Willow felt herself stiffen with each "pow" that issued from the other girl's lips. His arm still around her, Gunn must've felt it too.

"Well," said Wesley, inhaling and then exhaling with equal purpose, "onward. Though it would be good, I think, if before embarking for Sunnydale we stopped for some take-away. I know we've all been feeling rather peckish--on top of needing some sleep."

Cordelia looked to Willow. "You can fill us in on the way," she offered, and motioned more strongly for Gunn to take the axe she held.

Willow found strength to stand alone from the comforting expansion and contraction of Gunn's chest next to her, and she stepped out of his half-embrace. Angel had been wise to ask this man in to listen. Now she would not have to tell her story a second time, and neither would Angel. Gunn could simply relate the story of the past few weeks in Sunnydale. He didn't know Buffy--had no emotional connection there. It would not tear him up inside each time. To him it would be just a story, unfortunate, but hardly life-altering. It seemed to Willow a good idea to have someone like that around, and she wished such a person existed for her in Sunnydale, like a scout running ahead, checking the path, clearing it of obstacles--a person un-attached to the trauma. A translator.

"Do you think Angel's going to change clothes?" Cordelia asked, craning her neck to see the door of the office. "'Cause if he is, I only need a second to--" she gestured to her coin-bikini, "get more ready to kick some evil in the--"

Gunn swung his head around to Cordelia, the line of his mouth showing that he didn't relish what he would have to say, and he cut her off. "I'm sure you all heard in there..." He referenced the ruckus of wind and noise that surely could not have gone unnoticed.

"Screen door slammed," Cudgel Girl began to sing, breathy like Tori Amos, clearly far-off in her own world. "Mary's dress sways, like a vision she dan--"

"Fred," prompted Wesley, every bit the schoolmarm Willow remembered him to be. "Fred."

The girl stopped, her face attentive, but not chastened.

"Too late," Gunn told them bluntly and without preamble. "Buffy's died." He did not stop looking at Cordelia, and Willow thought that a hellmouth could open right here in the floor of the Hyperion's lobby and still, Charles Gunn would not have taken his eyes off Cordelia.

And for good reason, that. The hubcap axe Cordelia had been holding slid from her grip and Gunn had to do a near-dive to grab it before it hit the floor. He managed just barely to evade slicing himself in the catching process.

"How dead is dead?" the girl Willow now knew was called Fred asked. "All dead, or only mostly dead?" Her brows came together. "Stupid cow, Fred," she muttered to herself. "I seem to remember something important about that."

In response--the other three offered none, though they turned toward her--Wesley steered Fred out of the lobby and in the direction of the front doors, promising, "let's go, what do you say, and look into getting you that cigarette you asked about earlier?" His voice faded as they moved away from the inner ceiling's acoustics, "and perhaps a burrito."

"Buffy's dead," echoed Cordelia, looking first at Gunn, his gaze unwavering, who had made what she clearly believed to be an outrageous, unsubstantiated claim. "Buffy's dead," she turned to Willow now, as though petitioning her to deny it. "Buffy. Dead," she spoke it as a challenge meant to be disproved. Cordelia grabbed at the knife and the can of mace clipped to her midsection and let both clatter to the floor. "Well, you're wrong," she told them, throwing her head back and forcing a smile like the spunky cheerleader she had been in high school.

"I was there, Cordelia," Willow heard herself say, her voice hollow and unreal. "It's true."

"No," Cordelia smiled at her in the way of someone who knows the correct answer at Trivial Pursuit because they're holding the card. "Buffy can't be dead. I would've felt something. A vision." Her mind clicked on this. "I would have had a vision, Willow. Doyle did. Something to warn us--something so that Angel would--Angel," and her mind seemed to hit a snag there. "Oh," she said, and her face fell, losing its upbeat cheerleader 'that's all right, that's okay, we're gonna beat you anyway' grin, twisting instead into an expression Willow imagined was very like what she might wear following one of the aforementioned visions.

Willow thought for a moment that she should go to Cordelia, pat her back, something. But even in such a moment she was still Willow and it was still Cordelia, and their shared past of awkwardness and dislike held her in her place.

The office door opened and Angel, wearing his stoically-set human face (though perhaps he did angle his features away from them), made his way across the lobby and to the bottom of the stairwell. It was obvious that he had no intention of stopping to talk or comfort any of them, and Willow thought about what she had seen those moments ago in his office, and she couldn't blame him. He would go to his room, she thought, give himself over to grief in private. Gunn would tell the others what they needed to know; that there would be no trip to join up with the troops in Sunnydale, that the Slayer was gone, that...what was there to say after that? She didn't know. Perhaps Gunn did.

Angel avoided eye-contact as he crossed the lobby, and Willow saw Cordelia's heart (of whose existence she had always been in doubt) leap into her eyes and move to propel her toward the grieving vampire, her outfit's coins jingling, and her mouth already parted to call Angel to a halt. Stepping forward, Cordelia was going to go after him.

