to Xander, Spike leapt right into the fray. He was, however, injured fighting the creature. It was you who delivered the final blow."

"Spike was helping? Well, hurrah for him, I guess," Buffy conceded grudgingly.

"But Xander vividly recalls that while he was lying on the ground, possibly bleeding to death, you spared him barely a glance. You were too busy worrying over the nature of Spike’s wounds."

"I-I was? Maybe Xander was delirious. I wouldn’t put the Billy Idol poser over one of my oldest, bestest friends. I mean, why would I even bother? Spike’s a vampire. Any boo-boo he got would heal up like that." Buffy snapped her fingers in illustration.

Giles didn’t comment on her denial. He had more grim news in store. "Willow became the victim of a hex cast by her former friend and wicca-in-training Amy."

"Amy? As in Amy the rat? That Amy? How’d she do that? She hit Willow with a magic cheese pellet?"

"I must have left that out in my earlier summation. One of Willow’s less spectacular feats of magic last year involved her breaking Amy’s spell."

"Go Willow. Wait, if she made Amy human again, why’d she go all Carrie on Willow?"

"Evidently Amy harbored a great deal of resentment for Willow’s exceptional wiccan abilities and the fact that she was welcomed back into the fold so easily after she attempted to destroy the world. So she cast a hex on Willow that made her believe she was Warren. Her identification with him became so complete she nearly re-enacted the moment when he tried to kill you."

"Warren." Buffy mulled over that part of the story. Warren, geek extraordinaire, who wanted to become a supervillain but could only manage to be a rather ordinary criminal—with a handgun. [Poor Willow. She lost the woman she loved. I guess I’m lucky. I kept all my friends. And even if I don’t have Angel at least he’s still alive…undead. Whatever.]

"So Amy hexed Willow. Did Willow manage to break it?"

"Her girlfriend Kennedy—one of the potentials—did. It’s remarkable the devotion she’s developed for Willow in the fairly short time she’s known her. She’s well on her way to becoming a friend as well as a lover."

"A friend? Yeah, that’s great. It sounds like Willow could use more friends." Buffy wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She was glad Willow had found somebody new to heal her broken heart although the replacement seemed rather sudden in light of this Tara’s all-too-recent death. But wasn’t she supposed to be Willow’s bestest bud and girlfriend? "Once again, where was I while all this was going down?"

"You were getting Spike’s chip removed." He replied coldly, making no attempt to hide his disapproval or displeasure.

"Yikes. Why was I doing that, exactly? And how could I do that? Did Xander remove the top of his head with a chainsaw?" The mental image provided made her lips twitch.

"The chip was giving him headaches. You went to the Initiative’s underground bunker and they showed up and removed it—at your request. That’s where you were when Willow was suffering from Amy’s curse."

"Oh." This was insane. How could she have changed so much? She cared more about the vampire that had made it his business to kill her from the first night he arrived in Sunnydale than her best friends. Just what was wrong with her, anyway? Could dying the second time have changed her that much? "Is that it? I’m throwing Willow and Xander on the scrap heap for He-Who-Runs-with-Hair-Dye?"

"I’m afraid I’ve also come under your censure for my behavior towards Spike. He wasn’t only suffering from chip-induced migraines. The First had used a trigger to get Spike to kill without his being aware of it. He murdered at least twelve human beings that we’re aware of…after he got his soul."

"Now that is just so wrong, Giles. He’s running around killing humans and I’m doing, what, knitting? I’m the Slayer! Did I forget my job description? I don’t care how good Spike was in the sack; I should have staked him for that!"

"Buffy, you explained that Spike wasn’t in control of his actions. You were apparently willing to forgive him all his past crimes merely because he has a soul. You were trying to give him the chance to be good." Giles realized that he was defending Spike’s actions. But he didn’t want Buffy to blame herself for her good intentions.

"It sounds like the same deal I had with Angel. Maybe I was doing a little transferry thing of my own," Buffy muttered.

Her former Watcher silently agreed. He believed many of Buffy’s current actions stemmed from her desire to reform Spike in a way she had failed to do with Angel. Her vampire ex-boyfriend had left her with many unresolved issues she now had a chance of wrapping up with Spike. However, he’d known she’d be too stubborn to see it that way.

Shelving the topic for the moment, he continued with his list of grievances. "When we tried to deactivate Spike’s trigger, he went berserk and hurled his cot at Dawn."

"Dawn? What was she doing there?"

"She doesn’t trust Spike very much since his behavior towards you last year." Actually, Dawn’s antagonism towards Spike was more than a little puzzling. He sensed more than ordinary anger was involved and wondered if something had occurred that he hadn’t been made privy to as the others had.

"You mean she doesn’t trust me around him." Giles didn’t reply but he didn’t need to; Buffy could see the truth in his face. "Does everybody think I’m going to go back to being Spike’s Slayer ho? I really did dive off the deep end of the sanity pool, didn’t I?"

Giles chose not to answer that self-condemnation. "While Willow was tending to the gash Spike opened in Dawn’s head, you released him from his chains and allowed him the run of the house. Needless to say, no one else was happy with your decision—especially Principal Wood."

"Huh? What does the principal have to do with it? I have one date with him and he becomes an honorary member of the Scooby gang?"

"Wood became personally involved because Spike is the vampire who killed his mother."

Buffy sucked in her breath as she stared at Giles. The Englishman had mentioned this as casually as if he was talking about the weather but the ice in his green eyes belied his mild tone. "Spike killed this guy’s mother? Did I know this?"

"I think not. You were blindly intent on protecting him no matter what. You wouldn’t have let Wood near him if you’d been aware of the true nature of his interest in Spike."

"So I’m leaving Dawn to suffer major head trauma while unleashing the Big Bad in my home. God, could things get any worse?"

"They did."

She sighed. "Do I even want to hear it?"

"You must. After you and Spike left, Wood and I had a private conference. We strongly believed Spike presented an active danger. I understood Wood had a personal vendetta against Spike but that made no difference. I thought the vampire’s presence put your friends and the other girls in jeopardy—so I agreed to distract you while Wood killed Spike."

When he stopped speaking, she eyed him and then became impatient at his silence. "Don’t leave me hanging here, Watcher mine. I’m betting there was no happy ending to this fairytale. Care to let me in on it?"

"Wood failed even though the trigger was still active, just as I feared. You realized that I was providing a diversion and took off. Spike managed to withstand Wood’s attack though not without cost."

"Spike killed him?"

Giles was reluctant to concede to any goodness in Spike’s nature, soul or no. But Buffy wanted the entire story and he would oblige her to the best of his ability. "No. I will admit that he restrained himself from going that far. But he beat the man up quite badly and threatened to kill him if he ever crossed Spike again. I believe ‘If he even so much as looks at me funny, I’ll kill him,’ were his exact words."

"W-what did I do when I found out?" She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Giles had been growing more and more distant in his recital—a distance she realized had been there since she first came through the front door. Had she somehow turned from her Watcher, too, because of Spike?

"You were angry with me. You felt that I’d betrayed you by going behind your back. You’ve been hostile towards me ever since then. You said that I had nothing more to teach you."

"I said that? Giles, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe that dying and sleeping with Spike turned me into such a bitch!"

A chuckle erupted from Giles before he could stop it. "Actually, some would say that state of affairs existed before you ever died the second time."

She stared at him, her mouth agape. "You thought I was…oh. You’re thinking about Angel, aren’t you?"

"Well, you were always less than rational in your judgments regarding him. And there may have been one or two other instances as well."

She turned red in the face as she recalled those other instances: running away from home, her welcome back home party, hiding Angel’s return from the others. It was miracle Giles hadn’t left her before all this.

Buffy was finding the floor fascinating as she tried to sound out the Englishman’s feelings. "I haven’t been the world’s best Slayer, have I?"

"I’ve told you already. You are the best Slayer any Watcher could hope for. You have never disappointed me."

"Until now. Face it, Giles. We’re in the fight of our lives here and all I’m thinking about is reforming bad Brit boys who go ‘chomp’ in the night."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 3

He was formulating a reply when he heard the front door bang open. The next moment the house was filled with the excited, high-pitched voices of hyperactive teenage girls. Buffy started up with something like fright in her eyes.

"That’s them, isn’t it? Giles, I don’t think I can face them. T-this is just way too much information for me to process and I don’t know who any of these people are! Can’t you hold them off until I get my bearings?"

There she was, relying on him to deal with her problems again. He well understood the dilemma she was in but she couldn’t leave the others out of the loop this time. They needed to know the state of mind of their chosen leader.

"Buffy, I won’t tell the girls or Faith about your memory lapse. But I think Willow and Xander at least deserve to know, especially after everything they’ve been through." Mentioning Xander, he recalled the man’s injury and paled. He hadn’t managed to touch on the subject yet; it was simply too gruesome to spring on her at once. God, how was he going to let Buffy know about this?

Buffy was too unnerved at the idea of being inundated with strange faces to notice his sudden change in demeanor. "Okay. But where are we going to talk? You say the house is crawling with Slayer Mini Mes and Spike’s lurking in the basement doing his best imitation of the Phantom of the Opera. So where do we talk?"

There, this was the opening he was hoping for. "We can go to Xander’s apartment. He spends most of his time here but I believe we can persuade him to go to his apartment to recuperate."

"Recuperate? From what? Is it from that stab wound?"

"Hey, B. You and the Watcher holding a little confab? The girls are kinda tired and they want the room…unless you two still need to use it." Faith was standing in the doorway and Buffy had to restrain herself from attacking and punching the nasty leer right off her face.

[Faith is one of the good guys. Giles said so and Giles can be trusted. So what if it seems like only last week that she tried taking my boyfriend with a magic spell and threatening me with sharp knives? She’s one of the white hats and I’m not going to kick her ass—even if I do think she’s got it coming.]

Faith was becoming unnerved by Buffy’s grim stare. Things between her and her blonde sister Slayer hadn’t been entirely five by five but she thought B had been coming around. Now she looked almost as pissed as she had when Faith skewered her ex, Angel, with an arrow. "What’s the matter, B? What crawled up your ass and died?"

Buffy opened her mouth to retort when Giles hastily interjected. "Buffy was attacked at the school when she went to pick up her things. She’s suffered a small post-traumatic memory lapse and she can’t remember who her assailant was. She’s a trifle out of sorts."

"Really? Think it was that Caleb guy?"

[Caleb? Who the hell was that?] Giles shook his head imperceptibly at Buffy’s blank look and mouthed, "Later," his back towards Faith.

The petite blond gave the brunette Slayer standing in the doorway a tight-lipped smile. "Sorry, Faith. I’m a little out of it. Like Giles said, I can’t remember who it was. I think I’ll just stay out of everybody’s way and wait for the old memory to make a comeback."

"Whatever." Faith figured she’d interrupted some bit of Watcher/Slayer bonding. Frankly, she was glad to see Buffy getting back together with Giles. Having the two of them at odds felt really weird. Of course, Buffy had been on the outs with all her friends. The old Faith would have loved it, seeing it as an opportunity to push Buffy out and wedge herself in.

But now Faith was genuinely hoping to make amends and do right by the family she’d tried so much to hurt once upon a time. Only it had been starting to look like there’d be no family to join. [Maybe B’ll get her shit together and remember who her real friends are. And it ain’t Sir Dyes-a-Lot crashing in the basement.]

Buffy retreated to her bedroom as Giles went down the stairs to make a plausible excuse for her absence. Things were altered here as well though not beyond recognition. The old posters she’d had gracing the walls were gone. Mr. Gordo was also missing and she was distressed beyond all reason over his absence. It was dumb to miss a child’s toy when the loss of her mother and her one true love were more important but he had often provided comfort when there was none to be had elsewhere. She felt tears sting her eyes again and looked for something else to bolster her flagging spirits.

She looked at the pictures gracing the walls and pulled down one. She recognized Xander, Willow and even that Anya person. There was an unfamiliar face, though, and she struggled for her identity, trying to fit a name to a face from Giles’ descriptions.

The blond with her arm around Willow must be Tara. She had a sweet face and a gentle expression that made Buffy warm to her instantly. [Gosh. Willow looks so happy, even more than she did with Oz. I wish I could remember her.]

She picked up another picture and frowned. It was really tacky and cheesy-looking, the frame covered in pasted on seashells. The whole thing reeked of some kid’s art’s project. Within the frame was a picture of her Mother, herself and a brunette teenager.

[That must be the kid—my fake sister Dawn. Couldn’t those monks had made her more of a match? She doesn’t look anything like Mom or me.] The girl’s hair was long, shiny and straight unlike her own blonde hair or her Mother’s wavy curls. Her face was too rounded with a pointy chin. Buffy tried to summon up a speck of feeling for this imposed fake but nothing came to her. She shrugged mentally and put the picture back on the dresser.

She experienced the perverse desire to go down and confront the strangers living under her roof. She was certainly too antsy to stay in her room. It wasn’t as if there was anybody to fill in the blanks…

Suddenly she started and rushed to unlock her chest. Of course! Her diary would hold all the answers. It had been her constant confidante when she couldn’t talk to anybody else. All those battles against various demons, her affair with Angel…everything and anything she couldn’t spill to her friends lay nestled within those pages. Whatever Giles had omitted from his carefully worded story would be in there, she was sure of it.

Buffy sat back on her heels and looked at the opened container. She’d obviously had a lot to say in the last three years. There was no longer one diary but thirteen, all neatly lined up and dated in her looping script. Picking out one around the date of her trip to telepathic la-la land, she opened a page at random and began reading.

She heard footsteps racing up the stairs and barely managed to throw the book back into the chest, shut it and scramble onto the bed before the door flew open. A lanky brunette stood in the doorway and began chattering non-stop.

"Buffy, Faith took us to the Bronze! It was totally cool; you should have been there. We were dancing and there was this great band. Oh! I think the Hellmouth is making the cops all crazy, though. They took Faith out into the alley and tried to kill her. We kicked the ass of the guy inside and we came out to help. But Faith had already finished stomping on the bad cops so it was okay."

Buffy blinked mutely at this teenage spillage and the girl plopped down on her bed. "So how was your day? Giles said something happened at the school. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I’m fine except for a little head bump. It’s nothing to worry about—Dawn." Even saying the girl’s name felt alien.

Fortunately the chatterbox didn’t seem to notice. "Well, maybe a good night’s sleep will help. I know I need it. Dibs on the shower!" With that she jumped up and ran out of the room as abruptly as she entered it.

[Wow. Talky much? And what’s with crashing into my room like that? Totally rude. I’ve so got to get out of here.] Opening the chest again, she yanked out all the books from 1999 onward and began packing a bag. If she was going to be with Xander tonight, she wanted to take as much of the important stuff as she could.

Buffy hefted the bag over her shoulder and came down the stairs, pausing to survey the scene in the living room. It was practically wall to wall with teenage girls, many of who looked kinda the worse for wear. There was a black girl with her arm in a sling and others sporting various injuries. Giles was right; they were clearly in the middle of a war.

The feverish babbling from the females stopped when she appeared and she was cowed by the wary, shuttered looks on their faces. None of them looked happy to see her and she guessed that her friends hadn’t been the only ones feeling the Buffy chill.

[I am NOT everybody’s most popular person, am I?] "Hey, guys, what’s up? Dawn told me you had a little visit from our boys in bl—" She froze, her throat closing up, as she saw Xander’s face. A large bandage completely covered his left eye and a sinking in the pit of her stomach told her there was worse than a black eye under it. "Xander?"

Blast. Giles had been hoping to break the news to her gently but, as usual, his Slayer had charged in without giving him a chance to prepare. "Right. Well, Xander, you should get back to your home. You’ll need peace and quiet. That would be better for you than staying here." The Englishman did his best to sound noncommittal but the dark-haired man instantly protested.

"No way, Giles! I should stay here. Buffy might need…"

"Need what? For you to lose another eye? Giles is right. You need rest and quiet and you’re not going to get it here in a house full of loud, talkative females." This comment came from a sharp-nosed woman who bore an extremely aggrieved expression on her face.

Oh no. Xander had lost an eye? Buffy blanched and her eyes drifted helplessly over Xander’s face. How could that have happened? How could she have let it happen? Her lips quivered and she rushed over and hugged Xander as hard as she could.

"Hey, Buffster. It’s good to see you, too. Although I’m gonna have to look twice as hard in the future to get all of you. Man, if I’d known this is what it took for you to get all touchy-feely, I’d have lost an eye a long time ago."

Buffy bit back a sob. God, how could Xander make jokes over something like this? She was responsible for his injury; she was certain of that. A feeling of sheer hatred against whoever had done this welled up inside her. Silently she vowed to make them pay.

"Gosh, Buffy, it’s nice of you to give a crap now that it’s too late. We’ve got dead girls, banged up Potentials and Xander’s been permanently maimed. Maybe now you’ll listen to advice instead of charging in like an idiot."

Willow glared at the woman who’d spoken before and Buffy squinted at the tactless female. This was Anya, Xander’s on-again, off-again, now-you’ve-got-demon, now-you-don’t ex-fiancée? [Do we have to take her with us?] She sighed at the idea that they probably did. Then she turned to Willow.

"I’m ready to go here. Giles thought it would be a good idea for me to get away, too. How about it, Wills? You want to take a night off?"

Willow was startled as if she’d never expected Buffy to say something like that. She glanced at the brunette woman sitting next to her on the couch. "I-I don’t know. Kennedy, would you be okay if I spent the night with Xander? He and I…well…"

"It’s okay, Willow. I understand. Don’t sweat it. Hey, this way I get the bed all to myself for a night." Buffy smiled and hoped her annoyance at the other woman didn’t show. Maybe it was the way Willow got all stammery and uncertain around her as if she couldn’t make a decision without consulting this person first. Maybe it was the possessive way Kennedy put her hand on Willow’s thigh. Buffy didn’t know what it was; she just knew that she didn’t like her.

"Well, if Xander’s going, I’m going, too."

"That’s not necessary, Anya. I’m not really up for entertaining and I’ll totally suck at darts and pool until I get this depth perception problem licked. I’ll check in with you guys tomorrow." Xander heaved himself up and waved goodbye to the others. Anya did her best to hide her obvious disappointment but it was clear her exclusion bothered her more than a little.

Faith waited until they all left and then caught Buffy outside the house. "B, what’s going on?"

"Nothing’s going on, Faith. Xander’s on the injured list and we’re taking him home."

"Since when does he need you to hold his hand? Since when do you care?"

Buffy choked down her temper and gritted out, "I care, Faith. These are MY friends and I’ll thank you not to get high-and-mighty about them. Just stay here and guard the others, all right?" She cast about in her mind for something to put Faith off the track. "Giles and I have been talking and he says…you’re one of the good guys and I should start treating you like it. So you’re in charge until I get back."

The other woman eyed her uncertainly. There was something else going on here; she could practically smell it. But B wasn’t giving anything away and Faith decided to let it go. "Sure, B. Don’t do anybody I wouldn’t do. And tell Willow not to worry. I’ll take real good care of Kennedy while she’s gone." She winked at Willow’s outraged expression.

But Buffy wasn’t about to let anybody take potshots at her friends. "Well, don’t molest the children, Faith. You wouldn’t want to land in prison again." Buffy threw her a saccharine smile and got into the car without a backward look.

[Wow. Xander’s really done well for himself.] The apartment was large and airy, tastefully furnished with well-lined shelves holding small bric-a-brac on the right and bookshelves on the left. Plump beige couches in an L-configuration lined up flush with the windows. The place looked comfortable and homey…a far cry from the Harris basement. Buffy was glad to see that Xander had managed to get something good out of his life.

However, she watched with concern as he blundered around the space. He wasn’t clumsy exactly; he just kept misjudging the distance between himself and objects and bumping into them. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer. "Xander, just sit down and take it easy. Willow and I will take of things, won’t we, Wills?"

"Oh, sure, absolutely. We’ll make coffee and Giles can have tea. Do you have tea in the place, Xander?" she asked with a nervous look at her tired friend.

"Only the bagged kind. Tetley’s—the lazy man’s alternative. Heat water, throw in bag." Xander sank onto the couch and leaned his head back, closing his eye.

Buffy was beginning to think this was a bad idea. Her friends had been through so much; did she have any right to burden them with her latest problem? Maybe she could just go through the diaries and get all she needed from them. [So I forgot the last four years. Big whoop. From what Giles tells me, they were pretty sucky, what with me getting a bratty little sister and having my mom die. And let’s not forget the whole Buffy-bites-the-big-one show I put on again. Not something I want to reminisce about.]

She stood in the kitchen door and called out. "Giles? Could you come here? I want you to help me with the tea. I don’t know how you like it."

Xander couldn’t believe it. "Buffy, are you kidding? You used to fix tea all the time Giles was gone. You said it reminded you…" Too late, he realized he was probably giving away a secret. Buffy had been pissed as hell about Giles’ desertion and refused even to speak to him when he called on the phone. She probably didn’t want him to know how much she’d really missed him.

"It’s quite all right, Xander. Buffy probably doesn’t know where everything is." Giles confronted the small blonde woman while she scrambled for the tea things. "Willow, why don’t you go out and see to Xander? He might want something from his room."

"Gotcha." Willow was too worried about Xander to notice Buffy’s and Giles’ queer behavior and being away from Xander in his wounded condition for even a moment was too much for her to take.

When she’d gone, Buffy whispered, "Giles, I don’t think Xander and Willow are up for this. Maybe we should save it for another time."

"What other time? As you said before, we are in the fight of our lives. They should know everything that might influence or endanger their lives. Besides, Willow is a very powerful wicca. If anyone can figure out what’s wrong, it’s she."

"I thought you said this was ordinary head whackage going on here."

"I said that it might be. It could also be the result of a spell. If such is the case, Willow will be able to assess the situation. We can decide what needs to be done when we’re sure of what we’re up against."

"I guess." So she was putting her fate in the hands of a woman who’d tried to end the world? Buffy shivered and peeked out the doorway. She saw Xander’s head leaning against Willow’s shoulder and the redheaded woman’s free arm snaked around his back. Her supersensitive Slayer’s hearing picked up on the goofy, nonsensical jokes and memories the two shared from a time before Buffy’s entry into their lives.

On Willow’s face lay all the tenderness and gentle concern Buffy remembered. These were her good friends, all of them, under the same roof. Maybe the Buffy of this time was too much of a dimwit to appreciate her pals but she wasn’t. She spoke to Giles without taking her eyes off them. "Right. Let’s do this."

She stepped into Xander’s living room and smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring manner at the two. "Guys. I’ve got something to tell you."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 4

"So that’s it. I’m Buffy minus about four years’ worth of memory. Giles thinks it’s a head blow or maybe a spell. What do you think, Willow?"

The redhead had remained quiet except for a few sharp questions. She’d been staring into the distance, emitting occasional ‘hmmms’ and rubbing her chin. Xander hadn’t said much either.

