“What was that about?” Anya asked as the door slammed shut behind the trio from LA.
Xander moved toward the door, he wanted to go after Angel and try to make things right between them, but suddenly realized he didn’t know how he could do that. The man who had walked out of Giles’ apartment was eighty years removed from the person he had just left and obviously the rules had changed since Chicago.
“Who the is Liam?” Buffy demanded as Giles said, “You didn’t tell him about the clause in his curse.”
Xander looked back at his friends. Riley, Tara and Anya were understandably confused; they didn’t know enough of the back-story to understand any of this. Willow looked bemused, Buffy looked furious and Giles seemed stunned.
“Look you weren’t there,” Xander said. “Things were different.”
“How hard would it have been to say ‘Angel if you sleep with Buffy you’ll loose your soul, become a monster again and end up getting sent to Hell’?” Buffy asked.
“Buffy I spent most of the last month trying to figure out how to say just that to someone who wasn’t anything like your Angel, along with trying to find out how to get myself home,” Xander said. “I’d have liked to see you do better.”
“How different could he have been, he had his soul,” Buffy commented.
Xander started to open his mouth to explain just how different Angel could be when it suddenly occurred to him that Buffy really had no clue as to what being resouled had done to Angel. She knew what Angelus could be and she knew her brooding, suave boyfriend. But Buffy had never thought about what the curse actually was, it never occurred to her that it had taken Angel decades to adapt to having a soul. To her it was like a light switch; Angel or Angelus with nothing between the two states. Angel had never told her about what came before her Angel. He must not have wanted her to know that stuff, Xander thought.
The words Xander had been about to speak caught in his throat. “Look, I’m really tired and as everyone pointed out, I need a shower. How about you guy save the third degree for tomorrow?” Xander said thinking that this would give him a chance to figure out how to tell his story without saying more than Angel wanted known.
“Yes, of course,” Giles seconded absently. “You must be exhausted.”
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“The roaring 20’s,” Willow sighed. “In Chicago no less, the whole Prohibition Era atmosphere, speak-easies, flappers and bootleggers, Al Capone and Elliot Ness, it must have been so cool.”
“I d-don’t know,” Tara replied. “Xander didn’t look like he h-had a good time there.”
“What do you mean?” Willow asked.
“W-well look at how he was dressed and he hadn’t been able to shave or shower in a c-couple days. He couldn’t have been living too comfortably.”
“He probably just got too caught up in researching the spell to get back,” Willow said. “He was with Angel, I’m sure he wasn’t living on the streets or anything.”
“W-why is that?” Tara asked.
“He was with Angel, Angel would have taken care of him,” Willow said simply.
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“What did he mean calling Angel Liam?” Buffy demanded pacing Riley’s apartment.
“What does it matter?” Riley asked.
“That name meant something to Angel,” Buffy said. “Something important, really important. Did you see how Angel reacted to being called that?”
“So what?” Riley asked.
“Angel never mentioned that name to me,” Buffy exclaimed. “But he told Xander.”
“And you’re jealous,” Riley said disbelievingly. “The guy broke-up with you more than a year ago and you’re going nuts with jealousy because someone else knows something about him that you don’t. You’re still in love with him, all this time we’ve been dating and you still love him.”
“I’m not,” Buffy insisted.
“Then why all this?” Riley asked.
“I was in love with him for years,” Buffy said. “Now I wonder if I ever even knew him. Xander as much as said I didn’t, I could see it in his face. How could Angel keep me locked out of his life for so long when he was supposed to love me, but let Xander, who he doesn’t even like, in after only a month?”
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“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the curse.” Xander had said that four hours ago and the words still hung in the air.
Giles didn’t know what to think. The Watcher’s Council specifically forbade using magic to tamper with time. He hadn’t even let himself consider changing the past to bring Jenny back. He knew all the dangers that lay in that path and those dangers increased exponentially the further back in time that you went. Giles should have been relieved that Xander had been mature enough to recognize the danger and resist the temptation to try to set everything right.
But just this once Giles wished that the boy had acted with his usual impulsiveness and that he would have saved Jenny.
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Xander stared at the ceiling in his new bedroom. Anya was curled contentedly against his side. Xander wished he could join her in sleep, or at least that the welcome-home sex had been less energetic. He really was exhausted and he had a lot to figure out before talking to the others.
