Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of Stephenie Meyer. The original plot is the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Written for "Fandom for Texas Wildfire Relief".

Beta team: Ajr818, Lacrimosa Moon, and JaspersDestiny from Sparkly Red Pen.

Summary:

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer"/"Bones" crossover. AU.

Timeline: Post "Not Fade Away" ("Angel") and "Chosen" ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"). Somewhere in the first season of "Bones".

Angel's death in yet another averted apocalypse is the final blow for Buffy. She moves to Washington, DC, where she tries to find a way to survive without the other half of her soul. Two months later, a serial killer on the loose brings her face to face with FBI Special Agent Booth, a man that could be Angel's twin brother, but he doesn't seem to know who she is. Never stop believing in soul mates, even if you have to wait till death brings you together.

Living After The End

When Buffy regained consciousness, she knew that nothing would ever be the same again. Angel had left before, but at least then she had known that he was still alive, still a part of this world, even if he wasn't with her. This was different. This was final.

In the following days, Willow flew in from London, bringing Giles and Dawn with her, but no one could console Buffy or get her to talk. At first, she couldn't stop crying. Then, she would go on for days without moving. Three weeks after the destruction of Los Angeles—and the death of Angel—Buffy finally spoke.

"I need to be alone," she said to Dawn. "I know that you are the only one who can understand how I feel."

"I think I do," Dawn answered, watching as her big sister packed her clothes into a traveling bag. "I will miss you."

Buffy paused and looked up at her little sister. She didn't care that most of her memories of Dawn were planted; she loved her as a sister. Causing Dawn pain was the last thing Buffy wanted. She went over and hugged Dawn, and the two cried together.

"I loved him, Dawnie," Buffy whispered, speaking about Angel for the first time in weeks.

"I loved him, too."

There was very little said afterward as Dawn helped Buffy pack. Dawn would have Timothy, a brilliant and kind pre-med student in England, to turn to when she went back home. Buffy would have no one. It worried Dawn, but she understood her sister like no one else did. She knew that Buffy needed to handle some things on her own.

It was a sad but quiet goodbye as Dawn drove Buffy to the airport and watched her sister board a flight to Washington, DC. She wondered how long it would take Buffy to start dealing with Angel's death. Unlike the rest of the Scooby Gang, Dawn knew that Buffy would love Angel forever and that there would never be any getting over him, just dealing with the reality of his absence. She would give Buffy a month, Dawn decided, and then she would come to see how she was doing, whether Buffy wanted her there or not. Dealing was one thing, but sinking into self-pity was another, and Dawn had no intention of allowing her sister to do that for long.

—(~)—

Washington, DC

Buffy found a small cottage that she liked in one of the suburbs of Washington, DC. It was a small, two-story house with a gray-painted exterior and white shutters. It looked like many of the other houses on the street. It looked normal.

She felt uneasy at first, using money that Angel had left her to purchase the house, but after reading the letter he had left with his lawyer, she knew that she could not refuse him. She wanted to be angry with him for deceiving her, but she could not. He sacrificed himself to save her life, and she could not begrudge him for something that she would have done herself had she been in his shoes. He had wanted to take care of her, to allow him to give her this one last gift, and Buffy decided that she would not dishonor his memory by refusing to accept it.

Since the house was fully paid for, Buffy focused her thoughts toward decorating and furnishing it. It was easier to concentrate on small, mundane details than to allow herself to think about the gnawing pain that would rise to the surface each time she thought about Angel.

Washington was pleasantly calm in terms of the supernatural, and when Dawn came for a visit, both of them could relax for an entire week without having to mention the word vampire even once.

A month and a half after his death, Buffy felt that she might just survive being without him, but that would be all that her life would be: surviving. Buffy knew that the scar on her heart would never heal completely, but at least it was no longer a gaping hole in the middle of her chest.

She was on her way home from the store when she noticed that her quiet neighborhood was not so quiet anymore. Red and blue lights, sirens, and chatter filled the evening air as she walked to her front door. She heard the neighbors—all of whom she still didn't know—saying something about a body that had been found and her ears perked up. Quickly unlocking the door and putting the groceries away, she stepped right back out into the street. A body was not something common in the quiet neighborhood, and after living for so long on the Hellmouth, every body found in her proximity immediately aroused her suspicion.

Buffy could see that there were a lot of FBI agents present, recognizing them easily by the three yellow letters written on the backs of their jackets. Something was up, she thought, as she watched a tall, thin woman, wearing what looked like a forensic plastic overall, and a man in a suit walk toward the house that was swarming with police.

