The Road Home Series:
In the Silent Depth
by Gem

Part Four

There's something between us I won't let it go.
Less than nothing, more than the universe can hold.

Cordelia was ready to snap. She had been watching Kate pace back and forth along the same strip of carpet for at least twenty minutes, until Cordelia was certain every last bit of extra carpet fuzz was released into the air and headed directly for her sinuses. She held a tissue up to her nose yet again and blew, peering grimly over the white edge at Kate.

"Either you sit down or I will use Angel's handcuffs and chain you down, and don't think I don't know how," she warned the detective. "Enough with the mini-marathon! We're stuck here and stuck with each other, so we might as well make the best of it."

Kate's sour glance was not promising, but at least she stopped pacing.

"So what do you suggest we do to make the best of it?"

"Well…" Cordelia frantically tried to come up with something to do that didn't involve too much interaction on her part. "I know, you could tell me about how the other cops reacted to the blue blood on the floor at the police station. I bet that was pretty funny." She tossed her tissue in the garbage and summoned her best ‘my, how fascinating!’ face, honed from months of dull dates.

"They thought it was drug related," Kate replied flatly. "How can you just sit here? I'm going crazy not doing anything." Pacing back and forth in a contained area did not count as doing anything, at least not in her book. She needed to be a part of the action, a part of the fight. She had helped Angel before, and he'd helped her. Just because this Buffy girl had arrived on the scene, she was suddenly considered useless.

Cordelia shrugged. "Once a Scooby, always a Scooby. We fight when we can actually help otherwise we research, or carve stakes.” She paused reflectively. “And we have a lot of strange love affairs with people we normally wouldn't even be seen with. That's life on a hellmouth for you."

"Well I'm not a Scooby, whatever that is. I need to do something."

"You need to stop annoying me, Cagney." Cordelia glared at her. "Buffy said to stay here, and Angel agreed. If they thought you could help, they would have let you come along." She grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and made a great show of opening it to demonstrate the level of her indifference to Kate's feelings.

"They brought Doyle. I know Angel is strong because he's a vampire, and Buffy is this slayer you all keep talking about, but why Doyle?" Why not me, she wanted to whine.

The magazine rattled in front of Cordelia's face, then slowly lowered until it rested on her lap. "Doyle is…Doyle is special," she answered hesitantly. "He's a lot stronger than he looks, especially when his back is to the wall."

Even as Cordelia spoke, Doyle was trying to find that wall to put his back to, in order to keep said back from getting a knife through it. The Bathor were advancing steadily from the left while the Scourge moved in from the right. In the center of the alley, Buffy, Angel and Doyle all frantically looked for a way out past both sides.

"Stand aside, humans," called one of the Bathor. "Our quarrel is not with you. We have spilt blood to revenge."

"You really don't want to be messing with these guys. If 'twas me, I'd be heading to the nearest pub to start concocting some tall tales to tell the little woman when I got home. Much easier on the body and soul, if you know what I mean." Doyle took a few steps towards the nearest Bathor before Angel grabbed his coattail and yanked him back. "What are you doing? I might have gotten through," he protested.

Angel glanced over his shoulder at the rows of grey uniforms in the distance. "It's too late for talk. We have to get them out by force." He figured the odds at about three-to-one in the Bathor’s favor, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration what the Scourge might do to them while they were ‘protecting’ the Bathor. This wasn’t exactly what he had planned for this particular week, but there was no turning back now, even if they had a place to turn.

"Angel's right. We need to start driving them back. Push them back far enough and we have an escape route ourselves." Buffy scanned the assembled Bathor, searching for a likely weak link to give them a place to start.

"Yeah, and we have to turn our backs to the Scourge to do it," Doyle pointed out. "I say we fight alongside the Bathor and hope to hell we get out of it alive."

"The Bathor are warriors. They won't fight beside anyone not of their blood," Angel explained. "They'd sooner fight against us and lose to the Scourge than fight with us and live." He glanced at Buffy. "We can't fight the Scourge, at least not with what we have on hand. Remember that." "Well if the Bathor are as much snobs as the Scourge, why the hell are we bothering anyway? I'm thinking Cordelia was right about all this." Doyle was disgusted by the narrow-mindedness of his fellow demons, and he didn't care who knew it.

"Fellas, can we save the philosophy for later? I'll buy the cappuccino, Cordy can play the bongos. Right now we have to save some bad guys from the badder guys." Buffy gripped her favorite crossbow and nodded to Angel. Without further words, they began a concerted effort to force the Bathor to retreat.

