Part 2

They were evenly matched, neither getting the real upper hand, dodging, weaving, trading blows; this fight could last forever or until one of them tired. Faith ducked one punch only to be suckered by another. She retaliated, catching her opponent with a roundhouse, which bought her some time and space. But her opponent wasn't out of the game for long and the battle continued.

Punch, punch, kick, dodge, block, punch…

"FREEZE"

Both combatants froze, but didn't face the speaker; they kept their eyes locked on each other. The speaker moved round, and with one deft, effortless move, knocked Faith off balance and onto the floor.

"Shit!" Faith yelped as she toppled to the training room mats, and then glared up at Angel as he offered her a hand.

"You're concentrating too much on your Upper body, your feet are all over the place." Turning to the other combatant he frowned. "Don't look so smug, Buffy, you concentrate so hard on your leg work you leave your head exposed."

"Oh."

"You both need to find the balance between upper and lower body… and stop turning the sparring into a competition." He continued as the girls grabbed towels and water bottles from the table. He enjoyed this, watching the girls train, sharing his knowledge and techniques with them, helping them become better fighters. Or at least he hoped he was helping, most of the time the girls would start sparring and it would turn into a 'who could knock the other on their ass first' competition.

"Someone's grumpy today." Faith mumbled low enough that only Buffy heard. Buffy's lips twitched at the comment, Faith wasn't wrong, Angel was the ultimate killjoy this morning. When he'd come down for their training session he'd been short with both of them, but they were used to it. It was all part and parcel of his recovery; he had good days and bad days. Some days he was on top of the world, eager and even playful, others he could be surly and waspish; sometimes, lack of sleep or eating the wrong thing accounted for his mood. Other times there wasn't any explanation, he simply woke up grumpy. The drastic day-to-day mood swings had lessened over the last month, but every now and then he could be a real pain to live with.

"We done for today?" Faith asked, throwing her towel over he shoulder and tacking a long gulp of water. They'd been training for well over 3 hours and it had been hard graft, Angel had been really pushing them.

Angel merely nodded, placing the quarterstaffs they'd used earlier, back in the weapons locker they now had.

"Cool, I'm gonna hit the shower, Later B,"

Once Faith was out of sight up the stairs, Buffy moved to stand beside Angel, who was now locking up the equipment.

"Sooo, Bad night?"

"What?" Angel had been so deep in thought he hadn't heard her approach.

"Call me crazy, but I'm thinking your whole drill sergeant routine this morning is more than just a mood." She said resting her hand on his arm.

"I didn't sleep well," he responded evasively He hadn't slept because he'd spent the entire night thinking. Two topics in particular; Spike and Connor. Nearly everything that had happened since he left Sunnydale he was happy to tell Buffy about. He knew that some of it would be difficult, explaining his feelings about Cordelia and his relationship with Nina for example. But Connor was another matter; his conception, birth, disappearance and then Wolfram and hart were extremely painful topics. He would tell her, he just wasn't sure how. He knew Buffy wasn't buying the reasons he gave as to why he signed on with Wolfram and Hart, and although she had promised to be nonjudgmental, he couldn't help but feel that the whole sordid story could bring their relationship to grinding halt, never to be restarted.

And then there was Spike, Spike who his feelings were deeply mixed about, Spike who he had come to admire and respect in secret over the course of that year. If Buffy were to tell him he was the consolation prize because Spike hadn't made it through the fight, he thought it might kill him. Not to mention he still wasn't convinced that the Shanshu had only gone to him, because he was the only vampire with a soul left.

"The meds not working?" Buffy's soft inquiry shook him from his dark and distressing thoughts. Rubbing his hand over his face, he shook his head lightly.

"No, I just had a lot on my mind."

"Well maybe after I shower we can talk?"

Angel nodded.

When Buffy came back downstairs after her shower, she found Angel sat in the study room. Leaning against the doorframe, she took a moment to just watch him. He was sat in a large armchair, his feet propped up on the table, reading a book. His face was contorted into the most adorable frown, and every so often, he would tilt the book up at an angle and scowl at the page, obviously not quite sure what he was seeing. She fought the urge to giggle as he looked at the same page from every possible angle before raising an eyebrow and shrugging.

