Buffy looked at her reflection in the mirror. She was too thin. Emaciated to a degree, though she’d been eating like a horse. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her hair was stringy. Angel hadn’t touched her in almost two days. It didn’t sound like that long of a time, but her skin felt coarse to her own hand. Unloved, somehow. She needed to remember what his hands felt like. What his lips felt like when they whispered ‘I love you’ into her ear. She looked down at her belly, and wanted to hate her baby. She wanted to for all the right reasons, and yet, she could not. Irene was her own. Her flesh and blood and Angel’s. She couldn’t hate her. Whatever was happening now was her own fault, not her unborn baby’s. She would have to deal with it on her own.

Angel was gone. She waited after he left, waited for the clunking of heavy boots and the careful slide of another body into the bed. But it never happened. She didn’t worry much; it would do no good. Angel had his own ways, and if he was feeling anything like she was right now, he’d want to be on the hunt. Killing something with her bare hands certainly did sound appealing to Buffy, but her stomach rumbled and reprimanded her in the same sound. She ’t do anything to hurt Irene.

But her muscles were tense and cramped. She hadn’t done anything in the way of exercise in so long...her skin craved the flow of blood through her veins, the way her muscles demanded use. She punched the wall, a clear hole through, exposing the dry wall and the dark crawl space between her wall and the next.

She cracked her knuckles and flexed her arms, but the tingling feeling wasn’t gone. Instead, it was just that more intense for having had a taste of excitement. Buffy sighed. Wearily, she grabbed a towel and stuffed it roughly in the hole to prevent drafts. It wasn’t pretty, but it would have to do.

She would make a terrible housewife, she thought almost hysterically. She realized she hadn’t slept for almost twenty-four hours now. But she couldn’t settle down, knowing that Angel was out there, and not in here.

She pushed the curtain aside and stared out into L.A.’s unforgiving night.

Angel returned to the hotel, dragging the skinny little demon behind him. The thing squealed and begged pathetically, but he paid it no mind. When it got too annoying, he jerked its arm sharply. The pain caused it to shut up momentarily.

His mind was reeling. So much had happened so quickly. One thing he knew was that he no longer cared about the PtB’s grand plan for the survivors of the human species. His only goal at this point was to save his baby. And Buffy.

A picture blossomed in his mind’s eye. It was Buffy, her golden radiance flowing outward around her body like a halo. Her green eyes seemed like they were reflecting light from the inside, not taking it in from the out. She loved him. She was beautiful, the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen in all his life. Not because of her physical beauty. Because she’d had the love and compassion in her heart to reach out to him when no one else would. She believed in him, believed in his soul when even he had doubts. She’d kept him going when he couldn’t even really believe that he had a soul. He loved her more than anything he could think of. He loved her more than the breath at his lips and the taste of food and the feel of warm sunshine. He missed her. And he needed to be with her now.

He smacked the demon’s head hard against the wall. The whimpering beast finally fell silent, and Angel breathed a silent sigh of relief. Moving quickly, he tied up the demon’s spindly hands and legs with a length of twine he found under the main desk in the lobby. He left the wretched demon collapsed in the hallway, and followed the hall to their room. He opened the door.

Buffy was inside. She sat peacefully at the window, her hands in her lap, staring out at the night. The moonlight hit the raised contours of her face and body, highlighting her stunning features in pale silver. She looked almost serene.

“Buffy,” Angel whispered in a low growl. She turned her head and jumped slightly. Her hands were already balled into fists before she realized who it was.

“Sorry,” she said. “Not used to being snuck up on. To my recollection, you’re still the only person who can consistently surprise me. I guess I should really start expecting it.”

She rose to her feet and walked over to where he stood. “Did you have any luck with whatever it is you were looking for? Did you get to kill anything?”

“Yes to both questions,” he said. Carefully, he tangled his hand in her hair.

“Angel,” she whispered, in a tone of warning. Irene had not complained yet, but they weren’t actually touching yet, either. “You know what’s gonna happen if...”

“I know. And just...let me try something.” He touched her cheek with his hand. A hot flash of pain blossomed in his head. He bit his tongue and ignored it. Slowly, the pain began to fade when Irene realized that Angel was determined to do this. It obviously took a substantial amount of power to send out pain like that, and Angel was grateful for it. He looked into Buffy’s eyes, and noticed that she was uncomfortable.

“Is she still hurting you?” she asked. She was almost afraid of what the answer would be.

Angel smiled slowly and carefully. “No. She’s left me alone.” He kissed the top of her head. “I think she knows how much I love you, and that I’m not going to let a little headache deter me from being with you.”

Buffy nodded. Her eyes felt suddenly moist and tearful. Her mind added at least for now to his statement. She wiped her nose surreptitiously and tilted her head up to kiss him. He did not disappoint her, and their lips met in sad passion. Denied for so long, it almost seemed as if they’d forgotten how to love simply. Everything they’d ever done had been fated to doom, every move they’d ever made together had been numbered. It was no way to live, and no way to love. And yet, somehow they’d held together, through all those years.

But there was no one here now, no one to tell them that they could or could not, that they should or should not. Buffy threw caution to the wind and let Angel hold her. Finally. They were together, and there was no one else in the room.

Tears leaked from her eyes and she remembered all the bad times. All the horrible times, the times they’d fought, when they’d been apart. There was so much pain in her, pain she’d thought gone. But there it was again. A deep well full of pain, and no bottom in sight.

She let go of her control and let her feel it. How could this happiness they’d found ever last? He kissed her, again and again, his lips finding every inch of pain and kissing it raw, before leaving it to start on another spot. Her neck was sore and the blood rushed close to the surface of her skin. But he didn’t bite her. He didn’t ravage her like she knew he wanted to.