Still, if he had tried to get out of sex Anya would have taken it wrong. Xander sighed, he really did love Anya, but his girlfriend still had some truly bizarre quirks. He was trying to convince her that not every bonding experience had to include sex, but he had a ways to go. Additionally his disappearance had really upset her and sex was still how Anya reassured herself that everything was okay.
Knowing that didn’t make him any less exhausted or bring him any closer to knowing how to deal with the whole time-travel/Angel situation.
First he had to deal with his friends, then with Angel. Buffy, Giles and Angel were probably all mad at him about the curse. At least Angel knew he’d tried to tell him, abet too late to get the message out. And maybe he could explain his indecisiveness to Buffy and Giles, but if he explained anything to them would it upset Angel even more than he already was?
Of course Buffy and Giles would spot the holes in his story if he didn’t explain everything. There were going to be a lot of them if he didn’t give away information about Angel’s past. Then they’d probably be upset with him too.
“How do I get myself into these messes?” Xander wondered. And when precisely had he decided to protect Angel’s secrets rather than just blurt out the whole story to Buffy and Giles. When had it stopped being an act, when had Angel become a friend?
Xander found himself laughing at the irony of the situation; he’d been feeling guilty about lying to Angel for weeks because of a lie that had actually been a truth.
At some point during between that miserably rainy night and telling Angel about his predicament four days later Xander realized he’d started liking the vampire. During those days it had rained almost continuously, both Xander and Angel had remained in the lair as much as possible and they’d talked. Or more to the point Angel had talked. Once he’d started feeding regularly, Angel’s mind had cleared leaving the vampire intensely miserable. He had needed someone to talk to about what had happened to him, what he’d done, Xander was there. Angel had told Xander about the years since the curse, about his wild swings between trying to be a proper vampire, which was all he really remembered how to be and attempts at escape from his over-whelming guilt, which had frequently included starving himself to the point that he couldn’t think clearly. It was actually a very easy state to induce in a vampire; Angel had repeatedly and purposefully muddled his mind by simply inducing blood loss that resulted in fast-forward starvation in the vampire.
Then the war had started. Angel had been wandering Europe in one of his depressed stages; unable to tolerate the carnage that Darla, Spike and Drucillia reveled in any longer, he’d chosen to separate from them. Old habits had attracted him to the battlefields where the traces of Ireland in Donnely’s voice had prompted him to save the man. Being responsible for saving a life rather than taking one had felt good, it was the first time anything had felt that way since the curse. Angel had eagerly embraced the roll of a medic, and quickly learned the rudimentary skills he needed to perform his self-appointed task properly. However, Donnely had been the first and Angel had become obsessed with seeing that the man made it through the war safely.
Being a medic had given Angel an outlet for his guilt, in addition to a way and a reason to maintain his health. It had given him time to evaluate the circumstances he’d found himself in. Angel had concluded that he couldn’t return to Darla again, killing was abhorrent to him now and no matter how much he tried to be what he had been it always would be. He also knew if he stayed in Europe it was only a matter of time before he’d encounter one of the vampires of his blood, his family, and Angel knew himself well enough to know he’d try to please them. So he’d gotten Donnely to bring him here, to America. He’d visited the continent briefly once before, at the time he’d found the Colonies remarkably dull, just as Darla had said they’d be when she’d refused to accompany him. After only a few months Angel had returned to Europe, along with his new protégé Penn. Now Angel didn’t care about being entertained, he just remembered his Sire’s distain of all things related to the New World and decided that it would make a perfect haven for him.
However, habit proved harder to out run than family. With the War over Angel had nothing to occupy him and quickly fell back to brooding upon his actions of the past century and a half, brooding lead to depression and depression lead back to bloodletting.
Listening to Angel talk had been a revelation to Xander. It was the first time Xander had thought about Angel as a person or thought about the curse as a punishment. He’d always assumed that the souled vampire had gotten off easy for the things he’d done, especially after Angelus’ reign of terror in Sunnydale. All Xander had been able to see was Buffy accepting Angel back as if nothing had happened. Xander had wanted Angel to pay for what he’d done the past spring, and by pay Xander had meant die. He’d even gone so far as to send Faith after Angel.
Now Xander found himself considering the curse from Angel’s point of view. He had always known that the souled vampire carried the memories of what the demon had done, and given Angelus’ love of mind games that probably meant that he had known many of his victims very well. Now Xander also possessed the uncomfortable knowledge that Angel and the demon couldn’t truly be considered separate entities, without the demon there was no Angel. Angel wasn’t human; he was a demon who suddenly found himself in possession of a conscious after a century and a half without one. Xander wondered how many faces haunted Angel’s dreams after over a century of killing.
