Chapter Ten: Homecoming, Part Two
Buffy entered the Espresso Pump and immediately spotted Willow. Her red-headed friend was on her feet, waving wildly. Buffy felt a wide grin breaking across her face as the confusion she had been drowning in lately began to abate.
“Hey,” she said simply as she reached the table.
“Hey!” Willow squeaked excitedly before throwing her arms around the Slayer. “I’m so glad you’re back!”
“You do realize,” Buffy began with a stern expression, “that you must tell me absolutely everything.”
Willow, for some strange reason, chose that moment to clap one hand over her mouth. The reason became apparent to Buffy when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around and was immediately engulfed in another enthusiastic embrace.
“Buffy!” Xander shouted, holding the smiling Slayer at arms’ length. “Words cannot describe how happy I am to see you.”
“I’ve been getting that a lot lately.”
Xander quickly pulled up a chair to the two-person table as Willow and Buffy took their seats.
“So,” Buffy began, “this being Sunnydale, I’m guessing I’ve missed a lot. And since we’re nearing the annual spring apocalypse . . .” she trailed off as a waitress approached their table.
Willow and Buffy ordered mochas without even glancing at the options, but Xander browsed calmly, feigning ignorance of the impatient women beside him. As soon as the waitress was gone, they eagerly resumed their conversation.
“Well, we haven’t confirmed whether or not this year’s disaster is of the apocalyptic variety,” Willow told the Slayer.
“But definitely of the disastrous,” Xander added.
“Good old Sunnydale,” Buffy said with surprising cheer. “Now, tell me everything.”
“Well, we defeated the Mayor,” Willow began.
“It was my idea,” Xander interrupted.
“Faith took off, and then the summer was pretty quiet,” Willow went on. “Xander went on a road trip to Oxnard, where he–”
“Um, WILLOW,” Xander practically shrieked, “I think Buffy wants to know what happened in Sunnydale, not, um, places where absolutely nothing happened.”
Buffy raised an eyebrow at Xander’s near-panic as she sipped her coffee.
“Well, back to what I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Willow said with a frown, ignoring the glare Xander was shooting her way. “He worked some mysterious job to get enough money to get back home. Oz and I started at UC Sunnydale, where I have the roommate from hell . . .”
~~~
Willow knocked impatiently. She could hear shuffling from behind the door, some odd scrabbling. She shifted the bag to her other shoulder, glancing anxiously behind her as she did so. Campus security or not, it was never a good idea to be outside during Sunnydale nights, especially without the protection of a Slayer, or even a stake, cross, bottle of holy water . . . Willow didn’t have any of those things, but she could float a pencil like nobody’s business.
The door swung open and Willow looked into the face of something truly monstrous: an unshaven college boy. She resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose distastefully at the sight and the smell. Instead, she politely asked if Oz was in. The boy wordlessly turned his back on her, leaving the door wide open. Willow took the open door as an invitation, and stepped inside. Once inside, it was simply a matter of navigating the cluttered hall, but she accomplished this quickly, determined not to be deterred by anything short of an apocalypse. She stood outside of Oz’s door for a few moments, listening to the soft strumming coming from inside. She could hear him humming under his breath, and knew he was composing. She waited with a smile until he stopped humming, reluctant to disturb his muse. Thus she was a bit surprised when the door opened to reveal a very much unsurprised Oz, holding his guitar in one hand.
“How did you . . .” she began before realizing the answer. “Smell?”
He tapped the side of his nose with one finger. “Smell. You camping out?”
He closed the door behind her as she walked in, setting her bag down on his bed.
“Well, I was hoping to stay here for a night or two . . . or, you know, the whole year.”
“Bad roomie?”
“Bad roomie. After the Frisbee incident, I decided enough was enough.”
~~~
“I told her she was welcome to stay with me in my basement,” Xander told Buffy, “but she
chose the boyfriend. I have no idea why.”
“No, but Anya does,” Willow said cheekily.
Buffy wanted to ask about Oz after what Giles had told her, but decided it was best to let Willow come to what had to be a painful subject on her own. “Two questions,” she said. “One: basement? Two: Anya?”
“Well after the Oxnard incident, I came back to good old Sunnyhell and moved back in with my parents. It’s just like high school, except now I live in the basement and I have to pay rent.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah,” Xander agreed. “And Anya, well, you remember how we went to Prom together?” Buffy nodded, hiding her smirk behind her hand. Xander continued, “Well, she came back to town looking for a relationship. And we, um, well, I guess we sort of started a thing.”
