Chapter Three

Predictably, that initial moment of magick between them didn't last. By the time they had bandaged Buffy and Faith's wounds and settled into the kitchen at the Slayer School, the silence between Buffy and Angel had devolved quickly into "awkward" territory. Or at least, it would have been awkward, thick with unspoken questions and ghosts of the past... if it weren't for the loud, enthusiastic chatter of young women glutting it instead.

"And it made this noise like...'WHOOOSHROWWWRRR!"

"Better than dusting vamps any day. I kept waiting for the director to yell, 'CUT!'"

"Buffy, can we help with the magick part next time? We're definitely ready."

"I've still got this...stuff under my fingernails. Lava didn't get it out. What IS this crap?"

"Oh, we're so ready for the magick part!"

"Did you see Buffy? The way she was swinging from that thing? Too cool."

Only the Elder Slayers, Willow and their guests were uncharacteristically tense and quiet. Buffy focused intently on her tea, Fred and Wesley perused the copies of the prophecy regarding the Heliosum Willow had given them, Faith alternated between chowing down on an enormous plate of spaghetti and de-gooping her boots; and Angel just sat, staring at Buffy with an intensity that could bore through steel.

Could be that last was why everyone else was so quiet.

"Right, Buffy?" one of the girls – April? Vi? Lisa? Angel couldn't keep their names straight in spite of his near perfect memory – asked their clearly distracted leader.

The Slayer in question finally glanced up from her oh-so-interesting teacup. She could feel Angel's stare like fingertips on her skin... felt nearly crushed under the barely reigned tension of his regard. But she was too tired to go there right now... the whys and wherefores and how-are-you's. And equally determined not to do it just on principle.

'Not cookies yet, Buffy...' she kept reminding herself.

"Yeah, right," she forced herself to reply to whomever was talking, in spite of the fact that she had no idea what she was agreeing to. Were his eyes always that dark and penetrating? Had she always felt like he was looking right through her, to the deepest parts of her soul where her darkest secrets lay?

'Oh, God. Penetrating? Don't think about that word. Penetrating BAD. No, no, NO penetrating! Even if he looks amazing and delicious and... NO!'

"See? Even Buffy agrees some of the students should have helped bring down the Heliosum," Kennedy pointed out, "Being back up and clean up is boring, and if these guys are going to graduate, they need to, you know, *graduate*. Kick off the training wheels!"

"Wait... what?" Buffy questioned, snapping out of her fog as she realized yet another small mutiny was taking place under her nose when she wasn't paying attention.

Another reason Angel's presence was a mixed bag.

Faith cast a quick glance from Angel to Buffy as she gave up on her boots and turned her attention to cleaning her sword. "No way you bunch were fighting that thing. It's not in the primary school Slayer textbook."

"There IS no Slayer textbook!" one of the girls cried in protest.

"Well, I heard there used to be a handbook, but they had to throw it out because of Buffy," another one offered.

Angel's cell buzzed in his coat pocket. Dragging his gaze away from Buffy, he rose and moved toward the back of the institutional kitchen as the argument went on.

"Angel."

"Sir, we finished the binding on the tar pit," the leader of the containment team he'd dispatched to clean up reported, "The portal's closed, but we're having a problem getting the tar to stop boiling. The Point Caster says the energy balance of the site isn't correct, so whatever opened the portal can't be countered. We've posted a team in case anything else decides to come out of it."

The vampire scowled. After all these years, and for all their usefulness, Angel still couldn't get over his irrational hatred of cell phones. When they bothered to work at all, they inevitably imparted bad news no matter where the bearer might be. No escape. "Keep working on it. Call in a High Magicks Squad if you have to."

"But, Sir..."

"JUST DO IT!" Angel barked, and snapped the phone shut.

He looked up to find all eyes in the room locked on him, drawn by his outburst.

"Is there a problem?" Wesley asked, concerned that Angel seemed more tense than usual, rather than less, after their adventure.

"No, no problem," he lied, glancing at Buffy once more. "We should go. Something's come up we need to take care of."

Buffy's own concern about his rare display of temper showed clearly on her bruised face. She rose. "I'll walk you out."

As the Wolfram & Hart team exited with Buffy bringing up the rear, Faith shot Willow a look.

The Witch sighed. "Go head. You can say it."

"Shit," the secondary Slayer remarked one last time.

~

Fred and Wesley quickly said their good-byes and headed for the car, leaving Buffy and Angel to talk.

"So... which one should I be more worried about? Angel's uber-grouchy thing or the way he was looking at Buffy like a starving man chained three feet away from the world's biggest banquet table? And now they're talking..." she glanced back at the pair on the front step. "Talking really, *really* close together."

Wesley took a look for himself, and frowned. "It's difficult to say at this point. Although I can't imagine they'll just drop down and make love on the front stoop after barely speaking for two years."

