Slowly, one by one, the group picked themselves up.
“Everyone okay?” Riley called.
“No,” Oz answered as he and Willow helped Angel to his feet. With the crisis over, things were starting to shut down. Angel seemed semiconscious, but after a moment, he shrugged them away.
“Thanks, but I can walk.” He looked sadly toward the pit. “I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones.”
Willow nodded sadly. “Poor Faith.”
“What about me?”
With a huge collective gasp, they all raced to the edge of the pit. Standing there, on the blank and whole ground twenty feet down, was Faith. Whole and healthy, and looking up to them.
There were a number of exclamations of shock and relief, and Faith assured them all that yes, it was, indeed, her; she was, indeed, alive; and she was all right.
Riley was the first to regain his wits enough to say something useful: “Can you make it up here? Or should we get a rope?”
“Nah, I’m okay, Beefstick. Everybody just stand back.”
With an exasperated sigh, Riley obeyed, waving everyone away from the edge of the pit. There was a sound of running from below, then Faith came somersaulting up over the lip, landing on her feet like she’d just hopped down from a high curb.
It was then that Faith received the shock of her life. Whatever she may have expected to find awaiting her when she arrived at ground level, she hadn’t expected to find herself at the center of a massive group hug. In utter shock, all she could do was stare blankly and pat random backs. As the shock wore off, however, she started to realize: *So this is what it feels like. Wow. Oh, wow. I could get used to this *.
The Englishmen, of course, were the first to break away. Spike wandered away, muttering something about “needing a fag” and pretending nothing had happened. Giles and Wesley, on the other hand, were overcome with curiosity.
“How is this possible?” The elder man asked, awed.
“Yes,” Wesley agreed. “Do you have any idea what happened?”
Faith shook her head as the group hug dispersed. “No clue. Maybe big shiny felt bad and decided to cut me a break.”
“Or maybe the Powers did,” Angel offered.
Cordelia snorted. “Maybe on the day after never,” she said. “I’m going with option one.”
“Oh, yeah!” Faith exclaimed. “That’s right! I got a message for you two.”
Angel sighed, and Cordelia rolled her eyes and groaned.
“From the Powers?” He asked.
Perplexed at their reaction, Faith shook her head. “No, it’s from Doyle.”
Both of them stared at her for a moment in blank shock. Cordelia’s surprise started to turn into anger, but Angel spoke first.
“But…you never met Doyle.”
“Sure I did. Little while ago, when I was out. And before you ask—he introduced himself. Anyway, he told me to tell you that it’s never closing time, the beer is free, and the Scotch is all single-malt—but he’s always as witty and charming as he thinks he is, and he always sings and dances as well as he thinks he does.” She frowned in puzzlement. “That mean anything to you guys?”
Cordelia and Angel looked at each other. “So there *is * a Heaven,” he said in hushed awe.
“Yeah, and isn’t that bloody wonderful,” Spike interrupted. “You’ll all get to go there real soon. Or am I the only one who remembers that me Sire is out there in the night somewhere, in all his psychopathic, world-wreckin’ glory?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Spike?” Buffy demanded. “Angel is standing five feet away from you.”
The rest of the people present were better informed.
“Oh, God, Angelus,” Willow gasped. “We forgot!”
“Did get a little distracting there for a while,” Oz commented.
“Well, where is he?” Anya demanded. “He could be anywhere, ready to jump out of the shadows and kill us!”
“Everybody just calm down,” Angel said. “He’s long gone and far away. He took off when Belial started shapeshifting.”
“How do you know all *that *?” Cordelia asked.
Angel tapped on his temple. “He was in here for a long, long time. I guess there’s still a link.”
Buffy sighed. “Okay. *Someone * is going to explain this to me as soon as we get somewhere safe. As beat-up as we are, Angelus could probably take all of us right now, so let’s go.”
*
They set out for Giles’s house in a limping mob. Against his protests, Angel was pushed to the center of said mob. When it was pointed out to him that he could barely walk, let alone defend himself, and forget about defending anyone else, he grudgingly acquiesced. Still, few had escaped injury entirely. Buffy had a necklace of nearly-black bruises, and everyone else had been tossed around quite a bit. In fact, ironically enough, Faith seemed to be the only one completely healthy.
*
Faith, as the healthiest Warrior, was walking point.
Meanwhile, Willow hung somewhere back near the middle, with Tara and Oz walking like bodyguards on either side, except that each of them was holding her hand. She would have been content to stay that way, walking home, watching the road, and holding onto current and ex-lover for dear life. But she spotted Faith walking alone at the front of the group as everyone else clung to their dear ones, and realized there was something she needed to do.
She let Oz and Tara’s hands fall—“Guys, just wait here a second, all right? I’ll be right back. There’s…something I need to do.”—and jogged over to Faith.
