DISCLAIMER: Well, who do they belong to at this very moment? UPN yet? Still Joss, at any rate.
TIMELINE: After 'Forever' and 'Disharmony'.
SPOILERS: See above, plus general season 5 arcs.
FEEDBACK: Is always adored.
RATING: PG
THANKS: Trix, for the summary... but kind of not because you just made me *really* desperate to see it < g >.

It's always about unfinished business between Angel and I. Why he shows up to save my life and I go if I think I have to protect his. Why he knows when it's my mental state rather than the physical that desperately needs the help. Why I spent all night talking to him not two days ago, and yet I want to hear his voice again.

Seriously needy still, sure. But also because it didn't seem anything *like* as long as a whole night.

* * * * *

I guess every established couple has a 'spot', like they have a song and inside jokes. I know Anya and Xander do, because she told us. I also know *why* it's Their Place because she told us that to, despite efforts to dissuade her. I think Tara and Will do. I know she had one with Oz.

If I'd been asked before, I don't know what I would have said was mine and Angel's place, while being totally and completely sure that we do have one. His old apartment, maybe, where we made love for the first - for the only - time. Although there's bad memories there too which pretty much discount it. Or the roof outside my bedroom window, which was how I got out to him and he came in to me for most of our relationship. Again, though, including during the bad Angelus-stalking parts, so not there either. The mansion? Where we spent countless nights cuddled carefully close, exchanging falsely chaste kisses and quiet words... and where I sent him to hell and watched him delirious and dying with poison?

My life just resists any attempt at 'normal girl' stuff.

I got a new candidate the other night - the tree we sat under for hours, exchanging one dangerously unchaste kiss and quiet words. And if it's practically in sight of my mother's grave; well, that puts it at about equal in the drawbacks category.

Perhaps that'll wind up being a bigger drawback than those of any of the others, when it really sinks in. So far, she could almost be on vacation, the length of time she's been gone. Is it supposed to be a long process, like it has been this last week? Slowly taking over Mom's responsibilities, letting the emotions wash over and past me without letting them register? Or should it be fast, painfully, guttingly fast, like opening the door on an empty street tonight?

I doubt Angel will be able to tell me - he was gently firm when insisting that everyone reacts differently but it's all valid so not to let that of all things bother me at all - but he'll help, even just by being with me.

"Dawn tried a reanimation spell tonight," I announced, walking up to the tree where he sat legs extended, hands lost in the folds of that coat, head back against the trunk, eyes closed.

I was absently impressed by the speed with which he was up from his awkward position and holding both my hands with his, peering anxiously into my face, reacting to the uncontrollable (when I don't have to, like around everyone else) shake and crack in my voice as much as my words.

"What happened?" he said, leading me over to where the ground was shaded and protected by the foliage canopy of the tree and settling me down. His manner was nearly paternal, but the firm, loving grip he kept around my waist was anything but.

"I slapped her," I said, and burst into tears.

Angel's really good when I cry on him, not at all nervous like some guys get. I can't think it's anything but natural talent, as I'm pretty sure Darla and Dru weren't much for vampire tears. Well, maybe Dru. Probably Dru. But I think he picked it up with the sister he's mentioned before. I can see him soothing his baby sister, lulling her out of tears and into sleep; can see him doing that with any baby, actually, including his or ours, but there's no good going down that path.

He didn't try that with me, anyway, at least not yet. He just let me cry, pulling me securely into his lap with little effort, settling my head into the cool crook of his neck, wrapping his arms tightly around me and murmuring tender nonsense in my ear.

When I slowed and started sniffling, he produced a handkerchief. A proper old-fashioned cotton handkerchief, like Giles', which was to be expected, but that fact that he had one at all surprised me, until I remembered this was a dreamscape and he could have pretty much what he liked. It seemed so much like the real time.

"You holding up okay?" he said against my cheek, his arms barely letting me pull away far enough to blow my nose and rearrange myself.

I gave a half-laugh half-snuffle and gestured to myself despairingly.

"In general, I meant," he added, and I shrugged and burrowed back into him.

"Still trying to get through every minute," I said. He stroked my hair. I'd told him I didn't know how I was going to get through the next few days, and he told me not to; to get through the next few minutes, and then the ones after that, and after that. It's working, so far, but it's not the most fun way to do life; enduring rather than living, but even enduring is better than floating the way I was. I'd ask him if it's how he manages life, but I'm not sure I want to hear the answer.

"Do you want to talk about...?" he asked.

"I don't know how she managed it," I said quietly. "She must have had help... Tara said she got the spell from a book at their place... but the actual spell... I'm not sure I want to know."

"If it didn't work, then -"

"It worked," I interrupted him simply.

He stiffened against me, his hand briefly freezing its slow caresses over my loose hair.

"Buffy..."

"We saw her... shadow and she knocked to be let in..." I felt the tears well up from deep inside me, the part that should be cried out by now, but there always seems to be more moisture. Angel responded by stilling his hands on the small of my back, on the skin just under the shirt, so that I shivered pleasureably from the cold of his hand slowly warming up on my skin. It's... nice, to make him warm like that. To share my heat with him, and it's even nicer to feel his plentiful energy coiling about me, protective and supportive.

