"I don't really feel like a Slayer right now. Not just because I can't slay. It's just, you know, Chosen for what? So I can put my loved ones in mortal peril just by being what I am? What kind of a destiny is that?" Buffy frowned into her tea, which Giles had poured for both of them before even thinking to ask if she wanted some. She was in Angel's soft armchair, he was on Angel's couch, listening to her in sympathetic silence. "For a while I thought I'd just give it up," she continued. "Convince the world I'm not a Slayer anymore, and then we'd all be safe. But we wouldn't, would we? So that doesn't make sense either."

"You're trying to take responsibility for your mother's death," Giles chided gently. "You musn't do that."

She raised an eyebrow at him and half-smiled. "I know. In my head I do, anyway. Don't let me worry you, Giles, I'm just letting off some steam. Believe me, you and Angel between the two of you have told me enough times that it's not my fault."

He hesitated, hoping that this was enough opening to bring it up. "Perhaps we should, ah, talk about..."

"...Angel?" She looked at him and saw she'd guessed right. "How'd I know that was coming?"

"Buffy, I don't mean to pass judgment on you. About anything. I'm simply concerned about how close the two of you seem to be since you began sharing this house with him."

"Pretty close, yeah," she said dryly. "Probably because we're in love with each other. Don't look so surprised, you already knew it was true. I'm just done with denying it. Telling the truth is not cause for panic."

"No," he agreed, disliking his paternal duties more and more, "but your feelings for Angel almost were, once."

"You'll notice I haven't made that mistake twice," she reminded him. Then she sighed. "Look, Giles, I don't know what you're trying to tell me here. 'Don't sleep with Angel'? Fine. Not gonna do it. But I can't stop loving him just because it would be more convenient."

Giles considered this. Apparently she didn't know about Willow's spell yet, which was a relief, but of course she'd find out eventually. "There's more that worries me about your romance with Angel than just the terms of his curse."

Buffy remained remarkably patient, but he could see she was getting annoyed with him. "I really don't need a refresher course on this. He's immortal. He's sterile. He's allergic to daylight. And supposedly all that adds up to no future. But you know what? Nobody seems to be asking themselves what kind of future I'm looking for. What kind of future I'd have without him."

"There will always be someone to love you, Buffy. You and Riley seemed to be building a foundation."

"Yeah, but as soon as Angel saved me I realized I couldn't stay with Riley even if he offered me a perfect life dipped in chocolate. It's not fair and it's not right and I don't want it. I can't be in love with more than one man at a time, and the love I have now isn't about to expire."

Giles had said nearly all he could. It was time to play his trump card. "He drank your blood. He nearly killed you."

Buffy lowered her eyes; he could tell she had expected this to come up. Instead of denying it or citing forgiveness, though, she answered in a vague evasion: "I think that's something we can work on." Seeing Giles's skepticism, she added, "Angel's at his best when he's with me. You have to admit that."

"To be honest, I wouldn't really know." He had thoughts of bringing up Angel's relatively passive hundred years without her, as compared to the rampage brought on when she broke his curse, but that seemed more likely to just hurt her feelings than to change her mind about anything. "I won't harass you about it. You must know I'm only trying to look out for you."

She smiled at him, an innocent smile of trust. "I know." For a moment she just looked into her teacup again, swirling it idly, and he got up to refill their cups from the kettle on the stove. When he'd sat down again she started speaking in a detached way, as if she didn't know or care if anyone was listening.

"As soon as I fell in love with Angel I knew we were doomed. Subconsciously, deep inside. And he knew it too, probably better than I did. We never talked about it-- not in those terms, anyway-- but every time we were together there was this desperation, this need to make every moment count because it might be the last one. Seize the day. Don't let any chance slip away, one of us might be dead before the chance comes again. And then I took a chance and I seized the day and that was what brought the doom on. Ironic, right?

"When he was brought back to life I kind of lost those fears. I thought that maybe all the bad stuff had happened to us already and we could be happy together. Angel knew better, I guess. He just thought he could avert it if he stayed away from me."

She looked up. Her eyes were just barely glistening, but her voice was steady. "Don't misunderstand what I'm doing with Angel, Giles. I know we're still doomed. But we're doomed if we're together and we're doomed if we're apart, and we've already gotten pretty good at facing our doom as a team."

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Angel knocked on the front door of the Summers house, which wasn't the Summers house anymore. Xander and Anya had moved into Buffy's mother's bedroom, and Willow and Oz were finishing the process of moving into Buffy's former room. It was a decent arrangement, since Buffy didn't want to sell the house and it was helpful for most of her friends to be based in the same place, but everyone seemed a little uncomfortable when talking about it. It was hard not to feel like they were taking something that belonged to her, despite her enthusiastic agreement to the plan.

Xander came to the door and Angel sighed-- it would be Xander, wouldn't it? "Hey," Angel greeted him, and tried to avoid further conversation by brushing past him and into the house, forgetting momentarily that he hadn't been there since the others moved in. He ran into a barrier and Xander saw it happen.

