Disclaimer etc, see part one.
The First Meeting
* * * * *
I met Angie in a bar almost two years after the 'gas caves surrounding the area of Sunnydale, northern California, collapsed, destroying the recently deserted town.' There is something strangely normal about the story of me meeting Angie in a bar. Considering Buffy met Angel because he was warning her of some great danger, and Spike because he wanted to kill her.
I was sitting, drinking, trying to pick if any of the others there were vampires and wondering at my luck when she walked in. I didn't notice at first, or luck-wondering would have increased. I'd managed to make it much further than my first road trip. I had four weeks work at the local lumberyard while one of their guys was sick. And I had a motel room like Faith's.
Buffy's latest email had said they'd got the school kind of set up. Willow had found the Council's assets, and they were, in fact, officially under Giles's control. They had also finalised the Watcher-Witch-Slayer structure. They had wanted four, like we had had, but Willow had pointed out that there was only one of me, so that wouldn't work.
She was in charge of relations with the covens around the world. Most were scared of her from the whole ending the world deal. But they had all felt the magic that she had pulled for the Slayers. Buffy was talking to the new Slayers and their parents, using what experience she had gained during her counselling stint. Giles was talking to the government.
And I'd run away. And they'd let me go. I was looking at the bottom of my glass, thinking about 'the road I'd come' when a flash of pink caught my eye.
Angie and a friend had sat down at the bar two stools down. They were wearing some hideous pink diner uniform and chatting animatedly, they way women like that seem to be able to do.
I was staring at her name badge. 'Angela,' the feminine form of the name Angel, from the Latin, Angelus. I knew that because I had read several baby name books. And I had read them because some where in the previous seven years my brain had gotten use to reading the same pieces of meaningless information written in different ways. Giles ruined me. I now have to have regular intakes of information. Demon books being hard to come by, and difficult to explain, I read anything. I know that Alexander was from the Greek, meaning defender of man and that Buffy was often a shortened form of Elizabeth, although it could also mean 'shinning one.'
Angie caught me starting and grinned at me.
"What are you staring at?" she asked, with a grin.
"I knew a guy called Angelus once, Angela," I said.
That was what had caught my attention. She was nothing at all like Angel, Mr-dark-and-brooding. She was a little like Cordelia, actually. And that was, shockingly, an appealing thought.
"It's hardly far that you know my name, when all I know about you is you've been in a nasty fight."
I smiled. Something in her manner reminded me of Anya without actually being anything like her.
I had had enough alcohol to send Scruffy Xander to sleep. Suave Xander held out his hand.
"Xander," I said.
She shook hands with me! Admittedly, she was grinning quite wryly at the time.
"Angie," she said. "How did you loose the eye?"
Unfortunately Scruffy Xander had decided to use my common sense as a pillow.
"An evil guy with supper strength wanted to stop a friend of mine getting something she needed in order to stop his boss destroying the world. I got in the way."
She chuckled appreciatively. I had never thought that that description could be funny. Everyone else – that is Angel, Wesley and the others at the hotel – had all nodded gravely. Angie didn't believe in big-bads. I liked it. It was easy to deal with. Unless she really was a demon and having me on, I thought. But it didn't turn out like that.
We glanced at each other a couple of time during the rest of the evening. And she no doubt discussed me with the friends she was sitting with. But we didn't speak again.
Two days later I was driving home from the yard. It was, again typically, raining. She was walking home, trying to hold her umbrella against the wind. I pulled up beside her and wound the window down.
"Angie! I promise I won't eat you. Do you want to get some food some place dry?"
She managed a graceful open door, fold umbrella, sit down, close door manoeuvre despite the wind. She grinned at me from under her soaked cap.
"There's a nice place…" she waved in the general direction across town. It was enough in my direction for me to lie with convincing nonchalance and I drove.
I was a pretty place. I wasn't flash so our wet work clothes weren't out of place. But it was nice enough that I felt I could have dressed better. But then, I often feel like that. Suave Xander doesn't always appear.
The evening went well, as witnessed by all subsequent events. I asked her a little about what she did and told her a little about Anya. She laughed when I told her that high school was literally hell. She asked me why I was on the road.
