I am not nervous, Buffy thought.
Sure, my palms are all sweaty, and I can't think straight, and my heart is beating about a jillion times a minute -- and I think he can actually HEAR that, which is so not cool --
She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She had a bad case of ex-boyfriend jitters about seeing Angel, sure -- but she knew well enough that she was focusing on that for a reason.
Easier to be scared about Angel than to be scared about what he would tell her.
Buffy straightened out her clothes and smoothed her hair before pressing her palm to the pad beside Angel's door. It slid open immediately. "Hey," Angel said. He was standing in the door, shoulders slightly hunched, expression hesitant. "You found it."
"Frances told me where, after some major eye-rolling," Buffy said. The moment was every bit as awkward as she'd feared. Should she hug him? Offer to shake? Embarrassed, she glanced over his shoulder -- then lit up. "Look at your place!"
Buffy walked past Angel into a room that was the most welcoming and familiar she'd seen since her resurrection. Instead of being all white and gray, Angel's room had colors -- blankets in green and gold, with patterns woven in, and wooden chairs that had been stained rich brown or dark red. Candles and oil lamps provided light instead of the usual, severe overhead glare. Photographs and tiny holograms littered the shelves, and books covered almost every wall -- including a bricked-over one that, Buffy realized, would once have been a window. Where there weren't books, there were pictures -- sketches in oils or pencils of various people. A few old swords and daggers lay on the shelves as well. "Angel, this is great. Your room -- has -- stuff in it! Stuff you don't even need! I never realized how beautiful plain old stuff can be."
"These are pretty austere times," Angel said. "But I like to keep my things around me."
"I do too," Buffy said. She sank gratefully onto Angel's battered old sofa. "Right now, all my stuff fits in a shoulder pack. But I've already started shopping, so I think I can turn that around."
"Have you eaten dinner?" Angel asked, sitting in one of the chairs opposite her. "I brought up some wine and fruit, but if you wanted more --"
"Wine and fruit will be fine. Had the regulation salad for dinner," Buffy said, then frowned. "Are we on some kind of enforced diet? Because the leafy greens have been heavily represented in our meals."
"Yours and everyone else's," Angel said. "Raising animals for food takes a lot of space and security, Buffy. Those are two things most people don't have any longer."
"So McDonald's is gone too," Buffy said. "Now I know it's the apocalypse."
"They sold hamburgers, right?" Angel said.
"You're scaring me," Buffy said. Then she gasped. "Oh, wait, you really are. Angel, what are you eating?"
"We have some animals here at the Keep," Angel said. "Not many. But I get by."
She looked at his drawn face and wondered how often he actually got to feed. He saw her gaze, dropped his eyes, then turned to pour some wine into two earthenware goblets. Buffy sighed and glanced around the room again. This is just gonna stay awkward, she told herself. Get used to it.
Her eyes fell on the two largest sketches in the room -- older ones, on paper that had yellowed with age. They were middle-aged people, a man and a woman --
Buffy sat upright as she realized that they were Wesley and Cordelia. Wesley had gray hair at his temples; Cordelia was a little rounder. But the faces were unmistakable.
"Buffy?" Angel said, puzzled by her reaction.
"I'm okay," she said, accepting the goblet of wine and slumping back in the sofa. "You're a good artist, Angel. I'd forgotten."
If Angel still remembered how she had learned of his drawing ability, he showed no sign of it. "Thanks. I made them sit for these before Wesley and I moved to England. I wanted two in the same style, of the same time. Cordelia wanted me to draw her young again, but she was more beautiful like this." Angel smiled gently. "I don't think she ever knew that."
Okay, Buffy thought, this is NOT how I am used to hearing Angel talk about Cordy. Or Wesley, for that matter. Time to get started. "I'm about out of small talk," she said.
"I never had much to start with."
"Angel, I need you to tell me -- God. Everything, I guess."
Angel leaned forward, holding his goblet in both hands. "Everything about what?"
"Everything. How the world got like this. How you ended up on the Council. What happened -- what happened to my friends." Buffy said the last in a rush, then breathed in deeply after she forced the words out.
