Farieangel: The conversation between Buffy and Xander? What conversation all they're going to do is yell scream and blame each other for everything bad that has ever happened to them g . Joke, let me know if there should be more of a resolution, I don't think they need to say much more to each other at this point.

Perfect Darkness: I had a look at that website. Thanks for the feedback, it's always good to get critical feedback on things like formatting and style. Every little bit helps to improve my writing. It's hard to change the way you write especially if that is the style that you find easiest to write in. I'll try to make it better but can't guarantee anything.

Quote 5, you know something guys, I really should get a life.

"Donkey, you have the right to remain silent. What you lack is the capacity!" Shrek: Shrek 2

Chapter 5

"Tell me about her?"

Willow turned to look at her girlfriend with wide eyes. Tara had never asked about Buffy before, it was almost like the blond Wiccan understood that it was taboo to talk about the Slayer if you hadn't met her. It had been tough for Tara at first, initially trying to get to know Willow but then when she was introduced to Xander, Giles and Faith it had brought along a whole nother level of difficulty. They were a close knit group and didn't let anyone else in easily.

They had eventually let her in, but not before she had proved herself to the group. Although at times she still felt like an interloper. None of them trusted easily anymore, they had been burned to many times. But now with Buffy's return maybe it was time to let go a little. Time to open up again.

Willow's face relaxed into a bittersweet smile.

"She saw me"

"Let's try this again. Hi I'm Buffy"

---- ---

"I was wondering when you'd get to me" Xander closed his eye's and took a deep breath "I figured you'd go and see Will's first"

Buffy took a tentative step forward and absorbed her surroundings; she could feel the magic pulsing throughout the shop. Looking to either side at first glance it was your typical Californian occult shop with incense, crystals and books on mysticism and self-discovery. However she knew there was a deeper underlining current of power that made this shop anything but typical.

The new-agers may come here but it was also the place where you'd go if you were serious about the mystical mythical and supernatural.

"Why did you tell me to kick his ass when you knew about the spell?" She ignored his question

Xander opened his mouth to retort but was cut off by Buffy raising her hand at the elbow palm forwards in the universal shut up gesture.

"Actually never mind. I honestly don't care anymore." Whilst her words could be construed as harsh they were anything but, her voice was low and had a weary quality about it. She took several more steps inside the shop and her eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness.

"Let me say this. It hurt that you didn't trust me but I got over that a long time ago. It's a big bad world out there" she crossed her arms over her chest and took another two steps closer "there's more out there than Sunnydale and it's Hellmouth with the demon of the week. It took me coming back here to realise that that" her voice dropped lower and Buffy let her eyes slide shut for a second before catching the young mans gaze. "I found myself by leaving everything else behind" She lifted her chin slightly. "After hiding for a year I discovered who Buffy could be without being the Vampire Slayer"

She cocked her head to the side slightly "Have you found yourself yet?"

She turned and walked back up the few steps and towards the door when his quiet voice and low words stopped her short.

"He's alive, living well I guess it would be un-living, in LA"

She turned slowly. First her head then shoulders as the finely sculptured eyebrows rose towards blond hairline. Hazel eyes widened in shock as her mouth opened but no sound came out. She reached out and grabbed onto the handle of the door when her knees threatened to give out on her.

"He just appeared one night, first thing he did was look for you" Xander shook his head slightly still unable to grasp the relationship between the Slayer and Vampire "All he could think of doing was to try and make amends"

He took a small step towards her hoping that she wouldn't back away "He's still trying to make amends"

Sunnydale California

May 1999

"I'll be leaving when this is over"

Willow looked up at the re-souled Vampire, not exactly sure what he was expecting to hear.

"Why?" it was the only thing she could think to say.

"Sunnydale is well protected. Faith can take care of it, she has you guys but there's a whole world out there that needs protecting"

Willow nodded and looked out of the corner of her eye at Xander who she knew was listening and would no doubt have a snide remark if he were invited into the conversation.

"And maybe you'll find her" she knew he would never stop looking.

"Maybe" he let a wry grin pass over his face "if she wants to be found"

"Wills knows how to find him. She'll be able to tell you where he lives" he knew it wasn't much but that it smacked of irony that he was the one that told her about Angel.

Her gaze dropped to the wood paneled floor that lined the entire store "and what if I don't want to see him?"

"Then don't ask Willow for the address"

--- ---

"I'm a little scared," Willow finally admitted to her lover "When I first met you I was still really upset over Oz leaving, but by that stage I never expected Buffy to come back. Up until yesterday morning I never thought I'd see her again. It had been such a long time"

Willow leaned back into Tara's embrace the two of them sitting in the window seat of their shared dorm room looking out over the late semester going ons of University of California Sunnydale Campus.

"I don't know about the others but" She shook her head slightly as though trying to re-scramble the thoughts into some semblance of order "but I don't think that I really need her in my life anymore. I've moved on. The lady who came with her said that she needed closure and that maybe I did to. She was right but just knowing she's alive is closure enough. I don't need to know about what she was doing, where she's been. I don't want to hear about why she all of a sudden decided to come back."

"She's alive and that's enough for me."

Tara wrapped her arms around the red head a little tighter "maybe that's a good thing sweetie, maybe that's a good thing."

--- ---

Giles stood at the front door of Joyce Summers home. He wasn't exactly sure what he was doing here, but then it was just like every other time he had turned up on Joyce's doorstep in that last few years. It had started after they had both eaten some questionable chocolate. Even though the relationship was not sexual, well not after that one encounter on the hood of a police car. Okay so it was twice.

