DR2 - The Cross of Changes by Nick Midian, Book II, part 7 of 8

Written by Nick Midian

Content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Duncan
English grammar, spelling, slang, Highlander continuity and general corrections
by Theo
French slang, content beta-reading and storyline suggestions by Mash
French slang by Alan


EMAIL: jcaballero@euskalnet.net

WEBSITE: http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/thedarkages

SPOILERS: For Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 3rd season, BUT no Xander/Willow kissing
and no Lover's Walk (welcome to the wonderful State of Denial, Land of
'Shippiness). Hmmm, I've messed with the third season's timeline to accommodate
it to my necessities. Let's just say that 'Band Candy' happened a lot later than
it did, around the first days of February, OK?
For Highlander: None really, the characters of the TV series and films are only
tangentially mentioned. You just need to know the basics of Highlander-style
immortality, BUT I've always thought that whole 'Immortals have no parents and
are found in a little basket' is a... um, the Spanish word for it is 'chorrada',
so let's just ignore it, OK?
KEYWORDS: Romance, Angst, Action-adventure, Violence, Alternate Universe,
Crossover.
RATING: PG-13 with some mild R parts for violence and sexual innuendo.
DISCLAIMER: This story has been written with no intention of profit, merely for
the pleasure of writing and sharing it.
The concept and characters of BTVS (Buffy, Angel, Cordelia, Xander, Willow, Oz,
Giles, Joyce, Spike, Drusilla, Snyder, Faith, Harmony, Lyle Gorch, Quentin
Travers and the rest) are intellectual and legal property of Joss Whedon, Warner
Brothers, Mutant Enemy, etc. Also, the concept of Highlander and the characters
mentioned here (Duncan MacLeod, Amanda Darieux, Richie Ryan, Joe Dawson and the
Society of Watchers) are the property of Panzer-Davis and Rysher Entertainment.
Michael Deveraux, Rachel Curran, Crystal Parker, Kyle White Owl, Robert
Coltrane, Elvis the Dog, Broderick Egoyan, Damon Frost, Mr. Smith, the World
Committee for Civil Defense and the rest are my own creation.
All the songs and lyrics here are used without permission, they are copyright of
their respective rights owners.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Please, understand that English is not my native language, so
any grammatical or spelling errors are my fault, not of any one of my wonderful
beta-readers. If you're thinking of sending any flames, please be kind with me.
I'm a grown man, but I still can cry like a child, believe me.
Additional Author's Note: The songs performed by Oz's band are 'Loli Jackson'
and 'Serenade' by Dover. It appears courtesy of Subterfuge records. All rights
reserved, yadda, yadda, yadda...
SUMMARY: After the events in 'Dark Reflection' a new threat menaces both the
Slayerettes and the Archangels as new and old enemies come to Sunnydale, merging
past and present. This time, it's something personal - ta-da-da-dam!!! (sorry,
but I just had to say that)

And now, on with the show. Fasten your seat belts ladies and gentlemen, because
it's going to be a long, hard and jumpy ride...

~~~~~~

The cast for Book II


Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
David Boreanaz as Angel
Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
Seth Green as Daniel 'Oz' Osborne
Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Matthew Perry as Michael Deveraux
Paula Trickey as Rachel Curran
James Marsters as Spike
Nikki Cox as Crystal Parker
David James Elliott as Kyle White Owl
Elvis the Dog as Himself

Eliza Dushku as Faith Adams
Donald Sutherland as The Old Chess Player, Broderick Egoyan
Sebastian Spence as Damon Frost
Avery Brooks as Mr. Smith

Mercedes MacNab as Harmony Kendall
Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder
Amy Chance as Aphrodesia
Persia White as Aura

Alan Rickman as Conrad Swann
Wesley Snipes as Talon Pantera
Dennis Rodman as Rush Pantera
Tom Berenger as Colonel Cabbot Ashe
Michael Ironside as the Sergeant
Trevor Goddard as Backlash
Shaquille O'Neal as Beast
Jet Li as Bushido

with

Kevin Spacey as Robert Coltrane
Nicholas Lea as Jonah Whalls
and
Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Lady in Red

~~~~~~

CHAPTER SEVEN: Opening gambits (shots to the heart)
Sunnydale, California. December 4, 2002. 7:00 a.m.

Brother, brother
Sister, sister
It's the loneliness
That's the killer

So you want
To be free
To live your life
The way you want to be
Will you give
If we cry?
Will we live
Or will we die?

Jaded hearts
Heal with time
Shoot that love
So we can
Stop the bleeding

Solitary brother
Is there still a part of you that wants to live?
Solitary sister
Is there still a part of you that wants to give?

"Killer", Seal


Rituals. Life is full of them.

A man wakes up every morning, grabs a shower and breakfast, kisses his wife and
kids goodbye and goes to work.

A woman arrives home late from work, sits alone in front of the TV, not really
looking at it as the microwave gets her pre-cooked dinner ready.

A child is tucked in by his mother and prays in the dim semi-darkness of his
bedroom to the God of his parents, asking him to wake up alive the next morning.

Rituals. They define us – our little manias, our fears, our hopes, the things we
love or hate... they tell things that sometimes we're not even conscious of,
things we hide even from ourselves. They tell the truth about us.

Damon Frost had only one ritual.

Each morning, as the sun climbed up the sky, as the night vanished, he stood by
the nearest window. Looking at the horizon with blind eyes and an empty
expression, as his fingertips traced the healed flesh of the burn scar on his
neck and shoulder. And, remembering the past, he wondered...

What would his life be like now, if he'd made other decisions? If he had chosen
other paths than the one he had decided to follow? Would he be here in the same
place he was right now? Was it all his fault?

He didn't want to believe that. He couldn't believe that. In his mind's eye, it
was not a cowardly lie to hide his own mistakes, but the truth upon which he had
founded his life for the last few years. It was what made him what he was.

They had betrayed him. His friends, his family. Michael Deveraux had sold him
out.

The man he had loved and admired, more than anyone else in his life.

As he closed his black eyes so tightly that the skin of his face filled with
deep wrinkles around them, Damon dug his fingertips into the flesh of his scar
until the sensation became painful enough to be unbearable.

His nails broke the tender skin there, making his red and warm blood begin to
flow out of the thin cut in scarlet tears that slowly rolled down his fair skin.


Pain was good. Pain was all that he had. And hate, that feeling inside his belly
so strong, so bitter that it consumed his whole being, setting him on fire,
burning his soul, fueling him.

He hated.

And as the memories of other times – of lying asleep, feeling safe in Michael
Deveraux's arms, of a life that now seemed to belong to a completely different
person – came to his mind with the same strength, he wished he was able to
change everything back. To forget, to make things as they had been not so long
ago.

But he couldn't move back in time; that road had vanished behind him,
disappearing into the void with every step he took forward. He was only able to
keep on walking the path he had chosen, and the only thing he could do was go to
the end of it.

That was one of the things that Michael had taught him.

The light of the rising sun bathed his almost-naked body in a warm golden glow
that was almost unreal, endowing sparkles from his blood as it flowed freely
down his shoulder and into the crisp sandy hair of his chest.

He closed his black eyes, taking a long and deep breath, feeling his lungs fill
with the fresh and salty air of the morning.

The moment was so close, that he could almost taste it. When all the questions
would be answered, when all the cards would finally be laid on the table, when
his hunger and anger would be finally satiated.

When he would finally make him understand that Michael had chosen the wrong one.
He would make all of them understand that.

Looking outside, at the bald and barren esplanade in front of the mansion, Damon
finally came out of his reverie and watched with half-closed and curious eyes
what was developing there.

Four black Humvees, filled to the brim with what to his trained eyes was hi-tech
military equipment, were parked in the center of the esplanade. In front of
them, a dozen men dressed in black paramilitary uniforms armed to the teeth were
standing at attention, as two other men dressed in the same fashion walked in
front of the group, addressing them.

Not far away from them, there was a black and unmarked UH-1D helicopter,
stationed like a big coleopteran, letting the first rays of the day bathe its
wide body.

From his position, Damon was able to see the pods mounted on both sides of the
helicopter, empty at that very moment but ready to hold what he knew was a wide
and diverse combination of weapons, from heavy machine-guns to rockets and even
light missiles.

=It's got some pretty heavy stuff,= he thought.

Recognizing Cabbot Ashe (Colonel Ashe, his mind corrected him) as one of the two
men addressing the group of soldiers, Damon threw a thin T-shirt over his bare
chest and opened his window, sitting on its shelf so he could listen to them
more comfortably.

This could be fun, after all.

"...is no game!" the mercenary colonel's voice came to him, full of authority.
"Gentlemen, if you thought this operation is going to be a walk in the park, you
are very wrong!! I know you've read the mission profiles, and that some of you
think we're just going to face a bunch of helpless kids. Well, if that's true
then let me tell you this: there's no easy mission, there's no easy target and
there's no easy enemy!!"

Arching his brow with amusement, Damon couldn't help but smile. It was like
being back at Fort Bragg.

"I won't tolerate any mistakes, and if any one of you let your guard down and
put this operation's objectives in danger, that man will have to answer to me
personally – am I understood?!"

"Sir!! Yes, sir!!" the twelve men roared as one.

Damon couldn't hold it anymore and burst out in laughter, so strongly that he
had to hold his gut with his hands not to fall out the window, and so loud that
the whole group of men looked at him in anger.

"Do you find something funny, Mr. Frost?" Colonel Ashe asked with a patent lack
of amusement in his voice, carefully adjusting his black beret on his head as he
looked at him with cold and hard eyes.

Barely controlling his laughter and shaking his head, he took a more comfortable
position on the window-shelf, with his legs hanging out and rocking like the
ones of a child.

