My way: Angel doesn't know of the destruction of Sunnydale. He has no son.
Spike didn't die in the destruction of Sunnydale and closing of the Hellmouth. Spike never went to L.A.

Chapter 1

He was brooding again. That was happening a lot lately; or at least noticeably more then usual. He glanced at his watch. It read 12:37. "I have sometime before I became a crispy critter." He winced as he thought of this. She had used to say that. Used to, before….before. He stopped before walking out into the night. The pain was still there, no matter how many months it had been. He had said things he regretted, and wished like Hell he could take them back.

Flashback: 6 months earlier, L.A.

"Why are you here? You shouldn't be here." He growled at here, smelling Spike on her. He knew something was between them, but at the time, he had thought it just a close friendship.

" I'm sorry. We didn't know-" started apologetically, but he cut across her.

" I don't care! Get out! You should have called before assuming we would let you crash here while things are bad in Sunnydale!" He was angry over nothing and he hadn't any idea why. Sure he had plans for tonight, but why was he so angry?

"We?" She looked confused and the tiniest bit hurt. She looked around just in time to see Cordelia coming down the stairs, tying her bathrobe around her waist, very obviously wearing little beneath it.

"Angel, come back upstairs. Whoever it is can't be all that important, and I want to celebra-" She stopped partially down the stairs, a look of mixed emotions on her face. Shock was the most prominent though, but she worked quickly to recover herself.

Buffy too, worked hard to erase the shock and extreme hurt playing across her face, and for a moment, he almost regretted tonight's plans. Almost, but not completely.

As both women started to come out of their initial reactions upon seeing each other in this fashion, Spike walked in.

"Love, what's taking so long? Xander is driving me nuts, Willow is going stir crazy, and Dawn is sleeping in the back. All of us are tired, hungry, and need a place to- whoah. Well well well, what do we have here?" Spike had noticed Cordelia on the stairs, Buffy looking shocked and hurt, and Angel looking smug, shocked, hurt, angry, and confused.

"What a little thing we have here! Angel's ex, now my girl, Cordelia, the girl who lusted after Angel for so long, and Angel himself in a pretty little triangle. This is sweet." He wraps his arm around Buffy's waist, and she looks torn, but decides to step back into her boyfriend's arms.

Cordelia, overcoming the shock of seeing Spike, former evil vampire, and Buffy, former nemesis of said evil vampire and ex lover to her boyfriend, comes down the stairs, saying" Hello Buffy, Spike. What brings you here? And why is everyone waiting in whatever form of car you've brought?"

Buffy shifted uncomfortably and decided not to tell the whole story. "Sunnydale's a little on the...dark side right now. We needed to get out of there and we needed a place to stay. As for everyone being in the van, we didn't want to unload everyone at once, due to the fact the we would be invading as it is. Giles is getting food for us, and blood for Spike and we're meeting him here in.." she checked ger watch, a cheep-o she had bought at a WalMart on the way here, "about 10 minutes. If you let us wait here long enough to meet him, we'll leave and be out of your way so you can enjoy the rest of the night. Sorry we bothered you." She turned to leave, dragging a protesting and confused Spike behind her.

"What's up, Angel?" asked Cordy. "You know what's up. I don't want her here tonight. Not ever. Too many memories and way too many feelings. The gang wouldn't understand." He finished. She understood, and hurried to get some clothes on. She would welcome their guests, even if he wouldn't. She returned 5 minutes later with sweats and a t-shirt on. She went outside and found all of them ,the old Scooby gang, there.

"Sorry Cordy. We're just leaving now." Said Buffy, climbing into the driver seat. Now that she could look at her with something other then shock, Cordelia saw changes from the Buffy Summers she had known. Her hair was longer and pulled back into a messy bun, her frame was the same, but she seemed taller. "No" she thought, "She hasn't grown." She realized that Buffy had grown into the sense of respect that one would get for her. "Please stay!" Cordelia said the words before realizing she was thinking them. "I know Angel isn't thrilled to see you, but that doesn't mean we won't let you stay here. Not forever mind you, but for a while." Buffy looked at her, thoroughly disbelieving. "It's ok, I'll take the heat with the big guy," reassured Cordelia. The Slayer had never looked more relieved and thankful. She hopped out with an energy all too familiar to Cordy, and hugged her. "Thank you so much. You have no idea what this means to us." With that, she turned to the car and said "Unload guys, we're staying here!" Suddenly, the van sliding door ssprung open and the next thing she knew, a very mature and good looking Xander had leaped from the confines of the car, followed shortly by Willow. Willow was no longer the dorky girl Cordelia remembered. She had grown into a gorgeous women. "CORDY!" they both yelled in unison and tackled her. When she could finally breathe and see, Cordelia managed to see Giles standing, holding a sleeping Dawn. "Good God, she's heavy!" He grunted, passing her to Buffy so he could greet Cordelia properly. "It's nice to see you, Cordelia. And thank you for your hospitality."

"No problem, Giles. I'll show you all to your rooms, and then I'll give you a tour."

After the hoots and thank you's and such went around again, Buffy asked where Dawn should go, and that they could room together. After receiving directions to a room, Buffy started out. She put Dawn in bed, and left the room quietly. Everyone else was settling down in their rooms, so she decided to take some time alone, and went into an alley behind the old hotel. She stood for a moment leaning against the wall, then sank down to the ground and burst into tears. " Oh god, oh god oh god. What are we doing here. We never should have come. He's gonna be so angry." She sat there crying. "You'ree right, I am angry. Once you find a new place to stay, you leave. I don't want you here, understood?" Angel emerged from the shadows. Buffy stood straight up, looked at him with hurt, pain, and longing in her eyes. "Understood" she said and went inside, embarrassed."

