Buffy sat in her chair, every one of her mystically enhanced muscles completely tense. Her pulse was racing, and every movement she made was jerky and unnatural.
"Buff?"
She looked at Xander, who was sitting in the chair beside her. "You gonna make it?" he asked.
She nodded, then shook her head. Looking at him helplessly, she shrugged.
He reached out and took hold of her hand. She crushed his larger hand in her grip, and although he winced, he didn't say anything. He just held on, giving her a tangible reminder that she was not alone, that she could have as much support as she needed. Which, he knew was going to be quite a lot.
The sun was still setting, and soon they would be arriving at the library...
She closed her eyes, willing the memories away. Willing herself to forget. Willing herself to be strong enough not to break down.
Xander's voice called her out of her reverie. "Hey, Buffy? Can I ask you a question?"
She nodded, grateful for the distraction.
"Do you remember a time when you didn't love Angel?"
She was taken aback by the question. She was crushed by the question.
She thought about the question.
"I remember. I remember being shallow and frivolous and never serious about anything. Even the things that scared me had to treated lightly- it was the only way I knew how to deal."
"I know the feeling."
She was startled at Xander's words, but comprehension dawned, and a smile began building in the corners of her mouth. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. If you don't admit to being scared of something, there's a chance it might not-"
"Might not be able to hurt you," she finished.
"So it was only after Angel came that you started allowing yourself to be serious?"
She shook her head vaguely. "It wasn't that, exactly. I mean, he was a part of it- he influenced it. He was this grave presence, which added to it, but my life was changing in other ways, too."
"Would you rather have Angel be in hell than have him not love you?"
She looked at him in shock. "Of course not."
That was when Willow came in, Angel right behind.
****
Buffy studied him, objectively. Looked at his smile, looked at his warm, open eyes. And while she was hardly going to go so far as to say that he was better off without her- she couldn't exactly deny it either. She supposed it depended on the definition of 'better'.
She had been amputated from his memories and his heart- her entire being, which she had given to him so gladly, wiped out from himself. From his experience, they were friendly acquaintances. He respected her because Willow did. He probably expected to become friends with her, just as he had managed with Xander.
The petty, grudge-loving part of her soul wanted to cling to her bitterness. It wanted to remember their times of fiery dark passion, the desperation of their adoration.
But she was a girl whose open and accepting heart had gotten her into trouble many times before. Perhaps, just once, its very ability to love without logic could get her out of trouble. She was clutching Xander's hand tightly, but there were no tears threatening, and her smile was growing more genuine with every moment.
"The first day I met you, you were trying to make a new life for yourself, weren't you?" Xander asked in a low voice.
She nodded as she looked into his smiling eyes.
"Chance number two," he whispered.
She gave his hand another squeeze, not so tight as it was grateful. Then she let go and stood up. She looked at Willow, whose worry and incredible desire not to harm was written all over her expressive face.
"Will, you would not believe Giles. He was freaking out over this book- not even a demon book, okay? Anyway, freaking out because I misshelved this book. I read the call number wrong- and since he makes the labels, is that my fault? And so I put the book all of two shelves away from where it should be, and he almost has a heart attack. He kept ranting about the horrors of misshelved books- they're like these lost and abandoned orphans, wandering through the stacks, looking for their proper place. Even those that seek them are powerless, etc. It would have been extremely moving, only he was worried about a book that was not lost." She made a face at the librarian, who just smiled.
"Well, Buffy, you know how he loves his books."
"Yes- he loves reading them and finding out new ways for me to die. And when he doesn't have a book foretelling doom, he gets bored and buys a new one. Like when Angel brought him the Codex. Or those scrolls he had flown in from Belgium."
She rambled on, her tone growing more natural with every sentence. Xander's reassuring grin had its intended effect on Willow, who brought Angel further into the library. "So, what's on the itinerary for tonight?" she asked, settling into a chair across from the slayer.
"I think you're all going to try and figure out the extent of my emotional damage, and we're also going to be cross referencing. I'm sure Giles mentioned cross referencing."
Willow blinked. "Oh. Sounds good."
****
Buffy hugged Xander fiercely. "Thank you for everything, Xander. You've just been Mr. Wonderful through all of this."
He shrugged. "No problem."
They were standing on his front porch. Even Xander's masculine sensibilities couldn't argue with his finely honed sense of self preservation, which is why Buffy had walked him home instead of vice versa.
"Just a few weeks ago, everything was so different. Before Angel forgot-" her strength broke there, and she stopped, drawing on deep reserves of control.
"I remember when Angel and I were arguing about his plan to sacrifice himself- you came in and wanted to ask us something. What were you doing that night, Xan? You weren't with us- it's only now that I realize I never knew what you were up to. Willow said she saw you on Main Street, and Giles talked to you in the graveyard."
He shook his head, a secret smile gracing his lips. "Sometime I'll tell you. Sometime that isn't now."
She nodded. "Okay."
She was about to walk away, when he stopped her. "Do you still feel like you belong to him?"
"Of course. The Slayer is a belongs to everyone- like public property."
"And Buffy?"
A long pause in the darkness, the sounds of night and the laughing sparkle of stars filtering around them as she searched for words.
"The Angel that I knew was devoted to me from the moment he saw me. I basked in that devotion for a long time. Now it's gone, and it's wrenching, but it makes me realize one other thing."
"What's that?"
"There's one other person who has been devoted to me ever since I first came to Sunnydale. I met him before I met Angel, actually. He asked if he could have me- but he never got the chance to find out."
"Is he going to?"
Buffy smiled wide and sweet, and with a whispered goodnight that spoke of possibility, she walked off into the dangerous darkness.
****
Angel, with all of the tendencies of an artist, loved to revel in the details. From the spray of fiery hair spread out behind Willow's head to the delicate curve of her tender mouth, every small part of her, every factor was merely a hint at the perfection of her whole.
He traced gently- but instead of a pencil, he used his fingers, and her pale skin was his sketchpad. He drew over the curves of her form with his artist's hands, memorizing them, knowing them.
He had heard the explanations without understanding them. Everyone had described his guilt, his agony. He remembered both emotions, of course, but never in the quantities that he had apparently been used to maintaining. And now all he could seem to do was smile. He smiled when she smiled, he smiled when she slept. He smiled when she was present and he smiled when he thought of her.
He was hardly recognizable, compared to what he had been. But he found that her kisses made him rather indifferent to what sort of image he was projecting. He could not possibly remember to fear hell, and so the memories that haunted him were those of homelessness and utter abandonment. Willow's logical forgiveness of any sins he had ever committed was nearly enough to convince him.
He felt his past growing fuzzier with every moment spent in her company, the clarity of love wiping away the misty horror of the past. His guilt remained, but it was closer to that held by the Slayer and her friends; the guilt of unprevented deaths, the guilt of helplessness to stop certain evils.
He could not know it, but there had been one other time that he had been so close to letting go of his self-hatred. One other time when he had been so close to feeling alive and accepted. That other time had been viciously cut off by his first curse, his happiness forbidden to him.
But this time his happiness grew, never endangering anyone, never becoming a problem, simply remaining a blessing. The terrible things he had done while soulless, the things he thought he could never wipe out from his fathomless mind had been excised for him. Whether a cosmic error or a divine intervention, no one could say. And while he had sense enough to feel some regret over what he had lost-
Willow opened her eyes with a smile, and any recent idea of regret vanished in his kiss.