Buffy Summer was tired and ready to just take a break, she waved her friends off as it came her turn to gossip about the latest job she'd just returned from earlier, finally having everything in place on it, and not even wanting to speak about the lot of them ever again if it could be helped. That whole experience had been draining, she wanted to just relax with some of the boys for a little while before heading home to get some much needed sleep in...

"I'll give a hard pass," she mumbled, reaching into the small fridge for a cold water bottle. Coming around to take a seat at the small square shaped table, her bottom was just about to touch the chair when Doyle started muttering some Irish swears and his hand shot out to his head once the vision struck.

Lorne had reached over quickly to grab a pen and a scrap of paper as he noticed those first signs of what was to come, sliding them to Doyle so he could jot down the information The Powers That Be were shooting through to him. They all waited quietly while the vision came and went and Doyle took a moment to recover, shaking his head and for the millionth time since she'd known him alone muttering how he wished they'd come up with a better messaging system. Cracking open her bottle, she took a small sip while Lorne finally questioned who the lucky winner was.

When Doyle's eyes met hers, Buffy sighed, pushing the lid back on. She'd really been hoping to have at least a small break between these little quests. She held her hand out and he shot her a look full of "I'm sorry" as he reached over to place the small brown piece of paper in her palm.

Buffy mouthed the words as she read them then looked over at the dark-haired seer. "Stroke of midnight?"

"Give or take some seconds," Doyle smirked.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Isn't she a little old to be carrying out birthday wishes?"

"He."

"He?"

"This Angel is a male."

She thought that over for a moment. Hardly the craziest name she'd come across. "Okay, well, isn't he a little old for this mess?"

Doyle shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "Oh, you know certain days affect the humans more than other creatures, it makes them more open, a little more vulnerable to make a wish of their hearts buried desires... childlike for even just a moment to believe in the impossible."

Buffy sighed. Yeah. She remembered.

OoOoO

Sitting up in bed, Angel furrowed his eyebrows together as he stared at the closed door to his bedroom, trying to pinpoint the noise coming from elsewhere in his apartment. Hearing more, he glanced at the clock, seeing it was just about time for the sun to make an appearance. Creeping slowly out of the bed, he made his way across the room, slowly opening the door and making his way out closer to the noise.

Angel's entire body came to a sudden halt as he spotted a strange blonde woman moving about his kitchen, messing with his coffee maker and grabbing mugs from cabinets, all like she owned the damn place. "Excuse me?" he finally said after she had started a fresh batch.

The woman didn't jump, flinch, nothing. No, she twirled around like it was perfectly normal for her to be here and smiled a little. "Oh, good, you're up. Though I was hoping to have you a fresh cup of coffee ready to go before you did but what can you do?"

Angel just stared at her. "What are you doing in my apartment?" finally blurted out of his mouth.

"Right," she said, shaking her blonde locks a bit with her heads' movements. "Okay, well, I'm Buffy and I am here to help you make a wish come true."

He cocked an eyebrow. "I have no idea what you're going on about. God, did Lindsey send you? Are you a stripper... or something?"

The woman, Buffy, rolled her green eyes. "I most certainly am not."

"Then who the hell are you and how did you get in here?"

"As the days rolled over to a new one, you grabbed a little blue candle. You lit it, holding it in your hands as you thought about your birthday that was rolling in, you thought about your past, your future, what you wanted in life... you thought about your place in the world. You closed your eyes, you opened your heart to the possibilities of what could be and you blew out that candle pinched between your fingers as you wished for-"

"How did-"

"-something that you would view as your happy ending. The Powers That Be picked you out of a hat, so to speak, and said that one gets a chance. So, here we are. Angel. Liam Angelus of little Sunnydale, California."

"Powers That Be? Wha-"

"That's who I work for and who's trying to grant your wish. Happy Birthday!"

"So... okay. So, the "powers that be" sent you?" He questioned before looking her up and down. "You're supposed to be my-"

She held up a hand, stopping him. "Oh, please. That's Rule Number One. I absolutely am not anyone's happily ever after. I'm just here to help you."

"Like a fairy godmother?" he questioned, cocking up one eyebrow.

She glared. "No. I'm more like a guide. No wands here," she said, holding her hands out.

"A guide?" he echoed, more confused by the second. This obviously was the result of drinking too much, lack of sleep, a dream... something.

