Rating: umm...I'm thinking along the lines of PG...in the meantime. Who knows what the future might bring:).
Disclaimer: nope, last time I checked, nothing was mine.
Spoilers: well...better safe than sorry: everything up to the end of season 3 can be spoilery.
Synopsis: I have a strange drive to rewrite season 3 of BtVS. I just don't seem to like the way it ended...beats me why. Anyway, so despite the fact that the original plan was to begin with "Helpless" (that's around the time everything really started getting screwed up B/A-wise), as you can see, plan's changed and I'm going to start with "Anne". If you expect to find in this series events/quotes from the original season....I seriously mean it - I'll try my hardest keeping them to the very minimum. But all in all - it's probably a yet another attempt to end the season on a more "positive" B/A level. See how it goes:).
Pairing: the conventional ships: B/A, W/O, C/X. If I decide to torture any/all of them, you'll be the first to know:).
Distribution: ask first.
Feedback: please, yes, please.

When will you believe me
When I say these things to you?
No one likes a liar, baby
No one at all
When will you receive me
When I say these things to you?
No one like a liar, baby
No one at all

- Vast, "A Better Place"

*********

"Hey," Buffy beamed, when she entered her bedroom and found Angel sitting on the windowsill, fully dressed and deep in thoughts, with one leg on each side. "Leaving without saying goodbye?" she asked, trying to sound lighthearted, but the tone of her voice wasn't quite working even on her.

Her boyfriend merely looked up, but didn't say anything, or changed his expression.

The Slayer walked over to him, holding out a plastic blood container. "You haven't fed in two days, as far as I know," she explained the gesture, waiting for him to accept her gift. "I thought it was about time you did."

He took the container from her hands and silently put it away.

She shook her head, opening her mouth to protest, but he didn't let her, swiftly standing up and shushing her with a gentle finger to her lips. When he it, Buffy remained quiet, watching him intently, as he took her hand and pulled her back down with him on the windowsill.

The vampire took the Slayer's small hands between his two larger ones and brought them to his lips for a kiss, never breaking eye contact. "While you were in school…I did some thinking," he began.

Buffy grinned. "If it's about kissing me, I just wanna let you know it's okay, since I already know your dark secret."

Angel half-smiled at that. "No," he shook his head slightly, still holding her hands to his lips as he went on, "it's not about that. Buffy, I…I don't know how to say this…"

"It's the second time I get that line today. The first one was good," she cut him, grinning thoughtfully, then she frowned. "Is this one bad?"

"I…I don't think so." The vampire broke eye contact for just a moment, to inhale a very needed breath. "I made up my mind," he said.

"Aha," the Slayer nodded, rather skeptically, as if she understood what he had meant by that, and at the same time, didn't. "About what?"

"About us. About where we're going from here, what we talked about…"

"What *did* we talk about?"

"You told me it was my choice...that I could think about it, and I did that. And I want you to move in with me," he spoke the last sentence his girlfriend had expected to hear from him any time soon, causing her to almost choke on her breath and stare at him as though he were a ghost. "Buffy?" Angel reached for her cheek.

"A-are you sure?" she stuttered.

He nodded.

"You're sure," she observed, looking away, still taking in the blow, "wow…"

Angel patiently waited for a more judicious reply from his girlfriend, knowing it was still to come.

Finally, she sighed, and tucked blond locks behind her ear, averting her gaze out of the window. "Are you sure you…thought about it enough?" she asked, then looked back at him, laying her hand on his thigh. "I don't want you to regret it," she managed, and as incredibly painful as it had been uttering these words, they needed to be said.

Angel swallowed and drew in another deep breath. "If what happened last night taught me anything…it was how much I need you." He held up his hand to prevent her for speaking her mind when she intended to, and let him go on instead. "I don't mean in the sense of…" he bit his lower lip, endeavoring to find the right words. "The last thing I want is for our relationship to be based on dependence. But I *do* need you…in a way I never wanted or needed anyone before, because no one has ever given me half the things you did." He took her hands in his again, looking her deep in the eye. "I know…I have things to do, that I'm here for something larger than I can conceive, like you. I want to fulfill that purpose…that I have; I want…I want to become a better man. And I want to wake up every day, holding in my arms that only person who can tell me that I can. And maybe…maybe I don't know how to put my feelings into words, or maybe my words don't make any sense to you...other than the simple fact that I love you. And I hope that…in that sense…you need me, too."

The Slayer sniffed, looking down momentarily, before throwing herself on her boyfriend, tightly securing her arms around his neck and burying her face there. "I love you, Angel," she murmured, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes and closing them at the so cherished sensation of the blandly cool caress of his hand on the small of her back and the strong arm around her waist. "I love you so much," she reiterated, reinforcing her hold on him.

