Giles walked quickly past Xander and knelt on the floor next Buffy

Breaking down the Walls

TITLE: "Breaking down the walls" Chapter 3 - 3/12 - Rated PG - B/A Angst, series 6 predictions
AUTHOR: Charlie/Selwyn29
EMAIL: selwyn29@ntlworld.com
DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, they're Joss's. But if they were mine I give them to Duck's for safekeeping
J
PAIRING: B/A, and loads more
TIMELINE: After end of series 5 Buffy, series 2 Angel
SPOILERS: Anything is possible... say all, up to B5/A2
SYNOPSIS: My take on series 6 and what should happen, please read Chapter One or none of this will make sense.
FEEDBACK: Definitely wanted, its my first attempt.
RATING: PG CONTENT

DEDICATION: To Trammie, AlwaysLuv and Mark my Beta readers and Duck's who without her epics I would never had started this one. Also to the Babble Board posters, who have been an inspiration for some storylines

Now on with the storytelling………..

Giles walked quickly past Xander and knelt on the floor next Buffy. He rested his head gently on her chest.

"Well, she's breathing, but I can't find a heartbeat, could you find one?"

"Gee, let me think. Well, I found this body and thought, that looks quite familiar, like the body of my best friend who I buried nearly four months ago, and the first thing I asked myself was does she have a heartbeat and not 'This is a bit weird, better take her to Giles!'"

Giles listened to her chest once more.

"I think we can assume there is no heartbeat and that she's in no present danger, life signs-wise."

"Is it the fact she's dead that gives that one away?" Xander quipped back.

"Sorry, emotional distress, bit of a shock." he said in way of apology.

"Understandable in the situation. Xander, I think you'd better go and ring Willow, but whatever you do, don't let anyone else know and tell Willow the same. Until we know exactly what has happened we have to keep this between ourselves."

Xander walked out of the room into the main body of the shop. As he walked he let out the breath he had been metaphorically holding inside since he had first found her. He still couldn't get his head around all of this and was glad Giles had given him something to do, but now the question was, how would he tell Willow? 'By the way, I just found our recently deceased friend, guess what, Buffy's back?' He picked up the receiver and dialled the familiar number, he guessed he'd just play it by ear, much like he always did.

"Hi Tara, is Will there?"

He heard the bustle in the background as Willow came to the phone.

"Hi Xan, what's up?"

"Secret meeting at the Batcave, Will, just you, and don't tell anyone where you are going, not even Tara"

"What's it about?"

"OK, see you soon, bye-bye." Xander hung up. Less time on the phone, less time for him to make a mess of it all and scream out, 'She's alive!' or some other contrived phrase. He'd let Giles handle the explaining part.

Xander walked back towards the training room, but at the open doorway he stopped. Giles sat on the floor next to Buffy, gently stroking her hair and whispering to her.

"I'm so proud of what you did, of how you did your duty and, most of all, protected Dawn. She quite reminds me of you these days. Thank you, for allowing me to look after her for you. You always knew how proud I was of you as a slayer, and as a person, but you never knew how much I loved you, and how much I thought of you as my own. If I could have chosen a daughter in this world, Buffy, I would have chosen you. I promise I will do whatever it takes to understand what has happened here. I promise."

Xander coughed quietly in the doorway.

"Giles, Willow is coming up the street. What are we going to do?"

Giles stood up, discreetly wiping the tears from his cheek.

"We'd better talk to her in the Magic Shop, explain things, lessen the shock a little. Buffy will be safe in here."

"OK, you're the grown-up." Xander answered, thankfully.

Two minutes later Willow came running through the door of the shop, it had begun raining outside and she was dripping wet.

"Wet look suits you Will." Xander observed, from where he was perched on the end of the table.

"No time for a coat." Willow gasped, hyperventilating. "Secret meeting?"

"Ah yes." Giles said, wandering across the room. "I think you'd better sit down Willow, we have something to tell you."