"Yep. I'm sent here to help you on this little journey. I help you figure out exactly what a happy ending is in your mind and from there we work on making that wish become reality."

His mouth opened, shut, then opened again. "How exactly would you make that happen?" he found himself questioning.

The blonde shrugged, turning her back to him to focus back on the coffee that had finished brewing. "A happy ending is a very broad term you would find, it can mean so many things to different people. The obvious is love, you find your soulmate, or at least someone you want to be with, and run toward happily ever after. But then again sometimes a happy ending is having a child, having or creating a family… or, maybe an orphan reconnecting with the family who gave him or her up or finally finding a completely new one, it covers a lot of ground. Usually the wisher already has exactly what they want in mind when they make that plea out into the universe but not always."

Angel just stared at her, his mind spinning.

"Do you know what you want?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

"Anywho," she said, bringing him a cup of coffee and laying out a scroll with a large black pen on top of it once it unrolled. "The deal is... you made a wish, you were chosen to have a chance at it being granted. You sign the contract and I, under the supervision of the PTB, do whatever I can to guide you to whatever that happy ending may be."

"Right," Angel chuckled in utter confusion and shock of what was happening.

"You have until your next birthday to carry out your wish. I do have to tell you some of the other rules... such as you cannot suddenly change the wish that you already whispered out into the unknown. You cannot give your wish to someone else. You cannot get a refund should things go awry..."

"Wishes, happily ever afters... refunds?"

Buffy propped her elbow up on the counter island of his kitchen, her body leaning so she could rest her chin on her hand. "Again, no magic wands, I can't do all the work for you and certainly can't help you out forever. I can get you to the happy ending but you have to make it work. That's the deal. Sometimes... well, sometimes things don't go how it was imagined after some time. It's not an exact science here and apparently it all has only gotten harder in time to actually please people. Like, say, you may wish for a prince, you may get the prince and the whole shebang, but you go and decide he snores too loud and you want to smother him in his damn sleep. Maybe he can't keep his hands to himself and you are sick and damn tired of it. There's just so many things. You might wish for a son, you leave out some details, suddenly you got a Pinnochio situation. Things happen."

"Sure. Because... of course. Right."

She shrugged, standing up again and taking a sip of her own cup of coffee.

"What-what if I don't want to sign any contract? What if I don't want my wish filled?" he asked, not sure why he was even letting this woman continue on with her delusions.

"If you wish to opt out, then that's simple. Easy peasy. You just don't sign and I am gone like," she trailed off, snapping her fingers and disappearing from right in front of him. By the time he got finished telling himself he was fucking losing it, she was suddenly there again. As if this was fucking normal, every day shit. "You can also sign the contract and still opt out any time you wish. No one is going to force you to live happily ever after, that would be ridiculous."

"Yes, that would just be simply too much," he drawled.

OoOoO

The second time Angel rose from his bed, he felt like he had been hit with a baseball bat all over his body. His head hurt. He still had that stupid dream spinning in his head of that beautiful blonde and her nonsense about being some being with some mystical power bullshit yadda yadda, talking him into signing his name on a glowing dotted line and watching as it suddenly turned to ash before disappearing into thin air.

Shaking his head, he got out of bed, wondering how he had been able to sleep so late as he saw it was nearly noon. His stomach growled and as he headed out of his bedroom he tried deciding between a shower first or making something quickly when suddenly a strangled noise came from his throat.

Setting the book in her hand to the side, Buffy locked eyes with him once more. "Well hello again, sleepy head," she grinned, her eyes flickering over his nearly nude form.

"Uh," he stumbled. "You're real… I mean you're still… you're here," he gasped. Clearly someone had slipped him something at dinner last night, he'd done his fair share of partying over the years, but he'd never experienced anything close to this.

She rolled her eyes, "We covered this already, remember?"

Shaking his head, he tried one more time to pull himself from this delusion. When it didn't work, he grabbed her, thrusting her up against him, he slammed his lips to hers half expecting her to disappear again.

Completely caught off guard, it took her a second but she quickly recovered, shoving him off her. "What the hell do you think you're doing!?"

His mouth hung open, apparently he could scratch hallucination from his list. There was no way his mind was capable if imagining something so divine. "Okay," he sighed. "For the last time who put you up to this? If it wasn't Lindsey, it had to be Gunn… or Wesley," he paused long enough to look back at her again. "Was it Wesley?"