She used the crowd to move closer to the scene of the crime—a house that was only five doors down from her own—without anyone stopping her. The police in DC proved to be much smarter than their colleagues in Sunnydale, so Buffy had to be careful in order to avoid being considered a suspect. Her sole interaction with the Sunnydale PD was enough to last her a lifetime or two, and she did not want a repeat performance.

Fifteen minutes later, all she had for her efforts was an overheard conversation stating that they had found a badly decomposed body in the basement of the house. It didn't appear to be demon-related, and after hearing nothing pointing toward the supernatural, Buffy decided to let the police handle this one and went back to her house.

—(~)—

"So, Bones, what can you tell me about this guy?" Special Agent Seeley Booth turned to his partner, gesturing at the dead body that lay on the floor of the basement.

"Well, this 'guy' is a female, Booth." Dr. Temperance Brennan was quick to correct him. Since she wasn't looking up at him but at the body, she missed the eye roll that her words had earned her. "Late teens, early twenties," she said as she examined the remains. "Level of decomp suggests that she's been here for at least two years. Hodgins can be more definitive once he analyzes the insects."

"Cause of death?"

"Undetermined at this point." Brennan stood up and took off her latex gloves. "Send the body to—"

"The Jeffersonian," he finished for her. "Already on it, Bones." He used his charming smile on her, unable to resist the opportunity to tease her.

This time it was her turn to roll her eyes. "I told you not to call me 'Bones'."

"And I ignored you." He smiled. "I'm going to go talk to the family that lives here. They moved in a few months ago, so your time of death crosses them off the list of potential suspects, but I still want to see what I can get from them. Would you like to join me?"

Brennan considered it for a moment, but then she decided that her presence was more valuable in the Medico-Legal lab in the Jeffersonian than in a routine conversation with the family that lived in the house where the body was found. "No, I'll go with the body and see if I can give you some answers."

"Okay, Bones. I'll see you later."

He tried his best to remain objective, but the loss of a life always touched a nerve, especially when it was someone so young.

Poor kid barely had a chance to live, he thought as he made his way toward the living room.

—(~)—

Booth was exhausted by the time he made it back to his apartment. There had been little progress made with the investigation. They were still unable to identify their victim, but at least Hodgins was able to confirm the time of death—two years, just like Bones had estimated. The cause of death was still undetermined, and the injuries the victim sustained were giving him a headache. She had a compound fracture to the left ulna and a green leaf fracture to the clavicle, both of which occurred perimortem—at the time of death. One could not work with Bones and not pick up a few terms, he thought with a faint smile. Allegedly, the victim's death was a violent one—it would have taken great force to cause the injuries that she sustained—but there were no ligature marks, no defensive wounds, nothing. It was as though she was paralyzed or drugged at the time of her attack, but again—there was no evidence of either.

When Bones began listing names of vertebrae that had sustained some kind of damage as well, Booth felt his eyes glaze over. He had to stop her flow of words and remind her he did not speak Vulcan and that he would appreciate plain English. Bones was a great partner and an asset to the FBI, but there were times when he could swear she was from another planet.

Finally, Hodgins took pity on him and explained, "It looks like something very sharp punctured her jugular and went so deep that it left a mark on the vertebrae."

"Can you determine what kind of weapon was used?" Booth asked.

"Just give me time." Hodgins smirked in confidence.

"Good. Are we any closer to identifying her?" Booth looked at Bones again.

"I made a sketch of the girl." Angela handed him the portrait. "I ran it through the Missing Persons database, but so far, no luck."

"There were no old injuries or existing medical conditions that we could check either," Zack volunteered.

"What about dentals?"

Angela shook her head. "No hits."

"So, basically, we don't know Jack," Booth summarized.

Angela sighed. She knew that he wasn't being intentionally rude, but the young age of the victim was taking its toll on him. "We are not magicians, Booth. Give us the time, and we'll give you the evidence you need to catch whoever did this."

"Fine." Booth sighed. "Let me know when you have anything new."

"I will," Brennan said.

I need to stop beating myself over this case, Booth thought as he tried to shake away the memories of the day's events. He pondered watching something on TV to distract him, but eventually he decided on a hot shower and an early night.

Crawling under the cool sheets of his bed, he checked once again that his gun was in the nightstand and within reach if needed and then turned off the night lamp and closed his eyes. It took only minutes before he was plunged into a world of dreams.

