SERIES: Scratch – http://always.basiamille.com/fanfic/scratch/
DISCLAIMER: *Hysterical Laughter*
RATING: PG-13 (this story) NC-17 eventually (the series)
PAIRING: B/A (and others... but those are a surprise. *G*)
TIMELINE: Two years after "Chosen"/"Home" - May 2005
SPOILERS: Entire B/A saga is fair game.
SUMMARY: They’ve got it all... except each other. The Powers take notice, and start sending clues even the King and Queen of Denial can't ignore or refute.
DISTRIBUTION: My site - http://ducksfanfic.denialbubble.com. Others may Archive or distribute freely, so long as you send me the address, and leave these tags intact.
FEEDBACK: Is Angel deprived of even a smidge of happiness? (That's a yes, for those who aren't clear on the concept.)
DEDICATION: To Joss, the great love/hate of my life -- enjoy the cookies. We know Angel will. *G* To Trammie, Margot Le Faye, and Dawny, whose work on the Babble Board is so imperative to keeping the hope alive. Thank you! As usual, to my yummy betas and fans – especially my sparkly minion Dru, the always splendiferous Shirl, and the delightfully shiny Lily - you guys got mad skillz, yo. ;) And to B/A Shippers everywhere... don’t lose hope. Our time is still to come.

Chapter One<

It had become his educated opinion that the ultimate goal of humanity was to find fulfillment. That elusive prize could come in any shape or size... as diverse as humans themselves. Rectangles of money, the amorphous, glittering

cloud of fame, the comforting foundation of home, the soft heart of family. From the simple joy of a child’s laughter to the complex pride that came from the knowledge that one had saved the world, satisfaction could look

like almost anything, depending on the individual.

Angel would bet his soul, however, that one of them wasn’t a manila file folder. And definitely not a veritable mountain of them.

"I really, really hate this job," he muttered to himself as he finished his notes on the latest stone in that utterly *un*fulfilling heap.

A soft cough interrupted his daily self-pity session. "Sir... I remind you again that you could have Files and Records summarize those files for you."

The consternated vampire glanced up at his assistant, the terminally neat, desperately organized, self-assured and outspoken Michael. Crisp suit, spit-shined shoes, light brown hair tamed with enough product that it even made Angel wince. The boy was nothing if not well polished. Also annoying and nosy.

And though he couldn’t function without him, Angel still never ceased to be surprised at how little the younger man had learned in their two years together. The endless stream of suggestions he gave to improve Angel's social life and general attitude made that clear.

"Yes, thank you, Michael. I’m aware of that. And I remind you again how I feel about the idea."

The assistant’s always vaguely disapproving expression darkened. "Yes, sir. You want to read every single file with your own two eyes."

This wasn’t a new discussion. Michael quoted the old saw as though Angel requested puppies for breakfast daily, instead of refusing to take Club Med cruises for vampires and dating demon call girls. With a sigh, the vampire turned his attention back to the latest Report ‘O Evil he had been examining.

"That’s right," he replied, "A little reading never hurt anyone." He returned to the endeavor, meaning the gesture to be dismissive, but Michael didn’t move.

"Sir, if I may also remind you, there are over eighteen billion, six hundred fifty two million, three hundred twenty three thousand..."

"One hundred thirty eight files in the archive. Yes, I’m aware of that too," Angel cited the statistic easily, as it had long been the foundation of his assistant’s moot argument.

"Actually, Sir, it’s closer to 18,652,324,437 now. You began two years ago."

"Fine," he snapped well aware of the fact that he was bailing out he proverbial boat with a shrimp fork, then muttered to himself, "I’m immortal. I’ve got time. It’s not like I do anything else around here."

Michael cocked a well-groomed eyebrow at his boss. The old vampire was always a little... off-putting. But lately, he’d become downright bizarre in his dour isolation. "Mr. Angel, if I may be so bold..."

Angel ticked a red mark on the upper left corner of the folder and tossed it onto the distressingly small "Completed – Return to Files & Records" pile before looking up once more.

"My opinion on the matter’s never stopped you before."

"True. Sir, I just think that maybe it’s time you considered... taking a vacation. Getting away from the city for a while. Tuscany is lovely this time of year."

Angel eased back in his chair and gave the young man a hard look, making it clear what he thought of that idea. "It is. Is there anything else?"

Realizing his defeat, Michael shook his head. "No, sir."

Angel turned back to his reading without another word, and the assistant moved back to the door.

"Oh, Michael, there is one thing."

Hopeful, he turned back. "Sir?"

"I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon, all right?"

With a nod, Michael stepped out, clicking the double doors shut behind him. Angel missed his presence almost immediately... at least his assistant was marginally more interesting than this gargantuan pile of paper.

Maybe his plan was a waste of time. But when he took over Wolfram & Hart, he had vowed to himself that he would understand every single project the firm had ever undertaken, and reverse as many of the evils perpetrated as he possibly could.

Even if it took eternity. It wasn’t like he had much else to look forward to.

He took a moment to survey the scene – the visual symbol of what his unlife had become. Mounds of files covering every surface. Oceans of reports. Nothing but words on paper for as far as his eyes could see. Was this what all he’d done in 250 years had led him to?

He had perpetrated unimaginable horror and pain. He had fought, bled and died time and time again in penance for his crimes against this dimension... and for his place in it. He had been a warrior. A Champion of humanity. He had faced the end of the world – several of them, in fact – and survived more or less intact. His influence now reached around the globe, across dimensions, touched millions of lives every day.

So why did he feel like little more than a glorified desk jockey? Once it had been epic battles, bloodthirsty monsters, souls in jeopardy, worlds in the balance and futures on the line. Now it was endless meetings with faceless corporate drones who had no investment in their jobs at all... pie charts and reports, running errands for the Senior Partners like some kind of Hellish lackey and, well... monsters. That much, at least, hadn’t changed. Some were enemies to be vanquished... but many were clients. The lines between good and evil were blurrier than they had ever been in his

existence.

Angel didn’t bother wasting unnecessary breath on a sigh as he snapped the next dossier shut and pressed his fingers to tired eyes. No use sitting here feeling sorry for himself. No reason to complain or regret. He had made his choices the day he accepted this job to save Connor. And every day since he had lived with the possible consequences of that decision... including a deep ennui that he just couldn’t kick.

He turned his high-backed mahogany and leather executive chair to face the warm glow of the LA afternoon outside the vast windows. Usually, at least this view boosted his spirits. The wall of necro-tempered glass allowed his vision to stretch for miles over the skyline. Day or night, he loved this city. Felt her pull in his soul... his deep kinship with her. He could remember so clearly how she looked in perpetual night... when she was drowning in a storm of fire. He remembered all he and his friends had sacrificed to save her.

But his fellow Californians were a resourceful, resilient bunch, and there was no sign today of the Hell that had almost swallowed it back then. The City of Angels was a beautiful, cruel bitch once more, overflowing with life

and danger, bursting with the pain, hope and exhilaration of the humanity teeming in her concrete and neon veins.

And here he was, separated from her heart by a partition of glass and steel.

"Yup. It’s Hell," he mumbled to no one in particular, and spun away again from the view. Today, it just wasn’t working.

If there was a fitting place for him to rot through eternity, this was it. He was planted firmly in a damn fishbowl clogged with paper, staring out at the world from under the deluge of contracts, negotiations, and teleconferences... Still apart from the world he loved, still crushed under the weight of demons – both personal and of the more otherworldly sort. Still alone.

He leaned over and pulled a folder from his personal files. This one was of a sturdier material... dark blue, stuffed full, its stiff spine creased from repeated reading.

The bold black letters on the top were so small... and yet contained the only real joy – albeit a bittersweet one – left to his reality.

‘BENJAMIN BRANNEN. A1CLEARANCE ONLY.’

Now this... this single folder was the only thing that made the unending waste of all the others worthwhile. Angel opened it, and couldn’t help a smile at the latest pictures tucked in the pocket by his independent P.I. contractor. Nothing about Connor’s new life would ever make it into the files of Wolfram & Hart if he could help it.

His son. Handsome, smart, happy, popular... all of the things Angel had never gotten to be. All the things he’d feared his son would never have. He leafed through the photos for the millionth time: the one of him winning the

hundred his freshman year, his face shining with the joy of victory, his eyes – Darla’s eyes – lit with joy. A picture of him smiling, taken at the UCLA Mentor Program’s open house. College agreed with him – 3.89 grade point

average, a star in history and math, member of the honor society, the yearbook staff and student government.

Angel stopped at his favorite picture, taken last summer in Alderby Park. Con... Benjamin sat beneath a tree, gazing adoringly into the eyes of the same slim, cheerful blonde he’d dated since high school. Three years and the two were still clearly in love, still lost in one another. Connor had that look – the one of a man more than willing to go to the ends of the earth...to lay down his very life for the woman he loved. The one woman who owned his heart and soul.

In that respect, at least, he was very much his father’s son.

The intercom on his desk mercifully buzzed, saving him from that endlessly painful train of thought. How was it that thinking about his son almost inevitably led to thoughts of...

"Yes?" He cut himself off, this time.

"Mr. Angel, Sir... I’m sorry to interrupt. I realize you asked not to be disturbed, but... I think you’ll want to hear this."

Michael’s strange, uncertain tone grabbed his attention. "It’s fine, Michael. What’s the problem?"

The assistant’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial murmur. "Sir... one of the *Upstairs* people is here. He says he has an urgent message for you." There was more muttering in the background. "Dire, Sir. He says to tell you he’s seen something dire."

Angel immediately perked up. Excitement at last! Although... he supposed he shouldn’t really happy about something ‘dire’ happening in the city.

"Send him in."

The "Upstairs People" were Wolfram & Hart’s elite team of psychics. Visionaries who, at his order, now held an extrasensory eye on the world 24/7, and kept him apprised of any possible situations – the National Weather Service of supernatural phenomena. He rarely heard from them, and when he did, he would usually receive a memo by email, upon which he would dispatch a team of whatever specialists were required for the situation in a matter of moments. Later, he got a report on the results. End of mission.

But if one of them was asking to speak to him personally...

The door opened to admit a boy of no more than 19, whose nickname had to be String Bean, or possibly Bean Pole. Topping Angel’s height by several inches, but under-weighing him by at least 75 pounds, the seer looked like nothing less than some strange human/ praying mantis hybrid.

He was also one of the most powerful seers in the dimension.

Angel rose and gestured to the chair across from him. "Have a seat, Marvin. Tell me what you’ve got."

The scraggly psychic stopped in his tracks, goggle-eyed with awe. Which was no mean feat, considering his eyes were already huge, and magnified times ten by thick, horn-rimmed spectacles.

"Wow. Sir. Mr. Angel, I... It’s... Wow. You know my name?" he stammered. "This is an honor, Sir, truly, thank you. I’m a real admirer of your work." The boy rushed forward with his hand out-stretched, stumbled over his feet,

and would have flown headlong into this boss’ lap if it weren’t for the latter’s vampire reflexes. Angel leapt up, caught the boy, steadied him on his feet, and returned to his own chair caught somewhere between irritation and bursting into laughter.

"God! I’m sorry! I’m such a klutz. Sir, please excuse me. I don’t come down here much, and I’m so excited... uh... I mean disturbed, of course, but...glad! Yes! Glad to be able to give you this vision."

"Marvin," Angel interrupted gently, "It’s okay. Have a seat." Coming around the desk once more, he gestured to the wet bar.

"Can I get you something? Water, maybe."

Marvin’s mouth soon matched his eyes as it dropped into a shocked ‘O’. "You... want to make *me* a *drink*?" he squeaked.

Angel couldn’t help but smile. "Only if you want one."

The boy shook his head. "I better not. Unless... okay, water would be good. Please. Thanks."

Angel poured the seer a glass and retook his seat. He was still uncomfortable taking the ‘Power Position’, most of the time – the enormous desk was just another barrier between himself and situations he’d rather be directly involved in.

Maybe this time... maybe today was the day he would finally throw off his corporate shackles and step back into the fray, where he belonged.

"So you had a vision," he began.

The seer gulped down his water in a few swallows, his Ichabod Crane-sized Adam’s apple bobbing furiously as he did. He set the empty glass down on the coaster Angel had provided, and took a deep breath.

"Well, Sir... normally-I-wouldn’t-bother-you-with-visions-because-that’s-what-the-reporting-unit-is-for-but-I-had-the-feeling-this-was-related-directly-to-you-and-I-know-you-don’t-like-your-personal-business-on-file-so-I-thought-this-should-come-right-to-you..."

"Marvin," Angel interrupted, dizzy from trying to decipher all the boy had voiced in a single breath.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Take a deep breath. Slow down. Whatever it is, we’ll handle it."

He nodded, took another, more steadying breath, and began once more. "Sir...there’s something coming. I think we may be seeing the beginnings of another apocalypse. And... the sensation I got from this vision is that... you’re

the only one who can stop it."

Angel frowned, his earlier anticipation gone. He leaned back in his chair. "Go on."

Chapter Two

Angel tried to ignore Fred fairly vibrating with enthusiasm in the passenger seat beside him as he made his way through the crawling sea of LA’s Friday night traffic.

"I’m SO glad you asked us to come with you, Angel! It’s been forever since I got out of the lab and actually *did* something! All day long it’s bubbling and zapping and arming and testing and writing reports, rewriting, presenting, blah blah blah. I mean... not that I don’t love my job – I do! Just... I miss my crossbow!"