Her arms crossed over her chest, why did the hot ones always have to be so damn dense… if you asked her, it took all of the fun out. "Are you on drugs or something? 'Cause I probably should have mentioned there's a whole section about that."

His eyes narrowed, "What? No." Though even he had his doubts at the moment, "I mean I don't know... did-did you give me something?"

Reaching out she grabbed his arm, tugging him behind her she led them over to the sofa. Pushing him down on the couch, she snapped her fingers, suddenly revealing the stack of papers with his glowing signature scrolled along the top.

Eyeing them wearily, he hesitated for a moment before reaching out to examine them. "So… all of this is real," he asked, tracing the ink of his name. "I'm not imagining things or on some sort of weird reality tv show?"

"Oh please," she giggled. "Trust me, Hollywood couldn't afford me, and Ashton Kutcher has long since retired from his days on MTV. Besides, why would they prank you?"

"Why did you pick me," he groaned, leaning back against the soft cushions of the couch. There was no way anyone would believe this, not that he would ever bring it up, this was the type of thing that got people committed.

Taking a deep breath she sat down in the small space between him and the side of the sofa. Linking their fingers, she slowly pried his arm back from his face. "Angel, look at me," she commanded softly, bringing his hand to her lap. "I know this can be a lot for some people, but the sooner you realize that this isn't some parlor trick, the sooner we can get on with figuring out just what makes you happy. As I said before, we don't have a whole lotta time, especially not in your case. We have exactly three hundred, sixty-four days, and…" she glanced down at the tiny silver watch on her wrist. "Twelve hours, give or take," she shrugged.

His thumb traced the inside of her palm, who, or whatever she was, she positively one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. "And you're sure that you're not a part of it, my happiness I mean?"

Her eyes went wide, the powers had really thrown her a curve ball with this one, she'd never had a charge quite so appealing before. Suddenly all those rules they had in place for this sort of thing were making a lot more sense. She squeezed his hand a little harder, "I'm just a guide," her voice softened further. "I mean I am human, more or less anyways, but people like me, we don't belong to ourselves."

"I don't understand."

She sighed, she hated when she had to go into this whole spiel. It made her job a whole lot easier when the people she was assigned too didn't question things. Most of the time, especially these days, her "clients" would hear the word wish and think they hit the lottery… no explanation needed. Then there were times like these, the ones like her Angel here who had to ask all of the questions, and have all of the answers before they could even consider this gift they were offered. "It goes like this, when you're created or whatever, long before you're born, you get a choice. You can either be sent to Earth to live your life as every other mortal, or you can choose to stay and work for the powers, most people - well the old souls at least, they usually choose to return to Earth, but every once in awhile you get someone like me who isn't down with the death and destruction this planet has to offer, so we choose to do something else, a higher power of sorts."

He wasn't sure why he was still entertaining this nonsense, but as much as the voice inside of him screamed at him to throw her out, he couldn't bring himself to listen. "So you're saying we're all... reincarnated?"

She shrugged, the truth was even she wasn't sure about all that. The powers were good at keeping you on a need to know basis, life, death, birth, the weight of life wasn't really something that concerned her, not in their eyes anyway. She was a guide, she was here to help people find happiness, not judge them for their sins, that was a whole other department that she'd done a damn good job avoiding… so far. "It's possible. Look, like I told you last night, I don't have all of the answers. All I know is what I'm told, and that's not much, but the gist is, I'm here to help you find whatever it is that makes you happy," she smirked, "And the one thing that I can guarantee is that it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I'm pretty sure there's actual laws against that type of thing actually, but besides that trust me when I say, you only think this whole wish granting thing is a lot to take in… there's entire worlds out there that people have no idea about," she pressed a finger to his lips, "And before you start it's best that you don't know. The less you know the better, plus it's not like you'd remember anyway."

He winced, "What do you mean?"

Curling her feet underneath her, she turned, to lean back next to him against the fluffy cushion. "When this is over, when the year is up, whether you've found happiness or not, I'll disappear… the powers will work their mojo or whatever, and you won't remember a single thing about me."

"What?" He gasped, "Why?"

