DISCLAIMER: We do not own Buffy or Angel (ooh, what a thought) or any of the rest of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Joss Whedon, WB and Mutant Enemy do.
RATING: PG-13
CONTENT WARNING: Some violence, some smooching. Nothing serious -- about the same as the show, with slightly strongly language. But what really gives it the PG-13 rating is -- horror of all horrors -- the hyena jokes. (Not.)
SPOILERS: Everything, we guess. This story takes place in the Fall of '98. Maybe 'The Pack'?
SUMMARY: Buffy and the Slayerettes spend Friday the Thirteenth fighting a new demon, only this time there's a complication, and as a result, Spike frenches Cordelia at last... Willow finally makes with Xander... Angel socks Giles... and a new demon has come to play. No, wait, it's not what you think... but you'll never know what we're talking about unless you read it!!!
Epilogue: LOST 'N' FOUND
Willow was having a hard time keeping up with the Slayer as they ran with increasing energy towards the library. Out of breath, Willow slowed in the hallway, taking time to observe and wonder at the inexplicable puddles of black ichor spreading in the hallways around the library. She made a mental note to grab first dibs on not cleaning up.
There were still a few heavy objects blocking the doorway; Buffy, heady with triumph (once again) over nearly impossible odds, simply shoved them aside. The first person she saw, once inside, was Xander.
Giddy and slightly hysterical, Buffy made the (false) assumption that Xander was still Angel and flung herself into his arms. "We did it! We did it again, Angel!" she reported into his shoulder. Instinctively, he tightened his arms around her, and she pulled back enough to kiss him.
For a frozen moment, nobody did anything; then Angel and Cordelia, seeing that Xander was not instantly jumping up to end the tableau, took action. Cordy walked up behind Xander and pointedly gripped his shoulder, while Angel cleared his throat noisily. Buffy, confused, looked up to see him, and made the connection. "Oh! Right. Sorry," she said, sliding out of Xander's embrace to wrap her arms around her boyfriend instead. He smiled down at her, instantly forgiving her. Xander grinned weakly at Cordelia, but the furious and expressive look she shot him almost made Buffy feel sorry for him for the next time they ended up in a closet together. Almost.
Willow, walking in, frowned at the two vampires who had also gotten caught up in this mess. "What are they doing here?" she demanded.
Spike, who had collected Drusilla and was sliding steadily backwards towards the stacks entrance, grinned a sickly little grin and waved. "Just leaving, Red. It's been a fine party, and if you're ever in the neighborhood, don't hesitate to not drop in." With that, still gripping Dru's hand fiercely, he turned away, muttering to himself. "And don't think I'll forget this freakin' violation any time soon -- hell, I wish I could get out of this town -- nothing but trouble --"
Dru looked back over her shoulder and shot a vulpine grin at Angel, who unconsciously pulled Buffy closer.
Buffy watched them go. "I really should chase after them and stake them," she remarked, "being the Slayer and all."
"Yes," Angel agreed, "you really should. Being the Slayer and all."
Neither of them moved as the two vampires left the room.
Giles, emerging from the stacks, saw Willow. "Willow! Are you okay? What happened?" he demanded, hurrying down the stairs.
Willow blinked in confusion. "Sure, Giles. I'm fine," she began.
Giles stopped for a full minute, looking slowly around the room. "Giles?" Willow said worriedly. "Are you all right?"
Giles seemed to shake himself out of his stupor. "Yeah, I-I'm fine. But, ah," he turned to speak to Buffy as well, flustered. "What's going on?"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "That seems to be the question of the day."
"So yet again, you've saved Sunnydale from the magical-evil-bug-of-doom! What are you going to do next?" Willow teased, as the two girls sat in the Bronze the next evening.
Buffy smiled. "Oh, I don't know. Right now, I'm hanging with my friend, and later I guess I'll --" some of the enthusiasm faded from her face. "go home and study..."
Willow's eyes widened. "On a Friday night? And they say that I have no life!"
"Will, you're the one who turns down date invitations to go websurfing. Don't lecture me about my poor social habits. And anyway, it's not like I have a date..." At Willow's uncertain look, Buffy made a face. "Though not from lack of trying on my part."
"Oh, I don't know," said a voice from behind, making both girls jump. "You weren't even looking for me."
Buffy turned to face Angel, a smile warring with a scowl on her face. "It's not my fault you melt into the wall so well, Stealth guy," she said.
Angel smiled, a bit sadly. "Can we talk?"
"That sorta depends. Do you mean a Giles sorta talk, or a Cordy-Xander sorta talk?"
"I'm not even going to answer that one. Want to dance?"
Buffy stood up smiling, then stopped, remembering her other friend. "I'm sorry, Willow. I'll be right back --"
Willow shook her head. "No, I'd better be heading home anyway. Oz is supposed to get back tonight, so I'm going to sit by my phone and cry until he calls."