A glance out of the corner of his eye caught her fondling the weapon in question (now modified with some electrical gadgets he couldn’t identify) with a longing that was... pretty disturbing, actually. He quickly looked away, but couldn’t help the mixture of pleasure at her excitement, and dread at what the seer had told him was coming.

"Yes, I have to second that sentiment," Wesley agreed from the back seat of the Belvedere. "As rewarding as our work can be, it’s simply not as satisfying as being directly involved in making the world a better place."

Angel smiled. "You’re welcome. I wouldn’t do it without you."

In truth, he had considered doing just that. When Marvin had finished his story about the dimensional rift and the resulting demon, Angel had nearly jumped out of his chair, grabbed his sword, and dashed to hack off the rising Heliosum’s head himself. But... knowing the others were feeling as impotent as he had been lately, locked up in their tower, fighting evil only in the abstract, he couldn’t find it in himself to deny his friends the same satisfaction he was seeking.

Not to mention the fact that, if this thing was coming for him directly, he might need backup that he could trust. No matter what happened.

"Now, you say Marvin mentioned the Tar Pits boiling *and* burning, yes? Was the fire green perchance?"

Angel smirked at the memory of the gawky young psychic stumbling all over himself in his eagerness to share what he saw as "big news" to his esteemed boss. "He didn’t mention it. Only the boiling, the Heliosum, and the girls."

"Hm," Wesley commented, and returned to reading the notes he’d downloaded onto his PDA.

"I still want to know what a class trip is doing at La Brea in the middle of the night," Fred mused. "I mean... you can’t exactly *see* the sights in the dark." An idea dawned on her, "Maybe it’s a class of *vampires*!"

"I don’t think so," Angel chuckled, then quickly sobered, "The impression was that they were human. Maybe the demon lured them there to feed. What’s important is that they are there, and they’ll be a midnight snack if we don’t help."

He didn’t mention the urgency Marvin had emphasized was central to his vision – the sense that this single demon was merely a portent of larger events about to unfold. Or the fact that some wrong from his past would have to be righted in order to save the world.

He’d worry about filling them in once the innocents were out of danger.

~

Faith’s comment about the situation was direct and to the point. "Shit."

"I probably would have gone with ‘crap’, considering the ten impressionable girls behind us," Buffy warned, "But, yeah... that about sums it up."

They, and the girls in question, stood around the lip of the steaming tar pit. The group represented the first graduating class of the Summers Memorial School for Gifted Girls – more popularly known amongst its members as the Slayer School – and tonight was their last field trip before "graduation".

It was convenient that one of Willow’s visionary witch friends had pointed her in the direction of a scroll that contained a prophecy that warned of a particular pair of Slayers – and some other, as of yet unidentified ‘Great Warriors’ being needed to stop an unfolding series of events.

Starting with the violently boiling pit of black ooze before them.

"This is not good," Kennedy observed. Being one of the girls with the most training and experience, she wasn’t actually a student, but had agreed to stay and help out with the day-to-day operations of the school. Ostensibly because she didn’t have anything else to do... but Buffy pretty much knew better.

She glanced to a nearby boulder where the real reason hid, and hoped Willow was prepared.

"No, this is definitely not good," she agreed. A rumbling growl emitting from the pit shook the earth around them. "And it’s about to get a whole lot worse!"

"Everybody get ready!" Faith shouted, "Fireboy’s gonna pop!"

"Will?" the blonde Slayer called across the park.

Her best friend sprang up from behind the rock, eyes shining silver. "Ready!" She raised her hands to the sky. "Phim! Calvalis! Venium! Ashala!"

"Okay," Buffy took firmer hold of her sword and nodded toward its twin in Faith’s hands. "We have to make that... connecting thingy through its head. With the swords."

"Conduit," Faith reminded her.

"Right. One entry on top of the head, down through the skull, the other up and through the throat."

"I’m Top," her sister Slayer said with a grin. "I’m gonna ride that sucker like Wood."

Buffy grimaced. "That’s... great. Just get it through the brain, okay? We have to pass the current through the spinal stem. I’ve got the underside." She gestured the students and Kennedy back away from the pit. "Don’t fire unless it gets out of the goop. This’ll be hard enough without enchanted arrows in our butt."

The younger women barely had enough time to take their positions before the pit exploded in a rain of fire and burning tar. The protection spell Willow cast on them deflected the searing, stinking slop, sending it spewing everywhere.

The Heliosum shot upward into the storm with a roar that shook the night. Faith and Buffy exchanged a look, then leapt at it with matching battle cries.

The fight had begun.

Faith landed squarely on the monstrosity’s thick, scaly neck just as Buffy’s grappling hook lodged in its jaw and the mechanism yanked her upward.

As she flew, she didn’t think. Didn’t worry about the danger to the girls – this was a training opportunity that didn't come along every day. A simple slash and bind. She didn’t worry about Faith, riding the thing like (no, no, no going there!) a bucking bronco from Hell as she positioned herself to pierce the armored skull with her enchanted sword. And she certainly didn’t think about the fact that she was dangling fifty feet above the ground and inches from a slimy, gaping maw packed with 13-inch teeth.

She never thought about much of anything, anymore. She just went with the flow, lived her life, and did what had to be done.

With a warrior shriek that would put Xena to shame – only less yodel-y – she thrust the sword upward into the Heliosum’s throat with all her strength. She felt the armor give, sending rocking vibrations down her arms. Heard the creature roar and Faith scream, "YES!" as the swords connected. Also heard Willow’s preternaturally loud chanting in the distance. The demon thrashed, flinging her upward toward its mouth as it fell. She felt her skull make contact with teeth, a searing wave of electricity as the spell broke free, then felt and heard no more.

~

A wave of dizziness slammed into Angel just as he was pulling into the parking lot. He jerked the wheel to the left, jamming on the brakes... just in time to black out.

When he came to, he found Wesley beside him, leaning in the driver’s side door, and Fred hovering from the passenger seat, both looking worried.

"Angel, are you all right?" Wesley asked.

"Fine." He tried to shake off the dizziness. "Something hit me. We have to hurry," he muttered, still confused and disoriented from the blow. The trio jumped from the car, weapons and Binding Orb in hand, and dashed toward the park entrance.

"Darn!" Fred complained as they skidded to a stop. "It’s dead already."

It certainly was. The scaly carcass was more than fifty feet long, probably weighed in at several tons. A horned cousin of Godzilla... that was already melting into a small lake of brown goo.

"Where are the girls?" Wesley queried.

Angel glanced around the park... and froze.

A few yards away from the decomposing demon, a clutch of young women knelt, hovering around something he couldn’t see at their center. But he was filled with dread, nonetheless, and remembered the blast of pain he had suffered upon their arrival.  A suddenly very familiar sensation of connection he had long forgotten existed.

Angel began to run. One of the girls spotted his approach.

"Crap! Fed, five o’clock!"

A second woman looked up, the firelight glinting off her red hair. "That’s not a Fed! It’s Angel!"

Faith glanced up just as the vampire slid to a stop beside them. "Shit," she cursed for the second time that night. The Slayer got to her feet. "Hey, Big A. Long time no see."

He stood there, staring in horror at Buffy’s still form. It was like something out of a nightmare – one he’d had so many times over the years, he could no longer count. He was stunned to silence with sudden regret... for all the things he’d never said, because he always thought there would be time for them later. When Buffy was cookies and he was sure of his own place in the world and able to let go of his resentment over Spike...

"Angel, she’s fine. Just a jolt from the spell," Faith promised.

"No," he muttered softly, more in response to his own dark and panicked thoughts than what the Slayer had said.

Fred touched his arm, making him startle. "Angel? Should we start the binding?"

He nodded absently, and managed to force himself to move through the small crowd to kneel beside Willow, who held Buffy’s still form in her arms.

He couldn’t, however, make himself look away.

"She’s fine, Angel," the redhead affirmed. "She hit her head, that’s all. Just give her a minute."

Despite the reassurance, and his trust that Willow knew what she was talking about, his heart squeezed tightly in fear.

A minute? He’d give her forever. He’d promised he would, the last time they spoke.  Was it too late to discover if he'd ever get to keep that vow?

As if she’d heard his thoughts, her eyes fluttered open and locked onto his like they’d never looked away two years ago.

"Angel?" she whispered.

For the first time since the last time he saw her, he smiled. And meant it.

Chapter Three

Predictably, that initial moment of magick between them didn’t last. By the time they had bandaged Buffy and Faith’s wounds and settled into the kitchen at the Slayer School, the silence between Buffy and Angel had devolved quickly into "awkward" territory. Or at least, it would have been awkward, thick with unspoken questions and ghosts of the past... if it weren’t for the loud, enthusiastic chatter of young women glutting it instead.

"And it made this noise like...’WHOOOSHROWWWRRR!"

"Better than dusting vamps any day. I kept waiting for the director to yell, ‘CUT!’"

"Buffy, can we help with the magick part next time? We’re definitely ready."

"I’ve still got this...stuff under my fingernails. Lava didn’t get it out. What IS this crap?"

"Oh, we’re so ready for the magick part!"

"Did you see Buffy? The way she was swinging from that thing? Too cool."

Only the Elder Slayers, Willow and their guests were uncharacteristically tense and quiet. Buffy focused intently on her tea, Fred and Wesley perused the copies of the prophecy regarding the Heliosum Willow had given them, Faith alternated between chowing down on an enormous plate of spaghetti and de-gooping her boots; and Angel just sat, staring at Buffy with an intensity that could bore through steel.

Could be that last was why everyone else was so quiet.

"Right, Buffy?" one of the girls – April? Vi? Lisa? Angel couldn’t keep their names straight in spite of his near perfect memory – asked their clearly distracted leader.

The Slayer in question finally glanced up from her oh-so-interesting teacup. She could feel Angel’s stare like fingertips on her skin... felt nearly crushed under the barely reigned tension of his regard. But she was too tired to go there right now... the whys and wherefores and how-are-you’s. And equally determined not to do it just on principle.

‘Not cookies yet, Buffy...’ she kept reminding herself.

"Yeah, right," she forced herself to reply to whomever was talking, in spite of the fact that she had no idea what she was agreeing to. Were his eyes always that dark and penetrating? Had she always felt like he was looking right through her, to the deepest parts of her soul where her darkest secrets lay?

‘Oh, God. Penetrating? Don’t think about that word. Penetrating BAD. No, no, NO penetrating! Even if he looks amazing and delicious and... NO!’

"See? Even Buffy agrees some of the students should have helped bring down the Heliosum," Kennedy pointed out, "Being back up and clean up is boring, and if these guys are going to graduate, they need to, you know, *graduate*. Kick off the training wheels!"

"Wait... what?" Buffy questioned, snapping out of her fog as she realized yet another small mutiny was taking place under her nose when she wasn’t paying attention.

Another reason Angel’s presence was a mixed bag.

Faith cast a quick glance from Angel to Buffy as she gave up on her boots and turned her attention to cleaning her sword. "No way you bunch were fighting that thing. It’s not in the primary school Slayer textbook."

"There IS no Slayer textbook!" one of the girls cried in protest.

"Well, I heard there used to be a handbook, but they had to throw it out because of Buffy," another one offered.

Angel’s cell buzzed in his coat pocket. Dragging his gaze away from Buffy, he rose and moved toward the back of the institutional kitchen as the argument went on.

"Angel."

"Sir, we finished the binding on the tar pit," the leader of the containment team he’d dispatched to clean up reported, "The portal’s closed, but we’re having a problem getting the tar to stop boiling. The Point Caster says the energy balance of the site isn’t correct, so whatever opened the portal can’t be countered. We’ve posted a team in case anything else decides to come out of it."

The vampire scowled. After all these years, and for all their usefulness, Angel still couldn’t get over his irrational hatred of cell phones. When they bothered to work at all, they inevitably imparted bad news no matter where the bearer might be. No escape. "Keep working on it. Call in a High Magicks Squad if you have to."

"But, Sir..."

"JUST DO IT!" Angel barked, and snapped the phone shut.

He looked up to find all eyes in the room locked on him, drawn by his outburst.

"Is there a problem?" Wesley asked, concerned that Angel seemed more tense than usual, rather than less, after their adventure.

"No, no problem," he lied, glancing at Buffy once more. "We should go. Something’s come up we need to take care of."

Buffy’s own concern about his rare display of temper showed clearly on her bruised face. She rose. "I’ll walk you out."

As the Wolfram & Hart team exited with Buffy bringing up the rear, Faith shot Willow a look.

The Witch sighed. "Go head. You can say it."

"Shit," the secondary Slayer remarked one last time.

~

Fred and Wesley quickly said their good-byes and headed for the car, leaving Buffy and Angel to talk.

"So... which one should I be more worried about? Angel’s uber-grouchy thing or the way he was looking at Buffy like a starving man chained three feet away from the world’s biggest banquet table? And now they’re talking..." she glanced back at the pair on the front step. "Talking really, *really* close together."

Wesley took a look for himself, and frowned. "It’s difficult to say at this point. Although I can’t imagine they’ll just drop down and make love on the front stoop after barely speaking for two years."

Fred shot him a glare. "Were we in the same room, back there? Wes... I hate clichés, but the one about knives and tension definitely fits here.

"Yes, well... that’s often the way it is between them." The ex-Watcher held open the passenger side door for her, taking one last glance at the star-crossed lovers embracing before he walked around to the other side. "Let’s address one issue at a time, though, shall we? I don’t believe Angel is in any position for Perfect Happiness to be a possibility right now, and if tonight’s events are a portent of bigger things to come, that is where our focus needs to be."

