Dead End

by Gem4

All forces gather to greet the End of Days. But is everyone fighting for the reason they claim?

7. Chapter 7

Dead End

Part 7

By Gem

Angel could see Buffy already standing at the top of the hill as soon as he stepped out of the garden, the moonlight outlining her slight form against a wavering curtain of stars.

He hadn't asked which hill she meant, and she hadn't volunteered; she knew he didn't need her to spell it out.  There was only one for them, the hill beyond the garden of his mansion on Crawford Street.  The hill where they used to linger before patrol, pretending they had all the time in the world to count the stars.  The same hill where he had gone to end his life one bleak Christmas morning, and she had followed to keep him from doing just that.  And the same hill where he'd witnessed the first miracle that ever told him he had a purpose on this earth beyond destruction and regret.

No, that wasn't true.  Buffy had been his first miracle.

She'd heard him step beyond the garden wall and turned slightly to watch him walk up and over the rise.  There was no welcoming smile on her face, no sign of any bittersweet nostalgia at the site of their meeting; there was only weary resignation.

"You weren't followed," she said as soon as he was close enough to hear her low voice. 

It wasn't a question.

"No," he agreed with a quick shake of his dark head.  "I did the over-shooting and doubling back and even went down a few alleys and over some fences, just to make sure.  Mind telling me why I acted like I was trying to smuggle illegal passports into Yugoslavia?"

She wrinkled her nose.  "Because you have really bad taste in spy movies?"

"Buffy."

"You're the detective," she challenged him.  "You figure it out."

Angel had a very good idea of why, but he wasn't going to push this time.  He would work his way through slowly, giving her every opportunity to tell him instead of telling her and hearing her deny it again in self-defense.

"Well I can guess you didn't want anyone to know we're meeting.  But since I haven't exactly made a secret of the fact that you're why I came to Sunnydale in the first place..." he turned up his palms and shrugged as his voice trailed away.

She turned away, looking down the hill at the lights of the town below.  All those people safe in their homes, because she and Angel never could be.

"It wasn't 'anyone' I didn't want to know.  It was someone."

"And that someone is?"

Buffy glanced back at him, unsure of why he was making her spell it all out.  Had he really bought her denial the night before?  At the time it certainly hadn't seemed like it. 

"Can't you guess?"

"If this was anything like a normal situation, I'd say it was your boyfriend.  But since we don't do normal very well..."

"He's not my boyfriend," she said sharply, her eyes flashing with an anger Angel could see even in the dim moonlight.  "If you mean Spike, that is.  He's not...but he is."

Angel could feel something deep within him loosen, and then tighten again, as Buffy first denied her relationship with Spike and then reaffirmed it.

"Fine," he said, with barely disguised frustration, "he's not your boyfriend but he is..."

"The reason I wanted to meet you alone," she finished for him, her voice taut with urgency.  "He can't know about this.  Ever."

They were getting closer, but Angel still needed to hear the words.  More than that, he was sure Buffy needed to say them.  From what he had seen of her the past few days, it didn't look like keeping them in wasn't doing her any favors.

If only it didn't hurt so much to watch her struggle.

"Oh what," he asked in what he hoped sounded like gentle sarcasm, "like I'm going to go brag to him about secretly meeting his not-a-girlfriend?  Gee, there's a coup."

Buffy looked up at him as some of her hard-won control slipped away in the face of his pain.  She had never meant to hurt him; he wasn't even supposed to be here just so that she couldn't hurt him.  Yet here he was and here she was and here was the mess that she'd made laying between them.

"You don't understand," she said impatiently.

"No, I don't, because you won't explain."

"I'm trying to." 

Angel started to walk away, and for a moment she thought she'd lost him forever.  She tried to be glad, for his sake, but she couldn't seem to summon that emotion until she realized he was merely moving back to perch on the low stone wall that enclosed the garden.

"I'm listening," he said quietly.

"He can't know because it would be dangerous," she said with difficulty.  "For you, for me... for all of us maybe."

Angel could feel his jaw begin to sag.  Even though he was the one who had first warned her, he still couldn't believe what he was hearing.  He felt like such an idiot for not recognizing sooner how raw and vulnerable the past few years had left her, and how very much that would appeal to Spike. 

"You're that afraid of him?"

"I'm not afraid," she quickly corrected him.

Too quickly for Angel's peace of mind.  He tried to catch her eye, to gauge how much of her brave words were sincere, but she carefully avoided confronting him directly.

"You just said he was dangerous to you," he pointed out.

"I said he was dangerous for everyone."  She lifted her chin defiantly.  "I can take care of myself, but I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

Many things about Buffy had changed during his absence, but he recognized that defensive tone in her voice.  It reminded him of the frightened teenager he'd once glimpsed through a window, pretending everything was normal in front of her feuding parents, and then crying herself to sleep with the dust of vampires still rimmed beneath her fingernails.

"But if you think he's so dangerous, why in God's name are you with him?" he burst out.  "And don't deny that you're with him on some level.  I've seen too much the last few days to buy that."

She flinched at the bitterness in Angel's voice, her own guilt blinding her to the fact that he was directing it more at himself than anything she had done. 

"You've seen what I wanted you to see, just like everyone else."   Her voice was ragged with the strain of holding her feelings inside day in, day out, hour upon hour, minute after endless minute.  "Just like he does, or at least I hope he does.  If he doesn't..."

"If he doesn't, what?  What do you think he'll do?"  Angel grimaced; now that the first wall had been breached he had to push before he lost the advantage.  So he felt like a heel for doing it; he'd earned it, hadn't he?  "You told me he'd never hurt you.  He's the soul of... soulfulness... these days, right?  You're the one who's been trying to convince me it makes such a difference."

Buffy looked down at her feet, and then looked past him to the mansion down below; she looked anywhere she wouldn't have to look at Angel. 

Here was where it got hard.

"He has a soul," she admitted, "but... you were right.  I don't think he's any less dangerous than he ever was.  More, maybe, because he knows what he does is wrong now and he... just doesn't care."

Just a little more, he silently begged her.  Baby please, trust me just a little bit more.

"What has he done?" was all he said.

She sighed and began pacing back and forth in front of him.  Her hands tightened reflexively, as they usually did when she was tense, but this time there was no convenient stake to wrap them around.  There was only Angel, and the gulf that yawned between them.

"I'm not stupid, Angel.  I didn't need you to tell me that soul doesn't equal saint, or that a vampire wears more than just his victim's face.  I went to school with Harmony, for God's sake.  And I knew Willow with and without leather.  And I... I knew you.  And Angelus." Her voice dropped to a near whisper.  "And even though it would have been a good way to get under my skin he never tried to convince me that I was like him, some sort of supernatural circus freak."  Buffy sighed as more unintended confessions escaped her.  "Unlike some vamps who shall remain nameless..."

"And spineless," Angel growled.  He had no doubts who she meant, and it only added fuel to the fire he intended to light under his worthless childe's extremely flammable hide.  "And soon to be hairless and toothless and less anything else I see hanging around..."

"Angel, stop."  His protective instincts brought the ghost of a smile to Buffy's face, but time was growing short.  "What I'm trying to say is that Angelus spent almost as much time as you do trying to remind me that I was a slayer and he was a vampire.  I admit he was doing that to hurt me, but," she shrugged, "it was still a part of you speaking through him.  On some level I always knew that."

"Then I don't get it.  If you knew Spike having a soul didn't mean he was any safer to have around, why risk it?"

Why risk yourself?

"I thought I still had the chip on my side, to buy me some time.  When he killed all those people, at first I thought it was the First.  The First Evil, I mean."  She paused to draw a deep breath and reassemble her jumbled memories into coherent sentences.  "I thought he killed them because the First made him do it, and that somehow overrode the chip."

This wasn't what Angel was expecting, not even close.

"Killed all those..." he started to echo, but Buffy wouldn't let him finish.

"I thought the voices in his head, the ghosts he was seeing... it all could have come from the First.  But whenever I looked in his eyes... it was just like before... before he got his soul."  She stopped pacing and turned to face Angel, her palms turned upwards in supplication.  "There's nothing there; nothing human, anyway.  No shame, no fear, no kindness... just two blue marbles focused on me.  Only me," she stressed.

"He's obsessed."

Buffy nodded in reluctant affirmation as she carefully chose her next words.  She so didn't want to hurt him with reminders of a past he couldn't help or change, but it was the only way to make him understand. 

"It's like, well, kind of like seeing Angelus again only... blonder."

Angel was on his feet in an instant, a prickle of uneasiness traveling swiftly down his spine.  He was prepared to accept the idea of a human evil residing within Spike's breast, but Angelus was a comparison well beyond the boundaries of comfort. 

"Then why..."

