I was ecstatic that James was allowing me to give him his soul back. I prepared for days. Father blessed it immediately, but warning me that James's new soul mustn't get in the way of protecting me or I'd be in charge of getting rid of it. I agreed and Father got me all of my supplies and cleared the house for us, cleaned it out so that we could have our privacy while we were doing our ritual.
"Bunny, I know very well that I do not have to take my shirt off for this!"
"It's my spell, Jamesy. My ritual. And I want you to take your shirt off for it. This is a very serious ritual."
"You just want me to take my shirt off. And you've been talking to far too many trashy demons from the South."
"Fine. Don't take your shirt off. But do get inside the circle of candles. And be very careful not to burn yourself."
He rolled his eyes and sat across from me in the circle. He asked, "We have to do all this? I've been watching you return souls since 1863 and you've never done this before."
"Yes, dear. Because before I was cursing people. Now, I am gifting you. I'm easing the pain. This is a gift of love, not a tool of vengeance."
"So you're making it to where we can have sex?"
"Yes, a lot of sex. Now, hush. This takes a lot of focus."
The ritual was fairly easy. It took a deep concentration and a lot of chanting, on my side and on James's, but it worked. And, when it did, I thought I was going to die. I could tell the second the soul filtered back into his immortal body. He was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him and his body bowed backwards. He nearly broke himself in half. His head almost touched the ground.
"James!" I extinguished the candles with a wind and jumped up quickly to grab him, to pull him back upwards to face me. His face was contorted in agony and his mouth was twisted in a silent scream. "James! It's okay. It's okay. I've got you. It's okay."
"God, Fawn. It hurts. I've done so much." Tears streaked his face and he grabbed me tight, yanking me to his body so he could bury his face in my chest. "I've hurt so many people."
"But you've never hurt me. And you'll never hurt people again. Come on, sweetheart. We're going to the bedroom."
I stood up and reached down to grasp his wrists and pull him up. I looped one of his arms around my shoulder and put mine around his waist so I could support him while he went through the pain of the soul taking root in his body. I half dragged him, half helped him limp back into our bedroom, where I put him on the bed and let him curl into my body so he could sob and I could run my fingers through his hair, trying to calm him. Even though my heart was pounding in my throat. "James, sweetest, my dearest, my knight. Everything is okay. I can take it back if it hurts too bad."
"Don't you dare take it back," he growled through gritted teeth. His fingers dug into my rib cage in his attempt to hold me as tightly as possible and I could feel the bruises forming. But I didn't say anything. I let him hold me that tight so he could squeeze out the pain, so he could pass it on to somebody else. "I can do this. I can live through this. The guilt comes first."
I kissed his forehead and let him wrap tighter around me. He wracked with the sobs and shook with the agony, and I let him until he had completely ran through his afterlife. Until he'd remembered every single mistake he'd made. Until he'd remembered every person he'd hurt. Then, the second aspect of having a soul settled over him. He raised his head up and stared at me, studying me slowly. He rolled over so that he was straddling me and his hands began tracing through my hair, over my face, across my shoulders.
"You're the most beautiful woman in eternity. I love you. I love you and it doesn't hurt to love you." His voice was incredulous, admiring, worshipping. "I love you."
"I love you," I replied, thankful for the loss of the grip he'd had on my waist. I could feel the bruises on my rib cage.
"I love you so much."
"And I love you. So much. I've been waiting a millennia for you. Only you. My white knight."
"My princess."
"You gave him back his soul and he accepted it happily?"
"He wanted his soul back."
"She gave me my damn humanity back," James spat out. "She gave me relief from loving her. I was burning alive every single day I was with her, and when she made me whole again, I burned in a different way. I burned for her. She was mine. And I was fully hers. For the first time in the long time we'd been together, I was hers."
"So you ran out and got married?"
"No, we've only been married since 1961. The year the Vietnam War started. But we started planning in 1959."
"Took her three damn years for us to get married. I wanted her to marry me straight away. She and her Father wanted to plan an extravagant, beautiful wedding. It was worth it though. Only plan to get married one time in my damn afterlife and she wanted to do it right."
"How did you get married? I just don't get it." Buffy sputtered.
"Her Father wanted to marry her but she wanted him to walk her down the aisle and we wanted a mix of human wedding ceremony and demon ceremony, so that we could celebrate both of our cultures. So we had a demon marry us officially at sunset. There were 300 guests in attendance. Then, only 100 of them were invited to the feast and the ball afterwards. We were seen off in a limo and the neighbors called us communists. It was nice."
"It was beautiful."
"Best day of my life."
"See, Buff, I told you you'd like their story," Angel teased.
"I want to hear about the wedding. Proposal and everything," Buffy demanded to the amusement of Angel.
"Your turn, sweetheart," Fawn commanded from her seat on James's lap.
"Fine, fine. Hand me my drink first, princess."