~

Angel held her until her ribs creaked, eliciting a yip of objection from Buffy.

"Sorry," he mumbled as he pulled away, "It’s just... seeing you like that..."

"How did you?" she interrupted, unable to force herself to let go of his hand, and just barely able to ignore the irrational urge to scoop him up, haul him bodily to her room and chain him to the bed for all eternity. "How did you know to come?"

He wanted to say something romantic... something epic like he had simply *known*, or *felt* that she needed him. But considering the circumstances, and what tonight’s incident might herald, he decided that honesty was the best way to go.

"One of my seers had a vision."

The Primary Slayer narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Don’t you have lackeys or minions or something to take care of that kind of stuff?"

He gave her a half-hearted smirk. "I’m not a Master, Buffy. I run a corporation. They’re called ‘highly trained specialists’. And yes, I do. But the vision indicated I needed to go. So I went."

She held his gaze for a long moment, searching for something – she wasn’t quite sure what – in his eyes. He seemed so... empty, somehow. Not quite all there.

Something she could absolutely relate to... with the exception of this exact moment.

"Well, you’re the vampire everybody answers to, so... tomato-tomahto. That call you got in the kitchen. Something went wrong," she observed. Sticking to business was the best way to keep this accidentally lit match from exploding into a firestorm.

Angel hesitated for a moment, not quite certain how much he wanted her to know, then admitted,

"I think that demon was just the beginning. The team reported that they can’t fully bind the Tar Pits." He gave the love of his life a long, hard look. "Something’s coming, Buffy. We can’t just assume that the two of us being drawn there together tonight was a coincidence. We need to be ready."

Buffy smiled weakly. "Just like old times."

Pain slashed across his features, and he stepped away. "Yeah," he replied flatly, and headed down the steps. At the foot, he turned back to look at her once more, his bleak expression softening. "Take care of yourself, Buffy. Stay alert."

And with those characteristic words of love, he was gone. Just melted into the shadows the way he always did, leaving her heart aching the way it hadn’t in years. Something was coming, he said. Something was dragging her and Angel back together in spite of their completely and totally separate lives. That just couldn’t be good thing.

Could it?

"See you soon," she whispered, and went back into the school, back to her life, which in a single night, had become far more complicated than she had ever imagined it could... or wanted it to.

~

Wesley remained behind once they returned to Angel’s office and completed the containment team’s debriefing. Their further attempts to bind the tar pits had failed miserably, and Fred was eager to meet with Knox and see if there was some technological solution to the energy shift that had freed the Heliosum... and threatened to perhaps release things even more dangerous than that.

He realized there was research to be done... prophecies and portents to translate, interpret and consult, but for the moment, he was more concerned with his friend’s darkening mood.

He had made it his job over the past two years to keep a metaphorical finger on the pulse of his family as they navigated the hellish maze of their new "careers". Working inside the stronghold of the enemy, surrounded day in and day out by every imaginable temptation, were dicey propositions for any group of people. But the weariness and vulnerability of the members of Angel Investigations (what remained of them) after the near-apocalypse of 2003 made them especially vulnerable.

If there were any slippery slopes ahead, he wanted to be equipped with a net to catch his loved ones if they fell. Wesley never intended to lose another of their numbers.

Angel loosened his tie, poured himself a double scotch, neat and sagged onto the couch near one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office suite. He stared out at the fading night as though looking for some elusive answer there, seemingly oblivious that his friend was present.

That wasn’t unusual for him, really. Since Cordelia had fallen into a vision-induced coma, and Angel had given up his soul to stop the Beast – nearly killing them all in the process, his attention tended to wander away from the painful past and empty present more frequently and completely than even his darkest early days in Los Angeles.

"Angel," he beckoned softly, interrupting the vampire’s weary reverie.

He didn’t start, but slowly faced his friend. "I’m sorry, Wes. Would you like a drink?"

The Englishman shook his head. "No, thank you. I’m more interested in how you’re doing. Tonight has been rather... full of surprises."

"It really has," he answered dully.

The younger man took a seat on the divan across from his boss and dearest friend. "Perhaps you’d like to talk about it?"

Angel sighed deeply, and shrugged. "What’s there to talk about? Seeing Buffy always shakes me up. The world is constantly in danger. None of this is exactly new, Wesley." Turning back to the vista once more, he added, "In fact, it’s pretty par for the course, at this point."

"Yes. But it’s been some time since we’ve faced this degree of uncertainty. And the fact that you and Buffy were both called to that place..."

Angel held up a hand to stop him. "Coincidence. That’s all. Buffy and I are in the same business, operating in the same city. We were bound to end up in the same fight sooner or later."

Wesley looked at him skeptically. "Is that really how you feel?"

"Yes," he lied smoothly, "It’s not a big deal. We’ve moved on with our lives: she has the school. I have..." his facile demeanor deflated, "... this. Anything else is of the past. Besides, if there is something coming, having 200 Slayers on our side can only help, right? The personal side of it is irrelevant."

His friend watched him for a moment, then spoke cautiously, "Your relationship with Buffy has never been simple – either in the mundane or mystical sense. It may be a mistake to dismiss tonight as a coincidence. Angel..." he leaned his elbows on his knees. "It’s no secret that you’re unhappy, here. Felling isolated from the world... useless. Cut off. You don’t have to put up a front for me. Perhaps this... situation, both the cataclysmic aspects and your reunion with Buffy are... a higher power’s method of snapping you out of it."

"Maybe." Angel downed the rest of his tumbler and stared in at the melting ice. "Or maybe it’s a setup to distract us. Stir up feelings better left... Well... it wouldn’t be the first time." Swallowing stiffly, he glanced up at his colleague once more. The friend who had once been used as a tool to break his heart... which he no longer even remembered. How could Wesley really understand what Angel had become? What he had lost? What had broken inside him and never healed...

The Englishman’s gaze softened. "You may be right. But... dismissing any possibility at this juncture is a serious error." He got up. "I’ll look into the prophecies Willow provided. Perhaps we’ll find some guidance there."

Before the ex-Watcher stepped out into the hall, Angel called his name. He turned to find the CEO of Wolfram & Hart’s Los Angeles annex staring at him, a frighteningly flat look in his dark eyes.

"Don’t put all your faith in prophecies, Wesley," he said in warning, then moved his gaze back to the brightening pre-dawn skyline once more. "They’re not always the advantage we tend to think they are."

Perplexed, Wesley left without comment.

~

Buffy finally made it back to her room with a cup of cocoa, an ice pack, and a deep, desperate desire to crawl under the covers and forget this day ever happened.

Naturally, Faith was waiting to make sure she didn’t get to do that.

"You know, I think I liked the interventions better when Giles ran them," she complained, setting her cup down on the vanity and claiming her hairbrush. "They felt more... I don’t know, helpful? As opposed to feeling like I’m about to get interviewed for ‘Oui’."

"Hey, B. Save the snark," Faith replied, holding her hands up in mock defense. "I’m not here to grill you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You got a pretty slammin’ freaking whammy tonight."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "It’s not exactly the first time Angel showed up and made the sky fall."

Her sister Slayer smirked knowingly. "I wasn’t talking about Angel."

"Oh." Busted, Buffy set the brush down. "The demon. Right. Um... I’m fine. Just tired."

"Cool. We’ve taken worse beatings, right?" She ignored the unsubtle hint and leaned back against the mountain of pillows on Buffy’s bed, tucking her arms behind her head. "But, you know... now that you bring up the Big A... He’s looking pretty tasty these days. That suit was a gas! And he seemed – I hate to say ‘hit by lightning’, since you got the blast, but... He definitely looked like he got something he wasn’t expecting."

The blonde plopped down beside her. "Yeah. He did, didn’t he?"

"If you’re trying not to sound jazzed about it, you’re doing a suckass job, B. You were staring at your cup so hard, I thought it was gonna explode. I swear, you two spend more energy avoiding each other than you ever did actually trying to make it work."

Glaring at her, Buffy snapped, "Who asked you? And when did you become such an expert on me and Angel?"

Faith’s neutral expression turned serious. "Since I got the gold star guided tour through his head. Buffy... I know you don’t wanna hear this, but... he still loves you. You know that, right?"

Buffy stared down at the brush in her hands and shrugged.

Sitting up and swinging her legs over the bed, Faith went on. "Well, I do. Yeah, I know it’s none of my business. But I think I get the two of you better than you do. Especially him. And you’re written all over everything in his that thick melon of his. I mean *everything*. You’re either the cause, the inspiration, the reason, the definition, the foundation, or the cure, B. He’s pushed it back, shoved it down, done everything but had a total brain/heart/soul flush to get rid of it. But it’s still there. Just like with you." She punched her friend gently in the arm. "Frickin’ Denial Twins Activate, yo."

"I am NOT in denial. I just don’t feel that way..." Buffy sighed. "I don’t know what I feel anymore. Except exhausted."

Finally taking her cue, Faith got up and headed for the door. "Yeah, I get it. Solo brooding’s another thing you two got in common." She stopped at the door and glanced back. "But don’t forget what the prophecy said. I’m thinking it wasn’t just about Godzilla Jr."

Buffy flopped back on the bed with an exasperated sigh and closed her eyes. Eternal Flames... Great Warriors... bindings of blood & tears. Her life’s truly pathetic story. "That’s what I’m afraid of."

Chapter Four

Sometimes, Angel deeply regretted the nearly endless resources at his disposal as head of Wolfram & Hart’s LA branch. There was hardly a source of information available in any known dimension that he and his staff couldn’t get their hands on, from the mystical to the mundane.

Which meant no blissful ignorance. Ever. There was always an answer he didn’t want to hear right around the corner. It was easy to miss the double-edged sword of flying blind, some days.

"The prophecies our outside source provided point to a heretofore unknown mystical convergence – unique astrological positionings, time anomalies, magickal fluxes, geo-thermal shifts and such – that together, throw the balance of this dimension into a tailspin. The phenomena we’ve witnessed in the past two weeks demonstrate its initial effects. We’ve little doubt that there are more to come."

At the head of the conference table, Angel struggled to stay sharp, take it all in. Listen to the facts his people had gathered and formulate a plan of action, when all he really wanted to do was drift away. Daydream about how Buffy felt in his arms – so tiny and warm, her delicate frame belying the physical strength hidden within. The scent of her hair... the look in her eyes. The sudden, desperate, and nearly irresistible urge to ask her, "Are you done baking yet?"

Had he imagined she seemed as lonely as he felt? Probably. But still... he’d forgotten how wonderful it was just to be near her. Two weeks later, and it was still the only thing he could think about... end of the world be damned.

Angel clenched his teeth hard enough to make his jaw pop. Damn it. This was *exactly* why working with his life’s only love was a bad idea. Now was *not* the time for them -- if there was ever going to *be* one. Now he needed to focus on the matter at hand.

It was just that the old Buffy-ache was so much more pleasant than most other kinds of pain...

"I see," he commented vaguely as Wesley concluded, hoping that covered up his lack of attention to the situation they were discussing. All his department heads had been working around the clock since the incident at La Brea, tracking the sudden and severe upsurge in demon activity, and the strangely patterned confluence of mystical catastrophes threatening his city: simple magicks gone horribly awry, long-standing bindings suddenly disintegrating, random dimensional portals opening in odd and dangerous places from shopping malls to school yards.

They had to figure out what it all meant and how to put a stop to it before the pinnacle hit and made the Rain of Fire look like a gentle, if inconvenient, sun shower.

"Fred, any progress on what’s dissolving the magickal matrices?" he asked, glad he had at least managed the foresight to have Michael type up an agenda he could follow.

His colleague and incidentally, second closest friend was always on the ball. She clicked a button on the remote panel beside her, and the screen on the far wall was instantly filled with mathematical, chemical, and alchemical symbols that made no more sense to him now than they ever had.

Unfortunately, Fred’s ostensibly English translations weren’t much help.

"As you can see from this chart, the ratio of positively charged ion streams to negative are skewed toward the negative, which undermines the atomic time space continuum and destroys the flow of life force used to create magick. And that’s only on the physical plane. The underpinnings of linear time itself are unraveling beneath the physical, making any magick that can be cast unpredictable at best. We think this is happening because the boundaries between dimensions have been weakened at some imperative locus. We just haven’t figured out quite where yet. The hot spots are shifting too, which suggests that the weaknesses aren’t static, and wherever they come to rest, waves of – for lack of a better term – magickal anti-matter are leaking through all over the place. Then there’s the relative balance shifts..."

She went on for what felt like forever, about quarks and miniature black holes, dimensional warp phases and proto-matter energies until everyone at the table looked stunned or on the verge of losing consciousness. Except Wesley, of course, who was apparently riveted and fascinated by her work, and took copious notes.

Angel blinked a few times to clear the fog from his head before he responded. "Okay. Do you... have any recommendations on how to repair the... uh..."

"Inter-dimensional time-space warp energy rifts," Fred offered helpfully.

"Right. Any suggestions?"

"All departments are on highest alert," Wesley reported, "Every available resource is being utilized to determine what – or whom – initiated this event, and how we might end it. We’ll require some additional time, but I see no reason why we can’t accomplish that goal."

"Good. Keep me posted," Angel concluded, "I want containment teams at all reported anomaly locations. Make sure each one has a dimensional specialist and a ritual magickian on hand. If these rifts keep spilling demons out onto the streets, we could be looking at total chaos in a matter of days. For the time being, let’s keep the ops as low-key as possible. We want to avoid panic if we can. Thank you, everyone."

The team began to disperse, but Angel held Fred and Wesley back.