"Am I pretending to... care... for him?" she finished awkwardly.  "Because the First wants him.  Or wanted him.  And I'm still not sure why."

"There are other ways to find out," he said sharply.  Knowing that she believed Spike to be so irredeemable and yet still gave herself to him was somehow even harder than believing she cared for him.

"No.  This is the way it has to be." 

Buffy shook her head decisively, the long strands of her blonde hair spilling smoothly over her shoulders.  Suddenly Angel was seized by memories so vivid they were almost painful, of those same silken locks brushing against his chilled skin.  He remembered the whisper-light caress, the scent, the golden warmth surrounding him... Angel swallowed hard and glanced away, hoping to regain his composure before Buffy noticed.

"I don't know if Spike is working with the First," Buffy continued, pretending not to see his discomfiture, "or if he just has his own agenda that fits in a little too well with the First's plans."

"He's not one of the world's great planners, Buffy."  Angel turned back to look at her, one part of his mind focusing fiercely on the problem at hand even as the rest of him struggled with the call of memories.  "As much as I hate to say anything nice about the guy, I really don't think he's plotting to end the world."

"You don't know him," she insisted, just seconds before she realized how inane the comment was.  But still she stood by it; she had to or all of her actions the past year had been for nothing.

"I've known Spike just a few decades more than you," Angel reminded her.  "Not quite in the same way, of course, but..."

"I..." she started to protest, but he quickly cut her off.

"I'm sorry."  He drew a sharp breath through his gritted teeth; he'd forgotten that around Buffy the man in him was much harder to control than the demon.  "That was... I shouldn't have said that.  I guess I'm just kind of..." Angel struggled with the word for a moment before he owned it, "jealous."

"Kind of?"  She raised an eyebrow.

"Okay," he said slowly, "how about greener than Lorne's big toe with?"

"Lorne has toes?"

"I...I don't know.  I mean I assumed..."  Angel sighed and rubbed two fingers hard against his brow.  "Is this really important to you?  I mean I can call and ask him if it will..." 

"No."

She wanted to keep the game going for just a few moments longer, long enough to lead them away from the dangerous waters of jealousy and betrayal.  But as always when it came to she and Angel, Time was calling all the shots.

"Angel, you have to know... you have to believe... there's nothing for you to be jealous of when it comes to Spike."  Her voice was low and tight with shame, each damning word she uttered forced out through sheer strength of will.  "Unless of course you always wanted us to mix sex and professional level kickboxing because we couldn't figure out who we hated more:  each other... or ourselves."

She could tell that whatever breath Angel had dragged into his lungs to speak had just rushed right back out again, leaving him unbearably silent and utterly still. 

"I have to find out the connection between Spike and the First; I don't have a choice.  And the only way I can do that is to keep Spike close, and make him think that I trust him so he'll trust me."

"And that's why you've let him stay with you?"  He'd rediscovered his voice, but Angel wasn't sure if he could really trust his hearing anymore.  "That's why you're keeping him under the same roof as your friends, potential slayers... and your sister?"  His voice rose sharply at the mention of Dawn's name, making the Slayer wince.  "Buffy, that's crazy."

"You know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies..."

"... Padlocked into 12 feet of heavy-gauge steel cable." 

Buffy was beginning to regret letting him off the hook so easily for his earlier tactlessness.

"That's your kink, not mine," she snapped, scowling as she pushed her hair off of her face.

Angel indulged in a moment of teeth-grinding and tongue-biting, then gamely pressed on. 

"Do I have to remind you who has the better track record at surviving my enemies... and yours?"

She bit her lip to keep from answering him.  Enemies he could survive; it was his loved ones that would one day be the death of Angel.

"I can handle Spike," she insisted, pushing Angel's troubled past to the background for the moment.  "As long as he thinks I want him, he won't touch Dawn or any of the gang.  He knows if they get hurt..."

"... You'll be hurt.  I get it."  Angel was rapidly losing patience with this insanity.  "But what you're missing is the part where he cares.  If he's as bad as you think... and knowing what I know about his human life, I'm not arguing the point... it will eventually turn into a way of controlling you.  Eventually," he said with a grimace, "it will be more fun not to stop himself."

"There's no other way," she said, her jaw set stubbornly.  "I'll be careful; I promise I will.  But in the meantime, you need to leave."

* * * * *

Cordelia prowled the living room restlessly, periodically twitching the curtains aside to peer out into the darkness and then tossing them back into place with enough force to pull the drapery hooks from the rod.  After the fourth forceful yank, which left the curtains sagging in more places than they hung straight, Faith had finally had enough.

"Okay, Cordy, you want to tell me what exactly you're expecting to see out there?"  Faith tossed the knife she been polishing onto the coffee table and stood up.  "If you've had a vision or something I really think you should share with the class."

"That's a joke coming from you," Spike said grimly.  "Seeing as how you've made a career out of playing things close to the chest." 

"Hoping to be Thing One or Thing Two, Bleach Boy?"

He leered at her from force of habit, but his heart really wasn't in it.  For the third night in a row Buffy had refused his company on patrol.  In fact she seemed to be making an effort to avoid him entirely; he hadn't had a minute alone with her since their brief basement tryst the night her precious Angel blew into town.  Worse than that, Spike was pretty sure she had made time to see his waste-of-space sire alone while he was forced to baby-sit the bush-league slayers.

Someone was going to pay for this, Spike vowed, starting with the pretender to the throne.  He lowered his eyes and glowered up at her through his lashes, but Faith didn't even seem to see him anymore.  The little bint was, as usual, all wrapped up in herself.

"Angel asked me to help and that's what I'm going to do."  Faith's stiff posture spoke clearly of her awkwardness at being among them again, but she tried to keep her voice relaxed if nothing else.  "I don't owe the rest of you a damn thing, but I owe him."

"Excuse me?"  Xander looked at the slayer in disbelief.  He had very distinct memories of her hands on his throat, and they weren't there to adjust his tie.  "After all you did to us the last time you were in Sunnydale, you think the only one you owe is Angel?  What have you done to him lately?"

"It's not what I did to him."  She took her attention away from the antsy Cordelia long enough to glare at Xander.  "It's what he did for me... what none of the rest of you, even your almighty Buffy, would've done for me."  Thumbing her nose at the First Evil, at least in her mind, she spelled out her debt in terms so simple she was sure even Xander would be able to understand.  "He didn't give up on me."

Xander was not about to be cowed by Faith anymore, and he certainly had no desire to explore any truths her words might hold.  "Well face it, he's got longer than the rest of us to wait out your bad girl phase, what with being Mr. Immortality and all." 

"Does every bloody conversation have to come back to that ponce?" Spike growled.  "Remember the good old days when we used to just chat about ultimate evil and the end of the world?"

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Xander sighed, "but I'm with Spike.  Everything's been out of whack since Angel blew back into town."  His voice turned plaintive.  "And you know, I happen to like whack.  I miss it."

"More than I need to know about your sex life, Harris."  Faith joined Cordelia at the front window, catching the Seer on her latest check on the perimeter.  "You never did answer me, Cor.  What are you looking for out there?"

Cordelia didn't say anything for a moment; she didn't even seem to notice Faith was standing next to her.  Finally she turned to the slayer, her eyes wide and distant. 

"Shouldn't Angel be back by now?"  Her right hand... the one visible to her audience... descended to rub her distended stomach in a seemingly absent fashion.  "He only went out to get blood, but it seems like so long ago now."  Cordelia's blank gaze shifted from Faith to Spike, turning the game up just a notch.  "Don't you think he's been gone a long time?"

Spike sat up slowly, mentally measuring Angel's errand against the minutes already passed by on the mantel clock.  It had been at least a half-hour, hadn't it?  A half-hour to get blood in a town he knew like the back of his lily-white hand, and him not exactly Mr. Sociable inclined to stay for a pint before he headed for home.

And Buffy gone more than that half-hour now, patrolling all on her lonesome, at her insistence.  Said she needed some peace and quiet.

A piece of someone quiet was more like it, he thought with a barely suppressed growl.

"Yeah," he said at last, "someone should really go look for him."

* * * * *

Angel scratched his head and frowned.  "I need to what?"

"You have to leave," Buffy repeated, as though it were obvious.  "Now that you know the truth you have to leave Sunnydale, and I have to stay and that's just the way it is.  Sacred duty meets ancient prophecy and we both end up alone on a Saturday night.  Life, and afterlife, bites."  An unhappy smile flitted across her face and then was gone.  "No pun intended."

"Buffy, I'm not going anywhere."  He stared at her as though he'd never seen her before, as he began to wonder if he ever really had.  "Even if there wasn't this whole 'all hands on deck for the end of the world' thing going on, I'm not about to leave you to deal with Spike alone.  Not now."

