The next day, Buffy walked down the large staircase. Cordelia was in the kitchen talking with Angel.

"God, that is so sad," Cordelia said. "I can't believe everything that's happened."

"I was as stunned as you are," Angel said. He sensed Buffy as she came closer. "Buffy? You there?"

Buffy came through the door. "Yeah. I'm here."

"You look awful," stated Cordelia. Buffy had rings under her eyes , her eyes were red and puffy, and her skin had a pale tone to it.

"If I look as awful as I feel, I don't even want to know," Buffy said, coming up to them and taking a seat on the counter.

"Angel was just telling me about what all's happened. It's unbelievable."

"You didn't have to live through it."

"And I thought we were in bad shape."

"Have you called Lorne's place, yet?" asked Angel.

Cordy nodded. "Fred and Gunn are coming back here tomorrow."

"What about Wesley?"

"We have no clue where he is."

"And Conner?"

"Same."

"Any sign of Justine?"

"Well, sorta. See, the whole reason I knew where you were is because I happened to look down just as they were dumping you in the ocean. After that, they drove off. So, my guess is, Conner is going to stick with her."

Angel sighed.

Buffy put a hand on his shoulder, giving him the best smile she could muster. "It'll work out. I should know. I'll tell you if it looks like something you should freak out over."

"I just don't trust Justine with him."

Cordelia replied, "And that's understandable."

"But," said Buffy, "If you keep looking at the down side, you'll never see what's coming." She paused for a minute. "You know, that would have been really useful advice for me earlier this year."

"Too bad you never thought of it."

"Or the Powers could at least send me a message like they did last night."

"Last night?" said Angel and Cordy at the same time.

"Oh, Whister paid me a little visit. Said a few things. Told me I didn't screw up this time, besides that fact that I should be dead now."

"Huh?"

"Willow was never suppose to come to the hospital. If she had never came, I would have died."

"So, that's three times you defied death," said Cordy.

Buffy nodded.

"Wow. That's pretty impressive."

"At least this time I didn't actually die."

"So," said Angel, "Whistler just showed up to tell you, 'you should be dead, but you're not, good for you'?"

"Pretty much."

"I really want to rip that guys head off."

"Don't we all."

Later on that day, Cordy was on the couch, watching Buffy and Angel spare in the main room.

They exchanged blows, but since Angel had been underwater for a week or so, he was a little rusty, where as, Buffy had just gotten through fighting a super-strong wiccan. Buffy eventually got the upper hand and Angel ended up on the floor, face-first.

"Um, ow," he groaned, sitting up.

"Can you teach me to do that?" asked Cordy.

"Do your demoness powers make you have super-strength?" asked Buffy.

"I don't think so."

"Then no. The only reason I won is because he's been underwater for a week and I haven't."

"Yeah," agreed Angel. "Otherwise-"

"Otherwise it would have taken me another fifteen minutes to get him on the ground."

"Or maybe I would have won."

Buffy held out her hand to help him up. "Don't count on it."

He glared at her, but took her hand. She pulled him to his feet.

"What is with men, and their egos?" asked Cordelia. "It's like, if a girl beats them, they think they're wusses. Which, in this case, that's true, but-"

"Hey," said Angel, offended.

"Well, she's the Slayer, and you're a vampire, and you should be able to take her down."

"He didn't even get me when he was Angelus," pointed out Buffy. "Big sword fight. I still won."

"See," said Cordy.

Angel glared at them. "I am not a wuss. If anyone's a wuss, it's -"

"Hello, people!" called Gunn from the door.

"Gunn. Fred," said Cordelia, standing. "You're back. Early."

"Yeah, well, the cab driver was in a-"

They heard tires squeal as the cab took off.

"Hurry," Gunn finished. He saw Buffy standing next to Angel. "You must be the all famous Buffy summers that I hear so much about."

"That's me," Buffy said softly.

He held out his hand. "I'm Charles Gunn. Everyone here calls me Gunn."

She shook his hand. "Nice to meet you."

A young girl with long brown hair came up to her. "I'm Fred."

"I'm Buffy."

"I know. We here alot about you from Angel."

"I noticed."

"So," said Gunn, dumping a travel bag on the counter, "why are you here?"

"I just had some things I wanted to talk to Angel about."

"Like what?"

"My friend becoming a Super-Wiccan and trying to destroy the world, my other friend dying, my other friend saving the world, and I've been sleeping with his childe."

"You mean, a vampire he sired?"

Angel butted in. "She means Spike."