Willow found herself a chair and sat at the table, watching them with her big dark eyes.

"Right, yes, well. Something, well, something quite unforeseen has happened and we don't quite understand it as yet. You see, sometimes, well, things, unexpected things, can happen for various reasons and well…"

Xander looked at Willow's confused face.

"Will, some mojo has happened and Buffy's back. She's in the back room."

Willow jumped up out of her seat and rushed into the training room.

"I think that could have been done a little more subtly, Xander."

"I'm sure it could, Summary Guy, but hey, I got to find out when I tripped over Buffy at the construction site, no nice explanations there for me."

Both Xander and Giles followed Willow's erratic path to the training room and stepped through the doorway, to hear the words:

"Bloody hell Red, you did it!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Willow stood in the middle of the room, facing Spike, who sat on the floor next to the body of the Slayer. Xander and Giles stood silently in the doorway.

"Look, she's breathing an all! Bloody perfect!"

Willow just stood there taking everything in.

Giles walked up behind her, he took hold of one arm and led her to a chair at the side of the room.

"I think you'd better tell me what you did." he requested.

The redhead sat there in stunned silence, occasionally glancing over at the seemingly sleeping body of her best friend.

"Willow?" Giles asked again. "We need help, we need to help Buffy."

"Is she, is she OK?" Willow asked quietly.

"We don't know, she seems okay, she has no heartbeat, though she breathes. But she hasn't awoken since we found her."

"Where?" Willow whispered. "Where did you find her?"

"I found her at the construction site, Will. Under some crates and things. I don't know how long she'd been there." Xander answered.

"Ten days, she's been there for ten days."

"Willow," Giles said, more forcefully, "what happened?"

Willow took a deep breath and began to tell the story,

"I took the resurrection spell, the one that Dawn had been messing with. I got some help off some Wiccans I'd met over the 'Net and they helped me piece a stronger spell together."

"Willow, what did you use in this spell?"

"We used a lock of her hair, an orb of Thesulah, to recapture her soul, umm, some blood from a Mohra demon egg…" Willow paused, trying to think.

"And this." Spike said, producing the silver cross from his pocket, where he had been keeping it. It had been slowly burning a hole in his jacket for the past few days, but he had found it comforting somehow. Now, however, held in the palm of his hand, the burn was a less comforting and more agonising pain. He quickly realised what he held and threw it across the room, yelping.

Xander walked over, retrieved it, and held it up.

"Now, how do you know all about this Spike?" He asked, quite threateningly.

"Spike, was with me the night we did the spell."

Xander stared across at Willow, a myriad of emotions playing behind his eyes. Spike, the annoying thorn in his side, had helped his best friend with the spell that had brought back the third of their trio. It was too much to think about at the moment.

"Willow, why have we not come across her before now? What happened on that night?" Giles asked, interrogating gently again.

"Something disturbed us, something happened with the spell, everything got blown about and the orb was smashed. The others ran off, I didn't think the spell had been finished properly. So I shouted out the final chants and then laid a binding spell across the site, in case something had gone wrong." She trailed off and went quiet again, glancing across at Buffy.

"Giles, will she be OK?" She looked up at the Watcher, tears glistening in her eyes.

"I think we need to proceed with much caution now. For one thing, we do not know what is going to wake up within that body. We have to try and distance ourselves from this a little. A resurrection spell is a very difficult spell to succeed with, we have no idea of knowing whether that is Buffy or not, until she wakes."

Xander looked down at the necklace in his hand and walked across to where she was lying, he crouched down and gently placed the necklace around her neck. He held his breath and waited for a moment then he stepped back to Giles and Willow.

"Well, I guess that rules out vampire." He paused for a moment, "So what next, Chief?"

"We need to keep a watch over her from now on, until she wakes. I need to do more research into this spell, Willow, I will need any information you have about it."

Willow just nodded.

"What do we tell the others?" Xander asked.

