8 - We Caught a Slayer, Can We Keep Her?

###

"So what do you think of our little house guest?"

Cordy and Wesley looked up as Faith came into the lobby, flush from her workout. Spike sat in the corner, reading the newspaper, not acknowledging the youngster's presence in the slightest.

"She is very different from ... what I expected." Wesley stated.

"Yeah," Cordy said, "here I expected a stake-wielding fanatic and what did we get? A California school girl in almost fashionable clothing. Who is also a stake-wielding fanatic, I guess."

Faith slouched down on the couch, thinking. Angel had given her a good a workout as always, the fact that he never even broke into a sweat still irking her. Yet she had noticed that he'd been distracted. It was not hard to figure out what the source of the distraction was.

"Think Angel can manage to screw her head on right?" Faith asked no one in particular.

"Bloody waste of time!" Spike grumbled without looking up from the paper.

"If what she told Angel is true and she has only been subject to the indoctrination of the Watchers' Council for a year," Wesley elaborated, "then there is indeed hope for her."

"What he said, only with less five-dollar-words." Cordy remarked.

"I'm not sure," Faith said, "I went down a few times to look at her and she's still giving me the wiggins. Something about her makes my skin creep."

"The fact that she killed a lot of people and is strong enough to snap your scrawny neck with one hand might have something to do with it." Spike grumbled again.

Faith gave the Vampire a severe glance.

"What's your problem anyway? It's not like she ever kicked your ass, that was me."

Spike rose from his chair and was halfway across the lobby, demon face coming out, when he caught himself. He looked down at Faith, the slight trace of fear on her face something his demon cherished. He was not a demon, though. He was a man! A man!

"You haven't got enough brains not to get yourself killed, Faith!" He growled at her. "One day you're gonna piss someone off and he or she will not hesitate to tear your vacuum-brained head off your body."

With that he stormed out of the lobby and into the night. He needed a drink or a brawl, preferably both.

"Boy, he is grumpy!" Faith commented, trying to ignore the lump in her throat.

#

"I think some of the others should talk to her as well." Angel said.

"You really think that's a good idea?"

Darla and Angel sat together in his room, listening to the soft music coming from the stereo, and enjoyed a bottle of blood. Ever since Darla's little performance in the Caritas they had been able to be together without all the awkwardness that had hung between them these last ninety years and Angel found that he cherished his Sire's presence.

"In one way or another," Angel explained, "everyone here started out with some serious issues against Vampires. Wesley was a Watcher, Cordelia was almost killed by Penn, Faith lost her parents to Vampires. Hearing their stories might help her come around. Also, so far she has only talked to me. I think she needs to see a few other faces or she'll go mad down there."

He looked at the monitor he had rigged up so he could watch the Slayer in her cell. Right now she was sleeping, though he could see her twist and turn in her sleep. A nightmare? A girl like her certainly had seen enough to make a few nightmares out of. He wished he could help her.

"I think we should also let her out for a while. Under carefully controlled conditions, of course."

"Now that is certainly not smart!" Darla said, sipping from her glass.

"Leaving her in that cell forever is not going to be much good," Angel said, "it will only make her resent us in the long run. She needs to see how we live if she's ever going to believe me."

Darla nodded, watching the girl as well.

"Okay, we'll let her make some rounds outside. But you should have Doyle and the tranquilizer gun close at all times. I'm not sure about involving the others, though. Cordelia, okay, she can probably handle it. Wesley and Faith? I'm not so sure."

"Care to explain?"

"Every time Wesley sees Buffy he really sees Kendra and remembers what he had to do. He's not over that, not by half. And Faith? There is some kind of tension in her whenever she is close to Buffy. Didn't she say something about Buffy giving her 'wiggins', whatever that might be?"

"Faith and Buffy are very similar. A year ago Faith was just where Buffy is now. Hating all Vampires, wanting to kill them all. Buffy is a bit like a mirror of what Faith was, or could have become. I hope they may do each other some good."

Darla looked at her childe and couldn't suppress a smile.

"You've taken a fancy to this girl." She said.

"I love Faith like she was my own daughter, Darla. You know that."

"I'm not talking about Faith. The blonde Slayer is the one that has caught your eye."

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"I can see it in your eyes. You care for her."

"I want to make sure she knows the truth. I want to make sure she is no longer a danger to my people."

Darla shook her head, knowing how stubborn and blind to his own feelings Angel could be.

"I think she likes you."

"Darla, she would stake me if she could. I don't think that falls under the concept of 'like'."

Darla smiled. She knew Angel better than he knew himself. He would refuse to realize it, but he liked that girl a lot. Darla didn't know if that was good or bad, she only knew that it had been much too long since Angel had had any kind of happiness in his life.

He needed some and maybe she could help things along a little.

Angel watched the blonde girl twist and turn in the throes of a nightmare and had to keep himself from going down there to comfort her. He was doing this for the safety of his people and for the sake of a young girl's soul, there was no other motivation.

He wondered what she was dreaming about.
 