"Yeah, well, now that you mention it..." he did a soft wave to the
straight-as-broomsticks men, "...are they real, or did you find them in a
collection of action figures? Do they make weird noises if you push the hidden
buttons? 'Up and at 'em!'" he exclaimed with a fake gruff tone. "'To the end and
beyond!'"

As Ashe and his subordinate walked slowly to him, Damon noticed the patches and
insignia on the uniforms. Although he doubted they were real, they were inspired
by the classic American military ones – they marked Ashe as a colonel and his
companion, a shorter and balder man that had a thin scar from his left temple to
the corner of his eye, as a sergeant.

Both men carried pistols, spare magazines and knives in their utility belts; and
their black berets showed a golden symbol, that resembled slightly the one of
the French Foreign Legion, a hand holding a dagger.

Damon hoped that they were more skillful on the battleground than they were on
the parade ground.

"My men come from some of the best special operations groups in the world, Mr.
Frost. Navy SeALs, Green Berets, British SAS and Royal Marines, German GSG-9...
they are the best of the best, so do you think it's wise to make fun out of
them?"

Letting a wide, almost arrogant smile cross his lips, Damon jumped smoothly from
the window, letting himself fall in front of the mercenary colonel. It was a
cold morning and he, wearing only a pair of dark blue jeans, T-shirt and
barefoot, felt the goosebumps rising all over the skin of his arms.

He guessed he must look curious, barely dressed in front of the two uniformed
men – but frankly, he couldn't care less about it.

"What's the point of meeting new friends, if you can't make fun out of them?
Come on," he said, giving the colonel a friendly pat on the shoulder, "don't be
so serious."

With his hands crossed behind him, Colonel Ashe took a short look at his
shoulder, where Damon had patted him, and then back at the young hit man. It was
clear to Damon that, although not a muscle of his body moved to show it, the
older man would love to rip his head off and take a leak in his bleeding throat.

Which was great, 'cause he just loved to piss off guys like him.

"Watch those hands, you little shithead," the colonel's companion grunted at
him, leaning his hand on the butt of his gun.

Before he could make any movement, the colonel silenced him with a soft movement
of his hand. Immediately, the sergeant became silent and quiet but still kept on
eyeing Damon with hostility.

"Have you ever been in the army, son?" Ashe asked him.

Damon's black eyes lost all their humor, turning suddenly cold and hard. "Don't
call me that - ever," he practically spat at the older man's face. "And yes, I
was once; and it's not one of my most pleasant memories, actually."

"I wonder why," the Sergeant mumbled.

"I guessed that you didn't get that bronze ring out of a box of cereal," the
colonel said, ignoring his subordinate's comment and signaling at Damon's hand
with a soft nod of his head.

Absent-mindedly making the ring turn around his finger so the seal would be
hidden inside his hand, the younger man nodded in silence. Ashe moved slightly
to one side and, giving a wave towards his men, smiled coldly at Damon. "Why
don't you show us how you got it?"

Smiling back, Damon made a playful and elegant bow in front of him. "My
pleasure," he said, before beginning to walk to the still firm men.

"Teach him a lesson," Ashe whispered to the sergeant, when the younger man was
out of their hearing range.

"Beast!" the sergeant shouted, after a quick nod towards his superior. "Get your
ass out of the line!!"

"Sir! Yes, sir!" one of the men exclaimed, saluting and walking out of the line.
He was black, tall and huge like a brick out-house. When he smiled predatorily
at Damon, the young man thought that his teeth were exactly like the ones of a
shark.

"I'm going to love this," Beast whispered to him, zipping open his black jacket
and taking it off.

Under it, the man called Beast was only wearing a tight black T-shirt and the
muscles of his arms seemed to Damon big and powerful enough to crush the whole
defensive line of the San Francisco '49ers.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Damon noticed the rest of the men break the line
to form an irregular semi-circle at their left. They seemed very sure and
self-confident of their own skills.

Damon just smiled to huge black man. "You know what they say, the bigger they
are..."

Beast launched himself forward, his big right fist going in search of the young
man's head like a guided missile, as he lifted his left one to protect his upper
torso and face.

Damon simply flexed his knees, letting the propelled fist pass over his head,
and, with a movement so fluid that it seemed made of water, spun around his left
feet as he extended his right one in a perfect round arch that hit Beast on the
back of his knees, sweeping his legs off of the ground and making him grunt in
sudden and unexpected pain.

"...the stronger they bleed," Damon completed his sentence as he grabbed the
man's still-extended right arm. Twisting it violently under Beast's back, he
yanked at the man's belt to throw him face-first to the ground, and then pin him
down with his bent knee on the small of his back.

With a roar of rage, the black man used his obviously superior strength to flip
him off of his back and rolled over the ground, quickly regaining his vertical
position as he unsheathed a short dagger from his boot.

"Come on," he waved at Damon with the shiny and obviously sharp short blade,
smiling twisty. "Try to repeat that, asshole."

The men cheered and roared their approval, chanting their partner's name.
"Beast! Beast! Beast!"

"Cut him in little pieces, Beasty Boy!" a man with a thick moustache and goatee,
and who carried a leather whip attached to his utility belt, shouted with a
thick Australian accent.

Ignoring them as he half-closed his eyes and centered them on his opponent's
ones, Damon adopted a relaxed fighting stance with his knees bent, his feet
separated and firmly anchored to the ground and his body slightly turned to one
side, offering a low profile to the man's next attack.

The eyes. That was another thing he had learnt from Michael. Everything was in
the eyes, the moment of the victory, the moment of the loss and the moment of
the attack.

He saw it, the hesitation, a slight movement of the man's pupils; and, when he
attacked, Damon was already finishing his own counter-attack.

The blade emerged forward and straight like an arrow, searching for the soft
flesh of his throat, and the young hit man just leaned to one side, letting it
pass without any harm and retreating back with the same speed as he took a short
step backwards.

When Beast tried to stab him again, Damon was slightly farther away from him,
not enough to make him take a step but enough to make him lean forward more in
order to reach out to him.

Just a little bit.

Damon leaned to the other side, eluding the blade for the second time, took a
new short step and Beast, like an obedient puppy, followed him.

In less than a second, the trap had been set.

The third time, the distance between them had grown so large that the huge man
had to bring his supporting foot slightly to the front to maintain his
equilibrium and his arm, completely extended in the stabbing movement, waited
just a fraction of second before retreating back.

It passed unnoticed for everybody else, but for Damon Frost it meant the end of
the fight. One of his hands descended like a lightning bolt onto the extended
wrist, capturing it, and the other took a good hold onto the elbow.

The young hit man twisted the man's arm as he spun around, stepping onto the
back of the knee of the man's supporting leg and making him fall onto it.

Groaning in pain and shouting a colorful insult, Beast's grasp on the knife
weakened enough for Damon to rip it from his hand and, with a fluid movement,
raise it ready to plunge it down into his throat.

Near them, the sergeant made a sharp gesture towards the man with the thick
Australian accent and this one lost no time in taking his whip off of his belt
and crack it. The point of the long leather whip rolled around Damon's wrist,
capturing it and stopping the young hit man from slicing Beast's neck open.

"Whatcha gonna do now that Backlash has you, buddy?" the man asked him with a
smug grin as he yanked at his whip, tensing it and making Damon lose his grip on
his fallen opponent.

Damon had to take a step away from him, not to fall to the ground himself. "Two
can play this game," Damon grunted, grabbing the whip and yanking back at it
with all his strength.

When he didn't let the whip go, the man that had called himself Backlash was
destabilized by the young hit man's sudden action and practically flew to him,
only to find his throat colliding with Damon's extended arm. He then fell to the
ground, in a shapeless pile of limbs.

"It this all that your men can do?" Damon asked Ashe with a half-smile,
carefully rolling up the whip around his forearm.

The Colonel shook his head slowly and made a soft gesture to the fallen men,
snapping his fingers. The two men stood up, grunting and holding their
respective pained areas, and looked at Damon with hatred and hostility.
"Sergeant."

The man with the scar on his face took a step towards them, his face turned into
a twisted mask of anger. "You two, get your queer butts out of here and begin
doing weapons and vehicle service!! I don't want to see your ugly faces for the
next five hours, you useless pieces of shit!!"

"God, sergeant," Backlash protested with a rough voice after sending a last
hateful look towards Damon. "We were just warming up."

"Warming up, my ass!! Bushido!! Get out here!!"

Another soldier, one with thin and elegant Asian features, walked to them, his
face devoid of any expression that wasn't strong resolve and self-confidence.

Just seeing the way he moved and walked, with sure and controlled movements made
to economize energy and effort, Damon knew he was going to face a really
dangerous fighter. A professional one.

Good, he liked to face his own kind.

Smiling, Damon took a small bow in front of him like protocol demanded but, when
Bushido was about to return it, the young hit man made his move, taking him by
surprise with a crescent kick that seemed fast enough to break the sound
barrier. After all, the one who strikes first, strikes twice.

Or, at least, that was what the saying used to be. In reality, Bushido reacted
at the sudden attack with the speed of a cobra, eluding Damon's rising foot and
spinning around in a low sweep that made the young hit man transform his kick
into a backflip, not to fall to the ground.

He had barely recovered from it when the Oriental man was already above him with
a high kick directed to his head, that he blocked with his risen forearm,
backpedaling to gain some breathing space.

Bushido began a fast series of kicks and punches that Damon was barely able to
block or elude. Finally, the mercenary's fist made contact with the young hit
man's nose and he felt his lower lip breaking, the taste of his own blood coming
to his mouth.

He was good, he had to gave him that.

But he, Damon Frost, was better.

