Riley Who?

Part Three

"Buffy?"

It was a dream. She was a dream. She must be a dream because Buffy was back in Sunnydale and he was alone in LA. She was building a normal human life without him and he was making amends for the sins of ten lifetimes. She was not here. She was not here.

"Angel? Aren't you going to say hello or anything?"

She was real. He slid slowly into the waking world when he felt her warm fingers gently caressing his cheek. For just a moment he closed his eyes and breathed in her essence. He knew he should resist the temptation, but it had been so long, and he missed her so desperately.

"Buffy," he murmured, surrendering to her touch as he reached up to clasp the hand that stroked his face. He lightly kissed her palm, and smiled when she uttered a tiny inarticulate sound of delight.

She was like air to him, or sunlight. She was all that he thought he would never have again. All that he didn't deserve to have. He choked on the pain that welled up in his chest and abruptly pulled away from her, dropping her hand as though it was a cross dipped in holy water.

"What are you doing here?" His dark eyes were wide with pain and confusion. She had promised she would never come again. She said she would stay away until they both forgot, and to him that meant forever. Yet here she was.

Buffy tried to suppress the hurt she felt when he pulled away from her. She sat on the edge of the bed next to him with a carefully assumed air of nonchalance.

"I needed to see you. There are some things we left unsaid, and I think we should say them."

She was almost amused to see him shrink back against the headboard. A five-foot tall blonde teenager reduced Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, to cowering against the bedpost. What countless slayers had tried to accomplish by brute force was made simple by the power of love, and the threat of open discussion.

"There's nothing left to talk about. Anyway, I thought you said you never wanted to see me again." He knew she wouldn't understand the true measure of his anguish; she did not remember the alternate past where those words were made false by a kiss, and so much more.

"Actually, I said I thought we shouldn't see each other until we'd forgotten," she carefully replied, trying to dig the exact words from her memories of her diary entries. "But I realize now that was wrong. I don't want to forget us, and I don't think you do either. What we should do is be mature and work out our problems. We can't do that if we're hiding from each other."

"There's nothing left to work out. It's over, Buffy." He avoided looking into her eyes, because he knew one glimpse into their hazel depths would drag him back into the whole fantasy again. He had to be strong for both of them, again.

"Yeah, you said that before, but you never let me have a chance for rebuttal." This was not going quite how she'd envisioned, and it was beginning to annoy her. "You just walked away and didn't look back. You let the guilt and the past pull you down and you didn't even fight it." She stood up and stalked away from the bed.

He winced at her view of their parting. She would never know how many nights he lay awake in his bed in the mansion, trying to envision a way out for them. She could never understand how hard it was to give up, not once but twice, the one person in his long life who loved him without reservation, knowing he would mourn her loss for eternity.

"I just wanted you to be happy," he replied softly. What else was there to say? Her well being was his goal, his quest, his Holy Grail.

Her back was still turned to him. "Well, I'm not. Got any brilliant ideas for Plan B?"

"Buffy, I…" he started to get out of bed to go to her, but quickly realized he had a slight problem. "Umm, could you toss me my pants?"

Buffy whirled around to see him gesturing to a pair of sweats on a chair near her. She flushed slightly when she remembered he preferred to sleep in the nude. All this time they had been arguing and he had been…why was she wasting time arguing? She put her hands on her hips and smiled at him.

"It's not like I haven't seen you before, Angel. Why don't you get them yourself?" She could only hope that flirtation would work where reason could not seem to prevail.

"This isn't funny, Buffy. Get me my sweats. Please." The note of desperation in his voice didn't please him, but he felt seriously disadvantaged in an argument when he wasn't wearing clothes. Besides, he was starting to get certain impossible ideas he had to make sure stayed unfulfilled. Nudity and denial just didn't go together.

She grimaced and tossed the sweats on his bed. "You're being a baby, you know."

"Nice to know what you really think of me," he mumbled as he slid into the sweatpants under the covers.

Buffy was seized by another brief flash of what must have been memory. She and Angel were arguing in the streets of Sunnydale. She saw a box, and her favorite blue coat, and heard a weird whooshing noise, then nothing.