“You and Ex-demon Girl. Odd couples abound. Or I guess that’s not so odd considering your history,” Buffy amended.
“Speaking of odd couples,” Willow began, resuming her tale. “Spike came back to town looking for this mythical ring, and guess who his girlfriend was.”
Buffy looked at Willow expectantly, and the redhead did not disappoint.
“Harmony!”
Buffy blinked. She had not been expecting that. “Harmony?” she repeated incredulously. When Willow confirmed it, her mouth formed a small “O” before breaking into a wide smile.
“That’s not all,” Willow continued. “The ring, the Gem of Amarra, makes any vampire wearing it invincible. And, well, Spike got his hands on it . . .”
~~~
Willow flipped through the pages of her trusty spell book, searching for anything that could possibly help in this situation.
“Ferns, no,” she muttered under her breath. “No . . . no . . . shrimp? No . . .”
The fight outside the darkened garage escalated, and Willow glanced up from her book in time to see Spike throw Xander through the air. Her heart caught in her throat as her best friend landed in a heap about fifteen feet away from the vampire. But she didn’t have time to worry about Xander. Right now, they had a much bigger problem.
“Hey Angelus!” Spike shouted. He stood in the entrance to the garage, backlit by the midday California sun, which shone off his bleached hair. The resulting halo was almost blinding enough to mask his vampiric face, but not quite. “You in there?” Spike called again. “Why don’t you come out and play? Oh wait, you can’t.”
Willow gripped her book tightly, struggling not to move or even draw breath. Spike wasn’t supposed to come for them yet. It wasn’t part of the plan. But, like clockwork, salvation came in the form of a large white van smashing into the approaching vampire. The ring prevented him from actually being hurt by it, but the force was still enough to send him flying. And, like clockwork, her trembling fingers found the right page with the right spell just as Angel launched himself from the shadows while Spike was getting shakily to his feet.
~~~
“You guys fought off an invincible Spike?” Buffy said a bit incredulously. “I’m sorta impressed.”
“Well, it wasn’t easy,” Xander bragged nonchalantly.
Willow gave him a little smile over her mocha. “Says the guy who got knocked out almost as soon as Giles.” Willow’s expression turned serious as she looked back to Buffy. “I managed to immobilize Spike for like a millisecond but it was enough for Angel to get the ring. Spike ran off again after that, and Angel, he, well . . . ” Willow trailed off, searching her friend’s downcast eyes for any hint of what was going on inside her head.
As it became clear that Willow did not know how to tell the Slayer that the vampire with a soul had destroyed the precious Gem after one sunset, Xander stepped in to finish the job. “He destroyed the Gem,” Xander said quietly. “So that it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. Again.” No matter how much he may have hated Angel, even he had admired the willpower and selflessness it took to do something like that.
Buffy shook her head slightly and looked up at her friends. “What happened next?” she said in a too-cheery voice. “That can’t be all the Hellmouth had to offer.”
“No way,” Xander said with a grin. “Next came . . . Halloween?” Willow nodded, and Xander picked up the story. “We got stuck in this haunted frat house and Giles had to rescue us with a chainsaw.”
Buffy’s eyes widened at that. “Giles with a . . . a chainsaw?”
“Did you know he has a girlfriend too?” Willow said. “Her name’s Olivia. Actually, they might have broken up after the Hellmouth freaked her out. Which was understandable, ‘cause the Hellmouth is pretty freaky, and those guys were super freaky even by Sunnydale’s standards.”
“Will, you’re getting ahead of the story,” Xander rebuked her. “Next comes the cavemen. I got a job at the campus bar and then the beer turned out to be enchanted and a whole bunch of guys turned into cavemen. It was kinda funny actually.”
“Funny cavemen?”
“Yeah, except for that whole bit where they set this building on fire and my morals forced me to quit a decently paying job after just one night.”
“Poor Xander,” Buffy said with exaggerated sympathy. “Whatever did you do?”
“I sold pizza. Doing my part to keep America constipated, as Spike so quaintly put it.”
“Spike came back?”
“Oh yeah. But now I’m getting ahead of the story. What’s . . . oh.” Xander looked at Willow uncomfortably. “You want me to take this one, Wills?” he asked her gently.
Willow shook her head and glanced down at the table before looking up at Buffy. “Oz, he . . . well, he left. There was this girl, um, Veruca–which, fittingly, means wart. Anyway, she was in a band and they were all chummy. I did the whole jealous girlfriend act, and then I found them in the cage together after a full moon. Naked, of course. They sure had a lot in common.”
