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There would, one might think, come a point in a lifetime of several centuries when Angel would actually be ready to catch a curveball.
But as he allows himself to finally relax when the Tribunal acquiesces, “You have won. She is under our protection,” it is immediately followed by, “As will her daughter be, from the time she is born until she comes of age."
“Wait, when?” Angel asks, back forcing itself straight again, but the tribunal has already gone.
The woman beside him, a once relieved hand now limp on her belly, closes her eyes, tips up her head, and starts to laugh. “Of course there would be fine print. There’s always fine print.” She turns toward him with a weighted look; she’s young, but even the faint lines around her eyes seem overwhelming. “Think an ambulance will find me if I get back down into those tunnels? I can give them notice. I’d say about –” She rubs over her belly like a fortune teller. “Mmm, maybe two weeks?”
Angel freezes, blinks, freezes again. He takes a breath. “You could – We could – I have a friend you could stay with.”
“Oh yeah? She got steel reinforced walls at home?” The woman (he really needs to actually learn her name) shifts her hip out, a flash of sass, in charge, even if it can’t be all that much. It makes it easy to see who she must be around her siblings, around her friends, before all this, what kind of mother she’ll be someday soon.
Angel gives his small, dry jump of a laugh. “No reinforced walls.” He tilts his head quickly, flickering up an eyebrow, reconsidering. “She does have a ghost, though.”
“That’s what’s going to help me out until my baby comes? Your friend’s invisible friend?”
“Well, I thought I could help.” Angel shrugs a shoulder and cants out his hand.
A car comes around the corner then. Whatever magic has been convincing the drivers of LA to divert their routes to avoid the joust going on in the middle of the street has clearly been lifted. Angel guides the woman over to the sidewalk, but even as they get there, she still seems to be formulating her response.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because you did a good job with the knight and the trial and everything. But your track record otherwise is not great, and also –” She gestures up and down at him. “You’re a guy. And I think I’d be more comfortable having a bodyguard who’s...not.”
“Kamal was a guy,” Angel points out before he has time to reconsider, then recalculates. “Kamal wasn’t even human.”
She glares at him. “I’m pretty sure you’re not either. But Kamal wasn’t ever supposed to be around for this part. We thought I was supposed to be wherever the Tribunal vacations. I wasn’t exactly taking him to Lamaze. So,” and for all her businesslike, handclap of a tone, there’s a tremble there, deeper, “you have any friends who are like you but the lady version?”
“Well, there’s one who’s local.”
“Great! How soon can you get her here?”
“Depends on how soon I can stage a jailbreak.”
“Uh-uh, try again.”
“I’ll keep thinking. But let’s continue this conversation inside.”
It’s LA weather, not particularly chilly, but Angel drapes his coat around her as they walk toward Cordelia’s. “My name’s Angel, by the way.”
“Little late in our relationship for that,” she says, peering at the (thankfully no longer seeping) stab wound in his midsection. She actually smiles at him. She has dimples. “I’m Jo.”
They walk a full block before Jo asks, “So, how’s that list coming? Any lady who isn’t incarcerated sounds good to me.” Angel opens his mouth and Jo holds up a finger to him. “Formerly incarcerated, and should-have-been-but-wasn’t count too.”
And Angel knows who he’s going to have to call.
In many ways, he and Buffy are in a better place than they have been in a long time. He’d returned from Sunnydale feeling that they were actually stable, despite his leaving and everything with Faith and the entire bloody, painful history of it all. But he’d never considered calling her up, to consult or just to chat. He believes that he and Buffy could grow to be friends, but there’s a point with them – there always is, with them – when just friends becomes too much because it’s so little compared to what he wants.
It’s easier to just stay away. Emergencies only contact.
“Maybe this counts as an emergency?” suggests Cordelia dubiously. “I’ve heard pregnancy cravings can get intense.”