They had become friends, confidants. Between the two of them they had managed to somehow keep each other sane, in a way the two of them had taken over as the major parental figures for Buffy's friends. It had been hard at first, especially for Joyce when the night after the Hansel and Gretel fiasco an almost hysterical Willow had shown up at her doorstep.

Sunnydale California

November 1998

The 17 year old red head stood at the front door of 1630 Revello drive nervously. She didn't even think she should be here but

Where else could she go?

Raising her hand she knocked tentatively on the wooden door. Her sub-conscious hoping that if she knocked quietly enough Mrs Summers wouldn't hear and she could tell herself that she tried and walk away.

However when the door opened the girl jumped visibly and she realised that she would need to say something, give a reason for showing up on Joyce Summers' doorstep at 10 o'clock at night. However when she saw Joyce standing there Willow's mind went totally blank.

"Willow?"

Willow's eyes filled up with tears as Joyce pulled her into a warm embrace.

After that night it seemed that all four of the teenagers went to Joyce whenever they were in need of of he guessed you could say a parent, but none of them ever stayed for long, an hour at most.

Time enough for a hot chocolate and the occasional hug.

Giles knew that he was welcome whenever, that he needn't knock or ring the bell for admission but he still did out of a sense of propriety that had been instilled at him at a young age and had never actually left. Raising his hand Giles knocked on the solid wood of the front door of Joyce Summers home and waited for the front door to open.

When the door hadn't been opened a few minutes later he looked over his shoulder, yes the Jeep was there so Joyce couldn't have gone anywhere, walking round to the side of the house he could hear a faint voice in the backyard. Not sure whom it was he kept his steps slow and quiet not wanting to alert them to his presence just yet. The closer he got the clearer the voice got until he could make out words.

"I spoke with Alex last night"

Silence

"Yeah we'll be there"

Another pause

"I don't know for sure but we might be bringing someone else with us do you mind?"

Giles stepped around the wall to see Detective Olivia Benson sitting on the back step talking on her cell phone, seemingly unaware of her audience. He watched and waited as the Detective continued on in her conversation. He took the time to study her, by her body language he could see that she was someone who was in generally in tune with her body and her surroundings but was slightly uncomfortable with her current situation. The tone of voice she was using and the words the she was speaking suggested that the person on the other end of the phone was someone she was familiar with, a work mate or family friend perhaps?

It still puzzled him slightly, by what he had gathered, why would this woman be willing to travel all the way across the country with someone she barely knew? From the sounds of it Buffy had saved her life fairly recently but still that didn't seem quite reason enough.

In all his thoughts he hadn't noticed that Olivia had finished her conversation and hung up the phone and was now watching him with open curiosity.

"Mr Giles?"

He focused on her the instant she said his name.

"I take it you're looking for Mrs Summers, she said she was just going to go upstairs for a minute. She should be back down by now"

He didn't speak just yet but continued to regard her silently almost to the point where Olivia felt as though she was being interrogated.

It made her extremely uncomfortable. Usually it was the other way around.

"Whatever you want to ask me go ahead. I have no ulterior motive for being here other than wanting to give Buffy some kind of closure so that she can move on with her life."

"Ah" Giles nodded slightly "and where might that life be?"

Nodding her head in understanding Olivia shuffled over slightly and patted the step beside her indicating that Giles could sit next to her should he chose to. Relaxing slightly Giles closed the remaining distance between them and lowered himself down onto the step next to the brunette Detective.

Olivia sat and watched as the sunlight danced through the leaves just out of her reach. Never quite touching her and wondered if this was how some people felt all their lives. Always watching the sun but never quite making it out to bask in it. Always on the outside of the light, watching waiting scared to take that final step.

Maybe that was how Buffy had felt? Since that fateful night in a darkened cemetery when an old English man had show Buffy her destiny, she had never been the same. As hard as she had tried since then she had always been on the outside. Watching the normal' have their lives, their boyfriends and girlfriends. Going to the movies, doing normal stuff.

I would love to be up in my room right now, watching TV, talking about boys or God even studying.

Even now after 6 years later she was still on the outside looking in. Only now it was self-imposed, she wouldn't let herself go out into the sun.

Or would she?

Turning to face the older Englishman Olivia crinkled her nose slightly.

"If you want to know exactly what she's been up to or what her plans are now I honestly can't tell you because I simply don't know"

Pulling his glasses off his nose and shuffling slightly Giles reached into his pocket for the ever present handkerchief that he used to clean them. Grinning slightly once they were clean and back on his face Giles looked at Olivia out of the corner of his eyes.

"Ah. In fact I was originally going to ask exactly why you were here?"

Taken aback slightly by the frankness of his question Olivia took a few moments to gather her thoughts she sighed.

"The first time I met her I saw this closed off young woman who was doing her best not to let any emotion whatsoever through. Buffy, well she was going by Anne at that stage wanted nothing more than to go and hide again would do anything as long as she wasn't found, but something changed. A week and a half later the scared young woman who had found the body of a teenager was gone and in her place was I guess you would call her a warrior, I'm not sure exactly what she was but she was different. I don't pretend to understand what happened to her or to any of you but I saw a lost child who needed to go home to Mommy. Even if it's only for a few days, she needed to come back and chase away the old demons before she could truly move on with her life."

Olivia turned her head to face him.

"And I knew that whoever she had left behind would need to move on with theirs as well."

Olivia leaned back slightly and rested her elbows on the top step of the porch.

"If she does come back to New York I promise I won't let her hide again"