This author's note is devoted to the anonymous reviewers for being so awesome. I'd hug you if I knew who and where you were. And if it wouldn't come across as really creepy.

The next morning, Buffy and Willow were sitting side-by-side on the table in the library, arms crossed and faces wearing matching expressions of thinly veiled anger as they watched the door and waited. Buffy could barely form coherent thoughts, but Willow's mind was racing. She couldn't believe that her lifelong best friend, the boy she'd been kissing behind Oz's back, could have done something so despicable without acting like a single thing was different. For seven months! And he'd still had the nerve to chastise Buffy for mourning so long! Well, he was done dancing on Angel's proverbial grave, as far as Willow was concerned. Either that, or he was going to find himself with two best friends fewer than he'd had the day before.

Giles could see the two girls sitting there from where he sat in his office. Even though they hadn't told him what this was about, he felt suddenly glad, given their forbidding expressions and postures, that he was not the person whose arrival they awaited. And sure enough, utterly oblivious to the storm that lay before him, that person strolled into the library a few minutes later.

Xander caught sight of Buffy and Willow at once, but didn't register their anger, which was no longer veiled, thinly or otherwise, and walked towards them. "How're my girls?" he asked. His carefree grin faltered when their only reply was to glare daggers at him. "Uh," he said, trying to sound humorous, "what did I do?"

"Gee, let's think. How about not telling Buffy I was going to restore Angel's soul," said Willow coldly. Her eyes filled with tears of hurt in spite of her determination to only show anger. "How could you, Xander?"

Xander said nothing, merely staring from one to the other with the unmistakable air of someone who had just been cornered without having seen it coming.

"I had to send the man I love to Hell," said Buffy through clenched teeth. "Not Angelus; Angel. And I might not have had to if I'd known Willow was about to bring him back."

Still glaring at him, they both hopped down from the table and walked past him and out of the library. Xander remained frozen to the spot, as dazed as if their words had bashed him in the face.

Giles emerged from his office, polishing his glasses on a handkerchief. After he put them carefully back on, it was still a full minute before anything else happened.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"You can't tell me you didn't want him dead after what he did to Miss Calendar. After what he did to you."

"That is neither here nor there," said Giles. "The soul had nothing to do with any of that, Xander. The soul was innocent. Was your dislike of Angel worth condemning him to Hell and putting Buffy through not only the pain of losing him, but the guilt of having to send him there?"

Xander looked down. It had seemed a simple and justified lie to tell at the time, and he hadn't really given it much thought since he'd told it. With Buffy and Willow's expressions of betrayal and disgust burned into his eyes and the calm rebuke of the one man with more reason to hate Angel than any of them ringing in his ears, however, he suddenly felt sickened by what he had done.

"I screwed up really bad, Giles."

"I'm glad you're aware of that."

[o]

Neither Buffy nor Willow spoke to Xander at all for the rest of the day, but as he still didn't know what to say to them, he didn't make much of an effort to change this, and it wasn't a very pleasant day for any of them. Even Willow's happiness when Oz approached her after school to say he wanted to give their relationship another shot was slightly marred by the rift with Xander.

[o]

That evening, noticing how out-of-spirits her daughter seemed to be, Joyce suggested that they go pick out a Christmas tree. Since Buffy had already invited Faith to spend Christmas Eve with them, she called her up and asked her if she wanted to help them with the tree selection too—though mostly because if Faith was there, it would be harder for her mom to ask her what was wrong. Faith accepted, stating bluntly that she had nothing better to do, and the three of them were soon wandering the tree lot.

"Do you wanna get one with snow on it?" asked Joyce, looking at a group of flocked trees. "It'd be very Christmassy."

"I think those are just for display," said Buffy in a passive-aggressive rejection of the trees. Faith looked around, obviously bored.

"Hey, Mom?" asked Buffy after a few more minutes spent roving amongst the trees. "Do you think we should invite Giles over for Christmas Eve too? I mean, he doesn't have any fam—"

"No, I'm sure he's fine," Joyce interrupted.

"We could ask him and see," said Buffy hopefully. She didn't like the thought of Giles spending Christmas alone at his apartment.

"He doesn't want to spend Christmas Eve with a bunch of girls," said Joyce repressively. She dithered awkwardly for a moment, before suggesting that they split up and walking hastily away through the trees.

"What was that about?" asked Faith.

"No idea," said Buffy. "Mom and Giles have been really wiggy about each other for a while."

"Think they're screwing?"

Buffy gagged. "Ugh. You're paying for all of the hours of therapy I'm gonna need now," she said reproachfully.

"Sorry," said Faith with a shrug.