"Willow? Hellllloo? Earth to Willow? I hate to sound whiny here, but there’s a Slayer in serious need of wicca magic here—or a trip to the doctor. I’d like to know before I go into convulsions and pass out from bleeding on the brain."

The redhead flinched at this thoughtless comment, a vivid reminder of what had happened to Joyce. But she couldn’t blame Buffy—this Buffy. It’s not as if she remembered her Mother dying. "Um, well, we could do that spell Buffy did to see what was attacking Joyce."

"The ‘tirer la couture?’ Capital suggestion, Willow!" Giles smiled at the wicca.

" ‘Rotate the foodstuffs?’ " Buffy was reassured by Giles’ enthusiasm even if she didn’t get it. What were they talking about?

Willow giggled. "You know, that’s the exact same thing you said then, Buffy. It means ‘pull back the curtain’ and it’s a trance spell by a 16th-century French sorcerer named Cloutier. He used it to expose demonic spells."

"Oh, so you’re saying this spell will show what’s wrong with me?"

"If it’s magical in origin, yes." Willow grabbed her bag and unzipped it.

Giles held up a hand to stop her. "You’re certain you’re up to the task, Willow?"

"Absolutely, Giles. If Buffy could do this spell, it’ll be a snap for me. I can do this." Willow grinned and started pulling things out of her overnight bag. Buffy stared at all the mystic accoutrements: dried and fresh herbs, spices, candles, crystals, a couple of worn spellbooks, bottles of colored sand, a silver knife with an ivory handle and amulets to beat the band. The last she could ever remember seeing Willow doing was floating a pencil. Now it looked like she was packing real witchy heat.

The wicca stood and retired to the bedroom with a bowl, spices and a couple of candles cradled in her arms. "I’ll need to be alone for the casting. Don’t be surprised if I seem a little out of it. I’ll be seeing all sorts of things that normal folks can’t see," she informed the others.

"And that includes us one-eyed Muggles." Noting Buffy’s uncomprehending look, Xander said, "Oh, I forget. Harry Potter after your time?"

What, was he kidding her? "No, I heard about it. I just haven’t read it. It’s for kids, Xander."

He scowled. At least it looked like a scowl; with only one eye, it was hard to be sure. "Well, the adults watching the movie didn’t seem to mind it."

"Movie?" Damn, she had to get her memory back. These kind of cultural gaps were going to be embarrassing otherwise. She sighed and then sniffed the air. There was an odd burning smell coming from Xander’s bedroom. "Giles? Is that from the magic?"

"Yes. It’s short and fairly straightforward. Willow should be out any…ah, here she is."

It was indeed Willow. She stood in front of them, blinking in an owlish fashion, as she stared slowly about the room. Her gaze came to rest on the blonde Slayer and her eyes flitted all around Buffy’s face as if trying to peer through a fog.

All this wordless examination was making Buffy nervous. "Willow? What is it? What do you see?"

Her voice when she replied was far away. "I’m not sure. It’s like there’s some kind of blurry double image. I keep seeing two Buffys: one looks like you, that is, the you you are now: same clothes and hair and stuff. The other has different clothes and looks, I don’t know, happier somehow. But they’re both you and there’s no magical aura or demon cloud or mystic claw about your head or anything. It’s just you, Buffy."

Willow shook her head; obviously the spell wasn’t quite as helpful as she’d thought it would be and she felt incredibly frustrated. Then her eyes fell on Xander and her mouth dropped open. He was staring at her—from both big beautiful brown eyes. He had his arm around an extremely pregnant Anya and she lifted her head to look beyond Willow. "Halfrek! Get over here and stop teasing your baby brother!"

Halfrek? Anya’s demon friend? Turning about in confusion, Willow gaped as a little brunette girl, about seven years old, ran in holding a toy bear above the reaching arms of a smaller boy the spitting image of Xander. The boy grabbed futilely for the toy beyond his reach and then kicked his older sister in the shin. She gave a howl of pain and dropped the bear.

"Mommy! Rupert kicked me!"

"You tole my bear!"

"It’s not your bear! Auntie Willow gave it to me!"

"But you don’ like bears! It’s mine!"

The girl grabbed the teddy bear and started tugging at one leg. "Mine!" she shrieked with all the lung power that a small child could possess.

"Mine!" the younger boy yelled back and pulled at the other leg.

Anya rolled her eyes. "Oh, for cryin’ out loud." She staggered up, wobbling slightly under the weight of her huge belly, and came over to the two children. Pulling the bear from their hands with practiced ease, she held it away from both of them. "Hallie, you don’t like bears. You pouted and agreed to let Rupert have it. You’re just taking it from him now because you want to make him miserable."

Turning to her younger offspring, she shook the bear in his face. "As for you, young man, I don’t ever want to see you kicking your sister again. I don’t like it when males commit acts of violence against women and mommy still has pull in the Underworld. You do something like that again, I’m having one of my old friends turn you into something small and nasty—like a rat. Then I’m feeding you to the neighbor’s cat."

The threat obviously had some weight because the kid’s eyes grew wide as saucers. He accepted the bear and Anya folded her arms. "What do you say to your sister?"

" ‘orry, Hallie."

"That’s better. Hallie, go and play with your Xena doll. You can vent by having her battling with Hercules." The two children nodded and, glaring silently at each other, ran from the room. Having settled the dispute to her own satisfaction, she waddled back to her husband. "Honestly, human children are such a pain sometimes."

"You’re not fooling anybody, Anya. You love ‘em to bits just like I do. Besides, you told me that demon babies aren’t much easier to take care of."

"True. But they’re easier to punish. One day little Rupert is going to see through mommy’s bluff and then I’ll really have to let him get chewed by beetles or spend a day as a sparrow being chased by hawks just to let him know I mean business." She shifted around on the couch, arranging her belly to get comfortable. "On that note, have you thought about what I said?"

"About what we’re going to name the next kid?" Xander asked.

"No, about leaving Sunnydale."

"We’re not leaving Sunnydale."

"Why not? The Hellmouth’s closed and Buffy doesn’t really need us now. She said you could go, Xander."

"Anya, we’ve had this discussion. All our friends are here."

"All your friends are here. My friends are everywhere or can be summoned anywhere. Xander, you’re still hanging onto a past where Buffy needed to have all her old friends around her. But she’s got so many people helping her now: Angel, Giles, Wesley, Willow, Tara and the rest. You’re just…"

"In the way? Useless?" Xander’s voice didn’t sound bitter only kinda sad and wistful. It was like the conversation was just a mere formality and they’d already made up their minds what they were going to do.

"I was going to say unnecessary," Anya finished in her blunt fashion. "Hear me out before you get all defensive. Buffy will always love you as one of her best friends. She wouldn’t have survived this long without you. She’s not going to forget you if you take off to another state or even another continent. Neither will the others.

"But she feels the same way I do. We’re raising a family now and I want them out of harm’s way. But, believe me, if Buffy ever feels like she needs us—and I mean, both of us—then we’ll come back."

She turned Xander’s face towards her and kissed him soundly on the mouth. When his lips parted from hers, she smiled at him. "We’re a Scooby family as well as a Harris family and I’ll never forget that no matter where we go."

Xander beamed with that same happy smile Willow had always loved. "I’m holding you to that, sweetie." He bent his head and kissed her again. She kissed him back and then started.

"Ooh! The baby kicked! Feel." She brought his hand to her stomach and then…

"Willow? Are you okay? What did you see?" Buffy was shaking her slightly and Willow blinked again. The vision of Anya and Xander disappeared. She gulped and for a moment felt tears welling up in her eyes. [Tara! Anya said Tara! She’s still alive there—wherever there is. I can get her back!]

Buffy was becoming alarmed at Willow’s silence and the swimming in her eyes. "Oh no. It’s something horrible, isn’t it? I’m under a demon curse or we’re about to be attacked. Do we have any weapons here? All I brought were a couple of swords and Mr. Pointy!"

"No, no, Buffy. It’s okay. It was a good thing." Willow sat down on the couch and quickly sketched in everything she’d seen.

The former Watcher paced up and down as he tried to piece together the mystery. "So what it boils down to is this. An alternate reality exists—one in which we’re all together, no one has died and Xander’s expecting his third child?"

"I’m going to be a daddy? Anya and I really made it work? Oh crap, I did blow it when I walked out on her!" Xander groaned and bent his head into his hands.

Willow did her best to console her Xander-shaped buddy. "I’m thinking that you couldn’t have worked things out here…not in this reality, anyway. This world is seriously screwed up and somehow it all revolves around Buffy."

The blonde threw up her hands and fumed in outrage. "That’s just peachy! How am I supposed to fix things? My memory’s been screwed with and that can’t be of the good. And you still haven’t figured out what caused it, have you?"

Willow looked up at her from the couch and shrugged. She understood Buffy’s frustration but she was at a loss to help. All the magic had shown her was an alternate timeline in which everybody seemed to be happy and the Hellmouth was closed. Other than that, she had no clue how to solve Buffy’s current predicament.

Buffy huffed and plopped down on the sofa, adjacent to but not touching Xander and Willow. "So we’re back to square one. Buffy with big hole where her memories should be." She sat up and looked at the others. "Do you think I should call Angel?"

Giles spoke before the others could comment. "I hardly believe that’s necessary or even advisable. I understand from Faith that affairs are rather volatile in L.A. at the moment and Angel has his own problems to worry about."

"Shouldn’t we be doing the talking thing with him then? What if whatever is going on in L.A. is connected to what’s happening here in Sunnydale? Anybody check on that?" She frowned at their evasive expressions. Had things between her and Angel gotten so bad, they couldn’t even keep in touch?

She still found it hard to grasp that Angel could simply have taken off and left her. First he was wildly in love with her. Then he up and left. Shit, he was no better than her father if he pulled that stunt.

[No! Angel loves me. This is just some crazy misunderstanding. But does he still love you? After all, he’s been gone for almost four years according to Giles. The only "man" who’s ever stuck with you is some half-loony second-rater with a bad dye job and a tacked-on soul. You can’t seem to hold onto the live ones, darling, and the dead lover didn’t want you. Maybe something is wrong with you.]

Okay, where was that crazy self-doubt coming from? Yes, she’d had issues with Angel’s feelings for her, starting with Cordelia Chase’s snippy commentary about her less-than-perfect looks compared to the brunette’s flawless made-up beauty. But she’d put them to rest when he’d staked Darla for her and when she’d defeated Spike in that stupid enchanted 18th-century get-up she’d sported on Halloween. It was good to be Buffy the Slayer, kicking ass and taking no names, and Angel got that.

But he was gone. And Cordelia was in L.A. with Angel while she remained stuck here… How had it all gone so horribly wrong?

All of a sudden she was wretchedly tired. She didn’t know what she’d been doing before she woke up in that school hallway. She only knew that she wanted to sleep and put this whole day behind her. "Guys, I’m gonna crash. Is it okay if I use the shower first? I’m feeling kinda ooky."

"Sure. Ladies first." Xander waved vaguely in the direction of the bathroom and Buffy snatched up her bag.

Giles made his goodbyes, promising to return in the morning, and Buffy settled onto the couch. Xander had protested, insisting that he could sleep quite comfortably on it, but she’d put her foot down. He was injured and deserved the bed. After a lot of discussion, he unwillingly agreed to share with Willow. The redhead teased him that his virtue was safe; the time when she would have jumped him was long passed.

Buffy waited a long time until she was sure the two of them were asleep. Then she lowered the table lamp to the floor and turned it on.

"Angel cured me with that demon blood. I was kinda out of it at the time which was probably good since I’m sure it tasted pretty yucky. It is so good to have only my thoughts in my head again. I learned more about my friends than I ever wanted to. Although in Cordelia’s case that wasn’t much. What you see is pretty much what you get in her case. No brainer is right.

"I can’t believe Mom slept with Giles! That is so freaky. I’m going to tease him about that the next time I see him. I wonder what a stevedore is and how Giles is like one. Ack! No! No sex thoughts about Giles. That is so gross. On second thought, I don’t think I’ll talk about that; it is just too wiggy."

Well, that was funny but not very informative. She skipped forward a few pages and continued.

"Faith shot Angel with an arrow. She didn’t get him in the heart and we thought she was just a lousy shot. But then he collapsed. It turns out she shot him with the Killer of the Dead. It’s some ancient poison used to kill vampires slowly. He was sweating and hallucinating and calling other people by my name even when I wasn’t there. Oz says he got that too. I would have thought that a scream if I hadn’t been so terrified.

"So I tried to kill Faith. That’s what was needed—the blood of a Slayer. Specifically, Angel needed to drain the blood of a Slayer. At the time I didn’t hesitate. I went after Faith and didn’t care that I was going to kill a human being. This was the man I loved and if her stinking, rotten blood was what was needed, then she was going to pony up. She’d tried to kill him; it was only justice that she save his life. Right?

"It’s just that now that I have a chance to think clearly I have to wonder. I was ready to kill a human being to save a vampire. There’s got to be something in the Slayer’s Handbook against that sort of thing. Not that I’ve ever cared about the handbook. The Watcher’s Council can shove their manuals where the sun doesn’t shine…which would be the whole of England, I suppose. It’s just that I’ve given up so much for Angel and now I was prepared to squash my morals and kill for him, too. What does that say about me?

"I know that I’d do it again in a heartbeat just as I was prepared to risk my own life to save him. Maybe that should have been my first choice instead of my last."

Buffy’s hand drifted up absently to stroke the scar on the right side of her neck. She’d seen it in the mirror when she’d gone to shower. Back at the Summers house, Giles had mentioned Angel’s attack on her; he hadn’t been able to explain why this scar had never faded when every other wound she’d ever received from her fights always disappeared hours after battle. But there it lay, a testament to the love they bore each other. She hadn’t left him with anything nearly so permanent. What did he have in L.A. to hold on to that reminded him of her?

"Yay us. We kicked the Mayor’s ass. Faith’s in the hospital in a coma, Angel got his mojo working in time for the eclipse and we packed the library with enough explosives to start our own military yard sale. Luring the Mayor in was easy. I just waved around the knife I took from Faith when I gutted her and he took the bait.

"Too bad about the school, though. It’s a total rubbish heap after the explosives blew and took Mayor Wilkins aka Snake Boy with it. I actually liked being there. Well, in between the times when I wasn’t dealing with invisible girls, zombie guys, reptile men who used to be swimmers, lovelorn ghosts and pissed off vampires. Who am I kidding? I hated it. The only good things I’m taking away from it are all of my friends."

So they survived the Mayor? Well, Giles had said as much; she just needed confirmation, that’s all. Turning over the next page, she came across one that stopped her cold. The handwriting was shaky and there were blotches all over it as if she’d been crying when she wrote it.

"Angel left. I don’t know why I’m so surprised; he said he would leave right after graduation. I just kept hoping that he didn’t mean it, that he would change his mind. He kept on babbling about how something was telling him to move on. What something? Did he get some celestial email telling him his time’s up in Sunnydale? We love each other and he just wouldn’t discuss it. His mind was made up and he just turned around and walked into the damned fog without looking back. It’s like it didn’t even hurt him to leave. After everything we went through together, after I was willing to give up my life for him, he just turns around and abandons me. Why? What did I do wrong? It had to have been me. I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or funny enough…or maybe I was just some silly schoolgirl who didn’t amount to much in his eyes.

"I just don’t understand it. I love him. He claims he loves me. What went wrong?"

The rest wasn’t much different. There was page after page of silent written heartbreak. How she couldn’t discuss it in front of the others because Xander was too happy Angel was gone and she didn’t want to put Willow in the middle. How everyone simply avoided mentioning his name as if that would make all her feelings disappear.

It hadn’t happened to her yet, this her, the one reading these entries almost four years old. But she could feel that pain rooted in the insecurity that still welled up in her when she considered that Angel was over 200 years old and she was barely a fraction of his age. He must have seen thousands of women in his time, lovelier and more experienced. How could she compete with that? She still recalled the words he’d said to her after he lost his soul:

"You’ve got a lot to learn about men, kiddo—although I guess you proved that last night."

Intellectually she knew that had been said by Angelus to hurt her, to cripple her emotionally to the point where she couldn’t, wouldn’t, fight him. But what if it was true? What if, in some tiny corner of Angel’s mind, she simply didn’t measure up?

She blinked and scrubbed away the tears she hadn’t realized were pouring down her cheeks. [Stop it! Stop crying like some immature schoolkid. This has already happened. Angel broke your heart and moved on without you. This took place years ago and blubbering about it now isn’t going to help solve anything.]

Oh but it hurt, though. It hurt like a bitch and she flipped through the pages to find something, anything, to remove her from this raging pain.

"I met somebody today. His name’s Riley Finn and he’s very good-looking in an all-American cornfed jock kinda way. He’s tall, muscular and funny. He’s no Angel but then nobody is. I just can’t help comparing him to Angel. But that’s stupid. Angel forgot about me so I might as well move on…and try to stop looking at every tall, dark-haired male that comes my way as if he might be the one.

"College is certainly not much different from high school. My roommate Kathy is giving me the creeps though. I’m having bizarre nightmares and she plays this godawful Celine Dion music. I mean, honestly! Celine Dion?! Is she mental? She’s a really loud sleeper, too. How am I supposed to slay and do homework with that snoring or whatever creepy mouth music she’s making over there?

"The others are accusing me of acting strange. Fuck them! What the hell do they know about anything? Do they think my life is easy? I have to slay, attend college classes, do homework and all the while make with playing happy Buffy to please them because they can’t stand to have me mope about Angel. Like I should just put him out of my mind. This is all Angel’s fault. He should have stayed with me. Instead he leaves with some lame excuse and breaks my heart and I’m supposed to suck it up and get over it. Asshole."

Wow, that was majorly hostile. What was up with her? She knew she was torn up about Angel’s departure but this passage sounded more Cordelia-like than her usual Buffy tones. Of course, Angel used to get her pretty riled up at times. But it was in the nice I-love-him-but-he-just-drives-me-crazy kind of way that all boyfriends did to their girlfriends. She’d even gotten some of that from Willow about Oz. His monosyllabic, laid-back approach to life would infuriate the more energetic, emotional redhead. She would wonder if Oz really cared about anything or about her. Then he would say something really sweet and wonderful and melt her heart all over again.

[Something wonderful. Just like a Broadway musical. So what had me so steamed?]

"There’s a bunch of teenage vamps on campus. They go around picking off other losers, slackers, nerds, the mentally challenged and whatnot and then vamp them. They figure these kids will just be pegged as dropouts and runaways and nobody’ll think twice about them except maybe the parents. But they stole my things including that trophy I got from graduation. That was it. Nobody messes with my stuff, especially a bunch of wannabe badasses like them.

"I met up with Xander, Willow, Oz and Giles again. We tracked down Sunday and her team of vampire minions and other assorted losers and I totally dusted them all. I think a few may have gotten away but I didn’t find any when I went to track them down. Still, it shouldn’t be too hard to get them. These vamps do not strike me as being the sharpest pencils in the desk. How could they be? They’re all dropouts!"

Hmmm. So she missed a couple of vampires. And she met that Riley guy, the one Giles told her was involved in the—what was it called? Oh, right, the Initiative. Should she just skip ahead to her affair with him or see what else was happening? She skimmed ahead and found out what had happened to the infamous Kathy.

"I knew it! My roommate was a demon and she was sucking my soul out while I was sleeping. That’s why I was being such a total bitch to my friends. Well, robbing a Slayer of her soul wasn’t the smartest thing she could have done. I was a killing machine before I lost it; I totally whaled on her afterwards. I pulled her human mask clean off her face and, wow, was she ugly under it. Think charbroiled steak and you’ve got it in a nutshell. Giles and Willow cast some spell and, voila!, Buffy gets her soul back. Long story short, her demon elder came for Kathy and sucked her back down into whatever hell dimension she came from and that was that. Let’s hope my next roommate is better. I wonder if I can get Willow…

"I met a cute guy named Parker. He’s kinda nice. Definitely a sweet talker, too. He’s tall, dark and handsome—so my type. Guess I’m just doomed to fall for tall brunettes. He wants me to sleep with him and I’m getting so sick of being alone. After giving up my virginity to the man I love, it’s not like I’ve got anything to keep back from another guy so why not?"

Oh shit. She did sleep with Parker. Giles had casually brushed over mentioning him as if the affair had been of no importance and she guessed it wasn’t—to Parker, at any rate. God, she must have been lonely and desperate. She’d heard enough about Parker’s rep to know better. Well, actually she didn’t listen much to the bathroom gossip of other girls. That was more Cordelia’s scene than hers. But she’d had some clue. Could Angel’s departure have hurt her that much?

Huh. Looks like she wasn’t the only one with man trouble. Oz got involved with some she-werewolf named Veruca and slept with her.

"Oz says he did it to keep Veruca from roaming around killing people, but I don’t know. I mean, hello, Slayer? He could have given me a call, told me there was a wolf bitch on campus but instead he gets the bright idea that screwing her is the solution. What was he gonna do—keep boinking her every night just to keep her indoors? And Willow saw them together, too. God, that must have hurt. I remember being upset about Angel lying to me about Drusilla, but at least I knew that when Angelus slept with her, it didn’t mean anything.

"Well, Oz did get in touch with me—eventually. I got a tranquilizer gun but I ran into this masked man in the woods and it wasn’t Batman. He was toting some serious hardware and I barely got away from him in time. What’s going on here? We’ve got werewolves, demons and now army guys running around campus? I gotta talk to Giles about this. Something tells me Slaying just got a whole lot more complicated."

Right. That must have been her first meeting with a member of the Initiative. When did she figure out Riley was with them?

"Oz left Willow. He gave her some speech about how he needed to get his wolfy side under control and took off. Willow is just devastated and she can’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do or say. All I can do is be there for her the way she was for me about Angel. Oh great. Even when I’m writing about my best friend’s woes I can’t help dragging Mr. Broody into it. At least now Willow knows what it’s like to be the grieving girlfriend. One thing I’m not gonna do to her is try to push her into relationships before she’s ready for them. That’s what she did to me with Scott Hope and I hated it. What Willow needs now is space, time to heal…and tons of ice cream."

Buffy couldn’t take much more of this. It wasn’t simply that it was hard to read. There was just a depressing sameness to all of it. Page after page was filled with the stress of school, slaying and heartbreak. Even with Riley there was nothing really new. She liked him and they’d had sex but between the written lines she could see that there was no depth to her feelings for him. She hid things from him, went whole hours without thinking about him and didn’t even care for the sex much. Riley tended to be too fond of the whole man-superior style.

[Still, it’s not like I ever got beyond that with Angel. But I remember Angel using his hands, his tongue, his everything….mmmmmm.] She flushed as she recalled the details of their one and only night together in her head. She’d written up about that in her diaries; there was no need to go over it again. And there was too much more to cover…

"Something’s wrong with Mom. The doctors aren’t sure what it is but it’s got something to do with her brain. The doctor told me but all of a sudden it was like there was this weird droning noise and I could see his lips moving but nothing was coming out.

