She had been right to delay the disclosure of her renewed relationship with Angel, Buffy thought now. Among all the things she had mishandled in the last years, taking into account every mistake and every hesitation that had cost an innocent's life, keeping the truth from her friends was the one thing she refused to feel guilty about.

What would her last year in school have been like if Willow and Xander had spent it watching her with strangers' eyes? Giles' disappointment, she could have endured and matched it with her own. But losing the only humans she could trust?