Deciding that she couldn't stand and watch him forever, not matter how much it appealed. Stepping into the room she cleared the throat, drawing his attention away from the book.

"Hey," he said looking up at her.

"Hey," she smiled back, taking seat opposite him, once he'd lowered his feet from the table. "Good book?"

"Mating rituals of pan-dimensional migratory demons," he replied closing the book and reading its cover, "In Ancient Greek. Its one of Wes'."

"Ah, sounds, ummm..."

"Disturbing?"

"Pretty much,"

"You know, if I had known this was the kind of stuff he read in his off time before…" He trailed off with a shake of his head, "Well let's just say I would have sat him down and gone over the virtues of a good wholesome copy of Playboy."

Buffy just nodded and tried to keep a straight face, she as failing miserably. His sense of humour caught her out sometimes, it was dry and subtle and combined with his ability to keep a poker face in any situation, she was never sure if he was joking or not. The mental image of Angel, sharing his 'gentleman's magazines' with Wesley popped into her head, and she shuddered. Looking up she saw that Angel was watching her, his earlier sour expression back full force. She sighed; it was too much to ask that his mood had evaporated while she was in the shower.

"You said before, you had a lot on your mind… wanna talk about it?" She probed gently, and was surprised when he surged from his seat and walked over to the bookcases and the guise of returning his book to its shelf. Buffy watched his tense back from where she sat, waiting for Angel to unload.

"I was thinking… I was thinking about Spike."

"Spike?" She repeated slowly, already knowing where this was headed.

"You and Spike."

"Ah, me and Spike. Wow, now there's a topic."

"You promised," Angel said quietly, turning around to look at her.

"So did you," She noted frankly and Angel nodded, conceding her point.

"Would you rather I start? Is there…" He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. Returning to his seat, he leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "We need to do this, we can't live with all the secrets."

"I know," Buffy replied looking down and playing with her hands in her lap. "Its just…"

"Hard?"

"Yeah."

"So we start with what we know: you and Spike, me and Cordelia," he shrugged as he trailed off, putting the ball in her court. If she wanted to ask about him and Cordelia he would tell her, if she wanted to tell him about Spike, he wouldn't have to ask again later.

Leaning back in her chair Buffy sighed. "I'm not avoiding it, no, actually I am, but could you tell me about Cordelia, I don't think I'm ready to talk about Spike just yet."

"OK," Angel nodded; the Cordelia saga was something he had already dealt with himself, a long time ago, after she died. "Cordy… she was my best friend. After you died, she was the only one who saw how much I was hurting and she let me grieve, in my own way. Things were happening, I needed someone to just be there, and she was. We got very close, I went through some hard times, and she was my rock."

Buffy had been listening intently as he spoke, dropping her head again; she played with her fingers and bit her lip, before looking up.

"Did you love her?"

"I did," Buffy's face crumpled and Angel shook his head, "Like a sister. Her memory for me will always be of a little sister. I… at one point I thought maybe… but loneliness and stress will make you think a lot of things."

"Tell me about it." Buffy snorted and then sighed at Angel's questioning look, "Spike…"

Angel didn't say anything, just watched her as she took a deep breath and continued.

"When… when Willow brought me back, none of them knew, they didn't get it, Spike did."

Angel dropped his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"It was before the soul." He stated, not sure where to put his eyes.

"You promised not to judge!" Buffy pleaded, not liking his instant reaction.

"And I'm not, really Buffy," he took a deep breath, knowing that she had slept with Spike before his soul went against everything he had always believed, everything he had left her for. Hell, even being with Spike after the soul was a slap in the face. Returning his gaze to hers, he swallowed then motioned with a hand for her to go on. "So you and soulless Spike."

Buffy picked up the inadvertent ice that accompanied 'soulless Spike' but chose to carry on regardless. He hadn't just got up and walked away, so that was a good sign.

"I was… coming back from Heaven, I just… When Giles left I lost it, I couldn't deal and Spike he offered me a way to feel something, anything and I used him. What we had had was bloody and violent and I let him do things…" By this time her words were whisper soft and her head was so lowered he chin was on her chest.