"Mom’s going to be okay. She’s a Summers and she’s tough. We all are. She’s gonna be okay."

So this was the beginning of it. Mom getting sick, going into the hospital and getting tests. She was shutting Riley out more and more; she had this odd idea of trying to protect him. She learned about Dawn’s Key status around this time, too. She told Giles, she told her friends. But she didn’t tell Riley? Why not?

She pulled out another diary and frowned. Spike started making more appearances in their lives and in her diary entries. Why were they keeping him around? Was it some misplaced idea of chivalry not to kill him just because he was helpless against humans? He was still a pain in the ass.

"My god. I can’t believe it; I just can’t. Riley was sneaking out at nights. He was going…it’s so sick I can barely think about it. Spike came into my room a few nights ago and told me he had something important to show me. I don’t know why I believed him but I guess he’s never failed with news even though I usually have to beat it out of him. What’s up with that, anyway? Is he some sort of closet masochist? Of course he is; he was with Drusilla for 120-odd years!

"Where was I? He took me to this shabby vampire den. I’ve been in crypts before but this place was totally foul. It was dirty and filled with human and vampire stench and the vampires seemed mostly out of it as if they didn’t realize there was a Slayer in the house. There were humans there, too. They were being bitten and moaning…like they were getting some sick thrill out of it. Every Slayer vibe went off and I wanted to tear into each bloodsucker in the place and stake them into dust. But Spike said that wasn’t why we were here. He brought me to this room upstairs and I saw…"

Buffy pushed the diary aside, her hands trembling. She didn’t want to read what was coming next. She didn’t know what it was but she was sure that it would be almost as shocking as Xander’s missing eye, as her own death and as disturbing as her sex with Spike. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to continue.

"…I saw Riley. He was sitting in a chair with his shirt off and urging some skinny, dried-up vampire bitch to suck on him. The room was dim so I couldn’t get much detail but I could see all these bite marks scattered over his chest and arms. I could tell he’d been doing this for a while now. Guess that explains why he’s been keeping his shirt on and having sex with me in the dark.

"I couldn’t stand to watch it. I ran outside and tried not to rolf on the sidewalk. Spike ran after me and said some garbage. I don’t know what; I was too sick to listen. I don’t even know how I got home. This happened three nights ago and it took me this long to settle down and write this.

"I went back to that place the next day. I took Xander, Willow and Giles with me. I didn’t tell them anything about Riley being there, only that it was some vampire version of a crack den. Anya knew all about it, which didn’t surprise me. Giles knew about it, too. He never told me because he felt it didn’t fall under my duties as a Slayer. How could he even think that?! How could he not tell me? I’m a Slayer and killing vamps is what I’m supposed to do.

"I wanted to dust every last one of those things. But they weren’t there. I guess they finally wised up about the Slayer and cleared out. I torched the place but it didn’t help. It didn’t make me feel any better.

"Riley and I had a talk—if you can call it that. He accused me of having an attraction to vampires which is a laugh considering what I saw him doing. So he left me. He took off for Central America with some lameass excuse about killing demons in the jungle. I tried to get him back; I really did. Though now I wonder why I bothered.

"Riley was supposed to be the one, the so-called normal guy Angel left me to be with. Instead he was just a fill-in. I wasn’t in love with Riley, not really. I cared about him and maybe loved him a little. But he was the rebound guy for Angel and he knew it before I did. I thought that was Parker but Parker was just a one-night stand. Riley was supposed to be the real deal. Guess I was wrong about that."

So Riley had been no big loss. No need to dwell on him then. The rest of the diary dealt with her struggling with her mother’s illness, fending off attacks from that hellgod Glory and shutting Spike out of the house after he’d declared his, ugh, love. She gritted her teeth and read the appalling, humiliating details of being chained in his basement while he threatened to sic Drusilla on her like a rabid Doberman.

[And I didn’t stake him for that, WHY? Was I mental? Even with that chip in his head, he was dangerous and evil to the core. He should have been dust blowing in the wind for that and I just let him go.] Buffy snorted and flipped the pages. Coming to another blotchy, wrinkled page, she slowed down and read about her mother…

"She was lying on the couch. She was just…god, she was staring at the ceiling and I knew. I just knew she was dead because nobody sleeps…"

The next few words were smudged and illegible and, after trying to make out the inkblots, Buffy simply gave up. Giles had shown up and she’d broken the news to her friends—and Dawn. [Nice to see they were still first on my mental speed dial of people to contact not the Former Big Bad.]

Angel had made a brief appearance after the funeral and she didn’t try to fight the now-familiar moistness in her eyes.

"I must have stood there for hours after they shoveled in the last dirt clod. I don’t know what I was waiting for but somehow I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I felt a cold hand wind in mine. Angel. He’d come back."

Yes, he had. She was beginning to see a pattern to Angel’s reappearances. He showed up for the big moments in her life but the little everyday things found him to be totally absent. She supposed that meant something. But it wasn’t enough. It was hard to believe that she was being fed such lousy crumbs of affection when she used to bathe in his love night after night.

"He held me close as we rested by mom’s grave. He said he had ‘things’ going on in L.A. but he would stay as long as he wanted me. I wanted to pour my heart out to him and tell him about my sister, about Glory, that I was up against a god and thought I might not make it. He would have stayed to lend his strength in the fight, I know it. But I was afraid and confused.

"Part of me wanted him to stay no matter what I said. He must have known I was hurting and needed mucho boyfriend support. But he left it up to me. He didn’t say, ‘Buffy, I’ll be here no matter what.’ ‘Buffy, I’m here for you.’ No, just that he’d stay if I wanted. Not that he wanted to stay.

"Why couldn’t he say he wanted to be with me? Was being with his old girlfriend too much for him? Was I that much of a chore? That’s what it felt like, as if I was taking time away from his precious cases in L.A. I was also terrified that he would get hurt. I just knew that fighting Glory meant that some of us were going to die and I didn’t want it to be him. I wanted to protect him.

"I guess that’s the difference between what I felt for Riley and what I feel for Angel. I shut out Riley because I didn’t really care about making him a part of the team. I kept Angel out of it because I love him."

Buffy reached out a slim finger and traced those three little words. "I love him." In spite of Scott Hope, Parker, Riley, she loved him. That didn’t change no matter what.

So how the HELL did she wind up with Spike?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 5

She rubbed her eyes and sighed. It was going on close to 2:30 a.m. and she was sure she’d need the sleep for the daylight hours. She had potential Slayers to train, a sister to deal with and a house to clean up (and, judging by the mess in her mother’s old bedroom, those girls definitely weren’t doing their share). Maybe she could make Faith whip them into line. Or better yet, have Faith doing laundry detail. [Heck, she must have done that a few times in prison. This’ll be no sweat for her.]

Smirking at the thought of Faith touting laundry baskets, Buffy felt a boost of good cheer. She picked up another diary.

"I’m back. They brought me back. Well, to hear Willow go on about it when she thinks I can’t hear, she brought me back. The others were just candleholders. No one will give me the details except Anya and she says it was a lot of chanting and Willow coughing up snakes. Ewww. I can’t believe she went through that—for me.

"So how can I tell her I’m not grateful? They all think I was in hell and I don’t know how to tell them I wasn’t.

"I was in Heaven and I miss it. Part of me longs to go back so badly I can practically taste it; the world is so damn awful. The colors are too bright and it’s all so loud. And I’m back in the Slayer struggle when I thought I’d be out of it for good. I had my reward, damn it! Why couldn’t they leave well enough alone?!?

"Everything hurts with a constant grating pain that never quits. I get up in the morning and want to scream at the light stabbing into my eyes. Dawn whines because she’s no more a morning person than me and the noise goes through me like a buzzsaw. Thank god for Tara. She’s the only one who can keep quiet. But I can’t talk to her either because she was part of it; they all were. My so-called friends. I know I should be grateful but part of me hates them. I want to pound them with my fists until they’re all just bloody flesh under my knuckles.

"I miss Giles. After I got through all the fumbling, clumsy cheer of ‘Welcome Home, Buffy!’ from the others, I looked around for him. But he’s not here. He went back to England. I guess the others didn’t tell him about the big resurrection party they were throwing for me so he just took off. I just wish he were here to talk to me. There was a—what’s the word for it?

"Balm. That’s the word I want. He was just so soothing, like his words were a healing lotion spread across my frazzled nerves. That’s probably not the right way to say that but it’s what I mean. Having him back would make me better."

Giles did come back and it looked like things were better—at least for a while. But there were money problems to deal with and the pipes in the basement sprang a leak. The bank refused to give Buffy a loan even after she tangled with a couple of M’Fashnik demons who were robbing the place. Life after death was not the picnic all those religious pamphlets made it out to be.

Then Angel got the news…

"I thought Angel would have shown up before now. But of course he didn’t know I was back. Somebody finally let him know—probably Willow. She doesn’t know about Heaven but she knows something’s off about me. Maybe she thinks Angel will help. Something’s got to. I go around every day with a squeezing sensation in my throat and a hollowness in my chest. I want to scream but that wouldn’t help. I go out patrolling every night, shutting down my feelings and turning into the Slayer, but it doesn’t help.

"But I didn’t tell him. Angel and me started kissing and groping like mad moments after we saw each other. We pulled back before things got too hot and heavy. Can’t risk jogging loose that soul after all. Damn gypsies. Still can’t believe they’d put such a dumb loophole in a curse designed to make somebody suffer.

"He still loved me and missed me. That much was pretty obvious. But it was like there was a part of me missing. I knew I loved him but it was like a memory of love rather than the thing itself. He could sense it, too, but he didn’t say anything. He kept asking if I was all right and all I could do was say I was getting better. Of course, he thought I was in hell, too, and I let him think it. Once upon a time, he would have known I was lying, known all wasn’t right in Buffyworld and kept pushing until he got to the bottom of it. Now it was like he didn’t care.

"He was holding himself back from touching me when I wanted nothing more than to bury myself in his arms and all at once I hated him, too. How could he not see how much pain I was in? How could he not want to be there for me? I was there for him, dammit, when he came back from hell. I lied to my friends, my mom, my Watcher to protect him and be with him. I helped him through one of the harshest things someone can go through and still keep their sanity. One meeting with me and he rides back into the sunset. ‘So long, Buffy. Call me the next time you get back from hell!’ What are the chances he’ll actually bother to keep in touch with me?

"So it’s back to the others with my stone-in-the-chest ache and a bucket full of delicious fast food chicken. They wanted to know about Angel. What could I say except that it had been—intense. Definitely an understatement."

So she was still in love with Angel at this point and this was when? She glanced at the date of the entry: October 16, 2001, over a year and a half ago. The crap with Spike must have started after that.

"There’s something wrong with me and not just because Spike says so. His chip doesn’t go off when he hits me. Somehow Willow brought me back less than human and he knows about it. He taunted me about it as he hit me and something snapped. I couldn’t stand it any longer, the pulling sucking emptiness inside and I knew that Spike could stop it. I started punching him and I couldn’t stop and then in the midst of all his leering mixed with those idiotic spewings about love, we wound up kissing and rolling around on the floor. The building was shaking but I didn’t care. I was tearing and pulling at his clothes and he was ripping mine and all of sudden we were fucking like animals. Fucking—that’s the word for it. Ugly, nasty, raw, vicious sex without an ounce of tenderness.

"We must have done it at least four times that I can remember. I woke up this morning sore and bruised. The building was in ruins. The ceiling had fallen and there was rubble covering almost every surface…and there was Spike, naked as the day he was born, lying beside me.

"God, I feel sick. I am sick. How could I have done those things with him? How could I have betrayed myself and what I stand for? I just scrambled for my clothes and punched him out when he dangled my underwear in my face. I hate him. I know I do. But I hate myself even more. I let him get too close and this is the result. I’m nothing but a stupid vampire whore, no better than Darla or Drusilla. How could I do this to myself—with him?!"

Buffy slammed the diary shut and burst into tears. She muffled her mouth with her hands and desperately stifled the sounds so her sleeping friends couldn’t hear. She could feel bile rising in her throat and gulped harshly in an effort to hold back nausea. In a moment, she was going to lose the battle and throw up on Xander’s carpet. Staggering to her feet, she tiptoed to the kitchen. Maybe she wouldn’t have to run the faucet. Xander might have bottled water in his fridge…

Nope, no such luck. She might have known he wasn’t the bottled water drinking type. She cleaned out a glass as best she could and filled it from the pipe. She swallowed at least three glasses before she calmed down enough to feel steady on her feet again.

[This was last year. It’s already happened and Giles said you’re not sleeping with him any more. Ah, but Giles isn’t sure about that, is he? And from what he says, you’re certainly been drooling over Spike and being pod-Buffy with your friends. Maybe you’re still banging hips with him. Why not? He’s got a soul like Angel now and he can’t lose it during sex. Wait, did Giles tell you that part? Why not find out for yourself?]

Snarky inner voice, right on cue. She sighed and resisted the urge to sink into one of the kitchen chairs. If she sat down now, she’d never get back up again. She turned off the kitchen light and went back to the living room.

[Onward into the breach. Who said that again? Oh yeah, Peter Cook in that Blackadder show.] She picked up the diary by one corner as if she felt soiled to be touching it and went through the rest of the entries.

Any hope that she had bumped uglies with Spike only once swiftly went out the window. There had been numerous times. Occasionally she went to him. Frequently he came and ambushed her. Sometimes there were blows. Sometimes not. He was cruel and hateful to her always with never a kind word. But it seemed that kindness wasn’t what she’d wanted or needed.

Reluctantly she realized that he must have helped keep her sane. Often Spike had shown up when she was feeling at her worst; the thought-degrading sex seemed to be exactly what was needed to keep her from losing it completely.

She frowned and squinted. That had happened before, hadn’t it? Flipping through another of her diaries, she took notes of all the times when she was feeling truly depressed. Her mother’s illness, Riley’s enforced departure, Glory’s attacks, problems with paying the bills—Spike had always been hanging around. As things got worse, his appearances became more frequent, as if events allowed him the opportunity to wedge himself further into her life.

This was important, she just knew it. Her defenses were low and the demon took advantage. [Hey, isn’t that what Angelus did when he treated you like shit after the sex and went on a killing spree with The Judge? He was so sure you’d be down for the count with your weepy, poor-little-girl ‘tude. You showed him, though, didn’t you? Kicked him right in the balls—and then walked off and let him kill Theresa, Jenny Calendar and who knows how many others. Oh, yeah. Spike had you pegged all right. Get the Slayer when she’s down and she won’t be able to say no. You slut.]

Ouch. They say that nothing hurt like the truth and here it was in all its unadorned pain-givingness. She heaved a deep sigh and turned back to the diary.

She’d ended it—finally. It took Riley coming back to Sunnydale on some mission to track down an egg-laying demon or other to do it. But she did end it. She told Spike the affair was killing her and that she was using him.

A profound snort greeted that. She was using him? Like that wasn’t a certain amount of using on his side. Why she took on all the blame on herself she didn’t know. But at least it was over. Then why was he back in her life now?

She was barely making it through the days but at least she wasn’t joined at the hip with the chipped wonder any longer. He’d threatened to tell her friends about the two of them but hadn’t put it into practice even after she broke it off.

Then he did. Xander caught sight of him screwing Anya and Spike ratted her out. The bastard. Buffy scowled and wished she could reach back through time and hit Spike so hard his pointed fangs would fly out of his mouth.

"Buffy?" She started. Willow was standing near the couch, her red hair rumpled from the bed. "What are you doing? It’s almost four in the morning."

"I-I was…" She tried to shove the diaries out of sight but the wicca had already seen them.

Willow smiled faintly and waved back at her. "It’s okay, Buffy. I was just going to the bathroom and I saw the light on. Guess I shouldn’t have drunk all of Xander’s milk before I went to bed. I’ll just be going now."

"No, Willow! Wait. We need—we need to talk." Buffy patted the couch and invited the woman to sit beside her.

The redheaded woman raised her eyebrows but made no comment as she sat beside the Slayer. She had noted the reddened eyes and blotchy cheeks that signified a real crying jagfest that she hadn’t been part of. Maybe Buffy was going to be share girl and let her in for a change.

Buffy chewed her bottom lip and fidgeted. She didn’t really know where to start. "Willow, have I—have I been a real mega bitch to you guys lately?"

Willow rolled her eyes and sniggered. "Oh yeah. You just getting that?" Noting the stricken look on Buffy’s face, she sighed and tried to revise her statement. "But, hey, you’re talking to somebody who tried to destroy the world. We’re talking a whole other level of comparison here. Besides, it’s totally understandable if there has been friction on the Buffy homefront. You were ripped out of Heaven—by me," she concluded and Buffy didn’t miss the dark, unhappy look that followed.

"Hey. You thought I was in Hell. I don’t know if you actually checked or not…"

"I didn’t."

"Oh." The flat statement, represented without apology or excuse, rattled her for a moment and then she forged on. "Whatever. You thought I was in Hell and you pulled me out. I read about it," waving her hands at the scattered diaries on the floor. "I understand there were…snakes in the procedure?" She couldn’t help shuddering and Willow smiled. It was weak but a smile nonetheless.

"I was being tested by Osiris to see if I was worthy to receive such a great gift. It was more draining than painful. I was so woozy afterwards I couldn’t even really stand for awhile. Good thing the others were there."

"Yeah. It’s good to have friends around."

"Way good." They sat in silence and let the moment stretch itself out. Buffy couldn’t remember when she and Willow had talked like this; reading the diaries made it seem almost a lifetime ago and a world away.

The exhaustion from the emotional strain brought on by reading the nearly unending tale of woe was almost physical. But she struggled against sleep; she had another thing on her mind. "Willow…about this thing with you and Kennedy…"

"Yes?" Willow couldn’t help feeling tense and nervous. She remembered how freaked Buffy had been about her and Tara. Was she about to go through all that again? Her lesbian status was something she’d come to terms with long ago; she didn’t want to have to rehash it.

"Do you love her?"

Okay, she hadn’t been expecting that question. "Love? Well, no, it-it’s too soon for that. We just got together and I like her a lot. Really, I do. She’s smart, tough, funny, sexy and she gets the wicca thing. Well, she’s getting it. She’s more of the physical, hands-on type of gal—I don’t mean that type of hands-on although she is. I just don’t mean it that way. She just has trouble handling the concept of magic so she’s in no way l-like Tara which is good because it’s not like I was looking for a replacement for Tara or anything—"

"Willow. Relax. Breathe before you pass out." At least the beloved Willow babble hadn’t changed any. And she had her answer. Buffy sorted out her next question carefully in her head. "I’ve been reading my diary and it says that Tara died back in May. I thought you’d have wanted to wait awhile before plunging into a relationship so quickly with somebody else."

"How long did you wait after Angel left before taking up with Scott? Or Parker?"

Willow could have bitten her tongue when she saw the hurt on Buffy’s face. The next moment, the blonde girl got her feelings under control and tried to answer. "I guess I deserved that. But I don’t remember Scott or Parker and, from what I read, there wasn’t really anything to what I had with them. Scott and I never made it past sharing popcorn at the movies and Parker was the biggest jerk alive. Second biggest," she amended, recalling Spike.

"What about Riley? I know you don’t remember him but you were pretty miserable after he left, take my word for it."

"But was it the same kind of misery as when Angel left?"

Willow had to admit she was right. Score one for Buffy. "No, guess not. In fact, you bounced back from Riley pretty fast."

"So maybe you’re jumping the gun with Kennedy here. She could be to you what Riley was to me." Buffy stopped and braced herself for a load of denials.

Instead Willow just sat there with her hands folded in her lap. She glanced up at Buffy and shrugged. "You could be right."

"Huh? I could? But…just now you said…"

"I said that Kennedy has a lot of great qualities. And she does. But those are the things you say about people when you like them. Someone asks you what you like about a person, you start running down a list. But love doesn’t have any definitions. If Xander and Anya had stayed together, for the rest of his life he would have had people asking him, ‘What do you SEE in her?’ because she’s a rude, thoughtless, annoying, critical, crass, full-of-herself, money-obsessed, sex-driven bitch and nobody can really stand her conversation."

Buffy gaped in surprise. The Willow she remembered didn’t use words like ‘bitch.’ It went against the Willow Code of Babble. But she was curious to see where she was going with this so she kept quiet.

"That’s why no one could ever LIKE Anya. But when it comes to love, all the rules fly out the window. Somebody asks Xander why he loves her and he’ll shrug and say ‘I just do’ ‘cause love makes you do the wacky. And you have to accept that. If anybody had asked me how I could switch from boys to loving Tara, all I could say is ‘I love her’ and that would be that. So I guess all the reasons I gave about Kennedy show reason—and that ain’t love.

"Tara was—" Her eyes misted over and they glistened as she recalled the blonde and what she’d meant to her. "She was my everything, you know? In a way that Oz never was. When I saw that Oz had been with Veruca, I was furious. I wanted to cast a vengeance spell on them both. But in the end I didn’t go through with it. It wasn’t just because it was wrong. It was because I-I didn’t think it was worth risking my soul for--that he was worth risking my soul for. That idiotic ‘Will Be Done’ spell was the only thing I could manage and I couldn’t even get that right.

"But when Glory attacked Tara and when she died, I just totally lost it. I tried to take on a god and end the world. If that’s proof of love, then I guess I loved her. I’m thinking that maybe Xander’s just that crazy about Anya."

"Yes, I am." The two women looked up and saw Xander. His hair was even more of a mess than Willow’s, flattened at the side and sticking up in the back. He was also wearing dark sharkskin blue pjs. Buffy blinked at their shiny brightness and wondered if his ex had picked it out for him or whether Xander’s notorious fondness for Hawaiian shirts had undergone a bizarre transformation.

"Oh, hey, Xander. Did we wake you up? I’m sorry." [Oh shit. Did he hear what I said about his ex? Please please please…]

"No, the old bladder woke me. And I agree with everything you said about Any, Willow." The redhead cringed. He ignored it to squeeze in between the two. "But you left out a few things. She’s loyal, funny and straight talking. I know that translates into unfeeling bitca every now and again but most of the time there’s no malice in it. She doesn’t have a mean bone in her body—"

Willow coughed and Buffy caught her eye, choking back a smirk. Xander gave them another one-eyed scowl and then grinned. "Right. Eleven hundred years of assorted male torture aside, she’s really sweet and doesn’t wish any harm on anybody. Well, maybe she does wish but she doesn’t mean it."

Willow scooted over to give him room. "So why did you leave her hanging, Xander? You never really told us and I must have asked you a dozen times."

"Actually it was only a couple of times, Wills. I was sorta distancy Xander and not in share mode so I wasn’t about opening up."