"Wouldn't Markwith tell you?" Angel was slipping into his trademark glower. "Did he just keep you there for weeks without any answers?"
"Hey, Markwith's not on my Christmas-card list either, but I have to be fair. They didn't tell me because I didn't ask. I -- I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"I didn't want to hear it," Buffy admitted, hating the tightness in her throat as she spoke. "It was like -- if I didn't hear anybody say how they all died, then they wouldn't really be dead. You know?"
"Yes," Angel said gently. "I understand."
"And Frances and Markwith are so damn cold and official and everything. I didn't want to hear it from them. It would just be some fact they looked up in a book or something. It wouldn't mean anything. But I think I could hear it from you."
Buffy wasn't sure her reasoning made sense, but Angel didn't question her about it. Instead he looked at her calmly and said, "I don't remember it all, Buffy. It's been a long time. But whatever I know, I'll tell you. Where should I begin?"
For a moment, Buffy was unable to find words. Where should he begin? How did you decide whose death to hear first? After a moment, she hit on the one bit of information she did have. "Let's start -- let's start with Giles," she said. "How did he end up head of the Council?"
Angel frowned. "Giles was never head of the Council. Never really had much to do with them at all, after your death."
"That's not right," Buffy said, clinging to her information. "Xiaoting said you joined the Council when my Watcher was in charge."
"Is that how the story goes?" Angel said. "I can see why they'd say that. But they're talking about Wesley, not Giles."
"Wesley?"
"He was your Watcher for a while, wasn't he?"
"Yeah, I remember that." Buffy started to ask about Giles again, but that scared, twisted-up part of her quailed once more. Instead she said,. "How did Wesley end up head of the Council?"
"That's probably a good place for us to begin," Angel said. He sat back in his chair and took another sip of wine; he had the quiet, inward expression Buffy recognized as the prelude to a long story.
"Your death created a major crisis for the Council, Buffy. They'd always had a Slayer to control -- or, in your case, negotiate with. After you died, though, they only had Faith, who still had years left in her prison sentence. They didn't believe in her change of heart --"
Big shocker, Buffy thought.
"-- and they thought they'd be decades without a warrior for the fight."
"So what did they do? Hire a temp?"
"They killed her."
Buffy felt the floor shift beneath her. "What?"
"They sent assassins into the prison to kill her. Normally she could have fought them, but within the confines of jail -- Faith never had a chance."
Not like that, Buffy thought. I think I still hate her, but I wouldn't want her to die like that.
"Fortunately, that was the last decision the old guard in the Council ever made. That leader -- what was his name?"
"Quentin Travers," Buffy said automatically. Her mind was still flashing images of Faith pinned inside a cell, raging uselessly as her murderers closed in.
"Travers, right. He'd been abusing the Council's role for a long time, but Faith's assassination proved too much for the others to accept. They threw out the old guard, invited in the new. That included Wesley. He helped them be more flexible, more understanding, more protective of their Slayers."
"Wesley. Flexible," Buffy said. "These words do not match."
Angel looked at her strangely. But he said only, "You remember him differently than I do."
"I guess he changed." Buffy felt suddenly embarrassed to have joked about Wesley at all.
"Anyway, once he'd become their leader, he invited me to join. He convinced them that I could be a help. And I wanted to help rebuild something that might help other Slayers. I thought it was the best way to honor you." Angel said this all very simply, but Buffy felt her breath catch for a moment.
He continued, "And we did help, Buffy. For a good 200 years, the Council was what it was supposed to be. We got rid of that barbaric test they used to put Slayers through at 18. Stopped withholding information for gain. Used our connections to simplify their lives. Brought their families into the fold."
"Sounds nice," Buffy said. "My life would've been a whole lot easier with that kind of Council."
"That was the idea."
"So what changed?"
Angel sighed and looked down at the floor. "It all happened pretty fast. There had been other biological wars, but they were always contained, somehow. Humanity got lucky too many times. Finally they set free a disease they couldn't stop."
"Vamps didn't do this?" Buffy said. "PEOPLE did this?"