“Hey, Will,” the younger slayer greeted her. “What can I do you for?”
Willow had, of course, heard the question before. And she hadn’t been able to think of a good response those times, either. “Nothing.” She saw Faith’s faint smirk and started to flounder. “Wait, I didn’t mean—I mean—“ She sighed and gave it up. “Faith. Do you remember what you said in the cell?”
Faith’s smirk faded. “Yeah?”
“Well, I’m ready to believe you now,” Willow said, her Resolve Face in place. Even after all that had happened that night, all that had gone before was not undone, and it was hard to say. The next was even harder. “And I’m ready to accept it.”
Faith knew what she meant, but she hardly dared to believe it. “So we’re five by five?” She asked.
“Ten-four, good buddy,” Willow affirmed. She waved her hand in the direction of the main group. “Well, I have to get back to Tara. And Oz.”
Faith grinned again as Willow started to walk away. “Have fun. Don’t do anything I don’t know how to do.”
Willow blushed, then grinned. Time to get a little of her own back. “I won’t. And Faith? As for doing me? If I weren’t with Tara, I might consider it. You have a nice ass.”
Faith could only stare in admiring shock as Willow walked away with a triumphant grin on her face.
*
Buffy approached shortly after Willow left.
“Hey, B.”
“Hey, Faith. Looks like you made your peace with Willow.”
“Looks like. Certainly hope so. She seems like a good friend to have.”
“The best.”
They walked in silence for a long moment. In the end, it was Faith who had to break the silence. “How ‘bout you, B?”
“Hm?”
Death had made Faith bold. “Will you still beat me to death if I apologize?”
Buffy sighed and closed her eyes. “No. But wait, okay?” she opened her eyes again, and they were very, very tired. “I don’t think I’m strong enough to forgive anyone tonight.” She looked over her shoulder, and Faith followed her eyes to where Xander walked, holding Anya’s hand, but clearly lost in his own misery. Not far away, Joyce walked along in much the same way.
“Gotcha,” Faith agreed.
“Say it in a day or two, and I’ll probably accept,” Buffy said. “It’s just hard, Faith. Belial exaggerated, but not by that much. Almost nothing has ever made me feel that powerless. And I think you know how that feels.”
Buffy’s tired, but piercing gaze fixed on Faith until she nodded.
Buffy then patted Faith’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay, Faith. Just…give me time, okay?”
*
When the group reach Giles’s house, Buffy stepped aside and allowed the others to pass her by.
“Okay,” she announced as they mounted the steps. “Now that everyone’s here safe, I’m going to go out and hit something. I’ll be back soon.”
“Er…Buffy?” Giles called after her as she started to turn away. She turned back to him, impatience written clearly on her face. “Are you sure that’s wise? You *are * injured, you know.”
Buffy gingerly touched her throat, and winced, then dismissed it with a shake of her head. “It’s so late it’s early, Giles. I’ll be okay. Even if anything was out and around on a night like tonight, it’s probably gone by now.”
Giles thought that over for a moment, then nodded. “All right, then.”
“Besides, wise or not, this is the only way certain people are going to live out the night,” she continued, shooting an evil glare at Xander and Joyce.
Anyone else present would have taken that as their cue to hang their heads in shame and go inside. Neither of the two, however, were accustomed to admitting error.
“Now wait just a second,” Xander began hotly. “I did what I had—“
“Buffy, I’m you’re mother,” Joyce began at the same time. “And I did what I thought was—“
“Next person to say a word goes to the hospital,” Buffy said. “Think I’m bluffing?”
Both mouths snapped shut.
“Now listen to me carefully,” Buffy said as she walked toward them. She stopped a few feet away from them and put her hands on her hips. “ ‘Cause I’m only going to say this once. I know I’m not perfect. I’ve screwed up majorly, and it has always come out, and I’ve apologized, and we’ve dealt. I have some major apologies to make for tonight. The way I see it, that’s how it always works with this group. We must be the biggest bunch of screwups on the planet, ‘cause we just do it over and over again: we hurt each other, it comes out, we apologize, and we deal. But you two? It never came out for you, did it? You just kept acting righteous and grinding my face into my mistakes until it *bled *!” She snapped her head forward for the last word and bit it off as it passed out of her mouth. Xander and Joyce both jumped. “Get me turned into a rat? I never say angry word one to you.” She told Xander. “Try to burn me at the stake? I let it go ‘cause I don’t want you to feel bad,” she said to Joyce. “But you both kept acting like the Justified, telling me how much of an untrustworthy screwup I was at every turn. Well, guess what? As far as I’m concerned, neither of you is ever going to be the Justified again. No matter what I do, you have no right to act like you have any kind of moral authority at all. Ever.”
