"Where is he? He should be here by now! God Wills, what if something happened? I can't loose him! I just got him back! I can't go through that again." Buffy is getting worried. Angel is nowhere to be seen. 'Where the hell is he?'
"Don't worry Buffy, he'll be here." Willow is trying to calm her, but without much luck. It's especially hard because Willow feels the same way. 'Angel wouldn't leave without telling her, would he?'
"What if he doesn't show up? What if he's out there hurt? I can't just sit here and do nothing!" Buffy asks her friend, panicking. About an hour ago she felt a spike of pain from the connection she shared with Angel. She can still feel him, but the connection is weak, like he's been drugged or he's unconscious.
"I'm going to look for him. Call me if he shows up." With that she grabs her purse and jacket and leaves the club.
She follows her connection to Angel, which leads her to Riley's frat house. She becomes even more worried, thinking that Riley's done something to Angel.
She walks in and asks one of the students where Riley is.
"Uh, I think he's helping Professor Walsh with something. You're welcome to stay until he comes back though." He tells her. She thanks him and goes deeper into the house. Of course, Buffy being Buffy, she took that as 'you're welcome to snoop'. Which she did. Snoop I mean.
Her connection with Angel takes her to a mirror in the hall. She taps it, wondering if it's some sort of hidden doorway. It is. She kicks the mirror/door and it shatters. Alarms blare, but she doesn't care, not when Angel's existence is at stake. No pun intended. She grabs the elevator cables and climbs down. When she reaches the elevator at the bottom she kicks in the maintenance hatch, then jumps down into the elevator and pries the doors apart. The room she enters is huge and white, computers lining the walls and a pit in the middle surrounded by a guard rail.
'So this is the secret Initiative base. Pretty much how I expected it to look like. Well actually, I was expecting more soldiers.' As she thinks that twenty soldiers appear with guns pointed at her.
"Good, you're here. I wasn't all that keen on getting lost in this place. Now, I'd like you to take me to Angel, now if you can. I need to know how much I have to kill you." She greets them with a smile.
"We don't take orders from HSTs." The leader of the group responds, keeping his gun pointed at her.
"Aww... Isn't that cute. You have a nickname for the forces if darkness. Look, not to be a party pooper, but I'm 100% human. Go ahead, check your fancy little toys. Tell me I'm wrong." She spreads out her arms and gestures for them to go ahead.
A few of the soldiers pull out their devices, visibly relaxing when the see the readings. She was human. Pure stupidity on their part.
"We don't know who this 'Angel' person is, but as an intruder, we'll have to take you to Walsh." The leader tells her once they're sure she's human.
"Oooh! I've always wanted to say this! Take me to your leader!" She tells them, grinning. Two soldiers grab her arms and start to 'escort' her to Walsh. As they walk she can feel her connection to Angel growing stronger. It dawns on her that wherever Walsh is, Angel is with her.
'I'm coming Angel. Don't worry.' She thinks.
A loud howl of pain echoes throughout the compound. Buffy's knees buckle at the pure sound of pain, knowing that it came from Angel.
"Angel! What are they doing to you?" Buffy gasps from her position on the floor.
"Miss? Are you okay? It's only a few more doors down." A soldier informs her, pointing to a door down the hall.
"If you've hurt him I will personally rip every single one of you into so many bits, they'll be finding you for years." Buffy growls, no longer feigning nice. The soldiers help her stand and they lead her to a door marked 321. They enter and the first thing Buffy sees is Angel, behind a window, on the floor, bleeding profusely. She grabs the first person she can get her hands on and throws them against the wall.
"What the hellhave you done to him?!" She growls, rage coloring her vision red.
"Buffy? You actually know this guy?" Riley exclaims for his position pinned to the wall.
"Riley. How did I know you would be behind this?" Buffy asks rhetorically.
"You haven't answered my question." He reminds her.
"Yes and you haven't answered mine." She reminds him, tightening her hold on him. "And quite frankly you're not in a position to be asking questions. Now, what did you do to Angel?" She demands again.
"Hostile 53 is a unique specimen. We wanted to test his healing and stamina. See the extent of the abuse he could withstand. Then we were going to test his mental capacities. See how much mental abuse he could take. All in the name of science and the greater good." Professor Walsh replies, in her clinical manner. Buffy drops Riley and spins to face Prof. Walsh.
"You did what?" She growls, narrowing her eyes at the older woman.
"In lay men's terms we tortured him." She replies. Buffy stalks towards Walsh.
"You're lucky I have a strict 'no killing humans' rule. Though I'm thinking its more of a suggestion right now." She threatens the woman. Fear flashes in Walsh's eyes briefly before it's hidden behind a cold mask.
"Buffy." It was so quiet that the only way they could have heard it was through it microphone planted in the room. Buffy rushes over to the window and crouches, pressing her hand against it.
"Angel. I'm so sorry. I'll get you out, don't worry. I love you." She whispers against the glass, load enough for him to hear her.
"You love him? God, that's disgusting!" Riley sneers at her. She turns her head and rises to her feet, pining him with a glare.
"Oh and being addicted to vampire bites isn't?" She snaps at him, no longer caring if his secret gets out.
"Yeah, like you're any better. Don't bother lying, I've seen your scar." Riley snaps back. Buffy rushes him and pins him back against the wall, crowding into his space.
"Don't talk about things you don't understand, boy. I know what I was doing, I was saving Angel's life." She growls.
"That's what he wanted you to think, he was just playing you! All he wanted was your blood! I bet he left after you gave it to him, didn't he? He's a vampire, they're all the same!" Buffy hits the wall next to his head, making a fist sized dent in the concrete.