"And now?" Buffy was almost afraid of talking to them. These were the two people with whom she’d shared practically everything and, according to Giles, it had all fallen apart. The main burden for that lay on her and she was nervous that horning in now might drive them even farther away.

"Now…I guess it’s the end of the world so why not?" He sighed and leaned back and the two women waited for him to talk.

"Buffy, you don’t remember this but there was this guy at my wedding. Well, not a guy guy, a demon guy—one of Anya’s old victims. She’d cursed him and he escaped from the demony pit he was being tortured in. Guess they don’t build torture chambers as well as they used to if the victims can get out, huh?" He chuckled but the women with him didn’t smile back.

He sighed and continued. "Anyhow, ole Stuart had a major beef against Anya and decided a little payback was in order. Vengeance against a vengeance demon. Major karma brouhaha. He showed me this vision of my future: me drinking and out of work, Anya bitter and pissed about it, unhappy kids—like the Harris family home life all over again. I-I couldn’t let that happen to Anya."

Willow rubbed his arm in sympathy. She’d been witness to quite a few Harris spats in the past and knew how much Xander hurt because of them. But she hadn’t realized his insecurities ran so deep. "But it wasn’t real, Xander, you know that. You’d never be like your father. You don’t have it in you."

"But that’s just it, Willow. I do have it in me! I’m a Harris man! After Buffy kicked that demon’s ass, I looked over and saw Mom and Dad going at it again just as if they were at home and not a public place like a wedding hall. How could I do that to Anya? At least if I didn’t marry her, she’d never have to go through that."

"Xander, how’d you lose your eye?" Wow, that was majorly blunt. The other two on the couch froze and stared at her. Buffy shrank inwardly but she had to know the complete story.

"You took Faith, some of the Potentials and Xander into the Vineyard. It was all part of this plan you had to take on this preacher guy, Buffy."

Buffy’s gaze never wavered from the man sitting beside her. "I don’t want to know your version, Willow. I want to hear Xander’s."

"You’d come up with this plan. You’d heard that Caleb—that priest guy working for the First Boredom—had something of yours. So we followed a Bringer to his hideaway. There was a fight and a few of the girls died…" Xander’s voice trailed away and his hands started to shake imperceptibly.

"We followed a Bringer? Where was he, in a sewer or underground cavern?"

"He was just walking in the open. You know, like he was taking a stroll to the mall. I’ve been wondering about that, by the way. How do these guys get around without eyes? Do they go shopping, you think? Somebody’s got to make those robes for them. It’s not like they can sew with that eyeless look they’ve got going."

Buffy ignored the trademark Xander humor. "This guy’s just walking along above ground and I followed. That was so obviously a trap. Why didn’t anybody say anything?"

"We did, Buffy. You weren’t listening. You said somebody had to lead and you were it." Willow didn’t want to sound condemning but that was the bare truth of the matter.

"So you followed me anyway, Xander. Why?"

"Like Willow said. We needed a leader…"

"So you just tag along? That doesn’t sound like the Xandman. If you just caved in to leadership, you’d never have become the Key guy with the grad students when we were fighting the Mayor. You’d never have defied prophecy and come down to the Master’s cavern to give me CPR. You’re not just a dumb jock playing follow-the-leader. So what makes you stumble into an obvious trap?"

Xander closed his eye again and Buffy wished she knew what he was thinking. He was always there for her with his advice or pep talk or simple asinine humor. This Xander looked like a worn-out stranger who’d seen too many battles and gotten too little compensation for them. But she could sense he was still good ole Xander underneath it all; it was going to take some digging to find him, that was all.

When her friend spoke again, his words were slow and careful as if he’d planned a speech in his head. "I had to believe that whatever you were planning was the right thing to do."

"Believing in me is one thing. Blind faith is another. So what makes sensible Xander follow Buffy into the gates of stupidity?"

"It’s you, Buffy. I told you once that you’re my hero. Whenever I was tempted simply to chuck it all up and quit because I didn’t have superpowers or wicca magic or Gilesian knowledge, I’d look at you and everything you’d ever given up to be the Slayer and think that I couldn’t let you go it alone. I could always get that normal life; you couldn’t. So who was I to just run out and be selfish like that?"

"Is that how you saw marrying Anya? As being selfish?"

"No! She’s the woman I love! I wanted to make her happy."

"But you were going to leave me to be with her. Willow saw that vision of you in the future. You were planning on leaving Sunnydale."

"I would never leave as long as you needed me, Buffy."

"Then you would have been there for me and Anya—no matter what." Buffy summed it up with a broad smile.

"Ye—hey, wait a minute, that’s not what I was trying to say here!"

"But you said it. You could never be like your dad, Xander. I doubt Mr. Harris would lose his eye in a noble cause. A bar fight maybe but not going toe to toe with great big naughty evil." Willow couldn’t help feeling smug as she pointed out the difference between her Snoopy dancing best friend and his sodden louse of a father.

"Maybe you’re right. I’m not saying you are, and I think it’s way too late for me to patch up things with Anya, but you may be right."

Buffy deadpanned. "I may be crazy."

"But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for," Willow sang.

"Turn out the light." Xander waggled his eyebrows and pinched Willow’s butt causing her to squeak.

Buffy leaned over and hugged him. "Aw, don’t try to save me."

Willow shoved Xander in the side with her elbow. "You may be wrong for all I know…"

"But you may be right!" They all finished the last line together. There was a thumping on the wall and Xander grimaced.

"Right. No a capellas after 10 p.m. Thank you, Mr. Bobbins!" The brunette Scooby sighed and darted a swift kiss to a surprised Buffy. "I don’t know about you but all this soul-bearing has made me wiped. I’m going for that potty break I scheduled before the girltalk sidetracked me. The loss of an eye means I can use up my sick days—what few I’ve got left. I’m sleeping until noon unless somebody calls me. Don’t get me up for anything short of an apocalypse. ‘Night, ladies."

Willow and Buffy watched him go and then looked awkwardly at each other. When she heard the toilet flush, the redhead sprang up and said, "My turn. I need to catch my zzzs, too. I was planning on making funny-shaped pancakes in the morning and that takes wicca-sized concentration."

She stumbled after Xander, yawning mightily, only to halt when Buffy caught her hand. "Willow—we’re okay, aren’t we?"

The wicca blinked her luminescent green eyes at Buffy’s pleading gaze and her own softened. "Yeah. I think we’re okay."

Buffy let her go and clicked off the lamp. Randomly stuffing the diaries back into her bag, she collapsed onto the sofa. Thoughts about Spike and his souled status faded away. He wasn’t important. Whatever they’d shared didn’t matter. She remembered what her friends meant to her. She drew the blanket over her head and yawned mightily. She thought she could sleep now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 6

Buffy opened her eyes blearily. Angel was sitting by her side holding up a vial of blue liquid. She tensed at seeing his face as thoughts of all the suffering he’d put her through came to her. She began to struggle in his grasp.

He tightened his grip on her. "I’m gonna help you," he whispered. He held the glass to her to her lips and forced her to drink. Buffy tensed again and then relaxed as she swallowed the warm fluid. Suddenly it was as if a fiery sword had been shoved down her throat to skewer her guts. She began to thrash violently. Alarmed, Angel grabbed her even though her greater strength meant she would throw him out of the bed—or break one of his limbs trying. "Giles!"

[Giles? Giles is here? And Angel? Where’s Willow and Xander? Where’s here exactly?] Forcing back the pain, which was even now beginning to ebb, she re-focused on her ex-lover. He was staring at her with the familiar love blazing through his smoky eyes and she felt her heart start up and flutter in her chest the same way as it always did in his presence. "Angel?"

Just then her mother came running in with Wesley and Giles close behind her. "Thank god! Are you all right? Do you hear voices?" Joyce Summers perched on the edge of her daughter’s bed and gazed anxiously into her daughter’s eyes.

Buffy stared at her mother in shock and then lunged towards her, wrapping her in a huge bearhug. "Mom! It’s you! You’re alive! Oh thank god, Mommy, I missed you so much!"

"That’s…sweet, Buffy. I was worried about you, too." Joyce Summers smiled and then gasped from Buffy’s tight hold. She’d never been subjected to her daughter’s Slayer strength before and her vision was starting to swim from the lack of oxygen. "Honey, mommy really needs to breathe here."

Buffy unwillingly released her and then turned towards Angel. She embraced him as hard as she could and whispered in his ear, "I can’t believe you’re still here. Oh god, don’t leave me. Please never leave me, Angel."

"I won’t, beloved. But I think we should ease up on the public displays of affection. Your mother’s starting to get worried."

Buffy drew back slightly and looked around her room. Yes, it was the same as when she’d gone to bed this morning and her narrow glance shot back to Giles, completely ignoring the younger Watcher. "Giles, what day is it?"

"Ah, pardon? Oh, it’s, um, April 27th."

"The year?" When he gazed in puzzlement at her, she snapped, "C’mon, Watcher mine. This is an easy one. What year?"

"Nineteen ninety-nine, of course. Buffy, are you feeling quite well? You can’t still hear thoughts, can you?"

"God, I’m back in the right time. I can still fix things." Noting everybody’s worried glances, she leapt up from the bed. "Look, you guys have questions, and, boy, do I have answers not to mention one incredible story you are not going to believe. But first things first." She turned to Giles. "You have to get to the lunchroom. The lunch lady is going to put rat poison in the Jell-O. She’s got a cleaver so she’s really dangerous AND psychotic. I’ve got a date with a kid with a rifle."

Giles started up and ran after his Slayer as she tore down the stairs. "Buffy! Buffy, wait! Did you get all this from the mind reading?"

She called back as she tore through the door. "I’ll explain it all later in the library!"

There was a moment's silence then Angel looked around at the others. "Maybe someone should go after her and tell her to change out of those pajamas."

One would-be suicide and narrowly averted mass murder later, Buffy bounded into the library to find everybody who mattered in her life waiting for her. Willow with her arm around Oz, Xander, Giles, Wesley, Angel and, surprisingly, her mom…they all looked up when she entered.

"Um, I’m not sure how much of this is real. But when I was out—you know, getting a brain meltdown from all the telepathic overload—I had this really bad vision of a future world…."

"…and I don’t care what you have to say to convince the doctors, Mom. You are getting an MRI every month until we find that thing lying in your brain and fix it!" Buffy ran her hands through her hair and took a deep breath. She wished she had her diary from the future; she was sure she was missing a few things. But she was telling them all the major events; the minor details could be handled as they came up.

Of course, she left out a couple of items. She didn’t think Oz needed to know that Willow was going to stop loving him and turn to someone else in the future. She did tell him that Veruca was a werewolf and would try to kill his girlfriend. Oz didn’t say anything; he never did say much. But she saw his hand tighten ever so slightly on Willow’s. He would defend her to the death; that much was certain.

Still…was Oz better for Willow than Tara? She remembered what Willow had said about the blonde wicca, how Willow had gone up against a hellgod, of all things, to avenge her beloved Tara. If Tara was Willow’s true love, then Oz would have to leave. That would be necessary in any case since he needed to get his werewolf half under control. But that was a decision for Oz to make; she wasn’t going to push him into anything. Buffy decided to keep all mention of Tara to herself.

She warned everybody about the Initiative although she said they posed more of a threat to the demon community than human beings. Buffy noticed with amusement that both Watchers withdrew slightly apart to make notes about this impending encroachment by the U.S. government onto the Slayer’s turf.

She fielded the questions coming at her from all sides as best she could. Then she took a deep breath and looked at Angel. She hadn’t said anything about Spike except that he would be coming back and more dangerous than ever. She saw his eyes darken at the mention of his Grandchilde but otherwise he had nothing to say about him.

There was only one protest about her revelations and that came from Wesley. "Miss Summers, I realize you have everyone’s best interests at heart here. But is it entirely wise to reveal the future in this fashion? You will be altering it in ways you can’t begin to conceive. Every disaster you avert may possibly leave you vulnerable and ill prepared for mischances you can’t foresee. And I must believe that some of this is due to your desire to keep him beside you." The younger Watcher made no attempt to hide his distaste; he was as bad as Xander when it came to making his displeasure at Angel’s presence known.

Buffy’s eyes grew cold and stormy and everyone except Angel shrank back a little. At that moment, they all remembered they were dealing with a Slayer and one who would take no censure about her man. "Listen, Wesley, I didn’t see you in my Sunnydale future and I can’t help but feel that’s a good thing if you’re still as much of a shit as you are now."

"Buffy!" Her mother was appalled. Her little girl never swore, certainly not in front of her. Was this creature Angel responsible for that? She glared at him. He shuffled his feet under her ferocious gaze and then shifted his eyes away as if it was of no consequence. She decided she was going to have a few sharp words with him in private…where her daughter couldn’t interfere.

"Wow, we’re going to be fighting a god? Do I speak for everybody when I say ‘eep?’ " Willow murmured, an eloquent, frightened expression on her face.

"That’s a long ways off, Wills. We’ll have plenty of time to prepare. I’m thinking, since she needs this Key and a mystical meeting of star signs to get back to her hellhome, Wesley can take Dawn to L.A. while we deal with that pathetic excuse for a god."

Giles glanced up sharply at that. "Are you sure that’s wise, Buffy? You said that you…died fighting this creature. Perhaps you should leave Sunnydale as well until she’s no longer a threat." His throat closed up as he repeated her words. She’d sounded so placid when she mentioned her second death as if it didn’t faze her a bit. But his blood had run cold. It had terrified him beyond measure to read about her death in the Codex the first time. He’d been prepared to die in her stead that night; he simply wouldn’t risk losing her again.

"No can do, Watcherman. Glory wants to go home. Preventing her from doing that means she’s still trapped on this world and, while she’s here, she’ll be making brain food of the people in Sunnydale. One way or the other, she has to die."

"And how do we accomplish that precisely?" Mr. Wyndham-Pryce didn’t bother to disguise the huffiness in his tone. It wasn’t lost on him that he had been stuck with babysitting duty while the others would be waging war against a crazed Hellgod. Not that he was eager to pit his mortal strength against a deity. It would have been merely polite for them to ask him, that was all.

"Well, my diary tells about the plans we made. But, since that featured Dawn getting kidnapped, I’m thinking we should take that off the menu." She gnawed her lip. That future involved an insane Tara, a mortally wounded Giles, a chipped Spike hanging around (though she was going to make sure they didn’t need him this time around) and a Trollgod hammer from Anya’s ex. She hadn’t even told Xander that he was going to be hooking up with an ex-demon. He was still getting over his breakup with Cordelia. Knowing he would be replacing her with a former Vengeance demon would cause him to wig for sure.

[I’ll talk it over with Giles and Angel. They’ll come up with a solution. No need to spook everybody else.] She sighed and sat up straight as she looked each of them in the eye. "Guys, like I said, that’s future business. We still have one Ascension to stop and one big bad beasty to slay. Who’s with me?"

That shelved all discussion about the future—for the time being. She could tell by the gazes of both her Watcher and her lover that they wouldn’t be so easily distracted.

She drew Giles aside after everyone else had left. There was too much they needed to go over. She sat him down at the table and filled him in on everything she’d omitted from her earlier recitation.

To say that he was speechless would have been putting it mildly. He removed his glasses and polished them several times, muttering several "Good Lords" and "dear mes" throughout. The news of Willow’s lesbianism didn’t appear to shock him as much as the tale of her aggressive overuse of magic. The revelation that she nearly ended the world caused him to blanch in horror.

"Buffy, we will stop this. If Willow becomes as dangerous as you say, then we will prevent that from happening. There are ways to bind her magically—"

"No." The cold syllable escaped her before she could think.

"I beg your pardon?"

"No binding. You’re not going to put a muzzle on my friend. That smacks too much of a certain Slayer trial I went through, remember?"

Giles flinched from the harshness of her look and tone as they both recalled the terrible Cruciamentum he had forced her to undergo. "Buffy, I-I understand your reluctance. But the two things are entirely separate. The trial is meant to test a Slayer’s courage and resourcefulness. In retrospect, I can see that it is cruel and unjust and no girl should ever be subjected to it. But, from what you tell me of Willow’s future, a binding may be not only necessary but also vital. It is a matter of life and death not merely for one girl but for the entire world."

"Then we watch her! That’s what you do, right? Watch? We all will and, when we see her getting out of line, we pull her up short and give her a good talking to! We let her know just how bad things could get. We stand by Willow and we support her.

"But we don’t keep her powers from her. I’ve seen the future, Giles. Willow needs to use her magic; it’s a part of her like my being a Slayer is a part of me. It would be removing something important to who she is as a person to try to shut her down completely. Besides her wicca know-how is as important in the future as her computer skills are right now. Willow keeps her powers and that’s final."

He glanced at his Slayer and sighed at the stern-faced determination he saw there. Giles was fearful of the future Buffy had outlined. Things had gone very badly indeed and he hadn’t been there for any of it. Willow’s dabbling with dark magicks wasn’t even the worst of it. Buffy had been with Spike and that had been truly incomprehensible. He didn’t see how he could have abandoned her either. Had things between them really degenerated to such an extent?

Buffy could see his confusion and something inside her relented. This was a lot to place on his shoulders and she felt badly that she couldn’t share it with her other friends and take the burden off him somewhat. She reached out to grab one tweed-clad shoulder and squeezed it.

"It’s gonna be okay, Giles. We’ve seen the worst that could possibly happen and we’re gonna lick this." She got up from the chair and began pacing around. "Now we should make plans about Faith. I’m gonna have to hurt her badly so she winds up down for the count. I can put her in a coma but we all know she’s gonna snap out of that and come back to raise hell in the future. Is there any place we can put her so she doesn’t pop out with her bad self and wreck things?"

"The Council is infinitely resourceful. We can always let them know and they can quietly spirit her out of any hospital. They can delete, forge or alter records so no one will ever know she existed. Considering the itinerant lifestyle she’s led, having her permanently…disappear would be a matter of great ease for them."

"You mean they’d kill her," was her flat response.

Her Watcher’s voice was equally noncommittal as he replied. "That would in all likelihood be their solution to the problem."

Was that so very different from her own plans? She’d been prepared to kill Faith, after all. [Oh, but that isn’t the same; I’ll be saving Angel.]

[How is it different? You’re trying to save your boyfriend; they’re trying to save the world from a psychotic Slayer. Oh, I see how it’s different. They’ve got a goal that isn’t based on petty selfishness. Kinda puts them above you, doesn’t it?]

[This is the COUNCIL we’re talking about here. They’ve always been hoity-toity, superior, stuck-up jerks who think they’re above the law and that Slayers are just replaceable little foot soldiers fighting an endless war while they sit back and keep their lily white hands spotless.]

[Details, details. They want Faith dead; you want her dead. You get them involved then you get to keep your hands spotless. This time you get to use them instead of vice versa.]

[No, I don’t want her dead just…out of the way.]

[Uh huh. And how do you manage that without killing her, exactly?]

Lousy inner voice. All questions and no answers. She sighed and then shrugged helplessly. "I hate to say this, Giles, but I don’t think we can get the Council involved. Faith…changes in the future. She tries to become a better person and actually make up for the all screwy things she did. I know that won’t make any difference to the people she killed but she deserves a second chance. So no killing…and that means no Council. We’re just going to have to let this play out."

"Very well. But you do admit she needs to be kept under supervision."

"I’ve got it covered. I know the exact date when she snaps out of her Sleeping Beauty phase. We’ll be ready and waiting for her."

Giles looked about the space and recalled something else. "Buffy…you mention a plan about destroying the Mayor…it involves explosives placed here?"

"Can’t put it in the gym. I think the cheerleaders might have a problem with packs of C4 all over the place."

"Yes, yes. I understand. It’s just, all these books…my books…" He waved a hand helplessly at all the stacks and she heard the forlorn note in his voice and could have smacked herself. Of course, Giles would be upset about this sacrifice. There had to be a way to save his precious paper knowledge banks…

"Hey! Now that we know what to do, we can move all these books out. Angel can put them in the mansion. We’ll have plenty of time if everybody helps."

The joy on her Watcher’s face warmed the Slayer all over. "Yes, splendid plan! Thank you, Buffy."

She grinned back and jumped off the table. Yielding to impulse she kissed Giles on the cheek. "Thank you for always being there, Watcher mine."

Buffy repeated as much of this as she was able to Angel. She was with him when her mother came to tell Angel to leave and she and the older Summers woman had a few sharp words about Angel’s place in her life. Buffy made it entirely clear that Angel staying with her was a good thing and that things in the future got very ugly without him in it. Angel had tried to interject his own comments but a few yells from both women convinced him that this was something he didn’t want to get in the middle of. Unfortunately, it was broad daylight outside and there was nowhere else for him to go. He was forced to retreat helplessly to a corner of his mansion while the two of them battled it out.

In the end, Buffy won. She had stated quite clearly that if her mother persuaded Angel to leave, she was going with him and would never return and nothing the woman could do or say would change that. Joyce Summers seized on the appearance of Buffy’s fictional sister as a last-ditch attempt to persuade her to stay. But the younger woman had merely countered that she was certain the monks would place Dawn with Buffy rather than her mother; a Slayer who didn’t have to worry about protecting her mom as well as the Key would be a far better defense for her, anyway.

Joyce Summers was forced to concede the point. Her daughter was in love and no argument would sway her. Glancing into Buffy’s resolute face and the equally impassive man hidden in the shadows, Mrs. Summers realized there was nothing more she could say.

Buffy watched her mom slam the door and sagged in the wake of their argument. She’d kept up a bold face during the entire shouting match but it had taken a lot out of her. A pair of strong cool arms came around her and she relaxed into the welcome embrace.

"Hey. That was really…something."

"Hey, yourself." Buffy marveled how Angel could say so little with so much. The unexpected visit from her mother had thrown him but he was restraining himself on her account. His next words confirmed her suspicions.

"She’s right, you know. I can’t give you any kind of life. I can’t give you…life at all."

She whirled around and glared at him with blazing eyes. "Listen, Angel. I just went through this with her. I’m not doing it again with you, not when we’ve got a big battle coming up. I NEED you and I love you and I’m not going to make it in the future without you." Her gaze softened and she pled with him in a broken voice. "Don’t you want to stay with me?"

How could she even doubt it? "Yes, you know I do."

"Angel, if I carry on, if things work for me, it’s because you’re there making it work. Being Slayergal and Buffy is something I struggle with every day and night but when you’re with me, it isn’t a struggle. It—fits. Everything fits. Am I making sense?"

"Perfect sense. It’s how I felt when I first saw you. Before you came along, I floundered, lost in the darkness. Literal and figurative. But I saw the light falling on you and just knew that I had to help you. I was afraid because you were the Slayer, sworn to destroy my kind. I hated having to lie to you about myself. But I knew you’d need help.

