Los Angeles, California

Hyperion Hotel

"It's been so long since I've…" Angel ran a hand over his face and tried to explain himself in another way. "After years of searching and the ache of disappointment, I convinced myself that it was time to… let go. I gave up. I pushed it all so far to back in my mind — I forced myself to forget."

"Forget what?" Fred asked with a shaky timid voice.

Unconsciously, Angel twisted the silver Claddagh ring that sat on his left ring finger for the last two hundred years. The heart still faced toward him. "In my human years, I was married." He tried to ignore their gasps of surprise. "We had children. A girl and a boy." Angel pictured their little faces in his mind feeling another stabbing stake in his dead heart. "After I risen from the grave, I went back for them. We had a cottage at the top of a hill looking over Galway. I entered the cottage expecting for them to all be there — but cottage was cold and empty. I just figured that they decided to move on to someplace knew and start again but everything we owned was left in the cottage… untouched. No one ever saw them again. They just vanished into thin air."

Cordelia held a hand over her heart empathetic to his heartbreak.

"I searched every corner of this earth; under every rock. They disappeared." Angel quickly blinked away the tears forming in his eyes. "It wasn't until coming to California… I saw her again — at least her ghost or so I thought." Angel trailed off reminding himself of the realisation in the office sometime before. "She was sixteen at the time. I watched her walk down the steps of the high school with a lollipop in her hand. She was surrounded by people who hung on her every word... I watched her as she was called—"

"Are you talking about Buffy?" Cordelia narrowly eyed Angel. "I thought we were talking about your wife." Angel stood silently waiting for the lightbulb to go off in her mind. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. "Oh good god." She whacked her hand across his arm. "Are you insane?" Cordelia scolded the vampire.

Gunn shook his head with a frown, "Wha—hold on a sec. I'm confused."

Wesley took off his glasses and ran a hand through his messy hair. "If I'm following this correctly, you are insinuating Buffy bared a remarkable resemblance to your former wife?"

Cordelia shook her head with disagreement. "No, I don't think that's it. I don't think that's it at all. I think, Angel's saying that Buffy was his wife." She narrowly eyed the vampire. "Hence the "are you insane" comment." Cordelia glared at the vampire folding her arms across her chest. "Which I still stand by." She pointedly added

The group turned to Angel with surprise.

"That's impossible." Wesley frowned scratching his head. "Well first, the obvious, Buffy lived in this century unless…"

"Unless what?" Cordelia eyed the ex-Watcher.

Wesley placed his glasses back on and paced back and forth. The wheels in his head cranked round and round. "Buffy died jumping into a portal, correct?" The group nodded their heads. "What if she didn't die at all?"

"But she did." Gunn crossed his arms.

"Yes, well, in this dimension she had. What if she traveled to another? A sort of… "alternate universe". It's the same world just... different. With time travel, every decision made will alter the previous history or future. Before Buffy had traveled back in time, we were led to believe in one particular reality. And when Buffy travelled in time that reality was adjusted to the decisions that were made. Changing everything we know now." Wesley turned to Angel. "It would explain why your memories were so easily repressed from your mind. And I suppose Buffy's were as well. All of your motives, everything that has driven you up to this moment was altered to fit into the "new reality"."

Angel ran a hand behind his neck thoughtfully. "The Powers created the fracture the moment Buffy jumped into the portal."

"To alter your past, I presume." Wesley said.

"Why?" Angel wondered. "It doesn't seem any different to me. I was turned into a vampire. I lost my soul. Killed a lot of people. Then regained my soul. Then lost it again, and regained it. Why all of this?"

With a shrug, Wesley slid a hand across his scruffy face. "That I'm not sure of. It would be strange to give you a life with the woman you love, only to take it away."

"There has to be a motive." The wheels in Angel's head began to crank in overtime. "A plan of some sort. Otherwise there is no reason for the Powers That Be to do this to us — to do this to her."

"Okay, now I need to sit." Cordelia sat down overwhelmed by the headache of information flooding into her mind at once.

