20: Buddy Bonding, Slayer Style

Donna clutched the stake uneasily. She would rather have had a crossbow, but wandering the White House grounds with a pointed stick was going to be hard enough to explain if she was spotted, let alone an actual weapon.

Buffy seemed quite at home patrolling the darkness, although she hiked up her dress with a curse. "We're not exactly dressed for this, are we?" Donna observed.

Buffy shrugged. "I'm kinda used to it by now. I mean, there was the whole Ascension thing at my Graduation, the Master decided to kill me at the Spring Fling... and don't even get me started on birthdays." She scowled. "Then, of course, there was the prom. I didn't mind the whole hellhound thing so much, but breaking up with my boyfriend the day before definitely sucked."

"Your boyfriend broke up with you right before the prom?" Donna winced. Getting a vampire-slaying destiny dumped on you was one thing, but that was just nasty

"Yeah." Buffy sighed. "Of course, it was never gonna work and we both knew it, but, you know, it would have killed him to wait 'til the day after?"

"He wasn't the guy?" Donna sympathised.

"Oh, no, he was totally the guy all right. It was just... complicated." She kicked at the ground with her fancy shoes. "He was older, for a start."

"Yeah?" Donna's thoughts skipped briefly back to the painful subject of Dr. Freeride. And then she thought about how since Josh had coined that nickname, she'd never thought of her ex-boyfriend by name ever again. Face it, girl, you fell a little bit in love with Joshua Lyman right there and then.

"Yeah," nodded Buffy. "Actually, he was two-hundred and fifty."

"Ah." Maybe there were more complicated relationships in the world than hers and Josh's.

"He was a vampire," Buffy elaborated.

"Not Spike?" Donna asked, remembering the bleached blond vamp and his strange devotion to the young Slayer.

Buffy gave a snort of startled laughter. "Spike? Um, no." She frowned a little. "Spike is... Spike. I have no idea what's going on with him, so let's just leave that alone. No, this was another guy. He was a vampire, but he had a soul; his name was Angel."

"Ah." Donna remembered that name; Willow had mentioned it in conjunction with the spell that had brought Buffy back, and both Spike and Xander had tensed up in disgust. "And he might have been the one?"

"Yup. Except for this whole calamity, end of the world, serious doom if we ever actually got together deal."

"I hear you." Donna nodded emphatically. Yeah, she knew about that all right. Dammit. "So what happened?"

"Briefly?" Buffy shot her a wryly amused look. "We met, fell in love, spent the night together, he lost his soul and went on a murder rampage, he tried to end the world, Willow gave him his soul back, I stabbed him and sent him to hell to save the world, he came back, we had a whole doomed love thing going again, and then we broke up. And now he works in LA as a private investigator."

"Wow."

"Yeah." Buffy shook her head. "We don't talk much anymore. I mean, I had to call him up after... you know... and say 'hey, so I'm not dead anymore', but apart from that..." She shrugged. "What would I say? 'Hi, remember me? We had the love of a lifetime and then I turned you evil, why don't we have brunch sometime?'" She sighed.

"Love sucks," said Donna despondently. She doubted Josh was in any danger of losing his soul, but his job was a different matter.

"Yeah. I'm giving up on love for the moment." Buffy suddenly grinned, making her look as young as she truly was. "But your friend Sam sure is pretty to look at in the meantime."

"He is, isn't he?" They shared a giggle.

"But seriously, though." Buffy gave Donna a look. "What's with you and Josh?"

"Nothing. He's my boss."

"Your boss with cute dimples who totally likes you."

"Maybe," she admitted, blushing a little.

Suddenly a vampire came rushing out of the darkness, animal face contorted in a murderous scowl. Buffy slammed a stake through its chest without even looking. "Do you mind? Talking."

She turned back to Donna. "So, c'mon. What's the scoop on Josh? Tell me everything."

They wandered on through the night.