"Okay, now I need the two of you to tell me – succinctly and in plain English – what exactly are we looking at, here, and how dangerous is it? How bad could it get, and how do we stop it?"

Fred cast her gaze down at the polished tabletop. "Sorry."

"Don’t be sorry, Fred. Be clear," he replied gently.

It was strange the way her demeanor changed when it was just the three of them. She no longer acted the all-together, big-brained scientist, and instead again became their quirky and bright friend. A fellow veteran of the apocalypse. "’Kay. There are borders between dimensions, and those borders are made out of energy. Something – or someone – has screwed the balance of that energy all up. Like... the points in a flashlight where the batteries connect to the wiring. Whatever is happening makes the flashlight have two negative posts, so no power can get through. Or in this case... only dark energy can. That’s why we’ve been seeing all the new monsters. And since time-space is made of the same kind of energy, we’re seeing all the weird time thingies the others reported. Like people getting caught in loops where the same stuff happens over and over again."

"And some others are experiencing... well, in short, they’re being thrown back into events that have already happened in their linear lifetime. Some are even meeting their doppelgangers, past, present, and future. We’ve witnessed all of these phenomena before, of course... just not usually all at once like this," Wesley added.

"Well, that answers my first question," Angel sighed. How could he have gotten *this* out of touch with what was going on in the world outside? He’d known he’d been missing the day-to-day workings of Los Angeles, but *this*? Something this serious shouldn’t have escaped his notice. "How bad could it get?"

Their friend's weariness was so clear in his tone; Wes and Fred almost hesitated to tell him.

"Gunn and the Ra-Tet have gathered five times in the past two weeks," Wesley replied, his own voice tense. "And no one – not even Fred and I – have been able to get in to see him and ask why. He’s not accepting visitors."

"That’s bad," Angel understated. As a safety precaution, the Ra-Tet never came together in the same place at the same time – even when the Beast and its Master pulled their Armageddon stunt two years ago, and began slaughtering them one by one. Gunn had become a member of the new set, who was equally isolated. "Wesley, do Willow’s documents give any hint of the cause? Or how to reverse it?"

"Yes, actually, although we’re having some trouble with exact translations. The general idea is that some single catastrophic event in the past decade has undermined the balance of light/dark energies in the cosmos. Some higher power – whether dark or light, we can’t be certain – is struggling to bring that power back into balance. As far as what we can do, two things are clear thus far: the original event must be reversed, or some equal action taken to repair the imbalance. And as for the second, the prophecies suggest..." he trailed off.

"Suggest?" Angel urged.

Wesley squarely met his gaze. "The prophecies speak frequently of a particular mystical fire, or energy. That an "eternal flame" is the only way to halt the progress of Hell’s conflagration. A fire specifically borne by two "great warriors", who are "bound by tears and blood."

Angel found himself awash in a sensation of half fear, half dread at the growing suspicious on what that Eternal Flame might be, and who were the bound two to bear it. There were, after all, no coincidences in his and Buffy’s lives... or in their relationship with one another.

"I’m guessing they aren’t referring to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier," he murmured.

"No, I should say not," Wes agreed gently. "I think... Angel, it might be prudent for you to contact Buffy as soon as possible."

The vampire closed his eyes and nodded. "That’s what I thought you were going to say."

~

The girls were exhausted. Buffy was starting to worry that their greatest enemy right now wasn’t the monsters swarming the streets of LA, or time going all wonky, but rather all of them dropping dead from exhaustion. Even 187 Slayers didn’t seem to be enough to keep things under control, lately. As much as she hated to admit it, they desperately needed help.

Wolfram & Hart sized help.

She knew what had to be done, but somehow... seeing Angel a few weeks ago, his dark eyes filled with weary sadness that only lightened the smallest bit when he looked at her, made it harder, rather than easier, to call him.

He obviously had a lot on his plate, running EvilCo., trying to change its mission statement from the inside. Taking on her problems could only make the tension she’d felt radiating off him, seen bunching his broad shoulders and snapping his usually long temper like a twig, worse. He already had the weight of several worlds on his back – how could she ask him to take on hers too?

Willow and Faith kept reminding her – theirs was the *same* world, the same sacred duty, and it was just Buffy’s stubborn pride that kept her from admitting it and banding together with Angel, rather than spending all her really negligible energy devising excuses to avoid him and deny what those few hours spent together that night did to her heart.

And yeah, there was the pride thing, too. She’d made such a big show of needing to be independent... making it on her own... the last time they spoke. She pushed away the one love she knew would always be there for her, because she didn’t want to admit – to him, herself, or anyone – that even all these years after he left her, she still needed him. Still wanted him in her life. Still dreamed of having him by her side. And she never felt quite... right without him there.

With all that had been going on then, she also hadn’t been able to bear the thought of seeing him die... again. Plus not really having the time, energy, or desire to keep Angel and Spike from killing each other in the middle of Armageddon.

Spike... now there was a completely different complicated, painful topic she had totally sublimated. She did so now, too. It was after 11, and she just had too much work to do to waste time indulging in all her favorite maybes, should-I-haves and what-ifs.

A soft knock at her office door solved the problem for her. Willow didn’t wait for an answer before she stepped inside.

"Hey, Buffy."

"Hey, Will. Did the girls get settled in okay?"

The redhead nodded as she sprawled out on the leather couch, crossing her arms over her face. She too was worn out from the events of the past two weeks of working non-stop directing their magickal operations, from enchanting weapons and shields to binding and protection spells and healing minor wounds.

"Angel called earlier," she announced in her best understated dramatic nonchalance, not taking her folded arms away from her face.

Buffy scowled. This wasn’t exactly the distraction she’d been hoping for. "What’d he want?"

Willow opened one eye to focus on her best friend. "To talk to you. I told him you were sleeping. Which you’re supposed to be."

"So are you," she Slayer snapped in reply.

"True. But I’m too wired from that last portal binding to sleep. Don’t you want to know what he said?"

She carefully examined her nails. "Not particularly."

"Liar."

Buffy’s head shot up. "Excuse me?"

Willow rolled onto her side and repeated very slowly, "Lie. Er. Come on Buffy. How long have I known you?"

Her best friend pouted fiercely at having her denial so thoroughly smashed, but didn’t reply. The vice-headmistress of the Slayer School went on as though Buffy had said what her studied appearance was saying for her. "And I’ve known you and Angel as long as *you’ve* known you and Angel, haven’t I?"

"Fine! I’m lying! You caught me!" Buffy cut her off with a bark, "Just... give me the message and go away already so I can get back to repressing. It’s a delicate art form."

The witch grinned. "I didn’t say he left a message."

Buffy rewarded her teasing with a withering glare.

"Okay, okay," Willow relented, "They’ve got more information about what’s happening around here. Angel wants to meet with all of us as soon as possible. But he says he has to talk to you first."

The Slayer’s eyes went wide in sudden fear. "Me? Alone? Why?"

"Buffy... you heard what the prophecy said: Great Warriors, Eternal Flame, Blood and Tears. That’s sort of personal."

"Yeah, but... we both have lots of great warriors, and... the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has an eternal flame, right? And there’s blood... or... probably was... and tears. Definitely tears. That’s not personal!"

Willow made her opinion of Buffy’s desperate defiance tap-dance clear with a disapproving look.

The blonde jumped out of her chair. "I can’t do this, Willow! I can’t just forget the past six years and go, ‘Oh, Hey, Angel. Long time no see. Say, can you help me out with this apocalypse? But let’s keep it strictly business. No personal stuff.’"

"Why can’t it be personal? Impending disaster and possibly horrible death is always personal, in my experience," her colleague reminded, knowing she was treading on dangerous ground. She had been reading the scroll, consulting with Wes and his assistants, and everyone concurred with regard to what the tacit meaning of the passages most likely was.

Definitely personal.

"Because! It’s... it’s too late, and it’s too much!" Buffy cried, pacing the way she always did when she was upset. "Still! I see him, and all of a sudden I’m 16 again. I can’t *be* 16 anymore, Willow. I have responsibilities! People who count on me. I can’t afford to fall apart while I drool or cry or freak over my ex! I’ve been through too much for that to be okay. We’ve both been through so much apart..."

Watching her best friend rant and pace made Willow smile. It had been longer than she could remember since she’d seen Buffy so animated... so alive. Even if she was currently having a mini-psychotic break.

"Buffy, I hear what you’re saying. I do. But... don’t you think saving the world has to take priority over your Angel issues?"

Buffy slowly turned to look at her best friend, her fearful expression defeated. "I guess I don’t really have a choice."

"Maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean... you’re both grown-ups. Oz and I have perfectly reasonable phone conversations all the time. And it's not like you’ll be wandering around in cemeteries resisting the urge to grope instead of hunting vampires, right?"

"With us? Don’t be so sure," Buffy sighed, and sank back into her chair.

"Do you want his number?’

"I already have it tattooed conveniently on my brain," she glared at the phone. "If this doesn’t end up being the end of the world, it’ll at least be the end of what little mental health I have left."

~

Angel had just finished venting some angst dusting a small nest of vampires not far from the office when his cell rang.

Glancing down at his watch, he found that it was barely midnight. Miles to go...

"Angel."

"Hey."

The soft, hesitant tone of Buffy’s voice sent an unexpected shock vibrating through ever fiber of his being, to the point where he froze in the middle of dusting off his slacks, and said nothing in response.

"Hello?" Buffy called out after a silent moment. "Are you on a cell phone? Can you hear me? Angel! HELLO! Damn it."

He finally got it together and forced himself to stand up. "Sorry. I’m here."

"Where is here, a sewer or something? I thought with all that Wolfram & Hart technology, you’d at least have a decent cell phone," she teased. Then the silence quickly dominated once more. "So. Um... hi. Willow said you called?"

Angel made his way back to the main sewer junction, following it east to the subbasement of the W&H building.

"I did," he answered succinctly, still not quite positive where to go next with the conversation. Some small, childlike voice in the bottom of his long-dead heart cried, ‘Meet me at the airport! I have a private jet! We can get the Hell out of here! There’s so much to say and we’ve had so little time and *screw* the end of the world. Let it all get sucked into Hell, as long as we’re together. I don’t care any more!’

Naturally, he voiced none of that aloud.

"Ah. Okay. Good," she stammered. "So. Um... how are you?"

"Currently covered in several inches of vamp dust with an extra coating of sewer muck for accent," he forced himself to reply lightly, which was somewhere several counties away from what he was feeling.

"I’ll take that as ‘good’."

The silence returned, hanging heavy over the line for a moment. He reached the ladder to his building, and paused.

"How are you? I know you’ve been... busy," he finished lamely.

‘Oh, good, dumbass. ‘Busy’. That’s like saying getting tortured by a Ryvar demon ‘isn’t fun’.

She laughed. The sound, though unquestionably tired, was like warm water flowing over his bruised soul. He leaned back against the ladder and let that magickal sound wash away what tension slaughtering eight vampires single-handed hadn’t.

"Yup, busy, that’s me, Mr. Understatement. But... we’re all okay. Just in desperate need of a week in Maui or something. Since we’ve already done Disneyland."

"Glad to hear it. But I wasn’t asking about your students," he clarified somewhat in opposition to his better judgment. He felt utterly unprepared to deal with this level of intimacy with her. But... as nerve-wracking and heart-wrenching as the process may be, if Wesley was right about the events they were to face, at least building a working relationship with Buffy was a necessary effort. Like therapy... involving the consumption of copious amounts of ground glass.

She sighed. "Right. Me? Oh, you know..."

At least she didn’t seem to be having any easier a time of it. He turned and sprinted up the ladder, popping the cover off and springing into the hallway, then headed for the parking garage.

"I *don’t* know. That’s why I’m asking," he reminded her.

Buffy paused for a moment before she replied, "I don’t know if I’m ready to do this, Angel. You or another apocalypse. Not that I equate the two."

"Of course not," he commented wryly, nodding to the security guards at the entrance to the garage as he entered. "I’m not entirely comfortable with it myself. But all the signs say..."

"We have to work together. I know." She took a deep breath, as though she was about to dive into some deep water. Which, he supposed, they both were. "I just don’t have the first clue where to start."

Angel reached his small fleet of cars – the vast majority of which remained unused – and was shocked by the sight all over again. Who ever needed this many vehicles? Two Audis, two Maseratis, a Ferrari, three Mercedes, a BMW, an MG Spider, a modified Hum-V, a Land Rover, and two limousines. Ridiculous.

He hopped into the Belvedere, his old, reliable friend. Settling into the comfy leather seat, he forced himself to relax and focus on finding them some easier middle ground to meet on... somewhere far away from the millions of painful subjects their conversations tended to wander to.

"Well... why don’t we start with the simple stuff? Like... what you’ve been dealing with since the Confluence began," he suggested. There. Shoptalk was simple.

She grabbed hold of the thought like a drowning woman thrown a life jacket. "Ooh! Good idea! Okay, um... Thursday there was this portal that opened in Iminy Square, and spilled out all these tiny rat demons..."

He started up the car as she began her report, listening to the now-lighter and easier tone of her voice as he made his way toward the Hyperion.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Chapter Five

"This is so bad, " Buffy moaned, letting her head fall on the dining table with a dull thump.

Willow and Faith exchanged grins.

"Late night?" the brunette Slayer drawled. "All that paperwork sure sucks up the time, don’t it? That’s why I leave that crap to you and Wood, while I stick to the ass-kicking part of the curriculum. Regular hours, and lets me work off lots of energy so I can sleep like a baby."

