Buffy, dressed in a red cotton hoodie with no sleeves, underneath a pair of large over-alls, combat boots, and a blue handkerchief over her lone long braid, walked into the hotel lobby.  She then went behind the desk and started to organize files on the group's laptop as Cordy had showed her.  The others had gone out to run errands but Lorne said he would come over before they got back to help Buffy, but he hadn't arrived yet.

As Buffy was working on the computer, she heard the doors open, but kept her eyes on the screen, thinking it was her friend.

"Hey Lorne, I downloaded a new song.  It's from the 40's and I think you'll really like it."  When the demon didn't answer, Buffy looked up, but the smile slid from her face as she saw who stood in front of her.  "Angel."

The vampire stood with his eyes wide, staring at her.  He couldn't believe what he was seeing, she was dead.  Willow had come to LA three months ago to tell him that, but how then, was she standing in front of him.

The petit blonde held out her hands in front of her and started to back away from the desk.  "Okay, Angel, this isn't what you think.  Or maybe it's exactly what you think."

Angel dropped his bag and began to walk towards her.  "You're dead.  You died."

"Yeah, but now I'm back."

"You're not Buffy.  You don't feel like her."

"Yeah, well I've changed.  I've been through a lot."

"I know Buffy, and you're not her."

"I really don't think you know me, I mean..."  Suddenly Angel leapt over the front desk and towards Buffy.  She no longer had slayer speed and strength and when Angel slammed her down on Cordy's desk with his hand on her throat, she could do nothing to stop him.

"Tell me who you really are?"  Angel's vamped out and loosed his grip on Buffy just a little so she could talk.

"Angel, ask me anything.  Anything the real Buffy, me, would know."  Her words were gurgled.

Angel thought for a moment, going through his painful memories of himself and Buffy.  Finally he came to one.  "Just before the portal to hell closed three years ago, when you saved the world, what happened, that no one else knows about?"

Tears formed in Buffy's green eyes, but not from the pain.  "Willow's spell worked, Angelus was gone, and you came back, to me.  Bu..but I couldn't keep you for myself, I had to do...I had to kill you, to send you to hell."  Realization dawned on Angel's face and he released his grip on Buffy and backed away.  His face was confused and pained, he slammed into the desk, looking back at Buffy.

She rose from the desk, rubbing her neck, drying her tears.  "I know this doesn't make sense, none of it does.  But you have to try and understand that it is harder for me, then it is or will be for you."

Angel looked up at the woman he loved, the woman he thought was dead, who he had spent three months mourning over.  Buffy had changed, not only in personality, but also in appearance.  Her hair was longer, her structure smaller, much skinnier, and her muscles that had once been defined, were hardly there.

"How?"  The word was barely a whisper.

"We...don't know.  We don't know how, why, only...."

"What?"

"Where."

"Where?"

"Angel, for the past three months, more correctly, three hundred years..."

"No.  No, no, no, no.  NO."  Angel realized what Buffy meant, where she had been, and it killed him.  Buffy, his Buffy, the slayer, had been in hell.  He looked up at her, taking in the scars and healing wounds.  They had tortured her, for three hundred fricking years.

"I know Angel, I know."  Buffy carefully walked forward and crouched down beside Angel.  She put her arms around him, trying to comfort him, as Wes had done for her.

They stayed that way until Lorne came in, shortly followed by the others.  Wes took charge, explaining to Angel what had happened during the past two weeks, trying to help him understand.

****

Later, that night, Gunn had taken Buffy out for ice cream and left the others to talk with Angel.  He sat on the couch in front of his office, while the others silently tried to decide who would start.  Angel took care of that.

"How, Wes?"  The ex-watcher sighed.

"We don't know, we're working on it, but...so far we have nothing."

"We've been searching through millions of texts, on the web.  We've hit a dead end."  Cordy was just as sad.

"Have you tried..."  Angel looked to Lorne.

"She sang, and I got a big headache.  All the flashes were, were pictures of her being tortured, of her pain, her loneliness, and of her courage to keep on going.  Nothing of why she was back or how."

"We took her to a hospital under a different name, there's nothing wrong physically with her."  Fred smiled a little.  "In fact she is in perfect health.  The wounds are healing normally,"  She looked around at the others.  "Normal for a regular human being.  All of her vitals are the same as a regular human being."  At this, Angel looked sharply at his friends.

"What are you saying?  That she isn't the slayer anymore?"

"As far as we can tell, yes."  Wes smiled grimly.

"Buffy accepts this?"

"She, is, let's say more then content with that fact."

"She doesn't mind?"

"No."

"This is pretty, wow."  Angel ran his hands over his eyes and threw his hair.

"We know."

"Have you called Willow?  Anyone from Sunnydale?"

"No."  Cordy sat down across from him.  "Buffy's made it every clear she isn't ready to face her friends."

"But she died saving them."

"That's what makes it even harder.  Because they care so much, it would kill them to know she went to hell.  No slayer has ever gone to hell, there is a special place in heaven reserved for them, always."  Cordy looked to Angel then to the rest of the group.  "Buffy's the only slayer to go to hell in the history of slayers.  And the only one to come back."