"We tell as few people as little as possible, at the moment and, especially, not Dawn." Giles was very firm about this.

"We have no idea what the outcome of this is going to be, so the less people to know about it the better."

"Now all we need is for somewhere to look after her which is out of the way."

Spike immediately piped up, "Well, we can put her in the crypt, I can look after her."

Xander looked over at the pale man.

"Spike, on previous occasions you have created a robot in Buffy's likeness and used it as some sick sex object, I don't think we'll be trusting you with her unconscious body. I have a spare room at the apartment we can use, and Dawn doesn't come over there all that much. Could we look after Buffy there?"

"Yes, obviously we are all going to have to be available to watch her round the clock. She can never be left alone for any time at all. It also goes without saying that Dawn cannot be suspicious of what is going on."

At that point Anya walked into the room, on her way back from the bank.

"Hi everyone, I got the money. Oh, hello, Buffy."

With that, she walked back out into the main body of the shop, towards the till. Giles signalled to Xander to follow her and explain the situation a bit better to her.

"Anya, something quite strange has happened."

"Yes I can see, Buffy is back from the dead." Anya carried on counting the money.

"Right, well she is going to have to come and stay in the apartment for a while until she gets better. In the spare room."

"Very well, as long as we don't use the best sheets, dead people don't need good sheets." Anya said and put her head down again.

Xander walked back into the training room.

"Well that's all sorted out then."

"Good," Giles said, "we'd better move her before Dawn comes back from school."

Spike went to pick up the body of the prone slayer.

"Not so fast Spike, its daylight, I think the flames would get in the way of carrying her anywhere safely."

Xander picked her up, once more, in his arms and led the way out of the back of the shop to Giles' car. Giles and Willow followed, carrying books concerning healing and resurrection.

Spike ran out of the shop and lifted up the nearest sewage lid and dropped underground. They might have stopped him having her in the crypt, but he'd be damned if they were going to stop him looking after her.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Their lives followed very much the same pattern for the next few weeks. Spike generally stayed with Buffy during the day, they had put blackout curtains over the windows for him. He sat next to the bed, reading British papers to her, telling her about Manchester United's latest win, or what Posh Spice was wearing this week. Xander looked after her in the evenings when he got in from work. Willow and Giles tended to come at night, leaving Spike free to go out patrolling.

It wasn't looking good though, Spike complained every night when he came in, that there were more and more demons out there. Newspaper reports, every day, noted strange occurrences, people turning against neighbours and friends. And still the Slayer slept.

It was a Saturday night, Giles and Willow had elected to stay up with Buffy. Dawn had gone to a friend's for a sleepover. Giles was just reliving the trauma of taking Dawn to the mall for new clothes for school.

"I had no idea that young girls required so many outfits, and some of them so…well, revealing."

"You'd be happy if she wore a tweed suit, wouldn't you?" Willow said, smiling at the Watcher.

"No, not exactly, but some of the clothes were hardly functional."

"Functional!" Willow laughed. "Remember some of the things Buffy used to wear to patrol in? You could hardly call them functional."

Giles laughed for a split second, and then his expression returned to the same pensive norm it had been for the past few weeks. He looked to the bed, at the body of the Slayer. She was still wearing the pink prom dress that they had chosen for her to be buried in. He couldn't help, but notice how beautiful she looked, just as she had that night. Xander had found the umbrella she had been awarded at school that night and had opened it up above the bed, shining glitter marks glinted on her face, giving her some other worldly beauty.

"Giles," Willow whispered, "is she ever going to come around?"

"I hope so, Willow, I hope so."

He took hold of Buffy's hand and looked at her again. It had been three weeks now, since Xander had found the body, and at least one month since Willow had cast the original resurrection spell. He had read text, after text, after text on resurrections and healing, and they had cast spell after spell, to try and heal her, but all the books just gave the same advice, they had to wait until the soul was ready to return and then she would awake.

"I'm sorry." Willow whispered to her friend.

Giles looked up at the young girl.