"Oh." Pause. "Why?"

"Long story that I've already told twice."

"I'll fill you in later," promised Cordy.

Gunn nodded. "So, has anything changed while we were gone?"

"Conner is gone with Justine somewhere, Wesley is nowhere to be found, and I'm a higher being."

"You're a higher what?"

"A higher being. It means I don't exist in this dimension anymore."

"What?!" cried everyone in the room besides Buffy.

"You never said that," said Angel.

"How did that happen?" asked Gunn.

"You mean, you're not real?" Fred asked.

"If you would let me explain," shouted Cordy, "I can tell you."

The three stopped what they were saying and waited.

"Thank you. When I say I don't exist in this dimension anymore, I mean, I live in a different dimension now. I'm real. It's just, I'm in different form now. That's why I'm all glowy. This body is like a costume for me. I wear it so I can be here."

"How long are you going to stay here?" asked Fred.

"For about a week. That's when the spell wears of and I have to go back to my other dimension."

The room was silent. Buffy kind of held back. This was their problem.

"So you only have a week here," stated Angel.

"Sort of. It's like, my kind, what I am now, are able to move through dimensions. We have that ability, but we don't have the ability to take human form. If I come here, I have to have a spell put on me and that costs money. Well, not really money, but the kind of currency they have there. It's like glowing balls of energy. Something like that, anyway, I will come back. It will just be awhile."

There was silence. Angel walked over to the counter and perched on top of it. He stared at the ground in deep thought.

Cordy watched Gunn and Fred just give her half-smiles.

Buffy walked over and sat next to Angel. "You okay?" she asked softly.

He just shook his head, no.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"I think I'm starting to understand how you felt after I left," he admitted, never looking at her.

"It's painful to lose someone you love."

"And I've had it happen three times now."

She put a reassuring hand on his arm. "I've had it happen more than that. You don't even know half of it."

"I'm not sure I want to."

By this time, Gunn, Fred, and Cordy had made themselves scarce.

"At least, you know she'll be back."

"When? I'm not even sure she feels the same about me. I just know that all of a sudden I have feelings for her."

"I can talk to her."

"I don't know. I don't want to bring you into it. You have enough problems." He looked up at her. "Are you ready to tell me the thing you haven't told me yet?"

Buffy looked at the ground. "It's not really the fact that I don't want you to know, I'm just worried about what you're going to do afterwards. 'Cause, once I get done talking, if you even let me finish talking, you're not going to listen to my reasons why you shouldn't kill him....." The last part was barely above a whisper.

"Who? Why would I kill....." Realization hit him. "What did he do?"

"Angel, it wasn't his fault. Well, not entirely. I should have stopped it from the beginning or it wouldn't have come to this..." her rambling was only making him more anxious.

"Buffy, spit it out!"

"If I had just said no and stuck with it the first time he would have known that I meant no and wouldn't have tried to...."

"What? What did he do?"

Buffy's voice started to waver. He stopped raising his voice and put a hand on hers. He asked again in a soft voice. "What did he do?"

"He tried to rape me."

Angel was dumbfounded. That was the last thing he expected to hear. He felt like killing something, until Buffy started to cry. She leaned onto his shoulder, clenching her eyes shut.

He stopped being mad for a second, and put an arm around her shoulder.

"Did he hurt you?" he hissed.

"I-I had already hurt my back earlier that day.....He pushed me and I fell and it hurt so much..."

"Did he.....Go through with it?"

She shook her head, no. "I kicked him off of me. The look on his face," she looked up at Angel, "I knew he hadn't meant it. I knew that wasn't why he had come."

"Buffy, when someone attempts rape you, they usually aren't sorry about it."

She pulled back from him, slightly. "Angel, if he had meant to do it, he would have done it a long time ago!"

"How? The chip.....Wait....Duh. Stupid me. ....The chip's out?"

"No. It just doesn't work on me. It hasn't since I came back."

"Has he hurt you before this?"

"No." Pause. "Well, not in the pain sense..."

"I didn't need to hear that."

"Sorry."

Pause.

"Did you love him?"

She looked up at his face again.

"No. I think.....Before.....I had feelings for him. I cared about what happened to him. That was probably the only reason I didn't let Xander go stake him."

"Xander knows?"

"They all know. I wouldn't keep something like that away from them. Not after keeping Spike a secret." She noticed they had gotten off the subject. "I don't love him. I think, maybe, there are still feelings for him somewhere in my heart, but it's not love."

"And if I were to say I'm going to kill him....."