Wesley says, “I think that Jo seems to be holding up extraordinarily well.” He glances quickly over at Angel and then, with a relieved lift of his eyebrows, moves to take the kettle off the stove. His back still turned, he adds, “However, if this is the situation we find ourselves in, we might have to agree to this one request.”
Wes sets a cup of tea in front of Angel. Gunn leans forward from his place against the wall and says, “I don’t get the problem. Lady seems to have been through a lot, all she wants is some girl time and it sounds like you’ve got a girl for the job.”
“Oh, we’ve got the girl,” says Cordelia, tossing her hair in what Angel guesses is meant to be a meaningful way. “The only problem is that our boy has a big book of history with her.”
Thankfully, Jo had seemed truly exhausted, gratefully taking Cordelia’s bed just after being introduced to her and the others, otherwise Angel would be concerned that she was listening at the door as his and Buffy’s relationship is once again unraveled and held up to the light.
Equally thankfully, Wes interrupts. “Considering all of that, perhaps it would be best if I reached out to Mr. Giles. I understand that you and Buffy are on fairly good terms at the moment, but this way things might stay more...”
“Non life-threatening?” Cordelia offers brightly.
Wes glares. “Professional.”
Angel abruptly puts down his cup. “Good idea.” He stands. “I’m going to check around, make sure things are quiet.” He retrieves his coat from Cordelia’s couch. Hand on the doorknob, he adds, “Make sure to tell Giles it should only be for a week or two. I know school starts soon,” and he’s gone.
It isn’t, Angel reflects as he waits for Wes and Cordy to return from their Buffy-retrieving trip to the bus station, that he hate the idea of Buffy back in LA. But the brief moments when their paths have crossed over the past year have been knife-sharp and veridian, painful enough to make him realize how much worse a week or even two in Buffy’s company will likely leave him after.
A five minute apology in her dorm hallway was one thing. The idea of seeing her for days of early mornings, talking to her as she sprawls on the sofa at night, the confrontation of memory and imagining of a human lifetime of that: it knocks hollow on his ribs.
“This doesn’t feel comforting,” Jo tells him in a crabby voice from where she is trying to watch TV. (It seems that getting to collapse, comfortable and safe after her past months of running, has allowed her to be in a bit of a mood.) Angel takes stock, stops his knee from bouncing. He hadn’t even noticed; he’d thought he was doing a half-decent job of subtlety. He’s had enough practice, after all. Apparently if Buffy wants to come to LA, it’s better if she sneaks up on him so he doesn’t have time for anxiety.
“-so just don’t ask for stuff that’s hot or breakable and you should alright.” Cordelia’s voice sounds closer than it should. It seems that distraction overrides supernaturally enhanced senses. "Sometimes Dennis gets a little too friendly.”
“That's okay. The ghosts I usually room with are big grumps, so it’ll be nice to have a change.”
He sees the ball this time. He's still not prepared.
Buffy looks the same, perhaps a little tanner on the other side of summer from when he last saw her, a little adult stress around her eyes. He can still imagine her row of cosmetics, the body sprays and perfumes and lotion all the same, keeping her scent the same. She smacks into his senses the way she always does and makes him think of fire and air and spring.
Now that he considers it, staying in Sunnydale might have been smarter. Maybe having her constant presence would inoculate him a little, keep him from feeling simultaneously compressed and freed, breath-stolen, every time he does see her.
“Buffy,” he says, trying for professionalism, but he has no experience in being professional with her. It comes out as it always does: open and with something like surprise at her existence.
“Angel.” Her professionalism is better than his, but still warm and, he thinks, maybe a bit nervous.
“I'm glad you came.” He walks a little closer, one hand coming out a little for her bag. Once she's given it over, he almost regrets it, not the politeness but the logic. Jo, Cordelia, and Buffy are meant to stay in the apartment together but Angel hadn't really considered the exact arrangements. He regroups a bit, tries, “Run into any trouble on the way?”
