Scribes1015 is one hell of a co-writer, I'm tellin' ya!

Lindsey dropped the last box on the carpeted floor before collapsing face first onto his bare mattress. He definitely hadn't planned on getting a place so soon, but after a few weeks on Wesley's couch an extra month's rent didn't sound so bad. Even so, he'd still been forced into the damn two bedroom him and Angel had been talking about, apparently apartments this close to campus were in high demand this time of year.

He was fucking exhausted, between moving all his shit and having to deal with getting what remained from the house, his mother's endless stream of questions, and complete avoidance regarding anything to do with his sister, his mind felt nearly as jumbled as it had when the whole mess started. Buffy was still refusing to speak to him, to see him even, he'd tried sneaking up to her room earlier but his mom had spotted him and after a heavy sigh finally told him she was at Willow's, still not ready to face him.

She'd even quit her job a few days after they got back when he tried cornering her there, which had earned him another ass chewing from their dear mother. He was completely out of the loop, a feeling he was in no way used too. Pretty much the only thing he had learned was that Buffy hadn't heard from Angel either, and he'd only discerned that because Joyce had slipped up and tried asking him if he knew how he was or if he'd from him.

He kept trying to push any worry or concern from his damn head, reminding himself that he had no reason to give a fuck anymore, but if he were being honest with himself the more time that passed the less that shit worked. Hell he'd even caught himself asking Darla when she stopped by Wes's with Mia a few nights back but she just shrugged and asked why she would be expected too. Which was probably the best answer she could have gave, because even though a part of him really wanted to hear he was all right, he probably would have went and kicked his ass again had he been with that tramp after everything.

He was almost positive he'd overheard Wes and Gunn on the phone with him a few times, but he'd been too damn stubborn to ask and neither of them were offering any information. He still didn't understand it, even the two of them seemed to be leaning more toward his side of this whole mess. At first they hadn't, but after a while each of them had tried to bring it up more than once, Wes even going as far as to ask him if his thoughts on the situation had changed after some time to think.

Which of course it fucking had not, not exactly anyway. Yes, maybe he could have reacted better, but in all honesty after seeing what he saw he could have reacted a lot fucking worse too. For goodness sake he fucking sat that man down and asked him point blank if there was anything going on and he'd lied straight to his damn face. That was what he couldn't get past, did he regret the way he talked to Buffy and smashing her phone, well of course, but he still couldn't get through the feelings of it being warranted. Which was exactly the damn cycle he'd been endlessly stuck in for weeks now.

OoOoO

Her mom had called to let her know that Lindsey had come and gone, she'd also filled her in on the small bit of information that she didn't believe he had heard anything from Angel either. The last twenty-three days had seemed to carry on so long they could almost fit different lifetimes within them, and some of them in fact had. She had gone from sad to worried, to panicked and back again. There wasn't a night that had gone by where she hadn't cried herself to sleep, the number of calls listed in her history to Angel's phone was rather pathetic, but she just hadn't been able to bring herself to give up… Until last week when his number was disconnected.

That was the turning point for her, the moment all of her tears hardened into anger. Looking back she couldn't believe how stupid she'd been, how naive she was to belive everything that he'd said. All of his promises of forever, all the whispered confessions of love. Her mom kept trying to tell her that she was overreacting, albeit with cause, but nonetheless she kept trying to tell her that there had to be some sort of explanation. That she couldn't just suddenly see Angel as someone differently than she had her entire life because this wasn't exactly something any of them had a plan for to deal with things. But all the same, she was hurt, and she was mad. Seeing red furious kind of mad at this point. And all of that seemed a lot easier to throw out the window now and to change her viewpoints on who he was and how he was treating her.

She knew everything was fucked up beyond belief but the complete silence was deafening. There was no checking up on her, letting anyone know he was okay or wondering if she were fucking okay, no even trying to figure something out, to even talk about what had happened and what they were going to do, just... nothingness.

It seemed too fucking easy for him to just walk away and that just be it and she couldn't help but feel like if he truly cared for her there would be at least something from him... but all she was getting were loud and clear messages that he didn't want anything to do with her now.

And she apparently just had to accept it and move on.

So, that's what she had been trying her damnedest to do. She stopped crying about all things Angel, most of the time even managed to not even think about him and carefully avoided talking about him at all whenever possible, she refused to see her brother and really even talk about him either, rarely saw any of the guys but kept things simple enough when they were around. She just did her best to focus on her new job, spending more time with Willow, and living life with less restrictions than ever. To be honest it was pretty amazing that she felt for the first time she could really do just about anything she wanted but this isn't how she wanted it.

She was sure there were still those who were more than happy to run to her brother and whisper bullshit in his ears if they saw her doing this, that or the other but she could not have cared any less. Because he had no place in her life anymore and there was not a damn thing he could do about any of it.