“That’s it! I’m not hanging around here doing nothing one minute longer.” Kate stood up and hurled her soda can at the recycling bin, missing it by nearly a foot.

Cordelia glanced pointedly at the can lying on the Oriental rug. “Oh yeah, with that kind of aim I can’t imagine why they didn’t drag you out to the car with them.” She looked down at the magazine in her lap as she muttered, “by your long dark roots.”

“They need back up,” Kate insisted. “There are three of them fighting two different gangs of demons. I don’t care how strong they are…gangs.” She stared at Cordelia in amazement. “They’re fighting gangs.”

“I see that smile, Kate, and I know what you’re thinking but don’t even go there.” Cordelia hastily abandoned her magazine and lunged for Kate, who was pulling out her cell phone.

Kate pivoted on her heel and neatly avoided Cordelia, as the vampire’s Girl Friday stumbled into the filing cabinet. By the time Cordelia regained her footing and made another grab for the phone, Kate had finished dialing the three digits she relied upon to restore order to her universe. Cordelia sank back in her chair and glared at Kate as she massaged the ankle she had just twisted trying to wrestle for the phone.

“Buffy is so not going to like this,” Cordelia pronounced darkly. “When she finds out…I wouldn’t be you for all the Versace in the world.”

It was a losing battle. The Bathor were fighting valiantly, but their courage was no match for the sheer number of the Scourge. One by one they fell, and the Scourge were poised to win the day.

Doyle was trying to slip willing Bathor along the outskirts of the fight into the security of the dark warehouses, while Buffy and Angel tried to force the less-than-willing out of the range of fire. After Buffy dragged one more ungrateful Bathor into a warehouse, she paused to look for her companions. She was amazed at the carnage that surrounded them. Suddenly this was all too sickeningly familiar. The sound of the weapons striking each other, the bodies of demons littering the ground, the darkness and Angel venturing right into the thick of the fight. He was hurt, he was still hurt, her panicked mind cried out, and yet he tried to draw all the danger to himself to protect her. She opened her mouth to call him back, just as he caught the eye of a Scourge whose prey had suddenly expired. The Scourge raised his staff to swat this annoying presence out of his way.

"Angel, look out!"

Buffy's shout made Angel turn to face his attacker just in time. He caught the staff on its downward path and struggled for dominance of it. His promise to Buffy rang in his head, but as the staff was slowly forced further down towards his skull he made a choice and released the demon within him.

"Vampire." The word dripped with disgust as it slid from the Scourge's mouth, and into the ever-vigilant ears of a nearby vampire slayer.

Angel was able to push the demon away with his sudden burst of unholy strength, allowing Buffy to slide a knife into the Scourge's stomach before the demon could recover. The demon fell, narrowly missing Doyle. Buffy looked from one man to the other in despair, realizing they were well and truly finished now. Doyle was also in demon form.

"Buffy, I'm…" Angel began, only to be drowned out by the wail of sirens. He looked from one end of the body-strewn street to the other, searching for the source of the noise. "Where the hell…"

"It's police," Doyle said in amazement. "Someone called the police." He saw the Scourge and the Bathor melt into the shadows and began to laugh.

"Someone?" Buffy didn't sound nearly as amused.

"You called the police! How could you be so stupid?"

Buffy paced and raged, much as she had done since the moment the officer caught up with them two alleys away from the battle zone. She had attempted at least minimal control at the police station, until Kate showed up to try and undo her handiwork. Then the lava began to flow.

"I'm a cop. I hear about a gang war going down, I call 911. It's what anyone with half a brain would do." Kate refused to see getting them out alive as a bad thing, regardless of her methods. She had helped, where Buffy could not, and that was where all this emotion was coming from: pure jealousy.

"Not a demon gang war," Buffy said bitingly. "Then the intelligent thing, the thing any normal person would do, is to hide your head and let those of us lucky enough to have a sacred duty handle it." She threw herself on the sofa beside Angel in clear demonstration of those who fit that description.

"I saved your ass. Admit it. I even got you out of the police station before they could file charges."

"Which we wouldn't have faced if you had been able to keep your nose out of it. And now the Scourge are scattered and we don't know where they are or what they're doing. Nice work."