Angel's heart broke for her, he knew all to well where she going with this and what that kind of despair felt like. Hadn't he done almost the same thing with Darla? Siding from his chair to he floor, he shuffled closer to hers and pulled her down with him so they were sat side by side, their backs against her chair. The position was almost identical to one they'd been in under a tree in Sunnydale the night after her mother's funeral.

He held her as she haltingly continued her story, finding the absolution she had unknowingly sought in his comforting embrace and soft endearments. When she had finished, Angel told her about Darla, everything up to his epiphany, and then she told him of the last months with Riley. By the time they had both finished, there had been shouting, crying and comfort.

Buffy felt like a huge weight had been lifted from her soul; she had no secrets from Angel anymore. Everything major that had relevance to their relationship since his leaving, was out in the open. She'd also learned a lot of what made this new Angel tick, he'd been brutally honest with her, and there were some issues she wasn't exactly happy about, Darla and Nina for example. She hadn't missed the fact that Angel had perused the relationship with Nina before his ill-fated visit to Italy. That was something else he told her about, how that visit had broken him. She had seen the end result but to hear him talk about his decline into hopelessness, both with Darla and after Italy, made her heart ache for her kind, gentle Angel.

When they finally left the study, Buffy felt real hope for the future of their relationship. Angel, having neglected to bring up Connor, felt like the biggest fraud alive.

Buffy watched Angel out of the corner of her eye. It had been two days since their revelatory talk on the Study room floor. That evening things had been fine, but after that things had deteriorated. He was brooding again, something she hadn't seen him do with such intensity, since she'd moved back to Los Angeles.

But it wasn't the brooding in itself that had her worried; it was the expressions that would creep over his face as he did. The only words she had for them were disgust, loathing and derision. And it wasn't just that, every time she was with him, he was tense and occasionally flinched at her touch. In Buffy's mind it could mean only one thing, he was disgusted, with her.

Something she had told him two days ago must have made him back track on their relationship, yet he hadn't said anything. At the time he had been so understanding, how could one night bring such a turn around?

She wanted to shout, to scream at him to tell her what she had done so bad, so they could fix it. She was so frustrated; it wasn't like he hadn't had his share of not so pleasant things to tell her. So what had she done so that would make him react this way? But the little voice in her heart, her conscience, taunted her, reminded her, and she knew what she had done. Spike.

He was disgusted with her because of Spike, her whirlwind affair with the darker side of sex, those shameful few months where she'd willingly given her body to a soulless demon. It wasn't just one night of total despair, but months of brutal fucking, where she'd tasted to the true meaning of depravity.

So she watched him, and hoped. She hoped that he could brood it through, that he would find a way to see around how far she'd fallen. Hoped he would see how far she'd come since then, and how much she regretted it. But as the hours turned to days, she began to doubt. To Angel she had always been a bastion of virtue, purity and good; to know about what she had done must have shattered that illusion. Could it be that Angel's seemingly endless well of forgiveness and understanding, had finally dried up?

Angel watched her, and knew she was watching him. It was the perfect moment to tell her, the perfect moment to explain the whole story. They were alone in the house, so one around to interrupt; it wouldn't take much to just go over and talk to her, but he didn't. He kept his head buried in the book he was pretending to read and he brooded.

This wasn't the first such opportunity he'd had, but like all the times before he faltered. How did one tell the love of ones life, something as monumental as this? What on earth could he say?

'Hey Buff, remember when you said, and I agreed, that we now had everything out in the open? You do? Well, I lied, and By the way I have a son and he's nearly 20, but should only be 3. But don't worry, I made a pact with the Devil and now no one remembers him. Does he remember me? Sure! But he thinks I'm dead, so he won't be popping round any time soon.'

Angel snorted mentally in derision of his own train of sarcastic thought. He was such a hypocrite; he'd been the one to insist on honesty, yet he was the one who couldn't be honest. And in the face of Buffy's brutal honesty, his self-disgust knew no bounds.

