Disclaimer: see chapter 1

Author's note: sorry about the huge spaces, something to do with the html formatting which I need in this one.

In the end I think they decided to take Angelus back to our place. Mum and Tara took him in our car and I went with Wesley and Cordelia and a very ill Giles in theirs. It was nearly midnight when we pulled up, and Mum and Tara were manoeuvring Angelus through the barriers. We followed them into the house.

I haven't been exposed to grief. Not having known my dad, it never bothered me he wasn't there, and none of my relatives (I haven't got many, having only one parent) have died. Mum kept her feelings about the past well enough subdued for me not to know about them particularly. Once, the father of one of my friends died, and that was pretty bad. This was a hundred times worse. I guess if you suddenly discover you killed the only person you ever loved it hits you pretty hard. We sat Angelus down in the living room but he kept on shaking and crying. The sobs had got less but his shirt was soaked. Mum gave him a hanky and in ten minutes it was damp and stained a sort of pale pink. Wesley and Cordelia were upstairs somewhere with Giles and so there was just the three of us and the vampire in the room. Eventually Mum sat down on the sofa next to him.

"Angel," she said softly, reassuringly. The sort of voice she used with me when I had nightmares. "You're safe."

"Safe?" He lifted a ravaged face to Mum's. "Safe? Safe from what, Willow? I killed her. I killed Buffy. So many people, and Buffy. How can I be saved?" He shook his head. "Why won't they stop talking, Willow?"

I saw Tara's face all screwed up next to me, and I knew she could feel the pain inside her head. Heck, I could almost feel it myself. Mum held Angelus's hand and glanced at me.

"Lizzy. Water and the sleeping pills."

I nodded and went to get them, grateful to get out of the room and away from all that pain. In the process of fetching the little bottle of sleeping pills from the medicine cupboard I popped my head around the door of Giles's room and saw him asleep. Wesley and Cordelia had dozed off too, she sitting on the floor with her head on the bed, he half on the bed next to Giles. I went back to Mum.

She pressed the water and five of the pills into Angelus's hand.

"Take these, Angel. You'll sleep and when you wake you'll feel better, I promise. If you don't take them I'll have to do another spell, and I'd rather not this soon."

He looked at the tablets with aching eyes, and then nodded and swallowed them down. Mum stood up and eased his legs on to the sofa.

"Now, sleep," she ordered, and glanced at me. "You too. No argument."

She had her resolved face on, the one you don't argue with, and I kissed her and Tara good night and went to bed.

In the night I was woken by an awful cry from across the hall (my room's on the ground floor), and I heard footsteps and soft discussion and then there was silence again.

Next morning, in the harsh light of day, it all seemed a bit unreal. I lay awake for a while, drinking in the sunlight through my curtains, and I got up eventually and wandered through to the kitchen. I avoided the living room on purpose.

Xadner and Anya were still not there, but the rest of them, including Giles, were sitting around drinking tea silently. I made myself some coffee and perched on the counter. For once, Mum didn't tell me to get down.

"Morning?" I tried.

"More like afternoon," pointed out Cordelia. "It's one o'clock, Lizzy."

I glanced at the oven clock and registered she was right.

"Oh."

"You slept?" asked Mum, turning her head.

"In stages," I told her. "Sort of disturbed. I didn't dream it, last night?"

She shook her head.

"No, you didn't dream. He's asleep. I had to – we had to put a spell on him, in the end. The sleeping pills weren't strong enough."

Giles rubbed his neck thoughtfully. He looked a lot better, but tired.

"That was really what I was worried about," he said, "that the soul … that it wouldn't be able to take the memories."

Mum creased her eyes.

"Giles, it was that or getting you killed. We needed the circle, we needed five people, we needed time to do the spell we had planned originally. I had to. I had no choice."

He nodded, and smiled gently at her, in rather a fatherly way.

"Willow, I'm not blaming you."

"I am," interrupted a voice from the doorway. We all turned to see Xander, grey rings around his eyes, leaning against the doorframe. "Will, how could you have done it?"

Mum stood up, her shoulders firm, her fists slightly clenched.