"Buffy, Kate, enough." Angel had taken about all he was going to take. He squeezed Buffy's hand as he gazed sternly at Kate. "You shouldn't have gotten the police involved. If the Scourge had stayed to fight instead of making a run for it, those cops would have gone down in a heartbeat." He turned back to Buffy, softening his tone slightly. "But we got out alive, and that's what counts in the end. Now we need to figure out our next move before the Scourge decide for us."

"Our next move is to get the heck out of Dodge," Cordelia said in amazement. "Goody-bye LA, hello hellmouth sweet hellmouth." So much for her perfect, if slightly haunted, apartment and all her aspirations of fame, but it beat being chased by a pack of fanatical demons. Better the devil you know.

Doyle shifted anxiously on his perch on stairs. "You'd really do that? Just pack up and leave?"

"Well duh. Like I'm really dying to stick around here dying. I just wish…"

"That's not the answer," Buffy interrupted. "We need to get rid of them. If we run they'll only chase us." More specifically, they would chase Angel.

"We can't take them on." Doyle couldn't believe his ears. "You saw what happened tonight with the Bathor. As many of them as there were and still they were being slaughtered."

"I saw everything that happened tonight," Buffy snapped. "I saw the Scourge watching Angel after he got into game face, and I know what that means."

She had known what it meant when her friends ganged up on a weakened Angel after his return from hell she had known what it meant when Giles hunted for Angel at the factory in the wake of Jenny Calender's death she had known what it meant when the commandos strapped Angel to a table in their lab. She had always known what it meant when someone looked at Angel and only saw the demon within him. It meant death, his and hers.

"Buffy, I'm sorry. It was the only way." Angel brought his other hand over to keep hers captive.

She dropped her eyes for a moment before she looked at him. "I know, honey, but the damage was done anyway. They know about you, and that makes you a great big non-reflective target. We have to get them away from here and make sure they don't come back."

"Away? You don't want to kill them?" Cordelia was puzzled. This was not the Buffy she knew and feared, the one who defended her mate from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Buffy gazed around the room at each of them, trying to make them understand the seriousness of the situation. "We can't kill them, not enough of them anyway. But if we could kill enough of them, they would feel hunted for a change and it might confuse them enough to let us slip through the cracks. So we need help."

"Who?" Angel was suddenly deeply suspicious.

"The commandos." She said it so quickly she wasn't sure she got all the syllables out, but the stunned look on Angel's face said her understood regardless.

"You want to ask your ex-boyfriend, who tried to give me a lobotomy, if he'll steer some bad guys away from me? Why am I not loving this plan?" Actually, loathing, despising and abhorring came closer to the mark than loving, but he was trying to be nice.

"No, I wasn't thinking of asking Riley he's not speaking to me." She paused for a moment, then amended her sentence. "He's kind of not speaking to anyone yet. I don't think that wire's coming out of his jaw for at least another week."

"You broke his jaw? You never told me, you sly devil." Cordelia leaned forward with a huge grin splitting her face. Suddenly all her troubles seemed to melt away in the face of some good gossip.

"I wasn't trying to break it," Buffy answered defensively. "I was trying to get to Angel and Riley was on the floor and…well, okay, so he was on the floor because I knocked him out with an IV stand and then he just kind of slid because you know how slippery corduroy pants are, and honestly, my foot slipped and then..."

"Wait, wait, back up." Cordelia held up her hand. "Wide wale?"

Buffy nodded.

"Oh, Buffy, how could you?" Her eyes were wide with dismay. "Wide wale corduroy? Why didn't you just sleep with Giles, for pete's sake?"

"You're not helping." Angel's glare would have quieted Cordelia even if she didn't know he had canine teeth the Big Bad Wolf would envy.

"The point is," Buffy continued through gritted teeth, "there are a lot of commandos on campus, a lot more than us. And even if they suck in combat, they have weapons, really big blow-things-up type of weapons. The Scourge don't need to be defeated by brains, this just takes muscle."

"Good thing," Angel muttered.

It was Buffy's turn to administer the soothing hand patting as she warmed to her subject. "We need to get the Scourge interested in the commandos, or in Sunnydale, or…oh, no, wait, we really don't want to bring a gang war to Sunnydale, do we?" She looked to her compatriots for a dissenting opinion. It really was the simplest solution, if it just didn't seem so much like shoving her problems on Giles' shoulders.

"No, we can't send them to Sunnydale," Angel said slowly. "But, much as I hate to admit it, you may be right about letting the commandos do the dirty work. I can't think of two groups that deserve each other more."