When the silent Oriental man's arm reached out to him, Damon, who was still
grabbing the rolled-up whip as if his life depended on it, brought it up and let
his fist pass through the irregular leather circle.

Then, before Bushido could take his arm out of it, Damon twisted the whip and,
trapping his elbow and bringing it behind his head, flipped the man over his
shoulder and to the ground with a judo lock.

Before the Oriental man could even regain his breath and while he kept him
immobilized with his arm painfully twisted behind his head and his knees to the
ground, Damon freed the whip with a crack and rolled it around his neck, tensing
it with a hard yank.

Bushido grunted and panted, his windpipe suddenly closed, and struggled wildly
in Damon's grasp, trying to get free. As a response, the young hit man just
tightened the hug of the whip, choking the air out of his lungs until he felt
him weakening and finally passing out because of the lack of oxygen in his
brain.

Unrolling the leather whip from his neck and placing his bare left foot on the
man's back, Damon pushed him to the hard ground, directing a smug grin towards
the mercenary colonel and his sergeant.

"End of the lesson," he said with contentment, carelessly throwing the whip
aside and beginning to walk away.

As the young hit man turned his back on the group of soldiers, the sergeant
placed his hand on the butt of his pistol, popping opening the safety strap with
his thumb.

"Don't even think about it," Ashe warned him in a whispering tone.

"But, sir..." the man with the scar protested.

"But nothing," the mercenary colonel told him with a harsh tone. "We have a job
to do. When we've finished it and received our pay, then there'll be time to
settle personal accounts. Until then, we follow Mr. Egoyan's orders, am I
understood?"

"Yes, sir," the sergeant grunted, not very convinced.

The two of them turned around to look at Bushido's still body on the ground,
surrounded by the rest of his mildly amused comrades. "And tell Scout to take a
look at Bushido, will you?" Ashe added, almost as an afterthought. "Lord knows
we're going to need him."

When Damon re-entered the mansion, padding barefoot on the cold marble floor,
Faith was waiting for him, leaning sexily on one of the tall columns near the
main door, safely away from the arch of daylight entering through it.

"Did you have fun, toyboy?" she asked him with a cocky smile.

Returning the smile and looking at her with his head slightly tilted to one side
as he hid his hands in the pockets of his jeans, Damon took a couple of steps
towards her and shrugged slightly. =God, she's beautiful.=

He had never exactly liked Xander, that was no secret, but until then Damon had
never believed he was stupid either. Now, looking at what the boy had rejected,
he was beginning to think otherwise.

Well, if he played his cards right, he could make his gain out of the young
vampire's loss.

"I'd be lying if I said otherwise," he told her, leaning close enough to her to
make the former Slayer feel the heat radiating from his human body. "Have I
impressed you?"

Raising an eyebrow, Faith made the international sign for 'so-so' with her hand.
"You should know by now that I'm very hard to please, Damon."

Chuckling, the young hit man tried to bring his mouth against hers, but the
vampiress sidestepped him, passing right under his arm and beginning to get
further into the twisted corridors of the mansion.

"Uh-oh," he chanted with a sing-song voice after kissing the empty air,
"someone's not in a good mood to-day!"

"And how did you arrive at such a bright deduction, smartass?" she practically
growled, not bothering at looking back to see if he followed her or not.

Doing so, and hiding again his hands in his pockets with a nonchalant attitude,
Damon hurried to her side. "I can just feel it in the air," he said with
sarcasm, "it's like a sixth sense. You know," he looked at her playfully and
turned his voice into a haunting tone, "'sometimes I see dead people'."

At her evident lack of amusement and hostile sideways glance, Damon just sighed,
letting his shoulders sink down in defeat. "OK, baby, I surrender. Where are we
going?"

"To the library," Faith told him succinctly. "Egoyan wants to see us."

=So that's it.= She was going to learn what it was everyone was going on about,
and she was getting nervous. Damon looked at the former Slayer through
half-closed and inquiring eyes.

The former Slayer was more than nervous; it didn't matter how much she wanted to
hide it, it didn't matter how strong her façade was, he could see right through
her. She was scared.

Good, he could take advantage of that.

They finally arrived at the huge double doors, and Damon gently laid his hand on
the small of her back in a gesture that was both familiar, comforting and
possessive, guiding her into the library.

She just sent a surprised look towards him, but made no effort to get away from
his contact or show any sign of finding it uncomfortable.

Far from it, his warm hand felt surprisingly good on the smooth curve of her
back.

As always, Egoyan was near the eternally burning fireplace, looking older,
sicker, weaker and more tired than ever. But, nevertheless, when he saw the duo
entering into the room and the air of closeness between them, his eyes seemed to
come to life and turn into blazing blue hells.

Smiling defiantly at him, Damon let himself fall into one of the seats and,
without uttering a word, gently made Faith sit across his lap, one hand between
her shoulder-blades and the other comfortably placed on one of her smooth
thighs.

She looked at him with renewed surprise and a good dose of annoyance but, when
his hand began to slowly and soothingly travel up and down the soft skin of her
leg and stroke her, she found herself about to start purring.

Faith even had to bite her lower lip not to moan, when his warm fingertips
traced a particularly sensitive spot on the inner side of her thigh.

Damon locked his black eyes with the old man's ones, and smiled smugly. He felt
like a young wolf questioning the authority of leader of the pack, and he was
enjoying it immensely.

Maybe it wasn't the wisest thing to do, but he had always been a rebel at heart.
It was what had always gotten him into trouble.

With a snort, Egoyan ignored him and motioned to Mr. Smith, who walked away from
his spot by the flickering shadows by the fireplace and rolled the old man close
to the couple.

"The time for the first move of the game has finally arrived," the Chess Player
told them, looking uncomfortably at their obvious intimacy.

"I thought that it was the white side that moved first in chess," Faith said,
slapping away Damon's hand when it became too bold in its exploration of her
thighs.

Egoyan just raised his eyebrows. "My game, my rules."

"It wouldn't hurt us if you explained some of those rules," Damon commented
almost absent-mindedly. "You know, before all of us need a wheelchair to move
around."

While Faith covered her mouth to hide her giggles, the old man looked at him
with hateful eyes, barely repressing his anger. "I would like it if you showed
some signs of respect towards me, Mr. Frost. After all, I'm the one who is
paying your bills."

Damon sighed, and massaged the back of his neck tiredly. "You see, Broderick,
it's like this – you're paying me for doing something which I'm very good at;
but you still haven't told me exactly what the job is, hence my confusion and
lack of... manners. I'm getting bored with this."

"Yeah," the former Slayer agreed, "I'm with him on that."

Shaking slightly his head to one side, Egoyan finally let a twisted smile appear
on his wrinkled face. "I guess that fair's enough, after all. If the truth be
told," he said, leaning back in his wheelchair. "it is quite an easy matter. I
want something, and in order to get it I need something that is in the
possession of our common friends on the other side of the board. Now, it would
be pointless to say that they won't be eager to help me in that matter. This is
where I need you."

"You've gotten some pretty powerful aid," Faith said, "don't you think it's a
little too much overkill?"

This time, it was Damon who snorted. "No, baby," he told her, "knowing who we're
going to face, it is the right amount of overkill."

"Exactly," the old man said with a smile. "Nevertheless, as I already told Mr.
Frost, the strength of our opponents is not based on the sum of their respective
abilities, but in the way they are linked to each other. Their strength is not
so much in themselves, as it is in the ties that bind them together."

Smiling, Damon raised a sandy-haired eyebrow. "And you want us to..."

Egoyan leaned forward, his clear blue eyes locked into the young hit man's black
ones. "Cut those ties, Mr. Frost. Destroy the family before annihilating each
one of its members."

Damon nodded in silence. "And when do you want us to begin?"

The old man crossed his hands on his lap, and leaned back in his chair. "Right
now would be the perfect moment." Making a small gesture to the tall black man
behind him, Egoyan looked straight into Damon's face. "It's time for you to
demonstrate all those professional skills you like to talk about, Damon."

Towering over them like a dark totem, Smith took out a folded piece of paper
from the interior of his jacket and offered it to the young hit man. "Michael
Deveraux has an appointment for lunch this afternoon," he said with his usual
cold and controlled tone, "he will be alone with his companion."

"It will be a perfect moment for you to... make peace with him," Egoyan told him
as Damon got up from his seat, almost throwing Faith to the floor in his haste
to grab the piece of paper. "That is, if you really think you are able to...
bring him down. I could provide you with some help, if you'd like."

Making an effort to control the shake of his hands, the clear show of the
adrenaline suddenly running through his veins, Damon looked at the paper, taking
long and cleansing breaths. "That won't be necessary."

The old man looked at him with a sardonic half-smile, pleased to be the one with
the upper hand. "Are you sure? After all, he taught you everything you know."

The look that Damon sent him could have frozen the fires of Hell. "I've learnt
some new tricks since then."

"Very well then," Egoyan said, rolling away with what seemed like renewed
strength. "Do me this favor, Mr. Frost, and do it yourself," he looked intently
at him with cold blue eyes and when he spoke, the temperature of the room seemed
to descend to the same level of the Arctic core.

