### 3 months later / aka 6 months since the gang has seen Buffy. Aka 4 months since Angel has been back.
Buffy laughed as Rod tried to coax the kitten down from the tree. He turned and glared at her before trying to get back to the task and then finally he said "You know you can help anytime now." She laughed again and said "And ruin all that fun you seem to be having, pfft." He smiled and shook his head before returning the task, a part of him enjoying seeing her laughing again.
Buffy had returned to high school a month ago, they managed to make it work but she still had no idea how he did it. It was strange; she was finally living a somewhat normal life. She went to school, hung out with her new friends and came home to a dad who asked her about her day and actually listened.
It was weird, the first few weeks living in a house with a complete stranger but eventually she let him on bits of her life. She excluded all about the slayer part of her and told him mostly truths including being kicked out of home that fatal night. He tried to persuade her to at least ring her mother but she had smiled and told him when she was ready she would and in the mean time let her be. He hadn't brought it up again because for a week she had not smiled and seemed unhappy. He tried not to mention her past now, they just talked about now and his past and it was nice.
Her bruising had left after a little over a month ashad her broken bones, only leavingher with a small limp which wouldeventually goandnow all she had as a reminder of those nightmare months was the scars that littered her back and a few that scattered the top of her thighs where the stakes had been plunged in. Every couple of nights she would find herself waking crying out for help and she felt the twinge of pain where her scars were. She knew it would never leave her especially when she had no one she could share what happened with instead keeping it bottled up. And yes she knew it wasn't healthy to bottle up those sorts of emotions but she found difficult to even think about let alone talk about.
The gang were moving on with there lives now that they had graduated. It had been an interesting ceremony and they were all glad that they had faith and Angel to back them up. Willow was on campus with Oz and was in her second month of college, while Xander was working in bar, illegally of course.
Willow was the main person of the gang that was still having trouble dealing with the Buffy not coming back scenario. She often found herself staring out the window with tears in her eyes staring at the stars and talking to Buffy. She hoped she could hear her wherever she was and would come back maybe one day. She needed that closure to know why she left, why she came back in the first place if she was just going to leave again.
Buffy sat at the dinner table discussing her results and what she planned to do. She was amazed that she had done so well, but was even more surprised that Rod wasn't. He had looked smug and said "I knew you would do well." Her eyes had widened classically and she had said "Yeah well if you hadn't convinced me to redo the year I wouldn't have."
Yes Buffy Summers / Grant was finally graduating which also meant the time for going back to Sunnydale was drawing nearer. She had promised a couple of months ago that she would go after graduation. It had been 10 months since she had been home and she would be returning as an 18 year old graduate with outstanding SAT scores.
She had changed a lot since leaving, not just the way she looked but also her attitude. She had taken up Karate and Yoga and found great techniques for fighting that improved her ten fold. Rod was also a great influence on her, he had a way of calming her down when she got upset that made her laugh. Her looks well that was pretty drastic, She hated her blonde long locks because every time someone called her something to do with her hair she had flashed to the vampires taunting her about her love of her hair. So she had died it brown with blonde highlights and had chopped it to her shoulders, it actually gave her a more sophisticated look and she liked it.
So in 2 days she would be in Sunnydale!