"He's harmless this way. He can't hurt anyone any more."

"Can't he?" I had never seen Xander like this before, not bitter and angry. And never, ever, angry at Mum. They had been friends since kindergarten, her and him, inseparable all through school. He was like the brother Mum had never had, she was his helper and guide and tutor. They had never raised their voices at each other in my presence. "Can't he?" repeated Xander. "Has everybody forgotten what he did? Not just recently, but before? Giles? Cordy?"

"Of course I haven't forgotten," Giles said in a low voice, and Mum looked at him and back at Xander with daggers in her eyes. I half-expected to see real daggers fly at him.

"Don't bring her up now," she warned. "Just don't, Xander. You were always so hurt by Angel. Always jealous. You took everything so personally. And in fact it never touched you."

"My friends were in danger," Xander came back. "You were in danger, Will. That spell – it nearly killed you twice, and you still did it again?"

Mum said nothing. I swallowed and watched her. Xander was scaring me a bit, in this strange mood.

"What happened?" asked Mum, after a minute. "What happened the day that Buffy killed him and ran away? Did you give her my message?"

"Your message?"

"Did you tell her I was going to do the spell again?" said Mum, quietly. From my vantage point on the counter I could see each of them; Giles with his head bowed, Cordelia staring at Xander, Wesley at Mum, Tara with her hands twisted together, and Mum and Xander with their eyes locked. Suddenly Xander's eyes filled with tears and he literally collapsed on to the floor, shaking his head.

"No. No. I couldn't, Will, I got to her and she was so determined with the sword in her hand, and I told her you said to be careful. I couldn't. She didn't know."

Mum just looked at Xander and then turned away to Tara.

I left my coffee and went for a walk, trying to get away from the emotion and the things I didn't understand in that house. I thought I understood them, even with my odd parentage, but all of a sudden I found I didn't understand anything. I walked pretty blindly but found my steps heading towards the cemetery; it was quiet and calm in the sun, almost pleasant if it hadn't been full of dead people. I bypassed the old mausoleums and graves and headed for the more recent ones, searching for a name. I found it on a clean white marble headstone, cared for by someone, with a little white rose plant growing in front. "Buffy Summers," I read aloud, "The Chosen One. 1981 – 2001." I sat down on the grass and wondered.

I wondered about a lot of things. I wondered about myself. It shocked me – it shocks me now, as I sit in front of my computer screen writing this – that I took everything so calmly, relatively speaking. And that I'd gone out the night before dressed to be killed by a vampire. Yet it didn't seem strange, really, I accepted it because odd things are my life. I'm used to Tara mind reading and I'm used to Mum casting spells here there and everywhere to make people's lives better. But somehow, the vampire in the living room was the strangest of all, and not least because of the reaction of otherwise perfectly ordinary people like Xander.

I sat in front of Buffy Summers's grave and I wondered about her, this girl whose face I had only seen twice in my life; on the wall and in Tara's memory. She was dead. I'd seen her die. But she was alive in the minds of Mum and the others, she meant so much that they were prepared to risk their lives to avenge her death. She must have been extraordinary. And at some stage she'd fallen in love with, and yes, it comes back to him again, the vampire in the living room. When I realised that I got up and went home, wanting answers.

The living room curtains were still shut, and so was the door, as I paused outside it, but there were low voices coming from inside the room. In the kitchen (still there) I found everyone except Giles, Mum and the others picking at pizza from a cardboard box.

When Giles found out I was going to write this account he said that I had to know what everyone said in the living room that day, to make it faithful. He says if I send him a copy he'll send it on to people he knows in London, where it will become part of a big history about Slayers and vampires, and Buffy Summers and Angelus in particular. They all listened to Giles and they all came and told me, which impressed me and surprised me at once. Xander was a bit reluctant, but I think out of respect for Giles he told me too.

Cordelia and Wesley went first. Wesley did the talking, with interruptions from Cordelia when she thought it was necessary.

*   *   *

"You have to know, Liz," Wesley began, "that before you were born, after Cordelia and the others finished high school, we – me and Cordelia worked for Angel in Los Angeles. We ran a sort of detective firm and killed demons."

