Summary: A year after 'Chosen,' Buffy, Xander and Willow have a phone conversation. Old hurts resurface and new amends are made. But the Scoobies are still wondering how the water buffalo fits into all of this…

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy/UPN. Not me.

-Atonement-

He called her last night.

That in itself wasn't strange. Xander called her every couple of weeks to see how it was going. How she liked Rome, how Dawn was doing in college. Things like that. The kind of stuff you discuss with your aunt.

Last night was different.

"Hello?" Buffy picked up the old fashioned phone but was greeted with no response. A choked muffling sound was all she could hear in the background. "Hello?"

"Buffy…" Xander's voice, 2000 miles away sounded distant and dissonant, like broken chords filtering through the air between them.

"Xander?" she cried out nervously. Her name, that one word, hung between them strange and unsettling. He sounded broken, lost, and not like himself at all. "What's wrong? Something happened. Something definitely happened."

"I'm sorry. I called because—well…we never said sorry, did we?"

"Wh—what?" Buffy responded, genuinely confused. What did he need to apologize for? Her stomach felt cold and light. Something was very, very wrong.

"We never said sorry…for what we did."

"You didn't do anything, Xander."

"We did something. Willow, Anya, Tara and I."

Buffy rolled her shoulders under the phone, the feeling of unease still evident. "Xander…don't. That was a long time ago. We don't have to talk about it."

"But we should talk about it."

"Don't be sorry. I'm happy that I'm alive. Living is fun, remember?" Of course, she hadn't always thought that, but what did it matter now? She had Dawn and actual free time, and she was living in Rome! Xander's broken apology might have meant something a couple years ago, but now…

Xander changed his tone of voice. "Have you ever talked about it? With Willow, or someone?"

"I talked about it with Spike. And Dawn, a couple of times."

Silence.

"That's good…that Spike could help you with that. I've never been his biggest supporter, but I'm glad that he had some uses."

She winces at those last, seemingly deliberate words and he seems to realize it over the phone.

"Oh crap, look I didn't mean it that way." He paused, again. "But what about Willow?"

"Willow and I don't talk about that kind of thing." Her voice is slightly tight and she hates herself for it. For a dirty little grudge that never has been able to dislodge itself from the back of her mind. For blaming her best friend for caring too much.

"None of us talk about that kind of thing anymore. Remember how it used to be? With all of us. Before…"

"You don't have to say it like that, Xander. I'm tired of the big, freaky, invisible elephant in the middle of the room. I died, and you guys brought me back. You're right, things haven't been the same between the Scoobies in a very long time. But it started before I died…the second time."

"You're right." Xander paused. "But it's more fun blaming the big, freaky, invisible elephant."

"How's Africa?" she asks, aware that whether it be justice or denial, when Xander sets his mind to something, he doesn't give up.

"Great. Lots of sand and border officials to bribe."

"Glad to hear that power hasn't corrupted you."

"You know me."

"You didn't have to apologize to me. It's water under the bridge. But thanks for doing it anyway."

"We hurt you, Buffy. We did something that we pretended was to help, but we were just selfish. And I'm still being selfish because I've never regretted that you're back. We hurt you, and then spent the next two years laying on more duties and burdens and accusations. We did these things and then we couldn't even trust your leadership towards the end."

Buffy snorts lightly. "I was acting like a first-class bitch towards the end. I mean, you didn't have to kick me out of my own house or anything, but still." Her own tone sobered a bit. "And Xander, as long as we're dishing out apologies, I should get to give you one too. That raid on Caleb's? A whole lot of people got hurt, died there. And what did I do? Try to send everyone storming back. After what Caleb did, and I couldn't even stay at the hospital and play a game of cards with you."

"I get what you mean now, all these apologies are unnecessary. You know I don't blame you about those things, don't you?"

"And I don't blame you for resurrecting me."

"Aww, aren't we heartwarming?"

"You know it."

They pause for a moment, wondering why they had let themselves drift so far apart in the first place. "Sunnydale…sometimes I think it broke us. And then we almost broke each other."

"We all turned into people that…people that I never wanted us to become."

"But maybe we're better people for it now. I like to think that."

Buffy just laughs. "When did you become Mr. Introspective?"

"I have my ways."

Buffy shifts the phone to her other shoulder. "Know if Willow's busy right now?"

"Are you kidding? She never works Tuesday."

"You can smell the irony in that statement, can't you?"

"I wouldn't be the Xan-man if I couldn't."

"Get her on the line, will you?"

"Yeah sure, why? I can do a three-way." A beat. "And if we were still seventeen, I would have meant that in the sweaty fun way…Ok, I can still mean it that way."

"Gross, Xander." Buffy crouched over the old TV and fiddled with the antenna as she began flipping through the channels. Her hand dropped and she covered her mouth in shock as the screen glowed with a familiar image. "Ah..hahaha, Xander, you have to turn on channel 31."

"Buffy, you are aware that the stations are different in Africa than Rome."

"Ok, fine, ruin my fun. But turn on your TV. And keep flipping the channels."

"How will I know where to stop if you don't tell me what I'm looking for" he whined.

"Trust me, you'll know it when you see it."

Not more than 5 seconds later, Xander had dropped the phone as he began howling with laughter. Picking it back up, he told Buffy "I'm getting Willow on the line now."

Ten minutes later…

Thousands of miles away from each other, each Scoobie sat on their own couch, happily munching popcorn in front of their TVs with phones cradled against their ears.

"Why is she singing?" Xander inquires.

"You already asked that" Buffy tells him.

Willow sighs good-naturedly. "She's sad because her lover gave her twelve gold coins, but then the wizard cut open the bag of salt, and now the dancing minions have nowhere to put their big maple…fish thing."

"Isn't that guy her chiropractor?" Buffy asks between mouthfuls of popcorn.

"Because of that thing he did with her feet? No, that was personal."

Buffy makes an "ahh" noise in understanding. "So how does the water buffalo fit in again?"

And bathed in blue light as she listens to inexplicable, garbled Indian singing in one ear and her friends in the other, Buffy thinks that maybe…

Maybe things can just be like old times again.

The End.

A/N: Heh. If you didn't notice, I lifted the movie scene for the most part from season two's 'Reptile Boy.' I always loved that scene and I think that it perfectly encapsulated the Scoobies' friendship. I wrote this oneshot kind of quickly so I know that it's far from perfect and kind of abrupt, but please review anyway!