"Shut up, Faith. I’m trying to sleep, here," her co-headmistress mumbled into the pillow of her folded arms.

Willow took a long sip of her tea, trying (and failing) not to sound smug as she asked, "Up all night talking to Angel?"

Incoherent grumbling came from the slumped figure beside her.

"Must have been one Hell of a convo," Faith put in, "You were cracking up like a speed freak every ten seconds."

"I’m cracking up all right," Buffy sighed as she sat up and reached for her coffee. "In fact, I’m pretty sure I reverted into the same kind of giggling, drooling, squealing moron we work with every day."

"Hey!" one of the eavesdropping students further down the table cried in protest.

"Eat your cornflakes," Buffy muttered.

Willow leaned in closer, and couldn’t help the pang of nostalgia the two of them sitting there dishing about Angel brought to her heart. "You really talked all night?"

A hesitant smile crept across her best friend’s face, brightening it in spite of her shadowed eyes. "Yeah. It started out as shoptalk, you know? Where the monsters were, how we were killing them, what the time-freakies were all about. And by the end, we were arguing about reality shows and the best brand of hair gel."

Faith beamed. "So it was cool."

Her sister Slayer rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it was cool. At least... maybe we proved we can get through this without ending up in straight jackets. Or killing each other." Her confident expression became more apprehensive. "But we didn’t really go to the bloodier places, so... the jury’s really still out."

"Give it time, Buffy," Willow encouraged. "You’ll get there. I mean... you guys have hardly spoken in years. A lot’s happened, like you said last night. You can’t expect to be best friends again in one conversation. Even a seven-hour one."

"I still can’t figure out what you’d talk to a guy about – even Angel – for seven hours," Faith remarked, "I like keeping the verbal to a min."

"A truer truth hath never been spoken," Wood commented as he took the seat next to his lover, brushing an absent kiss to her cheek and reaching for the coffee.

The other women smirked, but refrained from giving Faith a hard time about the way Robin made her blush like a schoolgirl. They had learned a long time ago that things tended to get broken when they teased her too much.

"Don’t hear you complaining, Champ," Faith muttered, turning her full attention to shoveling cereal into her face.

"So, what’d I miss?" the school’s principal and de jure administrator asked.

"Buffy finally talked to Angel," Willow reported dutifully.

Robin arched a brow. "That’s the... *other* vampire lover, right?"

All three women’s gazes fell on him in various degrees of chastisement: Willow and Faith’s to remind him Spike was a taboo subject, and Buffy’s because... repressing. Delicate art form.

"Sorry, but I’m still pretty new to the whole saga. I have to use what reference points I have," he pointed out in his own defense.

"Yes. Angel was my... is a... used to be..." Buffy stammered, unable to find a succinct term to explain what Angel was to her. She went with the simplest. "He’s a friend."

Faith coughed, "Understatement."

"Didn’t we already cover the ‘shut up’ thing?" Buffy snapped.

"He’s the head of Wolfram & Hart now," Willow explained. "The prophecy says he and Buffy..." she cut herself off at the latter’s glare, "Um... that we need his help."

"You can say that again. Wait," Wood cut in, "Isn’t Wolfram & Hart evil?"

"Not anymore," his girlfriend corrected him, "Big A’s running things now. They don’t get much not-eviler than him."

Wincing at Faith’s characteristic slaughter of the English language, he went on incredulously, "A vampire."

"With a soul," Buffy amended.

Robin unconsciously touched the scar below his right eye – a present from Spike, who had also, ostensibly, had a soul. "Which always guarantees goodness and light."

"Jesus, Wood," Faith bitched, "Let go of the Down With Vamps riff already. It’s old. Angel’s got a hundred years of soul-practice under his belt. And he saved my life -- all our lives. Completely different animal than the-bleached-blond-who-shall-not-be-named."

"Animal being the operative term," the principal reminded them.

"Spike saved all our lives too," Buffy murmured under her breath.

"Fine," Robin interrupted, deciding to wrangle the conversation back to safer ground – Armageddon. "So Angel’s in the game. Do we have a plan on how to stop what’s happening?"

Buffy shrugged. "He’s got his people on it. He wants us – ALL of us – to work together on this."

"Hey, I’m not gonna say no to being sponsored by a big corporation with bottomless buckets of cash, that’s for sure," Faith said, "We’re holding half our weapons together with rubber bands."

"They’re not *sponsoring* us!" the blonde Slayer shouted, "We’re *consulting*! Big difference!"

Faith slammed her cereal spoon on the table. "Whatever! The fact is, he’s in it, and that’s all good, as far as I can see. We need the money, and we *really* need the backup! So, though it’s way cool that you and Angel are patchin’ up your... whatever... let’s not forget why you’re doing it." She gestured at the weary breakfast crowd filling the dining room, dropping her voice to avoid their attention. "They’re wiped, B. The rotating shifts aren’t so much rotating anymore as cramming together into one big shift. They can’t keep doing this."

Buffy closed her eyes. "I know, I know. It’s just..." she glanced from one of her colleagues to the other. "This is really hard. You guys just can’t understand. Angel and I need to work together, but... Oh, forget it." She shoved out of her chair and stomped from the room.

"Your diplomacy skills never cease to amaze me," Wood commented to Faith.

"Shut up, Cueball."

Willow rose. "I’m going to talk to her."

Faith grabbed her arm. "Leave it alone, Red. She just needs some time to chill."

The Witch hesitated and then retook her seat. "I guess. I just hate seeing her this upset."

"She’ll get over it. Angel’s just a tough subject for her – you know how she gets all spastic over him. He’s the same way."

"I really need more backstory here," Wood complained.

"I’ll fill you in before class – for the next hundred years," Faith offered, their tiff already forgotten. Sniping was, after all, her and Robin’s preferred method of communication. Right behind screwing each other into the mattress... or whatever handy surface was around.

Which was, in her opinion, way preferable to the "noble", ulcer inducing deny-repress-avoid method of her two closest friends.

"Can vampires get ulcers?" she wondered aloud, eliciting a strange look from her companions. "Probably not, huh?"

~

He had planned to get some sleep when he and Buffy finally (and to his surprise, hesitantly) rang off. But after four hours lying in bed with his mind reeling, Angel finally gave up.

Showered, dressed and fed, he ducked back into the tunnels, choosing to avoid any human contact, even with his driver, in favor of some quiet time to think. And there was no quieter, more peaceful and solitary place in the city than the private hospital where Cordelia was currently being cared for by the finest specialists his now-endless resources could provide.

He had come here at least once a week, for all these years. Brought her flowers she couldn’t smell, CD’s she couldn’t hear, clothes and magazines she couldn’t see. Sometimes he just sat and thought, or watched her for some sign of life. Sometimes he’d talk to her for hours.

Even in her pampered stillness, Cordelia Chase was still his closest confidant. He missed her... the way they’d been before... everything. When she was the surrogate sister, the tactless sayer of truths, and he at last, the decent big brother. He recalled how her sharp-tongued honesty had kicked him back into shape when he got too stuck in his own head, too bound up in guilt or self-pity to see things clearly.

Back before the manipulations... the twisting of emotions by outside forces, the lies, the wounds inflicted and the self-delusion.

Before Connor...

He’d learned to let some of that go, now. The longing and the resentments. No one remembered except him anymore, anyway. So he could come and sit beside her and tell her anything, everything, because even if she remembered, wherever she was, she wasn’t about to judge.

He eased into his customary chair with a tired sigh. Checked the latest notes on her medical chart... which still showed no change.

"Hey, Cor," he began, as he always did, tucking the thick binder back into its clip. "You look great. The new hairdo really flatters your cheekbones. I, uh... I brought the new ‘Vogue’, and that ‘Delerium’ disc I was telling you about the other day. Fred can’t stop raving about it, but... you know me. Anything made after ‘75’s just noise."

He trailed off, just staring out the window for a long time, gathering his thoughts. But wasn’t that why he’d come here – to talk it all through until something made sense? Until the fact that a single conversation made him feel better than he had in years no longer seemed so... incredible?

What would Cordy say to all this? The former Queen C would likely roll her eyes, snort derisively, and continue on to bitch about his therapy–worthy, unending, Buffy-obsession of course, and probably end with some snide comment about Buffy’s taste in clothing, makeup, or hair.

"I talked to her last night. Or... she talked, and I slid comments in edgewise whenever I could," he chuckled affectionately, "It was... good, Cor. Really good. I’d forgotten how comforting it felt to just... hear her voice. Share things with her. It’s been so long." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Feels like four or five lifetimes, at least. I’m not really sure how to handle it. These... emotions. They shouldn’t still hit me like this, should they? Shouldn’t all this time – all the things we’ve been through – faded it? We hardly know one another anymore, and still..."

He closed his eyes, reliving the soft music of Buffy’s laughter. Her stories about what she referred to as her "crazy hormone bomb brigade". Her certainty that the radical, cosmos-altering action she, Faith and Willow had undertaken was the best thing for the world – and for themselves. All the exciting and exotic places she’d gone, collecting Slayers for training. All the good she felt they were doing.

"She’s grown up so much. Become this... amazing, strong, self-assured woman. But she’s still... Buffy. I can still see that little girl I fell in love with in her eyes. The way she laughs. She still says my name with that exact same tone she always did. And she still makes me feel..." He swallowed back his unaccustomed tears. "Full. I didn’t realize just how much I missed her."

And this would have been the cue for more snorting, eye rolling and bitching from Cordy, he was sure. And then he could almost hear her shouting, ‘What the Hell is the problem, then! Why are you acting like she ate your puppy? God, you and your self-flagellation! Get over it already!’

He smiled sadly, his lip trembling. "I miss you, Cordelia. I really wish..." he shook it off. "Yeah. If wishes were shoes, right? I just don’t know what to do. There’s so much... pain. In us, between us. So many walls to climb over. Wesley and Willow think we have to do it to stop what’s happening. But why? That’s what I don’t get. We’ve both moved on. What’s the point of forcing us back together now?"

‘Maybe the *point*, Brain Trust, is that you *haven’t* worked it all out. Maybe the universe going all kerplooey is a hint that you can’t ignore no matter how hard you try!’

He shook his head. "Come on. Why should the Powers care whether Buffy and I work through our issues? We loved each other. It didn’t work. End of story. That’s hardly dimension-altering stuff. It happens to people every day. How many people actually end up spending their lives with their first love?"

‘Yeah. Typical first love. I’m sure teenaged vampire Slayers fall in love with emotionally crippled vampires with souls – and vice versa – every day. Don’t you read the singles ads? ‘SWVS seeks future Champion of humanity for GWA and fighting the forces of darkness, while not having hot monkey sex because of the stupidest gypsy curse in human history!’ And let’s not forget those time-honored rites of passage like sending your first love to Hell, or drinking her blood to save you from a mystical poison, or you giving up a chance to be human for her, or that having sex with her made you lose your *soul*...’

And there was that long-forgotten caveat. One he’d hardly thought about in... forever, it seemed. His heart and soul hadn’t been an issue when he was busy repressing them. All of his energy had long been diverted into external pursuits, leaving his internal state of being comfortably moot.

Was this another problem he would be obliged to face now? Along with the fact that, no matter how much he tried to tell himself that what he and Buffy once (still?) shared was merely one stop in his long journey, albeit the foundational one, and was long and permanently over... that never turned out to be the case when she stood before him.

Maybe the curse, and all it’s collateral damage, were just another set of countless things he deluded himself over so he didn’t have to invest the resources needed to really understand.

"Maybe," he replied to the Cordy-voice in his head. "But then... maybe the reason I’m fighting this is because I’m just not ready to know these answers. No matter what the universe thinks."

‘Or maybe you’re still the biggest drama queen jackass in any dimension. And maybe you’ve gotten so good at playing Denial Boy, you don’t even know how to stop when you should.’

He took her strangely warm hand and squeezed, willing her to open her eyes. To shout at him in person and not just from the twisted wreckage of his psyche.

"Give me a sign, Cordy," he pleaded, "Tell me what I should do."

His cell rang, nearly scaring him out of his chair. Hands shaking, he answered, "This better be apocalyptic."

"Angel?" Willow cried, "You need to get over here right away. It’s definitely apocalyptic."

Chapter Six

Apocalyptic might have been somewhat of an understatement. Angel’s driver got ten blocks from the Slayer School’s campus when they found...

Nothing. A void in reality a good hundred yards long or more and several hundred feet high.

"Sir?" his driver yelped in panic. And considering some of the things he’d driven, and what he’d driven them to, that was saying something.

"Go around it!" Angel shouted, hitting the emergency button on his cell that put him instantly though to dispatch. "This is Angel. I need Containment Units, now! What? All of them! High Magicks and Dimensions, too. Page Mr. Wyndham-Price and Ms. Burkle. Put them through as soon as you reach them."

He glanced up and found the driver still staring at the vortex in shock as it inched away from them, slowly devouring everything in its path.

The path to Buffy’s school.

"DRIVE, GODDAMNIT!" he bellowed. Time was up, and all the confusion, questions and decisions that had been plaguing him instantly became moot. He had to get to Buffy. Now. Before she and her entire family disappeared forever, and they had no more chances for answers.

The driver finally got it together and peeled out as he spun the limo into reverse, jumped the curb, and sped down the street running parallel to the void, jerking the wheel left and right to avoid the screaming, panicking throngs fleeing in the opposite direction.

"This wasn’t exactly the sign I was looking for, Cordy," Angel grumbled into the chaos.