"But the only reason I told was to get you to leave!" 

He wasn't so sure about that.  He had seen the tight rein she kept on her emotions, and he had also seen the cost of it in her eyes when she thought no one was looking.

"I'm not afraid of Spike," she reiterated, as though she stood accused of a crime.  "If you're staying here just to hold my hand when I face the big bad vampire... don't.  I don't need it."

Angel was worried despite her repeated reassurances, or more accurately, he was worried because of them.  Buffy kept saying 'I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid,' like a charm or a spell. 

Or like a little girl walking into a dark forest all by herself. 

Suddenly, and no matter what Buffy said to the contrary, Angel was sure the story Dawn had worked so hard not to tell him was true: Spike had tried to rape her sister. 

For a moment a haze of red washed over his eyes, his only foothold on sanity resting in Dawn's assertion that Spike had not succeeded.  Fiercely he clung to the idea that she had managed to fight him off, although he doubted the distinction was of much comfort to Buffy.  Both the woman and the slayer in her were fighters, and each side of her nature would have been equally rocked by such a violation of her sense of self.  Long after the visible bruises had faded, her perception of herself was still tainted by what she saw as her failure, and by her fear.

He wondered if Buffy knew it wasn't only Spike she was trying to defeat, but the insecurities his actions spawned.  And that, being Buffy, she was trying to conquer fears she couldn't admit by placing her head directly in the lion's mouth, waiting for him to choke.

Or snap.

"I just think we could kind of balance each other out."  Angel struggled for words that would not betray his revelations; even if he were right, she still wasn't ready to talk openly about it.  "We see different parts of him, and in different ways.  What one of us misses..." 

Buffy balled her right hand into a fist and punched downwards, wishing there was a convenient evil guy at the other end of her arm.  She really needed to hit something right about now.

"Angel, it's too hard to do this with you around," she broke in.  "It's making him even more unstable; I mean he's about one red dress away from being Dru these days.  You're worried about him losing control?  Well you're the one who's going to make him lose it."

"No, he's going to lose it whether I'm here or not."  He took one long step towards her, but he still resisted the urge to touch her.  The control Buffy was keeping over herself looked like it might shatter at any moment.  "And if he's in league with the First, it's a toss-up whether he'll hold off on the meltdown until after the apocalypse has started or he'll be the warm-up act."

"I can take care of myself," she insisted.  "Defender of the universe, remember?  I get to take care of everyone because I can."

"But you don't have to do it alone.  You're choosing to and that's... nuts."

"Like you're the poster child for share and share alike?"

"I'm not talking about me," he replied crossly.  "And in case the six... no, seven people I brought with me from LA have escaped your attention, can I just say I've actually learned to play well... okay, fairly well... with others?  But you haven't told anyone about this thing with Spike, have you?"   Angel looked at her closely, seeing the answer in her eyes before she turned her head to avoid facing him.  "Not Willow or Xander... or even Giles?"

Abruptly her brittle façade began to melt.

"No," she whispered.  "I couldn't."

"But why not?  You used to tell them everything."  It was a gift he'd envied, the ability to share, to confide.  Whatever he knew about it now, and tried to practice with his own friends, he'd learned from Buffy.

"They'd want to help."

He frowned but forced himself to remain silent and wait, knowing there had to be more to the story.

"This isn't just Spike and his usual mixed nuts doubles partner," she explained with difficulty.  "He was bad enough with Dru, but now he... and then there's the First...  it's too much.  I can't risk them."  She lifted both hands and ran them through her windblown hair, not even noticing the tugs as her fingers struck tangles.  "If I told them there's no way I could keep them from helping.  They'd give it everything they've got and one of those things would be someone's life.  I know it."

"And they know the risks, Buffy," he said gently.  "They've always known, but some things, and some people, are worth the fight."

"But it would all be my fault because... because I didn't stake him before all this started."

Angel closed his eyes for an instant as a shield against the raw pain on his lover's face, but it didn't help.  No matter where he hid he could never escape the sins of his past.  Nor, it seemed, could Buffy escape feeling to blame for them.

"Then let me help," he begged, raising his hand to her cheek and gently turning her face towards his.  "Because if you want to go back to where this all started with Spike... it ends up on my doorstep." 

Instantly the old instincts kicked in, leaving Buffy scrambling for a way to steer Angel clear of the guilt that dogged him awake and asleep.

"Yeah, except by that argument we have to go back to Darla, and then the Master and... well, I haven't a clue who killed him but it was way long ago so I don't think we'd be able to extradite unless you stashed a DeLorean in the garage during the eighties."

"What about the slayers before you who didn't kill Spike?" he challenged.  "Like your boss's mother.  Do we blame her?  Or how about the slayers who didn't kill me before I killed Dru?  They could have cut the bloodline off at the pass by cutting me off at the head."

"Stop."  She slapped her hand over his lips with more force than she'd intended, too jolted by the image his words presented to be gentle or patient.  "I'm not playing the begats on both sides of the family tree; I get the point.  I don't agree," she warned, lest he think he'd won.  "This is my fight and I'm not getting the others involved."

It wasn't what Angel wanted; from what he could tell Buffy needed all the support she could get right now.  But if he wanted to show her that he'd changed, he was going to have to start somewhere, and respecting this choice seemed the best way to go.

"As long as you don't think that 'the others' includes me, I'll agree," he conceded.  "For now.  Later on, if the stakes go up..."    

She had started to draw a deep breath of relief when he began to speak, ending with a gusty sigh when it became clear she was no further ahead than when she began. 

"I need... I need to go." 

"No."  His protest was automatic, instinctive.

She hated that she could still think clearly and coldly about the situation, pushing her own feelings and Angel's to the back of her mind as she assessed the risks and benefits of every move they made.  She hated what necessity had made of her, but she couldn't let go now, when the end was so close at hand.

"I have to patrol," she forced herself to say, "and you have to get back to the house before anyone realizes we're together."

Angel shook his head.  Logic argued on her side, but he was in no mood to be logical. "Not yet."

"It's way past yet."

He checked his watch, and then lied to himself about what he saw there.  "We have a little time still.  Not much, but..."

She smiled, or at least she tried to, but Angel saw only the sadness and loneliness shadowing her eyes. 

"No, we don't."

He raised one hand and gently traced the line of her jaw with his fingertip.  "Then we're taking it anyway.  Because I'm not going anywhere until the First Evil is the Last Evil, which means we're going to have to work out some plans."

She made herself reach up and remove his hand from her cheek, but as she pulled it down she still held it fast.  Buffy rarely allowed herself physical contact with anyone these days – letting the barriers down even a millimeter left the door open to surrender.  But she missed the feeling of someone casually touching her on the shoulder, or the simple pleasure of taking a friend's hand in hers.  And she couldn't even begin to describe how much she'd missed the feel of Angel's cool skin against her own, the reassuring solidity of his muscles moving smoothly in unison with hers.

"Plans for what?" she asked, more as an excuse to prolong this moment than from any desire to think about the future.

"How I can help you with Spike."

Buffy ground her teeth together as he unceremoniously yanked her from living in the moment.  Winning an argument with Angel used to be a possibility, but somewhere along the way he'd tumbled onto the advantage that immortality gave him and ever since then he'd just waited her out.  Still, she was the slayer and fighting was what she did best.

"I thought we established that: leave."

"No, we established that you think I should leave and I won't go."  He smiled at her naiveté.  "So what's our next step?"

* * * * *

As Buffy was pulling out all the stops to persuade the world's first vampire with a soul to abandon her to the vagaries of Fate and Evil, Faith was working equally hard to keep the runner-up plastered to her side.

"Spike, I really think you should stay here.  In fact," the slayer deftly slid past him to block his access to the front door, "I'm going to insist." 

Spike did actually stop, paying momentary homage to her guts if not her brains. 

"Insist, is it?  And you really think you can keep me here?  You?"

Faith crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at him.  She knew of Spike's history with slayers, and it should have made her nervous.  Instead it amused her.  She had survived Angelus and she'd survived Kakistos... she'd be damned if Sid Vampish was going to send her running for cover.

"I can think of all sorts of ways to keep you here, Spike.  Some of 'em you might even enjoy, though me..." she shrugged philosophically.  "But hey, a girl's gotta do who a girl's gotta do."

"And here I thought you were panting at Angel's heels," the vampire scoffed.  "Turns out you don't even care if he's run up against the First all by himself and..."