"Buffy, are you okay?"

She shook her head to clear it and realized Angel was standing next to her, his hand hovering over her arm as though he were afraid to touch her.

"You look so strange. Are you okay?" he repeated.

"I'm…I'm fine," she stammered, brushing a hand across her forehead. "I've been having, well, a little problem lately. Nothing serious," she hastily added when she saw a gratifying flare of concern in his dark eyes. "I just don't remember stuff."

"What stuff?" he asked suspiciously. He risked putting his hand to her elbow and guided her over to the bed.

"This year stuff." She settled herself on the edge of the bed and looked expectantly at him when he didn't join her. "I remember being able to read minds, and you killing the demon to save me, and the talk we had that night, and then…nothing. The next thing I remember is waking up in the cemetery with a headache and finding out it was a year later." She shrugged her slim shoulders. "I said I wouldn't see you until enough time had passed and I'd forgotten. Well, now I have, so here I am."

"Are you okay? Where were you hit?" He leaned over to examine her wound, his long fingers carefully searching for it through her hair. The shock of his cool hands touching the skin just below her ear sent a tiny frisson of delight down Buffy's spine.

"I'm fine." She reached up and pulled his hands to her mouth for a kiss. Regret slammed through her chest when he disentangled his hands from hers and sat down on the far end of the bed.

"You've got amnesia?" He was still reeling from the shock, and a sense of betrayal. "Why didn't anyone tell me? Giles just called a few days ago to tell me about…you don't think Faith was responsible, do you?" The idea scared the hell out of him.

"I don't know," she replied honestly. "I've been catching up on my life from my diaries, and from the sound of them Faith is long gone, but it's possible. I don't actually care why it happened, I just don't want to waste the opportunity." She reached over and gently clasped his hand in hers.

He stared at their intertwined hands and fought back the memories of the last time they were together on this bed. What he remembered was little more than a dream, he told himself firmly. Reality for him was loneliness and penance, not ice cream and sunshine. This bright creature, so close and yet so very far away, could never truly belong to him.

"What opportunity?" he asked hoarsely, hating himself for asking. He didn't dare look in her eyes.

"Us," she replied softly, squeezing his hand. "Angel, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately along with my reading. Never thought you'd hear me say that, did you?" She flashed him a quick smile. "Looking at this whole situation as an impartial observer, which, funnily enough, I am because I don't remember how it all felt, I realize we screwed up in a major way. Well, you screwed up, but I let you. You shouldn't have listened to what everyone else was thinking, Angel, and I shouldn't have let you walk away without a fight. But we've been given another chance. We can't waste it."

He wrenched away from the warm pressure of her hand and the seductive pull of her reasoning. He began to pace the length of the room, running his hand roughly through his dark hair as he tried to marshal his defenses against the only one who had ever defeated him.

"There are no second chances, Buffy, not for us. We never had a first one. We were never supposed to be." He told himself that every night as he lay in his lonely bed, his thoughts drifting to their one perfect day. The day that never was. If it had been meant to be, there would have been another way out.

She felt the familiar despair swell inside of her at his defeatist attitude, but she forced herself to remain calm. She was fighting against a century-long habit of remorse, and it would take more than a few words to vanquish this demon.

"Angel, we were brought together for a reason," she said with all the patience she could muster. "I don't think it was just so you could help me stop the Harvest, or even to bring you together with Acathla, which is Giles' pet theory. I know there has to be a bigger reason why a vampire and a vampire slayer would go against every instinct and fall in love." She ached to put her arms around him, but she was still afraid of being pushed away.

"It doesn't matter why, Buffy. Why and who and how are all moot points now. We have to move on." His voice was low and weary with the strain of trying to follow his own advice.

"I don't buy it." She set her jaw. "Every time I fight a demon, Giles finds an explanation for that creature being in Sunnydale. Every time I face the apocalypse, there is a reason it came to me. Do you think only bad things are meant to be? I know there is a plan for us."

"And what if the plan is over?"

