Title: A Lifetime Apart, An Eternity Together

Rating: PG 13 for now

Author: Specks

Disclaimer: Mutant Enemy, Fox and all those network honchos and writers own all, I own nothing, don't sue.

Synopsis: Buffy/ Dark Angel crossover with Highlander elements. Buffy is immortal, and she travels with Methos to Seattle to investigate a head hunter. The same case of mysterious bodies turning up without heads stirs Logan's curiosity, so he asks Max to investigate. Just a routine job for both parties, right?

Pairings: M/L and B/A with implied B/S.

Spoilers: Not much of Dark Angel, up to first season finale I guess. Spoilers up to about mid season six for Buffy.

Author's Notes #1: I would like to thank my beta readers Nina and Tiff. . Nina, all your help on the fic was really apreciated. I totally understand about the red inklessness, you are so not the evil professor with red pen type. I see you more as the nice, but wonderfully demanding type.

Tiff, thank you so much for helping me with the last chapter. I couldn't send you this chapter cause there was something wrong with your email. I kept getting error messages. Please email me so we can sort this out, you're an amazing beta reader, and I would hate to lose you because of technical problems.

Author's Notes #2: Thank you to all those people that sent me the encouraging feedback: Pheobe L, Jezzie, misqteeone, Carmelia, evilalucard, Rosie, Mike, morotcycle_angel(Margaret), Mija, DizzyDame, Hay 25, Karen- Tenou, Whittie-kittie, Lisette, Jill, Jeff, Meagan, Hope, Manticore- gurl071134,Matt, Boy of Enders, BTVS Lover, Sparrow, X-Lander, Liquid Amber, Rashaka, Maeve Tyr Namid, Deep Red, and Cyber AngelOne. Thanks guys, you keep me writing..that and my beta fic reader.

Feedback: Yes! I crave feedback, should I continue? Any ideas would be welcome as well. Pleas e-mail me at slete130@netzero.net



Her troubled thoughts plaguing her, Buffy found herself pacing the hall of her

penthouse, trying to process her newly acquired information.



The day after their coffee-house meeting, she and Adam had done some snooping--

trying learn the identity of their nosy reporter. Discovering his real identity had been almost impossible; the guy had more aliases then Hugh Hefner had girlfriends. ( It took them two whole days just to separate fact from fiction. By the third day, her patience had run out, and she was just about to ask a couple of friends for help when they had hit paydirt.

A contact of hers had information--apparently their nosy reporter was Eyes Only, Seattle's premier cable hacking journalist.



This knowledge would have been little help to an ordinary person, but then, no one had ever accused Buffy of being ordinary.

With a few phone calls, and some promises here and there, she was able to secure one of the world's finest Trackers.



Trackers were rare and hard to come by because they possessed a unique, and highly sought after, gift: they had the ability to manipulate both technology and magic in conjunction with each other, and thus were able to obtain almost any kind of information from a computer. A good tracker could sniff out anything or anyone that had passed through the Internet within the last 48 hours and, since Eyes Only had just recently done a cable hack, tracking him was not hard.



By the end of the day, she had not only Eyes Only's location, but also the sites he'd visited and the times and

dates he'd logged on within the past year. From there it wasn't very hard to deduce the identity of the reporter: Logan Cale.



The problem was she knew Logan; they had lived in the same building for years. He was one of her best mortal friends, and now, to discover he was to be the one behind the disturbing probes into immortal lore... It was quite a shock. What troubled her was not Logan's secrecy about Eyes Only, but the danger he had inadvertently put himself in because of it. Until now, Logan's quarries had all been human, but pursuing the supernatural underworld was a different matter. Any one of the more powerful immortals might well decide to take matters into their own hands and silence his inquiries for good. If she could find him then so could they.



Concerns about her friend's safety and the best way to broach the subject with him followed

her as she continued to pace.



One floor down, unaware of his friend's thoughts, Logan stood in front of his door. Precariously balancing grocery bags in his hands, he blindly searched for the hole in which his key fit.



"There!" he cried triumphantly as the key slid into the lock. Pushing the door open, Logan stumbled into the penthouse; weaving and bobbing like an expert boxer, he tried desperately to hang on to all of his bags.