9 - Bondage, Slayer-style, and Girl-Talk
 

###
 

Buffy had been a prisoner of the Vampires for nearly two weeks now and she was slowly losing hope. Not because she was treated badly. Quite the opposite. The cot in the cell wasn't cozy, but neither was it a pain to sleep on it. She got regular meals that tasted quite good. She was starting to stink a little, what with no showers, but she got her clothing cleaned when she handed it to Angel and could so some washing in the small sink in the corner. As prisons went, this one was quite comfortable.

What made her feel hopeless was that Angel seemed totally immune to both her charms and whatever temper tantrums she might throw. There had been quite a few of the latter these past two weeks, as she found she didn't have enough patience to go through with her original plan. Angel on the other hand seemed possessed of infinite patience. He just kept on telling her stories about how Vampires were people and how it was wrong to kill them unless they actually did something evil.

Worse, she found that she was having a hard time thinking of Angel as a monster. There was just nothing monstrous about him. There was so much pain and regret in his dark eyes, how could that man be a remorseless killer?

Part of her was telling her that he was slowly succeeding in filling her head with his nonsense. Another part, though, made her wonder whether he might actually be telling the truth. It went against everything she had been told, everything she had seen of Vampires so far.

Yet those gang members had not harmed anyone that she knew of, that was true. The Vampires she had taken by surprise inside that apartment had not put up much of a fight. They had seemed scared of her. Could monsters be scared?

Someone was coming down the stairs, someone making too much noise to be one of the undead. Spying through the bars she could just see the bottom of the stairs and there was a dark-haired girl coming down, looking at her.

"Hi, Buffy!" The girl said. "I'm Cordy. Thought you'd like some company. I know how boring Angel can get if he starts his tortured past routine."

The girl called Cordy sat down on the same chair Angel always used and looked at her.

"You're not a Vampire!" Buffy said.

"Gosh, really? Let me check!" She touched her fingers to her wrist. "Pulse is there, check! Breathing? Check! Heartbeat? Check! You're right. I'm not a Vampire."

Buffy was a bit taken aback by the sheer energy this girl radiated. On top of that she couldn't figure out what she was doing here. For a moment she had a horrible picture in her head of Angel using this girl for his personal pleasure. It seemed like something Vampires would do. But no, she simply couldn't connect something like that with her mental image of Angel.

"You're not the most talkative of people, are you?" Cordy asked.

"Might have something to do with being stuck in a cell." Buffy mumbled.

"You want out?"

Buffy stared at her for a moment, then quickly rose and walked to the bars.

"Yes! Yes, I want out. If you could just ..."

Cordy threw something into the cell and Buffy caught it before she had time to consciously think about it. She looked at what she had caught and saw two pairs of handcuffs, one with a short length of chain between them.

"What the ...?" She began.

"Cuff your feet together and your hands behind your back. Angel said you might need a walk in the sunlight and, seeing as he is a bit handicapped in that area, he asked me to take you. Maybe figured I could slip in some girl-talk."

Buffy looked at the cuffs and knew that this was maybe her only chance to get out of here. It was probably too much to hope for, though, that Angel would have underestimated her strength when ordering these cuffs. Still, just getting out of this cell would do wonders for her peace of mind. She didn't like the thought of being tied up with Vampires around, but if they had meant to hurt her, they could have done so long since.

With a sigh she squatted down and cuffed her feet together. The chain left just enough slack for her to walk in small steps. Running was out of the question. She crossed her wrists behind her back, thinking for a minute about trying to trick Cordy. Then she decided that the girl was watching her much too closely, so she fumbled until she could feel the cuffs snap shut around her wrists.

"All set!" She told Cordy without much enthusiasm.

The other girl slid the bars back and walked in carefully, checking the cuffs. Only now did Buffy see another figure standing close to the cell. A short man in a dingy leather jacket, a gun held in one hand. She wasn't sure whether he was a Vampire. She was sure he would shoot if she tried anything.

"Okay," Cordy pronounced, "we good to go."

She turned and walked out of the cell, Buffy following her with small, awkward steps.

#

Faith stood at the top of the stairs and watched as Cordelia and Buffy came up, the latter walking very carefully, taking the steps slow and one at a time. Faith wasn't half as enthusiastic about this as she pretended to be. Angel had asked her to do this and she would do pretty much anything for him, but still ...

She couldn't figure out why this girl was disturbing her this way. Maybe it was like Spike had said. Knowing what she had done, what she was capable of doing, maybe it was just good old-fashioned stay-away-from-the-predator fear.

Buffy reached the top of the stairs and looked around the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. The sun was shining in through the windows and one could see the barest hint of clear blue skies outside.

"God, I thought I'd never see the sun again." Buffy muttered.

"Sorry about that," Faith said, making her presence known, "but you know how it is. Can't let you go around staking people and all."

Buffy gave the other girl a dirty look.

"They're not people." She said, but by now it sounded more like mindless repetition.

"Oh, put a sock in it!" Faith grumbled. "Some of them are better people than any o'those that walk around in daylight."

"They are monsters, they kill people for their blood."

The Slayer seemed less interested in what she was saying than in holding her face into the sunlight. Faith, never one with a lot of patience, was getting irritated. Angel had warned her that it would take a lot of time to get Buffy's brain right side up, but she had somehow figured that it wouldn't take THAT long.