"Don't you dare talk about Angel like that." She growls, her voice icy cold. She turns her head and addresses Walsh. "Do you know what a Slayer is? Ask one of your precious 'HSTs'. See what their reaction is. Go on, do it!"
Walsh tells three of her men to ask three different HSTs. When they return, it's with the same story, whether it was a vampire, demon, or otherwise. The HST crawled away into the corner and begged them not to bring in the Slayer. They would plead for their lives, asking them not to bring in the Slayer.
"That's me. The Slayer. The thing the monsters have nightmares about. And that's just my job. Now imagine what I would do to someone that's hurting the man I love. The last time, I burned down their hideout around them, and I was in a hurry. Let me make it very clear to you, what I would do to you would make even Angelus, the Scourge of Europe, cower in fear. He taught me a lot in his brief stay in Sunnydale, but the rest I picked up on my own. I know exactly what buttons to push to cause the most damage. Now, I'm going to tell you one last time, and then I'm going to get angry. Release. Angel. Now." She swings her arm and releases Riley, sending him crashing into Walsh. The remaining soldiers quickly go about unlocking the door to Angel's room. Buffy rushes in once the door is unlocked and picks him up, allowing him to lean on her.
"Now, we're going to leave. And when I come back in two weeks, I expect you to be gone. If you're not, then God help you. The demons you're holding should be dead or released, preferably dead. Leave whatever werewolves you have, if you have any, alive and in the frat house with some clothes. If you leave during the full moon, or the two nights surrounding it, leave them in cages. I suggest you follow these instructions very carefully, you really don't want to find out what happens if you don't." She growls. With that Buffy carries Angel out of the Initiative and takes him back to her house.
The entire gang is gathered in her living room when she opens the door.
"Oh my Goddess! What happened?" Willow asks, horrified at the sight of Angel practically being carried by an exhausted looking Buffy.
"The Initiative." She responds, carrying Angel into the kitchen and hoists him onto the island. He lays down and she begins to unbutton his shirt. She focuses entirely on cleaning Angel's wound without hurting him, grabbing the First Aid kit once it's clean.
"I'm sorry Angel. This is going to hurt." She tells him. She winces when the first stitch makes him gasp in pain, the flesh around the wound still too sore.
'Do you want me to do it? You'll only end up hurting both of you more if you sew like that.' Willow asks. Buffy looks at her friend and nods.
'Thank you Willow.' She thinks as she hands the needle to Willow, gaining a few strange looks from everyone else, and sits on a stool by Angel's head. She take his hand in hers and waits for the next pierce. Angel squeezes her hand every time Willow makes a new stitch.
"Almost done. Just one more stitch and I can tie it off." Willow reassures them. Buffy nods in thanks. Willow finishes and ties off her stitches and steps away, allowing Buffy to apply the bandages over the wound. She helps Angel sit up, being careful not to pull any of the fresh stitches.
"See? What did I say? Big Bad lurking around the corner, waiting to separate me and Angel. And they were human. I mean, Professor Walsh and, and Riley..." Buffy mumbles to herself.
"Shh... It's okay Ionuin. They're gone. It's okay." Angel reassures her, stroking her hand.
"Are you okay Buffy?" Giles asks. Buffy looks at him with her eyebrows raised. "I, I mean, we, we already know about Angel's, uh, condition. I was simply worried about you." He stammers. She smiles at him and shakes her head.
"I'm fine Giles, but thank you." She tells him. "You should all go home and get some rest, we'll be fine." Buffy reassures them.
They all agree and soon it's just Buffy and Angel, Joyce and Dawn were already in bed. Buffy helps Angel up the stairs and into her room. She helps remove his shirt, seeing that he was having trouble getting it off without tugging at his stitches. Buffy grabs her clothes and repeats the process she went through the night before.
'Has it really only been one day? It feels like that was weeks ago.' Buffy thinks as she walks back to her room.
When she re-enters, he's lying on the bed again in the same position he was in the first time she returned from the bathroom. The only difference is that he's awake this time.
"Hey. How are you feeling?" She asks as she slides in next to him.
"As well as I can, considering. I'm sorry, about what happened at the Initiative." He starts. Buffy puts a finger on his lips, cutting him off.
"No. That wasn't your fault. The Initiative is to blame, not you. You have enough things to brood about as it is without adding unnecessary guilt." She reminds him with a small smile. He returns the smile and Buffy cuddles closer to Angel on the bed.
"This is nice. Not the needing to rescue you bit. The cuddling afterward part." Buffy sighs, snuggling into her cradle-robbing-creature-of-the-night-boyfriend's side. They stay like that for a moment, simply enjoying being with each other.
"You know Buffy, there's something you said to me that I never quite understood." Angel says suddenly, breaking the silence.
"What was is?" She asks, tilting her head to look at him.
"You said that when you kissed me you wanted to die." He reminds her. Buffy blushes. It wasn't one of her best communication moments.
"Oh, that. I was trying to say that when you kiss me, I would be okay with dying. 'Cause if I did, then I would die happy, knowing I had the love of my life and he loved me back." She tells him, looking up at him through her eyelashes.
"Well then, I suppose we should make sure you always die happy." He says, smiling down at her. Buffy hums in agreement.
"Hmm... Maybe we should." They only spend a few seconds kissing before Buffy breaks the kiss with a yawn.
"You need to sleep." Angel reminds her.
"Stupid human biology." Buffy mutters to herself. She sighs. "Fine. Goodnight Angel, I love you."
"I love you too Buffy." He replies, kissing her forehead. They fall asleep wrapped in each others arms.
Buffy's last thought before slipping into a deep slumber is 'this is perfect.'