AN: Hurrah that FanFiction.Net is finally working for me again! Here's the new chapter. A little B/A drama for those shippers, but don't despair Spuffers, you never now what's up my sleeve next!

Chapter 9: Consequences

Buffy winced as she gingerly opened the front door in an effort to avoid any attention drawn to her as she entered the house. Peering over her shoulder, she saw the downstairs was empty with only the kitchen light that was usually left on glaring down the hallway. Breathing a sigh of relief, she was about to make her way up the stairs when an unruly head popped out from the dining room.

"Buffy? Home late again? Awww, I'm telling Mom!" A small girl grinned mischievously as she grasped some cookies, some pieces already in her mouth, some spilling onto her fluffy sheep-printed pajamas. Buffy gave her a steely glare.

"Aren't you supposed to be in bed, ever-annoying one?" she hissed, motioning her sister to lower her voice.

"Got hungry, a midnight snack. Emphasis on midnight, which as I remember, is past your curfew." Her sister responded by sticking her tongue out at her.

"God, nosy much? Why don't you mind your own business and go to bed? And wipe those crumbs from off your shirt, it's driving me crazy."

Dawn looked down at her cookie-laden shirt and shrugged. "So what'd you do tonight?" she asked eagerly, ignoring venomous looks of vexation directed at her from her sister.

"Nothing, Dawn. At least nothing you have to be concerned about."

"No really what did you do?"

"NOTHING."

"No really." Only an eleven-year old would have the ungodly patience to keep this game up. Buffy turned sharply from the stairs to glare down at the impish girl.

"I engaged in highly illegal acts that involved underage drinking and PG-13 language. Now are you happy? To BED!" She resumed clunking her way up the stairs. Dawn remained smiling mischievously at the end of the staircase.

"Really? So you're weren't busy slaying vampires?"

Buffy whirled around slowly, eyebrows flying high and chin jutted out carefully. Her sister had crossed herself into dangerous territory. "What did you just say?"

"Mmmm . . . nothing," Dawn smartly answered as she began to march up the stairs. Buffy pounded her hand into the opposite wall, obstructing Dawn from going completely upstairs.

"Dawn . . ." Buffy glared at her sister dangerously and spoke in low threatening tones. "What . . . did . . . you . . . say?"

Dawn shrugged. "You know, you and you're brain-dead imaginary toothy friends who are all 'I vill suck your vlaad!'" She made a face, sticking her canines out and laughed before calming down again. "Even I don't believe in vampires any more! Wow, are you dumb!"

Buffy glanced up the hall and noticed the door to her room was slightly open. She pursed her lips in restrained anger. "You've been reading my diary again, haven't you?"

Dawn grinned fiercely as she began to skip up the stairs again. "Maybe."

Buffy grabbed her arm and spun her sister back to her so they were face-to-face. "You're cruising for an emphatic butt-kicking, you know that, Missy?"

Dawn wrenched her arm away. "Well it's not like you try all that hard to hide it! Geez, you hardly gave me anything to search for at all last time! It was under your mattress, as usual. Takes all the fun out of it . . . well okay, maybe half the fun . . ."

"Dawn, if you come into my room once more I will have Mom officially notified of all your cookie-jar pilfering from now on." At the sound of that, Dawn straightened self-righteously and donned a challenging air.

"Oh yeah? Then maybe I'll tell her all about how you're seeing that college guy behind her back!"

Buffy placed her hands on hips. "What college guy?"

Dawn shrugged restlessly. "I dunno . . . the guy with the weird name . . . Ansel . . . no, Angel. Yeah, that's it, Angel!"

Buffy involuntarily straightened. Not the name she felt like hearing. Not the person she felt like being reminded of. Her stomach curled into a heavy ball at the utterance of his name. "Another tidbit you scrounged from all your diary snooping, I guess?" she asked quietly, looking down at her hands.

"Uh-huh. And don't think Mom's not going to be majorly pissed when she hears about it."

Buffy looked to her sister with new fire. "Mom is not going to hear about it, because there's nothing to tell, do you hear me?"