"Angel is a good guy," she yelled at Buffy, "one of the best. I would probably be dead by now if not for him. These last hundred years he's done nothing but good and still bigoted idiots like you run around, carrying a stake with his name on it."

#

Buffy was taken aback by the intensity of the girl's outburst. She became painfully aware of the fact that she was cuffed and helpless here, while this dark-haired teenager seemed poised to swing at her.

"Tone down on the psycho-act, Faith!" Cordelia reminded everyone of her presence. "We're trying to do some female bondage-stuff here. Bondage meaning emotional, you know? Not the cuff part. We're not that kinky."

She came to a stop in front of Buffy and looked her up and down.

"You look a lot more in need of a shower here in daylight. We'll have to get you some other clothes if you're to stay here for a while. Oh, where are my manners? The girl wonder here is Faith, I'm not sure why she is here, but she always is. My full name is Cordelia Chase, by the way. These people here would be lost without me. None of them has any sense of style. No wonder Vampires get all the bad press. They're all running around in black."

Buffy still tried to wrap her mind around the fact that living human beings seemed so very fond of a Vampire, fond to the point of vehemently defending them. And here was this Cordelia girl giving fashion tips to Vampires? She wondered if this entire thing, starting with the fight in the alley, might not have been a weird dream after too much ice cream.

"Come on, girls!" Cordelia motioned for them to follow her. "Let's step into the sun and have some girl talk!"

10 - About Vampires and Life after High School

###

Just feeling the sun on her skin again was a feeling too wonderful to describe. The building she had been kept prisoner in had a large courtyard and that was where Faith & Cordelia had taken her. They all sat down on a stone bench and Buffy turned her face toward the sun.

"They tell me you got all the powers of a Vampire," Cordelia said, "only without the whole creature-of-the-night angle. That's so cool!"

"No, it's not!" Buffy said. "It's not cool that I have to hang around dark alleys and cemeteries all night. It's not cool that I'm alienating all my friends and family because I can't tell them about this. It's definitely a not cool thing."

Cordy went quiet for a moment, sensing the pain in the other girl.

"Angel told me you've only been the Slayer for a year. Before that you were all normal high school girl or what?"

Buffy didn't want to talk to these girls that hung around with Vampires. She wanted out of here, that was all. Back to her home, back to her mom, who was probably worried sick by now. She wondered what Giles was doing right now. Was he looking for her? Or had he written her off and was looking for the new Slayer that would pop up if she was dead?

"The Slayer doesn't talk to us freak-girls!" Faith mumbled, looking less than happy to be here. "Probably figures us for coffin-bait or something."

"Oh, please!" Cordy made a throwaway motion. "As if. Angel's too busy saving the world to allow himself any fun. And Spike is still moping for his Dru."

"Dru?" Buffy asked, drawn into the conversation despite herself.

"His Sire and lover. She was killed twenty years ago. By a Slayer. You're not exactly his favorite people. I'm sure you understand."

Vampires in love with each other? These creatures were capable of love? She shook her head. Next they would tell her they were donating blood for Africa or something.

"Not in receptive mood, are you?" Cordy asked. "We must do something about that, I think."

"Let me get out of here and I'll be happy-girl!"

"Sorry, no can do. Angel would go all grrrr on us and you'd probably start killing again. So it's a no-no! I will think of something else, don't worry!"

"We could lock her in a room with Spike and throw the key away." Faith proposed.

#

Wesley watched the three girls from a distance, his eyes on the Slayer. She looked nothing like Kendra, that was for sure. Still, looking at her, it was like a trip into the past for him. He remembered a time when he had been sure in what he was and what he did. Vampires were evil and had to be destroyed. He hadn't simply believed that. He had known it to be true.

He looked at this girl. She seemed nowhere near as certain as he remembered himself being, but she was still hardening herself to the truth. He tried to remember the exact moment that he himself had come around. There probably wasn't one. It had been a gradual change, something that happened in too subtle a way to be noticed.

Angel had asked him to talk to the girl, if he felt up to it. Looking at her, he simply wasn't sure.

#

Faith had moved away, not trusting herself not to swing at the helpless Slayer. Which left Cordelia and Buffy on the bench, sitting in the sunshine.

"You do realize he could've killed you long ago if he wanted to, right?"

"He doesn't want a new Slayer to be called, that's all." Buffy wasn't sure she believed it, though.

"If that was his only motivation he could just leave you to rot in that cell. He wouldn't spend so much time talking to you."

Buffy tried ignore both Cordelia and the confused voices inside her own head. There was Giles, telling her that Vampires would try every dirty trick in the book. There was Slayer-Buffy, who was going crazy with not being able to kick Vampire ass. And there was another Buffy, who wondered whether everything Angel had told her just might be true.

"He saved my life, you know?" Cordelia said. "If not for him I wouldn't be here today."

"What happened?" Buffy asked, surprised that she really wanted to know.

"There was a Vampire called Penn, a serial killer. He sort-of had this fixation on getting even with his dad, said dad having been dead for nearly two centuries. He kept killing his family over and over again and he had chosen me as his next younger sister."

That sounded more like the Vampires she knew, Buffy thought.

"Angel tracked him down before Penn could do me in. They fought and Angel staked him. God, that sounds so easy, telling it like this. Penn was Angel's childe, you know? It was like killing his own son."