So he continued to watch her, watching him, this sad look on her face. This look of frustration, defeat and regret. It didn't take genius to work out she knew something was wrong. Every time he saw her, his gut would clench with the weighing guilt of his own dishonesty. His own inability to share this most crucial of personal burdens. Who else was he supposed to share it with, if not her? Hadn't she just proven her almost limitless capacity for compassion? She had held and comforted him over the tale of his child's conception; surely she wouldn't hate him for said child's existence?

Two Days Previous

"You slept with Darla?"

"Yeah."

"But she's dead." Off Angel's look, which was part incredulous, part confused, she elaborated. "Dust, she's dust. I was there, I saw you do it."

"Wolfram and Hart brought her back."

"So what? You said 'hey Darla, I haven't got laid in while, fancy a romp?" There was no real accusation in her tone, only incomprehension and curiosity. She didn't question that Wolfram and Hart could bring her back, she'd heard numerous stories of their capabilities and resurrecting vampires seemed like small fry in comparison.

"No…" Angel took a deep breath and maintained eye contact. This would be a hard story to tell, it was deeply personal and, as a private man by nature, opening up to this degree was difficult. Despite the events happening a long time past, he'd never shared his own hurts on the subject with any of his friends. When he had come back to the fold, none of them would have been very appreciative of his need to talk about the catalyst to his self-destruction. "They brought her back to drive me insane. She haunted me, she was in my dreams, everywhere I went, everywhere I looked, she was there, and she was human. For a long time I thought I was losing my mind."

"What happened?" Buffy asked softly, slipping an arm around his waist and offering gentle comfort. They were still sat at the foot of Buffy's chair, after her heart rendering confessions about Spike.

So he told her, about Darla's soul catching up with her, about her illness and about her finally excepting her fate. He buried his head in her shoulder as he told her about how he snapped, lost all sense of reason after he watched her being turned by Drusilla. How he fired all his friends and became a one-man weapon of vengeance, determined to get revenge on Wolfram and Hart for stealing Darla's second chance. All the time he spoke, his voice clogging with emotions he thought long ago dealt with; Buffy held him, offered him comfort and gentle reassurance.

When he told her about letting people die, she didn't bat a lash. But when he haltingly told her of the one night with his sire, she gasped, her face a mask of grief and horror.

"You wanted to lose your soul!"

Angel just hung his head. As terrible things went, trying to lose your soul and become a crazed monster was pretty much the worst thing he could have done.

"Angel, why? You used to say you would rather die than let Angelus run loose!"

"I know, but… I was afraid. I was in so much pain, and I wanted it to end. But I couldn't go back to Hell. So I tried to make it stop the only other way I knew how."

"God, Angel."

Present

That was the point at which he should have told her, but he hadn't, and had neglected to do so at every opportunity hence. He knew the longer he left it, the worse the repercussions would be. The one thing Buffy hated was lies, and a lie of omission was still a lie. Their fledgling relationship was already suffering, and the longer he left it the less likely it was that Buffy could forgive his neglect.

There was a voice that told he didn't have to tell her. It wasn't like Connor was going to show up and expose his treachery. But his conscience plagued him, nagged him night and day. He wanted things to work with Buffy, but so far he was the only one jeopardising that chance. So he wouldn't chicken out. He would tell her, now; and no matter how angry she was, how hurt, he would find a way to make it up to her.

Rising from his seat, he was about to go over to where she sat, when the doorbell rang. That voice that hadn't wanted to tell her sighed in relief, but on the whole Angel cursed his misfortune of another opportunity missed. Hopefully it would be salesmen or Jehovah's witnesses, someone he could take out his frustration on.

"Are you gonna get that?" Buffy asked, not looking up from her magazine.

"Yeah,"

Padding into he hall, he opened the door, ready to growl at whoever had spoiled his moment; but instead of a salesman, he was greeted by a face that made him smile.

"Dawn!"

"Angel! Hi, umm we were in the area and thought we'd stop by, so is that ok?"

"We?"

"Oh right, me and…" She bit her lip and reached out to grab the arm of the person that was just out of Angel's line of sight. When the boy came into view, Angel felt like he'd been sucker punched. The two gaped at each other for less than a second, before they gasped in unison.

"DAD!"

"Connor!"

tbc