It was times like this that he missed supermarkets the most, those were one

of the first things to go after the pulse.



Nowadays you have to run all over town to acquire the proper supplies for a decent dinner. Ahh supermarkets-- one of the greatest luxuries ever invented by man. Those heavenly piles of food conveniently prepackaged for you in individual containers, ready for sale. With instructions written right on the box simple enough for even the most profound culinary idiot to prepare.



Mounds upon mounds of fruit, mountain-like in their proportions, each one freshly delivered from the farmer's market. Individually selected for quality, and sprayed with pesticide to ensure against those otherwise helpful fertilizers that we call insects. Not to mention the deli and the entire row devoted to spices. Logan thought nostalgically of a time when you could find everything in one spot, of a time when good bourbon could be obtained somewhere other than the black market. Ahh, those were the days...



Surveying the mess of bags in front of him, Logan set to work putting the supplies into their proper spots. He was in the kitchen preparing a salad for lunch, when Max decided to pay him an afternoon visit.



"Knock, Knock" she said, poking her head through the threshold.



"Hey," said Logan a bit breathlessly. It was partly due to the beautiful vision before him, and partly from the near heart attack he had suffered from her sudden appearance.



Logan could not take his eyes off Max as she entered his kitchen. Her movements flowed with a catlike grace, and her face suffused with pleasure at the sight of the salad. She practically purred approval, as she inhaled the scent of the oriental chicken salad. With the conditions like they were now, you couldn't really risk eating raw vegetables unless you wanted to poison yourself. He had gone through a lot of trouble to obtain the greenery for his salads. It pleased Logan to no end that Max recognized and appreciated his efforts.



"What's that?" asked Max breaking into Logan's thoughts. She pointed to a pair of boxing gloves in the corner with the half eaten carrot she'd filched from the bowl. Inwardly she was already sure of his answer. After all, the gloves were exactly her size.



'How sweet', she thought, 'he thought of me while shopping'



"Oh those," said Logan distractedly waving in the general direction of the gloves, " Those are for-," the doorbell rang just then, effectively cutting off the rest of his sentence.



"Give me a minute," he said as he made his way around the counter to answer the door. He made it to the door just as the bell rang again.



ding..ding ding ding.....ding ding



A smile split Logan's face as he heard the pattern of the rings. Only one person rang his bell that way..



Opening the door he feigned surprise, "Oh, Buffy, its you! What a pleasant surprise!"



"What do you mean surprise?!" she demanded, "Who else rings your doorbell like that?"



"What's that? You say you were ringing the doorbell?" he said with an exaggerated impersonation of a deaf old man.



"Yeah!", she said grinning, well use to the banter, "How could you not hear me?"



"Because I've gone deaf in one ear due to the constant ringing of the doorbell by an annoying neighbor of mine." Logan countered with a straight face but Buffy saw the glint of mischief in his clear blue eyes.



"Well you know there is a way to regain your hearing," she said playing along.



"Well really? What's that?" he asked, trying not to give away his amusement. He was in for it now, he recognized the look on Buffy's face. It was her 'I'm gonna get you' face.



"There's a theory that if said person receives a concussion from said neighbor then said person would regain his or her hearing. Wanna test it?" asked Buffy as she playfully cuffed at his head, giving him ample opportunity to dodge out of the way. Missing its original target, Buffy's fist landed on his shoulder and Logan grunted obligingly. She was careful to keep her slayer strength under control; if she hadn't, Logan would have done much more than grunt.



They were wrestling playfully when Max came out of the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about. Seeing them all over each other made Max see red.



'What the hell is that skanky ho doin with Logan?' thought Max jealously. 'He's mine!'



Taking a deep breath, Max tried to compose her wayward thoughts, 'Down girl, he ain't yours. He can get all over whoever he wants.' That bleak thought helped her reign in the green eyed monster just as it reared its ugly head.



Breaking apart, Logan looked sheepish at being caught in such a childish display. Pushing his skewed glasses back in place, he hastened to make introductions. There was a scary, unwarranted animosity emanating from both of the women, and it made Logan decidedly uncomfortable.