"It's not," she flared, angered by the hopelessness in his voice. "We wouldn't still have all these feelings if it was over. I love you, Angel, and I think you still love me. Why would we be left with all of these emotions if we were never supposed to be in the first place?" At last she dared to approach him, catching his arm as he strode past her.

Angel was stopped in his frantic attempts to outrun his feelings by the pressure of her small hand on his arm. He suddenly felt ashamed of indulging in his fears, when clearly Buffy was led to him by her own.

"What's really wrong, Buffy?" he asked softly. Without thinking, he reached out to brush a stray lock of blonde hair from her cheek. "Why are you here?"

"Nothing is right without you," she whispered. She leaned into his hand and closed her eyes, taking solace from his cool touch. "I'm not me anymore, and I don't like the me that I've become. You walked away to give me a normal life, and I've tried, and it sucks. You wanted me to be happy, but I think the last time I was, was when we were together."

She stood very close to him, holding only his arm to maintain contact, but wanting so much more. They both did, she could feel it. If only he would let his guard down for an instant, she knew they could find a way to make things work.

"Baby, nothing's changed." He hated himself for the heartache he saw in her eyes, but he steeled himself to go on. "I can't give you a future anymore now than I could a year ago. I'm so desperately sorry you're unhappy, but I can't make it go away. Maybe you just need to try again with someone else. This obviously isn't the right guy for you."

"No, the right guy is so convinced he's the wrong guy he can't see what's in front of his face," Buffy replied bitterly. She dropped his arm as though it were on fire and turned away to face the wall.

Angel reached out to her, but she eluded his grasp and folded her arms to keep her traitorous hands from seeking comfort in his.

"I thought I was the right guy."

* * * * *

Buffy and Angel both turned to the stairs when they heard the quiet voice behind them. Riley stood on the last step, surveying the little drama that was putting an end to his own visions of the future.

"Riley," Buffy said helplessly, glancing at Angel. The anguish on Angel's face made her flinch, but looking into Riley's eyes wasn't much better.

"They were right." Riley's voice was quiet, and controlled. He refused to give way to the anger that was surging inside of him; it would only alienate Buffy. "They told me you would have come to him, and I didn't believe it, but they were right."

"I'm sorry," she replied sincerely, but she made no effort to leave Angel's side. "You know I don't remember the past year, so I feel a little funny apologizing for leading you on…but I think that's what I did. I am sorry."

Riley slowly walked across the room, reaching out to her as though he was trying to coax her off a ledge. "I know you've been really confused lately, Buffy. It has to be tough being in an unfamiliar situation and having everyone else know more than you do about your own life. But you can't make any rash decisions right now. You need to give it time."

Her howl of outrage took him by surprise, though Angel could have told him it was coming. Slayers don't react well to the mention of time.

"Why do people keep saying that to me! Everyone keeps telling me to take it slow, give it time. But unlike some people, I'm not going to live forever, dammit! From where I stand, I've already wasted a year of my life, so I think maybe I'm entitled to make a few rash decisions."

"Oh, that's flattering."

"Angel, I'm…"

"No, I'm sorry," he interrupted. He dropped his eyes to the floor for a moment before confronting her. "The thing is, I'm also tired of saying it. I'm sorry every single minute of every single day for almost every single thing I've done over the past…" he glanced at Riley and changed the ending of his sentence, "in my life. I don't want hurting you to add more regrets to the ones I already have. We can't be together. It's not an option."

Buffy couldn't believe her ears. She had worked so hard the past week to find out where and how things went so wrong. She tried to plan for every possible argument Angel could come up with, but everything was spinning out of her control. What should have been a rational conversation, followed by a rapturous reunion, was turning into a nightmare. It was time to make her lover take responsibility for his part in this little drama she called her life.

"Now it's my turn to ask why," she choked out at last. "Why did you come back from Hell, if not for us? Why did you spend months trying to make peace with my friends, and acting like the world ended when we had a fight, only to dump me in the sewers?"

The words were pouring out of her like water from a ruptured dam. She didn't even know what she was saying; she just rode the crest.