"A soul's no guarantee of goodness," Angel said slowly. "Vampires didn't decimate humanity. They just survived where billions of people died. The few humans who were immune were left in a world with a lot of hungry vampires -- and a lot of demons who'd just been waiting for their chance to reclaim the land."
"Well, all those years I spent averting the apocalypse are starting to seem like they were not time well-spent," Buffy said brokenly.
"Don't feel like that; we're not through. Just down. Not out. We -- we have to believe that."
Buffy took a sniffly breath and exhaled slowly. "I'm gonna be really mad about that later. But keep going."
"Well, the situation became desperate in a hurry. People were traumatized enough after the plagues; then they found out about the supernatural world. Found out that, for a big percentage of the world's remaining population, they were food. There was -- panic. Despair. The Council went public with the Slayer not long after that. It was meant to provide hope. Instead, it turned the Council into a bunch of politicians."
"Just when I thought they could get no worse," Buffy muttered.
"So things have been strange ever since," Angel said. "I think most of us on the Council are doing the best they can. But there are always people like Markwith. People who act like this is a game for an individual to win. Not a war we all have to win together."
He said no more, but simply studied her face.
After a few moments, Buffy sighed. "Can't put it off any longer, can I?"
"I was wondering when you'd realize that."
"Knew it all along," she said. She was silent for a while longer, half-hoping Angel would say something -- something trivial, maybe. Ask her if she wanted some wine. Tell her more about the Council. Swear at Markwith.
But he remained quiet, and she knew it was finally time to hear the whole truth. "Okay, then," she said softly. "What did happen to Giles?"
Angel looked at her steadily. "Buffy, Giles didn't do too well after your death."
"What do you mean?" Buffy said, sitting up in alarm, as though she could jump up and fix whatever was wrong.
"Losing you took something out of him," Angel said. "Took something out of all of us, but Giles was the one who couldn't seem to go on."
"But he did, eventually. He -- he got married, maybe to Olivia, and he kept on with his store, and he had the Scoobs there to help him --"
"I don't think he ever married," Angel said. "I can't remember for sure. But I know that he died just a few years later."
Buffy felt her skin go cold. "Something -- killed Giles?"
"No. Natural causes. He didn't take such good care of himself after -- well, after."
Buffy closed her eyes against the tears. No further explanations were needed; how many times had she seen him after some great trauma or crisis, holed up in his apartment, drinking from the bottles he thought he hid so well from their view. Giles, she thought, when I get done crying, I am going to be so mad at you. But she said only, "And Dawn?"
"Dawn managed better. I don't know much about the first few years after you died, but she went to college in LA. Eventually she looked me up. We didn't have a whole lot to talk about besides you, though, and after a while that -- that just hurt too much. But we kept in touch."
"Did -- did she have a good life?"
Angel looked at her gently. "I don't know that I can say for sure. I remember her very sad. But I think that had more to do with the fact that we always talked about you -- how much we missed you. I know she didn't ever get married or have kids. I used to wish she would."
"Why?"
"I guess I wondered what a Summers baby would look like," Angel said. Then, hurriedly, "Anyway, she had a long life. I know she traveled a lot. And she wrote a book."
Buffy smiled through her tears. "Really? Dawnie wrote a book? That's -- that's great."
All those diaries were good for something, Buffy thought. No kids, though. No hubby. Is that what she wanted? She tried to envision Dawn as some intrepid writer, independent and courageous, maybe with a great penthouse apartment in New York and a string of devoted lovers. Eww, she thought, scratch "lovers." Make that boyfriends, and it's a picture I can live with.
"Do you have it? The book, I mean."
Angel shook his head. "I'm sorry. I've had some things destroyed and stolen over the years, and that was one of them."
"Okay, then." Buffy took a deep breath. "What about Willow?"
"I don't know."
Buffy waited. "That's it? You don't know? Didn't you ever see her again?"
"She was the one who came and told me --" His voice trailed off, and his gaze dropped. After a moment, he continued. "I saw her at the wake, I'm sure. But after that -- I don't remember anything. I know we didn't see each other much, if at all. I've been racking my brain all day, and there's nothing else."
"You forgot," Buffy said. "You just up and forgot Willow. She didn't matter."
