Title: Reconcilation
Feedback: Of course I want to know what you think otherwise I'd hide it in a folder on my computer! Kristi@allengames.com
Disclaimer: They belong to Joss. If they were mine I'd be nicer to them! At least most of the time.
Spoilers: Only if you have lived in a cave and not seen any of Angel or Buffy.
Distribution: If you want it just ask!
Author's notes: The centered offset quotes are quotes pulled from the shows. I didn't write them, I didn't think of them. Also I wanted to thank everyone who sent me feedback! This is my first fanfic and it's very inspiring! If you'd like to see more of this story let me know!
Chapter Four
Buffy had left her shoes at Angel's house. She'd already run most of the way before she'd realized it. She'd walk over molten glass before she'd go back to his house to get them. They were her favorite boots too.
Her voicemail was full of messages, two from Xander, one from Maureen, one from Giles and for some reason, six from Andrew. Buffy sighed. She wanted to disappear somewhere for the rest of her life. She knew they wouldn't stop worrying until she called though so she started with Xander.
"Xander, it's me. I'm sorry. I found some old ruins and I lost track of time."
She listened to Xander half heartedly. He promised to take Maureen out that night and give her a night off. "Thanks Xan, I'm going to call Giles. He left a message."
"Yeah, I sort of called him when I couldn't find you." Xander said sheepishly.
"God! What am I twelve? I went exploring. I lost track of time." Buffy shrieked. She made decisions all the time that affected the entire world. Decisions like sending Angel to hell, and taking a swan dive off a tower into a portal. Yet everyone around her wanted to make decisions for her, where she could go, how long she could be gone and what she could do while she was gone.
"Sorry, Buff. I was worried. We still don't know much about the nightlife around here. I thought Giles should know you were missing."
"I wasn't missing-you know, never mind. I'm just gonna call him." Buffy hung up the phone irritably. She hadn't meant to argue with Xander, or with Angel.
She was sure it was an ungodly hour in Romania but she didn't care. She needed to talk to her best friend. She held herself together for the conversation with Giles and told him not to wake Dawnie. She'd talk to her later. "Is Willow up researching by chance?" Buffy asked, trying not to give anything away in her voice.
The moment Willow's voice came on the line, Buffy broke. "Oh God Will. Please don't tell Giles. He's here, Will."
Willow smiled cheerfully at Giles as she motioned to her bedroom. She made some bright, average comments. "Really? Oh Buffy, that's great." She shut the door behind her. "Buffy, who's there? What's wrong?" The concern was evident in her voice.
Buffy spilled the entire story out to her, about the ruins of the house and Angel. "I felt him, inside, Will. I just thought maybe it was this place, that he had lived here. It wasn't. He was here."
"Oh, Buffy. I take it things didn't go so well."
"I thought they did. We talked most of the night and stayed behind all the safe boundaries. I didn't even kiss him. This morning he decided that 'this' was not such a good idea. I'm not even sure what 'this' is! Talking to me? Seeing me? Being in Ireland for all I know." Buffy broke down in fresh sobs. "Will loving him ever stop hurting Will?"
Willow felt tears sting the backs of her eyes and wished she had an answer for her.
Angel walked through the narrow, nearly hidden door of the pub. It smelled like whiskey, smoke and demons. He smirked in spite of himself. He supposed this was the Irish version of Willy's. There wasn't much difference really. He ordered a pint of O neg at the bar and asked about a demon name Marvin. The bartender, not of the human variety, pointed him to a tiny booth in the back corner.
Angel slid into a greasy wooden booth across from one of the ugliest demons he'd seen in a long time. Marvin was pitifully ugly. Angel was pretty sure he was a cross breed of something. His skin was a sickly orange color and he was covered in pustules that closely resembled something rotting. He didn't smell much better either. Angel gladly dropped the habit of breathing after the first whiff of this guy.
"You Marvin?" Angel asked.
The demon looked up sullenly. "Who wants to know?"
Angel let his game face flash for just a moment. "Angelus."
The demon's sickly orange color faded to something resembling rotten apricots. "Uh-uh, yeah-yeah I'm-I'm Marvin. H-how can I help you, M-Mr. Angelus." He stuttered.