"Exactly!" Buffy beamed. "The Scourge are a bunch of fascist demons, and the commandos are heavy into the human supremacy deal, so let them fight it out. Last mutant standing wins…until we kill it."

"But if not in Sunnydale, then where? Do they have a homeland we could send them to, or maybe a fatherland? Or are we talking father planet?" Cordelia was ready for any contingency.

"How about if the commandos to come to LA and save us the delivery charges on the Scourge?"

"No!" Buffy looked alarmed at Doyle's suggestion. "I don't want the commandos anywhere near Angel, not after the last time. The whole point of this is to keep trouble away from us, not send it a bus ticket and a map."

"And there's also your blue butt to consider," Cordelia mused. She looked sharply at the stunned Brakken. "I'm assuming you did play show and tell with the porcupine face when you were fighting tonight."

"Cordelia, I don't know what…" he stammered, looking to Angel and Buffy for help but not finding it fast enough to suit him.

Cordelia impatiently waved her hands to shush him as she walked over to Angel's big rolltop desk. "Oh please, like I couldn't figure out your big secret if wonder cop could figure out Angel's. I may not have realized it when I hit you during the bachelor party, but it didn't take too long afterwards to add things up. One minute a blue demon is there and you're not, then you switch. You dump a perfectly good job…well, okay, you were a teacher, but it's still better than being a bum. Anyway, you ditch it and your wife, who then becomes a demon anthropologist, not exactly a typical career move for the recently divorced." She reached into the top desk drawer where Angel kept his checkbook and pulled out a small sheaf of yellow sticks. "And then there's these."

"What the hell are those?" Kate had at last recovered the power of speech, but she was back to the wonderful world of denial. Whatever those things were in Cordelia's hand, they were not discarded demon parts. They absolutely were not.

"They're his spikes, or quills, or whatever you want to call them. I came into work on more than one occasion to find out someone had been shedding, and it wasn't Angel." She glanced thoughtfully down at the quills resting in her palm. "Of course, given their yellow straw-like appearance, they could be from Buffy's hair."

"Hey!"

"But they started to appear before she came," Cordelia continued serenely over Buffy's outraged exclamation. "Now did you show these off to the goose-stepping gorgons or didn't you?"

"I…I did," Doyle admitted. "Why didn't you tell me you knew?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes as she joined Doyle on the futon. "I was waiting for you to tell me. I saw how much harder it made things for Buffy and Angel because he didn't tell her before she found out. Like he needed one more thing to feel guilty about. Instead of sharing a secret he got caught in a lie by proving that blood can actually flow in more than one direction during…heated moments." She smiled encouragingly at Angel, blissfully unaware of his embarrassment. "Actually, that's pretty impressive when you consider his blood hasn't technically flowed since before George Washington got caught in Cherry Tree-gate."

"So you're not mad, or disgusted or anything?" Doyle asked, anxious to get back to the present, and possibly the future. He abandoned his post on the stairs to sidle ever closer to Cordelia, until he was close enough to touch her, if he dared. "I mean, some girls might not like the idea of dat…I mean, working with a demon. A good demon, a peaceful one," he added hastily, "but still a demon."

She tipped her head and studied him for a long time, the longest minutes of Doyle's life. "Actually, I think it makes you more interesting," she pronounced at last.

Kate had seen enough. The world as she knew it just a few short weeks ago lay in tatters at her feet. She no longer knew what, or who, to believe. All she knew for sure was that the man she had come to count on more than she could say, the man she had finally decided to accept despite all his mind-blowing differences, was too busy watching the blonde girl next to him to notice that Kate was falling apart.

"This is great. I'm really happy for both of you, for all of you. Can I go now?" Kate hastily got to her feet and started for the lift, only to be stopped in her tracks by the sharp crack of Buffy's voice.

"Perfect. Stir things up, shoot Angel, put him in permanent danger and then go back to your safe, normal life. Nice meeting you, Kate. Come again soon."

Kate turned around slowly. Buffy had abandoned her place by Angel's side to stand in the center of the room, arms crossed and scowl at the ready. The storm inside of the Slayer had been building for days, and the venting she had allowed herself this night was only whetting her appetite for battle.

"I came to you for help, and you can't help me, so I'm going," Kate said evenly. "I'm sorry about Angel I've said that more than once. I'm also sorry if I put you all in danger. That was never my intention. I was trying to help my informants stay alive."

