In watching scenes of Angel's beginnings, Buffy had seen both how very far he had come and how, in some of the most important ways, he was still the same as he ever was. These were things she could have learned no other way than firsthand, for she knew that Angel, who was always so determined to see only the worst of himself, would not have recognized anything good in his errant youth.

Buffy, however, had seen a bright young man with an enormous capacity for love and kindness, but who was too discouraged by the void between his own dreams and what was expected of him to realize his potential. The Angel she knew was the same. That capacity for love was what enabled him to feel remorse and guilt almost to the point of insanity for a hundred and fifty years of terrible acts he had not committed. It was what had made it possible for him to open his heart to her when he saw her, even after so much despair that he could easily have been past feeling by then. It was the reason he had been able to recover his sentience and sanity after his long sojourn in Hell. It was why he had gone to L.A., leaving her free to find the kind of long-term joy he thought he couldn't offer her.

Well. So much for that last one.

No. She'd already decided not to dwell on that, hadn't she? And anyway, there were more pressing matters at hand. She was sure she knew what the next stop on her guided tour down Angel's memory lane would be, and she was equally sure that she didn't want to see it. She remembered Angel's words to her years ago, the night after she found out what he was and was trying so desperately to hate him in spite of a heart that refused to cooperate.

"I invited you into my home and then you attacked my family!"

"Why not? I killed mine."

The devout, stubborn, and well-meaning father who had struggled so hard to maintain his declining livelihood for his family's sake while despairing that he had apparently failed to instill the same values in his only son. The quiet, kind, and patient mother who stood by her husband through the hardships he tried to convince himself didn't exist, doing the grueling housework that servants had done in times when they could afford more than one without complaint. The sweet, compassionate, and fiercely loyal sister who saw only the good in everyone she met and hero-worshipped her brother long before he had done anything to deserve it.

And Angelus had killed them, simply because Liam had loved them. No; that was something she definitely didn't want to witness. There had been dysfunction, heartache, and disappointment aplenty, but underneath it all existed a loving family that faced challenges like any other, even if that was not apparent to everyone in it. Buffy did not want to see the night that family had been destroyed by the demon wearing the face of its wayward member.

Kathy was watching her curiously. "Ye're afraid I'll next show ye somethin' o' the demon 'e became," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Buffy admitted, wondering vaguely if perceptiveness as acute as Kathy's was unique to her or something everyone eventually learned in Heaven.

Kathy shook her head. "While Liam might 'ave a harder time believin' it 'imself, you know as well as I that the demon isn't my brother. Ye've already lived through what that monster is capable of. I've no more desire to see that again than you."

The house around them vanished, along with its inhabitants.

Their new surroundings were a clearing in a dense, black forest on a night darker than any Buffy had experienced. Somehow, she knew they were no longer in Galway, Ireland. There was a bonfire nearby, and its blazing light momentarily distracted her. Tearing her eyes from it, she saw that Angel was a few yards away. He had fallen to his knees and was clutching his head in his hands, and an awful sound was coming from him. It was like the howl of a wounded animal, but she could hear speech in it—most of which was not in English. It wasn't until she discerned the words "what have I done?" amid the disjointed babble that she realized what was happening. They had gone ahead a century and a half to the night he was cursed with his soul. And for the first time, Buffy fully appreciated what a terrible curse it was.

She wanted to run to him, hold him in her arms, and tell him how wonderful he was; that none of what he was remembering was his fault, but she couldn't. She was dead, and this scene was a hundred years old. It had been hard enough when she lived, to see the way his shoulders always hunched under the immense invisible weight of his conscience. But now it was fresh and looked like it was crushing him beneath it, and his pain clawed savagely at her heart. Even so, she didn't look away. She felt that this was something she needed to experience alongside him; sharing his woe as he had shared hers, no matter how much hers had paled in comparison.

"Oh, God. He was all alone like this for so long, wasn't he?" she asked around the hard lump that had risen in her throat.

"No," said Kathy softly. "'E was never as alone as 'e thought."

"You've been with him all along," said Buffy. Perhaps that perceptiveness was easier to learn than she'd thought.

"'E's my brother," said Kathy, who looked like she was on the verge of tears. "I couldn't leave 'im on 'is own. Not like this. 'E always looked out fer me. This was my only chance to return the favor."

For a long time, they watched the anguished form before them in silence. Then a small, painful smile formed on Buffy's face. "Thank you," she said.

Okay, this chapter is where the idea for the story came from. Buffy seeing Angel at the moment when he first got his soul in 1898. I'm not sure what possessed me to expose her to what I consider one of the saddest, most heart-wrenching moments of either show, but there you are. And this is another chapter title I really love. Latin is awesome.