Her hands kneaded his broad shoulders, and then dropped down to his hips and ass. She loved feeling every inch of him, all the hard, cold muscle that warmed under her touch. She loved that she could do this to him, that his body responded to her like this. It reminded her that she was a real person, and that she had a real effect on the world around her. And him. It made her breath catch when she realized how much influence she had on him. And he, her.

He wrapped her up in muscle-bound arms that felt like an angel’s wings, and he took her to bed. When she looked into his eyes, the darkness of his widened pupils drew her in until she was spinning through a pool of onyx. She clutched his shoulders to anchor herself. His skin was soft, and she felt the shoulder blades beneath the surface. She couldn’t see it, but she knew there was a tattoo there. He claimed it was a griffin, but she saw it as a bird of some kind. Perhaps a dove.

He nuzzled her neck and face, her breasts and belly, until she could no longer differentiate between his human and demon face. The speed of his movement kept her off-balance, and she felt like the room was spinning. There was a soft, warm, throbbing in her stomach, like Irene was pressing a tiny hand or foot against her organic confines.

Buffy cried out, and the sharp feel of cold air in her lungs reminded her that this was real. A new kind of reality. She thought of her old life, her old world. The way the trees there had seen years and years of life, the way people could trace their ancestry back to Neanderthals. And then she thought of this world. Bright and shiny and new. Fire cleansed the world of its history. This generation, the people who lived, they were like a thousand Adam and Eves. The only ancestry that mattered to them was their tie with God. The only trees here were shoots and saplings, green with youth.

The old world was gone.

She wasn’t. And Angel, the oldest thing on the planet, wasn’t either. They were here, and they were together. The fire had burned their bridges to the past, and all the emotional baggage they’d dealt with before was gone. Even Angel had sensed it, stopped brooding so much about his past deeds. They were part of the old world, and they were inconsequential now. It was best, she had to admit to herself, that the old world was forgotten completely.

Buffy was warm because Angel’s rough hands were bringing her circulation faster and faster. His looming body, which would seem by the laws of logic to be clumsy, moved over her gracefully. His body brought hers to life, which was strange, since it was supposed to be the other way around.

She opened her mouth to breathe, and his mouth covered hers, giving her mouth to mouth in a sense, surrendering the air he had warmed for her in his lungs. The oxygen she ended up breathing was warm and felt like him.

She felt a rumbling in her womb, and she knew that there would be hell to pay for this come morning. But morning was a long way off, and now was too important to think about anything else.

Buffy was up first thing in the morning, puking her guts out. Irene kicked her viciously in the stomach. It had turned out that there were limits to her baby’s power, but not enough of them. Last night Irene had been willing to let her parents have a little freedom, even if she had not appreciated it. But now, her strength was back up and she was raising hell again.

Angel came in and stroked her back reassuringly. “When you’re finished, I have something I need to show you.”

She gave him a playfully dirty look, but that was cut short by another upheaval from her belly. Angel took at as a yes, and left.

He had taken further measures to procure the demon almost immediately after his and Buffy’s nighttime tryst. To his pleasant surprise, the beast had remained prone and unmoving. Unconscious, as far as he could tell. Though it could just be faking to avoid another blow to the head.

Either way, Angel took maximum precaution to keep it secured. He checked the bonds about its hands and feet, and then dragged it into a vacant hotel room, and locked it in the bathroom, tied to the sink plumbing.

He went now to check on it, having full confidence that not only would it be there, but it would be ready to talk after a long night of cold linoleum and even colder fear. Angel intended to see that before the morning was out, he would know everything this creature knew, and then some.

When he got there, Matt was standing in front of the door. Not quite guarding it, but not hiding the fact that he knew something was in there. As Angel approached, his accusing brown eyes rose to lock Angel’s in a stare of hatred and disapproval. Matt wanted to know what was so important in that room, and wanted it badly. Angel felt the cold brass of the key in his pocket, and knew that Matt was just going to have to go on being curious. He bypassed the room in favor of breakfast.

Hunger gnawed at his entrails, and he prowled through the hotel, keeping clear of sunny patches. He didn’t know what he was going to do. The starvation was wearing on him, and his wounds weren’t healing well. He was getting close to collapse, and he knew it. He might not be able to hold himself until dark, and it didn’t look like there were any handy rats hanging around. Absentmindedly, he suckled the wound on his arm, which was covered only with thin blood clots. The hungrier he got, the longer it would take for him to heal.

His own blood did not sate his hunger, but there was no sense in wasting it. Every drop counted at this point. He growled in frustration. There had to be something! He returned to the room where the demon was kept, not bothering to distract Matt, who was still waiting patiently in front of the door. He shoved the protesting man out of the way and unlocked the door. It closed behind him with a satisfactory snick.

The demon was curled up on the bed, in a small ball that resembled the fetal position. Angel had no time for games. He lifted the demon by the folds of skin on the back of its neck. The stretched skin revealed great blue blood vessels pumping away beneath it.

Angel hesitated only a moment.

He bit in at the juncture of neck and shoulder, and the demon squealed something terrible. Angel didn’t much care. The blood was thick, and blue, and slightly viscous, but it was good enough for Angel.

It didn’t take much to bring him back to his senses. He released the demon and let it flop down on the bed. He wiped his mouth, and licked his fingers. He was still starving, but some modicum of sense had returned to him. The demon had served his immediate need, but as a downside, the creature would be weak for the next few days. The blood loss had knocked the demon into unconsciousness, which was unfortunate, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied by a few quick slaps or a bucket of cold water.

Angel left the room to retrieve Buffy.