Adult-FanFiction.org : Buffy

One Clear Shot	By : QueenB Category: AtS/BtVS Crossovers > Het - Male/Female > Angel(us)/Buffy > Angel(us)/Buffy Views: 11736 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“So that’s it. I’m Buffy minus about four years’s worth of memory. Giles thinks it’s a head blow or maybe a spell. What do you think, Willow?”
The redhead had remained quiet except for a few sharp questions. She’d been staring into the distance, emitting occasional ‘hmmms’ and rubbing her chin. Xander hadn’t said much either.
“Willow? Hellllloo? Earth to Willow? I hate to sound whiny here, but there’s a Slayer in serious need of wiccan magic here--or a trip to the doctor. I’d like to know before I go into convulsions and pass out from bleeding on the brain.”
The redhead flinched at this thoughtless comment, a vivid reminder of what had happened to Joyce. But she couldn’t blame Buffy--this Buffy. It’s not as if she remembered her Mother dying. “Um, well, we could do that spell Buffy did to see what was attacking Joyce.”
“The ‘tirer la couture?’ Capital suggestion, Willow!” Giles smiled at the wiccan.
“‘Rotate the foodstuffs?’” Buffy was reassured by Giles’s enthusiasm even if she didn’t get it. What were they talking about?
Willow giggled. “You know, that’s the exact same thing you said then, Buffy. It means ‘pull back the curtain’ and it’s a trance spell by a 16th-century French sorcerer named Cloutier. He used it to expose demonic spells.”
“Oh, so you’re saying this spell will show what’s wrong with me?”
“If it’s magical in origin, yes.” Willow grabbed her bag and unzipped it.
Giles held up a hand to stop her. “You’re certain you’re up to the task, Willow?”
“Absolutely, Giles. If Buffy could do this spell, it’ll be a snap for me. I can do this.” Willow grinned and started pulling things out of her overnight bag.
Buffy stared at all the mystic accoutrements: dried and fresh herbs, spices, candles, crystals, a couple of worn spellbooks, bottles of colored sand, a silver knife with an ivory handle and amulets to beat the band. The last she could ever remember seeing Willow doing was floating a pencil. Now it looked like she was packing real witchy heat.
The wiccan stood and retired to the bedroom with a bowl, spices and a couple of candles cradled in her arms. “I’ll need to be alone for the casting. Don’t be surprised if I seem a little out of it. I’ll be seeing all sorts of things that normal folks can’t see,” she informed the others.
“And that includes us one-eyed Muggles.” Noting Buffy’s uncomprehending look, Xander said, “Oh, I forget. Harry Potter after your time?”
What, was he kidding her? “No, I heard about it. I just haven’t read it. It’s for kids, Xander.”
He scowled. At least it looked like a scowl; with only one eye, it was hard to be sure. “Well, the adults watching the movie didn’t seem to mind it.”
“Movie?” Damn, she had to get her memory back. These kind of cultural gaps were going to be embarrassing otherwise. She sighed and then sniffed the air. There was an odd burning smell coming from Xander’s bedroom. “Giles? Is that from the magic?”
“Yes. It’s short and fairly straightforward. Willow should be out any…ah, here she is.”
It was indeed Willow. She stood in front of them, blinking in an owlish fashion, as she stared slowly about the room. Her gaze came to rest on the blonde Slayer and her eyes flitted all around Buffy’s face as if trying to peer through a fog.
All this wordless examination was making Buffy nervous. “Willow? What is it? What do you see?”
Her voice when she replied was far away. “I’m not sure. It’s like there’s some kind of blurry double image. I keep seeing two Buffys: one looks like you, that is, the you you are now: same clothes and hair and stuff. The other has different clothes and looks, I don’t know, happier somehow. But they’re both you and there’s no magical aura or demon cloud or mystic claw about your head or anything. It’s just you, Buffy.”
Willow shook her head; obviously the spell wasn’t quite as helpful as she’d thought it would be. She felt incredibly frustrated.
Then her eyes fell on Xander and her mouth dropped open. He was staring at her--from both big beautiful brown eyes. He had his arm around an extremely pregnant Anya and she lifted her head to look beyond Willow.
“Halfrek! Get over here and stop teasing your baby brother!”
Halfrek? Anya’s demon friend? Turning about in confusion, Willow gaped as a little brunette girl, about seven years old, ran in holding a toy bear above the reaching arms of a smaller boy the spitting image of Xander. The boy grabbed futilely for the toy beyond his reach and then kicked his older sister in the shin. She gave a howl of pain and dropped the bear.