"Why did you tell Willow you could never leave me, and then leave me without even saying goodbye? Why did you ask the Oracles to turn you back without even asking me first how I felt? Why?" She was gasping by the end of her speech, but it was the look on Angel's face that truly took her breath away.

"What did you say?" he whispered. "The Oracles, what did you say about them?"

"You asked them to turn you back, but you never…oh God," she breathed, as she lost all color in her face. "I remember. I remember everything now, even the stuff I'm not supposed to." The strength suddenly left her legs. She reached out to Angel as she sank to the ground.

Angel and Riley both made a grab for her, but Angel caught her first, and snarled at Riley to warn him off. Riley backed up a pace in alarm, but years of training overcame good sense and he approached Buffy again as she sat huddled on the floor in Angel's arms.

"Shhh, it's all right," Angel crooned as he held her close and stroked her hair. "You'll be fine, you just need to catch your breath. It's all right."

Buffy closed her eyes and truly relaxed for the first time in almost a year, as she felt the sweet succor of Angel's embrace. Here was peace, and joy, and hope. Despite all the confused thoughts whirling through her head, she was certain of one thing: here was home.

"I told you I wouldn't forget," she repeated over and over, as she rocked in his arms.

Riley squatted down in front of them and tentatively reached out to touch Buffy's hand. In spite of what she had just said, he had his doubts about her total recall of her life. She was, after all, not in his arms yet.

"Buffy, do you remember me now?"

Buffy raised her head from its comfortable, and achingly familiar, resting-place on Angel's shoulder. She acknowledged the concern in Riley's blue eyes, but it could not compare to the consummate devotion she felt from Angel's every touch.

"I remember everything, Riley," she quietly responded. She felt Angel's arms start to relax, and instinctively held him fast with all of the slayer strength at her command. "Oh no, not so fast, lover. We're not done yet." She completely forgot about Riley, as she looked steadily at the one who long ago promised to warm her heart with his own.

"We've reached the end of Memory Lane, sweetheart," Angel said gently. "It's time to go back to your new life and make it work. I can't help you with that." He tried to pull himself free, but she still clung to him.

"You walked away once because you said you couldn't give me a normal life, that I deserved more. Then, when you could give me all that, you walked away again because normal still wasn't good enough." She risked releasing her deathgrip on his arms to capture his beautiful, troubled face in her hands. "How many prophecies and demons do I have to defeat before you realize you are my destiny? What dragon do I have to slay, or ancient text do I have to steal from the Nazis to make you admit that I belong to you and you belong to me and that's the end of the story?"

"You are confused right now, Buffy," Riley piped up anxiously. His own destiny was on the line here, and things were not looking good for the good guys. "We have a lot of talking to do, and some fences to mend, but you can't throw everything we have away on a memory. I'm here and I'm real. We can build a life together. I love you."

"And I love him," Buffy replied softly. The look she bestowed on him was compassionate, but it bore none of the wrenching tenderness she'd shown Angel, and Riley knew it. "I care for you, Riley, honestly I do. You're a nice guy, basically, but you're not the one for me. If nothing else, you're way too young for me."

Angel told himself it was the tension that made him laugh.

Buffy swiftly smiled at Angel, relieved to know she could give him something besides regrets. "I love you, Angel," she said firmly, holding his eyes with her own. "I care about Riley, but I don't love him. I wouldn't kill for him and I wouldn't die for him. In our world, that's what love comes down to and you know it."

Angel's hand came up to caress the scar on her throat before he could stop it. "I know, but it shouldn't. You deserve more than…"

He honestly wasn't expecting the shriek of frustration, or the blow that sent him tumbling back against the wall. Surprise brought the demon in him to the surface for just an instant, long enough to shame him and galvanize a sulking Riley.

"Oh my God!" Riley yelled as he grabbed Buffy's arm. "He's a vampire!" He dragged Buffy to her feet, and tried to push her behind him. She firmly resisted his weak human tugging and stared at him in disbelief.

"Well, duh." Disgust dripped from her voice. "I know he's a vampire, Riley. I've known for a long time. It has nothing to do with this." She took in Angel's wry expression and amended her statement. "Okay, well, actually it has a lot to do with this, but it's no reason to panic. If he were going to kill you he would have done it long before now, and it wouldn't be because he was thirsty."