"You know," Cordelia broke in, "I'm getting really sick of this 'the First' stuff.  It's the First Evil, not the First First, you know."  She swept a scathing glance around the room, for once too annoyed to measure her words.  "There are other firsts in the world, and some of them might get pretty ticked at being pushed to the back burner so some show-off power can hog all the attention by being more evil than thou.  I mean..." her voice trailed off as she suddenly registered the puzzled expressions of her listeners' faces.  "I mean it's just... wrong.  Grammatically.  And, umm, sequentially.  And, well," she waved impatiently at Willow, "you should be the one protesting here.  You're Segue Girl.  Start segging."

"I'm good, actually," the witch said from the depths of her armchair.  "I have no problems giving the First Evil a nickname like 'The First,' as long as we all know who we're talking about."

"Maybe we should vote," Xander suggested.  "A secret ballot.  We'll see how many black marbles Cordy gets and..."

"I must have already lost all my marbles," Cordelia grumbled, "expecting any support out of you two.  Some things never change."

"We've changed, Cor," Xander protested.  "You used to be able to get to us."

"And now I can't even get rid of you," she sighed.

"Hey, who horned in on whose apocalypse?" her former boyfriend challenged. 

"And who's going to stop it?" Spike broke in loudly.  "Angel and his amazing hair gel?  Not bloody likely.  And not Buffy either, not without me to back her up."  He thought quickly, trying to frame an argument that appealed to the nobler instincts Angel and Buffy's groupies were always blathering about.  "But they're out there, and the... our... First is out there and we're standing around here listening to you three fight over who got the best seat in study hall."

"Now I know the world is truly coming to an end when the vampires start lecturing us on the right way to save it."  Wesley got up from his hard wooden chair by the fireplace and approached Faith.  "Perhaps we should allow Spike...with the proper accompaniment, of course... to search for Angel and Buffy.  There may be many evils abroad tonight."

"So, hey, why not add one more?" Xander said, throwing his hands in the air.

"I'm not fighting the idea of someone looking for them," Faith explained.  "I just think we need to keep a leash on Spanky here.  He's a little too eager to bite."

"I'll go with him," Wesley offered.  "And this time I won't let him out of my sight."

It would afford him the best opportunity to keep Spike away from Connor, Wesley decided, and the vampire might actually be right about Angel and Buffy being in danger.  And no one was saying he actually had to talk to Spike, just keep him from doing any more damage than his long life had already afforded.

"I'm not looking to lead a parade," Spike grumbled. 

If he could have managed to get Faith alone without being obvious it would be a different story, but that was too much to ask for right now.  Later, things would be different.  Later things would come around his way for a change.

"Everybody loves a parade," Lorne said, his voice tuned more to coaxing a toddler to eat Brussel sprouts than inducing a vampire to accept containment. 

"Oh, I do," Fred chimed in.  She could see where Lorne was going with his comment, and she wanted to help.  She also, quite honestly, loved parades.  "All those floats... and the big balloon animals… and the clowns.  I love clowns."

Xander shivered. 

"Why don't I go along with you?" Gunn suggested to Wesley.  "In case there's really trouble you could probably use an extra hand... and fist."

"And we can't do better than a human one, now can we, Shaft?" Spike sneered. 

Gunn ignored the vampire's sarcasm, but when criticism came from another corner it was not so easy to overlook.

"Why do you always do this, Charles?"  Fred demanded, awkwardly scrambling to her feet from her spot on the floor.  Any thoughts she had a moment earlier about 'all for one and one for all' had been washed away by fear.  "Why does it always have to be you," she gestured wildly, almost hitting him in the face, "riding in to rescue someone who might not want you to see that they need rescuing?"

He stared at her in shock, hearing the undercurrents as no one else but Wesley could.  All this time he'd thought her problem was with Faith, that because she was insecure in their relationship she felt unusually threatened by a strange young woman in their midst.  But it was still about her professor, and the death that lay between them.

"Baby, don't..." he began, but Fred wasn't finished yet.

"Maybe some people don't want you to show them how weak they really are... and mean... and just... just hateful!"  Tears started to spill out of the corners of her eyes drenching her lips like a salty rain, but she'd sooner drown than stop now.  "Maybe you playing the big hero makes them feel even worse because they were trying to keep you clean!"

Gunn was reaching out to her, his arms automatically proffered as a safe haven from the storm, but Fred couldn't hide behind him now.  Her sins were now offered up for speculation, and her pain too nakedly evident to face any of the assembled.  She pushed away Gunn's arms and stumbled past him, moving blindly but determinedly through the crowded living room towards the safety of the quiet second floor.

Lorne laid a gentle hand on Gunn's shoulder.  "Her soul's been singing the blues to me when she doesn't even say a word."

"That's the problem."  Gunn looked away, staring at the wall as he invented a hundred new words for 'jackass' and tried them all on for size.  "She hasn't been saying and I haven't been saying and all that not talking is getting too damned loud."

"Go upstairs, Gunn," Wesley said softly.  "We can handle this."

Once the Watcher would have been savagely glad he'd understood something in Fred that Gunn could not, but now all Wesley felt was pity.  Each of them saw the innocence in the other and loved it, but the inability to see it in their own selves was the wedge that threatened to keep them apart forever.  In a way it was the same dilemma Buffy and Angel faced, but both slayer and vampire had scars that left them made of much tougher stuff than fragile Fred and her chosen Sir Galahad.

"Are you sure, English?"  Gunn glanced uncertainly towards the stairs, weighing another fight with Fred against battling the ultimate force of evil in the universe.  He had a sinking feeling evil would be a lot easier to win over.  "We came here to do a job and..."

"I can go," Connor offered.

Connor had no burning desire to ride off to Angel's rescue, or at least he was pretty sure he didn't.  Though he had to admit, at least to himself, that it would be kind of satisfying to see the look of surprise on his father's face if he did.  Surprise and possibly gratitude, or maybe even a little respect.

Not that it mattered, Connor hastened to assure himself.  Not that he cared.

"I'm stronger than Gunn," he added.  "And a better fighter, if there's trouble."

Gunn was already headed for the staircase, but he turned at Connor's words.  "Hey, Sprout, what makes you think..."

Connor didn't even pretend to listen to Gunn's useless protest.  "I won't even kill him," he jerked his head at Spike, "if you really don't want me to."

"No."  Wesley didn't mean the word to come out as sharply as it did; he saw the rejection hit Connor like a physical blow.  He tried to soften his explanation, in hopes of making amends.  "No, it's best you stay here.  This is where you're needed."

Cordelia reached out and caught Connor's hand with her own, dragging him to her side.  She had no more illusions about Spike than Wesley did; actually she had less.  Soul or no soul, Spike was first and foremost a vampire.  Connor was human, and therefore prey.  To Cordelia, however, the boy was so much more, and she had no intention of letting any two-bit demon with an overbite and an attitude mess with what was hers.

"Stay here, Connor," she echoed.  "I need you."

"And I need a bush to heave into."  Spike glowered at Faith, who remained serenely in his way.  "Now are you going to move or am I going to play pick-up-sticks with slayer bones first?"

The slayer glanced at Wesley; he gave her the smallest of encouraging nods as an answer.  She took one large step to the side and gestured to the front door.

"Fetch, boy."

Spike grunted as he stalked past her into the night, but his attempt at hauteur only made Faith laugh.

"Jeeze, you'd think I called him Lassie."

"Nah," Xander scoffed, "Lassie was a natural blonde."

"And brunette," Dawn added, lifting one of her own smooth brown locks for inspection.  "But I don't know about the white – does that equal albino or..."

"Guys," Willow broke in, "normally I'm all over the witty banter; in fact just call me Banter Girl."

"Banter..."

"But this is Spike we're talking about," she continued loudly over Xander's voice. "Looking for Angel.  Who's probably with..."

"Buffy," Xander groaned. 

He still remembered the hurt and roiling anger he felt when he caught Buffy having a secret rendezvous with the supposedly dead Angel; the things he and the others had said and done in the aftermath could have driven Buffy away forever.  And he wasn't even an uber-jealous super-powered sociopath.  Who knew how many small cities Spike would level before he felt vindicated?

"I'll go after him," Faith volunteered.  "Just in case he needs a muzzle."

And if he did, she reasoned, so much the better.  She was aching for someone or something to hit, since she couldn't manage to put a gag on the mayor.  Ever since Cordelia raised the alarm about Angel, he had been whispering in her ear, pretending to commiserate that Faith was now the Chosen One to defend Buffy's right to date not one but two vampires.  If she was given the chance to pummel, or maybe even stake Spike, she'd feel like she was once again doing something for Angel instead of Buffy, and that was okay.  That was right.

"Be careful," Wesley warned her. 

Faith flashed him a quick grin before she slipped out the door.  "That'll be the day, coach."

The living room felt strangely large in Spike's absence.  The vampire always seemed to take over any room he was in within moments of his entry, and once he departed it usually took a few minutes before objects and people resumed their appropriate size.  It was a feeling Xander should have been familiar with by now, but he continued to fight it with the best weapon at his disposal.

