Continued...

Chapter 20 –

"Get out! Everyone get out! Go home, go somewhere….. I really don’t care. Just leave us alone." Angel shouted at them, angered by their stares, as he continued struggling to restrain Buffy.

Nobody moved. Everyone in the room just sat and stared at one another. No one was sure whether they should leave or not. Buffy was mad. Angel was mad. And who knew what could happen if Liz got mad, if she wasn’t all ready. The mental deliberations they were all having were quickly interrupted by Angel as he, with Buffy still in his clutches began rounding everyone up and shoving them out the door.

Cordelia was the last one he shoved out the door. She turned to her two friends and quietly said, "Thank you." With those two simple words, she turned and joined the others who were already standing on the front lawn, still mesmerized by what they had just witnessed. Angel slammed the large door shut and dragged Buffy by the arm back into the room with Liz.

The vampire set the Slayer down in the same overstuffed chair she had been sitting in before. He cautiously let go of her arm. He stood in front of her staring wearily at her. Finally, when he was confident that she wasn’t going to try and kill Liz again, he sat down in the chair next to her. He looked at Buffy, then to Liz. This had to be up there in the top three of his most uncomfortable moments of his life list.

"I…. I realize that what I said wasn’t easy to hear." Liz began slowly. She didn’t want to make things worse, but didn’t know any other way to finish her task. She realized she could not expect Buffy to think of things that way, and struggled to somehow do this better.

"Easy to hear? That’s all you have to say?" Buffy shouted at her. "That’s what you have to give me? I thought you were giving out rewards today? Isn’t that what everyone else got? Huh? Something for the good deed they did. Instead I learn that it’s because of you my life is nothing but misery!" she continued.

"Buffy! That’s enough! Liz did me, and everyone else in this world a favor when she cursed me. If she hadn’t then I would have kept killing more innocent people. Is that what you would have wanted?" Angel asked.

With giant tears welling in her eyes, Buffy looked at him. She didn’t want him cursed, she wanted him fixed. Fixed so he could love her, be with her, and not lose his soul. She had loved him with every inch of her being, and the ache that she felt from just looking at him now was overwhelming. She opened her mouth to speak, but unsure of what to say, closed it again and looked at Liz. She gave up, utterly this time. The fight was gone from her.

Liz could read people and usually with a fair amount of ease, but she was shocked at how easily it was with Buffy, her deepest feelings were wrote clearly all over her face. She leaned over and touched the Slayer’s hand. It was supposed to be her attempt at consoling her, but instead she got an unexpected surprise. Liz began seeing everything that had ever happened. Buffy’s entire life was suddenly running wild through her mind.

Angel could tell something wasn’t right. Both Liz and Buffy were acting odd. Neither of them had moved a muscle in more than a minute. ‘Maybe I should separate them’ he thought to himself. Not knowing what was in store, he grabbed each of their arms and instead of separating them, he was suddenly sucked into their ‘This Is My Life’ of the spiritual realm. He was seeing Buffy’s life as Liz was seeing it, and suddenly Buffy was seeing his.

In an instant, a spark of energy surged through each of their bodies, forcing them apart and throwing them through the air. Liz tried to regain her bearings quickly. She realized after what she had just seen that there was much more at stake here than even she had realized.

Buffy lifted her head from the spot on the hard wood floor where she had landed. She could see Angel lying on the floor across the room from her. ‘It can’t be true’ she thought to herself as she stared at him.

Angel caught Buffy’s stare as he lifted his head up off the floor. The sadness in her eyes said everything to him. He was sure she knew about Connor, but the realities of what he had seen was breaking his heart as well. ‘Spike? How could she have….’ but Angel’s thoughts were broken by Liz’s voice.

"I don’t want either one of you to say a thing. You have to remember that the two of you, above anyone else have been chosen by the Powers. You two have a bigger plan, you always have. The others’ destinies were only decided recently, but yours…. yours were planned centuries ago." Liz said sincerely. She was speaking to them now in a voice that sounded almost celestial.

Liz nervously glanced out the window. She could sense that the sun would be rising shortly and the ritual needed to take place before then. Glancing back at Buffy and Angel she could tell that the pictures they had just seen were extremely distressing to both of them. She looked upwards, towards the Heavens, and with a short prayer she continued.

"Your futures are intertwined. You two have been chosen to walk this earth together. And…." Liz was interrupted.