"Willow, I'm never going to condone your actions, you acted irresponsibly and used forces beyond your own powers, anything could have happened and things might still. However, what we have to concentrate on, is that you brought Buffy back, and we have to use everything we have to bring her back into the world again, in one piece."

Willow nodded her head.

"Shall we try another healing spell?" She asked.

Giles leaned down next to him and picked up a book he had open on the floor. He placed it across the body on the bed and they both began to chant.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That night, Angel Investigations had started off the same as most nights, a vision coming to Cordy with a brief, cryptic message for them all. Wesley and Fred hit the books, Angel and Gunn hit the weapons cabinet and took turns to check on Cordelia. The vision had shown a group of demons, which were trying to raise some great Power to influence the world, by using human sacrifices, mainly homeless kids, taken from the streets.

"So some big guys wanna take over the world again?" Gunn asked.

"Yeah, Friday night, same old, same old." Cordelia replied.

"Maybe we should try talking to Anne at the shelter?" Wesley asked.

Gunn made a quick phone call and then the gang ran out and got into Angel's car. With five of them now, it was getting to be a bit of a squash. Wesley had proposed buying a van, but had the idea laughed at for being far too 'A-team'.

They drove through the streets of LA and pulled up outside the homeless shelter, run by a girl called Anne, whom they had been in contact with before.

They all strode through the front doors and towards the office at the back of the building where she worked.

Anne was waiting for them behind the desk. She had photographs, in front of her, of three kids who had gone missing recently. Gunn picked them up and he and Cordelia began studying them.

"They left the shelter about two weeks ago, said some big guys had been hanging about offering them work and a place to live, they took their chances and haven't been seen since."

"Any idea who the men are?" Wesley asked.

"No not really, just that some of the guys say that they give them the creeps, that there is something not quite right about them."

"Are you sure they really are missing? Didn't just find some other place to crash?" Gunn asked.

"No, one of these guys has a little sister here, he said he'd come back and get her in a couple of days, when he was settled. She hasn't heard from him."

"Has anyone any idea where these men run their business from?" Wesley asked.

"Yeah, I think Jonal and his gang went looking around down there one day. Alison!" she shouted, to a young girl outside the room. "Can you go and get Jonal down here for me?"

Alison went running off up the stairs.

Fred was walking about the office, she never really said much, just absorbing everything since she'd come back from the demon dimension. She picked up a stuffed toy that Anne had on the shelf.

"He looks well looked after." she said, in her whispery voice.

"A good friend gave her to me. She gave me a lot, actually. We met when I got into some trouble with a 'supposed' helper of the homeless, who was taking street kids and making them work in this strange factory place. I was a mess then. She came down and got us all out, she was amazing, risked herself to save us all, not even knowing who we were. She gave me her job and her room, even let me have her alias 'Anne'. I was called Lily then. She was the reason I set this place up, she showed me that there are people willing to help others. She left that stuffed toy with me, and I named it after her…" Anne paused for a second, she looked up and saw Angel staring straight at the stuffed toy, recognition in his eyes.

"Buffy." He said, each syllable of the word its own agony.

"Yeah, that was her, I always wondered what happened to her."

"She's dead." Angel finished.

Anne looked shocked for a second, but before she could reply, Jonal appeared in the office.

"Anne, you wanted me? I'm just on my way out."

Anne snapped out of her surprise for a moment.

"Jonal, yeah, where was that place where the other guys went to find work? The one you went to the other week."

"It's an old disused factory on East 33rd street, has a sign saying Party People over the door. Is that it?"

"Yeah sure, you can go."

Anne looked up to see if the group had gotten the message, only to see the end of Angel's duster leave the office. She looked around at the rest of them.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you knew her, I didn't mean to upset anyone."

"Believe me, that's not even 'unhappy' with Angel." Cordelia said, trying to reassure the young girl.