Six hours later, Seeley Booth woke up with a start. His heart pounding in his chest and sweat coming down his forehead, he gasped for air. For the life of him, he could not remember what he had dreamed, only that it was very violent. Taking several deep breaths, he pulled the covers away and headed for the shower.

—(~)—

Buffy looked at the headline of the newspaper and felt a shiver go down her spine. Washington, DC, was not Sunnydale, and when the mortality rate of the local youth was on the rise, people noticed. She had been following the papers ever since the body had been found two weeks ago in the house down the street from her. Nothing in the reports gave her any reason to, yet she was sick with worry.

Actually, I'm probably just plain sick, Buffy thought as another chill went down her spine. She hated being sick, and luckily, she was generally healthy, but ever since Angel's death, she had been feeling her strength waning and her body betraying her. At first, she had attributed it to stress—Lord knows she had had a lot on her shoulders during the past month and a half—but as time went by and she hadn't gotten any better, she began to worry. A sick Slayer could easily mean a dead Slayer, and while Buffy was not the only one anymore, she knew that she still had a target painted on her back when it came to evil.

Now it seems like I have more than just the demon kind of evil to worry about, she thought as she finished reading the article about the serial killer who was terrorizing the young population in the nation's capital. Now I have to worry about the human kind as well.

Buffy pushed the paper aside and opened her laptop. Ever since the destruction of Sunnydale and Giles's appointment as the new head of the Watchers' Council, she found herself with a lot of free time on her hands. There was a Hellmouth in Cleveland, but Faith had taken it upon herself to guide the local Slayer—a position Buffy was all too happy to avoid. After living for so long in a place that was the center of mythical convergence, she was happy to get away from it. However, that did leave her with plenty of time and very little plans, so for the first time in the six years since she had been called, Buffy had a future to think about that did not include an approaching apocalypse.

Later that day, just as Buffy was coming back from her evening run, she was once again greeted with the sight of police cars and emergency services. She saw that this time they were further down her street, but there were FBI agents all over the place once again. The whispered murmurs—and the overheard conversation of two patrol officers—told Buffy that this was yet another victim of the serial killer. This time it was the body of a young girl who had disappeared three months ago from the local college campus. The officers' conversation revolved around how gruesome the body looked, with rats and other insects attacking it.

The description, and the image that it had brought up in her mind, sent Buffy to the nearest bush, where she threw up everything she had inside her stomach. When the nausea finally passed, she slowly made her way home. Stripping as soon as she made it to her bathroom, she stepped inside the shower to, hopefully, wash away not only the dirt and sweat but also the images her mind kept conjuring.

—(~)—

Booth was frustrated. It was their ninth victim, and there were still no leads. The victims were all young girls between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one, but that was the only commonality. Everything else—race, appearance, environment, social circles—was different. Two of the victims had gone to the same dentist; three others had graduated from the same high school but in different years. One was married and had lived with her husband, two had lived with their families, two had lived with a boyfriend, and the other four had lived alone. There were so many variables that it was maddening to try to make sense of it all.

This last discovery was the most recent out of the nine victims. Seeley had seen some terrible things in his life, but the sight of rats eating away at the flesh of the petite blonde was especially hard to stomach, and he wasn't sure why that was.

"Can you give an estimate of how long she's been here?" he asked the coroner crouching next to the body.

"I would say she's been here for no more than two weeks," the coroner replied.

"Two weeks?" Booth lifted his gaze from his notepad. "So she wasn't killed here?"

"It would seem so. It's still early to tell, Agent Booth."

"Okay, I'll go talk to the neighbors and see if anyone saw something," Booth said. "Send me your report when you're done."

"I will."

Booth was glad to be walking out of the basement and the horror that it held. Two weeks ago, when the first victim was found, it had been one of the patrol officers who did the questioning while Booth talked to the family who owned the house where the body was found. This time, he decided to do it himself.

However, after talking to several neighbors, he learned that there wasn't much they could tell him, and that left him frustrated. He had just one house left to visit, the furthest one from the crime scene, and Booth assumed that its residents wouldn't know anything new either.

He knocked on the door and held his badge in his hand, ready to show it.

"Evening, ma'am. I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth from the FBI," he introduced himself to the woman who opened the door. He was about to continue, but the look of shock on her face halted the words before they left his mouth.

"Angel?" It was nothing louder than a whisper, and he barely caught it.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" he asked when he noticed that with each passing moment that she stared at him, her color was growing paler.