"I'm looking for something called The Book of the Guardian. I've heard you might know something about it."
"Oh, God. I-I really don't know much. I mean really. I-I just heard that some nuns or saints or something hid it. I don't even know what it does, honest!" Marvin sniveled.
"I do. Where can I find it?" Angel was growing impatient. He'd wanted to scare the guy into helping him; he hadn't wanted to terrify him.
"Uhm-I heard it was buried under, under the alter in one of the churches on Inis Meain. But th-that was in the 18th century. A tourist could have dug it up by now." Marvin had just begun to gather his wits about him.
"For your sake, you'd better hope not."
It was nearly sunrise when Angel returned to his house. Inis Meain was one of the Aran Islands. He had made arrangements for a private fishing boat to take him out there at midnight the next evening. The man had been suspicious but some cash slid into his hand had taken care of that. He walked into the kitchen and took a blood bag from the fridge. He bit into it and drank it quickly, cold. He walked back into the living room and his eyes fell upon them, her boots. They were high heeled, beige, impractical things that most women wouldn't be able to run in, but she wore them to slay in. They made him smile for a moment and then he remembered her running out of her, the things she'd said.
He sat down on the couch with a sigh. The sooner he got out of the vicinity of Buffy the better. He might not see her, but he felt her and he knew she was close by. If he wanted to hunt her down it would take much of an effort. It was an internal, physical fight to keep from doing so.
Angel slept very little during the day, when he did he had horrible nightmares. He dreamt of Buffy and making love to her and then ripping her throat out. He woke in a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep. The dreams weren't new, in fact he'd had them many times before, and intellectually he knew it the demon in him eliciting what control it could while he slept. That didn't change how he felt about the nightmares.
Angel arranged to have Buffy's boots sent to the bed and breakfast she was staying in. He packed and made travel arrangements. He planned to leave as soon as he had retrieved The Book of the Guardian. As nightfall approached, he knew he couldn't leave things the way they were with Buffy. It would haunt him and frankly, Angel was haunted by enough things, he didn't need the love of his life doing it also.
He was right, hunting her down hadn't taken much of an effort. He watched Buffy and her new slayer train in the grave yard. She was right, the girl was good. He kept hidden in the shadows for awhile. He knew it wouldn't last long. Buffy kept glancing over her shoulder. She could sense him in almost the same way he'd sensed and tracked her.
He stepped from the shadows just after the girl had slain a vampire. He was surprised to find himself being tackled by a flurry of red hair and flashing green eyes. In a simple defensive move, he'd thrown an arm up and tossed her away from him, his vamp face slipping into place. It dropped quickly when he heard Buffy scream "Maureen, No! God, no, it's Angel!" He was a bit surprised to hear just a tremor of fear in her voice.
"Nae, really? Angelus, the one with the Angelic face." The redhead sized him up quickly. "Got that right in one I s'pose." She turned to Buffy. "'e's not evil is 'e?"
"Why does everyone ask that? I'm _not_ evil." Angel protested.
"So 'e's ye Angel?" Maureen arched an eyebrow in Buffy's direction.
"He's-An-He's."Buffy struggled.
"Yes, I'm 'her' Angel." He finished for her. He caught Buffy's eye and smiled that sweet, ear to ear smile reserved only for her. She actually felt the individual cells that made up her body melt together and puddle onto the grass beneath her.
'Oi," Maureen said, catching the look between the two lovers. She dismissed herself without another word, wandering over to a crypt to sit and wait but staying where she could watch the scene that was about to unfold.
Buffy took a deep breath before turning toward Angel. She both hated and loved that being near him threw her the way it did. Angel had ruined her for all other men. It had been the missing piece in her relationship with Riley, that and the fact that her heart and soul already belonged to someone else, Angel.
"My Angel?" she asked finally, turning to confront those soulful deep chocolate, brown eyes.
He scuffed his foot. "We've always had complications, Buffy. I mean I'm a vampire, you're a slayer, but somehow we seem to make it even more complicated then that. We've got separate lives but no matter what, through it all, I've always been your Angel. I always will be."
