The phone lay in Buffy's hand, a suddenly foreign alien device in her palm. She'd probably been staring at it for too long at this point, like when a word is said too much it becomes something strange and unusual for the tongue. Just phone him, a voice in her head said.

"Just do it." Buffy murmured. She unlocked her phone and clicked on Angel's name. It rang. Once. Twice.

"Buffy?" Angel answered, with perhaps 30% 'hey, what are you doing calling me?!' and 70% 'what's wrong, is it the apocalypse again'.

"Hey Angel." Buffy said awkwardly, feeling her body weight shift.

"Don't tell me. You died and came back again?" Angel said dryly, with a humour in his voice only Buffy and his friends could detect.

"Sure did. But I'm assured I die twice and I get the third for free." Buffy quipped.

"Well that's something." Angel smiled. "So, how are you? Are you alright?"

"Me? Yeah, absolutely. Better than alright. I'm good. Great, even. A bundle of fineness with a side of peachy keen." Buffy knew she was rambling, but it seemed easier to buy time than say what she called to say.

"Uh huh." Angel replied slowly. "So it's not good, then?"

Buffy exhaled. "No, it is." Buffy smiled. "I'm just not sure you're gonna want to hear it."

"Well that's even worse." Angel exhaled, she could picture him pinching the bridge of his nose. A moment of silence went by, when out of the nowhere, Angel asked, "Is it Spike?"

Buffy gritted her teeth. He knew. Another moment of silence. "Yes." Angel said nothing, for so long that Buffy checked to make sure the call hadn't dropped. "You're kinda wishing I'd told you I'd died again now, aren't you?" Buffy winced at the silence at the other end of the phone.

"I'm just… thrown." Angel responded, sitting down. "Buffy, of all the…"

"Angel, I get this is hard for you to grasp. I really do. But you worked with him. You lived with him. You know he's a different man now."

"Ha." Angel let a small laugh escape his lips. "His soul doesn't make him any less infuriating."

Buffy raised her eyebrow in agreement. "Well, you've got me there."

"At least when he was evil, there was always the option to stake him." Angel sighed, realising he'd completely missed his chance there.

"No argument from me." Buffy rolled her eyes; three, four years ago she would never in a million years imagined that she would be here, choosing Spike. If she had any choice in it at all, she would've chosen differently. She once chose Angel, but see how that worked out. But now… now she just couldn't deny it anymore, didn't want to. Brain, heart, soul, whatever you wanted to call it, it all chose Spike. "I'm sorry. I wish I could give you a reason for this, something to tell you to make this make sense. But it doesn't, it may never make any kind of sense. It's probably the absolute craziest thing I could've landed on. But it doesn't matter that I didn't choose it, this is where I am. And… Spike's the it for me."

Angel exhaled. "I get it. You can't help who you fall for, and stay fallen for."

Buffy nodded, sitting down on her bed. Her room in New Orleans was nothing like her bedroom in Sunnydale; this was an adult's bedroom, shaded colours, dark wood doors and furniture, a bed of fresh white linen. "Can I ask you what's probably a very personal question?" Angel asked.

"Shoot." Buffy said.

"You don't want kids?" Angel asked her quietly.

Buffy took a beat to let the question sink in. She heard it, she'd thought about this, but she wasn't ready for that question from Angel of all people. "I want him more." She answered honestly. Angel remained quiet. Five years ago, they'd had this conversation but it was Angel Buffy couldn't live without, and he'd made that decision for her. Now he wondered what might have happened if he hadn't.

"Look Angel, I appreciate you care about me, and I'll always care about you. But I'm an adult now, and Spike's not pulling away. I know you two have your… issues, but…"

"You love him." Angel finished for her.

"I do. And I will do anything to keep him." Buffy stated. "Including have this mega awkward conversation with you."

Angel scoffed. "Yah, I'm getting that." Buffy smiled.

"I haven't spoken to him yet. I haven't even seen him since… God, I'm not even sure how long ago Sunnydale was. I'm not even sure if he'll see me." Buffy admitted.