Buffy shook her head in amusement. "We'll walk you home?" she offered.
Unless you were the Slayer, which most people were not, being out after dark in Sunnydale was somewhat comparable to playing Russian Roulette with a full gun, but Willow just shook her head. "Nah. I have a cross and a stake and I'm really feeling in the mood to confront and expel all evil. Besides, after all the supervampires got melted, the rest of them will probably be hiding out for at least a few days."
Willow bounced out of the door as if she had rubber in her shoes. With one brief exchanged glance, Angel and Buffy followed her out the door.
"So everything's cool, right?" Xander said, reaching up to switch the light on. They were back in the closet again, and what had started out as a full blown argument, with Cordelia reaming Xander out for his behavior the previous day, had converted into other, more pleasing, business.
Cordelia sighed. Xander was sweet, and he was a good enough kisser, but he had this annoying habit of wanting to talk at the most inappropriate of moments. The only way to shut him up without starting another argument was to talk it through. "It's cool with me. But you'll have to talk it over with Buffy. She's the one who would have been hurt, not me."
Xander sighed, somewhat depressed. The problem with having all women friends (not counting Oz) was that they were all so damned unpredictable. "D'you think she'll forgive me?" he worried.
Cordelia smiled gently at him. Boys were so fragile. "I think she will. Although I think you should lay off on bashing her boyfriend for... oh, ordinarily I would say a month, but in your case I don't think that's even remotely possible. At least try, for the next week?"
Xander hung his head, doing that puppy-dog look. "Well, I was... planning on doing that anyway."
Cordelia lifted one eyebrow in surprise. What, Xander having forethought? This she had to hear. "Oh?" she challenged after a moment.
Xander shrugged. "Well, in the past few days I've been thinking--"
Sensing a revelation coming, Cordelia bit back on the obvious reply.
"--and I realized that I have been awfully selfish, ragging on about him like I did."
Cordelia stared at him suspiciously. "Are you sure all the witch's spells were reversed? 'Cause you don't sound like my boyfriend."
Xander gave her a hurt look and continued. "I mean, I didn't really understand how tough his life was -- or, not life --"
Cordelia smiled slightly. "That's better."
"--until I was faced with the prospect of being stuck with it. I mean," he pinned Cordelia with a look, "how did you feel when you thought you might be stuck in Drusilla?" Without waiting for an answer, he went on. "Anyway, it set me thinking. I mean, I may be only seventeen years old, but I don't have to act like a child."
Cordelia grinned, and stepped closer to him. "I think I can safely say you're not a child," she assured him. "Now shut up and kiss me."
Silence -- well, not exactly -- for several more seconds.
"Hey," said Xander, straightening abruptly and nearly banging his head on the dangling light bulb.
Annoyed, Cordelia reached up to turn it on. "What is it now?" she demanded angrily.
Pause.
"I think I lost twenty dollars."
Cordelia gave him a well-it's-nice-to-know-you're-no-more-mentally-unstable-than-you-already-were look, and reached up to turn the light back off.
Somehow Willow made it home safely; Buffy watched her bounce as far as her door, and turned back to Angel. "It's boyfriend missage," she explained with a small laugh as they began to pace away slowly. "Makes girls act kinda funky sometimes."
"You would know," Angel said sadly, "no thanks to me."
"I told you not to go guilt tripping," Buffy scolded. "If you must go tripping, why don't you eat a nice marijuana addict?"
"That's not funny."
Buffy grinned up at him. "Yes, it is."
"No, it's not." Angel was trying hard not to smile.
Buffy blinked angelically at him, pleased that she had won. They had stopped walking and were facing each other, not far down the sidewalk from Willow's house. Angel looked down at her, but his gaze quickly turned dark and sad.
Buffy put a hand on his arm. "Angel, tell me. What is it?"
Angel just shook his head. "I don't want to tell you. I'm... I can't..."
"There's nothing you can't tell me," Buffy said lowly. "You know that."
Angel bit his lips, then capitulated. "It hurts, this aftermath. It's not just a normal post-slaying day."
"Why is this different?" Buffy asked, already suspecting the answer.
"Well... you know how you've wished... that we were just normal kids?" Angel questioned.
"Angel, we've been through this. I've been known to wish, from time to time, that I wasn't the Slayer, that I could go through a normal day, week, and not save the world or risk my life or bring hurt and anguish and danger to the people I love. But I don't want you to change."
"All right then." Angel braced himself. "I wish I was a normal kid. That I didn't have to live with a demon in my head. That I didn't get hungry at the smell of blood. That I wouldn't live forever, that I could go out in the sun. That I... could have children. I've wished for all those things many times. Was I wrong?"
"I don't know," Buffy whispered. "I don't think it's wrong to wish for an easier life..." She stopped to consider. "But then again... perhaps it's wrong for you to wish you weren't who you are, when I love who you are."