"You were trying to worm your way deeper into Angel's life." Buffy tilted her head upwards and batted her eyelashes at an imaginary companion as she cooed, "Oh, Angel, you have to help me. Only you can understand." With an almost audible snap she shifted her focus once more upon Kate, pinning her to the floor with her hazel-eyed fury. "When that didn't pan out you shot him."

"Buffy, we don't need to go into this now," Angel said softly. He came to stand beside his lover, but when he put his hand lightly on her arm she shook it off. Still he persisted. "Sweetheart, we can't change the past, and even if we could we don't have time. We need to find a place where the Jets and the Sharks can rumble without taking out the whole town."

"Yeah, we need to clean up the mess she helped to create," Buffy shot back bitterly.

"I didn't make these demons the way they are." Kate was stunned by the accusation. "The world is sinking into a pit all on its own."

"Of course. It's never your fault. You never have to take any of the responsibility for the damage you cause, because Buffy is always here to pick up the pieces. Faith never has to…"

"Faith? Who's Faith?"

Buffy paled when she heard Kate's innocent question. Her jaw dropped as she struggled for the words to explain, but no sound came out. A beloved voice called to her from a great distance, but she couldn't respond.

"Buffy, sweetheart."

She looked away, unable to bear the compassion in the dark eyes of the one who knew her best.

"I'm sorry," she finally managed to whisper, then she clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. She ran for the stairs, too blinded by quick, hot tears to see the hands reaching out for her. The last thing Buffy heard, above the pounding of her feet on the risers, was Cordelia's quiet explanation.

"Faith is the last woman who hit on Angel in front of Buffy. She's been in a coma for about nine months now."

"Buffy! Buffy, wait!"

She wanted to run, as far and as fast as she could go, but the man who called after her deserved a woman who could stand and face her mistakes. She stopped just shy of the outer office door and waited dully for the coming storm.

"Buffy, love, please tell me what's been going on." Angel gently turned her around to face him as he whispered his desperate plea. He cupped her cheek in his hand and brushed the tears away with his thumb as he gazed lovingly into her eyes, and the soul that lay beneath.

She tried to pull away, almost undone by the tenderness of his expression, but he brought his other hand up to hold her head fast. "You have been going through something major the past few days, but you've shut me out. I need you to share it with me, Buffy. I respect your privacy, but whatever this is, it's tearing you apart to keep it inside."

She shook her head free of his grasp and stepped back until the door forced her to stop. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I know I've been a little crazy, but it just…piled up until I couldn't breathe."

"What piled up?" He tried very hard to keep the frustration from coming out in his voice. She seemed so fragile suddenly, as though one harsh word or look could shatter her. "I've seen the sudden vacations from reality, and I've heard the nightmares. You have to talk to me."

"I couldn't," she whispered. "That was the whole problem. You were so sick, you were dying, and I never, never thought I would have to see that. And I needed to talk to you about it, about how scared I was, but you were gone."

"Buffy, the bullet wound wasn't that…" Suddenly the light dawned. "Last spring," he said flatly. "This is about the poison arrow last spring."

She nodded tearfully as she reached her shaking hand out to trace the lines of his face. He caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips for a long kiss.

"I left before we could talk," he continued in the same dead tone. "You needed to talk about it but I was so wound up in my own pain and shame I never thought how hard it was on you. If anything, I thought it was one more reason to run as fast as I could. I was your weakness, and you were mine." He rubbed the back of her hand along his cheek, breathing in the scent of her perfume.

"In my head I knew you were okay. I knew I saved you." Her broken whisper was too soft to be heard by anyone but a vampire. "But I needed to feel it in my heart, and there wasn't time. There's never enough time for us."

"There is now, sweetheart. I promise, we have all the time in the world now." Angel folded her into his arms, silently cursing himself for waiting so long to acknowledge her pain. "I should have known that's what this was about. You got so shook up after the shooting, and you kept dropping hints but I was too dense to see them."

"I was jealous of her," Buffy admitted, tilting her head back to look up at him. "I didn't realize at first I was thinking of her like Faith, but it was there in the back of my head the whole time. I know you connected with Faith on some level that I couldn't understand, and it almost seemed that way with Kate too. The two of them remind me of parts of your past I can't really share, and that makes me a little crazy sometimes."

"And then when Kate shot me, it really brought Faith back," Angel said slowly.