*********

"It's about time," Joyce observed, somewhat dryly, as her eyes gravely lay on the couple as the two proceeded into the kitchen.

The blonde Slayer swallowed hard, and sat on the chair her boyfriend had pulled out for her and encouragingly clasped his hand, inwardly pondering whether doing it his way and allowing him to accompany her for *the talk* was such a good idea. Despite all the arguments he had brought up, and the fact it was too late to bail, for either of them, Buffy still wasn't so sure that letting Angel face the possible wrath of her mother in such an early stage was the right thing to do.

"Angel," the woman nodded pointedly at the vampire.

"Mrs. Summers," he returned, casting his gaze to the floor as if he were an eighteen-year-old boy and not a two-hundred-and-forty-six-year-old vampire.

"Is either one of you going to explain this to me?" If to judge by the tone of her voice, she had run out of patience a very long time ago.

Buffy finally mustered the courage to speak up. "Angel has been back for some months now," she said, that very moment vowing not to get into the details of his return or what had happened since even if her mother held a knife to her throat. "We've been together pretty much..." she took a deep breath, unsure of what to say. "I was with him from the moment he returned…the entire time."

"So that's where you were disappearing to," her mother acknowledged, feeling utterly betrayed. "So, all that time, I was trying to give you space and be the considerate mother, and you even set your *Watcher* to lie to me concerning your whereabouts."

"I didn't ask Giles to lie for me…"

"Oh, that's even better! So it was *his* idea!" her mother exclaimed, making Buffy realize it would have been much better for Giles' image in the woman's eyes, had she left things as they had been.

"We…*I* was going to tell you," Buffy promised her, her voice steady and contrite at the same time. "I was going to tell you everything, I swear…"

"When?!" Joyce interrupted her. She grasped she was way too upset to be listening to reason, assuming any of what was going on in her kitchen could be classified as 'reasonable'. "At the birth of my first grandson, maybe?! Can you two even…" she made a gesture with her hand, her voice receiving an inquisitive note.

"Not as far as we know," the blonde glanced up at her lover for an approval concerning the subject, at first, not realizing they were neglecting the matter at hand.

Her mother eyed the vampire and Slayer standing in front of her, inwardly admitting stranger things must have happened. Or perhaps a bit *too* much had happened, to *her* ever since months ago, her teenage daughter announced her she had been born tied to a deadly destiny to kill vampires for a living, and a few months afterwards, that she had been also dating one. And if that hadn't been enough, that *vampire*, according to her daughter, was her 'one true love'.

"She was everything for him, if you had gotten to know Angel, you would have understood what I mean by that. She was the center of his universe."

Rupert Giles' words resounded in her ears, and she realized she remembered them perfectly. Her eyes subconsciously fell on her daughter's hand, firmly clasped in her boyfriend's, who hadn't said one thing to defend himself so far, as though she was drawing strength from him to go on. The closure and the bond between them were so apparent and legible to the woman's eyes, but these were also things Joyce simply couldn't bring herself to understand. She didn't understand many things from her daughter's calling. In fact, she was *still* adjusting to most of the things she had 'discovered' ever since finding out who her daughter truly was. But one thing she knew for sure – these two were mortal enemies. And in spite of it all, the love they so obviously shared was something she had never encountered before. No matter how angry or betrayed she felt at that particular moment, she couldn't deny that.

And it caused her to open her eyes to a yet another revaluation - no matter what she did, she would never be able to keep them apart.

"What am I supposed to do now?" she found herself saying. It was the *last* line she had intended to use, and still, it determined the helplessness of her situation all too accurately.

"I don't know," the Slayer whispered, exhaling a sigh, feeling not any less helpless than her mother. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," she said, though being not at all sorry. She wouldn't have kept her mother in the dark, had she had the choice, but she also knew there had never been the right time to tell her. Even now wasn't the *right time* in her eyes, but neither she, nor Angel, could postpone it any longer.

"You're not sorry," Joyce remarked painfully, looking up at the vampire, hoping to also hear his side of the story, but knowing she wouldn't. Whatever reasons he had to keep quiet, she knew that in *that* conversation, he wasn't going to participate. But these soulful brown eyes did reveal to her something she hadn't descried in her daughter's green ones. Her gaze traveled down from him and back to the blonde by his side, bracing herself for the upcoming. "What else should I know?"

Buffy gulped, and gazed up at her boyfriend, exchanging a concerned look with him, then back at the woman in front of her. And her eyes said it all.

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