"You never told him." Angel wasn't asking a question.

Buffy shook her head, wanting to look anywhere but into his eyes. As usual, she had humiliated him by forcing him to admit to his demon half. "No, I never told him anything about you. I couldn't. It would have meant letting you go and I wasn't…I mean I'm not willing to do that." She faced him squarely now, daring him to deny the strength of her commitment to him.

"You dated a vampire? Is he the one who gave you that scar?" Riley couldn't seem to get past it. An ex-boyfriend was one thing but a …"you actually dated a vampire?"

Buffy crossed her arms and glared at him. "We've established that," she snapped. "Move on. You're embarrassing Angel." She turned back to the shamefaced vampire. "And you. You think you're sick of apologizing? Well I am sick of being apologized to. I am also really tired of hearing from you and everybody else how you're not good enough for me. You want to know what I deserve? I deserve to get what I want. I want you."

Angel was dumbstruck. He had struggled long and hard to do 'the right thing' when it came to Buffy. In his work, he never had trouble distinguishing right from wrong, good from evil, but when it came to this girl he got all turned around. Eventually, and with considerable help from others, he had come to realize whatever he wanted to be right, was wrong. If it felt good, and it made him happy, it was the path to her ultimate destruction. Now she was saying all his grand deductions were incorrect. Wrong. What he had come to believe was right for her was actually wrong. Wait, wasn't that how this whole thing started? It was enough to make his head spin.

"I don't care about picnics in the sunshine, Angel" she continued, ruthlessly stalking him as he tried to back out of her life again. "I don't mind growing old while you stay young, because it's not like I'd grow old unless you were there anyway. And the only one I would ever want to have kids with is you, so if you can't, we can't. I remember all the arguments and every last one of them is garbage. You make me happy, only you, and without you I am miserable. If that isn't reason enough for you, then I don't know what else to say."

"But what about the curse?" His overwrought neurons managed to fire up a memory of the biggest obstacle in their path as his back hit the wall. No amount of determination would will this one away, and they could only overlook it for so long.

"I don't care," she said firmly. She saw the doubt in his eyes and answered it before he could find the words. "Angel, I know eventually we need to do something about it, and we will. We'll finish translating the curse, and if it's the same one we'll fix it. Willow has made friends with another witch who's pretty powerful, and Anya was a witch a couple of centuries before you were born. I think she's picked up a thing or two over the millenium. We will find a way, I promise, but for right now we'll deal." She gently traced the outline of his lips with her fingertip, but he brushed off the caress with a stubborn shake of his head.

"It's not that simple. There may not be a way around it."

"Then we'll just deal. Believe me, I've realized sex isn't that important if it isn't with the right person." Too late, she remembered Riley was still in the room.

"Umm, oh, Riley," she said weakly as she turned to the wounded commando, "I don't think that came out very well." She looked back at Angel and realized she'd made a double blunder. "Oh boy, took out the eight ball and the cue ball with that one. Angel, you said you wanted me to move on."

"I did. I do." I didn't. I don't.

"Well I was only doing what you said you wanted me to do." She decided to go on the offensive. "And it's not like you were Mr. Celibate before we met, or after, for that matter. We've never discussed sleeping arrangements when you were camping out at the warehouse with Spike and Dru, and we never will. We learned, we were punished, we will move on."

While Angel fought to reorganize his Buffy-philosophy, she took advantage of his confusion and slipped her arms around him. Without thinking he returned the embrace, and his last chance at escape fled when the scent of her perfume drifted into his brain.

"We can't do it alone, Angel," she whispered into his neck. "We tried, but not even a vampire or a vampire slayer can fight fate. I'm not a little girl; I know we have a lot of problems to face, but we're supposed to face them together. If there is anything I'm sure of, it's that."

She felt his arms convulse around her as he absorbed her words.

"I love you so much, Buffy. I just wanted you to be happy." He kissed her lightly on the top of her head, relishing the silky feel of her hair against his lips. This was all he'd ever hoped for, but something inside of him still fought against the release.

