Series: Unnamed
Summary: Well there were a lot of requests to do a sequel to "Anything" so here goes.
Disclaimer: Premise and characters borrowed from "Angel"

Jeeves looked down at Angel with real regret filling his eyes and coloring his words. "I'm sorry, but we can't."

Angel frowned up at him in confusion. Won't he could have fought, pled with them, argued, made them see that they had to bring back Buffy. Can't he didn't know how to deal with. He could hear that can't meant can't and not won't. What was he supposed to do about can't? They had to bring Buffy back.

"Why can't you?" Angel asked. He was startled by the child-like inflection in his voice and on a certain level realized he was in shock. He'd seen this in the people he rescued from time to time, when they simply couldn't process what had happened or even had almost happened.

He'd never imagined he could feel like that. After what he'd done and seen in his unnaturally long life it should have been impossible for something to happen that he couldn't manage to deal with, but he'd never imagined Buffy being gone. Even during the months without his soul he'd always planned to turn her rather than kill her. Angel had known that Slayers inevitably died young, but somehow that had never applied to Buffy, not to his Slayer. Buffy was going to grow old, have children and grandchildren and somehow at the same time she was always going to be the teenager burning with life that he'd first fallen in love with.

The concept of Buffy being something still and lifeless, of her being dead was impossible to grasp. Buffy defined life. "Buffy died" was an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.

Of course they could make Buffy alive; that was the only way she could be.

"It's not my place," Jeeves said.

"But it's someone's?" Angel asked hopefully. "Who? How do I find them? What do I do?"

"It is not your place either," Jeeves replied. "What is done is done, what is to be is to be."

"I don't understand," Angel pled. "What should I do? I want her back. She has to be alive."

"Go home, go on with your life," Jeeves advised.

"No," Angel stated. "I need to know what to do to make things right. This isn't right."

Jeeves vanished and the stairs appeared but Angel stubbornly ignored them. Hours later Jeeves reappeared, he looked up at something beyond the roof. "It's nearly dawn," he sighed. "I suppose you'll have to stay the day, but there are better places to wait than the dungeon."

In a flash of light they moved, not to the waiting room, which Angel had halfway expected, but to a cozy sitting room. Angel was fully dressed again.

"She was a remarkable person," Jeeves said quietly as he encouraged Angel to take a seat.

"She wasn't supposed to die," Angel replied. "They said she'd die sooner if I stayed human, so I didn't. This is too soon. Something went wrong. I have to make it better. Tell me what to do."

Awkwardly Jeeves patted Angel's shoulder. "It will hurt less with time," he promised.

"No! Buffy can't stay dead!" Angel growled.

"Just give it time," Jeeves repeated.

After a considering pause Jeeves offered him tea. Angel frowned vaguely irritated at the cautious way he was being handled, like he might explode at any moment.

He wanted to be told how to get Buffy back, not to listen to a lot of fortune cookie nonsense or to be offered calming beverages. He was calm, or at least numb.

Angel watched the tea he'd been given go cold, watched a skin form on the surface. Jeeves was rustling around in the background, talk sometimes, but he wasn't saying anything Angel wanted to hear.

"It's sunset," Jeeves said, making that the first meaning thing to come out of his mouth since he'd said he couldn't bring Buffy back. "Your friends are concerned. You need to go home."

Angel considered arguing, but he'd accomplished nothing here. When the stairs appeared a second time he walked up them without question.

Whistler met him at the top of the stairs. "You're here?" Angel asked. "Why?"

"Ahh, I was worried," Whistler said. "It's been a bad year. I hate to see you get your feet knocked out from under you just when you find them again."

"Life's not fair," Angel replied with a dull bitterness. "That's hardly news. I just have to find a way to fix it, that's all."

"Um Angel, you know she's dead right?" Whistler asked cautiously. "You can't fix that."

"Doesn't stop me from trying."

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