Buffy nodded miserably. "I kept reliving that awful night, over and over. Everyone else has nightmares about that night because of the Mayor, and all the vamps, but me…it's always you and that hole in your chest and knowing you were going to die. I worked so hard to block it out. Even after we got back together I still pushed it away, because I knew how guilty you felt about drinking my blood that night. I thought I had it under control, right up to the moment in the alley when you twisted around and fell into my arms. Just like that night."

He touched his forehead to hers and closed his eyes, trying to think of the words that would ease her pain. "Buffy, I only wish I'd known how upset you still were. We deal so differently with pain. When I get upset I shut myself away and brood from every angle, until I've hit myself over the head with every inch of the problem. You pack all the bad stuff in the smallest bag you can find and jam it in the back of deep dark closet, hopefully never to be seen again." He opened his eyes and tugged just a little more at her heartstrings with his old melancholy half-smile. "I think we need to find some middle ground, with no doors to close and no closet space." He kissed her once, and then once more. "But as far as the feeling left out part goes, I want you to remember something. There is nothing in my past that you are not a part of because it all brought me to this moment, here, with you."

She drew a shaky breath as she ran her fingers over his lips, tracing his faint smile. "I feel the same way. But I'm still scared. How are we supposed to fight together if I freak every time you get hurt?"

"We talk about it. We admit our fears instead of protecting each other from them. One by one we will get through each and every day, together. It actually sounds pretty good to me." He smiled as he pictured those endless hours spent in the company of his beloved, sharing all the little details that together made a life.

"I never thought you could die before me. Even after all the times you've been hurt, even after I sent you to Hell, until that night I never imagined you could die." She tried to suppress the choking fear building in the back of her throat. "I know slayers don't last long, but vampires are supposed to be immortal. I count on that."

"No one is truly immortal, Buffy. Everything and everyone ends. When we fight together, side by side, I take comfort in knowing that if anything happens it will happen to me first, or very soon after. But during the day you might face a thousand different demons…and all I can do is sit and wait for you to come home."

"Oh great, so you worry all day and I have nightmares all night." She threw up her hands. "This is not the future we talked about, Angel. I don't want to be so scared of losing you that I can't function." She started to pace, but Angel grabbed her arm as she went past and held on tight.

"You didn't let the fear interfere with getting the job done tonight, did you? That demon would have snapped my head off if you hadn't warned me. But you did warn me, and then we killed him. Together."

He couldn't bear to see her looking so sad and lost. She, who was always so fierce in battle, looked like a frightened child adrift in tumultuous seas. He needed her to see she was not alone, never alone.

"I feel the fear too, you know. If it makes you feel any better, I don't think I will ever completely get over the night the Master drowned you. Every time I see you, that image of you face down in that water is still there in the back of my head, reminding me that you're mortal and that one day I will lose you."

Even as he spoke, he was flooded with memories of the night she died. He had been so scared to live without her then how could he face losing her now, with all that bound them together? Because he had no choice, he reminded himself. And this moment was about her, so he needed to focus.

"All we can do is to keep it from happening this night, and let the future take care of itself."

She wanted promises of 'happily ever after' and eternal futures, but as she looked into his dark eyes, she knew she would not hear the lies she longed for from his lips. All he would, and could, promise her was a love that would outlast death. Somehow she was going to have to make that be enough to keep her fears at bay.

"So no matter how much I dress up, when you look at me you see runny make-up and pond scum in my hair?" A slight smile was edging its way through the tear streaks on her face.

"But a kick dress," he assured her. "Besides, when you look at me you always see blood and a hole in my chest."

She drew a deep breath and leaned forward. Slipping a teasing hand inside the neck of his shirt to caress his cool skin, she brought her lips within centimeters of his. "No, I always picture you barechested. It's only when I'm worried there's a bloody hole in it."

"Well then, that's okay," he whispered as he pulled her up those last few precious degrees.

She gratefully slid into his healing embrace, surrendering to the feeling of security she always had in his arms. Neither of them could control the future that lay before them, but she could feel how hard he would fight for it and for them. She had given him the courage to fight for that life, and now she must match his determination, no matter how hard her fears tried to drag her down and away from him.

Angel was beginning to forget they were in a not-so-private office, lost as he was in feel of his lover in his arms. He slowly steered her towards the sofa, moving faster when Buffy realized his intent and began to tug on him. Her legs unexpectedly bumped the cushions and she lost her balance, dragging Angel down on top of her.