“Nope, guess the gang you’ve got chasing you this time aren’t big fans of the daytime either.” She runs a hand up her arm, holding onto her opposite bicep gently. “Convenient. Maybe you can bring that up, remind them how much you have in common.”
“Well, it’s not really him they’re after.” Jo mutes the TV and stands too. Even just watching her get to her feet, Angel can see the heaviness in her step. He can’t believe that a couple of days ago she was running through the city alone trying to protect herself and her daughter. “I’m Jo. I guess you’ll be babysitting me this week. I’m sorry to pull you away. I’m sure you have stuff going on.”
“Buffy.” They shake hands. “Demons are kinda my job, so it’s more like a semester abroad. With free cable.”
“Well, I hope you’re not expecting a continental breakfast or anything.” Cordelia is the one to finally step out of the entryway, moving over to flip quickly through the TV Guide; as undoubtedly irritating as the relocation of the Angel Investigations office to her apartment has been, not to mention her now playing host to a couple of extra people, she has been able to use the opportunity to watch daytime television live instead of taping it.
“Of course not. Wouldn’t want to put you out, Cordy,” Buffy says, humor hinting casually in her voice.
Cordelia raises her eyebrows a bit skeptically in response and opens her mouth, no doubt to begin a list of exactly how this whole affair has interrupted her life. Thankfully, however, Wesley is getting better at recognizing cues. “Now that everyone has arrived, perhaps we can start formulating a schedule? Some business will have to continue as usual - the vampire population of Los Angeles is still active, and seemingly less interested in money than blood - but we should still have someone guarding here at all times.” Wesley walks over to the now blank whiteboard, clearly ready to fill it with a new schedule.
“Except for the next couple of hours,” Jo says.
Wesley pauses, confused, marker at the ready. “I’m sorry?”
“I have an appointment at two, remember? The clinic was able to fit me in, and they said that I’m due so soon that it’s important that they check things out.”
“It’s probably pretty dangerous for you to go out,” Angel says. “Are you sure you can’t just wait and let the baby, you know…?” He trails off, because he doesn’t exactly know.
“Excuse him,” Buffy says. “Sometimes he’s a little stuck in the fifties, and maybe not even the nineteen ones.” She checks the time. “If it’s at two, we should probably get going.” Holding out a hand to Cordy, she adds, “Why don’t I -”
“If the word drive was about to come out of your mouth, I’m going to have the doctors check you for a stroke,” Cordelia says, smooth and disdainful. “You can be backseat girl this time.”
Angel tends to agree. He loves Buffy, but he’s seen her drive. Then again, he’s seen Cordelia drive too. And they are taking his car. “Maybe Wes should -” he starts, but before he can even get the suggestion out, he’s watching the door close behind the three of them.
“Yes, well,” Wes says, still sketching out a rotation on the board. “It might just be possible that the whole arrangement will be moot by the time they arrive at the doctor’s office. I wonder if a drive with Cordelia might not just induce labor.”
Angel puts Buffy’s bag down beside a chair. She’s been around for five minutes and he already feels her threading through the apartment. He resumes his seat. His leg resumes its bouncing, just a little. He can’t decide if not needing Buffy for more than a few hours would be the best or worst outcome.
Jo comes back with, according to her doctor, at least another week of pregnancy.
“Huh,” Angel says when she tells him, and she just nods and says, “I don’t know how to feel about it either.”
Wesley has arranged it so that Buffy spends most of her time with Jo while Angel sleeps and works and hunts. Angel stays in the apartment during those times that Buffy is taking some time for herself. And even those short times of overlap - seeing her come home with her hair untamed and her cheeks flushed from tracking down monsters before the monsters track them, turning away as she wipes off her makeup and brushes her teeth and changes into pajamas as if it’s the first time he’s seen her in them, laughing with her, letting her force him to watch what she terms the essential movies he missed out on during the century of brood - the pain and joy are tearful inside of him. He forgets, sometimes, when they don’t see each other, how funny she is. He wonders, when they are apart, if he’s made her into more than herself, but here she is, more and more and more.