If he had a lick of sense he wouldn't try either.

That was giving him a lot of credit though.

OoOoO

"You sure you're okay?" Mia asked, having come back up this way to help unpack the last of his things and get the apartment a little more set up and to just spend some extra time together.

He sat down on the couch that'd finally been delivered yesterday with a loud sigh and shrugged his shoulders. "I guess I'm just still not used to this. I don't like not knowing that people are okay. I don't like feeling like I don't have some sense of control over situations," he even admitted.

"You don't say."

"Siblings fight and shit Buffy's always been pretty good when it came to the silent treatment but it was different. It was different when we were still under the same roof and even if she wasn't speaking to me I knew what was going on with her. This is the longest by far we've ever gone without talking and I kind of hate it. She can even be pissed off or continue on hating me if she wants but this shit is awful."

Mia was quiet for a moment then curled her feet up her body and rested the side of her head against her propped up hand. "You know other people with siblings, Lindsey. You know how you and everyone act with that girl is outside of the normal. Maybe it wouldn't have been this specific situation but you had to have known sooner or later something was going to break there. You have to let her grow up. And as shitty as it may be, you have to let her come around only when she's ready and you have to be prepared to make a lot of different choices going forward if you want things to change."

He sighed again. He knew she was right, there was always truth to the countless times this had been told to him in various ways over the years, but he still hated hearing it.

Rubbing his temples, he kept anything else to himself. Like the fact as much as Buffy had a history of keeping radio silence from time to time, he was pretty sure that before this mess he had gone far less time without talking to Angel than Buffy over the years. Try as he might to ignore that too, it was a strange thing to get used to as well. Even with as pissed off at him as he was, it was still a weird thing to go from talking to someone every single day basically of the better part of your life to this.

"I'm sure if there was something truly wrong someone's going to come to you."

"Yeah, I know." That provided little comfort though.

OoOoO

Joyce Summers was tired, beyond tired. She was exhausted from being in the middle of her children and trying to fix the whole situation they had found themselves in, she'd hated seeing Buffy so broken for all those weeks but the last few of seeing her almost turn everything off like a switch had been turned wasn't much better. She was starting to get the feeling that Lindsey was close to coming around to at least hearing what she had been trying to mentally plan out to say at least. She just wasn't so sure it wasn't far too late for a lot of it.

She hated not hearing from Angel, not being able to know he was alright. Sure, Gunn had gone without saying too much but there'd been a time or two now where he'd given her a passing whisper that he had talked to Angel but didn't know too much about what he was doing or what was going on with him, but at least someone had certain proof he was at least alive and someone was keeping even the smallest tabs on him.

It was weighing on her a lot lately that he felt he couldn't come to her. Not even about the relationship because she got that, but with the fallout from it. She understood that too to a point but he should know no matter what she was here for him and it killed her that even after all this time and everything else they had been through he didn't.

OoOoO

Angel rubbed his eyes, wondering how in a town as big as this it still felt like one hell of a job to avoid one single person in it. Thankfully he was managing but it sure took some damn work to feel like he was dealing with less of a chance to have a run in. He stopped going to any of his previous favorite hangouts, changed his grocery stores, made the mistake of becoming a roommate to some dude from the ad pages who was turning out to be more than a little weird.

Truth was he felt like his life was hanging on by threads. Everything felt wrong, everything was wrong, and it seemed no matter how hard he tried he kept making shit worse. He had thought he was doing the best thing for everyone by disappearing, he'd heard from Gunn how everything within the Summer's house had pretty much blown up, how Buffy had sworn Lindsey off from being her brother, how she told him she hated him, and most surprisingly how Joyce had kicked him out of the house.

All because of him, it felt like every single thing he didn't want to happen kept happening, and no matter what he tried he couldn't fucking make it stop. He even went as far as changing his number one day because he couldn't bare to see Buffy's name flash across the screen one more time. It was selfish, but she deserved so much more than the shit show he had dragged her into. He never should have come back, of that he was certain.

He loved that girl more than any man should be capable of loving, and he knew he was probably breaking her fucking heart with this whole disappearing act, but it was the way it had to be. He couldn't be the reason Lindsey was ostracized from the family, she shouldn't have to choose between him and her brother. Eventually the two of them would work things out, it may take some time, but not near as much as it would if he were still in the picture.

But oh did he miss her in a way he hadn't even known was possible. The days were easier, he could almost trick himself into thinking she was at work, or off with Willow at the mall somewhere. It was the nights that gutted him, he hardly slept, staring at the wall he would wonder what she was doing, if she too was awake, if she still missed him or if she had moved on to the point of being glad he was gone. Then times when he did manage to drift off, well that was its own form of torture. His dreams were filled with images of her, beneath him, against him, reminding him how she taste, how she smelled, how she laughed, how she felt against him every morning when they first woke up. It was misery, and yet he was terrified of the night it all stopped.