"Kill Michael Deveraux, Damon. Destroy the pillar that supports the house, and
watch how the whole building collapses down."

~~~~~~

Rituals. Life is full of them. Sometimes, not even in death can you get rid of
them.

Holding each of the items in his two hands, Xander faced the same decision he
had to take every morning – knowing that he had only one possible choice.

But he refused to stop this bittersweet game he played, as if he was putting a
finger inside an open wound, reveling in the sharp pain that action caused into
his mind, heart and soul. Not for the first time, he wondered if he truly was a
born masochist.

In his right hand, a thin flask full of a colorless serum. In his left, a
plastic bag full of dark, red and tantalizing blood.

As said, no real choice. Not to him, at least.

HR-4, that was what the serum was called, a tiny hope given to him by science to
challenge what was a work of magic and onto which he had hung on by his
fingertips. Knowing it meant his only chance not to be hooked like a junkie, to
the red and vital liquid he held in his other hand.

As with other things in his life, a failure.

Finally, the tolerance he had developed towards the serum had made it
practically useless to him. What at first had served him to avoid feeding for
days, was now only able to postpone the hunger for a few hours.

Basically, it was only useful to calm him down if, being wounded in action, the
hunger dominated him.

Sighing with resignation, Xander returned the serum flask to the interior of the
fridge and closed its door; he walked back to the kitchen table on bare feet,
carrying the blood-bag with him.

He was about to slip his game face on and sink his fangs into it,
when he noticed Cordelia walking into the kitchen, wearing nothing more than his
crimson velvet shirt and a sleepy but happy smile on her perfect lips.

"Hi," she said, hiding a small yawn with his fist, and leaned closer to him to
place a soft kiss on his cheek. "Watcha doin'?"

"I was going to, uh," he shook the bag sheepishly, "have breakfast."

Smiling as she opened the fridge to retrieve a big bottle of OJ, Cordelia shook
her head when she noticed that he had placed the bag aside and, crossing his
hands on the table, was looking away as if he was waiting for something.

"If you're waiting to be alone," she said while sitting down in front of him, "I
should warn you that I don't intend going anywhere."

As she served herself a large glass of the cold juice, Xander sighed and shook
his head. "Cordy..."

"Don't you Cordy me, Xander," she told him, "if I was able to stand those
horrible shirts you used to wear all the time, I think I'm perfectly able to see
you drinking a little blood. Come on," she added, pushing the bag back to him,
"feed."

"I'm not hungry anymore," he lied with a stubborn expression, ignoring the bag.

"You're like a child," she grunted with annoyance. Before she could stop her,
Cordelia got up from her chair and grabbed the blood-bag, quickly walking toward
the kitchen's counter with decided steps.

"What are you doing?!" he exclaimed with surprise, looking with wide-open eyes
as she took a mug from the closet over the counter and, with a set of cooking
scissors, cut open one of the corners of the bag.

"You have to understand something, Xander Harris – we're in this together," she
told him as she filled the mug with blood, making a soft grimace, and then
placed it inside the microwave oven.

After switching it on and while the blood was warmed up inside it, the brunette
knelt down beside him, taking his hands in hers and looking up at his brown and
troubled eyes. "If you want me to accept everything you have to offer me,
Xander, your kindness, your strength, your soul, you have to let me in and see
everything that's inside of you."

Once more, Xander sighed and looked away from her eyes, almost unable to hold
the strong gaze of her hazel orbs. "I would like to keep some things to myself,
Cordy. I don't want you to see them."

"But I have to," she insisted, "otherwise it will be as if I never really knew
you."

The microwave dinged and Cordelia lost no time in standing up and retrieving the
mug from inside it, placing it with its dark contents in front of the young
vampire. "This is one of those things, isn't it?" Xander sighed.

"What things?"

He shrugged. "You know, one of those commitment things you do to strengthen a
relationship. Like choosing new curtains together, and all the other things you
girls like so much."

Raising an eyebrow, Cordelia pushed the steaming mug towards him. "Feed," she
simply commanded him.

Knowing he had no way out, Xander let his shoulders sink down in surrender.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, taking the mug.

"OK," he said to himself in a low tone, "coffee, it's nothing more than coffee."

Bringing the mug to his lips, Xander began to drink the warmed-up vital liquid –
and almost immediately, it was as if something had exploded inside his brain.

He gulped the blood down eagerly, slurping it as if his life depended on it, his
taste-buds inflamed by the incomparable metallic flavor of the red liquid.
Delicious, it was simply delicious.

Grunting when he finished it, the young vampire licked the rim of the mug and
the interior of it as far as he was able to reach with his tongue, leaving the
china almost as clean as a whistle.

"So, you weren't hungry, huh?" Cordelia observed with amusement.

Xander just looked at her sheepishly and gently took the mug to the counter,
quickly washing it and putting it to dry. "I guess I was, after all," he
admitted with a half-smile.

Shaking her head, Cordelia hugged him from behind and kissed him on the side of
the neck, reaching out to gently bite his earlobe.

"Hey!" he softly protested.

"That's to remind you that you're not the only one with sharp teeth, Xander,"
she warned him, leaning her chin on his shoulder.

Chuckling, Xander managed to get out from her arms and, taking one of her hands
in his, gently began to drag her back to his room.

"What are you doing?" she asked, although a very nice image of what she wanted
him to do to her was already beginning to form inside her mind.

"I want to give you something," he said, offering an enigmatic and twisted smile
to her. "A gift."

"Mmm," she smiled wickedly, "something perverse?"

He shook his head, opening the door to his room. "Maybe later."

Leading her until she sat on the still-unmade bed, Xander finally broke away
from Cordelia. He opened one of the drawers on his bureau and rummaged between
the neatly folded up pieces of cloth stored there until he found a small
package, wrapped up into a wrinkled, discolored and worn out gift paper.

For just a second, Xander held it in his hands and smiled with a bittersweet
lost expression.

"I was going to give you this, along with the perfume for our first
anniversary," he said, turning around and sitting down on the bed cross-legged.
He looked at her with that same expression as before, and Cordelia didn't know
whether to feel tenderness or pain at seeing his sad brown eyes. "But I guess we
lost that chance, huh?"

"What is this?" she asked with a curious smile, taking the package from Xander's
hands.

As she gently unwrapped it, discovering a little jewel-box, the young vampire
looked at her with a warm smile of affection and thought back to all the times
he had dreamed of this moment.

They hadn't been happy times, far from it; that little box covered by blue
velvet had been a painful reminder of all the things he had lost when he escaped
from Sunnydale, of all the moments of loneliness and sorrow he had endured in
the last few years.

But, at the same time, it was also a symbol of hope – of the inner strength that
had allowed him to surpass them.

Many nights, looking at that velvet box had been the only thing that had kept
him sane. "Open it," he told her gently.

With a shiver of excitement and a warm smile, the brunette young woman did as
she was told, opening the box with shaking hands.

Inside it there were two cracks, obviously designed to hold two rings; but only
one of them was occupied at the moment, holding an ornate silver ring,
magnificent in its single beauty and in the careful engravings on it.

"Xander, it's..." Cordelia was just rendered speechless, examining in awe the
ring and how the light reflected the strange engravings on it. It seemed like
some kind of language, but the brunette young woman wasn't able to recognize it.

Taking the small ring in her hand, Cordelia found it surprisingly cold and heavy
for just a second before it seemed to warm up and get lighter. "It's beautiful,"
she said simply, shaking her head in wonder.

Smiling, Xander took it from the palm of her hand and gently slipped it on the
ring-finger of her left hand. Much to her own surprise, it fit perfectly, as if
it had been designed just for her.

"Xander," she shook her head, "this has to be very expensive, I can't..."

He silenced her with a soft kiss on her mouth, interlacing his fingers with
hers, feeling the new tactile sensation of the ring on her hand. To him, it felt
like the right thing to do, although he didn't want to think very much about the
true meaning of what he had just done.

"Did I ever tell you about my grandmother?" he asked her in a soft tone, once
their lips had broken apart, his hand never letting hers get away.

At Cordelia's soft shake of her head, Xander got up for a short moment to
retrieve a picture from his box of treasures, which was placed on his bedside
table, before quickly returning to his lover's side.

It was the same picture he had shown Buffy just two nights ago, the one of his
grandmother holding him as a baby.

Unlike Buffy, Cordelia didn't need to ask anything or say any comment about it,
she just looked at the photo and then at Xander with a soft smile. It was her
precious hazel eyes who spoke for her, telling him that she knew and understood.

The love, the affection, the special relationship between them, all of it just
with a mere look at the picture in her hands.

"I wish I'd known her," Cordelia whispered almost reverently. "I bet she was one
hell of a woman."

Xander chuckled softly, nodding in agreement. "You can bet your life on it,
Cor."

"This was hers?" she asked, making the ring spin around her finger.

The young vampire nodded once more, smiling with affection. "It's been in my
mother's family for ages, passed from mother to daughter with each generation.
Our only tradition and treasure, if you want to call it that."

Cordelia frowned in confusion. "And why doesn't your mother have it?"

He shrugged, a slightly bitter expression flashing across his features for an
instant. "Mom never wanted to wear it, I don't know why and my grandma never
insisted on it."

He shook his head softly, with a thoughtful expression. "They were so different,
that I used to wonder how it was possible they shared the same blood... anyway,
I know Grandma would love it if you had it, Cordy. As much as she would have
loved you."

"Are you sure?" she asked, with a surprising lack of certainty.

"Are you joking?" he brought a hand to her face, cupping her soft and warm
cheek. "You're a lot like her, now that I think about it. Beautiful, resolute,
brave..." he smiled crookedly at her, "...and incredibly stubborn."

"Hey!" she slapped him playfully on his shoulder as the young vampire dissolved
into laughter, falling down on the bed when she practically jumped onto him and
tackled him down. "Stop that!"

"Never!" he exclaimed between laughs, struggling to get free from her grasp but
enjoying it too much to put any real effort into it.

"Stop it," she menaced him, "or I... I..."

Xander raised an eyebrow, with smug expectancy. "You what?"

Cordelia looked down at him defiantly, letting a twisted smile cross her
beautiful lips. "Sometimes you think too much of yourself, Xander Harris."

He chuckled, genuinely amused. "Oh, do I?"

She nodded slowly, and smiled with perversity. "I think you need to be put into
your place, young man."

Before he could do anything to prevent it, Cordelia straddled his waist with her
legs and captured his wrists, bringing them up and over his head. Not for the
first time, Xander wondered at how strong she really was. "I think you need
some... discipline."

Xander gulped, soundly. "Well, I, uh, I..."

She leaned over him, placing her lips over his and kissing him hot and hungrily,
parting them and slipping her warm and wet tongue inside his mouth, tracing each
nook and cranny of his interior like a curious and eager explorer.

She tasted some traces of blood still in his saliva, mixed with his own dark and
dangerous flavor. But, surprisingly to her, she found the metallic taste wildly
exciting as it almost burned her taste-buds at the contact of his own tongue.

Erotic, that was the only word she was able to conjure up to define the
sensation that was setting her belly on fire.

Breaking away from him, she trapped his lower lip between her teeth, carefully
yanking at it and then slow and sensually sucking it until it finally slipped
out of her lips.

Xander gulped again, a moronic wide smile filling his mouth. "Will you be gentle
with me?" he asked.

She shook her head slowly, her hazel eyes fixed on his brown ones. "No."

His smile grew even wider, if such a thing was possible. "Good."

As she brought her mouth against his for a new and fierce kiss, Xander could
only close his eyes and let the wild hurricane that was Cordelia Chase sweep him
away. Knowing that, no matter where she would take him, it would always be a
better and safer place.