"That's not it. Buffy, please," Angel said, leaning forward slightly. "350 years is a really long time, even to me."
"There aren't any records? Or, or, computer lists, or something?"
"Nothing beyond Giles' Watcher diaries, and those end at your death. Buffy, I'm really sorry."
"Dammit," Buffy said. The tears threatened again, but she kept blinking them back. Willow stopped right there, she thought. Buffy pictured her as she had been the night of that final battle, running off into a swirling fog, never to be seen again.
She breathed in and out, slowly and deliberately. When she spoke again, her voice was scratchy. "Don't guess you saw much of Xander, either."
"Not much, but I do remember him." Angel sounded relieved to have something to offer. "He was very close to Dawn, and sometimes I saw him when he was visiting her in L.A."
"Was he happy, do you know? Did -- did he marry Anya? He told me he was thinking about asking her."
"Oh, God, I'd forgotton that Anya and Xander used to be married." Angel shook his head. "Can't believe I forgot that."
"So they split up." To Buffy's surprise, that actually bothered her. "How did you know Anya, if not through Xander?"
"That must be how I met her. But her second marriage was to a friend of mine in L.A., a billionaire named David Nabbit. Odd sort of guy, but he had money, and did she ever love money. For his part, he had, uh, I guess you'd call it a demon fetish."
"Match made in the netherworld," Buffy said as she laughed a little. "Were they happy?"
"They were very wealthy together," Angel said.
"Way to go, Anya," Buffy said. "And Xander?"
"Last I remember he had his business -- construction or something? -- in Sunnydale. And he was remarried -- don't remember her name, but I'm pretty sure she knew you --" Angel frowned, opened his mouth to speak, shut it again. After a moment, he finally said, "Okay, this might sound crazy. But -- did you ever have a friend who spent a lot of time -- this is going to sound so weird -- a lot of time as a rat?"
"Amy!" Buffy lit up. "Amy Madison! She got unratted! Thank God. Xander and Amy, huh?"
Angel shook his head. "I'd forgotten what it was like, living on a Hellmouth."
Buffy leaned back into the sofa, trying to digest the information she'd been given. She could just see Xander and Amy now, in a nice, cozy house in Sunnydale, maybe one Xander had built with his own hands. He would have liked that. Amy would probably be overjoyed to live in anything that wasn't a Habitrail. Buffy liked her picture of them, and she decided to keep it firm in her memory, along with the image of Dawn in her Manhattan penthouse.
It kept her from having to picture Willow vanishing in that fog. Or Giles, alone in his apartment, looking old and tired as he clutched a half-empty glass.
After a little while, she looked up; Angel was watching her patiently, waiting to see what else she might need. She had forgotten how quiet he could be. How still.
She still needed so much -- so many answers he could not give her. If Angel remembered nothing further of Willow, then he would probably never even have met Tara or learned anything more about Oz. It seemed more than unlikely that he would ever have known, or cared, what became of Riley. And asking him about Spike would mean asking herself why she wanted to know about Spike in the first place.
"What about you?" she finally said. "How -- how has it been for you?"
Angel raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips. "There's no one answer to that. I've had good years, good decades. And I've had bad times, too. Seen things I never wanted to see." He looked at her, a curious expression on his face. "I suppose you're wondering why I'm not human. Or dead."
Buffy sat still for a moment, trying to think about what she was missing. "Uh, no, not really. I mean, you're not human because you got vamped, and you're not dead because you didn't get staked. Right?"
"You didn't know about the shanshu prophecy?" Angel said. He shook his head. "Could've sworn I found out while you were alive." Then his expression changed. "Oh. I didn't tell you --"
"Didn't tell me what? About shanshu?" Buffy wrinkled her nose. "Is that a style of sushi or something?"
"At some point -- it must have been not long after you died, though I could've sworn -- never mind. Anyway, I got my hands on an ancient scroll of prophecy. Wesley translated it and found some prophesies about me."
"I hate it when that happens."
Angel half-smiled. "The prophecy said that I would achieve something called shanshu. Wesley translated that to mean that I would someday become human."