"Oooh, tricky entrance, man," he taunted. "Hey, guess who lives here now? And guess who hasn't been invited in yet? And that means that the one who lives here now-- and that would be me we're talking about, by the way-- is at his leisure to grant or deny entrance to the one who hasn't been invited-- and that one's you, you probably guessed-- and that means--"

Angel peered through the doorway and spotted Willow crossing the room. "Willow!" he called out to get her attention, and she turned and saw him. "Hic stultus non me admittiet. Adjuva?"

Willow looked surprised, but she smiled and replied without missing a beat. "Is molestus interdum est. Te invito."

Xander cut his ramble short as Angel walked past him into the house. "Great," he said loudly, still holding the door open, "so now we have other languages to mock Xander with, because English alone sure wasn't cutting it."

"How'd you know I speak Latin?" Willow asked Angel as Xander left grumbling.

"You spend enough time in spellbooks, you pick up a working knowledge of it whether you're trying to or not. So you're probably way past working knowledge." He shifted his feet. "I came to get some more of Buffy's things."

Willow nodded. "Mmhm." The way she was looking at him wasn't exactly expectant, but it wasn't letting him leave it at that, either.

"Also to give Buffy and Giles some room to talk without me around." He tried to laugh and met with little success. "Since I'm probably one of the things they want to talk about."

She was still giving him the look. Finally he caved. "And also because sooner or later you and I have to talk about what happened while you were doing the spell."

"Ah hah," she said conclusively. "Come sit down."

She led him up to the room she was sharing with Oz, who didn't seem to be around tonight. They hadn't changed much so far, and they were keeping most of the furniture in there, since Buffy didn't need it at the mansion. The room still smelled primarily of her. Angel sat by the window and Willow perched crosslegged on the bed, looking oddly serene.

"Have you told anyone about the things I said?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Nope. Should I?"

He thought carefully before answering. He wanted to just tell her no and be done with it, but unless he could convince her that there really wasn't anything to worry about, keeping secrets wasn't going to help. "I knew it was hopeless. I was only trying to scare you."

"Need I say you succeeded?"

"None of it was true. I swear. There's no way I'd ever want to kill again, or hurt people, not unless I lost my soul. And thanks to you and Tara that's not going to happen anymore." He attempted a smile. "You did an amazing job. There's really no way it could have gone any better than it did."

"Except that you basically told me that I can't trust you anymore, and now you're telling me the opposite." Willow wrung her hands together and gazed at him with eyes heavy with worry. "Angel, which one of you tells the truth?"

He looked around the room, seeking strength from Buffy's energy there. "The one who's still alive?" he offered.

It didn't seem like that was the answer she wanted. She sighed heavily. "Look, if you think you're safe, I'm not going to fight you on it. I just want to know that if anything goes wacky in your brain, you're not going to try to handle it yourself."

"If Giles starts having doubts about me, Willow--"

"I know," she broke in. "Hence the me not telling anyone? We're talking about what happens if you start having doubts about you.If you can't tell Giles, if you can't tell Buffy, you've gotta tell me. I don't even know right now what I could do about it, but someone has to know."

Angel nodded hesitantly. "Okay. That makes sense. It's a deal."

Willow yawned. "Want some tea?"

"No, I'd better...on second thought, I'd better give Buffy and Giles some more time. Sure." As they both stood up he remembered to ask, "Willow, is Tara likely to say anything about it?"

"No. But if Cordelia does that's your problem."

Angel smiled. Cordelia was back in LA by now, after privately threatening to kill him in creative ways if he ever turned evil again. "Even a little bit," she had added, leaving him to wonder what counted as 'a little bit evil.'

"Cordy's not a problem," he said. "Do you have Earl Grey?"

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Father Tom began stopping by the Magic Box with some regularity. He perused Giles's books and found quite a few that interested him, explaining on his first visit, "Many of the churches I know have an occult section this size, but the titles in our collections are almost completely different from these. Oh, except for this one. And this one."

Xander told him that Giles was going to be jealous, but the two men quickly developed a scholarly respect for one another. They began seeking each other out to share any new information, and Xander suspected that they were also discussing moral quandaries when no one else was listening. Well, that was their business, but Xander couldn't help being intrigued by the very existence of a psychic battle priest, and Father Tom had some especially cool stories about his sacred mission of smiting evil. It was enough to make Xander actually volunteer to help them research, and Anya grew suspicious and asked him if he was going to give her up so he could join a celibate order.

He wasn't, of course. In fact, he had secretly resolved to stop helping if it led to being told to go to church, and then realized that he couldn't exactly keep secrets from Father Tom and kept waiting to be assigned some penance. But that never happened, and there wasn't much to do besides research anyway. Buffy was getting tired of constant supervision, Willow was absorbed in some kind of wiccan studying project again, and with both Angel and Father Tom working the beat, patrolling with the Scooby Gang wasn't that useful. Daemonis hadn't shown his face again. Actually, Father Tom was still the only one who had seen him up close.

"That's good news," said Father Tom when Xander brought it up. "He doesn't feel strong enough to face us yet. He has a weakness. We just have to figure out what it is."