~~~~~~

Rituals. Life is full of them, no matter how unnaturally long it can be.

Each morning, as the sun entered through the venetian blinds of his bedroom, the
French Immortal known as Michael Deveraux propped up his head against his hand
and looked down at the sleeping and peaceful body of his lover.

He marveled at the way that the soft light of the dawn seemed to draw lines of
gold on her smooth and flawless skin, feeling his heart trying to burst out of
his chest with the love he felt for this beautiful woman.

Sometimes, he even dared to lower the sheets covering them just a little, right
below the line of her shoulder-blades until he was able to see the little tattoo
she had behind her right shoulder.

A tiny blue fleur-de-lis. His mark, she had told him once, because she was his.
Forever.

In retaliation, he had tattooed himself a small red rose in the same place on
his body, just because her second name was Rosa, like her Spanish grandmother;
and because, as he liked to joke, she was a beautiful flower with some really
dangerous spines.

By definition, it was her mark, because he was hers. Forever.

And as he looked down at that tiny blue drawing on her otherwise perfect and
slightly tanned skin, he remembered times past – smiling when they were happy
memories, or with a sadder expression when they weren't so.

Three hundred and thirty five years endows you with a lot of memories – and
there were both good and bad ones, but all of them had led him to the place
where he was now, so he wouldn't trade any of them for anything in the world.

Well... most of them.

Some of those memories were so painful, so raw, that the wounds that they opened
in his soul were still bleeding even after so much time. And, even when he
didn't reject them, Michael wished he would be able to change the facts that had
caused them.

But after all, he was only human, and there were things that were beyond his
abilities, desires or understanding. Like a mortal man, he sometimes wondered if
there was really a God in the heavens above, if he really looked down at His
creatures on Earth and if He cared about them at all.

He wondered why things were like they were, why he had given the chance for
happiness and why it had been denied to others that, maybe with greater reasons
than the ones for himself, had also deserved it.

If there was one thing he had learnt to do in his more-than-lengthy existence,
it was not to dwell on the past – but to live in the present, and to have hopes
for the future.

And the present was this moment in time, this bed, this woman in his arms and
this silly smile coming to his lips as he remembered the previous night, the
laughter, the friendship, the love shared and expressed in its purest physical
form.

Shaking his head at his own sappiness, Michael leaned closer to Rachel's still
sleepy form. And, as he took her into his arms and his hands began exploring the
soft valleys and smooth mountains of her body, he planted a slow and
open-mouthed kiss on her tattoo. His tongue darting out just a little, so he
could taste the salty flavor of her skin.

She turned around into his arms, never getting out of his embrace, and, with
half-opened and still sleepy eyes, smiled at him as her own arms hugged him
close to her.

"Mi pequeña rosa española," he whispered, kissing her fully on the lips. "No
sabes cuanto te deseo."

"Mmm," she moaned, making him turn so her naked body was lying on top of his,
"you know I can't resist it when you talk to me like that, mi guapo francesito."

Michael chuckled, stretching her against himself and planting a kiss on her
forehead. "Why can't things always be like this?"

Leaning her head on his chest, Rachel sighed with resignation. "You're thinking
about him again?"

Blinking and sighing, Michael nodded slowly. "Twice in two days, I thought I'd
gotten over it."

Turning her head so her chin was leaning on his breastbone, the brunette
Immortal looked at her lover with attentive eyes. "I would think less of you if
you'd be able to discard his memory with such ease, Michael. You loved him with
all your heart and soul, I was there and I saw how painful it was for you when
he died."

This time, it was Michael who looked down at her with half-closed eyes. "And
you?" he asked, not missing the slight tone of bitterness that her voice had
carried. "He was also your friend."

"Yeah, friends..." Rachel avoided his eyes and extricated herself from his arms
so slowly that Michael almost didn't feel her doing so. She just shook her head
slowly and, much to his surprise, the French Immortal thought he had caught a
glimpse of wetness there for a short second.

"It's getting late," she whispered, with a tone that was unstable and forced. "I
promised Cordy we'd go out for a jog, before she had to go to class."

Michael watched in confused astonishment as his girlfriend got out of the bed
and, naked as the day she was born, padded softly to the bathroom without
looking back at him.

"Was it something I said?" he asked to the empty air with a small frown, once
she had disappeared into it.

As she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself, Rachel
almost fell down and had to lean her back on the wooden surface to keep herself
upright on her suddenly weak knees.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't right. Not now, not when everything was seeming to be
going so well for the two of them.

=He has the right to know,= she told herself as her soft brown eyes looked up at
the immaculate white ceiling of the bathroom, =I should tell him. I should have
told him right after it happened. Why is it I can't?=

=Because he won't understand,= another voice, that was also her own, answering
her silent question. =He would blame you. Damon is dead, and there is nothing
you can do about it now. Don't rock the boat. Don't make waves.=

'Don't make waves'. So long ago, when she had still been a normal mortal human
being, her husband used to tell her that, to inculcate those single three words
in her as if they were a dogma upon which to base her whole existence.

Often, he had tried to carve them onto her with his fists, leaving some marks on
her body that had healed long ago and others in her soul that would never
disappear.

Don't make waves, don't call attention. Never think yourself good enough for
anything... it had been more than seventy years since that and, still, it was
like a cold hand clenching her heart.

But Michael Deveraux had changed all that. With his love, his friendship, his
smile... and she had tried to return all the beauty, the hope and the love he
had brought into her life with the same strength, passion and undying loyalty.
She had tried her best to do so.

Still, reduced to her simplest denominator, she was just a human being, with the
same flaws and ability to make mistakes as any other woman. She had failed him
once –but, looking at it in retrospect, it was easy to see that the real failure
had been her second mistake.

Her lie, her inability to trust in her loved one to know the ultimate
consequences, that was what had constituted the real betrayal, the final error.

And now, like a ball of snow rolling down a hill, it was as if it was growing
and growing, getting harder and more painful to hide with each passing day.

She had to tell him, he had the right to know the truth about Damon Frost. And
about herself.

As she leaned against the bathroom's sink and looked at her own reflection in
the mirror, she had a hard time trying to recognize herself. There were slow,
silent tears running down her face, covering her tanned cheeks with shining and
wet streaks.

But, not even to save her own life, was she able to remember when she'd started
crying.

She had to tell him the truth.