"So they kill their own young, is it?" Buffy grumbled.

"You really don't want to understand, do you?" Cordy sighed. "The point is that Angel is Mr. Responsibility. He gave souls to Vampires, so he figures he is responsible for them all. These last ninety years he and a few others have been the police to their people, tracking down those that crossed the line. Penn did when he started killing again and so Angel staked him, no matter what feelings he might have had for him."

Cordy tilted her head back, feeling the sun on her face.

"Angel did more than save me, though. Before I met him I was a spoiled brat. Rich man's daughter, used to getting everything she wanted just because she wanted it. Life for me was wearing fashionable clothing and worrying about my popularity in High School. I knew about Vampires from TV, but I couldn't have cared less.

"Angel changed all that. Meeting him, getting to know him, it gave my life purpose. I figured my future was some kind of Hollywood dream, I figured myself an actress. These days I help people. Do you know how good that feels? I even went against my dad and when he took away my credit card the universe didn't collapse in on me.

"You know what Vampires are, Buffy? Not animals, not monsters, they are people. People that live without any rights, without any protection by the law, without anything. A lynch mob can just go ahead and burn a few of them and no one will do a thing about it. Is it any wonder that some of them turn out bad?"

Buffy didn't say anything, didn't know what to say. What Cordelia was telling her didn't sound right. It couldn't be right. Because if it was it would mean ...

"I would like to go back now." Buffy just said, sounding much more tired than she felt.

Cordy gave her a long look, then nodded.

Angel watched from the shadows, having heard every word the two girls had exchanged. Cordelia had certainly painted a very glorified picture of him. He looked at the Slayer's face and knew that they were making progress. Slowly, very slowly, but they were.

"There might just be hope for her yet." Angel murmured to himself.
 

11 - Interviewed by the Vampire
 

###
 

Buffy woke with a scream, almost tumbling off the narrow cot. Her body was covered in sweat, panting like she had just been through a ten-mile run. For a moment she had no idea where she was, the bare cell walls foreign and intimidating in the darkness.

With a sigh the memories returned. She was still a prisoner, coming close to the three weeks mark now, and, in her own opinion, in a certain amount of danger of going nuts. The nightmare she had just finished being the best indicator for that.

The memories of the dream were quickly fading, but she knew that she had seen. It made her shiver.

"A bad dream?"

For a moment she thought she was still dreaming, but there he stood, in front of her cell. She could barely make him out in the darkness, but the tingling of her Slayer sense and the familiar silhouette were enough by now.

"Are you watching me sleep?" She asked him, trying to sound irked, but what came out sounded just tired and a bit frightened.

"I keep an eye on you, yes." He admitted. "Can't have you do a disappearing act without anyone noticing. You've been having a lot of bad dreams."

She sat up on her cot and drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them. She wished he would turn on the light. Talking with him here in the dark gave the whole thing a feeling of intimacy she wasn't ready for yet. Yet? Where had that thought come from?

"Want to talk about them?" Angel asked.

"Why are you interested?"

"So far I've been the one doing all the talking. I would like to learn more about you, Buffy Summers."

She looked up.

"How do you know my last name? I never told you."

"Your wallet."

"Oh!"

She fell silent again, her eyes not looking at him, but somehow she was almost painfully aware of his presence nearby.

"I've been having nightmares since I became the Slayer." She finally said, knowing she had to break the silence or she'd go mad. "At first it was simple stuff. I was running through alleys and graveyards, chased by demons, they caught me, I woke up just before they could kill me. Don't need to be Freud to interpret those, I guess."

"You don't like your calling." Angel said.

"It destroyed my life. Or is in the process of doing so. I can't tell my mom about it, because she would freak. She's scared enough of Vampires as it is, even without knowing her little baby girl is out there hunting them down. I can't tell my friends, because they'd either label me freak for life or would think it cool and want to go along hunting, which would get them killed."

"You might not think so, but you can share the burden even without endangering others."

She looked up at him, trying to get a measure of his face in the darkness.

"You mean like you do with your little circle of friends here? Vampires and Vampire groupies? They tell me you're policing your own kind because you feel responsible for giving them souls."

"Is that so hard to understand?"

She laughed, but it didn't sound amused.

"You people are talking about stuff like souls like they were tangible things."

"They are." He rose and leaned against the bars. "I can feel it inside me, I'm aware of it every second of my existence. I don't expect you to understand it, Buffy. You never were without a soul. You always have it inside you so you are not even aware that you have it. It is different for me, for all of us."

"How so?" Buffy asked, just the tiniest bit of sarcasm in her voice.

"It's hard to describe. When you don't have a soul there is no such thing as right and wrong. It's only want, desire, passion. You don't care about the consequences of your deeds. The welfare of others is not even a consideration in your thinking. It's like the world is but a TV program, not real, and all the people in it are just cardboard cutouts. It would never even occur to you to give a damn about them. It's a very easy existence, Buffy."

He sat down again, looking at her in the darkness.

"What do you feel when you kill?" He asked her.

She was surprised that she genuinely considered the question. What did she feel when she plunged a stake into a Vampire's dead heart?

"Powerful." She finally said. "Carefree. Unburdened. I kill them and they just explode into dust."