Buffy couldn't speak. She couldn't move. It was Angel. Standing at the front door of her house was her soulmate, and he was looking at her as though he didn't know who she was. A thousand questions swirled around in her mind as she tried to keep herself standing. After a few moments, she realized that he was talking to her, asking her if she was feeling well.

"Is this some kind of a joke?" she asked, trying to keep her tone curt, but her voice broke on the last word.

"I beg your pardon?" Booth was taken aback at the mix of anger, hurt, and what appeared to be a fierce sense of betrayal in her eyes.

"I thought you were dead!"

He blinked several times, unsure of how to respond to that. "I think you might be confusing me with someone else."

"Confusing?" Buffy hated how small she sounded. This can't be happening. She had dreamed about Angel often, but never had she imagined him appearing on her doorstep, acting as though he didn't know her at all.

Booth could see tears forming in her eyes and suddenly felt the urge to hold her. "Why don't we go in so we can sit down and talk?" he suggested. The girl—no, woman—standing before him looked as though she was about to faint.

For a moment, he thought that she might slam the door in his face, but she stepped aside in a silent agreement, and something akin to a challenge appeared in her gaze. He stepped into the house and followed her into the living room, noticing that her eyes never left him.

Buffy could feel the familiar tingle moving through her body when he stepped closer and came inside the house. He didn't need an invitation to enter, and when she brushed her hand against his, he felt warm.

Whoever he might be, he is human. That much I'm certain of.

—(~)—

Buffy answered the agent's questions in monotone—there was little she could tell him anyway—but her eyes kept watch on every minute movement of his body. She felt her heart breaking all over again inside her chest, and when he stood to leave, she wanted to scream after him to not walk away from her again. She had to bite her tongue so that she wouldn't beg him to stay.

"If you remember anything that could be of use, here is my card."

He handed her a plain white business card with his name and number written on it. When they reached the door, he paused.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.

It was hard enough that everything about him reminded her of Angel, but the worry in his last question was almost her undoing.

She nodded, hiding behind a blank mask. "I'm okay," she lied.

—(~)—

Buffy called Willow as soon as she heard Angel—no, Agent Booth, she reminded herself—step away from her house. The tears were running freely down her cheeks, and the lump in her throat was so large that she was barely able to say anything other than, "Willow, I need you."

The Wiccan was immediately alarmed. Buffy sounded almost as bad as she was right after Angel's death.

"I'll be there as soon as I possibly can."

As Buffy collapsed in a pile of sobs, on the other side of the ocean, Willow rushed to pack an overnight bag for herself. She scrawled a short note to her roommate, saying that she was going to visit a friend overseas, and flashed out of the door. Normal means of transportation were just too slow for the powerful Wiccan, so she turned to her coven sisters and asked for their assistance in teleporting her to the States.

An hour after receiving the call from her friend, Willow was knocking on Buffy's front door. She thought about just going in, but both her manners and the fact that surprising a Slayer might cost you your life stopped her from reaching for the handle.

The tear-filled devastation on Buffy's face was something Willow never wanted to see again. It was as though Angel had died all over again.

Buffy cried for what seemed like hours while Willow just held her, not really knowing what had brought on this sudden breakdown.

Finally, at the wee hours of the night, Buffy's tears seemed to have dried and Willow decided to risk asking her, "Feel like telling me what happened?"

"Angel..." Buffy whispered, digging her fingers into the pillow that she was holding. "I think...I don't know what to think anymore."

Willow stayed silent, allowing Buffy to get everything off her chest.

"There was a crime...a, uh, a murder in the neighborhood." Buffy stared into space, seemingly lost in her memories. "This FBI guy came to my house to ask if I saw anything. Will," she turned to look at her friend, "this guy could be Angel's twin brother."

"T-twin brother?"

Buffy nodded. "He looked so much like him that I thought it was him." She sighed and leaned on Willow's shoulder. "It wasn't him. He didn't even know me. Oh, Will, when he looked at me," Buffy lifted her eyes to look at her friend, "it was like he had never seen me before. He kept calling me 'ma'am'." She laughed bitterly. "I was a complete stranger, and he was wearing the face of my soulmate." She broke down in tears again, amazed that she still had more. "He even left a card...Oh, God, Angel...why did you leave me?"

It took another hour for Willow to convince Buffy to go to bed and get some sleep. Once her breathing leveled, Willow went back to the living room and picked up the business card lying there. So, Mister FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth, it's time to find out who you really are.