-"Tell me you don't love me."-
-"You still my girl?"-
-"Always."-
Buffy couldn't breathe. Her chest was imploding. She was fighting back tears.
Angel wanted to kiss her. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Buffy, I couldn't leave things like they were between us. I wanted to apologize for this morning."
Buffy wanted to kiss him. She wrapped her arms around herself. "Angel, what happened? I thought we were having a good day, well at least a good day for us and then-What wasn't a good idea? Nothing happened."
Angel sighed. "No, but I wanted it to. Nothing's changed, Buffy. When I'm around you the only thing I can think about is how badly I want to kiss you."
"We'd want more. We'd only end up having to leave each other again." Buffy said, resigned. They'd gone over this more times then she ever cared to remember, most recently when she'd returned from heaven.
Angel snapped his head up and looked at her, through her, a puzzled look on his face.
-"If we let something happen here, we'd want more. And nothing's changed.
We'd only end up having to leave each other again."-
-"And that's the best case scenario."-
-"Oh, boy. I was really jonesing for another heartbreaking sewer talk."-
She couldn't remember, he thought. They'd promised she wouldn't remember. The Day that Wasn't was his burden to bear, his alone.
Buffy sighed and turned away. If she was going to tell him there would be no better time. "Willow, Giles and Dawn are working on that."
Angel looked up, his eyes wary. "Working on what?"
"The curse. They are in Borsa, Romania. They found a guy who specializes in gypsy magic history. He's related to the Kalderash clan. Willow is working on a way to remove the happiness clause without removing your soul."
"Does she think it's possible?" Angel asked, hope straining his voice.
"Giles has done a lot of research into soul magic and he thinks it can be done. Willow just has to figure out how. She says it will take an extraordinary amount of power and she's still so unsure of controlling her power."
"You'll keep in touch if she finds out anything?" Angel asked.
Buffy turned to him with a grin. "Actually, I thought I'd contact Hogwarts first, and then the ministry of magic, but you're definitely third on my list."
"Harry Potter?"
"Ding ding ding, you've been brushing up on your pop culture references." She beamed at him.
He didn't tell her that he'd bought the entire Harry Potter series for his son, which no one remembered now. The books were locked in a box with the rest of Conner's things in vault at Wolfram and Hart.
"I've got to go get Wes' book. It should be simple recon, just have to avoid a human night watchman who's probably asleep anyway. Would you like to come with me?"
Buffy laughed and took Angel's hand in hers. She hesitated a moment, that first touch sending tiny electric tingles throughout her body. "That's one of the things I always loved about you, Angel, the romantic places you take me."
At midnight Buffy and Angel stood at the bow of the small fishing boat. It was running without its lights. They both wore black clothing and black watch caps. The fishing boat dropped them off in a rubber raft and anchored a hundred yards from the island.
Angel rowed the short distance to the island and pulled the raft ashore. They ran half crouched into a ruined church. Buffy would have liked to stop and look around the stone building but Angel hurried her to the front of the church, where the alter would have been. They knelt on the stone floor.
"I feel like I should say a prayer." Buffy whispered.
"When I was a child we came here for festivals sometimes. They held mass in here."
Most of the time it was easy to forget that Angel was two hundred and fifty years old, but occasionally he mentioned something from his rich and varied past that reminded her, he was immortal. As long as he stayed clear of sharp wooden objects and kept his head, he would live forever. And she wouldn't, Buffy thought. At 24, she was already one of the oldest slayers in history.
Angel silently handed her a chisel. They started to work, gently prying up the stones just behind the ruins of the alter. The stones came up relatively easy. Underneath lay a bundle of linen, half covered in rocky black dirt. Angel lifted the bundle out of the earth, brushing some of the soil off and unwrapped the layers of Irish linen used to protect the ancient leather bound book. The gold leafing on the cover had worn off centuries ago.
He carefully opened the book. The pages inside were yellowed with age and brittle with time. He was surprised to see it was written in Gaelic.
"So this is your book?" Buffy asked in a whisper.
"It looks like it. Let's get out of here before the watchman decides to make his rounds." Angel put the book in a bag and carefully replaced the stones of the floor. They didn't speak again until they were back on the fishing boat.