"I am, silly. Right here and now, with you."

It was time to let go, once and for all.

"Then this is where I'll stay."

"Riley," Buffy murmured as she pillowed her head on Angel's broad shoulder, "you should go. Angel and I have a lot of talking left to do, and none of it concerns you." She smiled as she felt accustomed weight of Angel's head come to rest on her own.

"Buffy, you can't expect me to leave you here with this…this demon. He's got you under some spell or something. I'm not leaving without you."

"You will leave without her or without your pulse, take your pick," Angel growled, only partly in idle threat.

Buffy reluctantly disentangled herself from Angel's arms when she realized she was being unkind. She faced Riley, but she made no move to approach him, preferring to show her commitment to Angel in deed as well as word.

"Riley, I've said I'm sorry a couple of times, and I really, really mean it. You've been very patient with me, and in your own way you tried to be a good sport about the slayer thing. But we're not right for each other. Ultimately you want me to turn into some little housewife in Iowa, driving carpools and volunteering as a playground monitor. That would be a great life for some girls, but not me. It's not what I want, and if I've led you to believe otherwise, then I was wrong."

"This is still about Faith, isn't it? I swear I thought she was you."

Angel was puzzled, but decided to remain silent and see what he could learn that way. He could always coax the fine points out of Buffy later.

"This has nothing to do with her." Buffy sighed; this guy was harder to ditch than she had imagined. He almost made her think fondly of Parker. "I mean, I wasn't thrilled that you slept with her, but what it comes down to is that you and I don't belong together. You were just the answer to a problem. I thought I wanted a normal life, and a normal boyfriend, because that's what I used to have before I was the Slayer." She impatiently flipped her hair over her shoulder. "But you know what? I don't give a damn about 'normal' anymore. It's overrated. I like being a Slayer, and I like the fact that my boyfriend is a vampire because he can actually understand and admire my work. Nobody else really does."

"I admire your work," Riley protested. He was insulted; he had always supported Buffy's career. That is to say, her calling. Or was it her fate?

"Please! It scares the camouflage pants off of you," she retorted. "And it embarrasses you in front of your friends. I lied when I said you tried to be a good sport. You've been trying to keep me one pace to the rear since you found out I killed more vampires my first week on the job than you have in your whole life. I want someone who appreciates me for who I am, like Angel. He's only embarrassed by who he is, not me."

"I am proud of you," Angel said softly. It was true, he had never been intimidated by her calling, only his worthiness to assist her. And she had always accepted him as he was, fangs and all; it was her own heritage that she tried to deny.

"Riley, you need to go find a girl who wants to be that perfect housewife, and who has no interest in being a better hunter than you are. She probably shouldn't even know what you do. I think denial works better for some people." Counseling session at an end, Buffy returned her attention to her own wayward mate.

"You, on the other hand, have spent a little too much time at the denial well. You are good and kind and you deserve to be some happiness, Angel." She waggled her finger sternly at him. "So consider yourself warned: I'm going to make you happy even if it kills you." She winced at a not-so-pleasant memory. "Oh, wait, let me rephrase that."

"Buffy, are you sure?" Angel desperately wanted to believe her, but it was all too much to absorb. Just because he was committed to this wonderful insanity didn't mean that she…this was always the part of his dream where he woke up to an empty bed and an emptier life.

She growled and balled up her fist in a mock threat. "One more discouraging word and you will be home on the nice sunny range before you can say 'spontaneous combustion.' Are we clear?"

Angel grinned in spite of himself. Buffy rarely threatened him, and never in his dreams. He was almost starting to believe this was real.

"Yes, dear," he drawled, as he pulled her closer to him. Once again, the slayer triumphed over her vampire prey, but never had there been such a blessed defeat. The demon inside Angel howled in outrage as he was submerged in simple human joy.

When she felt his arms slide around her this time, Buffy swore no force on heaven or earth would ever remove them again. Not demons, or parents, or friends or…was there actually anyone else in the world but she and Angel? Nope, not possible.