Cordelia has an even larger array of scented sprays and creams than anything Angel had seen back on Revello Drive. The apartment still smells like Buffy now.
Jo becomes tense and smiling, pained and grateful by whirling cycles.
Angel, in and out of the apartment as if he is testing a flame with his palm, knows that it will be over soon. And behind every smile, every matched gesture, is the knowledge that Buffy is not meant to stay here with them.
“Angel?”
He whirls, trying to pretend that the hand he’s slapped over his mug is just meant to stop him from spilling. After all, people generally don’t try to hide their mugs full of coffee.
“What’s going on?” he says, trying to act casual rather than startled and squirrely and a little delighted that she’s come back from patrolling and gone into the kitchen with him instead of back to her room as she has been.
“Your friend Doyle,” she starts. “He was a Brachen, right? Bluish face, reddish horns? Peaceful guys, pretty much of the ‘don’t mess with us, we won’t mess with you’ attitude?”
Angel sets his mug down on the counter, still careful so she doesn’t see the blood inside. “Doyle was a Brachen and they generally are peaceful, but they have green skin and black spikes. Why?”
Buffy nods. “I was hoping that the guy I saw letting himself down into the sewers was just looking for a quick way home after a hard night of honest work, but now it kinda seems like he was maybe -”
“Casing the place?”
“Hey, give a guy a P.I. badge and he picks up all the lingo.”
“Well, I was a bit of an expert back in the day,” Angel deadpans. For a moment, Buffy’s face stays still, and he can’t even analyze if she’s confused or disappointed that he could joke about his past. But then a smile edges up her cheeks and he smiles back without thinking of it, not even out of relief, just because seeing her smile makes him smile too.
He glances out the window, seeing the last of the sunlight dimming the horizon. “I know you were just out,” he says, “but maybe we could go see what this guy’s up to? It sounds like he’s a Vaxur. They’re nasty, and smart enough for strategy.”
He worries, as soon as he’s said it, that she might reject the offer, remind him of their terrible history with sewers (even if she doesn’t remember their most recent outing). But instead she just nods and says, “Things were pretty quiet when I was out, and I’ve heard that idle hands are firmly in the bad column.”
Angel picks up the phone and calls Gunn and waits a few rings until he answers, sounding moody. “It’s Angel. Are you busy?”
“Yeah, man, busy sleeping. I work a night job, and not all of us have had a couple centuries to bank our beauty rest.” Angel hears a shuffling in the background, and then Gunn says, “I had another half hour before my alarm, too, damn.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Why am I sensing a ‘But now that you’re up…’?” Gunn sighs suspiciously.
“Look,” Angel says, trying not to sound too abrupt or irritated, because that was clearly not what he was going to say but he obviously doesn’t want to annoy the person he’s about to ask for a favor. “Buffy and I have a lead to track down, but we can’t leave Jo alone.”
“Nice to hear I count for the big leagues,” Gunn says, “but I’ve got my own things to do. Just take your turns. One of you go hunting, one of you stays home.”
Angel doesn’t want to get into how much he wants to spend a little time with Buffy, to walk and hunt beside her, as much as he knows it will hurt. He wants that memory to turn over when she’s gone. Instead he says, “Cordelia just got ESPN added to her cable package. Jo said she wasn’t feeling well and already went to bed and Cordy’s out on a date, so there’s no one else looking for TV time right now.”
Gunn pauses, then, “I’ll be there in ten.”
Buffy taps her stake against her hip, her walk patient and casual and focused as they get deeper into the tunnels. Angel, keeping pace with her, remembers a far more restless hunting style, a Buffy eager to return to the surface world of friends and laughter rather than stay below in the endless fight.
It’s only been a year since he left. He’d forgotten, in all that time spent alone, constantly moving from people he might grow to recognize, how quickly humans grow and change.
“So, Jo’s looking pretty pop ready these days,” she says.