At the start of all this, hell before the start of it all, he'd been terrified of losing Lindsey, and of course he missed him too but there was also some unresolved anger there. The time away from everyone had given him some much needed perspective, yes there had been wrongs on his end, admittedly he should have grew a pair and told him what was going on from the start, he never should have lied, but Linds could have reacted a bit better too. Despite the circumstances, he should have known that he would have never taken advantage of Buffy when she was younger or now.

It stung more than he cared to admit to know how little Lindsey thought of him. That he would think he was capable of using Buffy, that he would think even for a second that anything between them wasn't derived from love. Where Buffy had pretty much called nonstop, Lindsey hadn't tried to reach out once, and that told him all he needed to know. That every word he spoke had been true.

OoOoO

Joyce wasn't sure what she was about to walk in on, but she sure hoped that son of hers had been through some sort of breakthrough. Lindsey had called her the night before, far later than he would normally dare and asked if she would be willing to drive out to his new place the next day. He'd try to play it off, telling her that he needed her opinion on where a few things should go since he had never really been the one to decorate, but she couldn't help but feel like there was something more to his request.

His complex seemed nice enough, but knowing her son she didn't expect any different, like his father he'd always had a taste for the finer things in life, though she was worried about him being able to afford it all on his own now that Angel was no longer around.

Her breath caught when the heavy door opened to reveal her haggard son. "Oh Lindsey," she sighed, then immediately threw her arms around him. She had known this was coming, just like she knew her daughter, she knew her son just as well. She knew there was only so far the anger and stubbornness would be able to carry him before he broke. He had been wrong in the way he treated his sister, he had been wrong in the things he said to Angel and the way he handled the whole situation, but every bit of it had come from a place of love.

Stepping into his kitchen, she took over just as she would if they were back in her home. Starting the coffee pot she searched through the cabinets and when she couldn't find any clean mugs she grabbed two from the dishwasher and cleaned them out herself. Then after cleaning a couple of pans she went about making some eggs and bacon for them, which thankfully had been about the only edible things he had in the fridge if you didn't count the alcohol. With tears in his eyes he tried to tell her that she didn't have too, that he hadn't called her out her to put her to work, but she just waved him off telling him that no matter how old he was she would always feel better knowing that he'd eaten something other than cereal or raman.

Sitting in one of the barstools he watched in comfortable silence as his mom flipped the fried eggs to perfection. It had been a long time since they had done this, back when he was younger this had been their morning ritual, except back then it wasn't usually just the two of them. Looking around the empty room he let out a long sigh, "You think she's going to hate me forever?"

The spatula in her hand froze for just a moment, then turning off the burner, she sat the pan off to the side before turning around. "Honestly Linds, I don't know. Hate is a very strong word, and even though that's what she said, I'd like to think it's not really how she feels. Right now she's hurting deeply, and she's angry, and I'm not sure she believes that it's possible to even have a conversation with you without you trying to take on the role of her father." She took a deep breath, "I know that you have always meant well, I know that you have always tried to protect her, and I know how hard it has been for you to see her so grown up. I know you don't want to think of your sister being in a relationship and not because you don't think she deserves to find someone and make a life with someone who loves her, but out of being afraid she'll get hurt. It's hard to see her as someone able to make those choices that maybe you don't agree with, or me either. Maybe it's about a job or career choice, friends she's taken up with, a boy she decides to start seeing... but we can't dictate her life. She's no longer standing just yay high, playing with dolls and hosting tea parties... she hasn't been for a long time now."

"Life was easier when she was."

"I know. But she doesn't need all that now, honestly it was a lot then, too. Your daddy would have been protective of her, always, but he would have also been with me and know she has to grow up, make those choices, rise and fall. We will always be there for her, Linds. We can advise her, we can help her, we can voice concerns... but we can't make every decision for her. Now maybe we can overstep some bounds if she were in a really bad spot, if she were being hurt, but we can't just point our fingers around and tell her we know what's best for her every step of the way. Watching my kids grow up has been the best experience of my life, but it is hard. It was hard with you, too... and you were far more determined to do whatever in the world you wanted, to do all the things you took issue with her doing as soon as you could.

"It always felt different with me though," he sighed as she started back with their food. "I know all these things are a natural part of life.. learning to drive, having crushes and going on dates, some snotty girl in class being mean to you... yadda yadda... but it didn't change anything in my mind. I just wanted to keep her from being hurt anyway as much and for as long as possible."

"I know, but in doing so... sometimes it wound up being you was hurting her more, hun. You're her favorite person in the world and yet you made her feel suffocated sometimes, made her feel like she couldn't be trusted to make any sort of decisions, do anything without you telling her it was wrong. That's a lot for anyone to take at any age."