With that, she turned on her heel and started to walk away. Joyce was left standing there weeping, and even Xander’s eyes were red and his lips were quivering. Buffy must have heard them, because after a few steps, she stopped, and her shoulders drooped tiredly, the anger going out of her stiff back. “You know, there’s not much I can’t forgive,” she said without turning. “Stuff came out for Angel tonight, and he apologized. And I forgive him. Faith apologized in her own way tonight, and I forgive her. I’m plenty pissed at what you both did, but it’s come out now. Time for the next step.” With that, she walked away.
*
It was quickly decided that Riley and Wesley should follow Buffy at a distance to make sure that nothing went wrong. Of course, Angel—and, surprisingly, Spike—tried to insist on coming, but Riley tapped his watch. “Almost sunup, big man,” he said to Angel. “You won’t be much help against your evil twin, there, if you’re ashes.” Later, the senior members of the Scooby Gang and Angel Investigations would be impressed that, even in the short time he’d known Angel, he’d figured out that an appeal to Angel’s self-interest wouldn’t work. Wesley was simply chosen as the only remaining combat-effective that Buffy didn’t have any particular issues with at the moment. This was because Faith was finding that death had been more exhausting and traumatic than she’d first thought, and had retreated to Giles’s bedroom to “take another eight-month nap.”
Angel was the most severely injured. He sat—Cordelia tried to get him to lie down, but he refused—on Giles’s couch, sipping blood while she tended his wounds. Anya and (surprisingly) Tara had offered useful medical advice. Who knew that something that would be a catastrophically bad idea in treating a human patient—soaking a compress in the blood from a steak—would be helpful for a vampire? And who knew there were healing herbs to treat them?
*
After offering her advice in a halting whisper, only given the courage for that by Willow standing there holding her hand, Tara retreated across the room. The two lovers curled up together, trying to reassure each other that they were still alive by having the maximum contact possible. After a little while, Oz approached. Both girls looked up at him. He said nothing, made no move. Just looked down at them with a dreadful loneliness and a dreadful fear. They’d all nearly died that day. They’d nearly lost each other. Willow and Tara looked at each other. Now was not the time for anyone to be alone. They both reached out an arm to him. He clasped Tara’s hand warmly, giving her a sad, but grateful, smile. Then he settled down on the other side of Willow from her, wrapping his arm around Willow in a way that he had never forgotten.
The three of them held each other close. Tomorrow, they would worry about old and new loves. Tonight, they were alive.
*
Under any other circumstances, Tara would have been stealing glances across the room at the dark figure on the couch. This was the legendary Angel. Surely something interesting was going to happen. She wouldn’t have been disappointed.
Cordelia was busy patting the blood-compress to one of Angel’s back wounds, wincing every time he couldn’t hold in a hiss of pain. At the same time, she marveled at how she had become so used to seeing someone’s wounds closing at a visible speed.
It was then that Giles and Xander walked up. Giles strode purposefully, Xander walked slowly, staring at the floor.
“Excuse us, Cordelia. Could we speak to Angel?” Giles asked briskly.
“Are you going to be mean to him?” She demanded.
“No, actually—“
“It’s alright, Cordelia.” Angel said. He looked straight past Giles, at Xander. Xander looked up for a moment, met Angel’s eyes, then lowered his head again. “There are some things we need to talk about.”
Cordelia looked back and forth between the men, then nodded. “You’re right. I think you do.” She walked out to the kitchen to join Anya in scrounging for food.
The three men stood in silence for a long moment. Angel ignored Giles, his eyes burning into Xander. “I should kill you,” he said finally, a deadly quiet in his voice.
Xander looked up at that. There was no fear in his face, no shock. Only a bone-deep misery that Angel himself knew all too well. Right now, Xander didn’t care what happened to him.
“Not for me,” Angel continued. “If you’d told Buffy, maybe she could have kept me away from Acathla long enough so that I wouldn’t have had to go to Hell. Maybe I wouldn’t have been tortured for more than *six thousand years *. We’ll never know, will we? But that’s a maybe. And maybe she would have let her guard down just far enough for Angelus to kill her. He was ready to, you know.”
Xander and Giles both shivered. They’d known it would happen eventually, but to have it confirmed like this made their blood run cold.
“So who knows? Maybe you even did the right thing, wrong reasons and all. And I don’t care if you hate me, either. You’re a petty, spiteful little boy who can’t deal with someone intruding on what you perceive to be your territory. I think Oz will agree with me on that.”
Xander winced and dropped his head even further.
