Title: History Lesson
Author: Maeve Bran
Rating: T
Summary: Buffy spies a familiar face in her history textbook.
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy or Angel or Pirates of the Caribbean.
Notes: Takes place prior to the Season 2 episode, "Bad Eggs", and refers to events mentioned in the fic "From the Angel File - 1789".
Buffy sat in history class bored out of her mind. She was trying to pay attention, honest she was, but all those names and dates kept swirling around in her head and were starting to make her dizzy.
Then she spied the picture of the pirate in her textbook. Now that man was good looking. The man standing beside him looked familiar, too. Then she recognized him-- it was Angel! The date on the drawing said 1789. That would make him a vampire of thirty-six, back in his bad old days, and that meant the pirate beside him had been up to no good. She would have to ask Angel about that later after patrol. It had to be an interesting story, even if would feature heavily on the bloody side of Angelus.
The bell rang signaling the blessed end of another school day. Buffy joined the crowd exiting the classroom. She, Willow and Xander went to their lockers and then on to the library.
"Giles, how complete are those Watcher's diaries?" Buffy asked by way of greeting, once she was certain that only the Scoobies were present.
"Fairly complete as far as I know," Giles answered. Then he realized who had asked the question. "Why?"
"Because, look at this," Buffy said as she opened her history text. Giles, Willow and Xander gathered around and looked. They were stunned once they realized what they were looking at. "Do the diaries mention Angelus in the Caribbean? In the late 1700's?"
"Ah, no, they don't," Giles answered after consulting the proper diary.
A couple of hours later Buffy sat on a blanket in one of the cemeteries working on her history home work while waiting for a vampire to rise and for Angel to drop by. Angel made an appearance before the other vampire rose, and joined her on the blanket. He put his arm around Buffy and drew her close. She dragged the textbook with her.
He glanced over and saw the picture. "Where did they get that?" Angel asked softly.
"I have no idea. But wasn't that a little sloppy, getting your face on a wanted poster?" Buffy replied.
"Yes. Darla and I had taken passage on that pirate ship, the Black Pearl," Angel responded as if lost in the mists of time. "We thought it would be the perfect cover. They would attack other ships and we could feed, and in between we could feed on a crewmember here and there. 'Cause they were pirates, they were bound to fight and kill each other." He laughed ruefully. "We were wrong about that last part. They were cursed pirates. They could understand. We ended up sailing with the crew more than once over the next eight years."
Buffy was stunned. Her boyfriend had been a pirate. That was so totally cool. Strange but cool.
-x-