“Mommy! Rupert kicked me!”
“You tole my bear!”
“It’s not your bear! Auntie Willow gave it to me!”
“But you don’ like bears! It’s mine!”
The girl grabbed the teddy bear and started tugging at one leg. “Mine!” she shrieked with all the lung power that a small child could possess.
“Mine!” the younger boy yelled back and pulled at the other leg.
Anya rolled her eyes. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud.” She staggered up, wobbling slightly under the weight of her huge belly, and came over to the two children. Pulling the bear from their hands with practiced ease, she held it away from both of them. “Hallie, you don’t like bears. You pouted and agreed to let Rupert have it. You’re just taking it from him now because you want to make him miserable.”
Turning to her younger offspring, she shook the bear in his face. “As for you, young man, I don’t ever want to see you kicking your sister again. I don’t like it when males commit acts of violence against women and mommy still has pull in the Underworld. You do something like that again, I’m having one of my old friends turn you into something small and nasty--like a rat. Then I’m feeding you to the neighbor’s cat.”
The threat obviously had some weight because the kid’s eyes grew wide as saucers. He accepted the bear and Anya folded her arms. “What do you say to your sister?”
“ ‘orry, Hallie.”
“That’s better. Hallie, go and play with your Xena doll. You can vent by having her battling with Hercules.” The two children nodded and, glaring silently at each other, ran from the room. Having settled the dispute to her own satisfaction, she waddled back to her husband. “Honestly, human children are such a pain sometimes.”
“You’re not fooling anybody, Anya. You love ‘em to bits just like I do. Besides, you told me that demon babies aren’t much easier to take care of.”
“True. But they’re easier to punish. One day little Rupert is going to see through mommy’s bluff and then I’ll really have to let him get chewed by beetles or spend a day as a sparrow being chased by hawks just to let him know I mean business.” She shifted around on the couch, arranging her belly to get comfortable. “On that note, have you thought about what I said?”
“About what we’re going to name the next kid?” Xander asked.
“No, about leaving Sunnydale.”
“We’re not leaving Sunnydale.”
“Why not? The Hellmouth’s closed and Buffy doesn’t really need us now. She said you could go, Xander.”
“Anya, we’ve had this discussion. All our friends are here.”
“All your friends are here. My friends are everywhere or can be summoned anywhere. Xander, you’re still hanging onto a past where Buffy needed to have all her old friends around her. But she’s got so many people helping her now: Angel, Giles, Wesley, Willow, Tara and the rest. You’re just…”
“In the way? Useless?” Xander’s voice didn’t sound bitter only kinda sad and wistful. It was like the conversation was just a mere formality and they’d already made up their minds what they were going to do.
“I was going to say unnecessary,” Anya finished in her blunt fashion. “Hear me out before you get all defensive. Buffy will always love you as one of her best friends. She wouldn’t have survived this long without you. She’s not going to forget you if you take off to another state or even another continent. Neither will the others.
“But she feels the same way I do. We’re raising a family now and I want them out of harm’s way. But, believe me, if Buffy ever feels like she needs us--and I mean, both of us--then we’ll come back.”
She turned Xander’s face towards her and kissed him soundly on the mouth. When his lips parted from hers, she smiled at him. “We’re a Scooby family as well as a Harris family and I’ll never forget that no matter where we go.”
Xander beamed with that same happy smile Willow had always loved. “I’m holding you to that, sweetie.” He bent his head and kissed her again. She kissed him back and then started.
“Ooh! The baby kicked! Feel.” She brought his hand to her stomach and then…
“Willow? Are you okay? What did you see?” Buffy was shaking her slightly and Willow blinked again. The vision of Anya and Xander disappeared.
She gulped and for a moment felt tears welling up in her eyes. Tara! Anya said Tara! She’s still alive there--wherever there is. I can get her back!
Buffy was becoming alarmed at Willow’s silence and the swimming in her eyes. “Oh no. It’s something horrible, isn’t it? I’m under a demon curse or we’re about to be attacked. Do we have any weapons here? All I brought were a couple of swords and Mr. Pointy!”
“No, no, Buffy. It’s okay. It was a good thing.” Willow sat down on the couch and quickly sketched in everything she’d seen.