“Cordy said that she’s-” Angel tries to remember the exact words. “‘Almost at Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair and definitely a couple months past Cindy Crawford on W.’”
Buffy actually laughs. “I wouldn’t mention that to Jo.”
“I’m a little smarter than that. Especially knowing her mood these days.”
“She did go silent treatment on me just for offering to make her some soup the other day.” Angel politely refrains from mentioning that the first time Buffy had offered to cook, the resulting smells had caused them to have to air out the apartment for several hours. After a moment, Buffy delicately moves past it, adding fairly, “But hey, if I hadn’t seen my feet in as long as she has, I think I’d get a little flippy too.”
Angel says, “I think it’s kind of nice, that she has a chance just to relax and get annoyed with everything. She’s been through a lot over the past few months. Not having to grin and bear it while she runs around trying to keep her baby alive…”
“Big check from me,” Buffy agrees, but something about the tip of her tone makes Angel look at her closely. She gestures to something on the ground, hidden in the muck: a piece of reddish cartilage that looks like it could definitely be from a demon horn.
“The horns shed a little when a Vaxur is anxious,” Angel says, very quietly. “I think we must be close enough that he can hear us.”
“Then maybe he’ll listen to my advice about moisturizing to avoid horn dandruff.” Buffy’s face wrinkles at the thought.
There’s a roar, and a body pelts around the corner, remaining horns aimed at them.
“Apparently he thought that was insulting,” Angel says, stumbling as the Vaxur’s left shoulder hits him.
Buffy moves forward as the Vaxur wheels around. “Well, we could have just talked it out,” she calls back between a set of beautiful whirling kicks.
Angel jumps back from the fiercely fighting demon, and warns, “Watch out for the claws. He can excrete poison through them.”
“Anything else you failed to mention?”
There’s a burning smell, and the Vaxur begins to laugh, fighting back with renewed energy. “The horns can heat up, too,” Angel says.
Buffy gets the Vaxur onto his back. “Next time we do this, make me a cheat sheet before we go.” She holds a hand out. “Sword?”
She lifts her foot as he tosses it to her, allowing the Vaxur to attempt to get up just enough for his head to be at the correct angle for a sword swing.
When it’s done, she hands the sword back, and wrinkles her nose at the ground. “One point for vamps, they pretty much clean up after themselves.”
“We’re considerate like that,” Angel says dryly, eyeing the blood now covering the carvings on one of the only swords he had been able to salvage from his apartment.
“Think anyone else is hiding down here?” she asks, glancing around.
Angel listens. His nostrils flare briefly. “I don’t think so,” he finally says, “but we should probably keep an eye out as we head back.”
They turn toward their tunnel. Angel watches for anything to wipe his sword on, but everything seems to be rock or concrete, and he has no interest in scratching up the blade alongside the blood.
After a few minutes of quiet, Buffy says, “Jo’s baby is lucky to have someone who will always be supportive,” and Angel wonders and can’t quite tell if this has been percolating in her mind since their conversation earlier or if it has been even longer.
“Having a mom who you don’t have to hide yourself from and who you know protected you that strongly, it probably is pretty lucky,” he says carefully. “But you have Giles, Willow, Xander, now Tara, your mom came around.” He swallows and says, “You have Riley,” with careful casualness that he immediately ruins with glances darted her way.
She doesn’t even seem to notice, snorting out a sarcastic-seeming laugh. “I’m not so sure about some of the people on that list.
“What do you mean?” Describing his tentative question, his waitful silence, as breath-holding seems redundant, and nevertheless it’s the only comparison he can make.
Buffy doesn’t answer for a while, swinging her stake a bit, concentrating on her steps forward. Then she says, “We needed to really work together to defeat Adam, and I mean that pretty literally. It was kinda all aboard the Buffymobile for a while, and afterward, we all had these weird dreams.” She swallows, peering forward more than the gloom necessitates. “Not really nightmares but...nightmare-ish. I saw the First Slayer, and ever since, I’ve been Buffy-plus in the slayage department. I keep going out, not just every night, but sometimes more than once.”