"I wasn’t planning on falling in love. And I never dreamed you could care for me especially if you knew…what I was. I couldn’t stay away from you no matter how I tried. But when I hear people like your mother, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce…"

"Wesley? What does he have to do with this?" Had Wesley been talking to Angel behind her back? Silently she wondered just how much of the future timeline would be changed if she were to hunt him down and break a bone or two.

"I’ve overheard him talking to Giles when he thinks I can’t hear. I don’t think he realizes just how sharp vampire hearing is."

"Yep, that’s Wesley. Clueless as a stump. Makes Xander look like Knowledge Guy by comparison."

Angel’s lips twitched, the only sign of amusement in an otherwise still countenance. "Perhaps. But he points out how I’m not just an abomination but a distraction for you. You think of me first instead of your friends."

"Wrong. I think of you AND my friends. Putting a souled vampire above my friends was the mistake I made—will make—with Spike. I’m not doing that with you. And Weasley Wesley had better get over himself about you because he’s going to be spending time with you in L.A. in the future. Speaking of which…" She took a deep breath. She knew her next comment was going to invite debate and mentally prepared herself. "I think you should go away to L.A."

"What? Leave? Buffy, I can’t. You have to face the Mayor and you’ll need everyone you can get." Angel’s voice was low and appeared unemotional but she could hear the pain and disbelief running under it. He couldn’t fathom why she was pushing him away now. Was she punishing him for the desertion his future self would commit?

"You’re right, Angel. I’ll need all the muscle I can rustle for the upcoming punchfest with his Snakiness. I’m talking about afterwards. These Initiative guys are nothing to be messed with and, if you stay here, you might be caught and tagged like Spike. You need to be able to fight humans if you’re going to do good in this world and the last thing I want is a mechanical vamp. Best to have you out of harm’s way."

Angel’s eyes darkened again. He could tell there was a lot Buffy wasn’t going into. Whenever she mentioned the Initiative there was an undercurrent of unease that wasn’t there when discussing other future events.

"I guess." Now that she had suggested that he leave, a curious reluctance to do so tugged at him. What if she needed him and he wasn’t there? But she had seen the future; if she said it was safe for him to go then he would do so. Then he wondered if her insistence had another source entirely…

"Buffy?"

"Mmmm?" She’d been winding her hands around his shoulders and slowly down his back and in another moment they were making naughty forays into the tops of his slacks.

"About Spike…"

"I don’t want to talk about Spike." Oh yeah, those fingers were definitely headed south. He could feel certain parts of his anatomy stirring and taking interest as she groped at his buns and he steeled himself against the sensation.

"I need to know about him. In the future. You’re sending me away and he’s coming back…"

The fingers stopped and she stepped out of his arms, a look of total shock on her face. "And you think I’m getting you out of the way so I can get freaky with Spike?!? Are you insane? Part of the reason I’m doing all this is so I don’t wind up dirty dancing with that dyed loser."

The snapping anger in her eyes convinced him and banished any lingering doubts he might have had. "Still, I don’t like the thought of you facing him. When he returns, he’s bound to have minions…"

"…who’ll be the usual run-of-the-mill dopes. This Slayergal will have no problems." She grabbed his hand and drew him down onto the bed. "Now where were we?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 7

Oz handed Angel the ring. "That’s the Gem of Amara. You should hang onto it; you’re gonna need it for the future. Oh, and Buffy says Spike’s on the way so watch out for that. But he’s not the vampire you have to worry about. He’s traveling with this freak called Marcus…"

There was a knock at the door and Buffy smiled knowingly at the other holiday revelers. "I think that’s the package I’ve been expecting," she said.

Spike stood shivering in the doorway. His frame was scrawny to the point of emaciation and his cheeks were even more sunken than usual with bluish shadows under his eyes. As he stood trembling under the blanket shielding him from the sun’s rays, he demanded of the cool blonde Slayer staring at him, "Help me." She shoved him so that he went stumbling back from the door. "Oy! What part of ‘help me’ do you not understand?"

"The part where I help you," she replied sweetly. Out of sight, behind the door, she silently motioned for Giles to hand her a stake.

"Come on! I’m parboiling out here."

"I can help with that." In a blur of movement he never saw, the stake flashed out and he was dust seconds later. As the blanket drifted to the ground, Buffy kicked it to the side and beamed back at Giles. "Thanks, Watcherman." She raised her voice and called out to the others. "Who wants marshmallows in the sweet potatoes?"

"Willow, I know you’re hurting about Oz. But casting a spell to get him back is NOT the answer. If you use magic every time your feelings land in an emotional ditch, you are going to be in serious trouble one day."

Buffy shuffled closer to the red-eyed girl sitting on her campus bed and stroked her shoulder. "You can always talk to me, you know. That’s the great thing about being college roomies and bestest girlfriends. I’ll listen, you’ll pour your wicca heart out and we’ll pig out on strawberry ice cream until your innie becomes an outie."

Willow wiped her eyes on the Kleenex Buffy handed her and blew her nose. "It’s just that it hurts so much. I don’t want to deal with all this pain. And I know being mopey Willow is getting on everybody’s nerves."

"You’re not getting on my nerves. Don’t listen to what anybody else says. Now let’s go get that Ben & Jerry’s."

The other Englishman gave Rupert Giles a piercing look out of shrewd, narrow eyes. "When you went to the loo, I slipped a small pellet of poison in your drink. You’ll be dead in an hour." He watched the horrified look on Giles face and burst out laughing. "Just kidding!"

Giles laughed in response, gulped down the last of his drink and grimaced. "I’m gonna feel like hell in the morning."

The other sorcerer raised his glass. "Relax. Enjoy the night. We’re just a couple of sorcerers. The night is still our time. Time of magic."

Giles raised his glass in a return toast. "To magic."

The next morning, the sorcerer gaped in outrage as he stared in the mirror. Somehow his spell to turn his old pal Ripper into a Fyarl had failed. Instead the horrible visage of the horned demon was staring him in the face. The next moment, the motel door flew open and a number of armed military men stormed in and leveled their guns at him. Rupert Giles stood behind them wearing an infuriating smirk on his face.

"Sorry about this, old boy," Giles emphasized the words with a happy grin. "I knew what you were up to so I switched the drinks when your back was turned. I hope you’ll enjoy your new home. The U.S. government may not give you the best treatment but I understand the accommodations should be stellar."

The Fyarl that was formerly Ethan Rayne bellowed and lunged for him. The next moment he was hit by blasts from several tazers. His oversized grotesque body jerked in the fiery onslaught and he fell unconscious to the floor.

Riley Finn and his men wrapped the creature up as best they could in the body bag they’d brought with them. The tall Iowan glanced doubtfully at the burden and asked Giles, "Won’t the people here get suspicious about a bunch of military guys carrying what is so obviously a body out of here in broad daylight?"

"You’ll find the people of Sunnydale remarkably blind when it comes to the strange and unusual in their midst. Tell them he’s a victim of a virulent disease; that should be sufficient to ward off the curious."

The man nodded and eyed the strange Englishman speculatively. He’d tried again and again to get Buffy to go out with him but she’d been firm in her refusals. She had some odd relationship with this man that he couldn’t quite fathom. They were more than friends but weren’t lovers; he was certain of that. However, she hadn’t been more forthcoming than that. She told him she knew about his secret but that was as far as things went. It seemed that she and her friends knew quite a lot of things about this place that might prove invaluable in the future.

[She certainly was dead-on about that stuff the Initiative has been putting in my food.] Without the constant drugs in his system, Riley had felt dazed and shaky. The withdrawal had been awful. But her group had stood by and him and, thanks to them, he was definitely on the mend. Now if only he could convince the members of his team about their good intentions…

Faith wandered down the hospital hallway. Things were really quiet—too quiet. Shouldn’t the halls be filled with casualties from the Mayor’s attack? Why did everybody look so cheerful, so damned, stupidly happy?

"Hey, if it isn’t everybody’s favorite psycho Slayer out for a stroll. Hi, Faith. I brought you flowers."

She swung around, tensing for battle, and then relaxed. It was only Xander and he was holding what looked like a bunch of…pink roses? "What the fuck? Are you…what is this? What’s going on?"

"Oh right. You’re kinda out of the loopy what with the coma and all. So here’s the edited version of events. Mayor Wilkins turned into a huge snake. Buffy kicked its ass. The world was saved. We partied. How about you? All rested up?" He thrust the flowers towards her with a smarmy grin. She wanted to throw her fist through his face; let’s see how well he laughed then.

"I’m five by five, donut boy. No apocalypse then, huh?" She was casually edging around to his left, trying to get to the stairs.

Xander matched her move for move still casually holding the flowers as if he’d forgotten about them. "Sorry. We rescheduled the apocalypse. But look on the bright side. We’ve still got pizza and nachos. Of course, we’ve still got boy bands, too. But you gotta take the rough with the smooth."

"Well, it’s been a blast catching up with ya but I’ve got things to do. Tell Buffy—in fact, don’t tell Buffy anything. I’ll deliver the news personally." She lunged towards him only to be caught in an iron grip from behind.

"Faith. I got the message that you might be up and about. Good to see the coma hasn’t changed you."

"Angel?" She darted a glance outside. It was broad daylight and the vampire was standing in a shaft of sunlight from the door. How was that possible?

Before she could figure it out or twist out of his grasp, Xander pulled out the miniature tazer he’d hidden in the bouquet and held it to her mid-section. She stiffened and twitched violently as the current shot through her system and then slumped in the vampire’s grasp.

"You think you’ll be able to handle her until you get to L.A.?"

"Yeah. I’ve got the drug Giles used to render Buffy helpless during her Cruciamentum mixed in with a strong sedative." Angel pulled a syringe from his pocket and carefully injected the unconscious Slayer with it. "She’ll have ordinary strength for several hours. That oughta be enough time for me to get her there."

"What if this doesn’t work? I mean, what if she doesn’t want to go straight? Buffy told us things got really hairy in L.A. before she decided to play her own role in a prison movie."

Angel hefted the girl in his arms and stared solemnly at the man in front of him. "Buffy said Faith becomes a better person in the future. We have to trust her judgment…and we have to trust Faith. She’s gotten nothing but bad breaks, Xander. She deserves a second chance. Buffy wants her to have that."

"Guess she would." The two men eyed each other for a bit before Xander stepped back, breaking the mood. "Well, since Faith won’t be wanting these flowers, maybe you could have ‘em. Hope you like pink." He tossed the bouquet to Angel. The vampire caught them deftly and smirked at Xander.

"Why, thanks, Harris. But you shouldn’t have. You’re really not my type." Throwing the bouquet into a nearby waste disposal unit, he walked out with his burden leaving behind a scowling Scooby.

Willow lurked near the science lab and fell in step beside the short brunette who came out. "Hey, Jonathan! How are things?"

The young man yelped, jumped a foot in the air and dropped all his books. "Geez, you scared me!" He stooped to pick up his books and then did a double take, staring at the woman standing over him. "Willow? Willow Rosenberg? Y-you’re talking to me?"

"Sure. Why not?" She gathered up the rest of his things and favored him with a brilliant smile. "Jonathan, it occurs to me that we never talk any more."

"Actually, we’ve never talked. Not unless you’re counting the time you were hitting on me in the library or interrogating me about the swim team."

"Oh, those were…totally about other things, I mean, freak Sunnydale High things. And I wasn’t hitting on you. I thought you were going to kill…" She pulled herself up short with a gesture of impatience. "You know what? That’s all in the past. Let’s start off fresh. So…how’re you doing?" she finished awkwardly. [Didn’t anybody ever tell him that stripes going up and down instead of side to side would make him look taller? Focus, Willow! God, how do you talk to a nerd? It can’t be that hard. I used to be a nerd and Buffy talked to me all the time.]

"Okay, I guess. Look, if this is some kind of sick joke to get all your friends to laugh at me…"

"No, Jonathan. No joke. It’s just…I understand you’re into magic." [Oh, that was smooth intro, Rosenberg, in no way awkward.]

The expression on the short man’s face became that of a deer caught in the headlights. "M-m-magic? No, no magic. Why would I dabble in magic? I’m a science nerd not a gaming wizard. That’s strictly for the Lord of the Rings geeks; they hang out with the chess club mostly."

"Jonathan, you don’t have to lie to me about it. It’s just that I have friends who get it about the magic mojo and they’d really like to get to know you better. Wouldn’t it be nice to have real friends instead of made-up ones?" She eyed him as he squirmed under her meaningful stare.

The dwarfish man’s eyes darted in all directions as if searching for escape. His squeaky voice wobbled out of control. "Uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Made-up friends? Like I said, I’m not into the whole fantasy thing."

"Oh, I think you are. I think you’d think it’d be really neat to cast a spell to make you, say, the most popular person in the world. Am I right?" The sweet smile accompanying her words did nothing to hide the somber warning in her green eyes.

"Uh, uh, uh." Jonathan’s complexion had turned positively pasty. He looked as if he was going to swallow his tongue or pass out on the ground.

"Calm down, Jon boy. I’m not turning you in to the cops or anything. It’s not like I could say, ‘I’ve got a rogue wizard on my hands. Book ‘im!’ " She giggled at his relieved expression and then sobered. "But Jonathan, you have to listen to me. Magic is nothing to be fooled around with or used for personal gain. I know what I’m talking about here. My friends want to help and we’d like you in with us."

"R-really? You’d—they’d be okay with me joining you guys?" The pathetic gratitude in his eyes made her cringe but she understood the feeling behind it. And, if bringing Jonathan into the fold kept him out of trouble and prevented an early death, then she was more than fine with it.

"Yeah, no sweat. And you can keep an eye out for us. See if there are other people in the school misusing magic, trying to conjure demons, that kind of deal. Think you’re up for that?"

"Yeah! Yeah, no problem. See, since I’m small and everybody thinks of me as a dweeb, they don’t really pay attention to me. I just blend into the background and I hear all sorts of things because nobody notices me. Like the other day…" He glanced around in a conspiratorial manner and shuffled closer to Willow. Lowering his voice dramatically, he whispered, "I heard this rumor that Cordelia’s dad lost all his money because of some tax evasion and she’s totally broke. Can you believe it?"

[Really? So that’s what happened to her! I wondered where she’d got to after graduation.] Storing the information away for future reference—or ammunition—she smiled encouragingly at the dwarfish guy. "That’s nice, Jonathan, although it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. But keep up the good work."

He grinned and scampered off, struggling not to drop any more books and papers. She shook her head slightly. Maybe it was a mistake bringing the junior nerd into the fold. But Jonathan could be one of the good guys; she’d bet her lucky charms on it.

Buffy folded her arms and stared Travers coldly in the face. "Screw your review."

The elderly man raised his eyebrows in a small gesture of surprise. "Pardon?"

"We know about Glory. She’s a god, she’s trying to get back to her own dimension, and she’s got this whole brainsucking dealie going on. Blah blah blippity blah. See? We’ve got all the skinny and we don’t need you for that. Sorry to have had you waste a trip. So if you don’t have some cool mystical weapon I can use to chop her head off or spell to undo her magic, you can pack up your tea things and leave."

She leaned forward onto the table and stared down the older Englishman. "See, I get it now. It’s about power. I’ve got it. You don’t. The Watchers Council needs Slayers. Otherwise, you’re just a bunch of tea-swilling, uptight losers watching Masterpiece Theater. So here’s the deal. If you do come up with anything new about Glory, you’ll tell me. Rupert Giles gets to stay here and help me as my active Watcher and you’ll pay him for the job."

"Retroactively," Giles coughed discreetly behind his hand.

"Retroactively from the month he was fired. You give me the help; I stomp the bad guys. You don’t give me the help, I stomp the bad guys anyway. Do we have a deal?"

There was a long silence from the assorted company as all eyes turned to where Travers sat. Finally he murmured, "Your terms are acceptable."

She nodded sharply. "I think this discussion is over. I have patrolling to do. You can talk to Giles about any notes you’ve got." She turned and strode out the Magic Box door and resisted the urge to slam it behind her.

A familiar figure detached itself from the shadows. "How did it go?" Angel whispered.

In spite of his traditional black duster and dark attire, she easily picked him out of the darkness. "Piece of cake. Piece of cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top. Any luck sniffing out Glory?"

"No. You still can’t remember who it is?"

She huffed in exasperation. "No. It’s like I told you. I memorized everything I could from my diary about the next three years. But when I got back to the here and now, her human identity was completely stripped from my mind. All I can remember now is that our Hellgod wears designer clothes and a mortal body and hangs out near the hospital. Whatever magic she’s using to cloak herself still works and I can’t latch onto it no matter how I try. It slips through my mind like memory noodles." She sighed and wound her arms around Angel. "Don’t sweat it, Angel. We’ll figure this out."

"I’m not worried for myself." As the days wore on, he became more and more terrified at the thought of her impending death. He knew she was worried about it, too, although she hid it under a mask of chipper, rambling conversation. His beloved put up a brave front but he knew her too well.

She was becoming more aggressive on patrol and taking greater refuge in her training. Such immersion into the physical part of Slaying was always her typical retreat from expressing her feelings. After witnessing a needlessly violent attack on a Mar’nox demon, he grabbed her by the arms and pulled her back. "Okay, Buffy, I think it’s dead. You can let go now."

She glared at him through slightly unfocused eyes. Then she blinked and awareness seemed to come back to her. She jumped up from where she lay in the demon’s scattered limbs and sticky, greenish blood and grimaced. "Ugh. Demon ick. I hate this stuff; you can never get it out."

She strode on ahead and he ran in front to cut her off. "Buffy, I think we need to talk."

"About what?" She halted and he could see the swift flash of fear in her eyes. No matter how often he reassured her, she seemed to believe that every moment of conversation was going to lead to a breakup.

"It’s about you. You’re getting too aggressive. You need to take things a little easy."

"Easy? EASY? Angel, what part of insane hellgod do you not get? Weren’t you there at the meeting? Maybe we should have had Wesley take more notes."

"I’m not talking about Glory. I’m talking about you. You’re pushing yourself too hard and you keep trying these moves you learned in the future even though your body isn’t ready for them now. If you place too much of a strain on yourself or get injured because you’re taking foolish risks, you’re not going to be any good to anybody…especially her."

His voice lowered on the last syllable and she knew whom he meant. They were always careful never to say Dawn’s name out loud in public. Many demons had sharp hearing and there was no need to tip any of them off.

"Speaking of which…how are things going there?" Buffy continued scanning the area for possible activity even as she tried to steer him away from the dreaded topic of her death.

"Fine. Don’t change the subject." He stopped her forward movement by catching her arm and forcing her to look him in the eye. "What’s with you? Something is; don’t deny it."

"Noth…" Biting her lip, she stared at the ground for a moment before looking up again. "I-It’s the future. What if, in spite of everything, I face Glory and I die again? My friends aren’t going to bring me back. I’ve made them all promise not to try especially Willow. But…I’m just worried about what might happen afterwards. That future me had such problems to deal with and if I die then I’ll be leaving all that on everybody else’s shoulders.

"What if I’m being selfish or suicidal in wanting to stay dead? What if bringing me back was the right thing to do in terms of world saveage? What if…?"

Angel wrapped his arm around her and listened to her rambling questions spin themselves out. When she was finished, he smirked slightly in face of her fears. "Wow. You really needed to talk, didn’t you?"

She glared and then snorted. Yeah, it did seem as if she did. "No putting anything over on you, huh? I guess I have been bothered by it…that future me. How she seemed so lost, depressed—not to mention whiny as all get out. I just don’t understand what happened to her and her friends. Where was my support group when I really needed them?"

"Maybe that world wasn’t real, Buffy. Did you ever think of that?"

"Then how do you explain the Initiative and everything else I told you guys about? They all happened so it wasn’t just lies and fairydust sprinkled in my eyes."

"Not events per se. I mean a possible timeline. Maybe what you saw was a kind of warning. You know there’s more to being a Slayer than mere physical strength and combat skill. Perhaps it was a vision, one telling you just how bad things could get if you let go of your friends…or if they let go of you." He stopped and tilted her chin up so she could see the sincerity in her eyes. "I’ve only loved one woman in 245 years. That won’t change. I’ll always love you."

"Even if I’m covered in slime?" she gently teased and then held up one greasy greenish hand.

"What slime?" he replied. He pulled her into the shadow of a crypt and the next few moments had very little to do with actual conversation.

After letting her come up for air, Angel suddenly recalled another clue about the hellgod. "Didn’t you say Glory hung out with these diseased-looking trolls?"

"That’s right. Only we haven’t been able to spot any."

His eyes narrowed until they became one shadowed unreadable spot of darkness. "I’ll pay a call to Willy. He’s bound to have seen or heard something. If I can get wind of these creatures, I’ll follow one of them back to Glory’s lair."

"You won’t try taking her on, will you, Angel? According to my diary she pretty much reduced Spike to vampire kibble."

"I won’t. I’ll let you know what I find." Pressing another ardent kiss to her lips, he left her to continue patrolling alone.

"Hi. I’m April. Have you seen Warren?" The pretty brown-haired female approached Angel even as he began winding his way through the crowd.

"Leave me alone. I’ve got business," he growled, pushing past her. He had his sights on Dr. Williams. Willy had come up dry and there had been many a night of fruitless patrolling. But finally he lucked out. He had witnessed the man’s angry exchange with one of the diseased hobbits Buffy had mentioned and was certain this was his target.

Unfortunately, he nudged April just a bit too hard and her ever-present smile vanished. "Hey! You can’t treat me like that!" She grabbed his arm and spun him around. His eyes widened at the strength of her grip and he stared down at the diminutive little woman who had him in such a tight hold. "You know where Warren is, don’t you? Why won’t you tell me?!"

"Listen, I don’t know any Warren. Now let go." Other people had gathered around to witness the exchange including Buffy and her friends. Dr. Williams had drifted out of sight and he was going to lose him. He tried to break free from this woman’s tenacious grasp.

"TELL ME WHERE HE IS!" she shrieked as she picked him up by the lapels and threw him through the window. He flew onto the lawn and watched as Buffy came up to the woman and tried talking to her. With the same ease with which she’d handled him, he saw his beloved thrown several feet across the floor.

The girl’s smile switched back on and she blithely announced that she was going to look for Warren now. Angel climbed back through the window as Buffy reached out her hand to steady him. "Angel. Are you all right?"

"Still charming the ladies, huh, Deadboy? What did you say to get her so steamed?"

"Nothing, Harris," he groused at the other man. He turned to his beloved. "Buffy, there was a man—"

"Angel, that girl—" she said at the same time.

"Right. You go after her; I’ll go after him."

"Gotcha. See ya later." She stretched up on her toes and kissed him.

"Be careful. That girl packs a punch." He squeezed her hand and watched as she disappeared after the super strong female.

Dr. Williams walked to his car. Buffy had been polite but decided in turning down his latest offer of coffee. Over the months that her mother had been coming in for MRIs, he’d gotten to appreciate seeing her at the hospital. In spite of Glory’s frequent unscheduled interruptions into his existence, he’d managed to make a living and carve out a niche for himself around his divine sister’s intrusive lifestyle. He’d even been holding out for the hope of human passion. Buffy had seemed like a perfect choice with her winning smile, blondish hair, fragile human beauty and witty conversation.