"What if that wouldn't happen?" Angel asked. "What if you had bodies remain behind, Buffy? Dead eyes looking up at you, wondering why you decided to end their existence?"

She closed her eyes, but the images he conjured up had a life of their own and swirled through her head. A stake, rammed into a chest by her hand. Blood, not dust. A body tumbling to the ground. Blood spreading out on the floor. An empty face, features forever frozen in a look of disbelief.

"I don't want to talk about this." She whispered.

"Okay, then we'll talk about something else."

"What?"

"Your dreams. You said that at first it was you being chased by Vampires. What are you dreaming about now?"

She didn't want to answer those questions. That her unconscious mind was ready to believe him was not something she wanted him to know. Yet somehow she didn't know how to lie to him. She had the feeling he would know if she did. Or maybe she just didn't want to lie to him period.

"I dream about this. About you. About the stuff you're telling me."

"In what form?"

She hugged herself closer, feeling cold seep into her bones.

"I keep hearing your voice over and over again, telling me that the Vampires I killed were people. I see myself driving a stake through a Vampire's heart and suddenly it has your face. I expect to feel good about it, but I don't. I feel terrified and I can't figure out why."

She expected him to give some comment about how she was beginning to see the light or something. Instead she was taken completely by surprise when he slid back the cell door and walked inside, crouching down beside her cot.

She wanted to run. Wanted to use this chance to escape. Somehow her limps didn't obey her. She could do nothing but stare at him as he sat in front of her, his dark eyes locking with hers. There was so much to see in those eyes, such incredible depth. How could he be a monster?

He gently took one of her hands, guiding it toward his own chest. He placed it above his heart and Buffy felt the cold of his flesh seep into her skin. There should be a heartbeat, she realized. Something should be moving under that chest. Only it didn't.

"We are living in dead flesh," Angel said, "that is why we fall into dust when you kill us. But inside, where it counts, we are alive. We think, we feel, we love, and we hurt. Just like you."

She didn't know what to say, didn't know what to do. After a moment he let go off her hand and stood, moving out of the cell without another word. The door slid shut behind him and Buffy was left alone in the darkness, sitting on her cot with her knees hugged close to her chest.

12 - At Night all Slayers are Gray

###

"Are you completely out of your bloody mind?" Spike yelled as Angel came up the stairs.

"Spike?"

"You opened her cell door. She could have escaped."

"She didn't, did she?"

Spike stomped down in frustration, hard enough to crack the floor boards.

"I'm really getting tired of this, Peaches! I've had it up to here with your save-all-innocent-souls attitude. This chick is a murderer and we should deal with her. Right here! Right now! Rip her head off and be done with it."

Angel could hear the alcohol in his childe's voice, as well as the pain and anger he still felt, even after twenty years. Angel grabbed the blonde Vampire by the shoulders.

"This girl down there was tricked, Spike! They told her Vampires were evil and so she killed them. She didn't know any better! It's not her fault!"

Spike pushed him away, vamping out.

"I don't care what she knew and didn't know. She killed them. Killed our people." His rage spent, Spike dropped to his knees, crying bloody tears. "Killed Dru."

Angel knelt down and hugged Spike close.

"It wasn't her, Spike. This girl down there wasn't even born then. It's not her fault. And neither was it yours."

He knew the story of that day, of course. Spike and Dru had been in New York for the bicentennial celebration. Spike had left town for a day to check up on an old acquaintance in Boston. When he came back he only found Dru's ashes.

Within the week he tracked down the Slayer in the New York subway system and killed her.

"I should have been there." Spike sobbed. "I should have stayed with her. Saved her."

Angel knew no words that would help his childe, so he just held him and let him cry for the woman he still loved more than anything else.

#

Buffy sat on the roof of the Hotel, looking out across the lights of LA. It was hard to sit comfortably with her hands cuffed behind her back, but she managed. Now and then she threw a suspicious glance towards the blonde Vampire that had brought her up here.

"I guess you want to tell me something, too." Buffy told Darla. "Why don't you just start?"

"I thought you might want to enjoy being beneath an open sky once more for a while. But if you want, we can start right now."

Buffy had missed the outdoors, that was true. The last week she had been taken outside three times by Cordelia. It had gotten so far that she was even glad to see the talkative girl arrive because it meant she would get out some more.

Being taken onto a moonlit roof by a Vampire was not something she had ever expected to happen to her.

"What do you think about Angel?" Darla asked.

"I ... I'm not sure. I know that he's a Vampire, yet ... he's so ... so intense. So completely ... there. It's hard not to be ... intrigued by him."

"Angel is the most human of us all," Darla said, "and that is what makes him so very lonely."

"Lonely?" Buffy asked. "I didn't get the impression he was lonely. I get the feeling I still haven't met all the people running around here."

"Not lonely in a physical sense, Buffy," Darla continued, "but inside. You have to understand what the last ninety years have been like for him. He is the soul of the Vampire race, Buffy. He is our conscience. Our compassion."

She sat down beside Buffy, sighing.

"The first few years after the Restoration were hell for us. Many a Vampire committed suicide, walked into the sunlight, staked himself. Many more cursed Angel for what he had done. Why should we have to suffer through all this pain, this remorse? Just so that he and Spike wouldn't be the only Vampire's with souls anymore?