“Oh Willow,” Buffy whispered as tears began to gather in the other girl’s eyes.
“To cut a long story short, I tried to wreak bloody vengeance on Oz, but lost my nerve.”
~~~
“Let this image seal his fate: not to love, only hate.”
Willow held the image of Oz over the flame, his usually soothing gaze utterly failing to soothe her. She looked into his eyes and searched for deceit, but all she could find was love. Love so obvious that she’d have to be blind not to see it. With a soft cry, she released the magic along with the picture. She spun around when she heard someone enter the room.
“Wow,” Veruca said as she slunk forward. “For a minute there, I thought you might actually play rough. Sometimes you have to, you know? To keep what’s yours, sometimes you have to kill. How ‘bout that? The sun’s almost down.”
Willow risked a glance out the window and saw that the sunlight was indeed fading on the horizon.
“Can’t say I’m surprised you didn’t go through with your little hex,” the werewolf taunted the witch. “You don’t have the teeth.”
“You don’t know what I have,” Willow replied through a haze of anger and gathering tears. What did she have? She had rage: incredible, blinding rage. And with the rage came power. She could feel it, within her reach. But something was holding her back. She began to back up unconsciously, like prey from an advancing predator–which, in a way, she was. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know what you love. I have his scent on me right now.” Veruca’s dark eyes pinned Willow with the terrible truth.
“Don’t touch her again.”
The two women both transferred their attention to the newcomer.
“Come stop me,” Veruca replied in a silky voice. “I like it rough, remember?”
“You wanna hurt me, hurt me,” Oz said, his voice carrying more emotion than most people heard him express in a month. “You leave her out of this.”
“How can I? She’s the reason you’re living in cages. She’s blinding you. When she’s gone, you’ll be able to admit what you are.”
“You don’t wanna find out what I am,” came the reply from the usually innocuous Oz.
“You’re an animal,” Veruca insisted. “Animals kill.”
Willow had a bad idea about where this was going, and wished the cheating werewolves weren’t between her and her way out.
“You’re right,” Oz growled around elongated teeth. “We kill.”
The light of the rising moon shone through the window, and fur sprouted over their bodies, which quickly morphed into demonic predators. As the two wolves fought, Willow could not help but wonder if this was how things had started between them, if this really was Oz’s true nature. She retreated into a corner of the room, tears streaming down her face.
Suddenly the fight was over; the she-wolf lay dead in a bloody heap.
“Oz?” Willow whispered into the silence. The only other sounds were her own frightened breathing and the wolf’s heavy panting.
His snout lifted and he regarded her for a second, as she searched his eyes for a sign of recognition that wasn’t there. Then he lunged towards her, only to be brought crashing to the ground as Xander tackled him from behind.
“Willow, go!” Xander cried as he struggled to contain the wolf while avoiding the claws or teeth.
Willow watched, petrified. This uncontrollable beast was taking her lover from her, and now it was trying to take Xander, her best friend for fourteen years. “No,” she whimpered, shaking her head.
The door burst open and Giles entered, his eyes taking in the volatile situation as he aimed the tranquilizer gun at the writhing pair on the floor. “Xander,” he called, “let him go!”
Xander released his hold on the beast and scrambled backwards away from it even as it began to move forward towards Willow again. Willow stared into his eyes, too afraid to move, even as the wolf let out a squeal and collapsed to the floor. Giles stepped forward and fired another shot into its back, effectively ending its attempts to rise again.
~~~
“Then he, well, he left. For my own good, you know?” Willow said with a sniffle.
Buffy reached awkwardly over the round table and pulled Willow into an embrace, one hand reaching out to steady her cup of coffee. Willow squeezed her eyes shut and held Buffy tightly to her. Buffy just rubbed soothing circles on the redhead’s back until she pulled away. Willow brushed the tears from her eyes and gave her friends a watery smile.
“Thanks for that, but I’m actually pretty okay about it.” She sipped from her coffee as her friends looked at her with varying degrees of disbelief. “I’m serious,” she said, waving one hand in the air to punctuate her words. “I’m okay. And we’ve got to get on with the story or we’ll be here all night.”