"Well, gee, that was fun," he drawled.  "What's the encore?  Holy water squirt guns at high noon?"

"I'm going... I'll be upstairs," Gunn mumbled, marching up the stairs like a man facing his doom.

No one heard the kitchen door open, or footsteps making their way across the tile towards the living room.  Yet suddenly she was there, and she didn't look pleased.

"Xander Harris, why haven't you called me?"

"Anya," he gulped.

* * * * *

Buffy and Angel were still arguing over his participation in her plan when they entered the mansion.

"You'll never pull it off.  You're not that great of an actor."  Abruptly she stopped walking and glanced around the Great hall.  Her face was clouded with confusion as she once again tried to rub away the chill on her bare arms, a chill not helped by the cool stone walls surrounding them.  "How did we get here?  I distinctly remember telling you I had to go."

Angel shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders.  As he crossed the room to light the fire he'd laid in the grate that afternoon, he answered her over his shoulder.

"You did... and I disagreed.  Just like I disagree that I can't pull this off.  I mean I don't like to brag..."

She snorted, though a small smile teased at the edges of her mouth.

"...but do you remember who it was who tricked Faith into spilling the mayor's plans?"  He flicked a lit match into the fire.  "Mr. Not Such a Great Actor, that's who."

"You told her what she wanted to hear."  Not what Buffy had wanted to hear; that went without saying.  But it had certainly done the trick for Faith.

"And this will be what Spike wants to hear."  Angel could almost hear Buffy's thoughts, and he echoed them as far as his errant childe went.

She followed him over to the fireplace, taking her old seat on the couch nearest the hearth without thinking. 

"No way.  He won't fall for it."  She shook her head firmly as she curled her legs up onto the couch and covered them with the length of Angel's coat.  "He's known you too long.  A leopard doesn't change his stripes."

Angel's argument was monetarily derailed, as she had intended.  He turned his back on the blossoming fire and stared at her.

"Spots.  Tigers are striped."

Buffy wrinkled her nose at the thought.  "You look awful in polka-dots.  Actually stripes don't do much for you either."  She tipped her head to the side and smiled.  "But for some weird reason I'm getting a flash of you in plaid and thinking yum."

"Plaid?" he asked faintly.  Every Irish bone in his body cringed at the thought.

"Nothing flashy," she assured him.  "Just some nice dark blue and green or... see that's what I mean!"  Buffy pounded her fist on the arm of the sofa.  Turnabout was so not fair play.  "You always do that to me.  I get all serious and slay-worthy and then I start thinking about you and clothes... or not clothes... and then that's all I can think about."

This wasn't the right time; Angel knew that.  In fact he knew the right time probably wasn't even on their month-at-a-glance.  But suddenly he was desperate to bring a smile to Buffy's face, to know he could give back to her just a little of the happiness she gave him simply by existing.

"Is it really so bad, thinking like that?"  Angel smiled; flashing that old crooked grin, the one he knew melted every bone in her body, as he closed the distance between them.  "Not all the time, of course.  We have a world to save..."

"I have a world to save," Buffy corrected him tartly, emphasizing the pronoun.  Somebody obviously needed to be reminded who carried the stake in this family.

Family? her panicked mind echoed a moment later.  Did I just say...

"You have a world to save," he conceded, acknowledging the solitary nature of her calling.  "I have souls to save, or at least souls who need a chance to save themselves."  He stretched out one hand and captured hers, easily pulling her to her feet to stand in front of him.  "But just for a little while now and then... or maybe more than a little... is it really so bad to focus on you and me?"

Buffy hastily gathered the thoughts he was setting loose with such devastating ease.  Angel knew the reality of their situation as well as she, better in fact, but obviously the idea of them working together again had gotten to him.  Someone had to be responsible, and dammit, it looked like Angel was leaving it up to her.

"You know it is.  You know we can't..."

"Not now," he quickly agreed.  "This place is like a bus station the day before Thanksgiving.  But later, when things are quieter..."

She wanted to run and hide, mostly because the last thing she felt like doing when he used that husky tone of voice was escaping him.  She wanted to escape in him, with him, and never return to the world that expected so much of both of them.

She wanted to be Buffy, not the Slayer, but that option had disappeared long ago, if it had ever really existed.  So instead she stood her ground, just inches from everything she wanted, and threw it back in his face with all the strength she could summon.

"So Angelus can get a good nap in first?  He must be exhausted after his latest attempt to send the world to hell, or wherever he was aiming for this time." 

Angel had been waiting for this moment since the instant Willow had told him and even if it wasn't remotely how he had pictured it, he didn't care.  It was just such a relief to finally share it with Buffy.  It wouldn't seem real until he did that; nothing ever did. 

"He's not coming back, Buffy." 

Against her will, her free hand reached up to stroke his cheek.  Once arrived, she found she could not force its withdrawal.

"You can't make that kind of promise."

"Willow's spell... I'll let her explain the details, but my soul is safe, I promise."  Angel turned his cheek into her palm, nuzzling the soft fragrant skin pressed so warmly against his own.  "The demon is still inside me; I can't change that.   But he won't ever take over again.  He can't."

"Willow's spell?" she repeated, stalling for time.  "The one she did in LA... the one to restore your soul? That..."

"That spell," he agreed.

A small part of him was hurt that she didn't seem more excited; if anything she seemed politely confused.  But even when he had lived in Sunnydale, and she was so much more innocent and hopeful, she found it hard to trust sudden good fortune.  He hadn't been lying when he told Wesley she didn't like surprises, not even good ones.  Good turned bad so quickly for her, and the bad usually required killing.

"She worked with Lorne and some friends of his to make it permanent.  This last time with Angelus came too close... we can't let him loose again.  It's gone beyond too dangerous."

Buffy choked as a nervous laugh collided with a sob in her throat.  The hand that had been gently brushing Angel's cheek slipped down his chest, her fingers flexing as she clutched at the silk of his shirt to stop her freefall.

"Too dangerous?" she gasped.  "Ya think?"

"I think... no, I know he can't come back.  That's what matters."  He looked deep into her hazel eyes, suddenly unsure of what he might find in their depths.  "Isn't it?"

* * * * *

"Anya, you... you're here.  I, umm, was going to call you but there was this... and then we..."

Anya held up her hand to ward off Xander's excuses.  "I don't want to hear it.  I called on you for help and you let me down.  Again.  So you could be with your friends."  She cast a scornful glance around the room, but seemed to be ignoring the evidence of her eyes as she added, "So you could be with your precious Buffy; that was the real reason, wasn't it, Alexander Harris?"

"I hate it when she uses my full name," he grumbled.

Dawn nodded sympathetically, unwinding her tangle of arms and legs as she scrambled over to sit at his feet in a show of support.  "It's never a good thing.  When Buffy says 'Dawn Summers' in that voice... you know that voice... I know I'm in trouble."

"Trouble is when you hear your middle name too," Willow said glumly, several SITs in the room nodding in vigorous agreement.

"Using my middle name would only get Anya in trouble," Xander warned. 

He took a few steps closer to her, intent on getting her into another room where they could fight in peace.  His plans were thwarted, however, by the sudden presence of Connor between he and his on-again off-again girlfriend.

"I'm sorry," the boy said softly.  "She doesn't smell."

"I'm not," Xander responded bluntly, not understanding the kid's problem.  "I actually find that attractive in a woman.  Provided of course she's not really picky about how I might..."

Connor's words hadn't made the intended impression on Xander, but even in the short time he had been reunited with his friends, Wesley had come to know a few things about Angel's son.  Connor was trying to be gentle, a side he seldom let anyone see after the long years of living with Holtz.  If he was being that careful with the feelings of a relative stranger, it could only mean bad tidings.

"Xander," Wesley interrupted, "I don't think you understand what Connor is trying to say."  He fumbled for the right words, struggling at the same time to push away the memory of Lilah dropping limply from Angelus' arms.  "If you remember, Angel had a concern about scent, and I think Connor is trying to... that is to say Anya isn't..."

"No," Willow said sharply.  She raised one hand and slashed it in the air to silence the Watcher, and then slowly, painfully walked over to her oldest friend in the world.  "I will do this," she said, her voice steady through sheer force of will.

"Do what?"  Xander looked from Willow to Wesley, and then to Connor.  "You guys are wigging me out; what's with the silent auction here?"

There was a nagging voice at the back of his head trying to remind him why they all suddenly looked so sad, but he wouldn't listen.  He refused to listen, because there was nothing to listen to.  There couldn't be.

"They're trying to confuse you.  They think they can make you choose them over me."  Anya was openly sneering at him now, something she only did when he'd hurt her more than she could find words to describe.  "And why not?  You always have before."