Angel stays quiet. The words burden her tongue as she gets them out. He doesn’t want to make things harder for her.
“I’ll wake up and I’ll want to go out there, I’ll want a stake in my hand, like the thing that can make everything better is chasing something and putting it down. And then Dracula came.”
That tests Angel a little. He turns toward her sharply, catching himself before he actually says anything. Buffy seems too focused away to have even noticed the slip.
“And even though I know he was all with the mind games, I keep wondering if he was right, if there’s a darkness in me, if that’s why I like it all so much.” She shrugs, voice helpless, a little incredulous. “At school, I see people who are so passionate about things, about jobs and ideas, and I just- I don’t have that! The only thing that makes me feel that way is like what happened back there, a real fight, and no one can really understand that. My mom and Riley-” She breaks off, looks away. “They don’t get that slaying isn’t just something I do, it’s part of who I am. And I don’t blame them, I used to think the same thing, but I don’t know how to make them realize that it’s not something that’s going away, it’s not something I’m giving up, and even though half the time it’s all demon wishes and apocalypse dreams, it makes me feel strong. It feels...right.”
“And not a lot of things do these days?”
She presses her words forward, brow crinkling. “I thought- For so long I thought maybe Riley could do that for me, make things feel right, but he doesn’t even seem to like it when I fight. And if I challenged him to an arm wrestle, boy, would he get out of there fast.”
He and Buffy are friends now, Angel tries to remind himself. He tries to imagine what he would say if Cordelia decided for some reason to tell him this. He clears his throat. “Have you talked to him about this? Told him how you feel?”
“That’s the thing,” Buffy says slowly. “I don’t really want to have to talk to him about it. I want a guy who doesn’t need the step by step guide to Buffy. I think I’ve had enough of the mindreading for at least the next year or so, but maybe someone who has a little of that good old intuition. Someone who maybe even likes to watch me fight instead of getting all freaked out and He Man.” Her words are so clear and thoughtful, but her voice is so small. His hand reaches toward her; it takes effort to stop himself.
She turns to him suddenly, although she still avoids his eyes. “Did you ever feel weirded? About the way I fight?”
“Buffy,” he says, and stops walking, nearly struck silent. He struggles to even get the words out in a way that makes her understand. “I love the way you fight. You’re beautiful when you fight.”
Inadequate, inadequate. And yet she smiles, and takes his hand; it shocks him, the reality of her touch on him. “Thank you.” She squeezes once and lets go. She looks away, that tender tendency to protect herself, even as she lets herself be so open with him. “I just wish I could have both the ‘honey, why don’t you put your feet up?’ relationship and the ‘you give good stake’ relationship.”
“I think-” starts Angel. “I know you’ll get there someday.”
“I know you’re not great with the perspective thing, but any idea on the when? Might be nice to mark it on the calendar.”
Her voice, and its humor, waver. Their affections are so careful, so controlled in distribution, but right now he wants to hug her.
And so, for once, he does.
He rests his cheek on her hair, feeling the thick end of the stake in her fist press into his back as she puts her arms around him too.
“I don’t know when,” Angel says quietly. “But I know that if you want something, you can get it. I know that you’re worthy of someone like that. And I know that even if it doesn’t always feel like it, there are people who understand you, and who love you even when they don’t.”
Voice muffled in his shirt, she says, “You give good pep talk these days. I guess you really have been hanging with Cordelia.”
She doesn’t say it with malice, so his tone stays equally light and undefensive as he returns, “Hopefully I’ve done a little better than that. She wasn’t really that kind of cheerleader.” He knows that they should step apart soon - even if it weren’t the two of them, they’re certainly stretching social conventions - but he can’t make himself.
“Well, for a second there, you had me convinced I could have it all.”
“No one can have it all,” he says seriously. “But you can have enough.”