~

Pandemonium reigned at the Slayer School. The administrators watched in horror as the neighborhood nearby vanished, inch by slow, agonizing inch. There was no real sound – no explosions or screaming. Just the whoosh of the vortex’s unnatural wind, and then... nothing.

The only noise was everyone scrambling to the school buses, preparing to escape the coming destruction.

Buffy, Faith, Willow and the other teachers herded the girls out, hoping to keep them from dying by trampling each other – which would totally defeat the purpose of saving them from the devouring black hole.

Once all the students and outside staff were accounted for and the buses headed off to the safe house in the Simi Valley, Wood and Kennedy came to join them on the front steps.

"It’s barely moving," Kennedy observed, her usually strong voice trembling in terror.

"But it’s moving," Buffy replied, "A couple of feet an hour, we think. Or... Willow thinks."

"Did you get hold of Giles and Dawn in Budapest?" Faith asked.

Her sister Slayer nodded, her gaze still riveted on the vortex.

"Angel should be here any..." Willow began, but was cut off by the sound of a veritable fleet of Hum-V’s, jeeps and a weird looking tank screeching to a halt in the parking lot before them. The quintet watched in shock as what seemed an army of people poured out of the vehicles – some in fatigues and some in robes – and started making their way toward the void.

A stretch limo, its windows tinted pitch black, brought up the rear. The driver scrambled from the front, threw open the back door and revealed...

Angel. Dressed from his head to fingers to toes in black, a getup that included some sort of weird ski mask concealing his face, with a screen over his eyes. But Buffy knew him.... the breadth of his shoulders, his height, the graceful way he carried that big, muscular form. She gulped. There was *definitely* something wrong with her wanting to jump him when they were less than a mile from a vortex or something that was patiently swallowing the world and coming straight for them.

She watched him approach in dream-like slow motion. Like a knight in... well, black spandex, it looked like, charging from his sort-of steed to save the day.  Again.

Then he had her by the arm, and the group was rushing inside. Once in the reception area, Angel tore off his mask to face the confused countenances of the others.

"Enchanted silk-Lycra blend. Sunproof," he explained. "Now why doesn’t someone tell me what happened so we can get started."

Speechless, Buffy followed he and Faith into her office. The dark-haired Slayer grinned over her shoulder, mouthing, ‘He looks *HOT*!’

The world in peril, and her sister Slayer was still thinking about sex. And with *her* not-sort-of-maybe-future boyfriend, no less. Typical.

Although... Buffy tilted her head for a better view. Angel did look really hot in those black field pants.

~

"And it just... appeared there," Angel recapped.

"Yup. One minute, perfect summer afternoon just begging for some class skipping, blue sky, birds singing. The next?" Faith began.

"Disney Presents Black Hole 2: The Sequel Nobody Wanted," Wood finished for her. Everyone gave him a clueless look. "Before your time. Forget it."

"I tried locating the source," Willow said, "But the charm just... sputtered out. Which means it probably wasn’t a spell that created the vortex. So we probably can’t close it that way. And the pattern is different from any dimension portal I could find in the records, so I don’t think it’s a normal gate."

Angel nodded. "Fred’s team said it’s not a physical anomaly, either. It doesn’t have any of the usual characteristics of a black hole."

"Great. So we know a shitload about what it isn’t," Faith griped, plopping down on the couch, "How about we work on some clues about what it *is*?"

"We don’t have much time. It’s moving slowly, but we can’t be sure how long it’ll stay that way. So far it’s only swallowed a few buildings in the neighboorhood and some of the school grounds, but..." Wood added.

"It’s only a matter of time until it gets here," Buffy murmured absently. Her tense gaze met Angel’s. "The prophecy said something needs to be repaired to stop it."

Angel looked away.

"So," Faith remarked, giving Willow an elbow, "Anything in your books on Turbo Therapy? Save Your Relationship in Twelve Hours or Less? ‘Cause the clock’s ticking, kids."

No one responded.

~

Wesley remained on the front step with Fred and her team as the sun set, staring at the advancing void.

"This can’t be what the prophecy was referring to. What can a fire do against nothingness? Even a fire of the ‘Mythic romance’ persuasion," he lamented.

"I don’t know Wes," his colleague replied as she shut down her energy flux recorder. "I mean... no matter how epic they are, I don’t think Buffy and Angel can rip a hole the size of the Mall of America in the universe."

The ex-Watcher shrugged. "No, I suppose not. Which leaves us with less than nothing to go on, then."

Fred gave him a worried look. "I think I prefer the kiss-and-make-up theory, myself. These readings are just... weird. There’s no recognizable pattern, no traceable origin point, and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the other side. No demons, no Hell, no nothing."

"Well... we’ll keep trying. Willow is working on expanding the time-bubble spell Giles recommended. That should slow the anomaly’s progress until we can find a way to close it."

"I wonder how Buffy and Angel are doing," Fred wondered aloud, gazing up at the soft lights glowing in Buffy’s office window.

~

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Buffy glowered at the book she was completely not reading, and wished the grandfather clock Giles had brought back from Switzerland last year would show some tact and stop pointing out how time was TICK-TICK-TICKING away while she and Angel diligently maintained their pregnant silence.

"This scroll might as well be in Swahili," her companion complained, rubbing his eyes. "When Wes said the translation was complicated, he wasn’t exaggerating."

"Hm," Buffy replied noncommittally.

Angel gave her a look.

"What? I used up all my witty quips about Swahili, prophecies, and Wesley the last twenty times you mentioned that," she shot back.

Angel swept the scroll aside and combed his fingers through already mussed hair. "This is hopeless. Even if we could translate the rest of the prophecy, we don’t know if it has anything helpful to say about the vortex."

"Just a lot of stuff about our personal lives, which, if you ask me, is none of its business."

An ironic smirk crossed his face. "I can always count on you to make a joke in the face of imminent world destruction and horrible death. Where were you a couple of years ago when the sky was raining fire?"

"Babysitting proto-Slayers," Buffy answered with a shrug, and sank to the floor next to him, "Being haunted, having an existential crisis – again – fighting with the gang, sponsoring Spike, trying not to die... you know. The usual."

He smiled and automatically reached out to brush a stray hair from her cheek. The tender gesture snapped her gaze to his in surprise.

"Sorry," he lied, but didn’t look away or move his hand.

She took in the familiar details of his beautiful face with sad longing. "Angel, what happened to us? I mean... last night we were talking like it had been two days since we saw each other instead of two years. And now..."

"Now we’re stuck in the world’s most boring conversation loop," he sighed. "I don’t know. Maybe the phone is easier."

"Duh," Buffy agreed, flopping on her back. "I think it’s the eye-contact thing. I don’t think I’ve heard, said, thought or noticed the word ‘penetrating’ as much in my entire life as the past two weeks." Catching his bemused look, she closed her eyes and prayed that some void-minion would appear to swallow her up. "Double entendre not intended."

"Innuendo aside... you’re right. It’s harder when we’re physically close. It always has been." Angel winced at his own unintended innuendo as eased himself down on his elbow, but kept his gaze away from her, firmly locked on the darkening windows. "Every time I see you, it all comes back again. All the things I thought I’d forgotten. Or lost... It’s almost like no time ever passed at all."

"But it has," Buffy replied softly, looking up at him. Of course, he didn’t appear a day older than he had when she first set eyes on him almost ten years ago, but she could still see the way that ensuing time had changed him. Taken him through so many experiences that she’d never have... never get to share with him.... So much of each other’s lives they had missed. "We’re different now. Maybe too different."

He looked at her, and was instantly lost in the familiar grey-green of her eyes. At that particular moment, Angel couldn’t find a single thing that was different – not what he saw reflected in their familiar depths, or what he felt in return.

"Eternity melts away like a moment," he whispered, "As if forever had never been."

Buffy stared into his brown velvet gaze, as caught by his as he was hers. Her heart took up a frantic, pounding rhythm, her stomach dropped and fluttered, her breath came fast and shallow...

He was right. The important things... the real things... never changed.

She leaned in slowly toward him, her eyes flicking from his to his lips. Every time they kissed, time stopped. The past disappeared. Would it be the same this time? Could they connect... and could their connection generate a power that could save the world? Could she and Angel look past the pain and find this place of comfort, of peace, for more than a moment?

"Guess we better find out," she whispered to her own unspoken question. His hand came up to tenderly cup her cheek, and he tilted his head to meet her. His full lips three inches away... two... a hair...

"GUYS!"

The door to the library burst open and the others came bolting inside. Buffy and Angel sprang to their feet as if they’d been struck.

"What? Nothing! What is it?" Buffy yelped.

Angel turned away from the onslaught, trying to get his emotions back under control. A glaring reminder of exactly why it was so hard to be this close to Buffy. So to speak.

"We’ve got what we need for the time bubble!" Willow enthused, "We can stop the portal!"

"You’re sure it’ll work?" Angel asked; his equilibrium more or less restored. At least enough to stand up straight without too much pain.

Wood staggered into the room, dizzy from his two hours in the test bubble. "It works."

Angel glanced at Buffy out of the corner of his eye, but she avoided his regard.

Which was, he imagined, for the best right now.

"Let’s do it," he commanded. "The sooner, the better."

~

Faith kept an eagle eye on Buffy as they, the Wolfram & Hart troops, and their other friends met on the front steps once more to receive their instructions.

"Okay. The wizards and I will be on the roof, casting the bubble. It’s only supposed to last until sunrise, so we’ll have to work fast," Willow advised. "Fred?"

The thin brunette took the stage. Or... step, in this case. "My team will take the Ashvite Sphere and the flux disrupter to the nearest point we can manage to the void. We hope the combination of the two will interrupt whatever is giving the vortex its power long enough for Wesley to finish translating the scroll."

"Giles faxed a key that might assist in deciphering the non-human language portions of the prophecy. It’s akin to Latin, and mixed in with True Latin, the whole of the final passages become gibberish. With the key, the answer should be relatively simple. Again, it’s all a matter of time," the Englishman expounded. "And some measure of luck."

"Which we get from the bubble and the eruptor thingy," Buffy concluded, "Good plan. Except for the luck part."

"The timing has to be precise," Wood added. "And the magicks have to be focused on the four directional points. When the bubble starts, the magick will probably draw in some nasty critters. So we’ll have teams at the four points, holding the directing crystals, and Angel and his men on the perimeter to hold off any unwanted guests."

"And when the bubble expands, Fred’s team will let go with the techno. Bitchin’," Faith complimented. "Let’s kick some black hole ass."

The teams dispersed – Buffy to guard Willow and the magickians on the roof, and Angel to the north gate with a squad of armed men. The two generals paused before they separated.

"Be careful," he pleaded softly, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her one last time.

"Maybe we could pick up our conversation later. If we can. If you want."

She couldn’t help but smile, in spite of the circumstances. "I think the Swahili thing is played out."

He returned her humor with a wry half-smirk. "The other one."

Buffy nodded, a shiver running over her skin. Whether it was in fear or anticipation, she couldn’t be sure. "After we save the world... again... we’ll see."

He nodded and signaled for his men to move out. When he was gone, Buffy turned and ran smack into Faith. "God! What are you doing?"

"B... I was just thinking..."

"Can’t it wait?" the blonde Slayer snapped, "We’re kinda busy right this second."

"No, it can’t wait. The prophecy... it says the Great Eternal Warriors have to ‘connect’ to stop this thing. It looked like we interrupted you two ‘connecting’."

"We weren’t... Faith, just drop it, okay? We have to freeze the void before we worry about closing it. There’s not going to be any connecting – of any kind – tonight. This is a black hole, not a soap opera!"

"Fine," Faith capitulated, "You’re the boss."

Willow was wearing the same pale blue robes as the other wizards on the roof when the Slayers arrived. A circle was already drawn in red sand, and their friend stood at its center.

"When I’m done chanting, cover your eyes. There should be a green glow that shoots from the casters out to the vortex. That’ll be Fred’s signal to fire." She glanced at each of the six ritual magickians Angel had provided. "Ready?"

With a nod from her assistants, Willow began. She chanted in one of a hundred weird languages spells seemed always seemed to be written in, and after a few moments, the green light began to glow, pouring out of Willow’s fingers, creeping forth until each of the sorcerers were obscured in its light.

"Cool," Faith observed.

Buffy held her breath. Either this worked, or in another couple of hours, the whole world she had endeavored so hard to create was going to get sucked into nothing.

"Why can't a vortex be simple anymore?" she muttered, "I remember when just tossing somebody into one usually solved the problem."

"Go forth and pierce the four winds! Go and halt time’s very passage. Go forth and stop the world from spinning!" Willow intoned. "As I will, so shall it be!"

The green light exploded, sending Buffy flying back to crash into the nearby chimney. When the cartoon birdies were done chirping around her head, she looked up.

And saw Faith suspended in midair three feet away... and two feet off the ground, motionless.

Buffy jumped up. Willow and the Wizards were frozen too.

"That wasn’t supposed to happen!" she shouted at the petrified figures. Consumed by a fear that everything had just gone right down the drain, she ran over to peer at the courtyard below.

There were statue-people everywhere. A few of the demons they’d been expecting were there too, all locked in a likeness of eternal battle with Angel’s soldiers. She raised her gaze to the horizon and found that the void, at least, had also stopped its steady progress.

Buffy was the only thing in the world moving. It was all on her now.

"Crap! My Latin sucks!" she cried into the night.

Chapter Seven

Buffy was still muttering angrily to herself as she made her way down to the library, key in hand after a frustrating ten minutes trying to dig it out of Statue Willow’s pocket.