However, she never really let him get close to her. She was sweet but distant, a distance he wished he could break through. He never saw her with a boyfriend—in the daytime anyway. He was tall, brunette and was considered reasonably handsome according to the current American standards of beauty, at least judging by the attention he got from human females. Why wouldn’t she give him a chance?

Now it seemed as if his efforts would be for naught. They had found the aneurysm the Summers woman had insisted was there and part of him regretted it. Some invasive therapy and she would be as good as new. That meant that Buffy wouldn’t be showing at the hospital any longer. He was obviously never going to get another chance with her. He fumbled for his car keys and sighed at the lost opportunity for romance.

"Dr. Williams?"

He started and dropped his keys. A tall, solemn stranger he hadn’t seen had appeared from nowhere to stand beside his car. "Uh, yes. C-can I help you?" Ben bent to retrieve the keys and glanced around. The parking lot was practically deserted and there was no cover for several yards in any direction. Where had this man come from and how had he appeared so silently?

The man watched him for a moment before speaking again. "I’d like to talk to you about Glory."

Ben paled and backed up until he bumped into his car door. "Glory? H-how…I don’t know any Glory."

It was a little but it was enough. Dr. Williams knew about Glory; that much was certain in his accelerated heartbeat and the sudden stink of fear that bloomed like a rash all over his skin. This man was human but there was a smell on him, a smell that hinted to Angel of something other that wasn’t of this world. There was also an electric buzz, warning of ancient, dark magicks, that began to coalesce in the air. The change was coming, triggered by this man’s agitation, and Angel knew he had scant seconds to make up his mind and act.

"I’m sorry," he whispered. Without warning his hands shot out, grabbed Ben’s head and twisted it sharply to the side. There was a sharp ‘crack!’ and it was over. The bare beginnings of surprise appeared on the mortal’s face for a split second before the eyes dulled in death and his body dropped to the parking lot tarmac.

There had been a brief blurring of his face, a moment when the eyes had flickered from brown to green, and Angel knew this had been the right choice. But his human soul howled at the taking of an innocent life even though he knew he’d saved his dear Buffy by doing so. Drawing in a breath he no longer needed, he hefted the body over his shoulder and disappeared into the darkness.

Giles leaned over the pot, seasoning the spaghetti sauce to taste. He lowered the spoon when he heard the rapping on his door. "Coming!" He had been waiting impatiently for Buffy to check in after patrol. In spite of her promises to do so every night until the Glory threat was eliminated, she occasionally forgot, a fact that irritated him no end. However, he pulled open the door to encounter the last person he expected. "Angel?"

The vampire didn’t come in, his shoulders slumped as if he were bearing an intolerable load, and the Watcher’s heart stopped in his chest before beginning to pound frantically. "What is it? What’s happened?"

"I-I…" His voice failed him momentarily. Then Angel shook it off. "I found Glory."

"Really? That’s fantastic news! Do come in." He frowned as the souled vampire made no move to cross the threshold. "That is good news, isn’t it?"

"I did something tonight, Giles. Something I didn’t want to do and…I have to go away for awhile. I can’t be around anybody. I can’t be around Buffy. I don’t want her to know, not yet. I’ll be in L.A. Just make my excuses, will you?"

"I must certainly will not—not without knowing what this pertains to. You gave me spectacular news a moment ago and now you’re simply going to leave? I think I deserve an explanation."

The vampire’s jaw twitched but no other expression appeared on his face. Giles opened the door wider and got his first good look at him. At first, there seemed to be no change in the vampire’s appearance. But there was a thick heavy smell about him that Giles was all too familiar with from his many nights standing over Buffy while waiting for a fledgling to arise from a new grave. He stank of freshly turned earth, his hands were filthy and his shoes were covered in…mud?

"Angel. What have you done?"

Suddenly the vampire cast his head up and sniffed the air. "She’s coming, Giles. I can smell her. I can’t let her see me like this; she’ll know something’s wrong." He turned his head towards Giles and the Watcher was taken aback by the wild, desperate pleading in his eyes. He hadn’t seen Angel look like this since that fateful Christmas when the First had haunted him.

"All right. But the Glory threat—"

"—has been eliminated. Don’t worry about it. You can tell Buffy that. I’ll let her know the rest when I can." The vampire melted away into the shadows so imperceptibly the Watcher blinked. One moment Angel was there; the next he had vanished.

He had been gone for only a moment before Buffy came running up the walkway. She halted when she saw Giles standing motionless in the doorway. "Giles. There you are. Were you waiting for me? I told you I’d check in."

"Ah. Yes, yes. I-I heard you and thought I’d greet you at the door. How was patrol?"

"Pretty hairy. There aren’t that many vamps but the demons are getting bigger and uglier. Think they’re coming here for Glory’s going away party?" She seated herself on one of the stools and sniffed appreciatively at the aroma of oregano and thyme wafting from the simmering pot.

He walked over and lowered the heat so it wouldn’t burn. Keeping his back to Buffy allowed him to formulate a convincing pretense in being worried about Glory. "Perhaps. Although, since she is merely trying to quit this dimension and not exactly taking on followers to do so, it’s difficult to see what they’d gain from making an appearance now. She isn’t offering power, wealth, riches, world domination…"

"…or free rides to Disneyland. You’re right. No mega demon perks here. Guess they’re just hoping for some attending end-of-the-world related carnage."

She started as she remembered the major news. "Oh! I almost forgot. I took care of that April ‘bot Warren cooked up. I’d almost forgotten about her because she was so not important when dealing with a god but she came to the UC Sunnydale dorm and threw Angel through a window. I managed to find Warren on my own. That saved some time. But he still got into an argument with his girlfriend Katrina. I ran after her and caught April before she gave Katrina what she gave me.

"Then we got into this real knockdown, drag-out fight and her batteries ran down. She just stopped working with this idiotic smile plastered on her face because that Warren jerk wouldn’t let her cry. I mean, he made her growl and scowl but no tears because ‘tears are blackmail.’ Bastard." The very thought made Buffy angry.

"Buffy. I’m not certain why you’re so upset. She was just a foolish, lonely little boy’s plaything. She wasn’t real nor human."

"I know that, Giles! It’s just…I was prepared to feel sorry for him, you know? I thought ‘he’ll turn out to be this pathetic loser who can’t get himself a date so he makes himself one.’ And that’s exactly what he was except he did manage to get himself a girlfriend." She paused while she thought of how Warren had spoken to his girlfriend Katrina. "He didn’t treat her so well, either, now that I remember it. And he kills her in the future. I’m going to have to warn her about that somehow," she muttered to herself.

"So what has you so upset is that you realize that Warren doesn’t know how to behave with women. Real or simulated, he treats them all badly without even allowing them the benefit of grief merely to spare his feelings and provide a sop to his ego. Perhaps this strikes a far too personal note, hmmm?" He raised an eyebrow and they both knew what he meant.

She blushed as she recalled Parker. She hadn’t slept with him this time around but had mentioned the incident in passing as a kind of joke. Mercifully, he had never teased her about it and, even now, he sounded more rueful than chiding.

"Wow, that said it so much better than I did." She sank onto her Watcher’s couch and sighed heavily. "I know Warren hasn’t done anything yet. But he’s going to kill Katrina because he’s your basic abusive louse of a boyfriend. I don’t think I can reform him like Jonathan or Faith. What should I do?"

The taller Englishman sat on the stool beside her and leaned on the counter as he attempted to advise her. "Buffy, ultimately the urge for redemption lies within the individual. All you can do is reach out and point the way. You’ve seen much of the future and will save many lives because of it. You may even save Warren’s. However, it will be by his choice not your mere intervention. Perhaps letting Warren know, discreetly of course, that he’s being watched and that illegal activity on his part will not be tolerated may be enough to keep him from performing any crimes."

"I hope so. Maybe we should be on the lookout so he doesn’t gather together a new band of ubergeeks." Buffy decided that she’d had enough excitement for one night and got up to leave.

Belatedly, Giles remembered Angel’s news. If he said anything to Buffy about Angel, she would insist on seeing him and the vampire needed time to get away. However, she might be going to see him anyway. Buffy and Angel never said anything to him but he was certain they spent time together at night. He searched for a topic to keep her with him just a little longer. "Buffy, have you ever thought about binding Angel’s soul?"

That got her attention, all right. Her eyes widened and lit on his face with shock in their hazel depths. "W-what? Angel’s soul? What are you saying, Giles?"

"I believe there may be a spell that can seal his soul to his body so that it cannot be lost by anything less than sorcerous means. S-surely that would be the best and safest thing for everyone in the long run."

Hope and fear alike burgeoned on her face as she struggled for something to say. "You think it’s possible? I mean…that would be fantastic! On the scale of one to twelve of news bearing goodness, that definitely rates a fifteen." The next moment the light died out of her eyes and she began chewing her lip in thought.

"What is it? I thought you’d find this thrilling news."

"Y-yeah. I guess. But we’re knee-deep in this Glory mess. Do we really have time to spare on personal Angel business? It’s not like his soul is going anywhere."

"Yes, you’re quite right. I just thought this was something you’d want to know."

"It is. It really is. Yay Giles with the knowingness." She gave him a swift hug. "I’m glad. This is really good of you, Giles. I-I know you and Angel aren’t…" Her voice trailed away uncomfortably. Jenny Calendar’s death wasn’t a topic either of them ever brought up for discussion. Not for the first time, she wondered how he could stand being around the demon that had murdered his girlfriend in cold blood. [Giles is a good man. I’m never letting things get so bad that I ever forget that.] Having made this silent promise, she stepped back and darted a quick peek into his face.

He knew what she was thinking about; as always, his English reserve refused to touch on the subject. Instead he resumed their earlier theme of conversation as if the uncomfortable pause hadn’t occurred. "So we’ll shelve Angel’s soul for the moment and concentrate on Glory. But afterwards…"

"Afterwards." She hesitated, now caught up in a different train of thought. "Where should we start looking? Do you have those kind of books here? Maybe we should get in touch with Wesley in L.A."

He had to smile at her renewed burst of enthusiasm. "I fully intend to start looking although there may be books at the Magic Box that can provide more in-depth knowledge about the subject."

"Hey, how about the books we liberated from the high school library before it went kablammo? Angel’s got most of them at his place here in Sunnydale. I’ll just go and talk to him…" She headed towards the door and he shouted after her in alarm.

"No! That is, I don’t think you should disturb him about this, Buffy."

"Why not? He’s going to want to be disturbed because this is good disturbance. This is people jumping out of the dark yelling ‘Surprise!’ disturby. Why shouldn’t he know?"

"Because I only came up with the idea this moment, Buffy. I don’t even know if such a spell exists. Don’t you think we should find out for certain before getting his hopes up?" He held his breath and, after a slight hesitation, she bought his excuse.

"Oh. Guess you’re right about that. No raising of the hopes for Angel. If we failed he’d become Depresso Boy and nobody wants to see that."

"Most assuredly not. Angel at his normally gloomy is quite enough," Giles responded. He and his Slayer shared a moment of private amusement at her boyfriend’s melancholic demeanor. Then he showed her to the door.

"Please keep in mind what I said. You’ll keep this from Angel?"

She nodded and smiled at him. "Absolutely, Giles. I can keep a secret. But he might guess something’s up so I’ll skip hanging out with him. This is gonna be hard to keep under wraps, though." Her face lit up as she got a brilliant thought. "Can we get the gang in on this? Willow might be able to find out a juicy spell. She is the one who got with the soul-restory deal."

"That would be a fine suggestion except that Willow can’t keep a secret. You know that as well as I do."

Oh yeah. She’d been witness to many of Willow’s rambling attempts to stumble through unconvincing lies. Anya could do better than the redhead if it came down to it. "Okay. No spilling to the wicca. But this is big, Giles. This is girlfriend big. This is the sort of thing gal pals are supposed to share. She’ll be all pouty and upset that I didn’t tell her."

"We shall try all available resources between the two of us. If we can’t come up with something, then we’ll call the rest of our friends in on this." He noted the still, pensive expression on her face. "Buffy? Is everything all right?"

"It was just what you said just now. ‘Our friends.’ I can’t believe the future me gave that up. That woman was such a dope."

The Watcher couldn’t help chiding her. "You could never be that. That woman was merely angry, frustrated, deeply unhappy and—"

"—and a dope. Unhappy is one thing. Boinking the evil undead ranks down there with sticking your hands inside whirling blenders." Shuddering at the awful memories of her future self’s diary writings, she stepped into the dark. "Let me know when you want to start on that soul thing, Giles," she called back.

He shut the door after her and sighed. Now that he’d mentioned this to Buffy, he knew she wouldn’t let it go. At least he’d kept her from Angel for the time being. But now he really would have to look up a soulbinding spell.

And sooner or later he’d have to let her know about Glory’s demise. Naturally, she’d be angry with him and furious at Angel. Well, the vampire would probably come in for the greater share of Buffy’s anger. He couldn’t help but smile at the idea of Angel facing down a wrathful Slayer. He wouldn’t want to be in the souled vampire’s shoes when she learned the truth.

Chuckling dryly to himself, he went back to his pot of sauce.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 8

The Hyperion was fairly quiet as the three men cleaned their weapons. The nights had been busy, both with paid and unpaid work. Business was good, although it could be better in terms of paying clients. At least, that was Cordelia’s constant complaint.

Gunn was joking about the way that demon had spurted goo from an, ahem, unexpected orifice, catching Wesley right in the face. Angel managed a stoic countenance although he could tell from Wesley’s glare his attempts to keep from laughing had been duly noted. Cordelia was resting from her latest vision; the painkillers she was taking didn’t seem to help much in dulling the pain.

He’d maintained secret communications with Giles since his abrupt departure from Sunnydale. Buffy had told Angel how separating from him had hurt her in the future. But he couldn’t talk to her yet. A feeling almost akin to deep terror welled up in him whenever he considered it. But he could and did keep in touch with her Watcher to learn everything he could about her life, even if it was only secondhand. Yet his heart tore at him daily over the loss of his soulmate.

Soulmate. He’d never known that word when he was human. The closest his people came to such a concept was amnchara, a mystical balance between two people of disparate but complementing natures. He certainly hadn’t considered such a thing when he became a vampire. He’d seen enough of over two centuries of mean human selfishness or lust that masqueraded as love to pooh-pooh the notion as the lie it was. If he’d ever seen the true article, his demon had mocked it or sought to destroy it.

Now he knew. Being with Buffy and knowing the horror of a future without her had shown him the wonder, delight and, yes, exquisite pain that such a gift could bring. He hadn’t wanted to leave her. But with the murder of Dr. Williams, he knew he must and his soul felt the loss keenly.

Dawn had been a welcome addition to their crew in the short time she was here. She was a link to Buffy while managing to be completely different from her. She had won over Gunn simply by her youthful sweetness, a poignant reminder of his lost sister Alanna. She had teased Wesley without the dismissal or contempt of the Scooby gang. Surprisingly, Cordelia, the one member of his team he’d expected her to have the most friction with, had taken Dawn under her wing with a friendliness never shown to her older sister.

Dawn and the former beauty queen had bonded splendidly over clothes shopping, running up a hefty bill on his credit card. He had often heard Dawn giggling over Cordelia’s acidic comments about her former friends in Sunnydale although the teenager had been quite heated in her defense of Xander. They had often discussed the physical attributes of the males around them when they thought he couldn’t hear. The frankness of their compliments about his own form would have made him blush if he’d been capable.

Buffy had insisted that Dawn attend to her studies while in L.A. Giles had enlisted Willow’s help in getting her homework assignments sent on to her and Wesley had proved quite adept in home schooling. He had even coaxed Dawn into learning French. She had rapidly become more fluent than Buffy, an achievement she meant to rub her sister’s nose in when she got back to Sunnydale.

With Glory’s death, he’d been tempted to send her back the moment he returned from the small town. But he kept her a little longer, just to be certain it was safe for her to go back. He kept in touch with Giles to learn if Glory’s followers were still in the neighborhood. It was possible they would simply leave with the death of their god but that dispersal might take awhile.

Sure enough, reports had been made of the hellgod’s minions, decrepit monklike figures with horrid skin conditions, wandering madly through the darkened streets of Sunnydale in search of their lost deity. Then they all vanished from Sunnydale as mysteriously as they had entered it.

But that had been days ago and there had been no sign of them since then. Certain the danger was past, he had sent Dawn back to Sunnydale with Wesley along with several bags of new clothes. She and Cordelia had parted with effusive farewells and promises to keep in touch. Before she left, Angel had stressed to Dawn that she couldn’t let Buffy know that he’d been in L.A.

He shook off his musings to catch another round of ribbing from Gunn. "Man, getting that stuff out of your clothes is gonna be hell, Wes. Just what kind of cleaner works on demon shit, anyway?"

"As I believe I’ve already informed you, Gunn, that wasn’t its anus. It was the equivalent of an ink ejector on an octopus. The demon apparently emits it when it’s scared or anxious in order to blind its enemies. It has nothing to do with feces," the Englishman responded stiffly.

The former street tough sniggered. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I still think if it looks like shit and smells like shit, it’s shit."

"Would you two stop talking about demon goo for one minute? God, I know we’re in the monster hunting racket but you’d think you could discuss something other than disgust-o demonic spewage for a change!" The ex-cheerleader glared at the two of them until they both had the grace to look abashed.

There was a moment’s silence then Gunn piped up with, "Yo, Wes. You catch that Knicks game the other night?"

As the two men began an avid discussion of the game, Cordelia rolled her eyes and let her head drop back onto the couch. She held the moist towel over her forehead with one hand and grimaced at Angel. "I don’t suppose you’ve got any more riveting topics for conversation, do you?"

The directness of the question caught him off guard. "Um, what do you want to talk about?"

"Well…what did you usually talk about with Buffy?"

Buffy? That was easy. Anything and everything about her life was of interest to him. Hearing her tell about her friends, her training with Giles, her struggles with various subjects in school (she really appreciated his unique perspective on history)…all had made for lively conversations. Often he wouldn’t talk at all, merely sit and bask in her bubbling glow as she recounted the day’s events. An unexpected observation made in her light, sweet voice often had the habit of catching him unawares and making him laugh.

Noting his faraway stare, she sighed. "Oops. Shouldn’t have mentioned the B word. But you and her must have gone into other stuff besides the slaying. Come on; hit me, Angel."

"Maybe I’ll hit him instead." The icy voice came from the door of the Hyperion and everybody froze. Angel slowly lifted his head to make the stormy gaze of one truly pissed-off Slayer.

Buffy’s smile was like a glittering knife in her angry face. "Hello, honey. Miss me?"

After Buffy assured Gunn and Wes that there wasn’t an emergency, Cordelia had hustled them both out of the hotel. She’d seen that look in Buffy’s eyes too often and knew what it meant. "Trust me, guys. You don’t want to get in the middle of this."

Buffy and Angel stood in the lobby staring at one another and the vampire felt as if the space were entirely too small to hold the both of them. [That’s crazy. There are over 100-odd rooms. That’s plenty of space to hide in.]

[I’m not going to hide from Buffy! She’s…ticked, I can see that. But we can work through this.]

[Ticked? No, Cordelia Chase gets ticked. Buffy gets royally pissed and that’s what I’m seeing here. If you’re not gonna run, maybe you should try picking a weapon from the cabinet. C’mon! It’s only a few feet away. We can make it!]

Ignoring his cowardly inner voice, he held up his hands. "Buffy, I can explain…"

She marched up to him until she was standing right in his face, her hazel eyes darkened almost to green with the intensity of her emotion. "Explain? Okay, Angel, explain. Explain to me how, after everything you said about never leaving me, you just leave me!"

"It was…there were circumstances."

"What circumstances?! I’m up against a hellgod and need every member of my team fighting with me and you just pull a disappearing act. I came racing over to your mansion to let you in on the good news and I find out that you’re gone!"

"Good news? What good news?"

She evidently wanted to resume her rant about his terrible behavior but whatever news she had to impart was far more important. She walked over to the hotel lobby couch and plopped down where Cordelia had previously lain. "Giles told me there might be a spell to bind your soul."

"Bind my…what are you saying?"

"I thought I was being pretty clear. Giles told me that there might be a spell to bind your soul so you can’t lose it again—ever. But he didn’t want to tell you because he didn’t actually have a spell, just the idea to find one. So I kept quiet and kept away from you because I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I wasn’t going to mention it to anybody but I got hurt one night after patrol…"

"You were hurt on patrol?" Giles hadn’t mentioned any serious injury and Angel immediately ran his eyes over Buffy’s lithe form as if he could see through the pale green dress she was wearing.

"Nothing serious and don’t change the subject. I was getting patched up by Willow and wishing you were around and going on about what a bummer it was that we couldn’t be close. One thing led to another and Willow tells me that the soul restoration spell she did for you didn’t have the gypsy curse attached to it."

"No…curse?" Angel walked over to her cautiously. Buffy no longer seemed angry with him but that could change at any moment. He sat beside her but not too closely as he waited to hear what she had to say.

"Yeah. The original curse was to give you back your soul and make you suffer. The bit about losing it if you ever experienced total happiness was tacked on to make sure you’d always be Misery Angel. The gypsies were supposed to follow you and make sure you never got that moment of shining bliss. It was all part of their eternal-torture-of-Angel dealie. Only before Jenny could tip you off about that, we…" She flushed and stared down at her feet.

"I see." He remembered his period as Angelus in Sunnydale. The moments after his soul had been restored for the second time, he couldn’t remember those months at first, and he had been so confused. It had only been during his stint in hell that the true ugliness of his alter ego’s actions had been presented to him, over and over again, in vivid screaming Technicolor.

"But Jenny saw what you were like, what we had together and, when she created the curse that time, she…left that part out. She wanted you to be happy, Angel. She must have felt that you’d suffered enough."

If he’d had a human heartbeat, it would have been thundering in his chest. As it was he could only stare at her in shocked silence as he digested the news. No curse. There was no curse and they were both free. Free to see each other without fear of unleashing a dangerous predator on the world. Free to touch and kiss and…

The vivid fantasies about her that never truly went away crowded to the fore of his mind. Unconsciously he shifted closer to her only to reel back as she slapped his face. His head snapped to the side as she began shouting at him.

"So I go to the mansion all bouncy Buffy with the happy news and you’re not there! By the looks of the dust, you hadn’t been there in days and I didn’t understand it. I thought something had happened to you. I thought you might have been dusted or caught by Glory. I asked around Sunnydale, I begged Giles and the others to search for you but nothing turned up. I was sick with worry! Then Dawn came home and started going on about her great time in L.A. I wondered why she was home when Glory was still a threat and she gave me some story about Wesley and Giles saying the stars weren’t in alignment for Glory to return home so it was safe for her to come back. I actually bought it, but then I got a peek at her diary…"

Angel raised his eyebrows at that statement. "You read your sister’s diary?"