"So why is this book so important that you came all the way from Los Angeles to Ireland for?"
Angel looked down into the blackness of the water below. He had debated telling Buffy about the Shanshu prophecy so many times. It had taken every ounce of self control he'd learned in a hundred years not to drive to Sunnydale when he'd found out about it four years ago. It wasn't fair though, and it defeated the entire reason he'd left her. There was no date for the Shanshu. It might not happen in Buffy's lifetime. He didn't want her to spend the rest of her life hoping, waiting for him to become human so they could have the life together they both dreamed about.
"Just something Wes is working on. I offered to come get it because I hadn't been here in so long. It was a good opportunity to visit."
"Giles would like it. It looks old." Buffy observed.
Angel chuckled. "Wes wasn't sure how old but it was buried in that church in the late 17th century by a nun."
He walked Buffy back to the bed and breakfast she was staying in.
"Come up for just a little while?" Buffy asked. "There are a few hours until dawn left."
He hesitated but in the end agreed. Buffy's room was small. He took an unnecessary breath. The room smelled like vanilla, her scent. His gaze fell on the bed and he quickly looked away, right into Buffy's gray-green eyes. She blushed.
-"Oh, two of us, one bed. That doesn't work."-
-"and, uhm, keep your back turned while I change."-
-"Do you snore?"-
-"I don't know. It's been a longtime since anyone's been in the position to
let me know."-
Buffy cleared off the chair next to the bed so he could sit. She curled up on the bed across from the chair. She tucked one hand underneath her cheek. "Tell me about Ireland when you lived here. Tell me about the house when you lived there."
Angel smiled that special half smile that Willow called Buffy Face. He leaned forward on his elbows and begin to tell her.
Buffy struggled to stay awake as long as possible. Just before she gave into sleep she whispered. "Stay with me. I know you'll be gone when I wake up but stay for just a little while."
Buffy yawned and rubbed her eyes. She rolled over and glanced at the clock. It was 8 am. Her eyes fell on the chair Angel still occupied. She smiled sleepily at him. He gave her an equally sleepy smile.
"You're here." She said.
"I didn't want to be gone when you woke up."
Feedback: Of course I want to know what you think otherwise I'd hide it in a folder on my computer! Kristi@allengames.com
Disclaimer: They belong to Joss. If they were mine I'd be nicer to them! At least most of the time.
Spoilers: Only if you have lived in a cave and not seen any of Angel or Buffy.
Distribution: If you want it just ask!
Author's notes: The centered offset quotes are quotes pulled from the shows. I didn't write them, I didn't think of them. Also I wanted to thank everyone who sent me feedback! This is my first fanfic and it's very inspiring! If you'd like to see more of this story let me know!
Chapter Four
Buffy had left her shoes at Angel's house. She'd already run most of the way before she'd realized it. She'd walk over molten glass before she'd go back to his house to get them. They were her favorite boots too.
Her voicemail was full of messages, two from Xander, one from Maureen, one from Giles and for some reason, six from Andrew. Buffy sighed. She wanted to disappear somewhere for the rest of her life. She knew they wouldn't stop worrying until she called though so she started with Xander.
"Xander, it's me. I'm sorry. I found some old ruins and I lost track of time."
She listened to Xander half heartedly. He promised to take Maureen out that night and give her a night off. "Thanks Xan, I'm going to call Giles. He left a message."
"Yeah, I sort of called him when I couldn't find you." Xander said sheepishly.
"God! What am I twelve? I went exploring. I lost track of time." Buffy shrieked. She made decisions all the time that affected the entire world. Decisions like sending Angel to hell, and taking a swan dive off a tower into a portal. Yet everyone around her wanted to make decisions for her, where she could go, how long she could be gone and what she could do while she was gone.
"Sorry, Buff. I was worried. We still don't know much about the nightlife around here. I thought Giles should know you were missing."
"I wasn't missing-you know, never mind. I'm just gonna call him." Buffy hung up the phone irritably. She hadn't meant to argue with Xander, or with Angel.
She was sure it was an ungodly hour in Romania but she didn't care. She needed to talk to her best friend. She held herself together for the conversation with Giles and told him not to wake Dawnie. She'd talk to her later. "Is Willow up researching by chance?" Buffy asked, trying not to give anything away in her voice.