—(~)—

Seeley Booth was staring at the computer screen with a look of complete concentration on his face, but it wasn't the serial killer's case that had him sitting in his office until late in the day—it was one Buffy A. Summers. He couldn't help but feel shaken to the core by her behavior. The betrayal and the desperation he had seen in her eyes amazed him, almost making him feel guilty about not being the person she thought he was, and if he were to be honest with himself, the glimpse of love and absolute devotion he had seen in her eyes when she spoke of Angel made him slightly envious. He had no doubt that whoever this Angel was—she loved him very much.

"But why did she think I was him?" he asked, only half-aware that he had done so aloud.

He debated with himself for several hours, pondering whether he should do a background check on her or not. She wasn't a suspect; he didn't really have a reason to look into her affairs.

There's just something about her...

Eventually, his curiosity won, and he pulled out everything he could on her. There was not much to find, though. She was born in LA and moved to a small town by the name of Sunnydale after—

Burning down her high school gym?

He laughed, shaking his head as he read the details of that incident. He couldn't fathom what had caused her to do such a thing, but he figured that everyone had their quirks when they were in high school.

He continued on to read the details of her time at Sunnydale High. She seemed to have been an average student; nothing popped out. There was the occasional skipping of a class, but that was pretty much that. He was skimming through the information when he came across a line that stated that her school had been destroyed after her graduation, and he found himself laughing again.

This girl really doesn't have any luck when it comes to school, does she?

The reports continued to state that she went through one year of college at Sunnydale University before dropped out due to her mother's illness. Upon her mother's death, she was appointed sole custodian of her younger sister and took a position as a youth consultant at her old high school, which had been rebuilt by then.

There wasn't much information after both girls left Sunnydale and moved abroad. The sister, Dawn Summers, was currently living in England and attending university. Buffy Summers first lived in Rome for several months, but a few weeks ago, she had bought a small house in Washington, DC, where she currently resided.

That was all that the initial check had told him, but his gut was telling him that there was more, so he dug a little further. He found that Sunnydale was destroyed in some kind of freak accident when a crater opened up just beneath the city and swallowed it whole. There were tons of conspiracy theories revolving around this event, and Booth had no doubt that if he were to ask Hodgins, he would hear plenty more. However, while most of the time he would have ignored the stories as those told by people who would believe in anything as long as they could blame it on the government, this time something didn't sit well with him.

When every search he made brought up more and more conspiracy theories—each more outrageous than the last—he decided it was time to call in a favor, and he knew just the right people to ask.

The following day, he approached them in her office.

"I need a favor," he said in a quiet tone to the two people standing there. "It's something that's completely off the record and possibly not very legal."

"I'm in." Hodgins was quick to agree.

"What is it, Booth?" asked Angela.

"I need your computer skills, Angela." He handed her a piece of paper with the name Buffy Summers printed at the top. "Can you find everything there is to know about this person?"

"A woman?" Angela had a devilish smile on her face.

"Yes. It's something that came up during a neighborhood sweep. Something about her doesn't add up."

"I smell conspiracy!" Hodgins announced, rubbing his hands together.

Booth chuckled. "I don't know if it's a conspiracy, Hodgins, only that something doesn't smell right." He handed Hodgins another note and said, "See if you can find out what happened here."

"Sunnydale?" Hodgins frowned. There was something familiar about the name, but he couldn't quite pinpoint where he had heard it before.

"Yes." Booth nodded.

Angela looked up the woman in all the regular databases first. She knew that any information that she would have found there, Booth would have already seen, but she was nothing if not thorough, so she dug deeper.

"Hodgins?" she called when things started getting a little too weird for her.

Hodgins leaned over and peeked at the information showing on the screen. "Of course! Sunnydale!"

He was immediately shushed by both Angela and Booth.

"Sorry," he said in a much quieter tone. "Sunnydale was said to be the place of a failed government experiment, and that whole crater story? Cover up! Allow me?" he asked Angela as he reached for the keyboard.

"Sure."

Loading up a web page, he said, "The story is that there were a lot of unexplained disappearances throughout the history of Sunnydale. Demons, werewolves, vampires..." He grinned at the screen, completely missing the eye roll that was exchanged between the two other people in the room. "...you name it. The government tried to get the supernatural creatures to work for them, but after an experiment went wrong, the operation was shut down and they disposed of anyone who knew anything about it."

"Then how come you know something about it?" Booth asked, not even bothering to hide the sarcastic tone of his question.

"Well, it is the government." Hodgins huffed. He scrolled down the site to a part that was titled "The Slayer" and paused there. "Personally, I think it's a hoax, but some people claim that there's one woman, called the Slayer, who, along with two powerful witches, stopped the experiment and killed the demon that the government created in an attempt to build the ultimate soldier."