"He'll see you. No one's such a moron that they'd turn down Buffy Summers, not even Spike." Angel said, somewhat sadly. "I guess this is you, done baking, huh?"

"Yeah." Buffy said. "This is it."

"Then I wish you nothing but happiness, Buffy." Angel said.

"Thank you Angel. It means a lot." Buffy said.

"Take care of yourself." Angel said, with a finality that made Buffy really believe she may never talk to him again.

"You too." She said sadly, and with that, they hung up.

She took a deep breath in, and exhaled slowly. She did it. She closed the door forever on Angel. For all the time she didn't give him - them - closure once and for all, that was time that Spike would think she'd left the door open for Angel, time that she would spend having to try to convince Spike it was him she wanted. She wasn't an idiot; she knew Spike would always feel threatened by Angel if she didn't do something to show she was - forgive the pun - dead set on Spike. She still wasn't so sure he'd even talk to her.

Spike had died, and it devastated her. She didn't even really realise that until weeks, months, after it had happened. Sunnydale disappeared, and for some reason it didn't phase her. Anya and countless potentials-come-slayers had died in the battle. Her entire life changed, as now there were slayers who could do the job she had been doing since she was 15 years old. And she revelled in it. She took Dawn and they travelled, around the US, around Europe, and it was good. Simple. A high. And then she got word from Andrew that Spike was alive. Andrew hadn't even really meant to tell Buffy, it just slipped out in the clumsy way it often does when secrets are protected by Andrew. And she froze. She shook it off. She took a mild interest in public, to her friends, to Dawn. But Spike never reached out. And Buffy was left with this… feeling. This hole of things unfinished. She couldn't sleep. Dawn was on board, she just thought Buffy wanted to party the night away, and Dawn was inexhaustible. The summer before she got Dawn enrolled in high school in New Orleans was wild. They went all over Europe, partied every night; in all honesty, she thought Dawn would exhaust much sooner than she did. But she didn't, though to be fair it was probably because Dawn slept away the days like the dead. But eventually, the insomnia and sleeplessness took hold of Buffy and she started talking to Spike, as if he were there in the room. Asking her how she couldn't reach out to him despite him dying and coming back, for her. She started answering back, that's what pushed Buffy over the edge. That's when she wrote the letter. The letter…

It said all the things she wanted to be true. That she did love him, but she needed to move on, to find happiness outside her slayer life. That even though what they had was real, it was of it's time and place, namely in 2002 at the Hellmouth. She wrote it all in a haze, an insomniac's fevered daydream of things she wished to be true, needed to be true. She couldn't be with a vampire, not again. To say it ended badly was an understatement. It ended in a level of heartbreak she had never felt before or since. When Angel left her, it broke something within her that not even Riley could heal. She overhead Spike say something to Riley once that at the time, she knew wasn't true. But it stuck in her head, grew like a weed, until it took root all on it's own: the girl needs a little monster in her man.

And Spike was a monster. Soul or not, he had things in his past, did things, that could never be undone. When Buffy was younger, before she knew about slayers and demons, she had an idea what her price charming was like. And not only was he not a serial killer, but he also couldn't say he used to be a serial killer. It took a while for Buffy to trust that Spike was a different man now, but it took even longer for her to realise she was a different girl. So much had happened to her since she was that little idealistic girl, and she had come off dirtier, bathed in blood not her own. She was a warrior, she accepted that about herself now. And maybe it was that realisation, that acceptance, that made what Spike said take hold in her mind: she needed a little monster in her man, because Buffy had a darkness within her that was just as much a part of her as the light. Spike always saw the darkness, nurtured it even, at a time when she might have believed that that's all there was. Now, with a soul, Spike understood her in a way no one, not even Angel, ever did, ever could. Spike saw the monster inside and fought back, the way she does, the way everyone does. Buffy was not wholly good or bad, neither was Spike, they never would be. But their demons played together, complimented each other. It took Buffy sending that letter to Spike, and then spending months regretting it, to get to this place of finally accepting her true feelings: she was, and would always be, in love with Spike.

[As Spike would say]: Bugger