The former Watcher paced up and down as he tried to piece together the mystery. “So what it boils down to is this. An alternate reality exists--one in which we’re all together, no one has died and Xander’s expecting his third child?”
“I’m going to be a daddy? Anya and I really made it work? Oh crap, I did blow it when I walked out on her!” Xander groaned and bent his head into his hands.
Willow did her best to console her Xander-shaped buddy. “I’m thinking that you couldn’t have worked things out here…not in this reality, anyway. This world is seriously screwed up and somehow it all revolves around Buffy.”
The blond threw up her hands and fumed in outrage. “That’s just peachy! How am I supposed to fix things? My memory’s been screwed with and that can’t be of the good. And you still haven’t figured out what caused it, have you?”
Willow looked up at her from the couch and shrugged. She understood Buffy’s frustration but she was at a loss to help. All the magic had shown her was an alternate timeline in which everybody seemed to be happy and the Hellmouth was closed. Other than that, she had no clue how to solve Buffy’s current predicament.
Buffy huffed and plopped down on the sofa, adjacent to but not touching Xander and Willow. “So we’re back to square one. Buffy with big hole where her memories should be.” She sat up and looked at the others. “Do you think I should call Angel?”
Giles spoke before the others could comment. “I hardly believe that’s necessary or even advisable. I understand from Faith that affairs are rather volatile in L.A. at the moment and Angel has his own problems to worry about.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing the talking thing with him then? What if whatever is going on in L.A. is connected to what’s happening here in Sunnydale? Anybody check on that?” She frowned at their evasive expressions. Had things between her and Angel gotten so bad, they couldn’t even keep in touch?
She still found it hard to grasp that Angel could simply have taken off and left her. First he was wildly in love with her. Then he up and left. Shit, he was no better than her father if he pulled that stunt.
No! Angel loves me. This is just some crazy misunderstanding.
But does he still love you? After all, he’s been gone for almost four years according to Giles. The only “man” who’s ever stuck with you is some half-loony second-rater with a bad dye job and a tacked-on soul. You can’t seem to hold onto the live ones, darling, and the dead lover didn’t want you. Maybe something is wrong with you.
Okay, where was that crazy self-doubt coming from? Yes, she’d had issues with Angel’s feelings for her, starting with Cordelia Chase’s snippy commentary about her less-than-perfect looks compared to the brunette’s flawless made-up beauty. But she’d put them to rest when he’d staked Darla for her and when she’d defeated Spike in that stupid enchanted 18th-century get-up she’d sported on Halloween. It was good to be Buffy the Slayer, kicking ass and taking no names, and Angel got that.
But he was gone. And Cordelia was in L.A. with Angel while she remained stuck here… How had it all gone so horribly wrong?
All of a sudden she was wretchedly tired. She didn’t know what she’d been doing before she woke up in that school hallway. She only knew that she wanted to sleep and put this whole day behind her. “Guys, I’m gonna crash. Is it okay if I use the shower first? I’m feeling kinda ooky.”
“Sure. Ladies first.” Xander waved vaguely in the direction of the bathroom and Buffy snatched up her bag.
__________
Giles made his goodbyes, promising to return in the morning, and Buffy settled onto the couch. Xander had protested, insisting that he could sleep quite comfortably on it, but she’d put her foot down. He was injured and deserved the bed. After a lot of discussion, he unwillingly agreed to share with Willow. The redhead teased him that his virtue was safe; the time when she would have jumped him was long passed.
Buffy waited a long time until she was sure the two of them were asleep. Then she lowered the table lamp to the floor and turned it on. Pulling out the last diary she recalled writing in, she flipped it open and started reading.
“Angel cured me with that demon blood. I was kinda out of it at the time which was probably good since I’m sure it tasted pretty yucky. It is so good to have only my thoughts in my head again. I learned more about my friends than I ever wanted to. Although in Cordelia’s case that wasn’t much. What you see is pretty much what you get in her case. No brainer is right.
“I can’t believe Mom slept with Giles! That is so freaky. I’m going to tease him about that the next time I see him. I wonder what a stevedore is and how Giles is like one. Ack! No! No sex thoughts about Giles. That is so gross. On second thought, I don’t think I’ll talk about that; it is just too wiggy.”
Well, that was funny but not very informative. She skipped forward a few pages and continued.