The group said their goodbyes and made their way out of the office to find Angel. When they got outside, they found the car still there but no Angel. Each of them knew instantly that he'd gone ahead without them, so they followed him to the factory.

They walked in through the kicked in doorway and took in the scene before them. Five demons lay dead or unconscious on the floor, robes and artefacts scattered around them. The three missing kids were cowering in a corner of the room. Wesley ran across to them.

"Can you tell us what happened?"

The oldest of the kids began to speak.

"We came here for work and a place to stay but there were these guys here and they're part of some cult kind of thing. There wasn't any work, they were going to sacrifice us to try and call some gods, some people who they said could influence the way of the world. They already killed a couple of people." Wesley helped the kids to their feet and handed them over to Fred and Cordelia. He could hear sounds of fighting, coming from a further room and followed the noise.

The next room contained an altar, with hundreds of statues and paintings of two very beautiful Greek people on them, each one was priceless and had obviously been collected over a great length of time. In the centre of this altar stood Angel, a broken piece of wood in his hand.

"They must have been trying to summon The Powers That Be." Wesley explained.

"You don't say." Angel called back.

"We must gather all these things, this collection must have taken eons to congregate."

Angel took one look at his friend, turned his back and swept the statues off their altar onto the floor. He slashed the wood through paintings, smashed pottery and kicked the altar until it was in pieces on the floor. Wesley stood back and watched Angel destroy the room, all the time screaming out, into the heavens.

"Why? Why did you take her from me? Why let her die?" His cries were pure animal and terrifying.

He screamed once more towards the roof, "How can you expect me to carry on this work without her?" He then reached into his pocket, pulled out his lighter and dropped it at the edge of the altar. The entire thing went up in flames around him. He just turned and walked away, past Wesley, and out into the night.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Willow sat by the side of the bed when Xander came into the room.

"Ho-Ho?" He asked, eating one whole.

Willow just shook her head. Xander came across the room and sat by her side, without a single thought, he took her into his arms and held her close.

"Its like a part of you is missing, right?"

"Exactly." Willow answered.

"It's weird, having her here, but not. It's like, worse, somehow, than before. Then we could get on with our lives, carry on without her, start to deal. But now, she's here, well, her body is, and we can't do anything."

Willow looked at him, guilt in her eyes.

"Don't look like that, Will, I would have done the same if I could have, she's a part of us, she couldn't stay dead."

"When did you become so grown up?" Willow asked.

"I guess the thought of marriage does that to a guy."

"It just seems like everything is so much harder now, so many more choices and decisions. I mean, It's just this past year, everything seems to have become more like the big bad world, instead of our own insular little place. I remember all the fun we used to have in high school."

"You mean, apart from continually having to avert the apocalypse?" Xander joked.

"You know what I mean, everything was lighter and fun, the only person we really lost was Ms. Calendar, but this time, we lost one of us, we lost the main body and I don't know if she's going to come back."

"We'll do everything we can, Will, the Buffster isn't going this time without a fight."

"I just can't bear to let her go again. Xander, I just can't."

"I never thought I'd be saying this, but I can think of at least one other person who lives in LA who is taking it just as hard as us. Has Angel been told she's back?"

"No," Willow answered. "I called Cordelia, but she told me what a terrible state he was in, and that they were just getting him to go out again. I couldn't tell them she's back, especially not if we are going to lose her again. Cordelia is worried enough that his soul isn't going to stand it."

"Yeah well, Angel always liked a good brood…"

At that point Willow jumped up and ran from the room, "I've got to call Giles!" she called, "I think I know what's wrong!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Cordelia walked, once more, into Angel's office. It had been a week since the events at the shelter and Angel had once more sunk back into the silent brooding depression.

"Right," she said, storming into his apartment. She drew back the curtains and began picking things up from around the place. "Get dressed, you have to go out."

"I'm fine where I am."

"You're not, you're moping and brooding and it's not good. There is a world out there."

"I don't belong in it."

"Oh yes, you do. You're here to help people, Buffy would have wanted you to."