“Well, if you insist,” Xander said. “When me and Giles were rushing after Oz, we ran into these Commando guys. They knocked Giles down, and we almost didn’t make it in time. We didn’t find out who they were for awhile. See, Spike came back again. He got captured by the Commando guys, but he escaped from them and decided to kill you while you were, you know, all unconscious. But, obviously, he didn’t, seeing as you’re here and all. But he claims it was out of some twisted sense of honor, though my personal opinion is he was just scared of Dead Boy’s wrath. Which he got a liberal dose of when Angel found him. But he escaped again. It’s like he’s got nine lives or something. And since he couldn’t kill you, he decided to kill Willow instead. But the soldier boys showed up in the nick of time, followed by Angel. And in the confusion, Spike escaped. Again. But there’s a but.”
“Isn’t there always?” Buffy said with a smirk.
“Good point. This particular one happens to be ‘but the Initiative guys–that’s what they’re called–were doing experiments on vamps and they put this chip in Spike’s head that prevents him from hurting humans.”
“You’re kidding,” Buffy said incredulously. “Spike’s neutered?”
“Yup,” Xander replied. “And let me tell you, it is not a pretty sight. He’s so pathetic now–he showed up at Giles’s at Thanksgiving begging for blood. It had been my idea to have our own dinner at Giles’s, though we managed to lump most of the cooking on Giles, seeing as how I’m a terrible cook and Willow’s a conscientious objector.”
“It was a massacre!” Willow insisted.
“Hey, we all survived,” Xander protested.
“I was talking about the colonists and the Native Americans, Xander.”
“Wait a minute,” Buffy said. “You guys survived Thanksgiving? Was there a question of it? Lemme guess, the Hellmouth put its own extra special twist on the holiday?”
“Sure did,” Xander said with a grimace, leaning back in his seat. “This Indian spirit guy gave me syphilis and tried to kill us all. It was a thing.”
Buffy blinked. “Oh. Sounds like I missed some fun.”
“Near-death hijinks,” Xander quipped. “What could be more fun?”
“How about spells gone wrong?” Willow suggested.
“Which segues nicely into our next adventure: Willow Gets the Blues.”
“I was feeling pretty crappy,” Willow explained, receiving a muttered “understandable” from Buffy.
“So I decided to use magic to make the pain go away. I did this ‘I will it so’ spell, and then I kept saying these things unintentionally and making them true. It was freaky. Giles was blind and Xander was a demon magnet. And then Anya’s old boss offered me a job, but I turned him down.”
“Good for you,” Buffy said, visibly relieved to hear that her friend had not chosen the path of vengeance.
“And the she made cookies,” Xander added happily. “Even better.”
“Oooh!” Willow squealed, wiggling her hands through the air in excitement. “Next come the scary mimes!”
“Mimes?” Buffy said quizzically. “Uh-oh. Is this gonna be like the Talent Show?”
“Oh no,” Willow insisted, “much scarier.”
“Hey,” Buffy protested, “that was very scary!”
“Only because you have puppet-phobia,” Xander pointed. “But if you could’ve seen these guys, they would’ve given you quite the wiggins. Guaranteed.”
Buffy tried to smile at that, but her mind twisted down a darker path. If I could’ve seen them. What I wouldn’t give to have been there for all of this, instead of hearing the Cliff Notes version months later.
Willow frowned slightly, seeing the shadowed expression crossing her friend’s face. Desperate to lift it, she continued the story with added cheer. “Giles’s girlfriend came into town – she’s really pretty – and then these guys, the Gentlemen, stole everybody’s voices. So the whole town was freaking out, saying it was a sign of the apocalypse.”
“Was it?” Buffy felt obliged to ask.
“Nope,” Xander and Willow replied simultaneously.
“Just your garden-variety creepy, mime-like, voice-stealing, heart-harvesting, fairy tale demon guys,” Willow added.
~~~
Angel raised his head and drew in a deep, unnecessary breath. The lackeys’ scent emanated from the clock tower, and the vampire loped easily across the grass, slipping in through the doors and closing them as quietly as he could. He quickly surveyed his surroundings as he moved through the expansive hall that reeked of mildew and rot. He took the stairs two at a time, his pace increasing as he detected another scent mixed in with the demons’: human.
He crashed through the door into the top room of the tower. A few of the ghastly Gentlemen turned away from their huddle to watch his dramatic entrance. As they moved, Angel caught a glimpse of a girl who couldn’t be more than twelve years old in the center of their circle.
The seventh heart, Angel said to himself.
Several lackeys burst out of the shadows and moved between Angel and their masters. Seven, Angel said to himself. They weren’t the best odds, but there was no way he was turning back now.