"I thought you already took care of that!" Buffy sobbed. She was no longer able to contain her pain. "We tried that already, and because of you it can never be. You’ve ruined my life. Angel was all that mattered to me, and you took him away!"

Buffy began to gather herself and crawl up off the floor. She had to get out of there. She had to get away from Angel. She couldn’t face him anymore. She couldn’t know….. she couldn’t take it. She stumbled to the door, ready to flee the house, flee her entire life. But without warning the door slammed in her face. She coldly turned to look at Liz.

"You cannot leave. We are not finished yet." Liz said calmly.

"Haven’t you done enough already?" Angel asked coldly. As fond of Liz as he had always been, he was horrified that she would do something like this to them, to Buffy. Her apparent unconcern for the utter devastation she was continuing to cause enraged him.

"It is not me who is doing this. The Powers are at work here. I am simply a messenger." she replied sternly.

"Your trying to tell me that it was his destiny to blow me off when I needed him the most. And it was his destiny to sleep with Darla….. and…… and have a child with her? Your saying that was what the Powers planned for him? And then come here and shove it all in my face? That was the big plan?" Buffy screamed through the tears.

"His child was planned. That much is true. But the Powers cannot control matters of the heart." Liz replied.

Angel stood there in disbelief. Finally he couldn’t control his anger any longer, "Spike? You slept with Spike?" His words cut through Buffy like a knife. She turned to look at his beautiful face, only to find it stricken with hurt and contempt. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen him cry, but the empty pit in her stomach reminded her of what it had felt like.

Liz finally decided that it was going to take a miracle to set this plan of fate into action. Her two chosen warriors were having much too difficult a time dealing with something that they really had no control over in the first place. They were wasting time she didn’t have. As Buffy and Angel cried and then screamed, each pleading their cases to the other, Liz began.

On an old antique table that was sitting neatly in front of the large red couch, Liz laid out two large neatly hand-scripted envelopes. One addressed to Buffy and the other to Angel. She took the silver cross from around her neck and looked at it fondly as she laid it carefully on the envelope with Buffy’s name. She carefully pulled a small silver knife from her pocket and laughed to herself as she was going to miss having those endless pockets that anything she needed would magically appear out of. Shaking off the daydream, she quickly gathered her thoughts once more and walked to the corner that Buffy and Angel had moved their argument to.

Without saying a word to either of them, Liz grabbed Angel’s hand and sliced it quickly across the palm with the knife. Stunned, he looked at his hand, then to Liz. The guilt and pain still reeking havoc with his emotions, he had no words for her just then. Liz quickly did the same to Buffy’s hand, and then to her own. She looked first at Angel, and taking his hand in hers she tearfully said, "I love you now as I loved you then. Treat her now as you did me then." She then kissed him gently on the lips and then turned to Buffy.

"My admiration and respect for you is endless. Love and take care of Angel, and his son." Liz took Buffy’s hand within her own. Mixing their blood as she grasped it.

Neither Angel nor Buffy knew what to expect next. They were still in shock from it all. Quietly they stood, watching Liz’s every move. She looked at them sadly, but somehow they both knew in their own hearts and minds that she was at peace.

"The letters will explain everything. I love you both." And with tears now flowing freely down her face, Liz grabbed Angel’s hand, locking it within her own and recited an incantation. Angel’s eyes grew wide, his mouth dropped opened as he could feel her blood running through his body.

Buffy became frightened, thinking that perhaps Liz was hurting Angel. She tried to grab his arm and pull him away, but there was some sort of field surrounding them. She received a shock of energy every time she tried to break through this invisible shield, the pain from the shock adding to her terror. She couldn’t stand it any longer.

"I can’t watch you die again!" she choked out through the tears, and she turned and buried her head in her blood soaked hands.

In an instant everything had become utterly silent. Buffy was too frightened to look. The terror of what she thought had just happened kept her frozen in her spot. There were noises, faint noises, but she wasn’t moving, wasn’t uncovering her eyes. ‘Nothing will make me look’ she thought to herself.

Suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. A shiver ran down her spine and every hair on her body rose. ‘Oh God, she’s going to kill me too.’ Buffy’s thoughts were paralyzing. For the first time since she’d become the Slayer she wasn’t able to move, or even breath. She felt so heavy as if she’d been turned to stone.

"Buffy?" She heard the voice, but ‘it couldn’t be’ she thought.