“Faith shot Angel with an arrow. She didn’t get him in the heart and we thought she was just a lousy shot. But then he collapsed. It turns out she shot him with the Killer of the Dead. It’s some ancient poison used to kill vampires slowly. He was sweating and hallucinating and calling other people by my name even when I wasn’t there. Oz says he got that too. I would have thought that a scream if I hadn’t been so terrified.
“So I tried to kill Faith. That’s what was needed--the blood of a Slayer. Specifically, Angel needed to drain the blood of a Slayer. At the time I didn’t hesitate. I went after Faith and didn’t care that I was going to kill a human being. This was the man I loved and if her stinking, rotten blood was what was needed, then she was going to pony up. She’d tried to kill him; it was only justice that she save his life. Right?
“It’s just that now that I have a chance to think clearly I have to wonder. I was ready to kill a human being to save a vampire. There’s got got to be something in the Slayer’s Handbook against that sort of thing. Not that I’ve ever cared about the handbook. The Watcher’s Council can shove their manuals where the sun doesn’t shine…which would be the whole of England, I suppose. It’s just that I’ve given up so much for Angel and now I was prepared to squash my morals and kill for him, too. What does that say about me?
“I know that I’d do it again in a heartbeat just as I was prepared to risk my own life to save him. Maybe that should have been my first choice instead of my last.”
Buffy’s hand drifted up absently to stroke the scar on the right side of her neck. She’d seen it in the mirror when she’d gone to shower. Back at the Summers house, Giles had mentioned Angel’s attack on her; he hadn’t been able to explain why this scar had never faded when every other wound she’d ever received from her fights always disappeared minutes or hours after battle.
But there it lay, a testament to the love they bore each other. She hadn’t left him with anything nearly so permanent. What did he have in L.A. to hold on to that reminded him of her?
“Yay us. We kicked the Mayor’s ass. Faith’s in the hospital in a coma, Angel got his mojo working in time for the eclipse and we packed the library with enough explosives to start our own military yard sale. Luring the Mayor in was easy. I just waved around the knife I took from Faith when I gutted her and he took the bait.
“Too bad about the school, though. It’s a total rubbish heap after the explosives blew and took Mayor Wilkins aka Snake Boy with it. I actually liked being there. Well, in between the times when I wasn’t dealing with invisible girls, zombie guys, reptile men who used to be swimmers, lovelorn ghosts and pissed off vampires. Who am I kidding? I hated it. The only good things I’m taking away from it are all of my friends.”
So they survived the Mayor? Well, Giles had said as much; she just needed confirmation, that’s all. Turning over the next page, she came across one that stopped her cold. The handwriting was shaky and there were blotches all over it as she’d been crying when she wrote it.
“Angel left. I don’t know why I’m so surprised; he said he would leave right after graduation. I just kept hoping that he didn’t mean it, that he would change his mind. He kept on babbling about how something was telling him to move on. What something? Did he get some celestial email telling him his time’s up in Sunnydale? We love each other and he just wouldn’t discuss it. His mind was made up and he just turned around and walked into the damned fog without looking back. It’s like it didn’t even hurt him to leave. After everything we went through together, after I was willing to give up my life for him, he just turns around and abandons me. Why? What did I do wrong? It had to have been me. I wasn’t good enough or smart enough or funny enough…or maybe I was just some silly schoolgirl who didn’t amount to much in his eyes.
“I just don’t understand it. I love him. He claims he loves me. What went wrong?”
The was wasn’t much different. There was page after page of silent written heartbreak. How she couldn’t discuss it in front of the others because Xander was too happy Angel was gone and she didn’t want to put Willow in the middle. How everyone simply avoided mentioning his name as if that would make all her feelings disappear.
It hadn’t happened to her yet, this her, the one reading these entries almost four years old. But she could feel that pain rooted in the insecurity that still welled up in her when she considered that Angel was over 200 years old and she was barely a fraction of his age. He must have seen thousands of women in his time, lovelier and more experienced. How could she compete with that? She still recalled the words he’d said to her after he lost his soul:
“You’ve got a lot to learn about men, kiddo--although I guess you proved that last night.”
Intellectually she knew that had been said by Angelus to hurt her, to cripple her emotionally to the point where she couldn’t, wouldn’t, fight him. But what if it was true? What if, in some tiny corner of Angel’s mind, she simply didn’t measure up?
She blinked and scrubbed away the tears she hadn’t realized were pouring down her cheeks. Stop it! Stop crying like some immature schoolkid. This has already happened. Angel broke your heart and moved on without you. This took place years ago and blubbering about it now isn’t going to help solve anything.