"Angel gave us hope, Buffy. Hope that, despite what we are, we could live as people again. It was hard. Very much so. Back then it wasn't as easy to get a steady supply of cow's blood or to find a sun-proof shelter outside a graveyard. Electric light was just coming into vogue, the night was still a dark and scary place.

"It never stopped him. But it also cut him off from the rest of us. He was the one who had to stake the ones that stepped out of line. Some of them were his own childer, some of them people he had loved as a demon. He feels he can't allow himself to open up to anyone because he has taken it upon himself to carry the ultimate responsibility for all of us.

"The last few years were even more difficult than before. Despite the boasts some of us always yelled, about how you are the prey and we are the predators, our survival always depended upon your ignorance. There is six billion of you and less than a hundred thousand of us. When our existence became public knowledge we all despaired.

"All of us expect Angel. He is working with the human authorities. He is working to legalize Vampires through Cordelia and her lobby in Washington. He never quits, he never surrenders, and he hasn't had a moment's peace since the day of the Restoration. He is lonely, incredibly so."

Her speech seemed to have tired Darla out, she slouched back against the wall and closed her eyes.

"Before the return of the souls we were lovers, he and I. Our demons wanted each other with a passion that still makes me tingly today. But our souls never carried such fire for each other. Whatever we once had, it's gone. I can't help him fill that emptiness he carries inside himself."

She turned to look at Buffy.

"But maybe you can."

"Me? What are you talking about."

Darla laughed under her breath.

"A blind man would see that he cares for you, Buffy. Only Angel himself is too stubborn to ever let himself realize it. Part of the effort he puts into you is because he just is that kind of man. Savior of lost souls and such. But the largest part is because he cares about you. For the first time in ninety years he is on the verge of allowing himself to truly care for someone. I can see it in his eyes."

"He's a Vampire!" Buffy said, shaken by Darla's words. "I'm a Slayer. It's my job to kill Vampires. Besides, I could never ..."

"Love him?" Darla asked, cutting her off. "Love has nothing to do with Vampires and Slayers, Buffy. It doesn't care. It just is."

"This has nothing to do with love!" Buffy insisted. "I ... he kidnapped me. He's keeping me prisoner here against my will. He's filling my head with all that nonsense about souls and stuff, I ... three weeks ago the world was a place I could understand. Good guys and bad guys, Vampires being the latter. And now ..."

"Now your black and white world is tumbling away into shades of gray," Darla interrupted her again, "and you can't tell the good guys from the bad anymore. That's the way the world is, girl. Get used to it!"

"But that's ..." Buffy started.

"If all this is nonsense, then why didn't you flee last night?"

Buffy had thought about that every waking moment since it happened. Angel had opened the door, had walked up to her without a care in the world. She could have jumped him, knocked him out, fled from this place. She could have done it, only she hadn't. Why hadn't she?

"I have no idea." She admitted.

"Maybe you should figure it out then." Darla said. "If you do, I don't think we will need those much longer."

She pointed towards the cuffs. Buffy was actually a bit surprised to see herself still all tied up, she hadn't thought about it throughout the whole conversation. Then she realized that she hadn't really given much thought to planning her escape in days.

"Weird!" She mumbled to herself.

"One other thing!" Darla said.

"What?"

"I think we need to get you a shower." The blonde Vampire wrinkled her nose, smiling. "You smell!"

13 - Who Watches the Watchers?

##

"Are you sure about this?" Rupert Giles asked Quentin Travis.

"We don't make mistakes in things like this." Travis reminded him. "No new Slayer has been called. Ergo Buffy Summers is still alive."

Giles sat down on a chair, mixed emotions running through him. Relief that his charge had not been killed as he had feared these last three weeks, but at the same time a bone-chilling fear set in when he started to think about what might have happened to her instead.

"I don't suppose the Council has found a way to track her down, has it?" Giles asked, feeling tired.

"There was never a need to. A Slayer did her duty and when she vanished it meant she had died, a new Slayer was called. You know as well as I do, Rupert, that Buffy is a special case, though. She should never have become the Slayer."

Giles jumped to his feet, almost throwing down the seat.

"She has been a good Slayer these past twelve months. She has fulfilled her duty to the fullest."

"I know that. Yet it is also a fact that, unlike most Slayers, Buffy has not been trained from birth. I would have much preferred to have one of our Slayers-in-waiting be called when Kendra died instead of this American school girl."

"Some things are beyond our influence." Giles muttered, sitting down again.

"True. Well, whatever we might think about Buffy Summers, fact remains that she is the Slayer, wherever she is. We need to find her. In case she has been taken prisoner or something similar we must ..."

"What do you mean, in case? What other reason could there be for her disappearance?"

Travis sat down as well, looking at his fellow Watcher.

"Your reports stated that Buffy was less than happy with her duties as the Slayer. You mentioned several times that she felt bad about how her personal life suffered due to her responsibilities."

"While all this is true it does not mean that Buffy would just shirk her duties and run away from them. She is a responsible girl. She might not like it, but she knows how important her work is. She would never abandon it."