"Buffy, are you okay?" There it was again. She finally dug down deep inside herself, gathering enough strength to turn herself around and face what she knew to be the horrible but inevitable truth of what had transpired.

She turned around. Angel knelt beside her, eyes focused on her.

"Angel?" she gasped. "You’re alive?" She couldn’t believe it. She had been certain that Liz had killed him. "Oh my God! You’re still alive!!" she murmured again and again as she wrapped her arms around his neck tightly, vowing with each passing second that no matter what he had done in the past or what he said to her now, she was never letting him go again.

"What happen?" She finally asked him, letting go just enough to lean back and gaze at his face. She hadn’t even noticed Liz’s body laying limp on the floor behind him.

"I’m….. I’m….. hu….. human again." Angel said haltingly. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to say those words again. After the last time, he never really thought it could happen again.

"You’re what?" asked Buffy. "But….." she stopped, mid sentence. Angel had shifted his weight to his other knee and revealed Liz’s dead body lying behind him. Buffy froze, staring at the body.

"Buffy, I could hear her talking to me when she was dying. Just in my mind, but I could hear her. She said she was doing this for me. That this was part of my destiny." Angel began.

Through the tears, he slowly choked the rest out. "She… said that our destinies are linked. That she needed your blood to keep me strong, like you and that’s why she had to cut you. And then she told me that she was taking the demon from inside of me. Her body would become it’s home instead. Her salvation in this lifetime was giving me a new life."

Buffy smiled warmly at Angel. Tears flowing like rivers from her eyes, she couldn’t resist the urge she had to reach over and kissed him. She cupped his face in her ever so tiny hands and gently kissed him on his soft, and now warm lips. She had never been able to do that before, not that she really remembered anyway. It was how she’d dreamed of it hundreds of times, only better. The feelings that rushed through her body were overwhelming.

They reached for each other’s hand, and walked to Liz’s body, still motionless on the floor. Again, Buffy was struck by how different the dead looked from the living person they’d been. Liz seemed impossibly small and fragile now. The table with the envelopes seemed to tower over her lifeless body. Buffy bit her lip as she reached for the silver cross that Liz had left for her. The fact that Liz had in fact understood how dear the trinket was to her, had understood her love for Angel, and would give them her blessing, was amazing. Holding the cross in her hand, Buffy turned and looked down at Liz, whispering the words ‘thank you’. While she wished she could have said it to her while she was still living, Buffy knew that somewhere Liz was watching and heard her thanks.

Angel gathered Liz’s body in his strong arms. Buffy fastened the cross around her neck and then carefully picked the envelopes up off the table and followed Angel out the door that was now standing open. As they walked outside, they were greeted by the sight of their friends, anxiously waiting for them. Angel had gotten them out of the house but none of them would leave until they knew what had happened. As the sun rose high in the sky, and Angel stepped out into it, they all knew.

He carefully carried Liz’s body to the spot in the back yard where a small tree was just beginning to grow. Gently, Angel placed her body on the soft green grass. Buffy knelt beside him as they both carefully straightened her beautiful dress. Angel caressed her soft face one last time. He bent over her and kissed her forehead softly. He knew this would be the last time he’d ever look on her face again.

Although Liz had been a vampire, the human in her had been stronger than the demons while she lived. Now that her soul was free, the demons in her body were stirring. They started to take their revenge on her, the only way they could now. They started destroying the beautiful, human form of Liz, replacing it with a demonic visage more to their choosing. As Liz had been giving Angel his gift, she had made one last request of him as the transformation came to an end. She knew what the demons inside would try to do, and asked Angel not to let it happen. Angel sighed, a lump in his throat. He was about to grant that final wish. It was the least he could do, considering all that she had given him and Buffy.

Everyone stood around the body, mourning the loss of their new friend. In the early morning sun, they all gazed down at the woman who had changed things so dramatically and so quickly. Only one of those who had been rewarded stood back from the rest. Spike watched the proceedings from the decrepit back porch of the house. Though now he had his soul, he was still a vampire. The Sun was still his enemy, but he felt it was only right for him to stay and watch, to pay his own respects to Liz. She had given him the gift of true salvation, or at least as close as he was probably ever going to get to it. And even that was more than he’d thought he deserved. Still, she had been special, and Spike knew he’d never forget her. As he watched Angel, standing in the sunshine, look up to the Heavens, and ask the Gods to take Liz home, a single tear fell from his eye.

And with Angel’s final words, the body disappeared.


The End…….. for now!