~~~
“Angel kicked major ass, and then came face to face with this Commando guy, Riley Finn. Who just so happens to be the old psych professor’s TA. Then Angel smashed the box holding the voices, and everybody could talk again, and the little girl they’d captured started to scream, and all the Gentlemen’s heads went kaplooey. Didn’t see it happening, but I did see the remains in the halls, and let me just say – eughh!”
“Okay,” Buffy drawled, “maybe I’m not so sad I missed the exploding heads part of the adventure.”
“Hey, would you look at the time,” Xander said loudly, glancing at the clock on the wall over his shoulder. “I promised Anya I’d meet her in an hour, so we’d best get to it. What’s next? Wait a minute, is it what I think it is?”
Willow nodded excitedly. “I want to tell this part!”
“But you told the last part!”
“Um, guys?”
“Sorry,” they said.
“I’m telling this one,” Xander said firmly. “After the Gentlemen, things were quiet for about a week and then comes – dun dun dun dun – the end of the world.”
“Again?” Buffy said disbelievingly.
“That’s what we said,” Willow informed her.
“It was these three demon guys who wanted to use a sack of bones, a bag of blood, and some doohickey they stole from Giles to open up the Hellmouth,” Xander explained in a very not-explanatory way.
“The Hellmouth?” Buffy repeated. “As in the Hellmouth that’s under the library?”
“The very much exploded library?” Xander clarified. “Yup. Back to high school for us.”
“The woman I met in the hospital said people weren’t allowed in the ruins.”
Xander gave Buffy a ‘duh’ look. “Since when has that mattered?”
She nodded to concede the point.
“Oh!” Willow cried suddenly. “The high school! You should’ve seen it. It feels so much smaller.” She wrinkled her nose. “And charred. Anyway, we went in, Xander, Angel, and me. Oh, and Spike.” Buffy looked at Willow incredulously, and the redhead hurried to explain while Xander just rolled his eyes. “We had to bring him with us ‘cause if we didn’t he’d kill himself because he was all depressed about being, you know, impotent.”
“And that would be bad because . . . ?”
Willow scowled slightly, pushing her hair out of her eyes with one hand as she leaned back in her chair.
“Because Will here’s a big softy,” Xander said with a wide grin. “Anyway, turns out he wasn’t so useless. He can fight demons, and he did. Although throwing that one into the Hellmouth wasn’t the best idea, since they had to do that to complete the ritual. But then Angel killed the last one and saved the day. With a little help.”
~~~
“Hello again,” Riley said guardedly. “I guess I should’ve expected to see you here.” He waved his arm in a sweeping gesture, encompassing the ruins of what had once been Sunnydale High Library, domain of one Rupert Giles.
“Where’s the rest of your little band? Or are you solo? Either way, you’re a little late,” Angel said harshly. “Or did you just come to clean up after the apocalypse? Sweep the debris under the carpet?”
“What are you talking about? What apocalypse? Who are you anyway?”
Angel pondered how to answer that question. Somehow he didn’t think ‘I’m Angel, formerly Angelus the Scourge of Europe,’ would go over very well. Turning his back dismissively to mask his indecision, the vampire began picking his way through the rubble, back to where Willow, Xander, and Spike were waiting. “I’m just a . . . rogue demon hunter.”
“Does this ‘rogue demon hunter’ have a name?” Riley asked impatiently as he followed the mysterious stranger.
“Does this army boy?”
“Riley Finn. Special Agent Riley Finn.”
“Angel.”
“Angel, eh? Well, I guess I should be thanking you. For saving my life last time, and for whatever you did here. I’ve been tracking those demons, but I guess I was a little on the late side, like you said.”
Angel turned around and looked the much younger man in the eye. “Your welcome,” he said simply before turning back around and walking over to where the other three stood.
“Well hey,” Riley said as he spotted Willow and two other people who looked very familiar. “Willow and . . .”
“Xander,” the dark-haired man supplied.
“Jeez, what are the chances, huh?” Riley said nervously. “Yeah, I was just passing by when I thought I heard people inside.”
“Passing by in your GI Joe outfit?”
“GI . . . um, no I . . . Paintball! Yeah, I was playing Paintball, and then the aftershocks . . .”
“So you’re one of the Commando guys?” Xander surmised, attempting to put the other man out of his misery. “And probably the one Angel ran into before.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no . . . Commando, no, I mean . . .” Riley trailed off as his eyes fell on the platinum-haired man in the Hawaiian shirt who shifted under his gaze. “Don’t I know you?”
Spike started. “Me? No. No, sir. I’m just an ol’ pal er Xander’s here.”