Oh but it hurt, though. It hurt like a bitch and she flipped through the pages to find something, anything, to remove her from this raging pain.
“I met somebody today. His name’s Riley Finn and he’s very good-looking in an all-American cornfed jock kinda way. He’s tall, muscular and funny. He’s no Angel but then nobody is. I just can’t help comparing him to Angel. But that’s stupid. Angel forgot about me so I might as well move on…and try to stop looking at every tall, dark-haired male that comes my way as if he might be the one.
“College is certainly not much different from high school. My roommate Kathy is giving me the creeps though. I’m having bizarre nightmares and she plays this godawful Celine Dion music. I mean, honestly! Celine Dion?! Is she mental? She’s a really loud sleeper, too. How am I supposed to slay and do homework with that snoring or whatever creepy mouth music she’s making over there?
“The others are accusing me of acting strange. Fuck them! What the hell do they know about anything? Do they think my life is easy? I have to slay, attend college classes, do homework and all the while make with playing happy Buffy to please them because they can’t stand to have me mope about Angel. Like I should just put him out of my mind. This is all Angel’s fault. He should have stayed with me. Instead he leaves with some lame excuse and breaks my heart and I’m supposed to suck it up and get over it. Asshole.”
Wow, that was majorly hostile. What was up with her? She knew she was torn up about Angel’s departure but this passage sounded more Cordelia-like than her usual Buffy tones. Of course, Angel used to get her pretty riled up at times. But it was in the nice I-love-him-but-he-just-drives-me-crazy kind of way that all boyfriends did to their girlfriends. She’d even gotten some of that from Willow about Oz. His monosyllabic, laid-back approach to life would infuriate the more energetic, emotional redhead. She would wonder if Oz really cared about anything or about her. Then he would say something really sweet and wonderful and melt her heart all over again.
Something wonderful. Just like a Broadway musical. So what had me so steamed?
“There’s a bunch of teenage vamps on campus. They go around picking off other losers, slackers, nerds, the mentally challenged and whatnot and then vamp them. They figure these kids will just be pegged as dropouts and runaways and nobody’ll think twice about them except maybe the parents. But they stole my things including that trophy I got from graduation. That was it. Nobody messes with my stuff, especially a bunch of wannabe badasses like them.
“I met up with Xander, Willow, Oz and Giles again. We tracked down Sunday and her team of vampire minions and other assorted losers and I totally dusted them all. I think a few may have gotten away but I didn’t find any when I went to track them down. Still, it shouldn’t be too hard to get them. These vamps do not strike me as being the sharpest pencils in the desk. How could they be? They’re all dropouts!”
Hmmm. So she missed a couple of vampires. And she met that Riley guy, the one Giles told her was involved in the--what was it called? Oh, right, the Initiative. Should she just skip ahead to her affair with him or see what else was happening? She skimmed ahead and found out what had happened to the infamous Kathy.
“I knew it! My roommate was a demon and she was sucking my soul out while I was sleeping. That’s why I was being such a total bitch to my friends. Well, robbing a Slayer of her soul wasn’t the smartest thing she could have done. I was a killing machine before I lost it; I totally whaled on her afterwards. I pulled her human mask clean off her face and, wow, was she ugly under it. Think charbroiled steak and you’ve got it in a nutshell. Giles and Willow cast some spell and, voila!, Buffy gets her soul back. Long story short, her demon jailer came for Kathy and sucked her back down into whatever hell dimension she came from and that was that. Let’s hope my next roommate is better. I wonder if I can get Willow…
“I met a cute guy named Parker. He’s kinda nice. Definitely a sweet talker, too. He’s tall, dark and handsome--so my type. Guess I’m just doomed to fall for tall brunettes. He wants me to sleep with him and I’m getting so sick of being alone. After giving up my virginity to the man I love, it’s not like I’ve got anything to keep back from another guy so why not?”
Oh shit. She did sleep with Parker. Giles had casually brushed over mentioning him as if the affair had been of no importance and she guessed it was--to Parker, at any rate. God, she must have been lonely and desperate. She’d heard enough about Parker’s rep to know better. Well, actually she didn’t listen much to the bathroom gossip of other girls. That was more Cordelia’s scene than hers. But she’d had some clue. Could Angel’s departure have hurt her that much?
Huh. Looks like she wasn’t the only one with man trouble. Oz got involved with some she-werewolf named Veruca and slept with her.