"I would say you have to go through me first."

He nodded his head solemnly.

After a moment, he spoke. "Why? How? How did it start in the first place?"

She thought for a minute. "He was the only one, besides Dawn, that wasn't jumping all over me when I first came back. He was the first person I told, that I had been pulled from Heaven. When I was with him.....I felt like I had my fire back. After I was pulled from Heaven, it was like I was incapable of feeling.....except when I was with him."

He nodded, looking at the floor.

"How do you always seem to get me to pour out my problems to you? We were suppose to be talking about you," she said.

"Not much to say about me."

"Sure there is." She pulled her legs up and crossed them, getting comfortable. "So. Tell me, what does it feel like to have a son?"

He thought for a minute before giving her a smile. "It's amazing. I have something that no other vampire has. Even if he hates me and wants me dead."

"At least you have one. That's a downside of being the Slayer. No kids. Well, we can have them, but it wouldn't be good for the baby to grow up not knowing is she's going to see her mother the next day."

"Besides, you can't seem to stay with a guy that is capable of giving you a baby."

"I had Riley," she retorted.

"Yeah, but he couldn't give you what you need. You've always had a dark side to you."

She got quiet and looked down at her hands.

"What? What'd I say?" he asked.

"It's not you," she said looking at him. "It's....Spike. He was always telling me I belong in the dark."

"I never said you belonged there. I would never want you to fear the light. You just have this dark side of you that will always be there. It's a part of you. But, you should never fear your light side."

"And I haven't. It's just....Coming back. I didn't know where I belonged. It just seemed to get worse everyday. Then, that thing with Spike. He wasn't much of a help. It wasn't like he was forcing me to be in the dark. He just sort of....leered."

"He has a tendancy to do that."

"But, I think that I can be lighter now," she said, looking up. "He's not here. At least, not now. My friends are in Sunnydale. And I'm here. With you. Even if you do have another honey."

"Well, she's not really my..."

"Oh, lose the act, Angel. You like her. She likes you. It was meant to be."

"How do you know she likes me?"

"I can prove it to you."

"What? Uh, wait. No-" before he could get the words out, Buffy called for Cordelia.

"Hey, Cordelia! Come 'er," Buffy shouted.

Angel glared at her. "Why did you do that?"

"You have to find out sooner or later."

He sighed.

Cordy walked into the room. "Watchya need?"

Buffy talked while looking at Angel. "How do feel about Angel?"

Cordelia's eyes widened. "Uh. Um. I."

Buffy got up from her spot and walked up to Cordelia. She spoke in a voice so small that not even Angel could hear. "If you like him, tell him. Don't hide it. He likes you, too."

Cordy whispered back, "What do I say? You're an expert with him, you do it."

"Tell him how you feel." Buffy leaned in closer. "You'll know the conversation went well if you're kissing in less than five minutes."

Cordy gave her a nervous look.

"Go," ushered Buffy. She gave Cordy a small nudge towards Angel and walked away. "I'll be in here if you need me," she called over her shoulder.

Angel and Cordelia looked at each other nervously.

"So," said Cordelia, swinging her arms.

"So," said Angel.

In the kitchen, Gunn was cooking Fred something to eat.

"Hey, Buffy," he called.

"Hey. Whatchya cookin'?" she asked.

"Pancakes. You want some?"

"Sure. Why not? I don't think I've eaten since I got here." She walked over and sat on the counter next to Fred. "So. How did you guys meet Angel? You know everything about me, but I know nothing about you."

Fred spoke up. "Well, I was a slave in Pylea, that's another dimension, and Angel rescued me. Well, he was there for Cordelia, but he got me while he was there."

"They had made Cordelia their princess," said Gunn. "I think she misses it sometimes."

"Cordelia was a princess?" said Buffy with a laugh. "Her highschool dreams have finally come true."

"What was she like when she was in highschool?" asked Fred.

"Uh, major drama queen. Little Miss Popularity. May Queen. And, before she found out about the vampires and demons, a real snob to me."

"Not much has changed since highschool," joked Gunn.

"I know one thing has changed," said Buffy, hopping off the counter. She walked out of the kitchen.

Fred and Gunn exchanged looks, then followed. Buffy peeked around the corner into the main lobby. Gunn came up behind her. Buffy pointed.

Angel and Cordelia were kissing lightly. Angel's hand carressed her face. Her hands were wrapped lazily around his neck.

Buffy walked away with a smile, leaving Gunn and Fred to spy on their friends.