The thick silence hung in the air. You could've heard a pin drop on the floor. No one moved a muscle wondering if their ears had failed them.
Buffy had to remind herself to keep breathing. She honestly had no idea where, to begin with her questions. She didn't know whether to yell, cry, or argue. Her head suddenly ached with an agonising throbbing pain.
She stared unblinkingly at Angel's face replaying his words over and over in her head. This has to be a joke. Her serious expression lightened as a smile tugged at her lips. "You're playing with me. Is this one of your jokes I could never understand like that one about the horse and the duck? That one wasn't very funny either."
Angel unsmiling face did not change needing her to understand the reality in his words.
A slow breath released from Buffy's lungs as the gravity of the situation weighed on her. "No," she said having heard enough.
"No?" Angel questioned her.
"That's right, no." Buffy shook her head folding her arms across her chest standing similarly to Katie. "I don't know what's going on with you, but this is not happening. Not now."
"Buffy—"
She scoffed at her former lover with annoyance, "—You come here unannounced and you tell me that I'm miraculously a mother? Are you kidding me? How stupid do you think I am, Angel?" She felt anger rise in her chest. "Do you not remember those creepy Hansel and Gretel kids? They had everyone in Sunnydale rally against the Slayer, the Witches—even Giles!"
"And don't forget MOO." Xander raised a finger interrupting the rant.
Buffy shot Xander a glare, immediately shutting him up. "My point is, those kids everyone was mourning over, turned out to be a giant demon that tried to burn me at the stake!" She glared at her former lover. "I can't afford to be burned at the stake right now," Buffy said through gritted teeth.
"Our children are not demons." Angel hated her for saying his initial thought aloud. "They're real. And they're ours."
Ignoring the sad eyes staring up at her, Buffy kept her sight straight ahead. "Stop saying, 'our' because they're not our children. I don't have children! You and I will never have that." Buffy felt her heartbreak as soon as the words spilt out from her mouth.
The decided harshness of her voice felt like a sucker punch into the solar plexuses. All of Katie and Liam's worst fears were coming to life right before their eyes. Their own mother, the mother they love so much and missed so miserably looked at them as if they were demons sent from Hell to taunt her.
The man standing behind Buffy stepped forward making himself more visible to the children and Angel. "I think it's time you took your demons and left town." Katie studied the unfamiliar face wondering why he was standing so close to her mother.
Angel shifted his eyes from Riley's smug face back to Buffy's. "Stay here," Angel ordered to Katie and moved across the room, swiftly walking past Liam and tightly grasped Buffy by her elbow.
"Hey! Let go of me! Angel!" Angel ignored Buffy's angry protests as well as her whacking hand.
Liam giggled turning his eyes back to Katie pointing his little finger at their parents. "Mommy is smacking Daddy."
Angel dragged her away from Riley and the Scoobie's leading her into the back training room door and slammed it closed behind t.
Awkwardly, Katie felt the immediate absence of Angel. All of Scoobie's eyes went from the closed door and rested on Katie and Liam standing in the centre of the magic shop.
Katie nervously swallowed and opened her mouth to say something—anything but nothing came out drawing a complete blank.
Training Room
"Let go of me!" Buffy angrily said through gritted teeth snatching her wrist from his grasp.
"Fine!" Angel shouted panting unneeded breaths slowly calming himself.
Buffy turned her eyes to his face wanting to do nothing more than kicking his ass purely from her anger and frustration of his sudden reappearance. "Why did you bring them here? I have more than enough demons to deal with on a regular basis. I don't need you to add to the pile!"
"Stop calling them demons! They're not!"
"Then what are they?" Buffy shouted.
"Our children, Buffy!" Angel shouted in her face then slowly calmed, taking unneeded breaths. "They are our flesh and blood. We made them together."
Buffy shook her head refusing to fall for the demonic spell her ex-lover was apparently under. "I don't remember doing that with you. You know what I remember?—Killing you. Breaking up with you in a sewer. That's all we've ever done, Angel. We either fought or we fought about fighting."
"How can you stand there and openly deny them?"
"How can you stand there and openly accept them? Did it at all occur to you to think about what they could be? That they could be—I don't, the latest Hellions washed up from the fiery ocean of Hell? Did you at all think about the destruction they could have on us or the entire world? Or, did you just fall to knees with open arms when the cute little boy called you, Daddy?"
If felt like centuries old silence filling the room, suffocating them out. Angel did not respond looking at her when an unexpected faint smile tugged at his lips. He knew this would be her reaction. He could've played the scene out before it even happened. But what he always forgot to add his own anger and frustration into the scenarios. Although he knew of her initial anger and confusion, Angel also knew that soon her next step would be to process and with that, Angel knew she'd have a sudden has a change of heart. She would accept everything she had brazenly argue against as if were the first time she heard it.
"Of course I had those thoughts," Angel admitted using his best even-tempered voice. "How could I not? In the world we live in, I thought it was a new form of punishment. Like that time I was visited by my victims." His eyes met her knowing she undoubtedly remembered that event as well. "Instead of my past coming to haunt me... It was… what could've been my future… if this were a perfect world. I spent so long dreaming of a life with you, Buffy and in this life, we'd have children—exactly like them."
Buffy was silent taking in his words trying to rationalize everything herself.
Angel continued, "When they said, they were from another world, I thought they were demons. But then… The more I look at them, the more I saw you in them. God, they can't be Evil if you're inside of 'em." He could hear her pounding heart slow down finding its steady rhythm again which told him, Buffy calmed down and was truly listening to him. " Together we made something so perfect—twice, even...Please, just give them a chance. I'm telling you, Buffy, you'll instantly fall in love."
The ball was now in Buffy's court. It was her choice whether she'd let the children in or banish them away. More than anything in the recent months since all of the recent events piled on one after another, she prayed to the Powers That Be for something good to happen. It could be small and irrelevant, but it was something that could give her hope.
Slowly, she began to shake her head leaving Angel helpless and defeated. "I can't… I'm sorry."
"Buffy, ple—"
The wooden door slowly cracked open turning the adult's attention from their disappointment to their intruder.
"Liam! Come back here! Liam!" Katie loudly whispered to Liam as he strutted into the training room ignoring her.
Liam stared up at Buffy with unwavering eyes and a crooked toothy smile. His hands were behind his back as he approached the Vampire Slayer.
"I found this—well, Katie found this…" He revealed the photograph he had stuffed into his back pocket before leaving his own time. He had forgotten about it until a few moments ago. "It was in your box of stuff where we found the big book."
Buffy turned her eyes from the boy's face to the photo in his small hand and tilted her head to the side taking the photograph into her hands to examine it.
It was of her. She was sitting up in a hospital bed, wearing a white hospital gown. Beside her, sitting against her hip on the bed was a five-year-old Katie, and held in Buffy's arms, wrapped in a light blue blanket was a sleeping newborn, who she presumed was Liam.
Liam moved to Buffy's side and peered over her hand to the photo. "That's me." He pointed at the baby in Buffy's arms. "That's, Katie and that's you. Katie says, Daddy was taking the picture and that's why he's not in it."
Unable to breathe, Buffy stood speechless staring at the photograph. She looked so happy and perfectly content surrounded by her alleged children. Whoever she was looking at behind the camera was with pure love.
Coming to a decision, Buffy lifted her chin locked her panicked gaze with Angel and took a deep breath.