"Angel Investigations. We help the helpless," added Cordelia brightly, with a sort of fixed smile on her face. Then she lost the smile. "Before we became the helpless."

"We found a prophecy that said after the battles, after the thwarted apocalypses and so on, Angel would become human. We worked towards that, we hoped for it. He was our friend and he deserved his redemption." Wesley sighed, a sigh full of longing and nostalgia. "There's a law firm in LA called Wolfram and Hart. They deal with the underworld. They're practically on the side of evil. For reasons best known to themselves they did not want Angel to – to 'shanshu', to regain his humanity, and so they sprang a plot to end it." He reached for Cordelia's hand and held it tightly throughout his tale. "Angel received a polite note to attend a meeting at Wolfram and Hart. We all went. We armed ourselves. We didn't know what to expect. Everything started normally, the senior partners were there, the people involved with Angel. They seemed nervous, but that was normal. They didn't understand Angel, and many of them were scared of him." Wesley laughed shortly and without actually finding anything funny. "They hadn't researched. Good research is so important. They'd looked at his history briefly, thought he was just a vampire who'd happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got punished for it. We sat down. And then the door opened and a mage arrived and started a spell. It froze us all, there was so much light and a kind of hum in the air, all centred around Angel, and when it ended and the door closed on the mage there was silence. We thought they'd killed Angel. He seemed to be unconscious, or dead, and I got up and went to him." He stopped talking and looked at Cordelia, who nodded and took up the tale.

"Angel kind of looked up and smiled at Wes and then he just picked him up and threw him across the room. I guess I should have gone to see if Wes was all right but it was like I couldn't move. Angel got up from his seat and he had the sword in his hand that he'd brought in case. The lawyers were all backing away, except for a guy called Lindsay who'd got his hand chopped off by Angel before. Lindsay nodded at Angel and said, 'Welcome back, Angelus,' and I think I screamed and then Lindsay was … headless. I must have screamed again. Then I … don't remember."

"We woke up later to a massacre," resumed Wesley, sombre. "There were paramedics. I couldn't move my head. Cordelia had bruises and there was blood everywhere. Angel – Angelus had gone. We got taken to the hospital and we weren't let out until five weeks later, and by that time Buffy was dead."

"God," I whispered, despite myself. "So … what did you say to him?"

"Today?" said Wesley. "We went in when Willow told us he was awake. I don't think he wanted to see us."

"Hello, Angel," said Wesley.

Angel looked up and barely acknowledged their presence.

"Look, I know you don't know what to say, and I don't either, not really," continued Wesley, awkwardly adjusting his glasses in the gloom. "But it's not your fault. None of it ever was. None of us blame you."

"Xander blames me," said Angel, staring at the floor. "Xander always did blame me. Xander is right."

"Xander Harris is as selfish as ever," Cordelia said with conviction. "You're worth ten of him."

"Thank you, Cordelia," Angel whispered. "I didn't mean … what I said last night …"

"World's worst actress?" asked Cordelia. "You did and you're right."

"I wish we hadn't gone to that meeting," said Wesley. "We should have known they'd have had something up their sleeve."

"It hurt, so much," Angel said, finally looking up. "Like I was being ripped in two. And then the pain went, and all I saw … all I felt …was that room full of life waiting to be ended."

"You missed two," said Cordelia, trying to be cheerful.

"I'm glad," Angel replied. "On top of everything else … I couldn't have borne that too. Not you two. Those years in LA were the happiest I had, ever. I felt I was wanted."

"You still are wanted," admonished Wesley. "We all want you. You have to separate yourself from the demon, Angel."

"The demon's always going to be a part of me," Angel shook his head. "I can't separate myself from it, however hard I try, however much I think I have succeeded, it always betrays me in the end. It betrayed me with Buffy." At her name he bent his head again and they watched him surreptitiously wipe away tears with aching hearts.

"It needn't always be with you," Wesley reminded him. "The prophecy still stands, I'm sure. You're still what you were. You can still become human, Angel."

The vampire shook his head.

"Not now, Wesley. Not now."

He said nothing more and they left him alone in the room.