"And we have lift off!" Cordelia called excitedly as she darted into the office, followed by Doyle and Kate. She skidded to a halt as she suddenly saw the two figures on the sofa. "Whoa, we really do have lift off. Don't you two have a bedroom or something?"

Buffy reluctantly slid out from under Angel, who moved to the other end of the sofa with a scowl that did not bode well for Cordelia in her annual evaluation.

"We have a room," he growled. "There's just a continual party going on outside of it."

Buffy stood up and smoothed her clothing, still carefully avoiding eye contact with Kate. "So what's the news from Houston, commander?"

"Actually, it would be Santa Marisa, not Houston."

"What would be Santa Marisa?" Angel tugged at Buffy's hand, urging her to sit next to him. "Or is that a 'who' question?"

"Santa Marisa is a tiny little town about an hour outside of Sunnydale. It also happens to be where the commandos, who are actually called the Initiative, by the way, are headed," Cordelia replied triumphantly. "While you two were up here angsting, I made a quick call to the little house on the hellmouth and talked to Giles. It seems Spike started doing reconnaissance, for money of course, and found out a few things we can use. One of them is that the Initiative has a new training camp in Santa Marisa where they spend every spare second these days." She grinned mischievously at Buffy, who perched on the arm of the sofa next to Angel. "Apparently the men with the medals on their chests were not too pleased when they heard their best and brightest were taken out by a freshman girl."

"Who's not even on the field hockey team," Doyle reminded them.

"They hurt my boyfriend," Buffy replied indignantly. "Nobody gets to do that and live, at least not without scar tissue." Her levity suddenly vanished as she realized the further implications of her words. She glanced over at Angel, who squeezed her hand and nodded. With a sigh, Buffy stood up and approached Kate.

"Umm, before we go any further with the game plan, I need to say something to Kate. And I'm not very good at saying this sort of stuff, so you better just let me get it out in one shot before I lose my nerve."

"You don't have to say anything, Buffy. I think we all made our positions clear the past few days." Kate was suddenly very tired. The past few days had been draining, physically and emotionally, and all she wanted to do was hide under her covers until the world straightened itself out.

"Please, let me apologize. Not for everything," she hastily added, "but for tonight at least. Well, part of tonight. I still think you should have let Angel and Doyle and I handle the Scourge, because you could have gotten a lot of cops killed if the Scourge had been in the mood to play with humans."

She wanted to say more, but the subdued sound of Angel clearing his throat reminded her this was supposed to be an apology. "But you were trying to help," she sighed, "and not just Angel. I'm sorry I implied that you were using them to get to him." Buffy glanced back at Angel for a moment to gather her strength, the resolutely faced her nemesis again. "I get a little jealous sometimes. I try not to," she continued over Cordelia's snort, "but I can't always help it. And you did just barge into the apartment like you owned it. Which, by the way, everyone else does too, but will no longer do upon pain of…pain. I want that understood."

Kate glanced at Angel, watching him watch Buffy. His heart was in his eyes, and she had the feeling he wasn't even aware there was anyone else in the room. Every time she had seen him the past few days, he was either watching Buffy or talking about her. And he was smiling when he did it, dammit! Angel, who rarely smiled, and then only sadly, lit up like the Las Vegas strip when this girl so much as walked in the room.

"I…can understand the jealousy," Kate slowly responded. "And I'm sorry for barging in that first morning. I should have called, or knocked or something."

"We're not going to be friends," Buffy warned her. "No bonding over shoe-shopping, no lunch at the mall, no polishing of the nails. I'm talking a mutual non-aggression pact, nothing more. Just so we're clear."

Kate raised her hand in pledge. "I'm good with that. You people are way too much for me to handle on a regular basis." She indulged in a tiny inward sigh as she mentally bade farewell to the plans she hadn't even admitted to herself she'd been forming. "I just want a normal life. No monsters, no demons, no vampires. No offense."

Buffy couldn't help laughing. Maybe Cordelia was right. Maybe Kate was Buffy in ten years, or rather the Buffy who would have been if she had never met, and been loved by, Angel. If so, poor Kate.

"Normal life? Gee, that sounds pretty yawnworthy. No offense."

"Now that no one is offended, can we get back to business?" Angel pleaded. "How do we get the Scourge to Santa Marisa?"

"Me," said Doyle.

Part Five

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