"But you said in your diary---"

"Nothing! It meant nothing. It was all a part of my imagination, okay? There is no Angel, there never was an Angel, and most of all there is no Me and Angel! You got that?!" Dawn opened her mouth to protest further, but Buffy had already reached for the doorknob of her room and sank into it, door slamming violently. Buffy sighed, not bothering to turn on the lights in her room as she slumped against the door. She heard Dawn fidget outside for a few moments, then goose-step her way back to her room, which was punctuated by the thunderous clap of her door. Buffy relaxed a bit and threw off her jacket, aiming for her bed, but jumped when she realized it moved when it hit the mattress. A figure sitting on the bed threw it aside and rose slowly. Trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness, she instinctively grabbed the stake in her pocket and held it in her hand, ready. She gingerly edged toward the shadowy person on the balls of her heels. The figure jumped towards her, and she lunged forward, aiming the stake for the unknown stranger's chest. Just then a pool of moonlight flooded the windows and cast a milky shadow on the stranger's pale face. Dark brooding brown eyes peered down at her from under heavy-knit, furrowed eyebrows. Angel.

She was just as startled when she recognized him in the darkness as she was when she became first aware of his presence. He was holding onto her slight arms and after a burning stare down into her eyes, he glanced down at the stake she was holding. Carefully he eased it out of her hands.

"A-Angel. W-what are you doing here?" She felt electric and fatal in his arms, standing so close to something that was cold, yet was providing heat in her veins, something that existed as the living undead, but made her want to die. He was also aware of their close proximity to each other and for a moment they both paused and seemed on the brink of eternal silence and hurt as they both glanced down at each other's lips. Angel let go of Buffy and backed away a few paces.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have just jumped at you like that----"

"Why are you here?" Buffy repeated, her voice tinged with pleading.

Angel sighed an unnecessary breath and slumped visibly. "I wanted to see . . . I wanted to see if you were okay."

"I'm not the one you should be worried about," Buffy replied softly.

Angel stared at her gingerly and intensely. "But you are." He sighed again and began pacing the room. "How's Spike?" This time he avoided her glance.

Buffy sighed. "A couple broken bones, but nothing life-threatening. So he'll live." Not his mother though, she unconsciously added to herself. Angel understood what she was not saying and maintained awkward silence for what seemed to be hours longer than a few minutes. Finally they both spoke at the same time.

"Buffy---"

"Angel---"

They both shared an irrelevant, nervous laugh and fidgeted where they stood. Angel sank down into a chair. "Y-you go," he urged her, motioning a hand towards her.

"No," she shook her head graciously and awkwardly. "I-it's okay. W-what were you going to say?"

Angel shrugged, and now given the chance to say something, he felt at a loss to do so. He only cupped his face in his hands and rose from the chair and sat down again multiple times. Buffy felt inclined to stake him for merely making her so nervous. Finally he turned fully to her and straightened. "I don't know how to fix this Buffy."

She fell silent for a few moments and looked at him earnestly. "No one's asking you to."

But Angel had already worked himself into fit of agitation. "Aren't they? Aren't you?"

Her eyes widened. "What? No! I never--"

"You say you don't but I can tell. I can tell by the way you talk to me and the way you look at me and the way you touch me. This has changed things. And I heard what you said to Dawn outside just now."

"Angel! I just said that because Dawn's eleven and I don't want her knowing those type of things!"

"No, I know that, it's just . . . when you were saying it . . . that there was no you and me . . . part of you wanted to believe that, didn't you?"

Buffy paused and bit her lip, but once again, Angel managed to find a way to pierce a glance into her eyes and already find the answer lying there. A tear trickled down the cleft of her cheek, but she tried brushing it off. "Suppose, it's true," she whispered. "Suppose I did want to believe it." Angel had been expecting the answer, but it crushed him nonetheless and he sank back into the chair. "Suppose I happen to want to believe that this whole thing never happened. That my boyfriend isn't some former serial killer who's responsible for the death of one of my friends' mother."

"Buffy . . . you know I didn't mean to . . . that I was a different person back then . . ."

