Buffy twirled, the sword swinging above her head lopping off demon body parts.  The heat in the close alley was oppressive, the stink of demon guts and blood even more so, but she continued to fight.  The attacks in the Cotswolds had been building in intensity for two weeks before the Watchers' Council had finally figured out what they were leading to.  At that point, they'd called in their most experienced fighter.

No one had seemed to care that Buffy had been in the middle of her Italian mid-term when the extraction team had swept into the university classroom and pulled her away.  With the large number of slayers out there, the existence of them and the forces they fought were no longer such a secret.

Still, she just knew her prune-faced teacher was going to flunk her.

And then there was Dawn to worry about--left behind, eighteen years old, Italian boys hanging all over her newly voluptuous body.

Buffy hacked a large purple demon into little pieces as she worried what those boys might be doing to that voluptuous body.

As the final demon fell at her feet, she heard a noise like the popping of her ears as air pressure changed, and looked up to see a female form approaching from the north entrance to the alley.

Since the female form was blue, Buffy raised her sword and rammed it into the creature's gut.

The humanoid demon looked down at the sword, then up at the panting Slayer, then over her shoulder.  "This one has annoyed me.  Shall I kill it?"  As she spoke, she pulled the sword out and tossed it aside.  The skin-tight armor she wore formed over the wound, leaving only minute traces of dark red blood.

"Crap," Buffy muttered, pulling a knife out of her boot.  Usually when she stabbed things in their guts they at least fell over.

Before either female could move, a large masculine form dashed into the alley to move between the two.  "No!"

Buffy stared in shock.  The blue lady demon grunted softly and cocked her head to the side, watching.

"Angel?"

"Buffy."

The knife clattered to the pavement.

"I'd heard..." she choked then forced herself to continue as her hands began to tremble.  "I'd heard you'd died in L.A. last year"

"Nearly."  Angel smiled gently.  "A few of us got out, thanks to Illyria here."

"Demon?"

"Old One, actually, but she's on our side.  Buffy...It's good to see you."

Then she was in his arms and everything was finally right with the world.

"Angel.  The next wave is coming," came the clipped voice interrupting the wonderful moment of peace.

Angel gently disengaged himself from Buffy and bent to pick up her sword.  "We've been monitoring the situation here as the alignment approached.  Wes held us back till now, something about stopping it sooner not really stopping it.  I had no idea you'd be here, though."  He handed the sword to her.

"Watchers Council finally sent me here, too, probably for the same reasons.  Some star thingie opening a portal or something.  There are a dozen other Slayers scattered across this area but they wanted me to lead the fight."  Buffy looked up at her former lover and smiled grimly.  "This feels very familiar."

Angel pulled his own sword from his trenchcoat and nodded. "Battling together seems to be our thing."

"One of them."

The next wave of demons crashed into the alley, silencing all discussion for the moment.

Later, leaning against a wall, cleaning her sword, Buffy watched Angel doing the same as the blue demon lady stalked back and forth, sniffing the air.

"They are done for now," she announced.  "We must go, Angel." She pointed her finger to an empty spot and a portal began to form out of the murky air.

"You go on.  Buffy and I need to talk."

The portal snapped shut and Illyria turned, eyes narrowing.  "This is the Slayer.  The one of whom you and my pet are so enamored?  She will cause you only misery.  Your mind must be clear, your heart free of entanglements, if you would lead us to save this planet you cling to so needfully."

"Love is what's needed to save Earth, Illyria.  That's something you still need to learn," Angel replied softly.

She snorted and turned on Buffy.  "Love is a foolish weakness. She is not worth your heart."

"Who is this chick?" Buffy demanded, taking a step towards Illyria.  "Get out of my face.  If Angel wants to stay and talk to me, he can stay and talk to me.  You don't own him."  She quickly turned to Angel who was looking a bit bemused.  "She doesn't own you, does she?"

"Not me."

The blonde head snapped back to the blue.  "So, go away.  I'll make sure he returns to wherever you came from in one piece."

"You will distract him."

"Yeah?  I bet he can use some distraction if he has to listen to you all the time."

Before Buffy could retort, Angel again moved between the two, this time facing Illyria.

"Illyria, go home.  Have Wesley figure out when the final attack will occur and gather the troops to come back for that fight."  He lowered his voice slightly.  "Tell Spike that Buffy's here."

Illyria snarled something in a guttural, demonic language, flung her wrist to the side to open a portal, then stepped through it. As it snapped shut behind her, Buffy reached out and turned Angel to face her.

"Spike?"

Angel gave her an uncomfortable look.  "He's alive."