"There isn't anyone to help tonight."

"Surprisingly, there is. You see, downstairs there is a quiet, mousy librarian, who we dragged into this world from a demon dimension. You see, she formed quite a bond with you, and recently hasn't seen all that much of you, so tonight, you're taking Fred out to dinner. No arguments! You owe us!"

Angel took one look at her and decided it really wasn't worth arguing with her. She was right, he hadn't spent any time at all with Fred since they had come back and, maybe a night away from all of this would be good, help clear his mind a little. Maybe he could fool himself for a second, that this nightmare was just that.

"Alright, let me get changed." he said, resignedly.

Cordelia let herself out of the apartment, a small smile on her face. It was about time that he got on with his life, it'd been nearly half a year now.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

That same Saturday night five people sat in the back room of Xander's apartment, around the quiet still body of a very close friend. Xander was there, opposite were Spike, Giles, Willow and Tara. Anya had been sent to Giles' apartment to look after Dawn and to let her win at Monopoly.

The five held hands across the body and across a glass orb that sat on her chest.

"Is everyone ready?" Giles asked, looking at the young faces about the room.

They all nodded. Willow had proposed the idea, to Giles, that the reason Buffy was still 'sleeping', was because her soul had not been tied into her body properly, that the orb had smashed before the spell was finished. They had been preparing, now, to complete the spell.

"Let's give her a kiss and see if Sleeping Beauty awakes." Xander said, in confirmation.

They all closed their eyes and started chanting.

"Soulcatcher return to us what is hers,

Give us this essence that completes her."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Cordelia had picked a very authentic and peaceful Italian restaurant for Angel and Fred to eat in, just a five-minute walk from the hotel. They had talked amicably, at the start, about what Fred remembered of her previous life, and of the demon world, and how she felt now she was back.

"I just feel lost, somehow," she told Angel, "like, when I was on Pylea, it wasn't right, but I was a cow, I knew what my purpose was. Here, I just don't know anymore."

"I know how that feels." Angel stated.

Fred just looked at him, her eyes just, somehow, gave him this comfortable feeling, like he could talk to her about anything.

"I was sent to some other dimension a few years ago and brought back, and for a long time I didn't know the reason why I had returned. The things I had done, I should never have been allowed to exist, but for some reason, I was given a second chance. It took someone very close to me to show me that I could make whatever I wanted of myself, that I was needed. She gave me the chance to explore my inner feelings more than anyone, she was the one who brought me here."

The waiter placed their main courses down on the table. Angel went silent once more as he reached over to pick up a fork. Fred caught the glint of light, off a ring on his finger.

"That's a very beautiful ring. Is it from someone special?"

Angel looked down at the Claddagh ring on his finger. He had placed it there again, after hearing of her death, to signify he was with her forever. As he looked up towards Fred again, she noticed he had an identical, but smaller version on a chain around his neck.

"Did Buffy give that to you?" she asked quietly.

"No," Angel answered, "I gave the one around my neck to her, to signify that we were together, I wore an identical one to hers. I promised myself that if we couldn't be together, then I would always keep her ring to give back to her when we were together again."

Fred saw the sheer misery behind his eyes, but she carried on. Cordelia had told her that he was unwilling to talk about his pain, but now she had gotten him started, she didn't want him to stop.

"Did you go to her funeral?" Fred asked.

"The funeral?" Angel replied. Millions of thoughts ran through his head. He had been in Pylea when they had buried her, all alone. Willow had tried to contact him, but he was out of reach, his darling Buffy had been buried and had never know how much she meant to him.

"No, I didn't go, I was detained elsewhere." Angel's voice began to break. He wanted to tell Fred how much this girl had meant to him, how she was his salvation and his reward, but before he could begin to get the words out, another searing pain went through his body as it had done before, in the office.

Fred watched in shock as Angel crumpled to the floor, plates smashing against the tarmac. He could only utter one word.

"Buffy."