Her eyes stung for a moment, but she quickly pushed her own emotions to the side. "It's just the way it is, it's part of the deal. It's all covered on page seventeen, I do my job, you find happiness, they meddle with your memories and life goes on. You of course don't have to take the whole year to decide on your happiness but that's again how much time we have. But anyway, you are better off without memories of all of this, trust me. It's a lot for humans to deal with."

"I can't imagine why that might be."

"Getting through the wish part is already one thing. Having someone carry that around forever has been found to be just a little too much for most people," she continued.

"D-do you? Do you remember it though?"

Buffy nodded. "I have my memories, and I have files of all of my clients. Sometimes it's nice to remember, or to check in on them, see how things are going."

Angel was quiet for a long while. He didn't think he liked the idea of someone toying with his memories or of her remembering him when he wouldn't be allowed the same. "So... what is it I am supposed to do exactly?" he finally asked, unsure if he wanted an answer on that or not at the moment.

"Well, like I said, you first need to figure out what it is you want.. if you don't already know. That's a good jumping off point."

Angel clenched his jaw for a moment. "When I made that wish last night... this morning... whatever you want to call it... I was thinking about how a good portion of my friends have settled down, not all married but, you know, in committed, strong relationships... planning on weddings or babies in the near future and shit like that. The majority of the time I brush off their random comments about how I should settle down, too, find some nice girl and all that... but I don't know, last night I was just thinking about it as I was here alone..."

"And you thought that maybe it would be nice to not be as alone on your next birthday?" she guessed.

Angel's eyes flickered over her. "Something like that. I mean, I'm going to be seeing my friends later and I have them... but yeah. Maybe it would be nice. I guess."

Buffy smiled a little. "It's not a bad wish," she told him. "No one likes being lonely."

"Are you?"

Buffy's eyes widened again. "I keep busy," she laughed.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I am doing just fine, Angel. Don't worry about that."

He stared a moment too long before asking what would happen after that point, after deciding his happy ending might point in the direction of someone to love. Buffy snapped her fingers again and suddenly she had a notebook and pen in her hands.

"Well, we get a little more details about what exactly you view as this happy ending bit, maybe discuss any preferences about this mystery girl out there in the world so we can perhaps narrow some stuff down? Then, we can start playing Cupid. I can use magic and knowledge to set you up with these potentials, blind dates, moments to fill in as meet cutes, such as maybe I know the exact time a certain interest of yours might be destined to trip and fall but we tweak that moment just a bit by letting you be there at the perfect time to sweep her off of her feet, saving the day... I can arrange dates, snap my fingers to turn your life into a temporary musical episode of a day of your life..."

"Well, that sounds like a nightmare. Can I say right here and now that I very much do not want that last bit. Keep your Disney magic to yourself when it comes to breaking out into song and dance, please?"

She smirked and wrote something down quickly. "Noted," she promised. "No musical outbursts."

"Thank you," he drawled.

"Anything else entirely off limits we can get out of the way?" she asked, her pen poised to make any other short notes she might need.

OoOoO

"O-other people... they can see you... right?"

Buffy looked up from her notebook again. "Yes," she answered slowly. "I'm not some figment of your imagination as much as you would have liked to think so."

"So... what am I supposed to tell people? Like, about who you are, how we know one another? Like, if my friends see you hanging around for the next year or less and all that?"

Buffy shrugged. "That's kind of up to you, probably want to steer clear of the whole truth though."

"You don't say..."

"Just try to stick to the truth without too many details is usually your best, easiest bet I have found. I can always disappear as needed, try my best to not be noticed, but truthfully sooner or later people usually start noticing and asking questions the longer I am around. Sooner or later they might see us together and you'll have that to answer about it whenever."

"Where do you go?"

"Hmm?"

"When you snap your fingers and suddenly aren't there in front of me or whatever."

She gave him a strange look. "Nowhere in particular, at least not each time. I just think of where I want to be if I have the time, otherwise it's just determined in that split second," she said with a shrug. Sometimes I go where a charge might need me to be, sometimes I drop something off with a higher up, have a council meeting to attend, pop up at a friends', go to my house..."

"You have friends? A house?"

"Yes."

"Like, human friends or otherwordly type folks such as yourself?"

"The latter."

"Where do you live?"

"That would be a little hard to really explain..."

Angel continued to shoot off question after question about her, her life, this line of work she found herself in until Buffy finally told him perhaps they should focus a little less on her right now and more on this mystery dream girl they needed to help him find.