They say that the truth will set you free, but Rachel just wished that it
wouldn't destroy the both of them.

~~~~~~

Once Damon had gone out of the library, Broderick Egoyan asked Faith to stay a
little while, guiding her back to what seemed to be her favorite spot on the
largest couch of the room.

He smiled at her as she made herself comfortable on it, bringing her long and
smooth legs over the soft tapestry and leaning slightly sideways like a
beautiful and undead Dressed Maja.

"Can I offer you anything?" he asked, while making a silent gesture towards Mr.
Smith who, as always, remained on a second plane behind his master like an ebony
shadow. "Something to drink?"

The former Slayer shook her head softly, looking at him with inquisitive brown
eyes. "No, thanks."

"Oh, please," he said, as Smith placed a small service table by Faith's couch
and poured a generous dose of amber liquor from a ornate crystal bottle in a
equally carved glass. "Come now, indulge me. At my age, I have to enjoy even the
simplest pleasures through others' senses."

"That's why you want immortality?" Faith asked with a risen eyebrow, accepting
the glass from Mr. Smith's large hand and then looking out of the corner of her
eye how he seemed to vanish into the shadows behind the old man. "To enjoy again
the pleasures of youth?"

Egoyan offered her a half-smile, and nodded slowly. "I knew you'd understand me,
Miss Adams. Although I guess it's difficult to imagine for someone who has not
experienced how it is to see your own body betraying you, decaying with the
passage of time, getting weaker and..."

He looked down at his own trembling, wrinkled hands and shook his head weakly,
with the ghost of a sad smile twisting up the corners of his lips.

"Once upon a time, there was nothing that these hands weren't able to do, there
was no goal I couldn't achieve and no mountain I couldn't climb." He raised his
pale blue eyes to her, freezing the undead Slayer to the spot with the intensity
of his gaze.

"You'll never know how it feels, you'll always stay young, vital..." Before she
could do anything to prevent it, the old man reached out to take an errant lock
of her brown hair between his fingers.

His skin was as rough against her cheek, as her hair was silky between his
fingers.

"...beautiful," he concluded with a twisted grimace, that almost made her
shiver.

Fighting to hide her expression of distaste, Faith recoiled almost instinctively
in her seat, trying to get farther away from the old man and hiding her face in
the carved crystal glass and taking a long sip of the amber liquor. It was hard
and strong, and it warmed her cold insides as it went down her throat and
esophagus.

"So, you, uh," she said nonchalantly as she avoided his eyes, feeling
uncomfortable under Egoyan's gaze, "you've decided to change the course of
nature for your own benefit."

"Exactly," he almost whispered, leaning his bony chin on his hand as he looked
at her with curiosity, like a cat about to jump on a mouse.

"And how do you intend to do that?"

The old Chess Player shrugged with disinterest. "A little magic here, a little
spell there..."

This time, her eyes looked up with interest, boring into the old man's figure.
"Are you a warlock?"

With the same smile that a father would give to a child that had asked an
innocent but stupid question, he said, "Of course not – that's why I've
requested Mr. Swann's services, dear."

She arched her brow, nodding slowly. "I was wondering what his role was here."

Egoyan rolled his cold eyes with boredom. "Darling, as much as I would love to
spend the next few hours speaking about my good friend Conrad," he said with
mild sarcasm, "the truth is that we have much more important things to talk
about."

"Like?"

He smiled smugly, knowing the impact that his next words would have on her.
"Like your beloved Xander, for example."

As he had thought, Faith almost jumped to her feet, adopting a more alert
posture and nailing her brown eyes on his thin figure. "It's time to clarify
some points about your childe."

She looked at him with complete attention, slowly biting her own lower lip, but
saying nothing at first.

Slowly rolling away from her and back to the fireplace, where he could have his
old bones warmed up by the crackling fire, Egoyan smiled inwardly, showing his
back to her. "You know he's special, but I'm afraid you can't figure yet to what
point he really is."

"Why don't you explain it to me?" she asked, getting up from the couch and,
after leaving the half-empty glass on the small table, walking close to him.

The old man crossed his knotty fingers and took a long breath. "What do you know
about Immortals, Faith?"

"Immortals?" the former Slayer looked at him with puzzlement. "What do you
mean?"

He turned around in his wheelchair and raised his eyes to hers, an
indecipherable expression in them. "Let me tell you a little fairy tale, my
dear. A tale with beautiful princesses, evil demons and brave knights..."

~~~~~~

Xander absent-mindedly caressed Cordelia's hair and placed soft, silent kisses
on the crown of her head, sinking his nose in her silky dark brown mane,
drinking the sweet aroma of her perfume.

With the back of her head leaned on his bare chest, Cordelia examined with
wonder the silver ring around her finger, the symbol of his commitment to her.

To put it in simple terms, it was beautiful, and it made her feel different...
somehow special and unique.

It made her recover that silly and sappy teenage sensation she had felt a few
weeks before his - their - fall, when she had found herself often day-dreaming
in the middle of class, writing the different possibilities of her future name
in a corner of her notebook.

Cordelia Harris. Cordelia Harris-Chase. Cordelia Chase-Harris... it had been
silly. It had been wonderful.

And it was wonderful again. Even through the darkness that menaced their lives,
even when both of them knew that with the way they had chosen to live them there
was a permanent sword of Damocles hanging over their heads – it felt like, as
long as they were together, as long as they didn't allow anything to come
between them, nothing could ever harm them.

Their love, their passion made each other stronger, more even than the mere sum
of their parts.

She smiled to herself with a secret smile, feeling her heart and her soul warmed
by the love and the passion she felt for the young vampiric Immortal holding her
so tenderly.

She knew, with a clarity that was mystical, that they were just made for each
other.

That they had always been predestined to be together, from the very beginning.
The May Queen and the class clown, the brave white knight and the beautiful
damsel, the powerful Master vampire and his chosen mate, bound together
eternally like the rivulets of gold and silver on the ring around her finger...

She frowned and blinked repeatedly, as she tilted her head slightly to one side
in confusion and examined the ring closely. Gold? There hadn't been gold on the
ring a moment before...

Suddenly, she felt it growing heavy and cold again against her skin, as it had
been when she had first taken it from the velvet box. And just for an almost
impossible-to-perceive moment, it seemed to glow with an energy that came from
inside it – and then, the light of the morning refracted on its surface,
blinding her completely.

She whimpered with surprise and, when she opened her hazel eyes, she found
herself in a completely different world. Or, at least, that was how it seemed to
her.

There was darkness there, and it was cold too. But there was no fear, because
they were together, as they had always been, as they always would be. The evil
one was close and they were scared, because they knew that the moment of their
final fate would come with him.

But they also knew that there was no force in this world, not even in the next
one or in Hell that would be able to tear them apart, and they found their own
strength in this knowledge.

Strength in the idea that, no matter what, they had already achieved the real
prize, the one that could only be given from the real love freely given and
taken, that only could happen when two separate souls became one.

She looked down at his gentle brown eyes and found them different, strange. They
were smaller, more feminine, but they had the same warmth and strong resolve.

She heard his voice, and found it different, strange. Softer, smoother, but it
held the same strength and passion it had always carried.

'Will you be careful, my love?'

Even when her head didn't move, her field of vision changed and she saw her own
hand reaching our to take his slender and soft one. Her hand was big and strong,
callused and deeply tanned by the constant exposure to the sun.

It was a man's hand and, around his ring-finger there was that same silver ring,
now showing interlaced and ornate veins of gold. Her loved one carried a twin
ring on her slender hand, shining under the light of the harsh sun.

Her voice, when she spoke, was deep and masculine, ragged by the emotion and the
worry. 'You know I'll come back to you, no matter what; no matter what danger I
confront, no matter what darkness I find... nothing will keep us apart. I
promise this to you, my love.'

The darkness came back, engulfing her like an ocean wave, rocking and throwing
her far away into the troubled waters of time. She felt lost and blind in that
endless dark ocean, in that eternal and untimely night. She tried to scream, but
her voice wasn't able to pass the barrier of her lips.

And then she felt him again, his strong arms around her, holding her tightly
against his broad and hard chest, his animated heart beating against her back
and his breath caressing the soft hairs at the crook of her neck as his warm
lips traced his skin.

She blinked her eyes open. Xander's bedroom at the warehouse, the light of the
morning filtering through the venetian blinds, the bed, warm and slightly wet
because of their recent and ardent lovemaking, firm and soft under her body...
the ring around her finger... a completely normal silver ring.

No traces of gold, no weird glowing, no strange sensation, nothing at all...

Cordelia shook her head in confusion, trying to make the cobwebs vanish from her
mind. It was an unsettling sensation the one she was feeling right then –
because, much to her own surprise, it wasn't really alien to her. It was more
like déjà vu, like having a name on the tip of your tongue and not being able to
remember it.

It wasn't a hallucination, it wasn't a fantasy... a memory, a remembrance, a
feeling... as if it had all begun long ago...

"Are you alright?" she heard Xander softly asking in her ear, bringing her out
of her reverie. "You were shivering."

"No, I was just..." she turned her head slightly around to look at him and her
voice trailed off. It had happened to her before, she remembered it clearly now.

Once, as she tried to guide a bunch of school kids against a power-hungry Mayor
and his groups of vampire minions and survive at the same time. A flash. A
vision. A memory. "...daydreaming. Can I ask you something?"

He nodded slowly, looking down at her with curiosity. "Sure."

"This ring," she said, showing it to him. "There was another one, wasn't there?
A twin..."

=...that you should be wearing,= she completed the sentence without actually
voicing it, not really knowing why.

Xander opened his eyes wide with surprise, as he took her slender hand in his
and examined the ring in a closer way. "Yeah, they were actually wedding
rings..."

She looked at him, raising an eyebrow and half-smiling, but he just looked away,
chuckling nervously. "Well, uh, they used to be wedding rings, but the other one
was lost long ago. Grandma never told me the exact facts... but, how'd you know
that?"

She shrugged softly, avoiding his eyes as she played with the silver ring.
"There were two spaces in the velvet box, I just figured it out," she lied, once
again without knowing why. There was something about it, about that ring and
about them that was important somehow.

But, instinctively, she also knew it was neither the time nor the place to talk
about it.

Xander looked at her not really convinced, but shook his head, dismissing the
thought as if it wasn't really important at all. "Well," he finally sighed,
releasing her and getting up from the bed, "it's getting late, and didn't I hear
yesterday something about you and Rachel doing something together?"

Cordelia nodded slowly, getting up and searching for her clothes with her hazel
eyes. "Yeah, I don't want to get lazy on my feet," she looked at him with a
daring wicked smile, "although I guess you could say I've already exercised
enough for this morning."

"Don't be bad, Cordy," he told her, sharing her smile and placing a soft kiss on
her shoulder-blade.

In that very moment, a pounding sound began to shake the door of Xander's
bedroom and the aforementioned brunette Immortal's voice came with a cheery
tone. "Come on, Cordy! Eight o'clock, stop doing whatever you and the Xandman
are doing and let's have a real work-out!"

"She knows us well, you have to admit that," the young vampire laughed as he
slipped into a pair of black sweatpants as his only concession to modesty,
remaining barefoot and shirtless.

As she put her lover's crimson velvet shirt back on to cover her nakedness,
Cordelia stuck her tongue out to him playfully and went to open the door,
dodging the cushion that Xander threw at her in retaliation for her mocking.
"Hey! Watch out!"

"Are you naked?" Rachel asked with a bright smile, sticking her head into the
room through the narrow opening of the door.