"Maybe we should split up too," Buffy suggested, still shuddering.

"Whatevs," said Faith, shrugging again. They went off in different directions.

Buffy reached out her hand idly to touch the rough branches as she walked, but she wasn't really paying attention to the trees. What happened with Xander had driven everything else from her mind, including what she'd seen the previous night. She had no idea what it meant. Had he been a hallucination, or a ghost? Spike had said he could tell that Angel was still alive, and that did make sense. After all, swords through the torso didn't kill vampires. She'd sent him to Hell, but she hadn't killed him. Not that it made her feel any better. But if he was still alive, that made the possibility that she'd seen his ghost a lot less possible.

A dark shadow moved a little way in front of her, and she looked up. Her brow furrowed and her pace quickened. After she rounded the next cluster of trees, there he was again. "Angel?" He didn't turn, but kept walking. Buffy ran after him and reached out to grab his arm, but her hand went right through him. "What?" she said, bewildered. She turned to look at him again, but he had vanished. Well, there was more evidence towards the hallucination theory. "What's happening to me?" she asked the unseasonably warm night.

[o]

Faith walked between the trees without interest—at least until she came to several that were shriveled and brown. Her eyes narrowed.

"Bunch of them up and died on us," said the tree merchant, who had just popped out of nowhere. "Don't know why," he went on. "If you want one, I can make you a hell of a deal."

"Uh, no, I'm just here with a friend," said Faith.

"Girls, come here!" came Joyce's voice from another part of the lot. "This one's perfect!" Faith left the merchant right as he was beginning a new angle on his sales pitch. On the way over to Joyce, she ran into Buffy, who was white as a sheet.

"Hey, what's up?" she asked.

"I keep seeing him," said Buffy, sounding hysterical.

"Who?"

"Angel."

Joyce came into view then, calling for them again, but she hadn't seen them yet. Buffy shook herself and looked at Faith imploringly. "Don't say anything. She doesn't know."

"Yeah, sure," said Faith, looking concerned. "No problem."

"Thanks."

"You talked to Giles about this yet?"

"No. I will, though."

[o]

Yellow eyes watched Joyce from several trees away. The vampire they belonged to began to follow her, but stopped when she met up with two young women, one blonde and the other brunette. He snarled to be deprived of his prey, but as his eyes remained on the group of women, and a plan involving much more than a simple meal occurred to him. From the way the first woman interacted with the blonde, he could tell that they were mother and daughter. Oh, yes, this was going to be fun.

A familiar sharp pain attacked his head, and he slunk away, fumbling in his pockets for his pills. Once the pain had subsided to a dull ache, he followed the women from a distance as they left the lot with an exceptionally well-proportioned tree.

[o]

"I'll understand if this is something you'd rather not discuss," said Wesley, but no matter how hard he'd tried to keep the hopeful curiosity from his voice, Angel still heard it.

"It's okay, Wes," he said.

"Alright, then," said Wesley, his eyes lighting up eagerly. "What happened with the girl you were to protect?"

Angel gave a small snort that could either have been ironic or amused. "I fell in love with her."

"Oh?" said Wesley. Could this girl be the one to whom the ring had belonged? Angel hadn't mentioned anyone else who could have been its owner so far, and they were rapidly running out of backstory in which she could exist.

"I wasn't supposed to, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. And it wasn't long after we actually met before it wasn't just me anymore."

"She fell in love with you in return?" asked Wesley. Angel nodded. "Did she know what you are?"

"Not at first. When she did find out, she didn't take it well. And Darla wasn't making matters any easier."

"Your sire?"

"Yeah. But I told her about the curse, and she trusted me. Darla came in and tried to kill her, but I staked her before she could do it."

"You killed your sire?" As Wesley understood it, such an act was quite a taboo among vampires.

"I wasn't going to let anything hurt her. I had to choose between her and Darla, and it was an easy choice. After that, I tried to stay away from her." He smiled slightly. "I only lasted a couple of months. She didn't think too much of my attempt at noble aloofness, which was pretty pathetic anyway. Even as long as I've lived, love was still new to me, and I was powerless to resist. More months went by and we got closer and closer. She loved me even though she knew about my past. None of it mattered to her, not even for a second. I'd never been happier in my life." The muscles in his jaw tightened. "But it was my happiness that was our undoing."

Points to the first one who can identify the vampire chasing Buffy and Joyce. Also, I know a lot of you were probably expecting Buffy to hit Xander or something, and I definitely considered it, but this is what the characters gave me, and I think the cold disgust and/or hurt of his two best friends and then them shunning him, plus Giles adding his own helping of guilt to it, was much more effective at getting Xander to feel remorse.