The moment Willow's voice came on the line, Buffy broke. "Oh God Will. Please don't tell Giles. He's here, Will."
Willow smiled cheerfully at Giles as she motioned to her bedroom. She made some bright, average comments. "Really? Oh Buffy, that's great." She shut the door behind her. "Buffy, who's there? What's wrong?" The concern was evident in her voice.
Buffy spilled the entire story out to her, about the ruins of the house and Angel. "I felt him, inside, Will. I just thought maybe it was this place, that he had lived here. It wasn't. He was here."
"Oh, Buffy. I take it things didn't go so well."
"I thought they did. We talked most of the night and stayed behind all the safe boundaries. I didn't even kiss him. This morning he decided that 'this' was not such a good idea. I'm not even sure what 'this' is! Talking to me? Seeing me? Being in Ireland for all I know." Buffy broke down in fresh sobs. "Will loving him ever stop hurting Will?"
Willow felt tears sting the backs of her eyes and wished she had an answer for her.
Angel walked through the narrow, nearly hidden door of the pub. It smelled like whiskey, smoke and demons. He smirked in spite of himself. He supposed this was the Irish version of Willy's. There wasn't much difference really. He ordered a pint of O neg at the bar and asked about a demon name Marvin. The bartender, not of the human variety, pointed him to a tiny booth in the back corner.
Angel slid into a greasy wooden booth across from one of the ugliest demons he'd seen in a long time. Marvin was pitifully ugly. Angel was pretty sure he was a cross breed of something. His skin was a sickly orange color and he was covered in pustules that closely resembled something rotting. He didn't smell much better either. Angel gladly dropped the habit of breathing after the first whiff of this guy.
"You Marvin?" Angel asked.
The demon looked up sullenly. "Who wants to know?"
Angel let his game face flash for just a moment. "Angelus."
The demon's sickly orange color faded to something resembling rotten apricots. "Uh-uh, yeah-yeah I'm-I'm Marvin. H-how can I help you, M-Mr. Angelus." He stuttered.
"I'm looking for something called The Book of the Guardian. I've heard you might know something about it."
"Oh, God. I-I really don't know much. I mean really. I-I just heard that some nuns or saints or something hid it. I don't even know what it does, honest!" Marvin sniveled.
"I do. Where can I find it?" Angel was growing impatient. He'd wanted to scare the guy into helping him; he hadn't wanted to terrify him.
"Uhm-I heard it was buried under, under the alter in one of the churches on Inis Meain. But th-that was in the 18th century. A tourist could have dug it up by now." Marvin had just begun to gather his wits about him.
"For your sake, you'd better hope not."
It was nearly sunrise when Angel returned to his house. Inis Meain was one of the Aran Islands. He had made arrangements for a private fishing boat to take him out there at midnight the next evening. The man had been suspicious but some cash slid into his hand had taken care of that. He walked into the kitchen and took a blood bag from the fridge. He bit into it and drank it quickly, cold. He walked back into the living room and his eyes fell upon them, her boots. They were high heeled, beige, impractical things that most women wouldn't be able to run in, but she wore them to slay in. They made him smile for a moment and then he remembered her running out of her, the things she'd said.
He sat down on the couch with a sigh. The sooner he got out of the vicinity of Buffy the better. He might not see her, but he felt her and he knew she was close by. If he wanted to hunt her down it would take much of an effort. It was an internal, physical fight to keep from doing so.
Angel slept very little during the day, when he did he had horrible nightmares. He dreamt of Buffy and making love to her and then ripping her throat out. He woke in a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep. The dreams weren't new, in fact he'd had them many times before, and intellectually he knew it the demon in him eliciting what control it could while he slept. That didn't change how he felt about the nightmares.
Angel arranged to have Buffy's boots sent to the bed and breakfast she was staying in. He packed and made travel arrangements. He planned to leave as soon as he had retrieved The Book of the Guardian. As nightfall approached, he knew he couldn't leave things the way they were with Buffy. It would haunt him and frankly, Angel was haunted by enough things, he didn't need the love of his life doing it also.
