Title: Angel from Heaven Angel from Hell

Author: meee

Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me

Summary: AU Buffy is an exiled angel whose only chance of returning to Heaven is to help Angel redeem himself. It gets complicated.

Timeline: Present is the year 2027, but most of it takes place in 2007. All of Buffy's story from the show took place 100 years before it did in the show.

Feedback: First fic so pleeeaaase?

Year: 2007 (20 years earlier) Location: Manhattan, New York

Angel stumbled into a deserted alley in his tattered shoes. Landing in a pile of incredibly dirty cardboard pieces leaning against one of the buildings, he decided that the cardboard nest was a good place to sleep for the next day. He started to cover himself up with the cardboard.

"Wow. This place smells. So do you, actually. What's that you're wearing, l'eau de garbage?" asked a voice from the alley.

Angel looked up, dazed. He thought the alley was empty, but apparently not. In the darker part of the alley, there was a girl, no woman, who looked maybe twenty years old. She was wearing a clean white shirt and clean black slacks and a clean leather blazer. Basically, she was a lot cleaner than everything in the alley combined. To Angel, she looked beautiful and he felt desire for her, but also a little bloodlust, which was never good.

"Get out of here. You don't wanna be near me," Angel muttered at her, looking away.

"Relax. 'Cause if you don't, you might as well just bite me now," the woman said cheerfully, walking over to stand in front of him. She saw his surprised look. "Yeah, I know about you. Once a vampire, but defanged with a soul. Sounds depressing."

"You don't know anything about me," Angel said, glaring at her.

"We'll talk about what I know and don't know later. For now, let's just start with names. I'm Buffy. And you're Angel. Good, now we're on first-name basis. By the way, do you even have a last name? I never could tell," Buffy said.

Angel was still a little confused about why she was even talking to him. He was nothing, just a bum wandering in the streets of Manhattan. She looked like she was ready to go on a date, and he looked like he was ready to go to a homeless shelter. Somehow, Angel felt an impossible warmth expand inside him when he looked at her. He tried to ignore the feeling, but he was sure it was love at first sight, on his side anyway.

"So I get that you're still confused, although luckily it looks like you're not as depressed as you were before. Come on, let's go to my apartment. We have to get you inside before my only sunshine rises," Buffy said, stretching out a hand to pull him up.

Angel took the warm hand, and winced at the difference between their hands. He was still a vampire and she was still a human, so it didn't matter if he was already in love with her. But, no, she wasn't quite human. He could smell a subtle and strange difference between her and other humans.

"You know, I've been looking for you for a while. You couldn't have picked out a nicer home? Maybe one that doesn't send out the 'deserted alley' message?" Buffy said conversationally, leading Angel out of the alley and towards her apartment.

"Well, it's not like I can just go to Century 21 and ask for an apartment like you," Angel muttered under his breath.

"I heard that. You don't seem much like a people person," Buffy said with a small giggle.

"No, I'm not even a person," said Angel, but he softened up a little at the sound of her laughter.

"So I've heard. Well, here's my apartment."

Buffy closed the door behind Angel. The apartment was a little small and it looked like she'd just moved in. It didn't really look like she was much of an organization freak either.

It's a little small. Those stupid archangels wouldn't even give me a bigger apartment when they exiled me," she sighed. "Not that archangels are stupid," she added quickly, glancing upward.

Angel wasn't sure he'd heard the last part right. Archangels? What the hell was she talking about? Unless, oh, no way that was possible…

"Oh, yeah, I forgot that part, didn't I? Sorry, I never did have that much experience before. I'm not the greatest at this. So you probably wondered why I'm here. Well, long story short, I'm an angel. Or ex-angel actually. And no, I don't have wings or a halo," Buffy said, touching her hair self-consciously. "I really wish that I did have wings, though. It'd be so much better than that slow ass car I have to push most of the time."

Angel was even more bewildered, if that was possible. Before he could ask what was going on, two hands were pushing him into the bathroom of the apartment.

"Okay, now I don't know how vampires get clean, but you can use my shower. I can't talk to you anymore before I start commenting on your smell again. Use as much shampoo and soap as possible 'cause you seriously need it. I put a change of clothes on the shelf over there, but I'm not really sure what vampires like to wear either. And I had to borrow them from my friend, so don't hurt his fashion sense feelings," said Buffy before leaving the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Angel looked at the door she'd disappeared through indignantly.

"I don't smell," he grumbled. "That much."