Buffy pulled herself up short, embarrassed. "I wasn’t trying to. But she’s been borrowing my clothes—again—and I was looking for one of my sweaters when it fell out of the top shelf of the closet and fell open. I saw your name and all about her wonderful time in L.A. with my lover."

Her anger returning, she poked him in the chest with one finger. "Then I had to wait for the weekend because there was no way my mom was letting me run out on a school night just so I could hunt down my lying, skeezy boyfriend." She leaned against the couch back and glared at him. "Now it’s your turn, Angel. Spill it. Why’d you leave Sunnydale and why did you tell my sister to lie to me about it?"

Angel ran his hands through his cropped hair and tried to think of what to say. He’d had time and opportunity to come up with this speech and now the moment was here and he could barely get the words out. It wasn’t helping his concentration any to have Buffy so close. Her eyes sparkled in the light and her breasts were heaving with agitation. The graduated, clingy green dress did marvelous things to her figure. She may have been furious with him but it hadn’t prevented her from dressing to her advantage.

She was just so beautiful when she was angry, although he knew he wouldn’t win any points by telling her that now. In an effort to concentrate, he averted his dark eyes from hers and asked in a low voice, "Buffy, do you remember how you told me Glory was hiding in a human shell?"

"Yeah. That was the last thing we discussed and then you showed up at UC Sunnydale."

"I found the mortal."

"The mortal?" Her puzzlement was apparent and then the light dawned. "You mean the human skin Glory’s been playing Jekyll and Hyde with? You found out who it is?"

"I caught up to him that night that woman April tossed me out the window."

"Robot," she corrected.

"What?"

"She wasn’t a woman. She was a robot crafted by a techno-geek called Warren Meers. It was a whole ‘No woman loves me, so I’ll make a sex toy for myself’ deal gone bad." She waved her hand in impatient dismissal. "Sad story. Over story. Get on with your story."

He wanted to pursue the matter of that robotic woman. He hadn’t believed that such things were possible outside of science fiction. But his tale was more important. "Like I said, I found the mortal shell of Glory. It was a man called Dr. Ben Williams."

"Oh, I know him! He was handling my mother’s case when she kept going in for those tests at the hospital… Wait, he’s Glory’s better half? Wow, I never would have guessed."

Oh no, it was worse than he’d feared. Buffy had actually known this man and the difficulty of this confession had just increased tenfold.

Her beloved’s lapse into pained silence didn’t go unnoticed. "Angel? What about Dr. Williams? What happened when you met him? H-he didn’t try to brain suck you, did he?"

"He never got the chance, Buffy. I confronted him in the parking lot and something he said, the way he acted…I knew he was Glory. Before he could change—I killed him."

The silence stretched out interminably until the vampire couldn’t stand it any longer. He risked a glance into Buffy’s face to see her staring sightlessly at him. Her look was impassive and all at once he needed to hear the worst. Was she disgusted with him? Did she hate him? Would she get up now and walk out and never speak to him again? "Buffy? Please…say something," he whispered.

"You said this happened the same night I tangled with April."

"That's right."

"I came after patrol that night to talk to Giles and he told me about binding your soul. I wanted to run and let you know but he convinced me not to. In fact, he got pretty wiggy about my being anywhere around you. He knew about it, didn’t he?"

"I came to him and told him that Glory was no longer a problem. But I didn’t tell him what I’d done although I think he guessed. I didn’t want him to tell you about it, Buffy. That was for me to do."

"So Giles has known all this time about what you did and where you were and he kept it from me?" The anger on her face was replaced by betrayed hurt and her bottom lip quivered.

Taking a chance on her reaction, he slid closer to her although he avoided touching her yet. "I’m sorry to have laid that cross on him, Buffy. I just couldn’t bear to face you or anybody else. He was the only one I could trust not to tell you until I was ready."

"All this time, I was so worried about Glory. I was running myself ragged over her! He’s my Watcher; he should have let me know. Then at least I could have had peace of mind about her."

"I know, love. Believe me. It was a terrible thing I did to him, putting him in the middle of the two of us. But I was a wreck. At the time, I saw my pain as being greater than any moral quandary I put Giles in. Please don’t be angry with him. I’m the one who can’t be forgiven."

For the first time the pained guilt and anguish in his voice seeped through her consciousness and she lifted her head to search his eyes. "Angel, you can’t beat yourself up over this."

"Can’t I?" he said harshly. "You can’t say this is a case of my demon committing this act, Buffy. This wasn’t Angelus’s doing; ‘twas mine. I didn’t even look for another option! I killed a man with my soul intact." The last few words emerged in a vicious growl filled with self-loathing and his features shifted to his gameface before returning to their normal human planes.

"Angel, I know this wasn’t what you wanted to do. But it had to be done, didn’t it? I mean, there was no other way to stop Glory. The Council researched but they couldn’t come up with anything. Willow didn’t think there was a spell powerful enough to stop her. Giles couldn’t learn about any weaknesses she might have like kryptonite or a weak heel like that Achilles guy. We weren’t even sure if a Trollgod hammer would do the trick. What were your other choices?"

"I-I don’t know."

She could tell he wasn’t convinced. So she shifted gears slightly. "Why did you kill him then? I’m the Slayer; that was my job. Why not let me take care of it?"

"That’s just what I didn’t want, Buffy! You told me you’d died facing this creature. I couldn’t take the chance that might happen. If anyone was to fall against this thing, I wanted it to be me. I’m already dead; it would have been no loss. But by killing Dr. Williams…this way, no one would have to fight and die. Especially not you."

"You killed him for me?"

He rested his head in his large hands. She was prepared to forgive him for putting her life before this man’s own. But how could he tell her it wasn’t that simple, that it wasn’t the matter of a mere trade? He raised his head to stare at her and willed her to understand.

"Buffy, I’m an Irish Catholic. The church and I haven’t exactly been friends for over two centuries. But when my soul came back and my conscience with it—let’s just say a lot of retroactive church-fueled guilt came crashing down on me all at once. To us, the taking of a life is never a light thing."

"Even if it’s done for the greater good?"

"You can’t justify such things, Buffy. That’s what leads to genocide. Just ask the Jews who were persecuted by Hitler." He paused a moment to let that sink in.

She bit her lip as if wrestling with her conscience. Then she whispered, "Angel, I have to be confessy here. I-I tried to kill Faith."

"What? No, you just put her in a coma."

"I know. That’s what the diaries told me was going to happen. But that only did because I became killer Buffy. I knew she was going to shoot you and I didn’t tell you because I knew that one event would lead to another and she had to be Coma Girl so she could be a better person in the future. I kept that from you and risked your life…just so I could take hers."

He saw what she intended. "But you weren’t trying to kill her this time around, were you, Buffy?"

"Not at first. But when we started fighting, I lost it, Angel. I didn’t remember that she was going to be better in the future. I didn’t see the decent Faith who’d try to make good in a few years. I saw the lying, boyfriend-stealing bitch who walked on the dark side, the one who chained me to a wall and threatened to slice me up with little knives. I got all caught up in the fight and, when I stabbed her, it wasn’t about the future. It was about payback."

"Then why didn’t you kill her?"

"I looked at her and I thought about how you’d want to help her. About how you probably saw her as being like yourself. But I just let her fall off a tall building. Even knowing the future, that was still a big risk to take. She might have wound up in the morgue instead of the hospital."

"Buffy, it’s not the same."

"No, it’s not. You’re a demon, Angel. You’ve said that to me often enough so killing humans, pretty much part of your nature. I’m supposed to protect humans not kill them because I’m the Slayer. What’s my excuse?"

This was a valid point and obviously one to which she’d given a lot of thought. He struggled in his mind for a counter argument but none sprang to mind.

She clasped his hand. "You see, Angel? No black and white here. Only shades of gray and we’re both kinda coated with it. Tell you what. You forgive me and I’ll forgive you. Deal?"

At least she was making this easy on him. Forgiving himself was never an option but knowing that she did went far in easing the burden on his already tortured soul.

Sensing his surrender, she scooted closer and then sat in his lap. She pressed her lips over his softly. Caught by surprise, he didn’t respond for a moment. Then he wrapped his arms about her diminutive body and drew her close.

He’d taught her a lot about kissing and Buffy was determined to put everything she knew to the test. She ran her tongue all across his lower lip in one rapid, teasing flick. She pulled away slightly and came back again. This time her tongue was more insistent, parting the lips and stroking along the tops of the teeth. When his tongue came out and began playing with hers, she shifted closer and began wriggling her bottom across his lap.

Angel could feel heat—from her desire, her thickening lust-filled scent, her warm body pressing against his. It surged through him and he growled softly in reaction. She let the sound buzz against her lips and then pulled back to eye him with a mischievous expression. She purred, "So what do you say? Shall we test Willow’s theory about the curse?"

He chuckled and picked her up in his arms. He didn’t want to spend a single moment away from her mouth. Angel raced up the stairs with his light burden and fumbled awkwardly with the door to his room before she wiggled enough for him to set her down.

She paused in the open doorway to appreciate the Spartan décor. The furniture was heavy, dark and solid—with the bed only a few feet from the door. [Well, this is a hotel, after all. I guess most guests would want to get right down to business.]

The wanton thought caused her to blush and then she sucked in a breath. Cool hands had encircled her waist from behind and fingers began tracing circular paths over her stomach. A whisper wafted by her ear. "Have you changed your mind?"

"N-no." She cleared her throat and tried again. "Nope." The hands rose and cupped her breasts and she could feel them swelling in his hands. She sighed and leaned her head back against the broad chest behind her. "Definitely not."

He pressed kisses onto her neck and shoulders from behind. He wanted to prolong things and teasing her like this was just the way to do it. She sighed again and her little butt made tiny wiggling circles against his pants just as they had downstairs. He growled, the vibration thrumming against the skin on the lower part of her neck and she could feel it all the way down to her toes. Buffy moaned and eased around in his grasp until she was facing him again.

Her kisses were eager with all the flame of ardent youth but her hands touched him with a new awareness that hadn’t been there during their first time together. When they cupped and squeezed his buttocks, he grunted and arched against her, pressing his tightened slacks close. His fingers found the zipper in the back of the green dress and began slowly pulling it down.

The last click from the teeth and the diaphanous dress fell away from her skin in a whisper of cloth to pool around her tiny feet. Angel stared in rapt delight at the vision of succulent, tanned flesh clad in barely there satin bra and panties only a few shades darker than the green cloth lying at her feet. There was no spare flesh anywhere on her yet she managed to be curvy without boniness. "Venus rising from the waves," he murmured in appreciation and watched a sweet flush sweep over her skin at the praise.

She stepped out of the pool and tugged at his sweater. She smiled at the dark blue material; Cordelia must have been nagging him to try color in his wardrobe. It still wasn’t too far from his usual black and she was glad. She’d never realized before the aesthetic beauty of somber colors against his paleness but fell in love with his gorgeous skin all over again when his top was finally pulled away.

He was so breathtakingly handsome with his robust physique. Buffy had always favored tall, dark men; she wondered how her future self could have preferred Spike’s scrawny, short stature after someone like Angel. She could understand Parker and Riley in that context; Spike, never.

Buffy stood on her toes, nipping all along the collarbones, brushing her tongue into the hollow at the base of his neck. Angel growled when the teeth came so close. He remembered all too well the fierce pleasure such an action brought when Darla would bite him in the throes of passion. Buffy and he hadn’t progressed much beyond the missionary position on her 17th birthday and he longed to show her the full extent of pleasure their bodies could bring them.

Now he teased her again by cupping her breasts and rubbing the satiny material of the bra across her skin without actually removing the article. Buffy moaned and thrust forward impatiently. She wanted the clothing gone. She wanted those cool fingers leaving trails of heat over her flesh. But the vampire was an accomplished master of seduction. A long drawn-out interplay was what he wanted and he meant to have his way.

He left her breasts, aching with the mere hint of touch, and then caressed his hand in widening circles over her back. Her buttocks twitched like a pony’s as he patted and rubbed them. Every part of her was so responsive, alert to his every touch.

With the edge of the panties between his fingers, he tugged it repeatedly so the satin dragged between her legs, rubbing the moist slit. In moments she was squirming and gasping with each back-and-forth movement. She was moist and growing wetter with each glancing movement. Seizing the opportunity to taste her mouth, he crushed her body to his and plundered the opening between her lips.

His tongue battled with hers, straining to taste all the ripe lushness of her mouth. The coolness was in such wicked contrast to her own. It should have tasted clammy but it did not. It was ice and cleansing rain all dropped into her at once. She sucked at his tongue and followed the path back into his mouth. He curved it nimbly so it brushed all along the ticklish ridged flesh just behind her teeth.

It was too much for her. She could barely breathe with all the things he was doing to her and now he was robbing her of the little air she had left. Just as she thought she would pass out from the stimulation above and below, he mercifully released her mouth and let her breathe.

Her breath flew from between lips puffy from kissing. Her eyes were shining as she gazed up into his face and she noticed that he looked remarkably composed. Well, that wasn’t right, was it? Maybe she couldn’t make him pant but she’d have him screaming before she was done.

Before he could figure out her next move, she’d unbuckled his belt and zipped it out of the loops with only a few deft moves. She began inching her fingers into the tops of his pants while avoiding the thick length she’d felt against her stomach just moments before.

"B-Buffy," he whispered as warm fingers traveled downwards. Her hands left his thighs just as he was getting used to them and placed themselves on his buttocks instead. It was his turn to wince and wiggle as she pinched the delicate flesh.

Then she unzipped his pants and pulled them down with one brisk tug. She smiled widely at the sight of his cock rearing up proudly against his belly. [Goodness. Memory didn’t lie, I see.] The thick, veined cock stood up almost vertically and she licked her lips at the sight. Now her wiggle was against bare flesh and the rumbling sound from his chest made her breasts tingle.

Buffy wanted to feel him on top of her, inside her, and she was no longer willing to wait. All during the drive she could sense the strong pull of her mate drawing her ever closer to the hotel. It had flared up with shocking intensity the moment she’d set foot in the Hyperion and she’d brook no further delay. She relished the look of pleased surprise on his face as she took advantage of her slayer speed and flipped him onto the bed.

She knelt beside him as he reclined and Angel’s sharp eyes noted the front enclosure on her bra. He thought it a nice innovation and deftly unsnapped it with one hand so her breasts swung free. She grinned and wriggled out of the straps and threw it onto the floor.

Buffy lay on top of him, her tiny form barely covering his own larger frame. Raising herself slightly on her arms she rocked her lower body over his. The erect cock was pressed between their bodies, stroked by her panties and her equally smooth belly. The large length reared up between her legs and she could see drops of moisture steadily oozing from the tip.

Angel gasped and murmured something under his breath, a Gaelic phrase Buffy recalled from all the times they used to make out before and after he lost his soul. Just the sound of his voice, roughened with desire, speaking that ancient tongue was enough to arouse her and now was no exception.

Large hands clasped over her butt again, holding her still. "You want me to stop, Angel?" she whispered, her thighs pinning his.

The friction was terrific but now he was the impatient one. "No, Buffy," he ground out. "It’s just…"

She smirked; his frustration was so cute. "I know. Too much pressure," she quipped. She leaned forward and lapped at his mouth, drawing back before he got too comfortable. She ran her lips down to his nipples. Lapping and sucking caused him to moan. Biting changed the moans to growls.

Buffy had read the details of her future self’s grindings with Spike and the various places they’d done it. The constant undercurrent of pain and self-loathing in those passages had nauseated her. But somewhere deep inside she had experienced an undeniable, dark thrill. She wondered if, maybe, she could do the same with Angel.

Yet even during their frequent times spent groping during or after patrol, she could never bring herself to loosen up enough to try those things. The shame and ugliness of having done the nasty with Spike—even if it never truly happened this time—clouded the experiences. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss her fears with Angel; as if sensing her doubts, he never pressed her.

So here and now she was suddenly shy. That Buffy from the future had slept with three other men and gained a certain amount of confidence. She’d had only one truly complete sexual encounter and it was with the man in bed with her. He knew the full extent of her inexperience and all her assurance began to drain away.

He sensed her new hesitancy. "Beloved? What’s wrong?"

A shaky smile was his only answer. The last thing she wanted was to bring up her feelings of inadequacy. She ducked her head and kissed him thoroughly to regain her courage. "It’s nothing I can’t handle," she murmured when her lips were free. A stroking from her hand revealed just how eager she was to handle him.

Her lips ran over his throat in one continuous erratic pattern. The firm muscles of his chest twitched under her mouth as she resumed her earlier biting actions. This time she teased him by avoiding his nipples until a hand tangled in her hair pushed her mouth right where he wanted it.

But he knew his Buffy; she wasn’t as sure as she pretended. Her movements got less confident but more aggressive as if she were determined to push away her unease by sheer willpower. When her tongue dipped into his navel, he decided to call a halt to the proceedings. "Buffy, you don’t have to do this."

She lifted her head from where it lay on his stomach. The blonde hair was spread over the hard planes of his belly, the strands tickling his cock unbearably. "Angel, I want to. I know men like it, so…"

He drew her body alongside his. "I do. But I don’t want you to do anything if you’re not comfortable with it."

She hid her face in his neck and traced idle patterns on his stomach with her fingers. "I just didn’t want to disappoint you again," she said in a small voice.

He caught her roaming hand in his own, halting her movements. He knew what she was referring to and the memory shamed him. He’d managed to hurt her and make her uncertain about her sexuality. Angelus had spoiled what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life and he regretted that deeply.

Angel brought her hand up to his lips and kissed the tip of each finger. "Buffy, you didn’t disappoint me. If anything, I disappointed you."

Her gaze shot up to his and she gaped in shock. "Are you kidding? Angel, it was…I mean, I’d had fantasies and it was definitely better than any of them…like, wow! Willow and I talked about it for ages and she hoped her first time would be just as great."

A smug smile of masculine pride flitted over his countenance before being replaced by his usual grave expression. "No, that’s not what I meant. There’s more to sex than the act itself, Buffy. There’s a before, during and after. I’m afraid I ruined the ‘after’ for you. But the experience was everything I’d hoped for with you. Believe me, love. You couldn’t disappoint me. I lost my soul because of it, remember?"

Her eyes probed his as if searching for signs of dishonesty. Then she was apparently convinced because she nestled close to him again. "So…can we get to that ‘during’ part now?"

He chuckled quietly at the boldness of the query and delicacy of the language. He rolled over so he was on top. For the moment, he was content to wait while he reaffirmed his passion for her. He held up the breasts. They were small and fit perfectly into his hands. "These are beautiful," he purred. "Such perky nipples." A slight flick from his fingers and both nubs sprang to attention, eliciting a small gasp from the blonde slayer.

"They look so good." He bent his head and swept a pointed tongue around the left one until it shone with moisture. He blew so it hardened even further and then drew it between his lips. When he stopped for a moment, he whispered, "And they taste even better."

Buffy shut her eyes; she wanted to concentrate completely on what he was doing to her. Soft murmurs of appreciation came from her as his head swept back and forth between her breasts. He left them, the nipples swollen and wet, to brush human teeth across the butterfly expanse of her ribs.

"You’ve got a gorgeous stomach. I love the way it feels under my hands, the way it quivers." Suiting action to words, he stroked his broad hand over the mound. A thin line of golden-brown hair ran from the navel down to the top of her panties. He allowed his fingers to play with them briefly and watched in delight as her hips thrust up to prolong contact.

He kissed her stomach and down over one hip. His tongue trailing across her inner thigh laid down a path. She squealed, her leg jumping in his grasp. When the tremors subsided, he planted tiny kisses all along the insides of both thighs.

"So buttery soft, like kidskin—or satin." He trailed his fingers along the elastic edge of her underpants, forgotten until now. He sucked the juices seeping through the porous material, tonguing and blowing across the fabric.

Buffy’s hips had been arching forward with every phantom breath. But Angel had drawn back each time, anticipating her moves and keeping her dancing on the edge. She wanted to scream with the denied release but he was evidently determined to spin this out for as long as possible. And he was pulling away! His lips left her panties and trailed down her leg once more while she could have clawed the bedsheets from frustration.

"You’ve got such delicate and smooth legs but so strong, too. I can still remember what it felt like to have them locked around me while you lay under me. I would lie awake at nights dreaming of your embrace, about how accepted, whole and protected I felt with you. It was as if all the pain and loneliness dropped from me and I thought ‘Nothing can hurt me. My beloved is with me.’ "

She made him feel protected? Wow and she had thought she was the needy one. Her desire and love rushed back full force as the last of her doubts fell away. She felt unexpected moisture burning her eyes and she stroked her knee along one pale cheek to draw his attention to her words. "I dreamed about you, too. We’re here together now. Time to stop dreaming."

Wordlessly, he reached up and tugged at the panties. Her hips came up to help him and he drew them down her legs and tossed them onto the floor next to the discarded bra. He swept cool hands up the quivering legs and lithe thighs until his head was resting just above her mound. Now he repeated what he’d done while the barrier of her underpants still lay between them. He blew cool air across her clit until she writhed in the bed. Then one broad tongue began stroking the wet creases of her cunt.

Buffy cried out at that first touch, so longed for and so unbearable when it finally came. He lapped her in earnest, his tongue darting in seemingly random touches all along the petal-like labia. He pushed within her every now and then, always when she least expected it. Each dive was deeper and more prolonged than the last. When he left the folds to suck her clit onto the tip of his tongue, she arched until her back felt like breaking. "Angel! Don’t…stop! I think I’m…oooh!"

She wound her fingers in his hair again, dragging him tight between her legs. Now he brought his fingers into play, the long digits reaching places inside her smaller fingers never could, while his tongue licked and sucked her. He squeezed his lips firmly around the little nubbin and sucked hard. It wasn’t enough; it was too much. Her hips pressed into his face and she came at last.

The shrill scream tore from her throat and he was belatedly glad that the others had left them alone. Goodness knows what they would have thought at hearing those noises. He slid along her body, coming to rest beside her, while she trembled with the lesser waves. A gleaming sweat lay all over her and he watched the flush die slowly from her skin. God, she was exquisite and, by her impatient hands running across his chest, already eager for more.

She pulled him down onto her again and opened her mouth to his kisses. She could taste her own cum on his tongue and there was a strange thrill in sucking it off like this. She’d heard that men hated the act of cunt licking yet Angel brought to it enthusiasm as well as experience. She wondered if Riley and Parker had been that good and then dismissed the thought of them. They were part of a never-to-be-experienced future and she was happy to leave them there.

