Home At Last

By Joanne Robitaille

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything in this story except for what happens after Angel plops down out of Hell.
Author’s Note: I’ll let you know right now that this has been bugging me since the first time that I saw Beauty and the Beasts. Basically, in my world, Buffy would have noticed that the building was shaking and even if she didn’t notice that, you’d think that she’d notice that bright flash of light.



“Goodbye,” Buffy whispered as she set the ring down on the cement floor of the mansion. It wasn’t until she actually set the ring down on the floor that she realized Angel was never coming back. How could he? She had sent him to Hell and he wasn’t going to come back. She had to move on with her life.

Walking away after that was probably the hardest thing that she had ever had to do in her entire life. She was walking away from Angel. Her Angel. She was the one who had banished him to that unbearable fate and now she was going to forget all about him. How unfair was that. Angel didn’t deserve that, but there was nothing else that she could do. She couldn’t mourn him for the rest of her life no matter how much she wanted to. Angel would want her to get on with her life.

Buffy was about halfway to the door when she realized that something was wrong. At first she thought that it was simply a minor earthquake- there were plenty of them in California. When the rocking became more intense, Buffy reached towards the wall in order to steady herself. She turned her head in the direction of the living room just in time to see what happened next. Buffy was able to focus in on the beam of light hitting the small silver ring that she had left behind just seconds before a blinding flash of light illuminated the entire room. What the Slayer saw next shocked her even more. A body. A naked body falling from the ceiling and landing hard on the ground. Whoever it was lay there shaking for a few moments before struggling to lift their head. As soon as Buffy caught sight of the face in the moonlight, she felt as though her heart had stopped.

Angel.

Somehow, he had come back and was now lying there on the floor of the mansion shivering with cold even though he was covered with a fine sheen of sweat. His eyes met hers for a few seconds before his head flopped back down onto the ground and his body became perfectly still.

It took Buffy a few moments to process all of this. Angel was back. Somehow he had come back from Hell and was now lying right where she had left the ring that he had given her for her birthday. Buffy didn’t really care how or why he was back, all that mattered was that he was back. Her date with Scott was completely forgotten as she looked at her lover. She quickly sprinted in his direction and knelt down beside his still form.

When she reached him, Buffy saw that he wasn’t asleep like she had thought him to be. His eyes were opened slightly and she could see that he was looking at her. Angel opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no sound came out. He tried to lift his head again, only that didn’t seem to be working either. Still not able to find her voice, Buffy reached over and placed her hand on Angel’s back. As soon as she touched him, Angel cringed and started to pull back.

“Shhh. It’s all right, Angel. You’re home now,” Buffy whispered as she tried it again. This time Angel didn’t move. He lay perfectly still, his eyes clamped shut as though expecting some kind of pain. That hurt Buffy almost as much as the look on his face when she had sent him to Hell. That was all it took for Buffy to burst into tears. She leaned over and covered Angel’s chest and head with her own, feebly trying to protect him from the rest of the world. She didn’t even want to think about what the others would say. Xander and Giles would probably want to kill him.

This time, Angel didn’t try to pull away from Buffy’s touch. There was something familiar about her touch. His ravaged mind couldn’t process what it was exactly, but he knew that he needed her there. Her knew that nothing could hurt him if she was there to protect him. And she would protect him. He was sure of that.

The two of them stayed like that for the longest time. The Slayer protecting her vampire lover. Had anyone come in, they would have seen how truly poetic it. The star-crossed lovers lying where they had both lost and found each other once again. But what they didn’t know was that someone was there. A certain red-haired hacker stood just outside the door to the atrium smiling at her friends. Behind her, an aging librarian closed the weathered tome that he held in his hands. He knew that he could give his Slayer no greater gift than the man that she loved more than her own life.

The End

I know that Willow and Giles had nothing to do with Angel coming back, but wouldn’t it have been so much nicer if they had.