"Yep," Xander said, searching for his sneakers and finding only one of them
thrown into his wastepaper basket, much to his own amusement. "Better luck next
time, Rach, I know that there's a little voyeur inside you."

The two brunettes snorted practically at the same time. "I think you're
mistaking me for Spike, he's the one with the awesome adult-video collection."

As Cordelia giggled at the idea, Xander sent a faked severe look towards Rachel,
menacingly shaking his lonely sneaker at her. "Hey, don't mess with my
blood-brother, will you? The man is working on his issues, and we have to
support him on that."

"Yeah," Rachel rolled her brown eyes, leaning her shoulder on the door's frame
and crossing her arms, "I'll remember you the next time he chooses 'When Harry
Ate Sally' for a night at home."

"I liked it," he mumbled, kneeling down to search for his lost shoe under the
mattress of the bed.

Raising an eyebrow, and pretending she hadn't heard that, Cordelia turned around
to the brunette Immortal. "Well, can you give me a couple of minutes to change
and we go out?"

"Sure, although I was thinking that we could skip the jogging and do something
more..." she shrugged slightly, "...mobile."

Xander's head peeked out from the other side of the bed, a wicked smile on his
lips. "If that means what I think it does, I want you to let me look. After all,
there's a voyeur within me."

Spotting the lost black sneaker under the bedside table at her side, Cordelia
retrieved it and quickly threw it at the young vampire, hitting him squarely on
the top of his head.

"Ouch!" he exclaimed in pain. "That hurts!"

"That's for you not to have naughty ideas, pervert!" the brunette young woman
exclaimed as the Immortal by her side covered her mouth to hide her giggles.

Turning around to her, Cordelia raised an eyebrow and shook her head with
resignation, as she crossed her arms over her chest as if saying 'I still have
to train him better'. "What do you have in mind?"

Rachel just smiled wickedly at her younger friend, almost with perversity.

~~~~~~

As Cordelia ducked down, letting Rachel's extended leg pass barely a couple of
inches over her head in a perfect flying roundhouse kick, she felt her tight
spandex bodysuit uncomfortably plastered to her sweaty skin.

She glistened and sweated with the effort of the physical workout, and wondered
what had exactly had passed through her mind to put her in such a situation.

"Nice move," the brunette Immortal grunted, falling on her feet as the younger
woman transformed her ducking movement into a forward fall and rolled over her
shoulder, smoothly turning around and jumping up to face the Immortal again.
"Let's see if you can keep this level up."

Dressed in a similar way to Cordelia, with skin-tight and sleeveless black
spandex body-gloves that clung to the voluptuous curves of the two brunettes and
remaining barefoot, Rachel slashed forward with the heel of her right hand,
searching for the apparently unguarded chin of the younger woman.

Nevertheless, what happened then made the Immortal brunette remember the first
thing she had been taught by her French mentor so many years before, when he
took care of her: have faith in your own capacities, but never underestimate an
adversary.

Moving with fast and sure precision, Cordelia blocked her blow by raising her
left hand to push Rachel's upcoming arm away with a slap and then spun around,
making her long ponytail swing wildly over her shoulder and hitting her with her
bent right elbow in the ribs.

Grunting in pain and surprise, Rachel jumped backwards to get away from her and
eluded Cordy's foot when the younger brunette completed her 360 degree spin and
tried to hit her in the side of her face with a high side-kick.

Although it hurt and she knew that right then there was a red spot forming on
her skin under the tight body-glove, quickly turning purple before vanishing
thanks to her Immortal healing capacities, Rachel couldn't help but smile
inwardly, almost with pride.

At first, when two weeks previously Cordelia had asked her if she could teach
her some martial-arts moves, she'd had to make an effort not to laugh out loud.

But, seeing how seriously she was taking it and although she hadn't had a pupil
in more than twenty years (and she'd never had a mortal one), Rachel decided to
take the young woman under her proverbial wing. And, at least, teach her enough
self-defense to keep her safe and whole in a place as dangerous as Sunnydale.

It was supposed to be just something to help her feel better and useful. But
then, she should have remembered that very few things on the Hellmouth were what
they seemed to be.

Cordelia, for example, was more than the pretty face and a sometimes-snobby
attitude she had thought the girl was when she first met her. She was much more,
to the point that Rachel was beginning to think that there was something in
Xander's girlfriend that was beyond what any of them had thought possible.

Because what she had witnessed in the last few weeks, simply wasn't normal.

To put it simply, she was a natural-born Amazon. She doubted that any of her
friends, and not even Xander or Cordy herself had noticed it, too accustomed to
seeing her as the spoiled but brave girl she had once been.

But to her trained eye, she showed all the tell-tale signs. The inner strength,
the resolve, the valor, the fire burning in her hazel eyes... she had just been
born to be a warrior.

She liked to joke that all the natural abilities for hand-to-hand combat that
she seemed to be developing were a debt to her many years as a cheerleader; but
the Immortal knew better than that. Cordelia was a lot like her, a butterfly
about to be turned into a wasp, beautiful and lethal at the same time.

That was why she had been able to get in a few days, the knack of movements
other people would have needed weeks or even months to learn. Why she seemed to
be a natural with all the weapons Kyle had had the guts to leave in her hands,
why she never backed off, no matter what they would hit her with...

She was special, in a way that transcended her looks or beauty. And Rachel
Curran just loved it that she was the port in which Xander had sought refuge,
because she knew Cordelia had the strength and spirit to keep him safe and
sound. She just had to ask Cris to do a good 'reading' on the figure of the
young brunette...

She was so engrossed on her musings, that she almost didn't notice Cordelia
until the younger woman swept her feet off the ground with a low roundhouse.
Making Rachel remember rule number two: never space out in the middle of a
combat situation. There will be enough time for introspection later, if you
manage to come out of it alive.

But, once again, she hadn't survived all these years without learning one or two
tricks of her own. Instead of just letting herself hit the floor, Rachel stopped
her fall leaning her hand on the ground, supporting all her body weight on it.

She kicked Cordelia laterally in her shoulder as she stood up, destabilizing and
throwing her to the ground with a moan of pain as she elevated her whole body
and, pushing with her two hands against the mat that covered the floor of the
training area, flipped up to her feet.

"Come on," she said to her fallen friend as she turned around, "once again."

Getting to her knees and sitting down on her heels, Cordelia blew a loose lock
of dark hair that had escaped from her ponytail away from her forehead, and
looked up at her Immortal friend.

"Can't we just take a little break?" she pouted.

"Yes, please," Xander's voice said not far away from them. The two brunette
women turned their head to see their respective boyfriends seated on the back of
the larger couch in the rest area, dressed in comfortable slacks and loose
T-shirts, watching them with half-smiles as they shared the content of a big box
of popcorn.

"I mean, not that I don't like a good cat-fight now and then, but things are
beginning to get pretty..." Xander made a show of bringing the collar of his
T-shirt away from his neck, "hot here. I don't know I'll be able to contain
myself for much longer."

He looked at Michael with a frown of worry, and shook his head towards the two
beautiful women. "Do you think I'm sick to be totally aroused by all this?"

"I could give you a lot of reasons to consider you sick, mon ami," Michael said
with a lewd smile, "but this is not one of them. You should try to be a little
more... discreet, mes belles, or we won't be held responsible for our actions."

Offering her hand to Cordelia, Rachel helped her to her feet before turning
around to them and, leaning her hands on her hips, look at the two friends with
a risen eyebrow. "Do the two of you think yourselves man enough to... put down a
couple of helpless women like us?"

The two men looked at each other for a brief moment. "I told you we should have
kept our mouths shut, mon frère," the French Immortal said dryly.

Xander just smiled at him and jumped off the couch, quickly walking to the two
women. "I'm not in the mood for that kind of... body-to-body action."

"Oh, no?" Cordelia asked him, crossing her arms over her chest and raising a
cool eyebrow. "What then?"

The corner of Xander's generous mouth rose in wicked half-smile and his left
eyebrow jumped up perversely as he began to slowly walk towards his girlfriend.

"Oh, no..." she read his intentions and began to walk backwards away from him.
"Don't you dare... Xander! Xander, no!!"

Before she could get away from him, the young vampire took her into his arms
and, while she struggled in his grasp, kicking, screaming and finally giggling,
he flipped her onto his shoulder and began to run.

"Yes!" he shouted, jumping on the back of the couch and then becoming airborne.
"Fasten your seatbelts, 'cause it's time to fly with Air Xander!!"

"Xander, no!!" she screamed with delight, as they floated into the air and
wildly spun around like a twister. "You're gonna make me air-sick!"

Laughing out loud, Xander took her off his shoulder and, carrying her in his
strong arms, began to fly slower, lovingly kissing her on the lips as they
floated together around the interior of the huge warehouse.

Shaking her head, Rachel couldn't help but smile at seeing them so happy
together. And, marveled as she was by Xander's challenge to the laws of gravity,
she never noticed Michael getting closer to her until the French Immortal
practically whispered in her ear. "It's still difficult to believe,
n'est-ce-pas?"

She couldn't help but flinch in surprise and looked at him over her shoulder,
barely managing a nervous smile. "Y-yes, it's..." she shook her head, avoiding
the intense gaze of his dark blue eyes, "it's very weird."

Frowning slightly and tilting his head to one side, Michael looked at her with
puzzlement. "There is something bothering you, ma chèrie? There is something you
want to tell me?"

Immediately, she raised her eyes to him as if a lightning bolt had struck her.
Damn, he knew her well. Maybe too well for her own good. "It's nothing, I'm just
a little depressed today, that's all."

That sounded like crap to him, but knowing when to give her space, feeling that
she had given enough space to him through the years, Michael decided not to push
the matter too far.

"Très bien," he sighed, taking her hand in his and softly caressing her skin
with his thumb, "I just want you to know that I'm here for you. For anything you
want, mon amour."

She looked back at him, and managed a weak smile for his benefit. "I know that."

Smiling, the French Immortal softly enveloped her into his arms, sweetly kissing
her on the cheek and rocking her slow and comfortably.

"Bombs away!" Cordelia exclaimed when they passed over the couple, letting a
whole box of popcorn fall on their heads. The box itself fell right on the top
of Michael's head, ending up a makeshift and slightly-tilted hat. Above them,
the whole warehouse filled with the laughter of the flying vampire and his mate.

"Look at this!" Rachel said, barely containing her laughter and, taking a flake
from her boyfriend's shoulder, bringing it to her mouth with a wide smile. "It's
snowing!"

Michael just looked at her with the only eye that hadn't been covered by the
box, and a serious expression plastered on his face. "We will have to put some
fly-paper up in here."