“No, the reason I want pry your ribcage open and eat your heart right now is how you treated Buffy. Angelus returns, and what do you do? Gloat and browbeat her to kill me—him. You’d always wanted me dead, and you finally had an excuse. No sympathy for what she’s feeling. Your hatred for me crowded that out. When she finally does kill me, she runs away. Weaker souls have been driven to suicide by what she went through, but do you care? No. All you cared about was how she ‘ruined your life’ by leaving for a summer that she would have spent with her father *anyway *—“ Angel’s voice was rising to a roar. Anya, Cordelia, and Joyce stood in the kitchen doorway. Willow, Oz, and Tara watched from across the room, clutching each other close. Faith, roused by the noise, stumbled down the stairs, but stopped on the landing. Slowly, trembling with pain and weakness, Angel started to rise to his feet. Cordelia took a step forward to try to stop him, but she shot her a look that froze her in place. “Who would she have talked with about her grief if she’d stayed, huh? Giles or Willow, who I—Angelus—hurt? Or you, who would have been gloating? Maybe you—“ he pointed across the room, at Joyce. “After you let her back in the house?” Joyce raised a hand to her mouth and started trembling. Fresh tears started in her already red eyes. Angel turned back to Xander. “Or maybe the nice police who interrogated her for murder? She gets back, and you know she had to kill the man she loves, you don’t care, because that man was me. You never stopped berating her and rubbing her face in all the harm that I—he—did, until *you * found out what it was like to not be forgiven. Congratulations, Xander. Angelus would have admired your cruelty.” Angel drew himself to his full height—swathed in bandages and trembling with the effort, but still mountainous. He towered over the cowering boy. His demonic face had forced itself through in his rage. His yellow eyes blazed, and he snarled a mouthful of daggers. “Tell me—give me one good reason I shouldn’t break your fucking neck right now.”
“Because the effort will aggravate your injuries.”
Incredulously, Angel swung his head toward Giles. The ex-Watcher laid a hand on an uninjured area of Angel’s shoulder. “I’m none too pleased with him myself right now, Angel. But his actions cannot be undone. We must do our best to remember the many good things he has done, and give him a chance to atone. Perhaps he will redeem himself. Surely you can relate.”
Angel paused. He closed his eyes, allowed his human face to return, and allowed Giles to guide him back down to the couch. “What was it you wanted, Giles? I’m very tired.”
“Rage will do that to you. Believe me, I know.”
Angel sighed and covered his eyes. “Giles, please.”
“It was merely an observation. I promised Cordelia that I would not be mean to you, and I meant it. In fact, my intention was to...” he paused, swallowed hard, took off his glasses and began to clean them. “...to apologize.”
Angel’s head jerked up, eyes and mouth gaping with surprise. “Apologize?”
Giles replaced his glasses and sat down beside him. “Angel, when you first lost your soul, it was easy for me to separate between you and the demon. Throughout Angelus’s rampage, I mourned the loss of you, our ally, and feared the demon, who I didn’t think of as you at all. Then you returned, and it became complicated. *You * made little distinction between yourself and the demon. How was I to do any better? All I saw when I looked at you was the face of Jenny’s murderer. My mind knew better, but my heart hated you. The only reason I tolerated you was for Buffy’s sake.”
Angel nodded. “I never blamed you for that.”
“It was still an injustice. You are not he; this latest development proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt. Since then, I have been thinking. What to do with this new information, this new...perspective on those events? And as I thought, something occurred to me: Angelus has hurt you more than anyone else.” He turned and looked Angel straight in the eye. “He murdered your entire family. Then he uses your body as a weapon to murder untold hundreds, leaving you holding the bag with the gypsies. He leaves you wallowing with the guilt and misery for his deeds for nearly a century, then returns just as you find some peace. He torments the woman you love and those you’ve come to think of as friends, once again using your body as a weapon, and this time, he used your face as a shield. You were the hostage he used to control Buffy. Then he left you holding the bag yet again, suffering the pains of Hell first, then our hostility.” Giles paused for a moment to let that sink in. When he spoke again, there was a new hardness in his voice. “And now he’s free. The bastard who murdered your family and my Jenny, is free and rampaging in the world. More importantly, *he’s separate from you now *. I would like very much to hunt the son of a bitch down and kill him. What do you say to that?” He held out his hand to the vampire who had once been his nemesis.
Angel looked at the hand, then at Giles. His answering grin was feral. “I say yes.” Instead of taking Giles’s hand, he clasped his forearm.
After releasing Giles, Angel turned back to Xander. “You should come. Maybe watching something with my face die will help your hate.”
Xander opened his mouth, closed it again, then nodded.
“Sounds like a good idea.” Buffy stood in the doorway, flanked by Riley and Wesley. “In fact, I think we all should go. Angelus is too wily for any less. We can worry about apologies and hurt feelings and guilt *after * we get rid of the sadistic, world-destroying demon.” She turned to Angel. “Any idea where he might have gone?”
He nodded. “We still have a psychic connection, but I guess it’s only short range. I knew where he was headed when he bolted, though. The only place he *could * go, really.”
“Where?”
“LA.”
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