But Gunn put his arm out to stop her. "Let him go," he counseled, quietly, holding her back. "Man need to be alone."

Cordelia immediately and forcefully pushed his arm aside and Gunn let her. She took two determined paces, hampered somewhat by the silly shoes she was wearing, her outfit rustling like ghost's chains. Her steps echoed against the marble.

Angel had reached the landing and he paused at the sounds of Cordelia's noisy progress, but he did not turn, even though his stopping seemed to indicate he was considering changing course. As he paused, so did Cordelia, but after a moment Angel was climbing the stairs unmet and alone, and Cordelia had turned back to Willow and Gunn. As smoothly as something rehearsed, Gunn had his arms around Cordelia, or maybe Cordelia had her arms around him, and she looked up--first at Willow, then back to Gunn's face above her, and spoke. "I should have known. They should have told me. I thought--I should have felt it. I should have felt it."

Willow saw Gunn mouth the words, "it's okay," as he cradled Cordelia's face in his hands, and wiped her tears away with his thumbs.

Something like shiver went through Willow and she took a step back. It was like she had trespassed into someone's bedroom, had been spying on them through the curtains.

"So it is true, then," a voice spoke softly into Willow's ear from over her shoulder. She came about, knowing her eyes had grown round as saucers. She had not heard anyone come in, yet standing directly behind her was a large, reptilian-like green demon, red-eyed and wearing a suit of the most brightly-colored cloth she had possibly ever seen.

"The Host, at your service," he said in a gallant whisper. "But who I am is so clearly not important now, Red."

"Willow," she corrected him in whisper, just as he had spoken to her. "It's, Willow."

"So Luis wasn't lying to me, hastily predicting the election results? Slayerina's really I-should-have-died-in-your-arms-tonight, 'There's a place for us, Tony, somewhere there's a place for us' reprise-like dead?"

The tears coming back into Willow's eyes proved to be answer enough for him.

"Ah, Dollface, have you been here long?" From within his suit coat he produced an equally bright handkerchief, and held it out to her.

"Forever," she whispered, taking the offered square of fabric.

She turned her back on him to blow her nose, and when she looked up from the cloth she saw Cordelia and Gunn still locked in an embrace, Cordelia now wearing his coat draped over her shoulders. They stood there, like it was where they were meant to be in this moment, who they were supposed to be with, how they were supposed to cope. As though for them the evening had been part of a larger plan. It hit Willow quite suddenly and with surprising force that she wanted very much to go home.

She sniffed, and as though the friendly demon Host had read her mind, his long, green arm snaked around her shoulders in a comforting manner she would not usually have ascribed to a demon.

"C'mon, Witchey Woman," he offered. "I've got a spare, lightly-padded-to-my-tailor's-exact-specifications shoulder right here in the non-smoking section that's open 24-7 to listen to whatever you want to tell it. One night only, no reservations necessary. Drinks--and hankies--on the house." He gave her an encouraging half-smile.

Willow looked to him and then to Gunn and Cordelia. She thought of Angel. He would be up to his room by now, if that's where he had chosen to go first. Perhaps he was even lying next to or in place of the Willow-like shape she had inadvertantly left on his bed.

She thought of the hallways of the Hyperion, abandoned, quiet. Rooms inhabited only by bird families, old oil-painting still lifes hanging above endless broken bedframes, electric switches that threw sparks at you if you dared flip them, elevator buttons that no longer had the strength to summon the lift's car. She had been there, she had walked those corridors, stepped through those doorways, made her way past fallen wallpaper, looking beyond the haze of memory that covered the upper floors of the Hyperion like a heavy dust. She had done it, and so would he. There was nothing there that could hurt him if he didn't let it, nothing at all.

She sighed to herself and looked at the green demon waiting for his answer. A friendly shoulder, a warm embrace. It was the best offer that Willow Rosenberg had had in as long as she could remember. She did not hesitate in accepting.

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...THE END...

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Disclaimer: The characters of Buffy:TVS and Angel belong to Twentieth Century Fox, UPN and the WB respectively. I would not wish to represent otherwise. No one has given me the right to use them here. I took it by force.

I have some other fics posted here, and in a few weeks when I re-code this fic (and it may also be moderately edited--at the least for punctuation and spelling) it will take its place at my own site, The OutBack Fiction Shack, along with my other work.

You have all been very generous with your feedback, even when it did threaten bodily harm on myself or others, and I thank you for keeping me writing.

I don't think it's fair to either the viewers or the Buffy/Angel muse that Joss & Co. won't begin next season with the immediate fall-out of Willow's visit to LA, and more or less that's what powered me to write this fic. That moment of her on the couch is so moving only because of what comes next, however you choose to imagine it.

Fred, in this last chapter, is singing "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Thanks to chrysophyta for providing the lyrics courtesy Tori Amos performing it, and also for writing some of Fred's lines at my request.