"It's not like we can just… ask her." Gunn said holding his hands on his hips. "She's dead."

Sadness washed over Angel reminding himself of that simple fact. With all of the research and rehashing his story to his trusted friends, for just a moment, the glimmer of hope was bright. For a moment, Angel had forgotten that his love was in fact dead in this world. The depression that weighed his unbeating heart sank lower into the abyss of darkness within him.

Cordelia jumped to her feet with an expression of worry. "No! This can't be happening again!" She glared at Angel. "I will not let you destroy yourself in Hurricane Buffy! You don't deserve that, Angel."

"I don't deserve a lot of things." Angel mumbled. "But it's happened. I owe it to her — to us, to find our children and—" The words died on his lips.

Something from the top of the stairs of the entrance of the hotel caught Angel's attention from Cordelia. His serious expression softened to a look of shock.

"Somehow," Cordelia continued never realising Angel was no longer listening to her. "I know it'll be hard, but you have to move on from Buffy Sum— Angel? Are you even listening to me? Angel?" She snapped her fingers in his eyes. "You are unbelievable. Hello?" Cordelia scoffed with a heavy eye-roll.

His eyes were glued straight past her. With slight annoyance, Cordelia turned to see what had Angel's complete attention.

Her mouth fell and her eyes widened. "Oh. My. God." She said dumbfounded.

Standing at the top of the steps was the ghost of Angel's past. He couldn't blink, he couldn't move. If his heart could beat it would've stopped. His mouth went dry from leaving it open for so long.

He ran his eyes over the petite woman standing unmoving in front of him. She was surrounded by her friends from Sunnydale. She looked the same; heartbreakingly beautiful. Her blonde hair fell in long waves down her back. There was something different about the woman who stood before him. She didn't seem like the high school girl he had unlocked his heart to. No, the woman standing at the stop of the stairs seemed dreadfully familiar.

Desperately, Angel needed to look deeply into his eyes. He knew there was a robot trotting around Sunnydale pretending be his beloved. You were blind before... But you can see now. More than anything, Angel needed to look into those green eyes. He'd know then.

Hesitantly, Angel took the first few steps towards her. Afraid for what he might find if he were to be wrong. It was not the first time he's been cruelly tricked. He paused and decided on a different tactic.

With a hushed husky voice, Angel whispered, "Beidh sí ag gruaig buí agus súile glas le calóga de donn, liopaí múnlaithe mar chroí le gáire a d'fhéadfadh thógann an anam dorcha. A spiorad geal sin d'fhéadfadh sé— (She'll have yellow hair and green eyes with flakes of brown, lips shaped as a heart, with a smile that could lift the darkest soul. A spirit so bright it could—)"

Buffy released a soft gasp making her heart pound in her chest. She stepped down the steps and said, "— It could light the nighttime sky, giving it the stars."

For two hundred and forty-eight years, Angel had waited for this day. For centuries, he's searched every corner of the earth.

All this time, she was right under his nose.

Angel could hear her soft heartbeat as she stepped towards him. He couldn't move, frozen where he stood, Angel watched her.

Buffy stood at arms reach from him. She looked up at his handsome face falling into the depths of his dark familiar eyes. "Liam?" Her voice was hardly above a whisper.

Tears sprung into Angel's eyes the moment her sweet breathless voice whispered his name. He reached out his hand cupping the side of her face. "It's me, mo ghrá. It's me."

Buffy stepped into his arms wrapping her arms around his neck. Her body pressed against his, hugging him tightly, burying her face into his neck. She squeezed her eyes closed dampening his black shirt with tears. Angel held his arms tightly around her petite slim frame; vowing to never let her go again. His face hide into her blonde hair, breathing in her familiar scent permeated into his membrane.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" Angel mumbled in her hair.

Slightly, Buffy drew back and held his face between her hands. The tears ran freely down his face. Her fingers gently wiped away the wetness from under his eyes. "You have nothing to be sorry for." Angel leaned forward resting his forehead against hers. "We're together again. That's all that matters."