Fred shot him a glare. "Were we in the same room, back there? Wes... I hate clichés, but the one about knives and tension definitely fits here.

"Yes, well... that's often the way it is between them." The ex-Watcher held open the passenger side door for her, taking one last glance at the star-crossed lovers embracing before he walked around to the other side. "Let's address one issue at a time, though, shall we? I don't believe Angel is in any position for Perfect Happiness to be a possibility right now, and if tonight's events are a portent of bigger things to come, that is where our focus needs to be."

~

Angel held her until her ribs creaked, eliciting a yip of objection from Buffy.

"Sorry," he mumbled as he pulled away, "It's just... seeing you like that..."

"How did you?" she interrupted, unable to force herself to let go of his hand, and just barely able to ignore the irrational urge to scoop him up, haul him bodily to her room and chain him to the bed for all eternity. "How did you know to come?"

He wanted to say something romantic... something epic like he had simply *known*, or *felt* that she needed him. But considering the circumstances, and what tonight's incident might herald, he decided that honesty was the best way to go.

"One of my seers had a vision."

The Primary Slayer narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Don't you have lackeys or minions or something to take care of that kind of stuff?"

He gave her a half-hearted smirk. "I'm not a Master, Buffy. I run a corporation. They're called 'highly trained specialists'. And yes, I do. But the vision indicated I needed to go. So I went."

She held his gaze for a long moment, searching for something – she wasn't quite sure what – in his eyes. He seemed so... empty, somehow. Not quite all there.

Something she could absolutely relate to... with the exception of this exact moment.

"Well, you're the vampire everybody answers to, so... tomato-tomahto. That call you got in the kitchen. Something went wrong," she observed. Sticking to business was the best way to keep this accidentally lit match from exploding into a firestorm.

Angel hesitated for a moment, not quite certain how much he wanted her to know, then admitted,

"I think that demon was just the beginning. The team reported that they can't fully bind the Tar Pits." He gave the love of his life a long, hard look. "Something's coming, Buffy. We can't just assume that the two of us being drawn there together tonight was a coincidence. We need to be ready."

Buffy smiled weakly. "Just like old times."

Pain slashed across his features, and he stepped away. "Yeah," he replied flatly, and headed down the steps. At the foot, he turned back to look at her once more, his bleak expression softening. "Take care of yourself, Buffy. Stay alert."

And with those characteristic words of love, he was gone. Just melted into the shadows the way he always did, leaving her heart aching the way it hadn't in years. Something was coming, he said. Something was dragging her and Angel back together in spite of their completely and totally separate lives. That just couldn't be good thing.

Could it?

"See you soon," she whispered, and went back into the school, back to her life, which in a single night, had become far more complicated than she had ever imagined it could... or wanted it to.

~

Wesley remained behind once they returned to Angel's office and completed the containment team's debriefing. Their further attempts to bind the tar pits had failed miserably, and Fred was eager to meet with Knox and see if there was some technological solution to the energy shift that had freed the Heliosum... and threatened to perhaps release things even more dangerous than that.

He realized there was research to be done... prophecies and portents to translate, interpret and consult, but for the moment, he was more concerned with his friend's darkening mood.

He had made it his job over the past two years to keep a metaphorical finger on the pulse of his family as they navigated the hellish maze of their new "careers". Working inside the stronghold of the enemy, surrounded day in and day out by every imaginable temptation, were dicey propositions for any group of people. But the weariness and vulnerability of the members of Angel Investigations (what remained of them) after the near-apocalypse of 2003 made them especially vulnerable.

If there were any slippery slopes ahead, he wanted to be equipped with a net to catch his loved ones if they fell. Wesley never intended to lose another of their numbers.

Angel loosened his tie, poured himself a double scotch, neat and sagged onto the couch near one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in his office suite. He stared out at the fading night as though looking for some elusive answer there, seemingly oblivious that his friend was present.

That wasn't unusual for him, really. Since Cordelia had fallen into a vision-induced coma, and Angel had given up his soul to stop the Beast – nearly killing them all in the process, his attention tended to wander away from the painful past and empty present more frequently and completely than even his darkest early days in Los Angeles.

"Angel," he beckoned softly, interrupting the vampire's weary reverie.

He didn't start, but slowly faced his friend. "I'm sorry, Wes. Would you like a drink?"

The Englishman shook his head. "No, thank you. I'm more interested in how you're doing. Tonight has been rather... full of surprises."

"It really has," he answered dully.

The younger man took a seat on the divan across from his boss and dearest friend. "Perhaps you'd like to talk about it?"

Angel sighed deeply, and shrugged. "What's there to talk about? Seeing Buffy always shakes me up. The world is constantly in danger. None of this is exactly new, Wesley." Turning back to the vista once more, he added, "In fact, it's pretty par for the course, at this point."

"Yes. But it's been some time since we've faced this degree of uncertainty. And the fact that you and Buffy were both called to that place..."