OoOoO

Lindsey dreaded asking what in the hell he was supposed to do now, how he was supposed to make things right with his sister, after the exhaustingly long discussion he'd been having with his mother about Buffy, him, long roads they'd been on over the years, wrong choices, right choices, and everything else under the sun. But as they finished eating and began cleaning up the small mess they'd accumulated, he couldn't help but finally go there.

"Honestly, I think all you can do for the time being is give her space and time. I know that's not the answer you're hoping for here but I think she needs it. Let her come to you when she's ready, and hopefully when she does you will be in a place to admit maybe you did your share of wrong choices here, too, and be able to apologize and be open to hearing what she has to say on her end."

"I don't like not knowing what's going on with her."

Joyce sighed and thought for a moment before navigating a way to both help assure him she was doing as well as she could be right now and not giving away too much to where Buffy would be too upset.

OoOoO

"I said some pretty shitty things to Angel."

Joyce took a seat nearby and nodded her head. "You did."

"And about him."

"Mmhmm."

"I was so pissed off at him that I couldn't even see straight. It's lessened some you know... but I still can't even think about him and not be just filled with endless anger."

"You're entitled to feeling how you do, Linds... to being angry, feeling blindsided, betrayed. You very much did not handle things in the best way but it is understandable that you didn't just take it in stride, too."

"Really? Because no one else seems to see it that way."

"There's a back and forth here, son. There's a lot of variables and not everything is in black and white."

"I just don't understand why they didn't just say it. I kept telling myself I had to be crazy as those pieces all started to fall into place in front of me, or try and wrap my head around the idea of if I wasn't just imagining it all. He had every single chance to tell me something. To tell you! Hell, I sat him down and asked him right to his face and he lied to me... and that's just what pisses me off the most."

"You don't understand why... really, kiddo? I am not saying how they handled it was right, okay? But I think anyone who knows you can understand there's some reservations about coming to you about something like that. You don't have a good track record there. At all. And everyone knows it."

"They still should have come to me. Even if they thought I would be mad, or shut it down, or whatever else."

"I agree with that, I really do. But please try to remember that while that would have probably been the right thing to do... they also absolutely did not need to ask you permission. Or me for that matter. Or anyone else. I think everyone might have forgotten that little fact to be honest. And just for a moment, try and see it from their side. Angel knows you better than anyone and yet he didn't know how you would react to something like that, especially when it was him. He didn't know if it would soften the blow or be a million times worse."

"I would have reacted better to literally any other moment or way of finding out than what came to pass," he grumbled.

OoOoO

"For whatever it's worth, I hope someday you will be able to forgive Angel and someday he you as well. That doesn't mean you have to be friends ever again... I just hope that this part of you that is hurting so bad right now can continue to heal. And I hope one day you can look back on a lifetime of memories you had with that boy and remember the good times you had with him, too. Because even if it's broken now, for a very long time he was a very important part of you and your life and this family."

For as much as he had been angry, spouting off he didn't care if Angel was alive or dead, would be happy to never see him again, speak to him or hear anything about him, how much he had been living in that one moment... it all sure seemed to hit him in a whole new way as soon as she mentioned the part about the two of them being broken, as soon as she insinuated that they may very well only be a part of one another's past from here on out. Even as angry as he was he still couldn't picture the rest of his life without that asshole being some part of it.

He collapsed back against the couch, "And you're sure him and Buffy aren't talking, that she doesn't have some way to get ahold of him she's just not sharing with you?"

Joyce shook her head, "I think I'd actually be less worried about her if that were the case. Right now I'm honestly not sure which one of you has her the most angry, like I said Angel hasn't handled all this the best either."

"So what am I supposed to do," Lindsey sighed, "Buffy refuses to speak to me, I have no idea how to get ahold of him, where he's at, or if he's even willing to hear me out, and now you tell me he's basically ghosted my sister, the same one who he was so in love with that he was willing to risk everything for, who if I know as well as I think I do, and I'm sure I do won't have a damn thing to do with me until I fix whatever the hell it is I'm supposed to fix between him and me first." He pinched the bridge of his nose suddenly feeling worse about the whole situation than he had before he'd called his mom.

Joyce patted his knee, "I think this is one of those situations that I just don't have the answer for sweetie. Though I don't think reaching out to Angel is the worst idea, I hope that when and if you do it's for the right reasons. You two definitely have some things to discuss and work through, but please don't go into any of it thinking it's the answer to fixing things with your sister. Maybe it would have been at one time, but not anymore. The three of you each have some pretty big stuff to work out with each other, and unfortunately the only thing you have any control over is your own relationship with each of them. Whatever is going on, or not going on between your sister and Angel, and as much as hard as it's going to be for you, that's something you're going to have to stay out of."