“I know that,” says Buffy, and she does step away, looking away from him. The idea that she might be thinking of him, wishing for him, even a little, heats his chest.
Angel thinks of the someday, someday, maybe of Shanshu. But all he says as he too steps away is, “You’re enough, and you can have more than enough.”
No one even notices that they’re quiet as they come back, because the apartment is so loud.
“Where’s the damn bag?” Gunn demands. “All afternoon y’all are telling me there’s a bag and now it’s gone.”
“I moved it into the closet so we would be able to keep track of it,” says Wesley tensely. He is, as far as Angel can tell, picking up and putting down random handfuls of paper.
“And I took it out of the closet because that’s where I keep my shoes,” says Cordelia, digging through her purse, holding up her closed fist triumphantly as she discovers the car keys at the bottom.
“It sort of feels like in about fifteen seconds we can forget the bag because we won’t be able to get out anywhere,” Jo says, her voice jumping between panting and growling and a terrifying, shivery whisper.
Buffy has walked over to take Jo’s arm before Angel has even processed the whole scene. “Dennis,” she calls, and catches the famed bag in one hand. “Angel, you’re driving. Wes, documentation check. Gunn, help me with Jo. Let’s go.”
“I guess we’ll figure out my job in the car,” says Cordelia.
“Not about you right now,” Buffy tells her, teeth gritted, as she supports Jo through the door Angel’s holding open. Jo sucks in a quick breath, and then grits out a low groan. One of Cordy’s neighbors down the hall peers out and quickly slams the door again as they go by.
“We’ll take care of any cleanup,” Cordy calls with a big movie star smile.
“Guess everyone has their job now,” Buffy says.
“One job,” Jo says breathlessly as they help her into the car. “Hospital.”
“Hospital. Right,” Angel manages, shaking himself out of his daze enough to peel down the street so fast that Wes is startled into dropping his pile of papers.
The Tribunal has the respect or the sense to wait to materialize until the baby is cleaned and weighed and the doctors and nurses have stepped out. As soon as they do, Gunn, Wes, and Cordy go outside to stand guard. Angel can hear Cordy improvising through the door.
“The girl is born. The protection has begun,” says the one in the center.
“No more loopholes?” Buffy says. “You’re out of the fine print business?”
They all ignore her, still speaking to Jo. “You will join us now.”
“What kind of hospital do you guys have there? Cosmic hospital food still crappy?” Buffy continues, cheerfully distracting.
Angel leans over to Jo, hand brushing over the baby’s shoulder almost absently. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” he says quietly. “We’ve dealt with worse than a few bounty-hunting demons. And,” he adds sheepishly, “I’m thinking of buying a hotel. Plenty of space there.”
Jo smiles at him. “It’s okay,” she says. She looks down at the baby lying exhausted in her arms. “I think this is what’s supposed to happen. Elena and I will be fine.”
“Elena?”
“I named her after my grandmother,” Jo says, smiling down and stroking Elena’s small fingers. When Angel is quiet for a moment, she looks back up at him. “You didn’t think I was going to name her after…”
“No,” Angel says quickly. “Of course not.”
Jo smiles and shakes her head. “I’ll tell her about you. About how you make good on your mistakes, and that you all helped us so much even though you didn’t have to.”
Apparently even Buffy can only distract the Tribunal for so long. “It is time,” says the one on the left. Jo starts to get up, wincing. Angel and Buffy each help her.
“Are you sure?” Buffy says, bracing Jo’s shoulder, touching Elena’s light hair. “I know I told some horror stories, but a childhood on the Hellmouth could make a great college essay one day.”
“Thanks.” Jo grins. “But I’ve been waiting for this for a while.” And she walks, slowly, pained, but upright, to stand with the Tribunal, and she and the baby are gone.
“It’s pretty late,” Angel says, leaning against the doorframe as Buffy packs her bag. “You could catch the morning bus instead, if you wanted.”