"The stupid spell could have backfired and left Wesley free, or Fred, or Willow, or ANYONE BUT ME! But no, of course not! It had to be the one girl in all the world who can’t even learn Internet abbreviations, let alone a DEAD LANGUAGE!" She took out a minute sliver of her frustration by kicking open the library door.

"You know, I tried to teach you once, but you were more interested in... other things at the time."

Her head snapped up, and the most beautiful sight she’d ever laid eyes on sat before her, the scroll and another copy of the key spread out on the tabletop before him.

"Angel," she gasped, "You... you’re not frozen."

"Neither are you," he observed, "Which, if Wesley’s translation is even close, is exactly the way it’s supposed to be."

He nodded slightly to her right, and Buffy turned to check out what he was gesturing at. Wes stood stone-still not three feet away, obviously about to grab for the door. His empty left hand was clutched as if he was holding something important, and the expression on his face was a mixture of victory and grim determination. Buffy wondered if she’d hit him with the door on her way in.

"I had to pry the scroll out of his hand," Angel explained, "He must have figured out the answer, and was coming to tell us."

"Maybe to warn us the spell might backfire?" Buffy asked dryly.

"We should have known, considering the energy imbalances we’ve been seeing," he replied with a shrug.

Buffy went over to sit beside him at the large table. "How far have you gotten?"

"Not far. I wish he’d taken some notes. But what I can tell you is..." his eyes rose to meet hers. "This is about you and I, like the others have been saying. No one else can intervene."

He pointed to the verse he had scrawled on a memo pad. Buffy read it, and sighed. "Little late for a warning label."

"I think I’ve suspected this all along."

"That it’s too late for a warning label?" she tried to divert.

He smiled. "A very smart young woman I knew a long time ago once told me that."

"And boy, was she right," Buffy responded sadly. "So, okay. Faith said we have to make a connection. I think all this bashing our heads against the wall demonstrates the very "Not-that-Simple-ness" of the situation."

Angel chewed the inside of his lip as he nodded at her statement. "But there are some things between us that are. Maybe that’s the truth we need to get to. The connection."

Buffy laughed bitterly. "Angel, there is *nothing* simple about us. There never has been."

"I’m still in love with you. That’s simple."

She tensed at his soft, almost off-handed declaration, backing away from him defensively. He was slamming straight into the brick wall around her heart, skipping all the heroic climbing business, and she knew for a fact she wasn’t ready for that dam to burst. She’d drown in the deluge for sure. Angel was a bulldozer operating without a permit.

She got up, escaping to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, avoiding his intense gaze.

"That’s not simple, either," she corrected him.

"Why not?" he questioned bluntly. There wasn’t time for the gentle ease he would have preferred to utilize. Charging into the breach was the only way to go. He knew, above and beyond, in spite of everything else, that this much was Truth. Absolute. "Right now, it’s the only thing I know for certain."

She spun and nailed him with a hard look. "How can you say that? You hardly know me anymore! God, I hardly know me! Weren’t you there for the whole lame cookie dough thing?"

"I was there. And you’re right, partially. We don’t know all the minutiae of each other’s lives anymore. But I know *you*. Inside. The core of you, where it counts."

She wanted so badly to believe him. But she had seen, done and lost too much for the happy, quipping little girl she knew he was referring to to exist anymore. "No. You don’t. You don’t have the first clue what I’ve become since you left me. All you’ve gotten are snapshots of my life! You think I’m still all sunshine and light on the inside, right? That paragon of goodness and virtue and laughter you’d held up on a pedestal all these years? Well, I’m not! Not even close! I’ve done things that would make you *sick*! That make ME SICK! I’ve lied, and I’ve killed, and I’ve betrayed, and I’ve used people who cared about me. No, you don’t know ANY part of me anymore!"

Her anger took him by surprise, and he was unable to leash his own temper because of it. "What? You think I don’t know what walking through the darkness inside does to you? Please, Buffy! I know that feeling better than you do!" He got up and approached her once more. "It does change you. Of course, I know that. But I can see your heart as clearly today as the first time I ever saw you. I can still feel your soul. You *are* good. No matter what you’ve done. In the end, you always do what’s right, no matter what the price. You’re strong, and giving, and unselfish..."

She cut him off with a bitter laugh. "Oh, you think so? Unselfish and strong, huh? Do you know what I did when I came back from Heaven, after I saw you, and you pushed me away – AGAIN? I FUCKED SPIKE. Yeah, that’s right, evil, soulless monster Spike! I let him do things to my body... I can’t even SAY! But pain was something. It was REAL! And I needed it! I craved the bruises and the welts and the aches. I relished pounding on him and then fucking him into the floor. I savored making him tell me that he loved me! And do you know why I did it? Because I COULD! BECAUSE I KNEW HE WOULD NEVER, EVER LEAVE ME UNLESS I TOLD HIM TO!"

Angel stepped away, reeling from the anguish in her words – and the tearing sensation they wrought in his heart.

"How’s that for good and strong and unselfish?" she shrieked on, "Huh? And do you know what else? Part of the reason I made you leave that night before we battled the First was because something inside of me KNEW that whoever wore that amulet was going to die! And I couldn’t stand the thought of it being YOU! So after everything Spike did for me – after he traveled halfway around the world to get a SOUL FOR ME, I KILLED HIM! Is that unselfish?"

"Stop it," Angel demanded.

"NO!" She shot forward and grabbed his arm, forcing him to continue facing her. "You wanted to play therapy, so here we go! Take a good look at me, Angel! You know that ‘sacred calling’ I’ve always hated so much and fought so hard? I finally won that battle, didn’t I? I GAVE THAT SAME FUCKING CURSE TO HUNDREDS OF GIRLS WHO NEVER ASKED FOR IT! I ruined their lives so MINE would be easier! And my friends – what have they lost because of me? Their childhoods, their friends, their TOWN! All I’ve ever done is hurt the people who care about me, Angel! You of anyone should remember that!"

He confronted her at last, his features twisted in rage. "You are NOT the only person in the universe who’s done things they’re ashamed of! I’ve perpetrated things in the past few years WITH my soul that would give you nightmares! I’ve killed and lied and betrayed, and broken hearts, too! Christ, Buffy, do you really think anything you can throw at me would change the way I feel about you NOW? I didn’t intend to fall in love with you in the first place! God knows I’ve spent the last six years trying to stop, but I CAN’T!" He shook her off and paced across the cavernous library. "I tried other women. I tried losing myself in vengeance. I tried hiding, I tried pushing my family away and I tried to tie them to me in ways that didn't make any sense... But it never stops. You’re still there, inside me, at the center of me, and all the things I’ve been through these past six years haven’t faded it one bit. Listing all your supposed sins sure as Hell won’t. So save the speech for someone more easily impressed!"

Buffy stared at him, lip trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Which other women?"

Angel stopped. "What?"

"You said you tried other women. Who? And how?"

He smirked at her ironically petulant tone. "That entire sermon, and ‘other women’ is all you got from it?"

With a shrug, she reminded him, "I’m single-minded like that. And also persistent, so you might as well tell me so I can get a head start on hunting her down and killing her."

He waved off her question. No use telling her that Darla was already dead. "It’s not important. The point is... what we’ve done doesn’t change who we are, in our innermost beings. That’s the part in each of us that’s bound. Forever. That’s the part of me that’s always missed you, even when I knew leaving you was the right thing to do. The part of me that shriveled up when you died. That never really recovered, even after you came back. It’s easy to forget that tie is there, with all the events that go on in our lives. But when we remember..." He sighed and sank onto the couch beside him. "Something always feels off-kilter."

Buffy remained silent, just watching him as the time kept ticking by. "We’re not getting anywhere," she groused, defeated. "We can’t connect like that anymore, Angel. We see things too differently now. Maybe we always have."

He leaned his elbows on his knees, covering his face with his hands. "And the pressure doesn’t help."

Her heart wrenched to hear the weariness in his voice. The same hopelessness she was feeling... something so familiar to their relationship. The other night on the phone – that effortless camaraderie she thought lost long ago, and now suddenly regained – was a fluke. Just like she had told Faith (God, was that only yesterday morning?) the minute she and Angel stepped into the hairier areas of their relationship, everything just fell apart. She took the seat beside him.

"There’s just too much..." she whispered through her tears. "There’s too much, and too much time has gone by for us to just... be that way again. I think we should look for another way to stop the vortex."

He nodded and finally looked at her again. "I guess we’d better."

They gazed into each other’s eyes for a brief stretch of eternity, all those unspoken words choking their voices, until finally Angel broke the silence and abruptly rose, returning to the table. "Let’s check the Vatine Chronicles for references to fire devouring fire. That’s a place to start."

Some part of Buffy wailed in grief at how easily they both gave up. But that was the part she’d kept locked in the dungeon of her being since the night he walked away from her, and though that stone cell was a little leaky from the past couple of weeks he’d been back in her life, she didn’t think it would be too hard to lock it down again.

She’d lived without him and his fairy tale illusions for a long time. No reason to stop now. Since they probably didn’t have much time left, anyway.

~

They had been scouring the archives for hours when they heard the sound... a din like the universe had torn wide open and spilled every storm that ever struck out onto the earth at once.

Buffy jumped up from her place on the floor and ran to the windows on the east side of the library.

"Oh my God... Angel..." she gasped.

He joined her at the window and beheld the same horror that had bleached her skin to nearly as white as his own.

The void was moving forward again, faster now, and it had grown to the point where it blotted out their entire line of vision. Nothing as far as the eye could see.

"Fred’s team’s out there!" Angel cried, bolting for the door, "We have to get them out of its path!"

The pair tore into the fading night, both pouring on their preternatural speed as they ran straight toward the hole in reality. It was no longer pitch black and silent, but instead had become a maelstrom of fire and lightning rolling across the lawn as though making up for lost time.

Buffy and Angel moved in silent, automatic tandem, each slinging a guard or two over their shoulders and sprinting the quarter mile back to the school, where they deposited their statue-like burdens in the foyer and ran back to do it all over again.

It took close to an hour, but by the time the vortex had swallowed the area where the team had been standing, no one and nothing had been left behind, including the heavy equipment they’d been using.

Finally, they both stood on the top step of the entranceway, Buffy bent over desperately gasping for breath, with Angel beside her watching the chasm moving toward them.

"I know what we have to do," he finally announced, raising his voice a little to be heard over the increasing bedlam.

Buffy peered up, hopeful. "You do? Oh good."

He nodded, his expression grim. "Carrying the flux disrupter made me think of it. What if we created another vortex, this one on an opposite energy spectrum?"

She blinked. "A who in a what?"

"If we reverse the polarity of the disrupter, instead of it tapping into the void’s natural energy pattern, duplicating it, and turning it back on itself, we could create another vortex of the opposite polarity, going in the opposite direction in time-space..." he mused aloud.

"Oh, well, since you put it that way."

Angel was actually half-surprised he understood what he was talking about himself. Hurrah for photographic memory. "Basically, we turn reality inside out so the hole devours itself."

Now she got it. "OH! Oh! Yes! Okay, let’s do that!" She ran toward the enormous generator, but Angel reached out to pull her back.

"There’s a problem," he informed her.

"Of course there is," Buffy groaned, "Why wouldn’t there be?"

"If I’m right, the two voids will cancel each other out... but they’ll also erase everything in the immediate vicinity of the disrupter when they collapse."

She heaved a great sigh. "Including whichever about-to-be-dead people are running the... thingy."

Holding her gaze solemnly, he nodded.

"Oh good. Because I haven’t experienced nearly enough impending death in the past couple of years," Buffy turned to look at the vortex once more. "Well, we better get to it, then."

Angel squeezed her hand. "No ‘we’. Me. You’re staying here."

She yanked away from him. "Like Hell! This is my school! My home! Everything I’ve got! If anybody goes alone, it’s ME!"

He shook his head and gave her a resigned smile. "Even you can’t carry that thing alone. And you don’t know how to operate it. I can do both."

Standing full to her suddenly regal 5’4", Buffy notified him, "Then we both do it." Angel began to argue, but she immediately cut him off. "Listen! Your nobility would be really sweet if it wasn’t pointless AND putting the world in danger! So shut up and help me get this thing back out there!"

Without another word, the pair grabbed the sides of the two-ton generator, hauled it up, and began making their way back into the storm.

The sound was deafening, and Buffy could barely hear him shout, "HERE!" when they were less than a hundred yards from the sucking end of everything. Angel immediately began pushing buttons, pulling levers, grasping at every shred of memory he retained of Fred’s demonstration at the disrupter’s unveiling – and performed it backwards.

All the green lights went to red, and the machine began emitting a pained whine as he turned to stand in front of Buffy once more. The vortex was moving even faster now, barely 40 yards away. He rested one hand on the activation key.

"We have to do it now!" Angel bellowed into the wind.

Buffy nodded, swallowing stiffly, and came to stand beside him. She grabbed his free hand tightly.

"I always knew it would end like this! Me and you, I mean!" she shouted.

He nodded, smiling, and pulled her under the shelter of his arm.

"Buffy, I do love you. If we don’t end up together on the other side, please, never forget that, okay?"

Her eyes filled. "I love you too. I always have, and I always will. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before."

He glanced at the rapidly advancing vortex, then back at her again. "See?" he said with a small smile, "All it took was the end of the world. Simple."

She laughed. "Angel?"

"Yeah?"

"Could we quit with the speechifying and move on to the last-kiss-before-we-die portion of our program? Please?"