End Flashback

He grimaced in pain. She and the gang had left the next day, with no place to stay. He heard from Giles a week later, who had come back to tell him what really happened and to let Angel know how hard Buffy has been working and that when she saw him, she almost died inside. "We slept in that van for 4 days. Buffy went numb inside after we left. Whatever you said or did, I just thought you should know how it effected her." And with that, he left. He hadn't heard from any of them. He decided to go to bed and skip the walk. He was exhausted and needed rest.

CHAPTER 2

Angel headed to bed, and after pulling on sweats and stripping off his shirt, he went to bed. He had no worries as to someone walking in while he slept, he and Cordelia had broken up and she had moved to New York. He left his door open and climbed into bed. He fell sleep immediately, but had anything but a restful sleep. She haunted his dreams, as always, but tonight was different.

Angel walks his normal path through the streets, when he hears a commotion in an alley nearby. He walks to the alley, and turns into it when suddenly he is temporarily blinded. He hears a voice calling, screaming his name. He runs to it only to be pushed back by an invisible force. There she is, but she's glowing. He doesn't care, and walks towards her, smiling one of his real smiles that rarely surfaced. As he walked towards her, she smiles at him, but when he reaches out to touch him, she screeches and soars into the air and hovers there, 10 feet in the air. Her eyes burned into him like Holy Water sprinkling. He stared at her in horror and pain and wonder. "Why?" he choked out. "Because, I'm dying, and it's all your fault! You kicked us out and onto the streets. We had no where to go because of YOU!" With that she screeched a blood curdling, unearthly sound filled with pain and regret.

With that, he jolted awake, shaking and panting, even though there was no reason for him to; he didn't need to breathe. AS he awoke, there was something shimmering at the foot of his bed. He focused in it, and nearly screamed when he realized what it was. Buffy was standing peacefully, as she had been in his dream. "B-Buffy?" he asked, hesitantly. "Yes, it is me. What you saw in your vision was true. I am dying, and it is because of you. When you kicked us out, we had no where to go. If I am correct, Giles came back to tell you we had been sleeping in the van, and that I had changed inside." She stated this without emotion, and it hurt him worse then when she had been shrieking. "Once we had arrived home, we all began to get jobs. Giles opened another bookstore, Willow works in it with him, and business is successful for them. Xander works as a janitor in an office building, and he goes to college part time. Dawn is finishing college with Xander; she plans on being a teacher. Spike is helping me patrol at night, and I work in a gym as an instructor. We got a big house, and were living well for a few months. But I wasn't happy. Not even content." She finished up, and emotion started to crack through her voice, her face softening and yet hardening at the same time. He wanted to know where she was, what was happening with the others, why she was dying. There was so much he needed to know. As he started to ask, she held up a hand and he suddenly fell quiet. "The others are fine. Willow knows of my condition. The others do not. It is my time to go. Goodbye, my Angel." With sadness in her eyes, she disappeared.

Angel was flabbergasted. "How?" he said. How had her spirit come to him, without her being dead? Without so much as getting food, he changed and left to find her.

CHAPTER 3

Unionville, PA. 1 week later

Willow sat in her favorite coffee shop, Pete's. She loved the mood it put her in. It always calmed her frayed nerves to just sit here and listen to the calming rhythms being pumped out of the speakers. Her nerves were especially frayed since last week. Buffy had wanted to contact Angel to tell him that the dreams the Powers had been sending were true. The spell Willow had had to use was complicated, and had knocked her unconscious for a few hours. Buffy was determined that the spell not give any hints as to where she was, just how she was. She showed Angel how she looked, but now how she felt. Inside, she was dead. There was nothing and no one that could stir up any real emotion in her. When Buffy had told Willow she was dying, Willow broke down. "It's nothing natural, Willow. Remember on the Hellmouth, when the girl who felt invisible, became invisible?" Buffy had gently asked. "Yes, I remember. The Hellmouth and its magicks made her become what she felt she was." Willow remembered how they had had to fight her, and in the end the FBI ended up taking her away. She wondered what had happened to the girl, and started thinking of what the FBI wanted with her. Willow was pulled out of her thoughts as Buffy explained that there must have been a Hellmouth under the old barn by the private school, because ever since Buffy had replaced the gym teacher there, she had started to loose all emotion. When they left LA after Angel yelled at Buffy, she had started to feel as if the only thing she could feel was pain. Then, when the pain started to dull, she felt nothing. She would have moments where she felt happy, but they would be quickly gone. Once she had begun working at the school, however, she realized that those moments had stopped occurring at all. "Well, why don't you just quit?" Willow asked, It made sense to her. "The others would know something is wrong. Besides, I need to protect those kids and fight if need be. I've noticed strange things happening. The girls seem to care less and less about school and more and more about fashion and boys." Willow snorted with laughter and gave Buffy a pointed look. "Will, I mean to the point where it's not normal. The boys have changed, too. After one week of working out for an hour a day in our poor excuse for a weight room, I noticed the boys are already showing muscles that usually takes weeks to develop."

Angel was still confused about his dream. It had been a week since his dream, and he had been searcing for Buffy ever since. He found records of her from up to 3 weeks after he had thrown her and the Sunnydale group out, but after that...they just dissappeared. He sat on his bed running his hands through his hands. He had tried all the hotels in LA and the surrounding areas. He looked into bookstores, gyms, office buildings, and colleges. He looked for any of them. Just one, hoping that one could lead him to Buffy. So far, no luck. He went to bed, haunted by dreams of her in millions of horrible places and millions of horrible deaths, and each of them he could only watch on in horror as the love of his life died.