OoOoO

"You mentioned you would be spending your birthday with friends?"

Angel looked up and nodded. "Yeah, actually here shortly Lindsey should be showing up to kick things off. Dinner, whatever dumb activity Lindsey has decided on this year, then more than likely ending up at The Bronze... just a club in town."

She tapped her pen a few times. They had already decided she'd do her best to remain unseen to the people closest to him, at least for right now, today if nothing else, but she asked him how he'd feel about her just being out of the club and steering clear of him and the others while they celebrated.

"Why?"

"Maybe observing you, how you behave, how you react to different women will give me a sense of what you're looking for?" she answered. "Body language is quite a useful tool in this job, people watching, picking up on little clues someone might not otherwise know about even their own selves... and I will use it many times over. It doesn't have to be tonight or at the club though, I was just throwing it out there. I am still happy to start tomorrow, the next day, or whenever you feel ready."

Angel went silent as he contemplated what she was saying, he highly doubted he would be able to interact with any female knowing she was just out there watching. Hell he was still having trouble wrapping his head around this whole mess, if he had it his way he'd make her his date and just be done with the whole thing, problem solved, but apparently that went against her fairy godmother code of conduct or whatever she was.

"I don't see a problem with that," he finally agreed, it wasn't as if his day could get much weirder than it already was.

OoOoO

As promised, she'd disappeared before his friend had arrived. It didn't leave her much time, but there was enough for her to pop back home and get changed into something a little more appropriate for a night out. Angel's party was being held at some club called the Bronze, it seemed okay from what she'd seen so far. It was definitely better than some of the whole in the walls she'd been stuck in before anyways, at least it had decent music.

And him… who she wasn't sure what to think of just yet. Most of the time when she was assigned a new charge she could spot the reason they had trouble finding their very own happily ever after. Sometimes they were slobs, or alcoholic, over achievers, narcissists, and sometimes they were just plain ugly… in all her years with the PTB she had yet to figure out their system, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the people they chose to receive these gifts, her best guess was they threw everyone's name into a hat and shook it up real good, there was just no telling what you were going to get.

Though Angel didn't seem to have any of the problems her usual clients did, from what all she'd gathered so far he was just a nice normal guy, a normal guy who was built like a Greek God but a normal guy nonetheless. He seemed nice enough a little quiet maybe, but thankfully he wasn't full of himself, and as far as she could tell he didn't have a drinking problem, though his friends did seem a bit intent on giving him one judging from the mass amount of shots they had flowing around them.

As the night wore on she found it harder and harder to avoid the man she was there to study. Not by any fault of her own, but it seemed the more intoxicated he became the more she felt his eyes locked onto her, easily picking her out of the crowd. At one point he even tried to corner her coming out of the restroom, thankfully his little British friend stepped in and completely ignored his ramblings about fairy godmothers, which only seemed to spur Angel on further.

Luckily she'd found a spot on the second floor, he was still within her view, but it would be hard for him to spot her. She watched amused as he scanned the crowds once more, searching for what she could only assume was herself.

"Oh Angel," she muttered softly under her breath. He wasn't even paying attention to anyone around him because he was too damn focused on picking her out of the crowd. She'd heard of others running into this problem before, it didn't happen often, and it definitely wasn't something she'd ever had to deal with, but every once in a while you would hear about someone going awol and running off with a mortal. Though usually by the time the stories reached her they were nothing more than a whispered rumor, most of them knew not to pay much mind to the tall tales. Any type of fornication with mortals outside of what they were assigned to do as guides was strictly forbidden, so much so that not even Lorne knew what happened to the poor souls who chose to cross the powers, as far as anyone could tell they just disappeared never to be heard from again.

Of course she didn't think they were having problems anywhere near that deep, Angel was just intoxicated and everything he'd learned over the last several hours would be a lot for any human to handle. No matter how open minded they seemed to be, there was always an adjustment period when new charges were assigned. He was just curious, and she couldn't exactly fault him for that, though she did hope they were able to push past this stage sooner rather than later. He wasn't helping either of them with the way he brushed off nearly every girl who tried to approach him.

ButImBroken:

This story is cowritten with Scribes1015!

"Burning down Neverland, scatter the ashes, white lines, black tar, the matches. Is this another death by misadventure? Tell me what you got, what you really got, hey, hey..."