Hodgins turned, only to see Booth and Angela exchanging a doubtful glance.

"How much of this can actually be proven?" asked Booth. He was never one for conspiracy theories, but even he couldn't deny that there was more to the whole issue than what the official version stated.

"Plenty!" Hodgins turned back to the website and loaded several sketches of something that appeared to be a cross between a man and a machine, with a lot of fantasy thrown in for good measure. "Their super soldier was reportedly called Adam. This," he pointed at the sketches, "is what he looked like before the Slayer and her friends killed him. Apparently, there wasn't much left after they were done with it."

"So, you think this Slayer is real?" Angela asked, confused.

"Nah, like I said—hoax. I think it's another cover story by the government. They never wanted to admit that one of their experiments had gone wrong and that they had to destroy it."

Booth looked at the information on the screen and had to shake himself when he found himself wondering how much of it was true. Damn, Hodgins is getting to me!

"Well, it looks like your girl was somehow involved." Angela closed the site that Hodgins had loaded and brought up her own search. "There isn't much that I can access at the moment, but it looks like this person," she loaded a picture of a young man, "Riley Finn, gave this report."

Angela loaded an official-looking document, which Booth was certain she should not have been able to access—hell, he wasn't sure if he had the clearance to access that information—and read it aloud.

"Miss Summers was a fundamental part in many of the team's operations. Her actions served to save many lives, including my own, on more than one occasion."

"That's one hell of a report," Hodgins noted.

Booth agreed but said nothing.

"Hey, Hodgins?" Angela called.

"What?"

"Does this guy remind you of anyone?" She sent a pointed look toward Booth before looking back at Hodgins.

Hodgins looked at the photo on the screen and then at the FBI Agent. He had to admit that there were some similarities. "A little..."

"What? No way," Booth objected. "I'm way hotter than he is." He smirked, and Angela and Hodgins laughed.

"What's so funny?" The question came from behind them, causing all three to jump and turn to see Dr. Goodman standing in the doorway.

"Oh, nothing, just a private joke," Angela was quick to assure, swiftly closing the window with Riley Finn's photo.

"Good. Do we have any progress on those test results, Dr. Hodgins?"

Booth tuned Hodgins and Goodman out as they spoke and leaned over to Angela. "Can you continue to dig and send me all the info to my personal email when you're done?"

"Sure," she answered quietly. "Will you tell me why you need it?"

"I..." He hesitated. "I'm not really sure why I need it myself, Angela."

"Okay, Studly." She grinned at him as his cheeks colored a bit. He was very cute when he was all flustered, and she couldn't help teasing him sometimes. "You'll have it in your mailbox by this evening."

"Thanks, Angela."

—(~)—

Later that evening, when he got back to his apartment, Booth opened the email that Angela had sent him. She was able to find reports from Riley Finn, who turned out to be a Staff Sergeant, and as he read through them, he could discern that there was more to the man's relationship with Buffy Summers than a strictly professional liaison. He didn't know why, but he found that the idea annoyed him.

The reports he was reading now were much less vague than the ones Angela had found earlier that day. They spoke of things that Booth couldn't really believe were true, but it seemed that they were. The reports contained a mass of photos, as well as witness accounts that he could not just dismiss as the overworked imaginations of conspiracy fanatics.

In the privacy of his home office, he could admit that there was some resemblance between Finn and himself—they were the same height, similar build, and both had dark hair and brown eyes. There was no mention of Angel anywhere in the reports, which ended just shortly before the destruction of Sunnydale, but since a year had passed since then, Booth could not conclude whether Buffy's relationship with Angel had been before or after she met Riley.

He tended to lean toward before. Buffy's reaction to seeing him—who she had said looked very much like Angel—and the look she had had in her eyes, made him think that Riley was probably no more than a replacement, and a poor one at that, judging from their short term involvement.

The information in Booth's hands also stated that Riley had married since leaving Sunnydale and had had no contact with Buffy ever since parting ways with her. While Riley could have lied to his commanders and kept in touch, the phone records Angela had attached to the email clearly showed that there were no phone calls exchanged between the two.

No matter how much he looked, there was no mention of Angel in the information Angela sent him, and he was growing frustrated. Finally, when the time grew closer to morning, Booth decided that he had no other option but to talk to Buffy herself. He needed answers, and she was the only one who had them.

Thank you for reading,

Alley Cat.