Xander still felt a pang of guilt and disgust every time he remembered the things he’d done while the hyena spirit had possessed him, and he hadn’t even done that much. He’d killed and eaten Herbert the school mascot, he’d been cruel to Willow and had attempted to kill her, he’d attempted to rape Buffy. Even though his friends had absolved him of guilt in those acts Xander had never forgiven himself. The other students who’d been possessed had fared much worse in the long run. While he’d been having his confrontation with Buffy they’d been killing and eating Principal Flutie, that wasn’t something a person could just block out, not even on the Hellmouth were everyone had a lot of experience in rationalizing away the weirdness that was life. Ronda and Tor had entered into a suicide pact less than a month after the hyena incident. Heidi was still in drug rehab and Kyle had pulled a Faith. He’d ended up dead in a shoot out with the police.
They’d only killed one person and none of them came through the experience sane. Angel had easily killed hundreds of people, without his soul he’d done it gleefully and now he had to live with that. Xander had never thought about what that meant. Never thought about what it meant to have killed friends and family, including a younger sister who had idolized Angel.
Once Angel had tried to tell Xander about his life. The gaps had told Xander more than the scant words Angel had managed to speak. He mentioned his mother who had died while he’d still been a child, a beautiful wild girl who was barely a ghost in his memories. He’d mentioned the silent, timid, kind woman who had replaced his mother and born his younger sister, he’d liked her after a fashion. Angel said very little about his father, barely even his name. His voice held guilt and hatred and more guilt, but very little remorse when he said his father’s name. Xander wondered how he’d sound if he’d killed his father, the man he’d feared for so much of his life. He had a feeling he’d sound a lot like Angel; guilty for the feelings that not even death and centuries could change, guilty that he couldn’t feel the regret he believed he should feel.
Then there was Kathy, Angel’s, no Liam’s younger sister. Angel knew he’d loved her, he knew almost every happy memory in his human life had involved her, but when he tried to remember the details the only image Angel could bring to mind was that of her broke body lying in the doorway of his father’s home. When he tried to tell Xander about Kathy all he do was relive her death.
Xander tried to image what it would have been like if he’d actually hurt Willow or Buffy while possessed by the hyena and then he knew Angel hadn’t gotten off easy when he’d been cursed. Xander was beginning to see just how hard it must have been for Angel to re-enter life and start making amends for his past.
Once Xander admitted to himself that Angel did pay an immense price for his actions while soulless it wasn’t nearly as hard as Xander thought it would be to let go of his long held dislike of the other man.
Originally Xander had believed his newfound fondness for Angel stemmed from the situation in Chicago. But he had gotten back, he didn’t need Angel here and the reverse was more than true. He had seen the current version of Angel, the collected, annoying, completely non-pathetic version of Angel and Xander still couldn’t re-spark that old comfortable hatred for the vampire.
Sure, this Angel wasn’t the lost, vulnerable person he’d been in the 20’s, but Xander could still see traces of the person he’d been. The guilt that had once driven Angel to starve himself on the streets of Chicago now motivated him to save people. The feelings hadn’t changed, just the expression of them.
Xander had to respect Angel for the changes he’d made, because now Xander knew it had actually been easier for Angel to live like he had in Chicago, easier to allow confusion to numb his guilt.
Giles and Buffy would probably notice he was leaving out the majority of the story when he told them about Chicago, so why bother trying to hide that? They were just going to have to live with unanswered questions, that information was Angel’s to divulge or not. Xander owed Angel, he respected the vampire, Xander even liked him and for all those reasons Xander wasn’t going to give away any of his secrets.
With his decisions made, Xander finally was able to relax into sleep.
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“At the end everything happened really fast,” Xander said. “I expected to have more time to figure out what to tell Angel, then I was on my way back and I hadn’t said anything.”
“As much as I might wish to change the past so that Jenny is saved, you were right to be cautious,” Giles said tiredly, Xander thought he looked like the night had been a sleepless one for him as well.
“Okay,” Buffy said. “I get it, you couldn’t just blurt it out, there could have been consequences, but what was that whole Liam thing last night?”
Xander sighed, “I shouldn’t have called him that.”
“Why not?” Buffy demanded.
“Because it’s Angel’s story to tell,” Xander said.
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