“Oz says he did it to keep Veruca from roaming around killing people, but I don’t know. I mean, hello, Slayer? He could have given me a call, told me there was a wolf bitch on campus but instead he gets the bright idea that screwing her is the solution. What was he gonna do--keep boinking her every night just to keep her indoors? And Willow saw them together, too. God, that must have hurt. I remember being upset about Angel lying to me about Drusilla, but at least I knew that when Angelus slept with her, it didn’t mean anything.
“Well, Oz did get in touch with me--eventually. I got a tranquilizer gun but I ran into this masked man in the woods and it wasn’t Batman. He was toting some serious hardware and I barely got away from him in time. What’s going on here? We’ve got werewolves, demons and now army guys running around campus. I gotta talk to Giles about this. Something tells me slaying just got a whole lot more complicated.”
Right. That must have been her first meeting with a member of the Initiative. When did she figure out Riley was with them?
“Oz left Willow. He gave her some speech about how he needed to get his wolfy side under control and took off. Willow is just devastated and she can’t stop crying. I don’t know what to do or say. All I can do is be there for her the way she was for me about Angel. Oh great. Even when I’m writing about my best friend’s woes I can’t help dragging Mr. Broody into it. At least now Willow knows what it’s like to be the grieving girlfriend. One thing I’m not gonna do to her is try to push her into relationships before she’s ready for them. That’s what she did to me with Scott Hope and I hated it. What Willow needs now is space, time to heal…and tons of ice cream.”
Buffy couldn’t take much more of this. It wasn’t simply that it was hard to read. There was just a depressing sameness to all of it. Page after page was filled with the stress of school, slaying and heartbreak. Even with Riley there was nothing really new. She liked him and they’d had sex but between the written lines she could see that there was no depth to her feelings for him. She hid things from him, went whole hours without thinking about him and didn’t even care for the sex much. Riley tended to be too fond of the whole man-superior style.
Still, it’s not like I ever got beyond that with Angel. But I remember Angel using his hands, his tongue, his everything….mmmmmm. She flushed as she recalled the details of their one and only night together in her head. She’d written up about that in her diaries; there was no need to go over it again. And there was too much more to cover…
“Something’s wrong with Mom. The doctors aren’t sure what it is but it’s got something to do with her brain. The doctor told me but all of a sudden it was like there was this weird droning noise and I could see his lips moving but nothing was coming out.
“Mom’s going to be okay. She’s a Summers and she’s tough. We all are. She’s gonna be okay.”
So this was the beginning of it. Mom getting sick, going into the hospital and getting tests. She was shutting Riley out more and more; she had this odd idea of trying to protect him. She learned about Dawn’s Key status around this time, too. She told Giles, she told her friends. But she didn’t tell Riley? Why not?
She pulled out another diary and frowned. Spike started making more appearances in their lives and in her diary entries. Why were they keeping him around? Was it some misplaced idea of chivalry not to kill him just because he was helpless against humans? He was still a pain in the ass.
“My god. I can’t believe it; I just can’t. Riley was sneaking out at nights. He was going…it’s so sick I can barely think about it. Spike came into my room a few nights ago and told me he had something important to show me. I don’t know why I believed him but I guess he’s never failed with news even though I usually have to beat it out of him. What’s up with that, anyway? Is he some sort of closet masochist? Of course he is; he was with Drusilla for 120-odd years!
“Where was I? He took me to this shabby vampire den. I’ve been in crypts before but this place was totally foul. It was dirty and filled with human and vampire stench and the vampires seemed mostly out of it as if they didn’t realize there was a Slayer in the house. There were humans there, too. They were being bitten and moaning…like they were getting some sick thrill out of it. Every Slayer vibe went off and I wanted to tear into each bloodsucker in the place and stake them into dust. But Spike said that wasn’t why we were here. He brought me to this room upstairs and I saw…”
Buffy pushed the diary aside, her hands trembling. She didn’t want to read what was coming next. She didn’t know what it was but she was sure that it would be almost as shocking as Xander’s missing eye, as her own death and as disturbing as her sex with Spike. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to continue.
“…I saw Riley. He was sitting in a chair with his shirt off and urging some skinny, dried-up vampire bitch to suck on him. The room was dim so I couldn’t get much detail but I could see all these bite marks scattered over his chest and arms. I could tell he’d been doing this for a while now. Guess that explains why he’s been keeping his shirt on and having sex with me in the dark.