Buffy nodded.  "I know that.  I mean, I knew he was alive again before the fall of Los Angeles, because Andrew can't keep a secret to save anyone's soul, but he survived and is still with you?"

"Yeah."  He shuffled his feet and dropped his head.

Buffy couldn't help but giggle at his hang-dog look.  "Come on. I'll call in a team to clean up this mess, because I'm not going to do it, and let's go back to my hotel room, because we have a lot to talk about."

"Spike..."

"Not him."  Her hand curled around his wrist then slid down to entwine with his, slender fingers slipping between broad ones. "I'll always care about him, Angel, but he never came to me.  I can understand why you didn't, but it's not his nature.  Or it wasn't.  I kept waiting and he never came, and then I stopped expecting him and...got on with my life and realized I would always care for him but love just wasn't in the cards."  She glanced around and wrinkled her nose at the growing smell.  "I really don't want to have this conversation standing in the middle of a bunch of stinky dead demons."

"Me neither."

---

"Okay, Willow.  Keep me posted.  Angel's going to have Wesley contact you....Yeah, color me surprised....Yeah, I know you told me he'd changed....Scruffy....Yes....Not a nerd...I got it, Will. Bye."  Chuckling softly, Buffy hung up the phone and turned to find Angel fiddling with the chintz curtains.  "Yeah, Laura Ashley. So not me."

"It's Colefax and Fowler, actually.  A good reproduction of a 1930's design..."  He broke off with a sheepish look.  "I was very bored back then."

Buffy giggled.  "It's okay.  You have layers.  Interior decorator layers."  Sinking down onto the end of the bed, she gestured for him to have a seat in the one, chintz covered chair.  When he did, she sobered up and clasped her hands together in her lap. "I want to thank you for giving me the space I asked for."

"Sometimes I do listen," he said softly.

Nodding, she continued.  "I never really believed you'd gone evil on me.  None of us who knew you really did, but we're not the only players anymore.  With over a hundred active Slayers, the Watchers Council grew exponentially, and while Giles has a voice, it's only one.  Most of the Council and the Watchers have never been comfortable with the idea of souled vampires, so for them it was more easy to relegate you to unknown status which made it easy to ignore you.  That said, if I'd known what was about to happen in L.A., I'd have been there.  So would Willow and Faith and several of the other Slayers who fought with Spike and me in the fall of Sunnydale.  Maybe we could have stopped the influx of demons there, maybe not, and hindsight is never a useful thing, and...I'll stop babbling now."

"You're not babbling, and...thank you.  I thought seriously about calling you because I really thought none of us were going to survive.  Well, except for Illyria who is very hard to kill."

"Tell me about it.  Most things at least pretend to be hurt when I stab them."

Angel grinned slightly.  "She saved us all, in the end, but that's a long story for another time.  If you and the other Slayers had been there, maybe we could have stopped what happened, but maybe it would have been too many for her to save, so, I'm okay with the way everything happened.  What happened after...letting you think I was dead...for that, I'm sorry.  I should have contacted you.  For me, just knowing that you're in the world, has always made me fight harder, fight better, be a better person.  I think...I hope...it's the same for you."

Buffy felt tears welling in her eyes and hastily blinked them back. "It is, but Angel, you don't have to apologize.  We're not exactly in each other's lives anymore."

"I never have should have said that."

"No, we needed to be apart.  I needed to grow up."

"You are grown up."

She gave him a wavering smile.  "I guess.  Sometimes I don't feel like it.  Other times, I feel ancient."

"That's life, as trite as that sounds."

Reaching out, she took one of his hands between hers and looked into his soft brown eyes.  "So, what happens next.  It was an accident we met again."

"Was it?"

"Fate?"

"Maybe."

"Is it a good thing?"

Angel nodded and laced his fingers with hers.  "It is for me.  I've missed you."

"I've missed you, too.  Is this our time finally?"

"I don't think we'll ever know for sure, Buffy, but I'm willing to make it so."

"There's no one in your life?"

"There was, but we're just friends now.  You?"

"There was.  He turned evil," she said matter-of-factly, shrugging as it just didn't mean much to her.

"And Spike?" Angel murmured, trying to keep the hope from his voice.

"I said before that I'll always care for him, and maybe if he'd come to me after he came back to life, things would have happened and things would be different, but he didn't, and I moved on, and I found...I found myself back here, with you. Maybe we were meant to be after all?"

Angel tugged and Buffy willing slipped off the bed and onto his lap, curling her free hand around his shoulders, tightening her grip on him with the other.  "I guess we'll find out."

Their lips met in another soft, sweet kiss that felt completely right.

The End

 

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