"Xander honey," Willow said softly.  "What Connor... what we... are trying to say is that she isn't... that that thing," she spat out the word, "isn't Anya."

"No."

Xander didn't know exactly who barked out the word 'no;' it sounded vaguely like his father's voice just before he switched from taking a belt to swinging one.  But his father wasn't here and Xander couldn't... wouldn't... conceive of a situation where his own voice could become so harsh and bitter.

"It's the First Evil, Xander."

He tried to laugh it off because that was the only way he knew how to hold back reality.  Seven long years of demon hunting had allowed him to hone his skill to an art form.

"Hey, I know you and Anya haven't ever gotten along really well, but there's no need to call her evil, Will.  I mean sure, she's had her demonish moments... maybe you could even call them demony.  But that's all better now.  You're cured, right, honey?"

"She never liked me," Faux Anya sniffed.  "She was always jealous, even if you wouldn't admit it."

"You have to steel yourself, Xander.  This isn't really Anya."  Wesley's gentle voice ill matched the hard look he leveled at the First.  "I know it appears to be, but it's only an illusion."

It had taken Cordelia a few minutes to recover her composure after 'Anya' walked into the room, but luckily Xander's denial-fest had taken the heat off her at the crucial time.  Now she could settle down to some serious work, provided the participants would cooperate.

"If you don't believe them, check it out for yourself," she suggested.  "Touch her." 

Connor shot his lover a puzzled look.  He knew he was right about this creature pretending to be Xander's girlfriend, and somehow he'd assumed that at least Cordelia would support him.  She, at the very least, must know without question that he was telling the truth.  And if she did believe him, wasn't it cruel to drag things out like this?

"She has no smell," Connor repeated patiently.

"Stop saying that!" 

"I can settle this," Anya volunteered. 

In the blink of an eye Anya's suede top morphed into a wrinkled suit jacket and polyester white dress shirt.  Her long, satin skirt dimmed from dark red to a brownish grey tweed wannabe, and her loose blonde curls grayed and shrank both in length and number.  Thin lips pursed together as his face tightened into an impatient scowl.

"It's all the drugs you kids do these days," Principal Snyder said with a dismissive sniff.  "You don't know when to believe your own eyes anymore.  Bunch of juvenile delinquents.  The mayor should've eaten you when he had the chance."

* * * * *

Buffy suddenly felt a wave of anger surging up through her, rising so quickly it almost made her dizzy.  She just wasn't sure if it was the injustice that made her lightheaded, or the newfound freedom to express it.

"So Angelus is the only thing you think I should worry about?" she asked in a high, thin voice.

"No, I didn't mean it that way, exactly."  Angel frowned, wondering where his good news had gone so bad.  He wasn't allowed much time for a retrospective, however; his beloved had a few questions of her own.

"When we broke up..." she clutched his shirt tightly, twisting it to make sure he didn't escape, "make that when you dumped me, you kept saying sex wasn't the whole deal.  Now you're saying that it was?"

"No, of course not."

"So what else has changed?" 

Angel's coat slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet; if she took a step backward she would get tangled up in it.  But Buffy had no intention of backing off now. 

"If sex, which is to say 'hello Angelus, what towns have you drained today?' isn't the issue... if it was never the issue... then what is the issue that suddenly isn't?" 

She was pushing him and she knew it.  More importantly, she knew she shouldn't.  A half-hour ago she had been doing everything she could to persuade him to leave, and now she was trying to make him admit why he couldn't.  It was wrong and it was dangerous, but her heart had never been very easy to reason with when it came to Angel.

"Me.  I've changed."  He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly.  "And so have you."

She barely repressed a shudder at the memory of some of the changes in her world since the days when Angel shared it with her.  The lessons she'd learned from those changes seemed like pretty poor compensation for the parts of her soul she'd lost along the way. 

"Not good enough.  Change doesn't always mean things get better."

A bittersweet smile chased across Angel's pale face.  He had ghosts of his own to contend with.

"Actually cloth diapers can give you a whole new perspective on that one."

"Angel, I'm not..."

"...kidding.  I know.  Neither am I."  Reluctantly he dragged his mind from the too-brief weeks of Connor's infancy; he couldn't afford to linger overlong in the past if he wanted to have any kind of a future.  "Changes don't have to be good to do some good, Buffy.  Sometimes what we need is the hardest thing to live through."  He gently covered her hand on his chest with his own.  "I've been trying to talk to you about this since I got here."

Buffy bit her lip as she struggled with the compulsive need to check her watch.  It wasn't as though the watch was going to tell her anything good; she already knew they had to be out of time.  People... Spike... would be getting suspicious, possibly to the point of tracking them down.    She had to go.

"So talk," she said instead.

* * * * *

Gunn made his way slowly down the second floor hallway, pausing to poke his head into each room in search of Fred.  He received one or two invitations for company, and narrowly missed a left to the jaw when he opened first and knocked after, but he still didn't find the woman of his dreams.  Until, that is, he knocked on the last closed door.

"Go away," was the muffled response, but he paid it no mind.  He knew the sound of his girl's voice, even when she'd been crying.

Slowly he opened the door.

"Fred, I'm coming in," he warned.  "We need to talk, baby."

Quickly he opened the door and slipped in, closing it firmly behind him.  There were already far too many opportunities for an audience around here; there was no need to make things easy.

"There's nothing to say," she mumbled into the towel she held pressed against her eyes.

Gunn reached over and lightly tugged at the towel, gradually revealing Fred's tear-stained face.

"We've been saying that for weeks, and all it's gotten us is hiding out in a creepy bathroom."

Surprise pulled her head from the towel more than his gentle tone.  She glanced around the room, taking in the jumble of leftover shampoos, conditioners, gels, lotions, razors and towels taking up almost every inch of counter space.  Precariously dangling from the shower rod was a wide display of loofahs and body puffs.  A small sign, warning "Slay It, Don't Spray It," was carefully taped to the corner of the mirror, just above the rack of toothbrushes.

It looked, in short, like a bathroom populated by a large number of occasionally inconsiderate females.

"Creepy?" she asked doubtfully.

Gunn glanced around the same room and briskly rubbed his hands on his arms.

"Don't you feel it?"

"It's... just a bathroom."  She smiled in polite confusion as she folded up the hand towel and placed it on the counter.  "Isn't it?"

Gunn had followed Fred upstairs to talk about the past, but this wasn't exactly the part he wanted to revisit.  But if he wanted to preach the value of honesty, he figured he'd better make the first offer.

"Bad things," he said slowly, "things that hurt you... they can leave a mark on a place, kind of like, I don't know, a stain or a smell or something.  And I... feel it.  Sometimes," he added quickly.  "Not always.  Thought I learned to keep it out, but I guess with the Beast and Angelus and all..." he swiped his hand over his head, thinking back over the past few weeks.  "Shoulda known it wasn't working when we got to that crazy mansion of Angel's.  There's this spot near the fireplace... it's like it's screaming at me."

Fred stared at him silently for a moment, remembering all the terrible places they had been together over the past two years.  What they had seen was hard enough to carry the weight of; she couldn't begin to imagine having to see beyond all the past pains to even get to the new.  It also made her realize there was a question she had never asked him.

"Is that why you started hunting vampires?"  Her hand tightened on top of the folded towel, scrunching the soft cloth between suddenly nerveless fingers.  "To stop the... marks... before they get made?"

His strained expression softened at her words.  "Lot of people would think it was nuts, huh?"

"They don't know you."

"Can't exactly say I know me anymore," he admitted.  "Some of things I've done lately... never in a million years thought I could."

Fred looked away, accidentally confronting her image in the slightly streaky mirror.  She shivered at the sight; hers was not a face she recognized lately either.

"It's my fault," she mumbled.  "I wanted to keep you out of it.  I went to Wesley because I wanted to keep you out of it.  But you..." she balled both hands into fists and raised them in the air, trying to drag the words from the aether, "you have this thing where you have to try and save people even if they don't deserve to be saved and..."

"Baby, I wasn't trying to save him; I just didn't want you to get in too deep."

She stared at Gunn, aghast at his words. 

"Do you think I don't know that, Charles?  Don't you think I know it was me that you were really trying to save, even though...," this time she fought back her sob, though it took her a moment to compose herself enough to continue.  "Even though I didn't deserve it.  And even though the last, I mean the absolute last thing in the universe I wanted was to drag you into it."

This time it was Gunn who was at a loss.

"Where else was I supposed to be?  We're a team, you and me.  Least that's what I thought.  Your fights are my fights.  Someone hurts you... they answer to me."

"And what about when I'm the one that hurts you?" she asked softly.  "What about when I'm the one who takes everything you are and everything you believe and makes you throw it away to save me from myself?"