Inside his body, all the cells that connected to his sense of her, that told him when she was near, screamed out in agony. He looked up into the eyes of the woman sitting across from him and felt like he had betrayed his own soul.

"I have to go." he muttered, throwing enough money, to cover the meal, on the table. "I'm sorry." And he ran off into the darkness.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At that moment, the five casters had reached the peak of the spell. Colours and lights were swirling around the room, all eyes had turned dark and were staring at the ceiling. The orb, in the middle of Buffy's chest, began to glow a brilliant white. The chanting continued until a final word was spoken.

"Return!"

With that, all the light that was in the bright orb, vanished into the body beneath it. The spell casters were thrown into their respective corners of the room and all the lights in the apartment went out. An eerie silence fell across the area.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Angel ran back to the hotel, glad to see the lights were off, that no one was there. He burst through the doors and on into his office.

His mind was whirling, he didn't know what he was going to do, he just wanted to grab his car keys and go for a drive to clear the emotions running through his head. An envelope on his desk caught his eye. It was addressed to him. Wesley must have left it in his office earlier in the day. Something about the smell coming from it made him pick it up.

He grabbed his letter opener and sliced it open.

Angel,

I found this recently while clearing the last of her belongings, I think that she would have wanted you to have it.

All my love,

Dawn

A note on scented paper fell out of the envelope. Angel brought it up to his face and inhaled deeply. It smelled of vanilla and flowers, just like her. He blinked back the tears in his eyes and looked at the writing on the paper. It was scribed in her familiar loopy scrawl.

Darling Angel,

Words cannot express how grateful I am to you for coming to me in my time of need. I don't know how I could have coped with the days after the funeral without the memory of you sitting with me through one of the hardest nights of my life. No matter what, you are always there for me when I need you the most. For once in my life I am stuck for words, amazing isn't it? There is so much I want to say to you, but no words seem right. I've made a decision, Angel, and I hope you find it in your heart to agree with me. I've found a song that expresses it exactly for me, so I'll leave you with that, it's by Dina Carroll.

Feels like a lifetime away
When I heard you say
I love you
And it doesn't feel quite the same
Going through the day
Without your loving arms to ease the pain
I would surely go insane
But I know we're gonna be with love again

Though you may be far away
And I have is yesterday
I can't stop the world from turning
Only you can stop the hurting
Though you may be far away
Time and space will not erase
The look of pain upon your face
Said everything you could not say
I know as sure as I breathe
Love will always bring you back to me

If I had to fall in love again
I wouldn't hesitate
If it was with you
But love's story had to go and change
One thing remains
I will never be in love this way again
You know my heart's with you
Even when I can't be next to you

Though you may be far away
And I have is yesterday
I can't stop the world from turning
Only you can stop the hurting
Though you may be far away
Time and space will not erase
The look of pain upon your face
Said everything you could not say
I know as sure as I breathe
Love will always bring you back to me

I knew life would never be the same
Though my nights are long
I keep holding on
Sometimes I feel just like a child again
When I've lost control
Yet I know
That as sure as I breathe
Love will always bring you back to me

I think we've been apart for long enough. You wanted me to have a normal life, well I've been there, and I've done that and nothing compares to spending my life with you.

I love you, until the end of time.

Buffy

A single tear fell down the vampire's face. He grabbed his car keys and scribbled a quick note to Cordy, which just stated, 'I'm fine, there's someone I have to go and see.'

He ran out of the hotel and got into the car, parked outside. He turned the engine on and headed for the freeway. He was going back to Buffy, he needed to go to the graveside, needed to truly grieve for his soulmate.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Inside Xander's apartment five people began to move around in the darkness. Xander headed towards the door of the bedroom, to go and fix the lighting problem, but as he got to the doorway and opened it enough to let the moonlight in, something stopped him. Buffy sat up on the bed, where she had been for a month, and uttered a single word.

"Angel?"

END OF CHAPTER 3

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Chapter 4