Angel held up a hand to stop him. "Coincidence. That's all. Buffy and I are in the same business, operating in the same city. We were bound to end up in the same fight sooner or later."

Wesley looked at him skeptically. "Is that really how you feel?"

"Yes," he lied smoothly, "It's not a big deal. We've moved on with our lives: she has the school. I have..." his facile demeanor deflated, "... this. Anything else is of the past. Besides, if there is something coming, having 200 Slayers on our side can only help, right? The personal side of it is irrelevant."

His friend watched him for a moment, then spoke cautiously, "Your relationship with Buffy has never been simple – either in the mundane or mystical sense. It may be a mistake to dismiss tonight as a coincidence. Angel..." he leaned his elbows on his knees. "It's no secret that you're unhappy, here. Felling isolated from the world... useless. Cut off. You don't have to put up a front for me. Perhaps this... situation, both the cataclysmic aspects and your reunion with Buffy are... a higher power's method of snapping you out of it."

"Maybe." Angel downed the rest of his tumbler and stared in at the melting ice. "Or maybe it's a setup to distract us. Stir up feelings better left... Well... it wouldn't be the first time." Swallowing stiffly, he glanced up at his colleague once more. The friend who had once been used as a tool to break his heart... which he no longer even remembered. How could Wesley really understand what Angel had become? What he had lost? What had broken inside him and never healed...

The Englishman's gaze softened. "You may be right. But... dismissing any possibility at this juncture is a serious error." He got up. "I'll look into the prophecies Willow provided. Perhaps we'll find some guidance there."

Before the ex-Watcher stepped out into the hall, Angel called his name. He turned to find the CEO of Wolfram & Hart's Los Angeles annex staring at him, a frighteningly flat look in his dark eyes.

"Don't put all your faith in prophecies, Wesley," he said in warning, then moved his gaze back to the brightening pre-dawn skyline once more. "They're not always the advantage we tend to think they are."

Perplexed, Wesley left without comment.

~

Buffy finally made it back to her room with a cup of cocoa, an ice pack, and a deep, desperate desire to crawl under the covers and forget this day ever happened.

Naturally, Faith was waiting to make sure she didn't get to do that.

"You know, I think I liked the interventions better when Giles ran them," she complained, setting her cup down on the vanity and claiming her hairbrush. "They felt more... I don't know, helpful? As opposed to feeling like I'm about to get interviewed for 'Oui'."

"Hey, B. Save the snark," Faith replied, holding her hands up in mock defense. "I'm not here to grill you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You got a pretty slammin' freaking whammy tonight."

Buffy rolled her eyes. "It's not exactly the first time Angel showed up and made the sky fall."

Her sister Slayer smirked knowingly. "I wasn't talking about Angel."

"Oh." Busted, Buffy set the brush down. "The demon. Right. Um... I'm fine. Just tired."

"Cool. We've taken worse beatings, right?" She ignored the unsubtle hint and leaned back against the mountain of pillows on Buffy's bed, tucking her arms behind her head. "But, you know... now that you bring up the Big A... He's looking pretty tasty these days. That suit was a gas! And he seemed – I hate to say 'hit by lightning', since you got the blast, but... He definitely looked like he got something he wasn't expecting."

The blonde plopped down beside her. "Yeah. He did, didn't he?"

"If you're trying not to sound jazzed about it, you're doing a suckass job, B. You were staring at your cup so hard, I thought it was gonna explode. I swear, you two spend more energy avoiding each other than you ever did actually trying to make it work."

Glaring at her, Buffy snapped, "Who asked you? And when did you become such an expert on me and Angel?"

Faith's neutral expression turned serious. "Since I got the gold star guided tour through his head. Buffy... I know you don't wanna hear this, but... he still loves you. You know that, right?"

Buffy stared down at the brush in her hands and shrugged.

Sitting up and swinging her legs over the bed, Faith went on. "Well, I do. Yeah, I know it's none of my business. But I think I get the two of you better than you do. Especially him. And you're written all over everything in his that thick melon of his. I mean *everything*. You're either the cause, the inspiration, the reason, the definition, the foundation, or the cure, B. He's pushed it back, shoved it down, done everything but had a total brain/heart/soul flush to get rid of it. But it's still there. Just like with you." She punched her friend gently in the arm. "Frickin' Denial Twins Activate, yo."

"I am NOT in denial. I just don't feel that way..." Buffy sighed. "I don't know what I feel anymore. Except exhausted."

Finally taking her cue, Faith got up and headed for the door. "Yeah, I get it. Solo brooding's another thing you two got in common." She stopped at the door and glanced back. "But don't forget what the prophecy said. I'm thinking it wasn't just about Godzilla Jr."

Buffy flopped back on the bed with an exasperated sigh and closed her eyes. Eternal Flames... Great Warriors... bindings of blood & tears. Her life's truly pathetic story. "That's what I'm afraid of."

~

TBC...

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