“Oh, that’s . . . nice.”
~~~
“Yeah, we found out that my Psych TA was one of the agents of the Initiative, and that Professor Walsh was in charge too. Turns out she was kinda psycho too.”
“Ironic, since she was a psych professor,” Xander said helpfully.
“Well, they weren’t just doing like vampire rehab experiments in that giant microwave of a lab,” Willow continued. Buffy mouthed “microwave” at Xander, who just shrugged and waved a hand in Willow’s direction, a small smile on his face. The witch did not pause in her tale. “They were also chopping up demon and people parts and making this big patchwork monster like Dr. Frankenstein. It was supposed to be some super-soldier that would fight the good fight, only it’s more with the super and less with the good. She called it Adam to be all creepy and biblical, and then it killed her and escaped. And some people in the Initiative sort of connected her death to me and Angel, ‘cause she’d basically ordered me to ‘cease and desist’ from my ‘vigilante activities.’ But of course we didn’t, and Angel helped Riley out a couple of times. And Adam kind of . . . skewered her, which looks like . . .”
“A stake,” Buffy murmured, her mind flashing back to the fateful night last year when she and Faith had found out just what a stake could do to a human.
“A stake,” Willow agreed, “which the Commandos knew was Angel’s Modus Operandi. They came after him and they actually managed to capture him using, well, these laser gun things and sheer numbers. So they brought him down into their headquarters, and Adam showed up just in time to prove that A) he was the one who killed Professor Walsh, and B) he’s super strong and we have no idea how to stop him.”
“Which pretty much brings us to where we are now,” Xander added. “Except . . . oh! We skipped Ethan Rayne turning Giles into a demon! Luckily, the kind Angel knew how to communicate with.”
Buffy wrinkled her nose distastefully. “Ethan Rayne came back to town? I really hate him.”
“Yeah, well Giles went out drinking with him because he was all depressed since it was . . .” Willow trailed off, a strange smile spreading across her face as she stared at Buffy. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” she shrieked, leaping out of her seat and hurrying to embrace her friend.
When Willow moved away, she was quickly replaced by Xander, who pulled Buffy to her feet ecstatically.
“We missed your birthday!” he shouted. “Happy nineteenth!”
Buffy blinked, stunned. “I’m nineteen,” she whispered. “I’m nineteen.”
“We have to celebrate,” Xander said. “Why don’t we go Bronzing tonight! It’ll be just like old times. Except that Anya’ll be there, and the only time she was at the Bronze was when she was still evil and Willow’s evil twin vampire was going on a killing spree.”
“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Willow said. “And actually, there’s someone I’d like you two to meet . . . What do you say, Buffy?”
Buffy blinked again, refocusing on Willow. “Huh?”
Xander snorted. “Bronzing to celebrate the Buffster’s big one-nine.”
“Oh, um, actually . . . I was thinking I might . . .” Buffy turned to the street where the light of the setting sun cast long shadows.
Willow took in her friend’s blushing cheeks, and slight nervous stammer. “You want to find Angel,” she said softly. “And of course you totally should! He’ll probably be looking for you tonight, what with you not being in your hospital bed and all. He spends his days there, dawn to sunset.”
Xander looked slightly disappointed, stuffing his fists in his pockets and glancing down at his shoes. “We’ll go Bronzing another night. Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Buffy agreed.
~~~
Buffy knew where to find him. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. It was like some sixth sense was pulling her onward, through the darkening streets and the moonlit cemetery until he was standing before her. Neither of them moved, just drinking in the sight of the other. He took her breath away. He always took her breath away.
Angel was unable to tear his eyes from her. He inhaled deeply, bathing in her scent. She took one hesitant step forward, and he followed her lead. “Buffy,” he finally said, forcing the air through his lungs and making his rebellious vocal cords work.
Then they were moving, wrapping their arms around each other and holding on tightly.
That night, Buffy fell asleep in his arms and she knew she was home.
~~~
Miles away, Faith turned in her sleep, eyes flitting restlessly behind closed lids. Her hands snaked up her arms, wrapping herself in her own tight embrace as a peaceful smile spread across her face. For the first time in longer than she cared to think about, she felt right; somehow, she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
TBC
AN: Whew! Long wait. Long chapter! This was the longest by about 2000 words, which was part of the reason the wait was so long.
Shameless plug: Read ‘The Management’: the pilot for a spinoff the likes of which have never been spun before. My grammar’s confusing me . . . I’m sleep deprived.
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