.



Buffy looked tense, her gaze instantly taking in the woman who had interrupted them. Brown eyes clashed with hazel as each attempted to get the other's measure. For a moment her eyes reminded Buffy of Angel, they were full of guilt, pain and remorse, but where Angel's were soft, her's were hard and unforgiving. Buffy remembered the last time she had seen Angel, of the time when her own eyes had been filled with the same kind of pain, and remorse.



'Don't go there', she told herself mentally. It was never wise to think about Angel, even after all these years it was just too painful. Pulling herself back to the present, she tried to pinpoint what it was about the girl that gave her the wiggins.



There was something off about the dark haired woman, something unnatural. She was getting all sorts of mixed signals from her spidey sense. Whatever she was, it was clear from his body language that Logan trusted her. Buffy knew that Logan did not trust easily, anyone that could earn his trust was either a talented deceiver or an amazing person. She would reserve judgment on which category this woman fit.



"Buffy, this is Max," said Logan making the introduction, "Max, Buffy."



'What kind of name is that?' thought Max as she reached out and shook Buffy's hand. When they made contact, all thoughts of strange names flew her mind. The vibes coming off the blonde's hand were funky, it was a combination of total terror, and comforting warmth. Max did not relish repeating the action. There was something wrong about this girl, she and Logan may be chummy chummy, but that didn't count for shit in her book. Her instincts had never led her wrong, and right now they were screaming at her to run. Whoever this Buffy was, nothing about her was normal.



'I think I'll pay Buffy a little late night visit tomorrow,' thought Max as she listened with half an ear to Logan's rambling. If she didn't find anything in the blonde's penthouse, she could at least get an idea if the girl's personality. There was just something about her that made Max want to stay on the defensive.



"You know where the gloves are, right Max?" Logan asked her pulling her back to the conversation.



"Gloves? What gloves?" asked Max, she was still trying to figure out what they had been talking about.



"You know, the ones you were asking me about," said Logan gesturing towards the direction of the kitchen.



"Oh those," said Max remembering the gloves Logan had bought for her, "What about them?"



"Could you please go get them? They're for Buffy", said Logan.'



Buffy! I thought those were for me. First she manhandles Logan, and now she steals my gloves! What a bitch!' thought Max irrationally, as she stalked off toward the direction of the indicated object.



"You got me boxing gloves!", said Buffy, delighted, "You remembered! I didn't think you would." The last pair of gloves she had owned were shredded by a switchknife toting burglar. Unfortunately for the burgler, the destruction of he beloved gloves had left Buffy in rage. She had systematically beat the crap out of her would-be assailant and relished every blow. It was lucky Logan showed up, that is, lucky for the burglar. Logan's calm, inquiring voice had pierced through her haze of rage, and reason had returned. With Logan tending to the burgler Buffy was then able to call the police. And that had been that. It really surprised and pleased her that Logan was so thoughtful.

"Not remember!" said Logan insulted, "What kind of friend do you think I am?!"



His ensuing tirade was cut off when Max rentered the room. Handing Buffy the gloves, .

Her finger brushed with the blonde's and both experienced the previous jolt of ..something. They both pulled back quickly as though stung, their bodies tense and charged.



Deciding now was not the time to tell Logan she knew about Eyes Only, Buffy hurriedly made excuses to leave. There was no point in enduring this tension, if nothing was to come of it. Besides, she had to go home and do a bit more research on this Max. She was a new player, and Buffy did not liked to be surprised.

Hearing the elevator ding, Buffy stepped in as questions continued to plague her.What side was Max on, is her affection for Logan real or pretend? Those were questions that needed answering, and Buffy was determined to find the truth. With an inward sigh Buffy decided she would need another tracker. The suckers were expensive, both in money and in favors. Oh well, it would be worth it to see that Logan was safe. Buffy exited the elevator and entered her penthouse with a determined stride. She would get to the bottom of this.





_____________________

"Passion is the source of our finest moments, it is the joy of love, the clarity of hatred and the ecstacy of grief."

~Angeles ,Passion