Buffy could've sworn she felt that last word -- human -- slamming into her, force and heat and hope all at once. She put her hand to her mouth, felt her lips curving into a wide, crazy grin against her palm. "Oh, my God," she whispered. "Angel -- why didn't you tell me?"
"You had your own life. I didn't want you to spend it waiting for me."
"I would be a whole lot more pissed off at you if I weren't so --" Buffy shook her head, unable to put words to her emotions. "Angel, you're going to live again --"
He shook his head quickly, and her smile faded as he spoke. "Buffy, it wasn't true. The Council finally broke it to me a couple decades after the plagues. Wesley was -- well, he was wrong. Only mistranslation he ever made in his life." Angel smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "It was a good mistake, though. It gave me hope in the years when I needed it most. By the time I found out differently, I could bear it."
"I'm sorry," Buffy said. "I can't even say how sorry."
"It's okay," Angel said. "I can't pretend it wasn't a blow. But it was a long time ago now."
Buffy swallowed hard. "So what is this shanshu you're going to get?"
"Near as the Council could figure, it means something like 'peace of mind.'"
"Are you there yet?" Buffy said, forcing a little smile.
Angel returned it. "Not quite. But I think I'm a lot closer than I used to be."
"Out of all this time, what were the best years?"
"You should know the answer to that."
Buffy's cheeks flushed with warmth. "I mean, after."
"Probably those next few decades, with Wes and Cordy. They were the best friends I ever had, in any era. And we did a lot of good work. I knew their spouses and their children, loved them throughout their lives. That was the one time -- since I was alive, I mean -- when I had a family." Angel's face had taken on a softness she'd almost never seen, and for a moment, Buffy had to fight off a wave of unreasonable jealousy. "I still miss them. Every day."
"What were the worst years?"
"The plagues," Angel said, softness gone in an instant. "You can't imagine what it was like, Buffy. People died so quickly, in such numbers, that there was no one to bury them, and after that --"
"Okay, saw 'The Stand,' know the drill," Buffy said hurriedly.
Angel seemed to ignore her. "I'm grateful you didn't have to see that. It would have made you crazy. We're alike in that way -- we see people in trouble, and we want to rush in and help right that second. If we can't, we lose it. I remember that much about you."
"What else do you remember about me?" Buffy said, and then felt a little stupid for asking. Then, when she thought about it for a moment, she decided it was actually a pretty good question. She looked up at him to see his expression; he was deep in thought, considering carefully before he answered.
Finally, he said, "I remember your fighting spirit. Your sense of humor. And I'm not sure those two aren't really the same thing."
Buffy felt a reluctant smile tugging at her lips. "Fair enough."
"I remember that you made friends as quickly and as deeply as anyone I ever knew. I remember that you were the first person who loved me and trusted me even after knowing what I was, what I was capable of. I remember how I felt when Willow told me -- oh, God, Buffy, when she told me you were dead --"
He stopped then, caught short by the pain of memory; Buffy knew the look on his face, knew it mirrored so much of what she had been feeling these past several months. On impulse, she reached out and took his hand. "Hey," she said softly. "I'm all better now."
Angel smiled a little as he looked into her eyes again. "I meant what I said in the Council chambers, Buffy. What Markwith did was wrong. But I'm still glad you're back."
"No arguments either way," Buffy said. Angel's hand was warming in her own; she loved that, the way his skin would take on her body heat where they touched --
At the same moment, they pulled their hands apart. Angel's gaze dropped from hers, and Buffy quickly swallowed the last of her wine. "It's late," she said.
"You should go," Angel nodded. The awkwardness, which had eased so gently throughout the evening, tightened around them again. Buffy could feel the tightness in her chest, her throat. She expected him to apologize -- for what, she wasn't sure, but it was Angel's stock reaction to any blush-worthy situation.
Instead he said, "Tomorrow's going to be strange, Buffy. They're going to make a show of it. Don't let it get to you."
"Of course not," Buffy scoffed, though she was still uncertain exactly what Angel meant by "a show." She smiled as she went to the door. "Why would I let it get to me?"
"You'd be surprised," Angel said.
*