~~~~~~

Oz blinked his blue eyes open and yawned, feeling more tired and brain-fogged
than what was usual, and took a short look around himself. The cage, the rough
wood under his naked body and, beyond the wire-trimmed fence, the backroom of
Giles' bookstore.

=Just another day in the wonderful world of werewolfism,= he thought with dry
sarcasm.

=But this morning's different,= he also thought as he yawned again and grimaced
at the taste of his own mouth, wondering what the hell had died inside it last
night. There was something that wasn't right, there was something missing from
this picture.

"Willow?" he called out loud, as he got up from the floor and shook the closed
door, finding that he was still locked up. "Where are you?"

As he got closer to the fence, almost leaning his face against it and increasing
his range of vision, he was finally able to locate his red-haired girlfriend.
She was seated on the furthest part of the couch with her feet up on it, her
chin leaned on her bent knees and her sea-green eyes seemingly lost into the
void.

There was an aura of sadness so thick around her, that the young musician felt
his heart breaking only at the mere sight of her.

What could have happened to put that look of sadness in the eyes of his
beautiful Willow? Had he done something during the night? Had the beast inside
him managed to hurt her or someone else somehow?

Although his ever-calm façade didn't show it, Oz felt something cold inside his
belly, a bubbling sensation of nervousness aggravated by Willow's apparent lack
of response.

"Willow?" he called her again. "Willow?"

Finally, the red-haired young woman seemed to come out of her reverie and shook
her head, looking at Oz's naked form leaned against the fence as if it was the
first time she heard his deep voice.

"Oz?" she said his name with a weak, almost pained voice.

"Hey, baby," he managed a smile only for her benefit. "Could you let me outta
here? It's beginning to get cold."

Shaking her head again as if she was coming out of sleep right then, Willow
finally nodded and slowly got up from the couch, retrieving the keys of the cage
from the surface of the nearby table and walking to open the door's lock.

With his slender fingers still grasping the wire-trimmed fence, Oz followed with
his cold blue eyes each one of Willow's movements as she got closer to him. She
fought with the small collection of keys on the large key-ring, fumbling with
them until she was able to find the correct one and insert it into the lock.

Much to his own surprise and worry, the young musician found that she wasn't
able to look straight at him or talk to him at any given moment. When she
finally unlocked the door, but before she was able to open it, Oz strained his
fingers through the fence to caress her ones where she had leaned them to open
the door.

As if she had received an electric shock, Willow flinched and raised her
sea-green eyes to his. She seemed about to cry.

"Wills," he practically whispered, his lips only separated from hers by the
metallic fence and a few inches of air. To him, it seemed like being a whole
world apart. "Are you alright? Is there something going on?"

"I-I..." she sobbed, shaking her head. Breaking away from him, removing her hand
from his with a movement that was a final caress, Willow backpedaled to the
couch, hiding her face between her hands as she finally broke into tears.

Stifling a curse, Oz pushed the door violently open and, forgetting completely
about his current state of nakedness, quickly closed the space that separated
him from his loved one, enveloping the petite woman in his arms.

"No!" the redhead cried when she felt the arms of the werewolf around her,
struggling to free herself. "Don't touch me!"

"But baby," he shook his head in confusion, "you gotta tell me what's going on,
is it something I've done? Did I..." he took her face gently into his hands and
made her look straight at him, "...did I do something last night?"

She shook her head weakly and leaned her warm hand on his cheek, caressing him
sadly. "You? No, sweetheart... it was me who did something horrible last night."

Frowning, Oz blinked his eyes with puzzlement. When she tried again to come out
of his embrace, he let her go and reached out for the blanket on the back of the
couch, using it cover his naked body and get some resemblance of dignity.

"What are you talking about?" he asked, looking at her warily as he slowly sat
down on the old green couch.

Taking a step back from him as if his mere closeness hurt her, the young
apprentice witch leaned back on the near table, crossing her arms over her chest
almost defensively.

"I... I... uh, something happened last night," she told him, fighting with the
words. "It, it... well, it was nothing, I mean, it was something, but to me,
I..."

"Willow?" he called her, cutting off her seemingly endless tirade. She raised
her eyes from the floor, to look at him in silence. "You're babbling."

"I almost kissed Spike last night," she finally blurted out, with an
expressionless face and dead eyes.

They say that confession is good for the soul, but at that very moment, in the
midst of the thick and sticky silence that fell between her and the young man
she knew she loved with all her heart, Willow Rosenberg didn't feel good, not at
all.

All night she had been endlessly turning the whole matter back and forth inside
her mind, until she had believed she was going to go crazy and her head had
seemed about to explode.

But the truth was, she couldn't say that her thoughts were any clearer than what
they had been the moment Spike had crossed the door of the store.

What she knew was that, although she seemed to have some kind of feelings
towards the bleached-hair vampire she couldn't even measure or define, she still
loved Oz with all her heart and soul and that, at least, she owed him the
sincerity of the truth.

But now, as she perceived something changing inside the young werewolf she began
to think that, maybe, discretion would had been the wisest decision.

There wasn't anything really showy, Oz's usual calm and self-controlled façade
didn't change one bit, neither did the rhythm of his breathing or even the cool
fire that always seemed to blaze in his eyes.

But she, who was beginning to learn the real ways of magic and to see the world
as it really was, didn't need much effort to notice the variations in his aura.
Where everything was usually the soft pastel tones of an artist, bordered with
some touches of the indigo blue of a magical creature and the dark grays of his
inner wolf, now it all shone darker, swirling with rage like in a maelstrom,
giving color to his inner turmoil.

On the outside, Oz just took a long and deep breath and got up from the couch,
precariously grasping the blanket around his waist as he walked to the near
chair where all his clothes were still neatly folded.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" she weakly asked, as she watched him
slipping into his underwear and faded blue jeans.

"What do you want me to say?" Oz said, without turning around to look at her.

Willow shrugged helplessly. "I don't know... that you forgive me, that you still
love me... that you can't even look at me in the face, that you hate me...
something... anything, I guess."

Oz sighed again and, still without turning around to look straight at her, let
his head sink down tiredly and leaned his hands on his waist. "Willow, right
now, I just don't think there's much I want to say to you."

That was the moment when she saw it all clearly, and she had to wonder how it
was that she had been so stupid that she hadn't been able to understand it
sooner. No matter what she could feel for Spike, no matter how strong her
attraction for the dark and handsome vampire could be, it just paled in
comparison with her feelings towards Oz.

Because, if the high-pitched cry that escaped from her lips at hearing the
freezing cold in the young werewolf's voice wasn't the sound her heart breaking
inside her chest, Willow couldn't conceive what it was.

"Oz, please," she begged to him, "don't get angry with me."

"Angry?" he practically growled, wildly turning around and clenching his fists
around the thin T-shirt he held into his hands to control their shaking. "You
tell me that you've kissed another man, and then ask me not to get angry?"

"Almost kissed," she pointed out, barely recognizing the face of her boyfriend
under the sudden grimace of rage that crossed over his features for an almost
imperceptible moment. "There's a difference."

"Oh, really?" he asked with an unusual acid-dripping sarcasm, throwing the
T-shirt over his bare chest and sitting down on the chair to put on his socks
and sneakers. "Like what? An inch of air?"

"No," she said firmly, now resolved not to make him believe it had been what it
wasn't. "The difference is that I understood my mistake soon enough not to do
some irreparable damage to our relationship. I backed off, Oz, I didn't do it."

The young red-haired man slipped his feet into his white and tattered sneakers
and looked up at Willow, the intensity of his feelings only showing now in the
furious way in which he was tying his shoe-laces. "You just don't get it, don't
you?"

"What?" she asked with a frown.

Getting up from the chair, Oz began to walk to the exit of the room as he shook
his head. Once more, like the night before, she felt herself glued to the floor,
unable to follow and stop him the same way she hadn't been able to stop Spike.
"Oz, please, talk to me!"

Almost as if she watching the same movie with just the actors changed, Oz
stopped under the door's frame and turned around to look at her one last time
before walking out.

"I love you, Willow," he said simply, shaking his head sadly, "and nothing's
gonna change that, but right now..."

He sighed deeply and closed his eyes tightly shut, as if his head, or his heart,
was aching. "...right now I just need to be alone for a while, OK?" he said.
"I'll talk to you later."

"When?" she asked weakly, her eyes burning with the sting of tears.

Oz shook his head. "I don't know, Willow. I just don't know."

And, leaving her alone, cold and empty, the young werewolf finally walked out of
the room, turning his back on her so she couldn't see the silent tears of sorrow
and rage coming out from his blue eyes and rolling down his cheeks.

The only thing both of them knew at that moment was that, no matter what, things
would never be the same between them again.

~~~~~~

To be continued...