Angel savored every part of his Buffy. Vampires were deeply sensual creatures and he knew all of her intimately through his senses: the changeling color of her eyes when her moods shifted, the silken feel of her flesh, the taste of her blood, sweat and feminine juices, the vanilla scent that always clung to her and the sound of her heartbeat and skin shifting inside her clothes whenever she moved.

Now the heat from her skin was rising again and the damp thickening between her legs. He positioned himself between her thighs and his buttocks quivered as she grasped them under her hands. Her body stiffened and his name came in one extended moan as he entered her.

Between their last coupling and this one lay four years of pent-up desire. He had done things to her to keep her from being frustrated and sent her home countless times on clouds of female bliss. They had taken foreplay to new heights that would have shamed all the horny teenagers who ever made out in Sunnydale’s many parks. But always behind those make-out sessions lay the memory of their one and only time together.

Now he was here and calling her name in his lilting Gaelic accent as his length surged into her body. Buffy cried out again at the sudden invasion so that Angel halted, appalled. She was just as tight as that first time and he was afraid he’d hurt her.

"Oh, Angel…feels so good. I want you. Don’t stop, please." Her whispered pleas sounded genuine and he searched her face for signs of hurt. No, it had been pleasure not pain that elicited her outcry and the last of his fears vanished.

He withdrew and then his back bent, sinking himself deeper within the wet clinging passage. "Aaaaahhh, Buffy. Beloved," he whispered. He clasped her around her shoulders, drawing her closer. One trim leg wound around his waist, her Slayer strength crushing his body against hers. With one final thrust he was lodged fully inside her and he paused, savoring the joy of knowing her intimately once more.

Only moments passed before he began anew, the ancient driving rhythm melding them. Their bodies came together and apart, quicker and harder with each passing second. Soon she was spurring him on, her earlier hesitation forgotten, as she grabbed him with all her limbs wound tight.

It had hurt a little at first; his cock was so big and thick and it had been so long since they’d done this. But the pain passed quickly. She could feel every inch of ridged flesh filling her and she only craved more of it.

Now he relished the tightness of her as he drove back in with a motion that was almost violent in its unrestrained passion. The wet folds let him out with a slurping noise that was exaggerated a thousand times by his keen hearing. The uninhibited noises caused him to growl, harsher and louder than he had before, as he strove to bury himself in the hot sweetness of her body.

Angel’s thrusts were pressing her into the bed, squeezing the breath out of her so that her mouth opened wide, gulping for air. But she didn’t care. She didn’t want him to hold back, not now, not ever. She drew up her legs, locking them around his waist, and the altered position caused his pubic bone to bang hard into her clit.

Inner Slayer muscles gripped him so that he groaned at the pressure just where he wanted it. "Buffy, god, Buffy, my love, so beautiful," he chanted. Her body, just as he had dreamed for so many nights, was his at last. Her cries, her passion, her love—all for him. The possessive animal part of his nature that he normally kept under iron control burst loose and his face shifted.

The Slayer opened her eyes to meet the golden gaze of the beast. But she knew her vampire and this was he not Angelus staring down at her. The warrior within her cried out to destroy this monster but her heart knew the truth that lay under it.

Here was her mate, her other half, the perfect match to herself and her breath caught that she could do this to him, could cause him to lose control so completely. She drew his face down to hers and kissed him boldly, slicing open her tongue on his fangs.

The small taste of her blood was his undoing. He pistoned harder, her heels beating a tattoo on his ass, as he sucked on her tongue as if it were a nipple. He had never bitten her since that terrible illness induced by Faith’s arrow. He had given in to the urge to lick her wounds whenever she was injured on patrol and she had encouraged him to do it once she saw that it made her cuts heal faster. However, that was as far as it ever went.

But now the potent fluid hit his tongue and he growled again in ferocious desire. He twisted away from her mouth and ducked his head into the bend of her neck. His tongue rasped against his mark, the ridged crooked line seeming to leap into his mouth.

"Angel!" Many nights she had brought herself off by fingering herself and stroking the mark. In spite of her intimate conversations with Willow, she had never told the redhead just what this simple scar did for her. One stroke of her finger across it and her body melted into a liquid puddle. Now Angel was licking it, bathing it with his tongue. With the first scrape of a fang across it, she arched, the jolt of sensation almost causing her to crush him between her thighs.

"Oh god, Angel. Yes. Please. Bite me!" He sucked the flesh more firmly but didn’t bite down yet. He knew from past experience that the event would soon be over with the bite and he wanted to keep her wriggling on the hook just a little longer.

He was bucking harder and faster, her hips rising to meet his with no sign of pain or slowing. Slayer muscles flexed and gripped his cock and she was calling and panting in his ear but he wouldn’t bite. She sobbed with need and then, giving in to instinct, she tore into the thick column of his neck with her own teeth. Inexpertly, she gnawed the flesh and sucked the blood oozing from the ragged wound.

A furious shudder shook him and he gave way at last. The fangs sliced open the skin on her neck and he came as her blood splashed across his tongue. His entire body stiffened as his cock lurched once, twice inside her. The cool seed shot deep within her body as Angel drank from her, the pungent warmth of her Slayer blood causing him to cum again and again.

She thrust back her head and screamed as every muscle in her body seemed to convulse at once. For a brief span of time, she felt fused to her beloved as if she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. The building could have collapsed around them and she wouldn’t have noticed nor cared.

Buffy’s eyes opened in confusion to find Angel staring anxiously at her. "What happened?"

"I’m not sure. I think you passed out."

"Really?" She grinned weakly as she tried to ease his fear. "Well, consider that a compliment," she murmured.

There was no more sound in the room for several moments except her panting breaths as he nursed drowsily at her neck. He’d pulled back almost at once, dragging his tongue across it to slow the pulsing flow to a mere trickle. Now he contented himself with the occasional sip, punctuated with fleeting kisses to her lips. She didn’t appear to mind the blood any more than she’d minded the appearance of his gameface earlier. He wondered if she’d even noticed.

Her eyes had deepened to emerald green again with sated lust and she searched his gaze. "So…no Angelus?"

He cast around in his own mind. He could always sense his demon dimly lurking on the edges of his consciousness. The monster was still there but there was no sign of weakening of the mental chains that held him locked inside. "He’s here…but it looks like he’s staying put."

"Good." She snuggled closer and he basked in the absolute trust she showed in him. He hated to ruin the tenderness of this moment. But she had to know the danger.

"Buffy…the last time I lost my soul, it took awhile. It didn’t happen right away."

She heard the note of worry in his voice and raised her head. "How long did it take?"

He furrowed his brows as he considered. He had been rapt in gazing at her sleeping face throughout that stormy night. He hadn’t been aware of the danger so he hadn’t been watching a clock. "I’m not sure. Maybe a couple of hours."

"Oh. That gives me time then. Um, do you have chains in the hotel?"

He nodded heavily. "They’re in my closet."

Oh, that was a surprise. "Your closet? Funny place to keep hardware like that, Angel. Or is this a kink Angelus has got?"

He scowled at the amusement on her face. She wasn’t taking this seriously enough. "The others thought it would be best. Well, Wesley didn’t think it was necessary but Cordelia felt better safe than cocktails."

"Chalk one up for the cheerleader, then," Buffy sighed. She rose from the mattress though she was loath to abandon the hunky male in bed with her. Angel watched her naked form in appreciation as she walked to the closet, displaying a complete lack of modesty. He ran his eyes all over the trim tanned legs and bouncing buttocks as they bunched and flexed with each step.

She opened the closet and rummaged around in the bottom, bringing up the heavy chains in her hands. When she brought back the manacles and shackles, she paused and noted the renewed erection. She held up the chains and wagged her finger at him. "Uh uh. We have to make sure you’re safe first."

He scowled but all she did was straddle him and begin shackling him to the bed. It wasn’t until she was on the first leg iron that it occurred to him that he was still naked. "Uh, Buffy?"

"Mmmm hmmm?" She leaned back on his erection as if oblivious to the way it twitched between her legs and inspected her handiwork with one head bent to the side.

"I don’t want the others to walk in and see me like this."

"So we’ll lock the door." She gave one of the shackles an experimental tug and he winced. They were a little too tight but not unduly so.

"Ah. What’ll we tell them?"

"Well, after I get out of here, I’ll tell them the truth…that we think your soul is bound but I’m keeping you locked down just to be sure. Where are the keys for these things?"

"In the drawer to your left." Buffy rummaged around and located them and tried them in the locks just to be sure they fit. Then she re-fastened them. She sat back on his aching cock and wriggled until he groaned.

"You said this may take a couple of hours. What will we do to pass the time ‘til then?" The wriggling motion turned into a steady stroking so her lower lips brushed repeatedly over his length. The groaning noises became rumbling ones and he strained upward to meet her movements.

The mischievous smile on her face—a sly combination of false innocence and cunning—made it perfectly clear what she had in mind. She let her eyes pass over his body: the wide, filled-out chest, the lean hips, the arms and legs spread-eagled to bed, making him helpless to move. The scenario was wild, like something out of her future self’s diaries, and the desire filled her to take advantage of this unlooked-for opportunity.

She leaned back, still continuing the steady movements of her buttocks and raised her hands slowly up her waist to her breasts. She held them up with her hands and began running her fingers around the curves, bringing them close to but not touching the nipples pointed towards him. "Do you like what you see, Angel?"

The vampire’s eyes had widened as he watched the movements of her hands. She halted what she was doing and asked him again, "I said, do you like what you see?"

"Y-yes." It was a bare whisper, as his eyes remained riveted to the spectacle of his beloved handling herself. She was excited by his submissive pose and it was bringing out a side of her nature he rarely saw.

She rocked faster and let her fingers lightly circle the straining tips. Her eyelids drooped so her hazel eyes became shadowed. "Mmmm. Do you see yourself touching them?"

"Yes. Buffy, come closer." His voice was hoarse and he jerked futilely at the chains binding him to the bed.

Ignoring his request, she closed her eyes and whispered, "I can feel you touching them. I can feel you holding them with your cool hands, rubbing, squeezing, and pinching my nipples. You hold them up to your mouth like you did earlier."

"Buffy." The word emerged as a warning growl but he was powerless to do anything to speed up the action. Buffy was in control and she was enjoying every minute of it.

Her juices were leaking out of her and he could hear the faint slick noises as she jerked faster over his penis. She moaned softly as her clit brushed the bulging head and let her head fall back. The acorn-tipped nubs of her tits played hide-and-seek as she palmed and stroked them. "You’re licking them and biting them. I want you to bite harder but you keep on teasing me," she said in a faint whisper. She sank her nails lightly into the flesh so the nipples peeked out from between her fingers, jutting towards him.

"Beloved, please. Let me lick them. I’ll bite them if that’s what you want. Just please…come closer." He was begging now but he didn’t care. He never thought Buffy would play with him like this; it was better than he could have wished. But he wanted more contact with her and the minx seemed determined to deny him.

She twisted her hips and he gasped needlessly, arching so she was lifted slightly from the bed. She lost her balance and fell forward. Buffy came to rest with her hands on both sides of his head, the nipples hovering just above his head. Her spine undulated like a cat’s so the tips bobbed back and forth, tantalizingly out of reach. "Tell me you want me," she demanded.

"I want you. You can feel how much I want you." He rocked his hips again and she pressed back against them.

Gorgeous hazel eyes were fixed on his, her hands planted on his chest, keeping the distance between them. "Do you want to be inside me? Do you want to make love to me?"

A harsh growl was her only answer. The chains rattled with his frantic jerks. The waiting was driving him insane but he had to trust she’d put an end to this soon. His gameface appeared and disappeared in rapid shifts, his demon under only tenuous control.

Buffy reveled in this visible sign of his passion. She wondered how often she could make it happen. She scooted back onto his thighs so she could play with the tumescent cock. Now that she could do so without his interference, she drew out her touches. The penis pulsed in her hands as if it had a life of its own. She tugged on the pubic hairs and watched his dick jerk and dance. The wrinkles on his testicles shifted against her palm as she cupped and rolled the heavy balls.

The vampire struggled, his moans filling the room as the delightful torture continued. Buffy explored his cock with both hands, stroking him up and down, playing with the foreskin and smearing the precum all over the shaft. Both sticky hands were brought up to her lips and she sucked her fingers, knowing his eyes were following every move.

Then she leaned down and lapped at the tip. He moaned, his hands clenching and unclenching with the unconscious urge to push her head, and the desperation in his gesture made her smile. Buffy grasped the cock, feeling it throb in her grip, and inhaled deeply. The musky odor, the cool hardness of his erection, the salty goodness of the delicious precum and shiny muscular length—it went to her head and made her giddy with the sensations. She fitted her lips over the arrowlike head and sucked it down, coating it liberally with her saliva.

Angel’s body was trembling, the sensation of her lips causing his whole frame to become rigid as a pole. He gasped as his lungs drew in air he didn’t need and his hips jerked upward in the warmth of her mouth. "God, Buffy. It’s so…you’ve got the best mouth. Suck me, please. Harder."

A brief choking ensued and then she relaxed. She bobbed her head, opening her jaw as much as she could so she could accommodate his massive size. The big head touched the back of her throat and she paused, her nose pressed to the curly black hairs.

He smelled good and she bet he tasted even better. So she went to work in earnest. She drew back up the length until nothing but the head was left. Hearing his incoherent pleas, she worked her way slowly down again, jiggling his balls in her fingers and circling the anus. When she did that, she felt his body jump and when she pressed against the clenched ring, he shouted and bucked his hips towards her hand.

Did he like that? She wasn’t sure what that would do; there’d been no info about that in the diaries. But maybe she could find out. The dick was sucked in hard. She slurped, licked and caressed the pulsating length. Angel’s voice rose to steady growls and shouts and pleas.

"Baby. Don’t stop. Do that again. God, you’re so good, real good. More." He didn’t really need to encourage her and she was doing great on her own. Another hard suck and he shook. His balls drew up near his body and he knew what would happen next.

With Darla he wouldn’t have bothered with a warning. But this was Buffy’s first time doing this and he didn’t want to disgust nor frighten her. "Buffy, I’m gonna cum," he whispered hoarsely.

She didn’t stop nor pause. She merely sped up her movements and, just as his cock leaped within her mouth, she sank one slim finger into his anus. Angel’s face shifted and he roared, his orgasm overcoming him at last. Buffy spluttered with the stream of cum. Then she quickly regained control and greedily gulped down every drop.

"Mmm. That was good." She licked her lips like a cat with a plate of cream and he blinked in an attempt to get his vision to refocus.

"Good doesn’t describe it," he mumbled. "Any chance it’ll get better?"

She grinned and she raised herself away from him. He lamented the loss of contact with her, expressed in a throaty moan that was almost like a whine. What the fuck? Okay, he didn’t whine for anybody, not even for Spike when Marcus had been torturing him.

But she didn’t leave him in suspense as to her next move. She licked briskly along his cock again to get every bit of cum she might have missed and smiled as she saw it instantly leap to attention. Sucking on his balls caused the blood to pump into his dick until it once again rose proud and shaking along his stomach. Then she raised herself over him until the very tip was poised at her cunt.

Holding him with her eyes, she sank unhurriedly over him, pausing to let him swell and fit every crevice. She began a languid rhythm as she started whispering to him. "Angel. Do you know how this feels, how good it is? You’re so big, it almost hurts but in a good way, like you’re becoming a part of me." She moved faster as she got slicker. Her eyes drifted shut as one hand came up to play with a nipple and the other drifted down to stroke her clit.

She shivered from the bare beginnings of ecstasy that ran from her nub to her tingling nips. "Ooh, it’s so nice. I almost wish you could touch me. But you can’t, not yet. Maybe later, if you’re good. Or if you’re not." She flashed him a wicked smile and pumped her hips faster yet.

The blood was coursing over her belly in a nice flush all the way up to her breasts. He could see the way the nipples grew hard and thrust forward as she continued to tease and pull at them. Her eyes closed and her head fell back as she bounced on his cock, almost out of control. She rubbed her clit again and mewled. The soft sound ran along his nerves and he growled as he bucked in his restraints.

"Buffy." The word was little more than a low rumble and she knew without opening her eyes that his features had altered again. His gasps and cries mingled with hers as they began racing each other. She leaned back and pulled his balls away from his body, squeezing her hand around them so he couldn’t cum and he cried out in dismay. He couldn’t believe she’d torment him like this. "For god’s sake! Buffy!"

"No, not yet." she gasped. Her body alternately flexed and sagged as she drew close and retreated. Then he heard her scream as her cunt rippled and then clamped down on his cock.

She released his balls and he bellowed, caught helplessly in the riptide of his own climax, as he came in powerful spurts inside his mate.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Part 9

Gunn, Wesley and Cordelia tiptoed cautiously inside the Hyperion. There were no bodies lying around; that was a good sign. "So where they at?" the tall black man asked as he peered around the large space.

In the drive to the movie—Cordelia had assured them Angel and Buffy would need every bit of the time to hash out their problems—the seer had gone into elaborate, unwanted detail about the ups and downs of their turbulent affair and the return of Angel’s nasty alter ego. He’d had to bite back a snigger at the barely concealed jealousy as she carped about Angel’s unhealthy attachment to Buffy in high school as if there weren’t any other, more beautiful, women around.

They’d seen the movie and, mercifully, Cordelia had shut up during its entire run. Then, on the return trip, she had launched into all the details she’d apparently missed on the drive over to the movie theater. Now he was thoroughly bored with the subject; he just hoped he wouldn’t have to sweep his boss into an ashtray.

"Cordelia, I’m sure your fears are unfounded. Miss Summers may have been upset but she’s a mature adult and Angel is over 200 years old. They will settle this disagreement of theirs without resorting to fisticuffs."

"Ha! That just shows what you know, Wesley. Didn’t you hear anything I said? Hurricane Buffy is in town and that can only mean trou—"

"AAAAAAANNNNGELLLL!" The loud feminine wail came from upstairs swiftly followed by a deep guttural roar.

"BUUUUFFFFYYY!" The Watcher paled, Cordelia turned red and gaped in outrage and Gunn snorted and then burst into laughter.

"Oh yeah. Sounds like they killing each other, all right. Quick, Wesley, you get the trank gun, I’ll get my axe." He plopped on the couch, dissolving into laughter again as more ecstatic cries came from the room on the upper floor.

Cordelia stood in shock and then began spluttering, "What is the matter with her? Is she crazy? Has she forgotten what all this leads to? I can’t believe she’d be so selfish!"

She was marching for the stairs when Wesley pulled her back. "Cordelia, do you really want to walk in on them if Buffy and Angel are otherwise engaged?"

She glared at him and yanked her arm out of his grip. Nevertheless, she halted her progress up the stairs. "Wesley, you know what this means. Angelus is about to make a return and, you better believe me, it’s gonna take more than an axe and tranquilizers to stop him."

"Cordelia, I understand your fears. But I find it difficult to believe that Miss Summers would be so careless. After all, she’s resisted Angel’s—advances for the past four years. Why would she suddenly give in now, especially when she was obviously incensed with him earlier?"

"God, Wes, you don’t know much about this sort of thing, do you? Arguing leads to fighting, fighting leads to passion and that leads to make-up sex. I’m surprised she didn’t fall off the wagon before now." She shuddered at another round of delirious cries from upstairs.

"I think we should give both of them the benefit of the doubt."

"Fine. You go up there and talk to them then." Cordelia crossed her arms and lifted her chin in defiance.

"Me? Why do I have to go? You’re the one who doesn’t think Angel can be trusted."

"Well, you’re the one who thinks that Buffy can. So why don’t you just go up there and tell her what a big jerk she’s being putting us all in danger like this?"

Gunn listened to the two of them bickering with only one ear. The other one was eagerly listening for more sounds coming from the closed bedroom. After awhile, they seemed to stop with no sign that they were beginning again. So he shrugged mentally and slouched up the stairs. Cordelia stopped arguing to snap at him, "Where do you think you’re going?"

"I was thinking you two wanted to continue the Weezie and George Jefferson act a little longer. I’ll go check on them two now that things seem a little quieter." Without waiting for further permission, he sauntered upstairs and rapped on the hotel door.

There was a hurried rustling behind the door and then fevered whispering. From behind the locked door, a female voice sang out, "Who is it?"

"Yo, it’s me, Gunn. Angel, you all right in there?"

There was a soft giggle and the rustle of clothing and this time Angel answered. His voice sounded unusually high and strained as he spoke. "Yeah, Gunn. I’m fine. Is there a problem?"

"Nah. It’s just our resident seer has got her panties in a wad ‘cause she thinks Angelus is about to make a visit. From what she tells me, he’s a real badass and I want to know if I should be sharpening my trusty hubcap axe."

The next moment the door was pulled open and Buffy Summers stood before him. She was dressed in the same pale green dress she’d worn before but now she was distinctly braless under it and she had what he called "wild, funky sex hair." She thrust out one small hand towards him. "Hi. We weren’t properly introduced before. You’re Gunn, right?"

"That’s right. And you’re Buffy, the Slayer and Angel’s girl. I gotta tell you, I didn’t think a fighter would be so small."

"Yeah, they all say that," she replied with a genuine smile. She glanced back at something unseen just behind the door and he realized Angel hadn’t appeared yet. "You’re worried about Angelus. Don’t be. His soul is safe. My friend left out the happiness clause when she stuck his soul back in again. He’ll be just fine."

"Any chance I could see for myself?" He pushed forward only to find himself forced back by the deceptively small woman facing him.

"Uh no. He’s kinda…tied up at the moment." There was a loud snort from behind the door and it was obvious the woman was holding back a giggle of her own.

"Look, we’re taking every step to see Angelus doesn’t get out, okay? Believe me, the situation’s under control. See, I’ve got my trusty stake with me?" She fumbled in her purse and pulled out a stake, smooth and polished from constant handling.

"Well, if you think that’s gonna be enough—"

"Gunn, leave us alone. Buffy and I have…things to discuss." The growly voice was definitely from Angel and Gunn saw a naughty sparkle appear deep in the woman’s eyes.

"Okay. But if you’re gonna keep doing this kind of discussing, you might want to think about getting this room soundproofed. We could hear you two all the way downstairs."

He was gratified to see the blonde Slayer blush all the way up to her eyebrows. "You heard us? Even Cordelia?"

"Especially Cordy. She nearly had a stroke." She was turning all shades of red and he could hear male laughter drifting out from behind her. She glared in the direction of the unseen vampire and then turned back to Gunn.

"Um, thanks. We’ll…try to keep it down." She inched the door shut and then paused. "Did you say something earlier about a hubcap axe?"

"Yeah. Some kid made it for me in shop class. When you two finished with your conversation, I’ll show it to you."

She grinned as she replied, "Okay. It sounds cool. All I ever got in shop was an ashtray from some guy with a crush on me in the fifth grade." Then she shut the door. He could hear more whispers and then what sounded like a low moan.

He shook his head as he went back down the stairs. "Oh yeah. Definitely gonna need soundproofing."

Finis

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