He was right, hunting her down hadn't taken much of an effort. He watched Buffy and her new slayer train in the grave yard. She was right, the girl was good. He kept hidden in the shadows for awhile. He knew it wouldn't last long. Buffy kept glancing over her shoulder. She could sense him in almost the same way he'd sensed and tracked her.
He stepped from the shadows just after the girl had slain a vampire. He was surprised to find himself being tackled by a flurry of red hair and flashing green eyes. In a simple defensive move, he'd thrown an arm up and tossed her away from him, his vamp face slipping into place. It dropped quickly when he heard Buffy scream "Maureen, No! God, no, it's Angel!" He was a bit surprised to hear just a tremor of fear in her voice.
"Nae, really? Angelus, the one with the Angelic face." The redhead sized him up quickly. "Got that right in one I s'pose." She turned to Buffy. "'e's not evil is 'e?"
"Why does everyone ask that? I'm _not_ evil." Angel protested.
"So 'e's ye Angel?" Maureen arched an eyebrow in Buffy's direction.
"He's-An-He's."Buffy struggled.
"Yes, I'm 'her' Angel." He finished for her. He caught Buffy's eye and smiled that sweet, ear to ear smile reserved only for her. She actually felt the individual cells that made up her body melt together and puddle onto the grass beneath her.
'Oi," Maureen said, catching the look between the two lovers. She dismissed herself without another word, wandering over to a crypt to sit and wait but staying where she could watch the scene that was about to unfold.
Buffy took a deep breath before turning toward Angel. She both hated and loved that being near him threw her the way it did. Angel had ruined her for all other men. It had been the missing piece in her relationship with Riley, that and the fact that her heart and soul already belonged to someone else, Angel.
"My Angel?" she asked finally, turning to confront those soulful deep chocolate, brown eyes.
He scuffed his foot. "We've always had complications, Buffy. I mean I'm a vampire, you're a slayer, but somehow we seem to make it even more complicated then that. We've got separate lives but no matter what, through it all, I've always been your Angel. I always will be."
-"Tell me you don't love me."-
-"You still my girl?"-
-"Always."-
Buffy couldn't breathe. Her chest was imploding. She was fighting back tears.
Angel wanted to kiss her. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "Buffy, I couldn't leave things like they were between us. I wanted to apologize for this morning."
Buffy wanted to kiss him. She wrapped her arms around herself. "Angel, what happened? I thought we were having a good day, well at least a good day for us and then-What wasn't a good idea? Nothing happened."
Angel sighed. "No, but I wanted it to. Nothing's changed, Buffy. When I'm around you the only thing I can think about is how badly I want to kiss you."
"We'd want more. We'd only end up having to leave each other again." Buffy said, resigned. They'd gone over this more times then she ever cared to remember, most recently when she'd returned from heaven.
Angel snapped his head up and looked at her, through her, a puzzled look on his face.
-"If we let something happen here, we'd want more. And nothing's changed.
We'd only end up having to leave each other again."-
-"And that's the best case scenario."-
-"Oh, boy. I was really jonesing for another heartbreaking sewer talk."-
She couldn't remember, he thought. They'd promised she wouldn't remember. The Day that Wasn't was his burden to bear, his alone.
Buffy sighed and turned away. If she was going to tell him there would be no better time. "Willow, Giles and Dawn are working on that."
Angel looked up, his eyes wary. "Working on what?"
"The curse. They are in Borsa, Romania. They found a guy who specializes in gypsy magic history. He's related to the Kalderash clan. Willow is working on a way to remove the happiness clause without removing your soul."
"Does she think it's possible?" Angel asked, hope straining his voice.
"Giles has done a lot of research into soul magic and he thinks it can be done. Willow just has to figure out how. She says it will take an extraordinary amount of power and she's still so unsure of controlling her power."
"You'll keep in touch if she finds out anything?" Angel asked.
Buffy turned to him with a grin. "Actually, I thought I'd contact Hogwarts first, and then the ministry of magic, but you're definitely third on my list."
"Harry Potter?"
"Ding ding ding, you've been brushing up on your pop culture references." She beamed at him.