He took a step towards her, his hands slowly rising from his sides to reach out to her.  "Fred, you gotta believe I never..."

"Gunn!"

Both Gunn and Fred jerked their heads towards the closed door, and the hallway on the other side from when the shout had come.

"Damn!" Gunn swore softly. 

"Gunn?  Fred?  Where are you?"

The voice was thin and high-pitched, the shaded tones of panic growing stronger with each word.

Gunn looked quickly at Fred, gauging the odds of being able to remain in hiding long enough to settle things.  His lover saw the thought in his eyes, however, and disagreed before he'd even said a word.

"We're in here!" she called out, slipping past Gunn to open the door. 

Glumly he followed her into the hallway.  SITs were coming out of the bedrooms, and it seemed even out of the literal woodwork to find out the latest call to disaster, currently being broadcast by Dawn.

"What's up?" he asked with resignation. 

"Angel went after Buffy... at least we think he did," she said breathlessly.  "And then Spike went after Angel... or so he says... and Faith went after Spike, except I still don't trust a word she says even if Angel seems to think she's..."

"Dawn," he interrupted impatiently, "I know all this.  Cut to a different chase."

Dawn sucked in a huge breath of air in preparation for dropping her bombshell, so huge of a breath, in fact, that she began hiccupping.  Between the hiccups and her usual stream-of-consciousness speech pattern, her words should have been almost unintelligible.  Instead they emerged with a chilling clarity.

"Anya came in after Spike and Faith left.  Except it wasn't Anya, it was the First. She turned into Buffy's principal... the dead one, not the live one...and now Xander thinks Spike killed Anya.  You know last night, when he was missing?  He ran out... Xander ran out."  Tears began to fill her large brown eyes.    "And I think he's after Spike and I'm not sure if having Faith out there too is a good thing because I don't think she likes either of them and Spike can hurt people now, but if he doesn't hurt Xander then Xander's gonna kill him.  And then Buffy will never ever forgive him."

* * * * *

"Why didn't you ever say any of this before?"  Buffy reached up and stroked Angel's fire-warmed cheek as she leaned deeper into the sofa cushion and the arm resting around her shoulders.  "Not about the stuff that happened to you; I know you're not psychic or anything."

"That would be Cordy," he agreed.  A moment later he added with a small frown, "Though not lately."

She brushed her thumb across his lips, both to end any further discussion of Cordelia, and to grasp his chin between her thumb and fingers.  Her small hand gently but firmly kept his face, and hopefully his attention, directed towards her.

"I'm talking about the feelings, the things you wanted.  Why couldn't you have said that four years ago, before things got so horribly messed?"

There were still so many things Angel wanted to tell Buffy about the past four years; now that they were finally talking he wanted to share everything with her, even the things he knew would disappoint her.  But at least now he'd told her enough to show what turned a solitary guilt-stricken vampire into a father, a friend, a businessman, and an occasional horse's ass.

It was a beginning, instead of another unhappy ending.

"Because it wasn't true then, not all of it," he confessed.  "I was what was messed then, Buffy, and I needed time to get things straight."

She turned away reluctantly, slipping out of the circle of his arms and off the sofa to stand before the fire.  There was a confidence about Angel now, a surety that she found comforting as well as alluring.  But to see that hopeful light in his eyes and not feel the same assurance in herself only twisted the knife deeper.

"Great.  You get things straight while I'm making a Slinky out of my life."  She shook her head, caught somewhere between tears and laughter at the sheer stupidity of it all.  "You figure out who you are and all I have to show for the last four years is a truckload of who I don't want to be's bump-bump-bumping down the stairs."

Angel quickly joined her in front of the fireplace, sliding his arms around her waist and gently pulling her unresisting form back against his own.

"I think that's where it starts, Buffy," he said softly.  "And trust me, if you've already got a truckload you're way up on me.  It took me 26 wasted years of life, a hundred years of regret... and most of all, losing you... to give me a clue who I didn't want to be." 

She turned her head to the side so that she could look up into his serious brown eyes.  "And who's that guy you're so down on?"

"The one who lives his life without you."

Buffy looked at him silently for a moment, trying to absorb his words and the impact they could have on her life.  For all his love of poetry, Angel wasn't exactly the quickest guy, or the smoothest, with the hearts and flowers talk.  She had a feeling it was his way of facing the horrors of his past – if he forced himself to be honest with everyone, he wouldn't be able to lie to himself either.  For Buffy it had always added an extra measure of sweetness to his compliments, knowing they came from so deep in his heart, fighting their way past the dragon of his guilt. 

Tonight, though, they meant something more.  The words he'd just uttered were a commitment, of a sort, and if she accepted them in the spirit in which they were offered she was making a commitment of her own.  One she possibly... make that probably... had no right to make at this point in her screwed-up life.

"Maybe that guy knew when to get when the getting was good."

"I'd rather know when it's time to stop running away."

"Running's good," she said lightly.  She forced herself to break contact with his dark eyes and stared instead into the fire, whose flames were not nearly as hypnotic as the glow she had just been basking in.  "It gets you places.  Really fast, too."

"It doesn't get you anywhere if you don't stop," he countered.  "A long time ago you tried to tell me that, but I wasn't ready to understand.  Now I do."

"A little late, don't you think?"

"Call me a slow learner."

* * * * *

Spike crept down the hallway, towards the sound of voices.  He should've known to come here first, he berated himself.  Oldest trick in the book, this was.  Get everyone over to Buffy's house, all waiting for the Slayer to come back from her appointed rounds, and meanwhile the mansion is standing all empty.  Empty, that is, except for that same slayer and her precious ponce.

* * * * *

"And what are you going to call me," she asked, "when all the cozy firelight and nice romantic apocalypses are over?"  Buffy couldn't look at him; she stiffened her spine and pulled her arms tight against her body so that no part of her was touching Angel as she spoke.  "When it's just you and me... and Spike standing right between us, big as life and twice as annoying?  Because you can't tell me he won't be there, in your head if no place else."

"So you're saying Darla is always going to be lurking in the corners too?"  He made a show of glancing around the Great Hall.  "Guess it's a good thing I like big houses."

"What?"  She frowned.  "No, Darla has nothing to do with us... this." 

"Why not?"  His voice was low and steady, though it took all of his control to make it so.  "Aren't you going to think of her every time you see my son, her son?  The son you and I are never going to have together?"

Angel's words brought Buffy up short.  When she had first learned of Connor's parentage she had forced herself to fight back the jealousy, dragging out all the reasons it was illogical and unfair even as visions of stakings danced through her head.  But that seemed like years ago now.

"When I see Connor," she said, feeling her way through the minefield of betrayals both real and perceived, "all I think of is you.  What you got to experience... and what you missed."

"And when I see Spike..."

"You see red," she interrupted, whirling around to confront him.  "Or green.  You're like a traffic signal without the caution light.  You move straight from 'stop' thinking to 'go' for throat."

He forbore from mentioning that traffic lights normally did move straight from 'stop' to 'go'.  Buffy had always been a little sensitive on the subject of driving.

"Yes, I get jealous, but so what?"  Angel shrugged; as his insecurities were slowly dissipating, his jealous streak was as well, but he was the first to admit it was a work in progress.  "I was jealous of Riley too, and even Xander, once upon a time."

"Shut up," she exclaimed, pressing a hand to her cheek in mock astonishment.  "You were jealous of Riley?"

He ignored the jibe, but winced a little as honesty compelled him to continue.  "And, well, Ford... but I was kind of right about him.  And, okay, there was also that guy Owen.  And Scott..."

"Scott?" she broke in with an amazed laugh.  "Oh Angel, if you only knew."

Angel took a calculated risk and reached out to rest his hands lightly on her shoulders.  This time she didn't stiffen or pull away, although she didn't step into his arms either.  Still, he took is as a good sign.

"The point is that even though I was jealous of them, and maybe I still am a little because of the part of your life they got to share, they don't matter now.  They're in the past."

* * * * *

Spike ducked his head around the corner and very nearly strode into the Great Hall when he saw the two of them cuddling in front of the fire.  Angel had his hands all over his girl, the girl he had just killed for, as though he'd done anything to earn the right.  As though Angel had ever killed a girl just to make Buffy's life a little easier.  Not hardly, Spike sniffed silently.

It was only a need to hear Buffy's answer that kept Spike in his hiding place.  Not that he should have been able to hide from her; the knowledge that she didn't sense him made things that much worse.  She was the Slayer, the Chosen One to hunt vampires, and for that she should be able to sense them at close range.  To say nothing of the relationship they'd had; she should have some sort of sense of him based on that alone.  But no, his useless sire, who also should have been able to sense him if he wasn't so bloody... useless... had obviously scrambled Buffy's senses to the point where she hadn't got a one left.