"Not a person. A vampire." Buffy's eyes shone with fierce honesty now that things were out in the open. "And how are you so sure?"

"Buffy! I was drugged! I have no comprehension of what---"

"But you did! You had to have some comprehension of what you were doing, because why else would you not feed off of Spike? It's true isn't it? It's true that if you didn't have a soul, you would have fed off of him right?"

Angel shook his head. "I don't know---"

"Don't lie to me. Don't lie to yourself." Buffy's teeth were resolutely in place and her voice was firm. "If you didn't have a soul . . . you would have fed off of him." It was more an affirming declaration than a question. Angel sighed and nodded his head rigidly.

"Yes," he said softly.

"Yes," Buffy echoed. "But you didn't feed off of him. You're conscience was still telling you not to. So you fed off the mother instead."

"No! It wasn't like that! I told you I didn't mean for it to happen!"

"But it did! And you don't know what would happen if you were caught in a similar situation!"

"Yes I would," Angel spat through squared teeth. "Everything's different now."

"What? What's so different? You're still a vampire with a soul aren't you? You have been for eighty years now." Buffy stepped back from him and surveyed him wonderingly. "A vampire with a soul," she repeated. "You know, for so long, I always thought the soul part of the equation negated the vampire part. Like with a soul, you practically were human---"

"I practically am."

Buffy shook her head. "No, you're not. I wanted to believe that, but it's not true. Tonight just proved that. A soul doesn't erase the monster part of you, nothing will. You'll always have that feral part of you inside."

Angel almost visibly shrunk at her words. "So what do you want me to do about it? Stop being a vampire?" He asked angrily as he resumed pacing about.

Buffy looked down at the carpet defeatedly. "I want . . . I think what you should do is stay away from me."

Angel straightened and whipped his head up painfully. "Is that . . . is that what you really want?"

Buffy choked back tears. Is that what I want? Of course not! I would never want that; I would never---- "Yes," she lied quietly.

Angel nodded with pained understanding. "For how long?"

"I don't know. I guess until I can figure some things out." Buffy looked back up at him again and for a moment, both could tell that everything she had just said was a big lie. But it was a necessary lie. Angel once again nodded and unconsciously moved towards her, but she just backed away. Awkwardly, he halted and both of them just gazed at their shoes and each other alternatively until Angel neared the window and slipped out of it into the night. Slowly Buffy approached it later and strained her eyes to see if she could catch a glimpse of his shadowy retreating figure, but he was apparently already engulfed by the prevailing darkness. She sighed and slumped over into bed where she buried her head into a pillow and proceeded to saturate it with over-spilt tears.

Angel sighed as he entered his small apartment, dank and deafeningly empty. That's what its usual state was, but on this particular evening, it especially got to Angel, who regarded the whole place with contempt and loneliness. A usually subdued vamp, he felt ragingly restless tonight and took it out on his kitchen table, which he dumped over with a roar. Breathing heavily, he willed himself to calm down, but his mind was overcome and pervaded by ugly thoughts of past. The terrified gaze of a young mother as he sank his fangs into the soft lily-white crook or her neck . . . the distraught face of a screaming son, tears streaming down his pudgy cheeks . . . the glinting and malicious smile Darla gave him through a horrifyingly distorted face when he threw the limp body to the ground . . . the slack and battered face of Spike as his head hung heavily from his shoulders . . . the stricken and tear-streaked face of Buffy as she demanded her to stay away from him . . . He mashed his hands to his skull, as if he was trying to physically squeeze the ugliness from it. Still breathing erratically, he lurched over to the fridge to grab a blood pack in hopes that it would pacify himself.

Suddenly he heard a slight sound and jumped. It had not been that alarming, something like a small 'clunk', but at this time of night, Angel remained always on guard. He cautiously sniffed around for any sign of foreign presence. Sensing nothing, he turned back to his pig's blood.

He shouldn't have thought too soon. The front door suddenly broke through with a violent force, planks of wood splintering into pieces as a leg kicked through the threshold. Thrusting the door aside, Giles stood at the entrance with an adamant look on his face and a crossbow in his arms, aimed right for Angel.