“I couldn’t stand to watch it. I ran outside and tried not to rolf on the sidewalk. Spike ran after me and said some garbage. I don’t know what; I was too sick to listen. I don’t even know how I got home. This happened three nights ago and it took me this long to settle down and write this.
“I went back to that place the next day. I took Xander, Willow and Giles with me. I didn’t tell them anything about Riley being there, only that it was some vampire version of a crack den. Anya knew all about it, which didn’t surprise me. Giles knew about it, too. He never told me because he felt it didn’t fall under my duties as a Slayer. How could he even think that?! How could he not tell me? I’m a Slayer and killing vamps is what I’m supposed to do.
“I wanted to dust every last one of those things. But they weren’t there. I guess they finally wised up about the Slayer and cleared out. I torched the place but it didn’t help. It didn’t make me feel any better.
“Riley and I had a talk--if you can call it that. He accused me of having an attraction to vampires which is a laugh considering what I saw him doing. So he left me. He took off for Central America with some lameass excuse about killing demons in the jungle. I tried to get him back; I really did. Though now I wonder why I bothered.
“Riley was supposed to be the one, the so-called normal guy Angel left me to be with. Instead he was just a fill-in. I wasn’t in love with Riley, not really. I cared about him and maybe loved him a little. But he was the rebound guy for Angel and he knew it before I did. I thought that was Parker but Parker was just a one-night stand. Riley was supposed to be the real deal. Guess I was wrong about that.”
So Riley had been no big loss. No need to dwell on him then. The rest of the diary dealt with her struggling with her mother’s illness, fending off attacks from that hellgod Glory and shutting Spike out of the house after he’d declared his, ugh, love. She gritted her teeth and read the appalling, humiliating details of being chained in his basement while he threatened to sic Drusilla on her like a rabid Doberman.
And I didn’t stake him for that, WHY? Was I mental? Even with that chip in his head, he was dangerous and evil to the core. He should have been dust blowing in the wind for that and I just let him go. Buffy snorted and flipped the pages. Coming to another blotchy, wrinkled page, she slowed down and read about her mother…
“She was lying on the couch. She was just…god, she was staring at the ceiling and I knew. I just knew she was dead because nobody sleeps…”
The next few words were smudged and illegible and, after trying to make out the inkblots, Buffy simply gave up. Giles had shown up and she’d broken the news to her friends--and Dawn. Nice to see they were still first on my mental speed dial of people to contact not the Former Big Bad.
Angel had made a brief appearance after the funeral and she didn’t try to fight the now-familiar moistness in her eyes.
“I must have stood there for hours after they shoveled in the last dirt clod. I don’t know what I was waiting for but somehow I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I felt a cold hand wind in mine. Angel. He’d come back.”
Yes, he had. She was beginning to see a pattern to Angel’s reappearances. He showed up for the big moments in her life but the little everyday things found him to be totally absent. She supposed that meant something. But it wasn’t enough. It was hard to believe that she was being fed such lousy crumbs of affection when she used to bathe in his love night after night.
“He held me close as we rested by mom’s grave. He said he had ‘things’ going on in L.A. but he would stay as long as he wanted me. I wanted to pour my heart out to him and tell him about my sister, about Glory, that I was up against a god and thought I might not make it. He would have stayed to lend his strength in the fight, I know it. But I was afraid and confused.
“Part of me wanted him to stay no matter what I said. He must have known I was hurting and needed mucho boyfriend support. But he left it up to me. He didn’t say, ‘Buffy, I’ll be here no matter what.’ ‘Buffy, I’m here for you.’ No, just that he’d stay if I wanted. Not that he wanted to stay.
“Why couldn’t he say he wanted to be with me? Was being with his old girlfriend too much for him? Was I that much of a chore? That’s what it felt like, as if I was taking time away from his precious cases in L.A. I was also terrified that he would get hurt. I just knew that fighting Glory meant that some of us were going to die and I didn’t want it to be him. I wanted to protect him.
“I guess that’s the difference between what I felt for Riley and what I feel for Angel. I shut out Riley because I didn’t really care about making him a part of the team. I kept Angel out of it because I love him.”
Buffy reached out a slim finger and traced those three little words. “I love him.” In spite of Scott Hope, Parker, Riley, she loved him. That didn’t change no matter what.
So how the HELL did she wind up with Spike?

TBC
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One Clear Shot