As usual, Angel had mucked everything up but good.

* * * * *

"And you really think you can let Spike stay in the past, all tucked away in a dresser drawer with mothballs on top?"  She wanted to believe him; she wanted it more than anything.  But the idea was about as likely as Cordelia being a success as a higher being.

"If you can leave Darla with him for company."

"That was different," Buffy protested.  "I don't blame you for her.  She wanted to drag you down to her level and she messed with your head to do it.  And for a little while you were, well, dumb enough to fall for it."

"How is that different from what Spike did to you?"

Dammit, why did he always have to ask the stumpers just when she thought she'd won the argument?

"He said he loved me," she answered slowly, "and I wanted to believe him."  A harsh laugh boiled up from some lost place inside of her, perhaps the place that had first led her to Spike.  "How deeply sick is that?" 

"Sick to want to believe you're loved?"  Delicately, he probed a little deeper, sensing there were wounds yet to be seen, let alone healed.  "Or do you mean wanting to believe that you're worth being loved... but not to be sure?"

She didn't answer; he'd struck a little too close to the bone.

"You're asking the wrong guy that one, Buffy.  Even with all I told you tonight, you still don't know half the stupid things I've done because I just couldn't get it through my head that anyone could know me... really know me... and still care."

"But to want to believe even after he tried to... I mean how stupid could I be?"

Warning bells were clamoring in his head.  The feelings he was sensing in her were only too familiar, but they were nothing Buffy should have to deal with.

"Hey," he said sharply, "I don't care what he said he felt, or what you wanted him to say – it doesn't excuse what he did.  Do not beat yourself up over this."

"You're telling me not to buy a ticket for a guilt trip?"

"Do you know a more experienced tour guide?"  His mouth twisted into a pained smile.

She dropped her head and pressed her hands over her face, though she wasn't sure if it was Angel she couldn't face, or the reflection of the Buffy he thought she was that shone in his dark eyes.  Through the shield of her fingers, she mumbled, "God, I'm just such..." bitter memories rose like bile, "I'm such a Debbie."

Angel's crooked smile turned into a frown.  "A debbie?  You lost me."

"She was this girl... she had this boyfriend..." she raised her head, "It doesn't matter." 

She and Angel had never spoken about his first day back from hell, or the fact that his mind took a later train.  They both had so much guilt about that time in their lives, and so far Fate had never offered them enough down time to cope with it. 

"I just mean that I was so desperate, so pathetically desperate, that I would have done anything to make myself believe he could love me.  To make myself believe anyone ever could again.  How can you look at me the same way you used to when I sank that low?"

"You know, in painful, gory detail, about how low I've sunk over the centuries, but you still love me, don't you?"  He paused, fixing his eyes firmly on hers.  "Don't you?"

* * * * *

Spike leaned forward, until he was almost in the room with them.  She didn't... she couldn't.  There was no way his Slayer, the one he'd just killed for, thank you very much, was going to tell the Vamp of La Mancha that she still loved him.  Buffy was his, not Angel's, and in just a second she was going to...

A hand on his shoulder, hurling him backward down the hallway and toward the patio, interrupted his train of thought. 

* * * * *

"What was that?" Buffy asked. 

Angel followed her gaze to the doorway that led to the hallway, but there was nothing to see.  Even if there had been, he wasn't sure if it mattered at the moment.  To Angel, all that mattered was Buffy's answer to a very important question.

"Whatever it is, it's gone.  And we're here and you haven't answered me.  Do you still..."

"Love you?"  She smiled and shook her head at his blindness.  To her own mind she had been embarrassingly obvious.  "Angel, I've spent most of the last seven years trying not to... but I can never seem to shake it."

"Don't."

She wasn't sure if he was asking her or telling her, or maybe both, but it didn't really matter.  As she'd told him, there didn't seem to be a way around it. 

"You're not going to give up on this, are you?" she asked quietly.

"No."

A wistful note crept into her voice.  "Promise?"

"I'd say 'cross my heart and hope to die'... but it's a little late for that."

Buffy offered a watery smile; she knew he'd been hoping for more, but the cloud of memories was so thick around her head it was getting a little hard to even breathe.

"You don't do so great with crosses anyway," she murmured.

The look in Angel's eyes told her that he remembered the same night she did.  And his next words told Buffy he also remembered how it ended.

"But I do promise I won't give up this time, Buffy.  Not on you, and not on us."

Against every rational thought in her head, Buffy stepped into the arms he was holding out to her, and pressed her cheek to the small hollowed spot in Angel's chest created with her in mind.

"What are we going to do now?" she asked with a resigned sigh.

He rested his cheek against the warm cloud of her hair and uttered a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the miracle that kept finding him no matter how hard he tried to hide.

"We're going to think very carefully about what we've always done before... and then do the opposite."

* * * * *

"Xander, wait up!" 

Willow called out to him as she tried to make up the distance longer legs and anger had created between them, but Xander didn't seem to hear her.  He was too caught up in the race to find Spike before his own guilt could find him.

"I'm gonna kill him," Xander muttered.  "This time I'm gonna do it.  I don't care what Buffy says or Dawn or anybody; I'm just gonna grab him by his scrawny neck and stake his undead ass once and for all.  If I had done it before, after he tried to hurt Buffy, Anya would still be..." he stopped, unable to continue the thought.

Willow reached out and managed to catch him by the sleeve.

"You don't know that," she insisted.  A hard tug on his sleeve almost ripped it from his shirt but it did stop Xander's headlong flight, at least momentarily.  She quickly stepped in front of him, not sure if she was trying to block him or shield him.  "You don't know it was him."

"Yes, I do," he growled.  "He was missing last night and so was she and now she's..." his mind veered from the words he was about to commit to air.  "It was him; it was Spike."

Willow couldn't stand to see Xander in so much pain, but almost as hard to bear were the memories his emotions stirred up.  She'd been thinking so much about Tara the past few days; in a weird way she almost felt like all the negative energy created from her pain had reached out and claimed Anya.  She had to find a way to make it right, to make her suffering mean something.  It was the least she could do for Xander, and for Tara.

"Stop thinking about Spike," she begged Xander.  "Think about her.  We shouldn't be looking for him; we need to find Anya.  You need to find Anya," she finished gently, stressing the pronoun.

Her words pierced Xander's shroud of anger, letting in the first glimmerings of the pain he would have to endure before he reached the other side.

"I..." he looked at her helplessly, "I'm scared, Will."

She slipped her hand into his and squeezed it tightly.  "I know."

* * * * *

Spike quickly got his feet beneath him, but Faith kicked him again before he had a chance to finish standing up.  The blow wasn't quite the surprise of the first, though, and he managed to make a shoulder roll carry him onto the patio, and out of the range of her long legs.

"Bloody hell!  What do you think you're doing, woman?"

"You're what, 120?  130?"  She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at him as he warily rose to his feet.  "You still don't know three's a crowd?"

"You don't travel in the right circles," he grumbled, brushing the soil and dried leaves from his leather pants. 

"Promises, promises," Faith scolded him.  "Your problem, Sparky, aside from a big ol' thang for Marilyn," her scornful gaze swept over his bleached head, "is that you don't know when to quit.  Now normally I like that in a guy, but on you it's looking kind of... pathetic."

Spike cast an uneasy glance at the mansion Faith was currently barring his access to.  Buffy should have stormed out by now, or sent Angel flying out of a window.  She should have made some overt, and violent, gesture to indicate that her ex was way out of line with the love talk and he'd better stop if he knew what was good for him.  The fact that there were no body parts being torn asunder seemed to suggest that they were being put to other uses.

"Yeah, well, guess what?" he growled.  "There's a sucker born every minute, but this one's already dead and been buried." 

He turned on his heel and stalked towards the steps that would carry him up to the street again.  Faith threw a quick, curious look back at the mansion, and then ran after him.

"So," she called out, trying to sound casual, "where are we going now?  Gonna do anything I can kill you for?"

He grunted in reply.

"My standards aren't real high," she offered.

"Yeah, heard that." 

She caught up with him at the top of the staircase and grabbed his arm, almost knocking him off the landing as she tried to spin him around to face her.

"I just want to know if I need to go back in and change, or is the stake I'm wearing okay?"

His bitter gaze met hers and then slid past, fixing once more on the faint, flickering glow of firelight shining through the windows.

"You're so anxious to play with the big kids, what say I show you something about that 'three's a crowd' idea you're all worked up about?  Now that I grew a new pair, I'd say it's time to road test 'em."  He focused on Faith once more, something ugly in the smirk he was trying to force his lips into.  "We can visit my good buddy, Anya." 

* * * * *

To Be Continued