"I'm running away," I said.
She nodded. "I've always wanted to do that."
But I knew I needed to explain it to her. I just didn't know how it would sound.
"There was this guy who had particular issues with a friend of mine. She's little, but a tough fighter. He had a gang. We all teamed up to fight him. One of his guys killed my ex. And my friend lost someone too. The place I grew up was dangerous, we've all lost someone. It was too much for me. They're all trying to rebuild their lives, I couldn't stay and watch."
It was true enough. She smiled sadly at me. She though I was some sort of hero for helping my friend. I couldn't tell her that it was the battle against the ultimate evil so I really wasn't going to be doing anything else. Enough other people had run away that maybe I did deserve some of it. I tried to smile.
"Where did you grow up?" she asked.
"Sunnydale," I said. "It's a small town about –"
"I know where it is," she said. "It disappeared a couple of years ago. And there was always a lot of gang violence there."
I nodded. Twenty months. PCP.
"Wasn't there a mass break out of laryngitis a few years before that?"
"Yeah. That led to some weirdness. I think it was the gas from the caves though."
She nodded. That was the best explanation anyone had come up with. It explained the strange egg monster, the hole Spike caused, the silence, everyone leaving, most of the violence and the final collapse.
"Is that how you lost your eye, gang stuff?" she asked.
I remembered the way I'd described the fight and decided that I had to make it as normally sounding as possible.
"Nah. Work accident. I get a bit of pension for it actually, which works out okay. And I have to take a driving test every year. The gang stuff was mostly just punch ups."
"You were part of a gang?"
"Everyone was part of a gang," I said. "We were the Scoobies."
She giggled.
"Daggy name, I know. But it meant no one needed to take us on in order to prove themselves. Our leader knew a few combat skills. I had trained in the army a while. We knew a martial arts coach."
She asked, and I answered, questions about Sunnydale. I never mentioned anything supernatural except the "evil-demon-worshiping-Mayor" but she took it as figurative. I didn't tell as many stories as I described some of the effects of Sunnydale. It was easier than thinking up euphemisms, but the more I talked the easier they came. I talked to her about Tara, which I'd never talked to anyone about before. I told her that Willow had wanted to destroy the world. She'd gone after the guy that did it, wanted to kill him. I told her about Spike. I also told stories about Dawn, about the things I remembered her doing, about watching her grow up. Dawn balanced out the tales of messy darkness that I hadn't really realised made up most of our lives.
It wasn't so bad when you knew that Spike was a Vampire and Anya a Demon and Willow really did have the power to take everyone out. Everything was grander like that.
Angie told me stories about her life too. Her older brother used to beat her up a bit. And her uncle would always be coming on to her mom. She and her sister used to pretend their backyard was whole different world with princesses and dragons. It was amazing to hear about those sorts of worries. And she'd overcome them. And the stories she'd been able to make up. I had had to worry about nasty monsters, not the everyday things that should have been all right. Time with my folks hadn't been great, but I had had Willow.
"You don't say their names," she said after some time swapping stories.
It was getting close to half past eleven.
"Sorry," I said. "I think it's habit, you know, talking to outsiders."
I started to tell her all our names, but she stopped me. She said something about it being in a different time, and different part of my life. It would be easier if I didn't try to carry it around with me all the time. And besides, it made it all mysterious.
"I have to go, now, anyway," she said. "I have the early shift tomorrow."
"Run away with me," I said.
She raised an eyebrow.
"I've got two weeks here, then I'm driving closer to Hershey, where they make the chocolate."
"Okay."
Just like that she agreed. She says now that I had some look on my face, like she was a life ring to a drowning man. I don't believe her.
"But I'll still have to do the early shift tomorrow."
I drove her home, said good night and walked back to my hotel through the last of the rain. That was the moment that the Buffy years had ended. I had described the last twenty years of life without using her name.
I finally replied to Willow and Buffy's emails the next day. I told them, in what Willow described as glowing detail, about Angie and her running away with me. Both their replies seemed a little distant. I knew they were both working hard at college. I think they had heard that I was distant too. I had left them behind and really was running away.
At the time I didn't notice too much. Angie had agreed to drive across the country with me.