"Let's hope you're right. Otherwise we might be forced to have her undergo disciplinary actions. I would not want that."

Giles fumed inside, but didn't allow himself to show it. He didn't like Travis, but he was his boss. Apart from that there was a certain logic to Travis' thoughts. What if Buffy actually had run away? No, he didn't believe it. Something must have happened to her.

#

Faith had listened to most of the exchange between the two old guys and smiled to herself. It had been a good idea to come here after all. Of course her motivation hadn't exactly been pure as gold.

At first Faith had been excited about Angel having taken the Slayer prisoner. His mission to make her see the error of her ways was so typical for him. Faith had found it sweet. Just one more reason why she loved that dark-haired Vampire, who had saved and changed her life.

Truth was, though, that she was rapidly getting tired with the amount of attention the captured Slayer received from everyone. Especially Angel.

During one of their 'girl talks' Buffy had told them that she went to Hemery High School and that her Watcher doubled up as the librarian. Faith snorted. She didn't like talking to the Slayer. If it was up to her they would just leave that blonde bitch down in the cell to rot. A part of Faith realized that she herself had once been in a very similar situation, a major hatred for Vamps, and she had gotten her head screwed on right as well.

Still, it wasn't the same. She hadn't actually killed any Vampires. She wasn't a friggin' murderer like her. And, fuck, Angel shouldn't be looking at that girl the way he did!

The way Faith had always dreamed he would look at her some day.

She'd had it all planned out since very early in their relationship. She knew that Angel saw her as his little sister, or maybe a daughter, nothing more. That would soon change, though, she was certain. Soon he would stop seeing her as a kid and then he'd realize how much they meant to each other. She'd soon be seventeen, no longer a girl, but a woman. Angel would notice and things would go on from there.

Now, though, with the way he looked at that girl ...

Something had to be done and fast. For a moment she played with the thought of telling those old guys where they could find their precious Slayer. But no, that would not be a good idea. It could get Angel and her friends killed. She just wanted that girl gone, out of their lives again. She didn't want anyone to wind up dead in the process.

She thought about what she could gain from the conversation she had just overheard. So those Watcher guys were looking for their lost Slayer, wondering whether she might have been kidnapped or just had enough of the job.

Disciplinary action, eh? Faith no longer doubted that Angel would set Buffy free sooner or later. When he set his mind on something he usually succeeded, so it was only a matter of time until he got Buffy to see things his way and then he would let her go.

And if the Watchers thought she had been ditching her duty ... or better yet, fraternizing with the enemy ... it had possibilities.

Faith left the school, trying to come up with a plan what to do and dreaming of the time when she would once again be the center of Angel's attention. Maybe she'd wear an even tinier sports bra for their next workout session.

14 - Hot Showers and the Making of Tough Choices

###

Buffy couldn't get over how good it felt to have hot water trail down her skin. Showering had always been something she had to do, like eating or sleeping, not something she looked forward to. After three weeks without one, though, this shower was a grace right from the hands of God.

Or someone far from it, actually.

Angel had arrived at her cell, together with the short man in the dingy leather jacket. He was called Doyle, as she now knew, and they had taken her to get a shower. She hadn't missed the presence of the gun under Doyle's jacket, but the fact that Angel had not told her to put on the cuffs had been a genuine surprise.

They had led her up the stairs of what Buffy had figured out to be a hotel by now and into one of the rooms. The bathroom had no windows and Angel and Doyle were waiting right outside the door, so Buffy didn't waste much time thinking about escape. She might do that after she had finished this long, long shower. Got to keep one's priorities straight.

Feeling the hot water rain down on her she almost managed to put her constant deep thinking to rest. Deep thinking wasn't something she did very often. Before she had become the Slayer one could have argued about the whole thinking thing in general, but even since then she had mostly been a girl of action.

Which might have turned her into a murderer.

She had less trouble thinking about that question now than she'd had initially, but it still disturbed her greatly. The Vampires she had killed, had they been innocents? Approaching things from a logical standpoint she had to admit that it was possible. The only thing she had known was that they were Vampires and all Vampires were evil, that was what Giles had taught her.

But what if Giles had lied? Or just been wrong?

Angel wasn't evil, she was convinced of that by now. He couldn't be, not with all the things she had learned about him. Some part of her brain still said that all this could all be part of a complicated plot on the part of the Vampire, but her heart didn't believe it. She trusted her gut instincts and they told her that Angel was a good guy.

Did that mean everything she had known to be true this last year was all lies?

She knew that she needed to talk to Giles. Just as she couldn't believe that Angel was a bad guy she couldn't believe it of Giles, either. This last year he had been more of a father to her than Hank Summers had ever been and she trusted him deeply. She needed to figure this out, needed to know what he thought.

Maybe Giles didn't know about the Soul Restoration. He was a book worm, everything done by the letter. Maybe the books just hadn't been updated in a good long while. Maybe ...

She put a stop to her thoughts. She needed to talk to Giles, until then everything else was just guesswork. In order to talk to Giles, though, she needed to get out of here.

Her skin was beginning to turn wrinkly when she finally stepped out of the shower. Several large, fluffy towels were laid out for her, as well as a satin bathrobe. She dried off, blow-dried her hair, and put on the robe.