Outside the bathroom, Buffy leaned against the wall and sighed. She had to admit, the vampire was hot, well behind all the dirt anyway. She felt drawn to him (definitely not because of the smell) for some reason. Buffy hadn't felt like this before, even when she was alive. But things like this never worked out between a vampire and a human (which had never even happened before) and their relationship couldn't be anything more than a deal.

Buffy realized that she was getting ahead of herself. She didn't even know what Angel thought of her yet, and here she was thinking about their future's chances, which were maybe zero out of a billion.

Buffy tore her thoughts away from that subject and thought more about his soul. She was really interested about that. Besides the chipped vampires, she had never seen a non-bitey vampire. And she could tell that Angel was still mondo depressed, even after the 100 something years of living with a soul. He was a little like her in a way.

They had a long ways to go. There was that getting-over-his-soul thing, and then there was the Angel's redemption thing, and also her-finally-leaving-Earth-again thing.

Ever since Buffy had been cursed to Earth again, she'd learned to become a master at compartmentalizing her feelings. She didn't think about how much being on Earth really depressed her unless she had to. She focused on returning to Heaven instead.

Buffy sighed and pushed herself off the wall and towards her tiny kitchen. She got a blood bag that she'd bought before from the freezer and heated it to body temperature in the microwave.

"Hey, um, I think these clothes are a little small on me," Angel said uneasily from behind her.

Buffy turned around and let out a laugh before she could stop herself. Angel glared at her.

"Sorry, it's just um…" Buffy broke off, laughing. He was wearing a bright blue floral Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts. "Well, sorry, remember I had to borrow them from my friend in California. I don't have much of a salary. Or any salary, really."

Angel scowled as she chuckled. He thought it was cute, but he wasn't going to admit that.

"Gosh, Mr. Grumpyface, don't worry. We'll go shopping tomorrow as soon as your sun allergy doesn't bother you," Buffy said with a smile.

The microwave dinged. Buffy quickly turned around again and cut open the blood bag into a mug, handing it to Angel.

"Thanks," Angel was surprised that she'd gotten food for him. "So, what exactly do you do? I didn't know angels were real. And, no offense, but you don't look or talk like an angel."

"Yeah, the archangels agree with you there," Buffy sighed. "The archangels are the ones you're thinking of, with the white robes and halos and stuff. I'm sort of like a lower angel. I do their dirty work. At least I did before. Now I don't do much of anything." Angel was a little confused by the last comment, but he decided to save it for later.

"Can other people see you?"

"Yes and no. People who know about or believe in demons can see me, but if you're one of those many people who are in an eternal state of denial, then I'm just a weird sparkly piece of air floating around," Buffy answered matter-of-factly.

Angel nodded, taking in the information. He wanted to know more about her when she was alive and also her exile, which he assumed she was before, but he wasn't sure if that would count as rude or not.

"Um, I don't really know much about angel etiquette, but I just wanted to know more about you as a person. Like when you were alive or on Earth," he said awkwardly.

Buffy looked away and walked slowly past Angel and braced her hands against a sofa behind him. She took a deep breath, but didn't turn around to face him.

"I was born in 1881. When I was fifteen, I was called as a Slayer and sent to the Hellmouth after a year. You probably already know all about Slayers. I fought on the Hellmouth for four more years until I was twenty. I sacrificed myself in 1901 to save my sister from death and the world from a hell dimension. After I went to heaven, I chose to become an angel to continue helping people. I screwed up with something as an angel, though, and they've pretty much banished me to Earth forever unless I manage to help you. I've been living on Earth for almost 100 years now," Buffy said in a distant and hard tone. "This is an all or nothing deal, though. If I can't help you, I'll be sent to hell, which you can guess, is a lot worse then where I am now."

Angel was shocked when he heard that she used to be and still was (although dead) a Slayer. Great. So they were supposed to be sworn enemies. And he couldn't imagine what it was like for her to have known heaven and be forced to stay on Earth. It seemed like hell for her.

Buffy took another breath and forced a smile on her face before she turned around to face Angel. He looked at her worriedly and she knew that he saw through her fake expression.

"Enough about me. I'm here to help you, which you probably guessed. You've got power, Angel, and you can use it. You just need a little guidance and self-confidence," Buffy said with forced cheerfulness. "I need you to tell me about yourself, which is way more important than what happened to me to both of us. And then, we're gonna' go on a little trip."

Angel bit back a groan as he thought about the stuff he would have to tell her. If he had it his way, she would be happily in love with him, a human him, and they wouldn't have any of this about demons and Slayers and angels. That would a fairytale, though, and Angel knew enough that there was no such thing as happily ever afters for cursed people like himself and Buffy.