The first of his tears spilled over as he leaned down, capturing her warm, soft lips with his own. It was just the same – like being struck by lightning. Like falling into a bed of fluffy clouds – your own bed, after a long, hard journey. Like everything else in the cosmos just stopped, and there was nothing but her sweet mouth and the gentle cadence of her heartbeat. No past. No loss. No pain. Nothing but peace. Home.

They drew apart slowly, still lost in one another’s eyes, for a long, last moment.

"Angel..." Buffy whispered.

Whispered. He stood up straighter and turned.

The peace wasn’t only in his heart. The vortex had vanished, and only the pristine grounds of the Slayer school remained, shining a dull silver-grey in the first light of pre-dawn. There was nothing of the fissure in reality that had been there a moment ago.

Buffy and Angel looked at one another... and laughed.

~

Chapter Eight

Whoever brought the words, "I just need some time" into common usage should have been skinned, boiled in oil, eviscerated, then drawn and quartered and fed to giant slugs, in Angel’s opinion.

He knew he should have eaten Noah Webster when he had the chance.

Irrational, maybe, but being murderously angry with a long-dead linguist was far easier than resenting Buffy for a perfectly normal, reasonable, and completely understandable request.

Or so he’d been telling himself for the nine days since his and Buffy’s single kiss saved the world.

He prowled the night streets like a demon possessed – which, he supposed, he was. Possessed with a sudden, utter and unbalanced loss of patience and understanding. How much more time did she *need*? Six years wasn’t long enough? Hadn’t she seen and felt and learned the same things he had from their most recent brush with death?

That moment, when they’d faced the end side by side, Angel had known without a shadow of a doubt what the universe had been trying to tell them right along.

Love *was* enough, sometimes. If you let it be.

It was that simple... and that melodramatic. Why didn’t Buffy see that the Something Missing they’d both been suffering from since they parted was each other? How could she not understand that they may be complete, but were never truly whole when they were apart?

Okay, so... maybe he hadn’t given her many reasons to believe over the years, especially in the way he had drifted in and out of her life like some emotional pit stop. But that was over now. Denial, repression, rationalizing, abusing and hiding behind logic. All of it. Done.

He just couldn't fathom how Buffy didn't see it. She didn’t really believe all that garbage about being somehow ‘tainted’, did she? How could she? How could she fail to see that he loved her more, not less, for her layers and shadows and mistakes? Hadn’t he told her so? Hadn’t she felt it in that kiss they thought would be their last? Didn’t she know it had to be right when what they shared had the power to stop Armageddon?

But no. After they’d gotten everyone patched up and debriefed, collapsed from exhaustion on the couch in the library, and he finally thought they would have the time to speak freely...

She needed time to think.

Time! If the other night had taught him anything, it was that time was *short*. Their lives were so fragile... so very fleeting. They couldn’t just continue throwing chances away when there very well might not be any more chances. The world could end tomorrow – or five minutes from now. Didn’t they deserve what little happiness they could have together while they could have it?

So, fine, it had taken forever for him to figure that out, himself. To realize, yes, he’d left Sunnydale ostensibly for Buffy, but really, deep down, he’d gone because he never felt worthy of her love. He’d needed to find his own way, his own self and his own sense of purpose – which he had done. And sure, he’d had a chance to spend a brief human life span with her, and sacrificed it on the altar of their destiny – to save her life, when she had only died anyway. And yeah, when she came back from the dead, he’d turned and walked away because it was still just too hard. But...

But... what? Considering his own failures in their relationship, what right did he have to be so angry with her for feeling overwhelmed by the sudden, seemingly divine directive that they belonged together? Buffy had more than earned the right to dictate the path she would walk through her life, hadn’t she? And hadn’t he been filled with ironic pride when she sent him away so she could become cook... so she could grow into herself? Who did he think he was to invalidate her decisions, disrespect how she felt about things... the way he always had?

He had always pedantically made the overreaching choices regarding their relationship for both of them, as though she were a child. Even when she had never really been a child at all, but a great warrior who just happened to be... young. And now, just because he was so certain of what he wanted, he was having a temper tantrum because she wasn’t.

Which, he figured, made him pretty much the biggest selfish, domineering, thoughtless, chauvinistic jackass in the universe.

He sighed and turned to make his way back home... until he realized where his aimless walkabout had taken him.

Standing at the foot of the dorm wing of the Slayer School, four stories below the balcony outside Buffy’s bedroom.

He smiled sardonically to himself. Wasn’t Fate just a mean, twisted bitch?

The climb was quick and fairly simple – the virtual forest of old, tough ivy on the brick walls of the building made a better ladder than the trellis at her house in Sunnydale. In a matter of moments, Angel was perched outside her window, a perfect view of her peacefully sleeping form filling his vision.

So he would give her the time and space she needed. But that didn’t preclude spending the few hours remaining until dawn indulging in an old, comfortable – albeit slightly creepy – pastime.

Watching the great love of his very long life take her well-deserved rest.

~

Buffy was dreaming about donuts. Which might have been a nice respite from her incessant thoughts, daydreams and night visions about Angel, if the donuts in question weren’t 15 feet tall, fanged, taloned, armed with automatic weapons, and unbelievably mean about her wardrobe choices.

It was going all right – she was all Neo with the bullet-dodging, and managed to take out three of the dozen killer donuts with a giant cement hot dog (which Giles gad graciously assured her contained absolutely no relish of any kind), but then the leader – who wore a suspiciously familiar leather duster – informed her that she had been cursey-cursed to walk the earth wearing a size 12, triple E shoe for all eternity.

She jolted awake with a shriek, in stark terror of being forced to have her heels custom made by Frankenstein’s monster in some demonic Belgian shoe factory.

The Angel dreams were better.

She combed her fingers through her nasty bedhead, and ignored the tingle running down her spine, the slight cramping in her gut that she always got when she thought of her ex-sort-of-maybe-future... whatever. The sensation was strong enough to drive her out of bed, and possibly to drink. Tea, at least.

How could she possibly appreciate the physical space Angel was giving her to get her head on straight when he was constantly invading her head every damn minute? With the exception of the Killer Donut break, of course.

She put on the kettle and wandered over to the French Doors leading out to her balcony, and swept them open to the warm May night. A good brood looking up at the full moon was just what she needed.

Somehow, she wasn’t all that surprised to find Angel perched directly before her on the railing, a split second away from leaping four stories to the ground. He froze and flashed her a sheepish smile.

"Hi," he greeted her.

"I’m torn," she replied, "I’ve got snide remarks about your amazing lack of understanding of the concepts "time" and "space", wry comments about how you haven’t lost your talent for stalking, nostalgic melancholy over bedroom window memories... and wondering if you by any chance brought donuts."

Caught, Angel climbed down off the railing and in the worst attempt at casual he’d ever performed, brushed non-existent dust off his coat. "No donuts, sorry," he apologized. "As for the rest... it’s your line. You choose."

"What are you doing here, Angel?"

Looking thoroughly chagrined, he confessed, "Brushing up on my lurking skills. As you can see, I’m rusty." He smiled. "I’m sorry I woke you."

"I’m sure," she rejoined, giving him a knowing look. "Lurking really is a solo activity."

"Honestly... I wasn’t planning on coming here tonight." He leaned back against the rail and tucked his hands in his pockets, staring up at the moon, not quite sure if he wanted to see what was in her eyes. "I was out walking, and when I looked up, here I was. I am trying to respect your wishes. I guess I’m just not doing very well."

When he finally took a chance and looked at her once more, Buffy wore a strange expression somewhere between sleepy amusement and a thrilled smile. "Well, you’re here now. You might as well come in and have some tea."

Angel followed her into her bedroom, taking in all the details of her new life. After the Hellmouth collapsed, destroying Sunnydale, Buffy had had to start from scratch. The things she surrounded herself with now reflected the woman she had become – the dark, sensual décor that still managed easy comfort. The antique weapons interspersed with pastel landscapes and photographs of her friends and students. Volumes of prophecy and demon lore piled on the tables next to the latest ‘W’, ‘Vogue’, and ‘Cosmopolitan’. An antique china doll stood next to an old, ravaged stuffed pig.

"Is that Mr. Gordo?" he wondered aloud, surprised how comforting it felt to see that old toy again.

Buffy followed his eyes to the pig’s space on her bookshelf. "Yeah, believe it or not. He’s lived in my weapons bag for like, ever. He’s kind of beat up, but... he’s the only thing I have left from Sunnydale."

Angel watched her move to the kitchenette, go through the motions of making tea with practiced grace, and refrained from reminding her that Mr. Gordo wasn’t the only thing left from her tenure on the Hellmouth.

"Buffy, I can go, if you’d rather. I meant it when I said I didn’t mean to intrude..."

She returned with the tray and set it on the table, gesturing to the empty chair beside her before she sat. "No. I’m actually glad you came. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, and... I’ve just been procrastinating."

Dread clenched his chest tightly as he took the seat she offered. "Okay..."

Buffy took a deep breath. "I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since what happened the other night. In fact, I haven’t been able to think about much else."

Angel claimed his tea and sipped just for something to do... besides bolt in terror before she could tell him she didn’t want to see him again, which was his first instinct.

"There’s... a lot between us," Buffy went on, "A lot of pain, a lot of old wounds. Everybody says that the good memories stick better, but... it never seemed that way to me. The things we’ve been through... the ways we’ve hurt each other over the years... when I see you again, it’s like those things are always standing between us. I don’t get flashes of the way we used to talk when we patrolled, or how I used to make you laugh, or how lying in your arms always made me feel so safe. Or how beautiful it was the night we made love..." she fingered the rim of her teacup, watching the memories come. "I see me running you through with a sword. I see you telling me you don’t want to be with me. I see you dying of Faith’s poison. I see you walking away from me without saying goodbye. And just... leaving, over and over again."

"Buffy..." he attempted to interrupt.

She waved him off. "No, just let me finish... please. I need to say this. So... there’s all this pain between us. But... even with that, somewhere in my heart, I always hoped...maybe... someday... And then that last time... I knew I was going to die. Or at least, I thought I was. Probably. I was confused about who I was, what I wanted. Angry that I might never get the chance to find out. And all that stuff with Spike..." she shook her head, "It was too much to begin with, and then you showed up – the same knight in shining armor you’ve always been to me. I didn’t want to hope anymore, or dream, or anything. I just wanted to shake it all off... the past... you. All of it. I promised myself that if I survived, I wasn’t going to let anything tie me down ever again. No baggage. When what I really wanted was to just crawl into your arms and feel safe again, even if that meant the end of the world. Hence, the cookie dough speech – independent, not-dead, 100% carry-on free Buffy in instinctive defense against total insanity."

She was quiet for a long time, remembering that night. How he had stood there, her every wild, impossible dream come so incredibly true... and she had just thrown it away.

"I understand," Angel finally assured her. "I did then, and I do now."

"No, you don’t," she argued, turning to face him. "There’s so much you just don’t know. See... the baggage thing – the all-solitary-nun-Buffy ‘baking-in-progress, hands-off’ thing... they were true at the time. I was tired of carrying. But the cookie dough... that, I think I was wrong about, now."

"You weren’t wrong, Buffy." He took her hand. "A little weak in the metaphor department, maybe, but what you were telling me wasn’t wrong."

She digested that for a moment. "Okay, maybe ‘wrong’ isn’t the word, exactly. I mean... I really *don’t *know who I’ll turn out to be, or where I’ll end up in the world. There’s still so much I want to see and do and learn... about... everything. About myself. And the other night, when I was sure it was the end... the *real* end... and you kissed me, something finally just... clicked."

"What’s that?" he asked softly.

Buffy looked the man she loved – the only man she’d ever really loved – straight in the eye. "The fact is, I might never be ‘done’. I mean... is anybody ever finished growing up?"

Angel gave her a tender smile. "250 years, and I’d say I’m still a work in progress."

"Right. So... I figure the baking timer on the oven of my life won’t go off until I die. And considering my history with the whole death thing, probably not even then. But... for all that... I do love you, Angel. That hasn’t changed even a little bit for as long as I can remember. Even the past two years, when I was trying to put everything aside and just... be... you were still right there, dead center in my heart. And I missed you. No matter how much time passed, I still missed having you near me. I think I could bake for a thousand years, and never love you, or want you in my life any less than I ever have." She reached up to brush the familiar turn of his cheek. "Or as much as I do right now."

He felt the first wave of true hope he’d had in years washing through him... seeing the emotion in her eyes, feeling her gentle touch... "What are you saying, Buffy?"

"I’m saying... I know it won’t be easy. We’ll probably fight all the time, and throw things, and hurt each other. I’ll probably flake out on you a lot. But... I think... I mean, I want... I’d like to... if you want... I’d like for us to take another chance. Start from scratch, you know? Love should be part of the baking process, shouldn’t it? And I don’t want to wait a million years for you to enjoy my warm, delicious cookie goodness."

Barely able to speak around the love flooding his being, Angel whispered, "Betty Crocker must adore you."

"But do you? I mean... enough to... I’d understand if you’re not interested," Buffy offered.

He drew her in and gave his reply in the form of a long, deep, tender kiss.

When she pulled away, Buffy looked a little dazed. "So was that a ‘yes, I’m interested’ or a ‘I’d rather kiss you than answer that question’?" she murmured.

Angel brushed the tip of his nose to hers. "What do you think?"

The same hope he was feeling caught in Buffy’s long-neglected heart and forced a brilliant smile to her lips. "I’m not sure. Maybe you should tell me again."

And with a soft laugh that soothed her aching soul, he did. And this time, there was no room for doubt.

Read the rest of the series here if you are of age.

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