"I opened the door and Dawn ended the spell," I finished. "So we'll never know if it worked... really worked, or if she would have been..." I couldn't finish. I've spent the past days yearning for my mother back with a desperate strength I never imagined. When I thought I had her back, it felt like absolution, like none of it had been real except as some some test I'd passed and so I got her back. Now to think I might have gotten her back but it not her, rather some lesser version of her - it's just... not right. Disrespectful, and yet in that moment, I wanted her back no matter what it was of her, just any way at all. No matter what she would have wanted, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

"You know that was best?" he said, his tone tentative. He usually thinks he knows what's best for me, but in this case I know he's right.

"Yeah, I do. It doesn't stop me wanting her back," I admitted.

"That's normal," he said, and kissed the top of my head. "Just for us - people like us, who know it's possible, I think it might be worse."

"Is death different when you're immortal?" I asked.

He sighed, and I could tell that he didn't think this was the best thing to be going into right now, and also that he wasn't keen on answering - wasn't sure of his answer - but that he would.

"Death? No," he said. "The attitude to death - completely."

"How?" I encouraged.

I felt his shrug in the arms that enfolded me.

"Very few things have real immortality. You've killed vampires, other things that are supposed to be immortal. A lot of them wrongly assume they're invulnerable. They're surprised to be killed."

"And you?" I prompted, resting my hand on his leg in a tacit message that if he didn't answer, I wouldn't mind.

"I guess I fear it more," he said thoughtfully. "More to lose. Or less, depending on how you look at it." He sighed. "And then there's the whole issue of after death."

"You'll be fine," I said, uncomfortable with the subject in reference to him and in reference to my mom. She's in a good place, I'm sure. I have to believe she is. Even if I don't know where.

Will Angel go to a good place? He's already been in the bad. I think he will. I'm not sure he does.

"You know Cordy's old friend Harmony, right?" he asked, and despite not at all understanding the segue I squeezed his leg to let him know I supported the subject change, and in gratitude that he'd answered.

"The non-bad Big Bad," I said, "former girlfriend of Spike... she ended up in LA?"

"Yeah," he said. "She came, she saw, she betrayed."

"Betrayed who?" I said.

"Cordy."

Ah. Yes. Because we never told Cordelia that Harmony is a vampire.

"We never told Cordelia that Harmony's a vampire," I told him.

"No," he said. "But it was after she knew."

"You trusted her?" I said. Not that I don't have something of a history of trusting vamps, but Harmony isn't only a vampire. She's an airhead vampire.

"Not me," he said. "Cordelia. Wanted to. I pretty much backed her up."

"Why?" I said.

"To get into her good graces," he said, "and when that didn't work I... kind of resorted to bribery."

"Bribery," I repeated. "You?"

"She said we weren't friends," he confessed softly, and though since it was Cordelia I wasn't exactly sure why that would bother him, it obviously did. I slipped both arms around his neck in a light hug, and he renewed his grip around my waist.

"Well, if you're not friends, what are you doing with them?" I asked practically.

"Working for them," he replied.

"Working for as...?" I said.

"Dogsbody, I think," he said heavily, and I could already hear the slightest bit of resentment, light enough that I didn't know if he was aware of it yet. It didn't surprise me; Angel was a Master vampire for a century and a half. Vamps don't get to that position without being dominant. He always showed shades of leadership in Sunnydale, and when I visited LA last spring, I saw how it has blossomed. He won't do well taking orders for long. Especially if they're orders like...

"I have to *make their coffee*," he said, embarrassment and a little annoyance colouring his tones.

Of course Cordelia wouldn't bring herself to be generous about it.

"I know I owe them... a lot of work to regain their trust," he went on, "and reassurance that I won't go off again. And the office in my home, apparently. But I'd kind of hoped degradation and getting lectured at wouldn't be on the menu."

"Don't let them go too far," I cautioned softly.

"I won't," he said, but I knew he would. He clings to whatever attachments he can painfully make, will go far to retain them, and the family he's built himself won't be any different. He'll keep trying as long as he thinks there's something worth trying *for*, especially with the whole new, confusing, 'the smallest things count the most' attitude he explained to me under the tree. I've only heard his (sometimes garbled) account of what's been going on... but maybe if they'd listened a little more to him early on it wouldn't have gone this far. And okay, my opinion is biased.

So "You will," I countered, and he laughed ruefully.

"I've been lonely, Buffy. It's easy to get used to having people around."

"Easier than it is to get used to them..." my voice trembled.

"Not being around," he finished. "Yeah."

I felt gentle fingers on my chin and raised my face to his without hesitation. His eyes were wet, for me, matching the new as-yet unshed tears in mine. I kissed him, in this place where we didn't have to worry about stopping, and we held the kiss for a long moment, unmoving, feeling each other breathe, and then his tongue flickered out tentatively to meet mine and we kissed with rising intensity.

It ended too early and too late - do I really need more complications right now, even Angel-shaped ones? - but this time he stayed until the 'sun' came up.

I didn't look at him, at the way the sun would fall on his pale face (and how could it when I didn't know how it would look, couldn't create it), for fear that suddenly this wouldn't be a dream and he'd somehow be ashes decorating the ground.

I simply reassured myself feeling the tender strength of his body behind me as we waited out the sunrise together.

NOTE: During this series, I've managed to get the installment referring to each set of new eps written and posted before the following eps air, which was my aim. However, with now a straight run of new episodes each week until the end of May, and RL growing on me, I'm not sure I'll be able to get them out that quickly. I'll do my best and hopefully they'll continue coming before the eps; just please be prepared if they don't :).

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