Title: Love... Give... Forgive (1-?)

Spoiler Warning: Buffy season six, Angel season three... Wreaked on Buffy and Dad on Angel. Just to remind, Wreaked is after Smashed where there was the Buffy/Spike building falling down thing that we've all repressed since we are good little BA shippers...

Summary: The First Slayer's words from "Intervention" drive Buffy to seek out Angel and fix her emotional back from the dead problems.

Disclaimer: Jossy Whedon is the all mighty Hell God that even Glory would bow to (and with whom she would probably outrightly flirt). So, of course, I bow to his power and will. He owns these characters; I wouldn't want to own them. I just like playing with them. Any qualms can be taken up with Jossy, Mutant Enemy, and 20th Century FOX. The idea, of course, is my brainchild and no one elses! Even though, if Joss was as all mighty as I say, HE'D FIGURE IT OUT!

Feedback: PLEASE! I need the encouragement to keep working on this thing!

Since my first posting, I've done some rewriting. I've changed both the Buffy and Angel spring off episodes. They might change again, depending what I get after DVD watchage.

Right hook.

Snap kick.

Left palm strike.

Duck and kick again.

Fighting was the only time when she felt somewhat normal, somewhat alive.

Spin kick.

Side kick.

Buffy went to punch the vampire again, but he was ready. He hooked his arm around hers, and flipped her to the ground. She was a little slow on removing the stake from the small of her back.

The vampire flipped her onto her back. She couldn't quite get the stake to a slayable position. As the vampire leaned forward, tilting her neck up for a better angle, he found the tip of the stake. As he adjusted his body weight, to avoid the stake, his palm slipped on a leaf. He fell, impaling himself on the stake held in Buffy's limp grasp.

She stared up into the sky. After the ashes cleared, she took a deep breath. Tears started sloping down her cheeks as she broke down.

"Why can't you kill me?" She screamed. The heavens that let her be cast out didn't respond to her cries. "I want to go back!" The tears came harder as she struggled to her knees. "Why won't you let me?"

By the time she left the cemetery, she was back to her emotionally dead self.

Her dreams were dark that night.

She remembered the night well. She was dreaming of the night she called for a Spirit Guide, and the First Slayer appeared. It was a dream she had been having often since she… came back. She sat before a fire, and across from the flames, she was there. And, as always, the Slayer's words echoed through her dream.

"You think you're losing your ability to love. You're afraid that being the Slayer means losing your humanity. You are full of love. You love with all of your soul. It's brighter than the fire ... blinding. That's why you pull away from it."

"I'm full of love? I'm not losing it?"

"Only if you reject it. Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature. Love will bring you to your gift."

It was easy, at the time, to think her words referred only to saving Dawn. Yet, when she was pulled back from... where she was, lacking almost everything that made her her, she started wondering if the First Slayer's words had more meaning than she had first guessed.

"Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain. Love ... give ... forgive. Risk the pain. It is your nature. Love will bring you to your gift."

Once again, it would easy to believe her Spirit Guide meant she should forgive Riley for his misguided transgressions, or Spike for abusing her grief and loneliness, his past and current evil, but she knew with a certainty that mirrored the moment she knew she could save both Dawn and the rest of the world, that the Spirit Guide meant that she had to finally forgive Angel for leaving her, for complicating the one thing in her life that she could truly understand.

It was something she still couldn't forgive him for, and wondered if she ever could.

"Love is pain, and the Slayer forges strength from pain."

With Riley, she felt safe, she felt normal, and she felt that she could live without him. Angel, Angel made her feel. He made her cry. He didn't try to hide her from all the pain in the world, he just offered a shoulder to cry on when it became too much, a hand to hold in the darkness. She felt stronger just being with him. He truly was a bodyguard fit for a Slayer. He was, is, her Angel.

"That would be anger you're feeling."

"What?"

"You feel it, right? How the anger gives you fire? A Slayer needs that."

How could she have forgotten her conversation with Kendra? Had she changed that much since Angel left her that she no longer even used her emotions the way she used to? Once again, anger at Angel rose inside her, even in her dream. He had done this to her. When he left, he broke so many things in her. She couldn't even grieve for her mother, because if she had let go and cried, he wouldn't have been there to help her stop. As suddenly as the anger hit, it disappeared.

He had been there for her. When Joyce had died, he was here. He mysteriously appeared while she was standing watch over her mother's grave, and slipped his hand into hers. He had always done what he thought she had needed, what he thought would work out better for her in the end. He had come to her senior prom, he had given her that last non-goodbye, where they both comforted themselves with the fact that the other made it out of the battle that followed her high school graduation, and survived the explosion that took out Sunnydale High and the demonized Mayor. He had always been there for her. He loved her. And, yes, she still loved him. She would always love him.

Across the fire, the dream Spirit Guide slowly nodded.

She had to see him again. She had to reconfirm her feelings for him, apologize for the way she'd been treating him since he left her, and, try to forgive him. She had to. She wanted to feel again, she needed to feel again.