Stepping out of the bathroom she was surprised that Angel and Doyle were gone. In their stead another man was sitting on the bed, looking up as she entered. Almost instantly he reminded her of Giles. Not by his looks, he was a lot younger for starters, but by his entire impression. British, definitely British.

"Hello Buffy." He said in a voice that was so carefully neutral Buffy thought she might be talking to a machine. "My name is Wesley. Wesley Windham-Pryce. I wanted to talk to you."

"Hi, Wesley." Buffy said, sitting down on the other bed across from him, looking into his haunted face. There was great pain buried somewhere behind his eyes.

"I ... I tried to work up the courage to talk to you for quite some time now. You see ... I ... I can imagine what must be going through your head right now. I went through the same."

He looked up at her.

"Until about a year ago I was a member of the Watchers' Council. To be more precise I was the Watcher assigned to Kendra, your predecessor as the Slayer."

Buffy was too stunned to say anything. She had known, of course, that there had been a Slayer before her. Intellectually she had also known that this old Slayer must have died in order to dump the job on her. Now she was sitting across from the Watcher of her predecessor and the reality of the retirement aspects of her job suddenly hit home.

"Were you ... were you there when she died?" Buffy asked.

"You might say that, yes." Wesley said.

With a voice that might as well have belonged to a dead man he began telling her about Kendra. How the two of them had come to America and started killing Vampires. How Wesley had first met Angel and how that meeting changed him.

His voice faltered when he told her how all his attempts to explain things to the Council proved to be useless. He had loved Kendra like a daughter and wanted to break her free of the Council's influence, save this young girl from a life of murder and an early death.

He told her how Kendra hadn't listened. Raised from birth to hate, hunt, and kill Vampires, it was impossible to change her attitude. Wesley almost started crying when he pleaded with Buffy to believe that he had done everything in his power.

"In the end it came down to a choice." Wesley said, recovering again. "Kendra was about to kill Angel and a family of half-demons, four small children, none of them older than six years. They had never hurt anyone in their entire short lives. I had a gun in hand and ..."

He couldn't continue, burying his face in his hands and quietly sobbing. Buffy could only stare. What he had just told her was too horrible to imagine. Forced to make a choice like that ... she didn't have the slightest inkling what to say. She was seventeen years old, how could anyone expect her to deal with things like this?

After a while Wesley looked up again, red-rimmed eyes locking with hers.

"I don't know if I could have saved Kendra." Wesley said. "Every night since that day I've lain awake and wondered what I might have done differently to prevent this from happening. I don't know. Maybe Kendra's conditioning was too thorough. Maybe she was beyond saving."

He got off the bed and knelt in front of her, grabbing her by the shoulders.

"But you are not, Buffy! Please, don't let them turn you into something like that! They only had a year to fill your head with their lies. Don't listen to them! You have to keep your own mind! Don't let ... don't let something like that happen again!"

After a moment he let her go and stood, slowly walking toward the door, bent over like a man thrice his age. Buffy was shaken down to her very core by the anguish she had witnesses inside this man. Was this what Giles had tried to turn her into? A mindless killer that would meet her end gunned down by a man forced to make the most cruel choice of them all?

"Mr. Pryce?" She said when his hand already touched the door knob. He turned and looked at her.

"I ... I don't know what to tell you, but ..." She gulped down the lump in her throat. "I think my eyes have been opened a bit. God, that sounds so corny. I ... I can't even imagine what it must have been like. I ..."

She fell silent, realizing that she was babbling. Wesley was still looking at her with that intense gaze of his.

"I will try." Buffy said, her voice almost steady. "I promise I will."

Wesley nodded and the barest hint of a smile spread across his lips.

"Thank you!" He whispered and left.

Buffy remained sitting on the bed, her thoughts in turmoil. She didn't even notice that Angel had walked into the room until he stood right in front of her.

"Thank you." Angel said as well.

"For what?"

"For listening to him. Wesley needed this. I hope explaining to you, Kendra's successor, why he did what he did might help put his ghosts to rest."

Buffy looked past Angel at the door Wesley had left through.

"What he did ... God, I don't know what I should say or think."

"He made a choice nobody should have to make." Angel said, sitting down on the bed Wesley had sat on. "He chose between the girl he loved and the lives of six innocent people. I don't think he will ever stop wondering what he could have done differently on that day."

She looked at Angel and her thoughts cleared a bit. This man had changed the lives of so many people. Cordelia, Faith, Wesley, the entire Vampire race. If even a Watcher, a member of the group that had taught her everything she had known about Vampires, had come over to his side, could his side be the wrong one?

Or was the wrong side the one that trained girls from birth to kill innocent children?

"I've got something for you." Angel said.

He put a cordless phone into Buffy's hand and for a moment she regarded it like an alien thing.

"What ...?" She began.

"I thought you might want to let your mother know that you are all right, Buffy."

She looked up at him, open-mouthed.

"Are you serious?"

"Just speak to her. I'll be waiting outside."

With that he rose and left her alone with the phone. Buffy stared after him for a moment, then quickly dialed the number. Her mother picked up after the third ring.

"Yes?"

"Mom! It's me!"

"Buffy, my God! Where are you? What happened? I was so ..."

Go to Part 16