Angel just blinked. After a moment, he remarked with what was almost a smile, "I think I understood that, which is sort of disturbing, considering how tangled it was!"
Buffy giggled, but Angel immediately sobered up again. "What I'm trying to say is... I wanted to keep Xander's body. For you, to make your life easier, more normal. So you wouldn't have to deal with the hypocrisy that's nearly killed our love again and again, that a Slayer loves a vampire. And I wanted it... for myself. For my own selfish wish."
"Oh, Angel," Buffy said, beginning to form comforting words, but she stopped abruptly as a sob choked her throat. She tried to swallow it, startled at the sudden rush of emotion. This was touching the heart of Angel's pain, of his self-hatred. Nothing could ever take away what he'd done, the evil he'd committed, the memories that tormented him and fed his inner anguish. But the other half of the torment of his life -- the demon inside him that he could never escape, never destroy without killing himself, the alien being that he hated with heart and soul -- this was what he'd had a chance to escape. "You had a chance to escape," Buffy echoed her thoughts, as one wayward tear escaped her vigilant lashes. "You were tempted. But Angel, everyone is tempted. You came through. You always do."
"I didn't," Angel insisted, and Buffy could hear the tears behind his voice, too. "I didn't come through. It wasn't a conscious decision -- but I told Willow the truth, even knowing that it might make the spell permanent. Xander tried to kill me because he thought I'd done it on purpose, and I felt, deep down, that he had a right."
Buffy turned away for a moment, and put her hands over her face. When she turned back her features were under control. "I can't judge you, Angel," she said quietly. "It's not my place to forgive you, or to say if you need forgiveness. Only you can do that. But I love you."
Angel shook his head, mouth open to raise more protests, more self-blame. Buffy stopped it with a very quick kiss. "I love you." Another tear escaped from the drops clinging to her lashes, but she was smiling slightly. "I love you."
Angel looked at her. Buffy looked back. They stared at each other for a very long moment, tears and smiles, love and pain.
"I love you," Buffy whispered again. "And it's enough."
"AAAGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!"
The scream echoing from Willow's house was enough to wake the dead. It certainly woke Angel, not to mention Buffy, from that half-conscious state where they could see and hear nothing but each other. They broke away from each other in startlement, and Angel's face went vampire even as Buffy pulled out a stake from her jacket and dashed towards Willow's house.
The redheaded hacker slammed the front door open and stomped out onto the front lawn, apparently drawing breath for another scream, when she ran into Buffy. "What are you doing here?" Willow blasted, instead of whatever imprecations she had been intending to hurl at the inoffensive sky.
"Just, uh, passing by," Buffy said brightly. "Um. Patrol, you know." Angel loomed out of the shadows behind her with an innocent look on his face.
"Oh." Willow looked slightly calmer. "Hi, Angel."
"If I may ask -- what's wrong?" Buffy essayed.
"Oz just called me."
Buffy tilted her head inquisitively. "And?"
"And you know how Giles has been avoiding us all day, and won't talk about what happened or anything?"
Buffy began to get an awful feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Uh huh?"
"Well, I think I know why."
They looked at her expectantly.
"Well, Oz wouldn't talk about anything I wanted him to -- no smoochies, no 'I love you's, no nothing. It was awful. And then I noticed his accent."
"His accent?" Angel repeated incredulously.
Willow nodded, confirming it. "It was a definite British accent. And... he was stammering."
Buffy drew in a breath, apparently in preparation to attempt to duplicate Willow's impressive lung-power feat. Angel grabbed her hand. "Buffy, that's not going to help anything..."
With a great deal of effort, Buffy calmed herself down. "This should be okay," she said, sighing. "You can do that spell thing, Willow, and we can fix -- " She abruptly lost her train of thought, distracted by faint music. That unidentified boom box was at it again: Buffy could distinctly identify the strains of 'Lovefool' in the background. Not taking her hand from Angel's, she twisted around and scowled into the shadows. "Oh, shut up," she growled. "My life is enough like a bad sitcom, I don't need a sound track." Though she had to admit, it was better than a laugh track...
The music shut off abruptly. Buffy smiled in satisfaction and turned back to Angel and Willow. "Everything's going to be just fine."
|
Back to Prologue
Back to Part 1
Back to Part 2
Back to Part 3
Back to Part 4
Epilogue
I like feedback. Lots of it. Getting a word picture?
THAT'S IT!!... as if I hadn't had enough, back to Catoninetails Fanfic
The Brotherhood ][ Last Man Out ][ Blacklight
Behind the Scenes ][ What's Mine Is Yours ][ 3 Thru The Merry-O
Swing Set ][ The Healer ][ Black & White
The Meek Shall Inherit ][ Rosemary For Remembrance
|