He didn't tell her that he'd bought the entire Harry Potter series for his son, which no one remembered now. The books were locked in a box with the rest of Conner's things in vault at Wolfram and Hart.
"I've got to go get Wes' book. It should be simple recon, just have to avoid a human night watchman who's probably asleep anyway. Would you like to come with me?"
Buffy laughed and took Angel's hand in hers. She hesitated a moment, that first touch sending tiny electric tingles throughout her body. "That's one of the things I always loved about you, Angel, the romantic places you take me."
At midnight Buffy and Angel stood at the bow of the small fishing boat. It was running without its lights. They both wore black clothing and black watch caps. The fishing boat dropped them off in a rubber raft and anchored a hundred yards from the island.
Angel rowed the short distance to the island and pulled the raft ashore. They ran half crouched into a ruined church. Buffy would have liked to stop and look around the stone building but Angel hurried her to the front of the church, where the alter would have been. They knelt on the stone floor.
"I feel like I should say a prayer." Buffy whispered.
"When I was a child we came here for festivals sometimes. They held mass in here."
Most of the time it was easy to forget that Angel was two hundred and fifty years old, but occasionally he mentioned something from his rich and varied past that reminded her, he was immortal. As long as he stayed clear of sharp wooden objects and kept his head, he would live forever. And she wouldn't, Buffy thought. At 24, she was already one of the oldest slayers in history.
Angel silently handed her a chisel. They started to work, gently prying up the stones just behind the ruins of the alter. The stones came up relatively easy. Underneath lay a bundle of linen, half covered in rocky black dirt. Angel lifted the bundle out of the earth, brushing some of the soil off and unwrapped the layers of Irish linen used to protect the ancient leather bound book. The gold leafing on the cover had worn off centuries ago.
He carefully opened the book. The pages inside were yellowed with age and brittle with time. He was surprised to see it was written in Gaelic.
"So this is your book?" Buffy asked in a whisper.
"It looks like it. Let's get out of here before the watchman decides to make his rounds." Angel put the book in a bag and carefully replaced the stones of the floor. They didn't speak again until they were back on the fishing boat.
"So why is this book so important that you came all the way from Los Angeles to Ireland for?"
Angel looked down into the blackness of the water below. He had debated telling Buffy about the Shanshu prophecy so many times. It had taken every ounce of self control he'd learned in a hundred years not to drive to Sunnydale when he'd found out about it four years ago. It wasn't fair though, and it defeated the entire reason he'd left her. There was no date for the Shanshu. It might not happen in Buffy's lifetime. He didn't want her to spend the rest of her life hoping, waiting for him to become human so they could have the life together they both dreamed about.
"Just something Wes is working on. I offered to come get it because I hadn't been here in so long. It was a good opportunity to visit."
"Giles would like it. It looks old." Buffy observed.
Angel chuckled. "Wes wasn't sure how old but it was buried in that church in the late 17th century by a nun."
He walked Buffy back to the bed and breakfast she was staying in.
"Come up for just a little while?" Buffy asked. "There are a few hours until dawn left."
He hesitated but in the end agreed. Buffy's room was small. He took an unnecessary breath. The room smelled like vanilla, her scent. His gaze fell on the bed and he quickly looked away, right into Buffy's gray-green eyes. She blushed.
-"Oh, two of us, one bed. That doesn't work."-
-"and, uhm, keep your back turned while I change."-
-"Do you snore?"-
-"I don't know. It's been a longtime since anyone's been in the position to
let me know."-
Buffy cleared off the chair next to the bed so he could sit. She curled up on the bed across from the chair. She tucked one hand underneath her cheek. "Tell me about Ireland when you lived here. Tell me about the house when you lived there."
Angel smiled that special half smile that Willow called Buffy Face. He leaned forward on his elbows and begin to tell her.
Buffy struggled to stay awake as long as possible. Just before she gave into sleep she whispered. "Stay with me. I know you'll be gone when I wake up but stay for just a little while."
Buffy yawned and rubbed her eyes. She rolled over and glanced at the clock. It was 8 am. Her eyes fell on the chair Angel still occupied. She smiled sleepily at him. He gave her an equally sleepy smile.
"You're here." She said.
"I didn't want to be gone when you woke up."