Buffy’s eyes crinkle with her smile. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know that Cordy would.”
“UC Sunnydale gives better education that I thought,” Cordelia calls.
“Okay,” Angel says. “Can I drive you to the station?”
“I’d like that.”
Angel has no frame of reference, but he assumes that 2 AM does little to show the best of the Los Angeles bus terminal.
“Don’t worry,” Buffy tells him as she sees him eyeing her fellow passengers. “I won’t get all dismembery if anyone gets creepy with me.”
“I was actually going to encourage it,” Angel says, watching thankfully as a man who doesn’t seem to realize that his tongue belongs inside his mouth moves past the Sunnydale bus in favor of the one to San Francisco.
Buffy smiles again. “It was good to see you,” she says, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “Especially without the real world-ending kind of danger.”
“It was good to see you too. I’m glad that you came. I think Jo really appreciated it.” Buffy glances away, and he knows her well enough to see that it isn’t from modesty. He clears his throat. “I appreciated it too. I appreciated seeing you...a lot.”
“Oh. I’m really- I’m really glad.” Her voice is quiet, but he can hear the heartbeat in it. Then she adds, “I’m also glad I could see you wearing all the bright colors these days.” She says it with that gentle hesitance that he loves. Instead of speaking to awkward distance, it makes him think about Buffy’s kindness, and the way she is applying it to him, knowing him, caring enough to consider how it might sound to him.
He glances down at his navy shirt and smiles. “Maybe next time, I’ll have moved up to greens.”
“Warn a girl beforehand, okay?” she says, dimpling.
“I will,” he says, and she touches his hand and turns to go.
He watches her and then, “Buffy,” he says as she steps over to the line leading to the doors to her bus. “I have something to tell you. About a prophecy we found.”
When he’s finished the whole story - Wolfram and Hart, Wes’s translation misadventures, his potential future as best they can tell now - she just looks at him. The Sunnydale-bound passengers are disappearing into the bus.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” she says finally. The worst thing is that it comes out not as the sharply enunciated, overly polite anger she uses with Faith or when things are falling apart during an apocalypse, but as dazed, quiet, wavering hurt.
“I thought it might hurt you more,” Angel says, trying to keep his own voice steady. “I know I let myself get distracted by the idea and it almost got Jo killed. But there’s no time frame on it anyway - I don’t know if it’ll be in fifty years, or a thousand, or it might not happen at all - and I wanted -”
“My hopes to stay nice and padlocked to the ground,” she finishes.
“Final call for Sunnydale departure,” announces the bus driver behind them, using the PA system as if addressing the general crowd, though Angel’s seen him staring at them the whole time.
“So why tell me now?”
It’s a good question. History has shown that he’s able to lie to Buffy with only slightly more than the normal amount of guilt. And it’s not as if the circumstances have actually changed. But in some ways his hopes have. He made a mistake but he made good on it. He has people who were willing to disregard everything to play babysitter and bodyguard for a stranger. He helped allow a new, powerful life into the world.
For once, despite knowing the scale and how heavily it weighs against him, against hope, he decides to hope anyway.
“I thought you should know,” he says, “that there could be a someday...someday.”
“I’d like someday,” she says, and finally looks into his face. “But I think I’m enough until then, you know?”
He brushes her hair back off her shoulder, leans very slightly closer. “You’re enough always.”
“Final. Call.” The bus driver sounds a little angry now.
Buffy turns and starts to walk toward the bus. As she reaches the doors, she says, “I’m going to call you when I get home. And I’ll probably have to vent a little, so you’d better pick up. Unvented Buffy...it’s dangerous”
“I’ll answer.” She steps onto the bus, and Angel adds, “Maybe you can tell me then what the hell Dracula was doing in Sunnydale.”
Buffy takes a window seat. He can see her face, shocked and uncomfortable and a little pleased, as the bus drives her away, back to the life he may not be so apart from anymore.
Epilogue
The dream is hard to shake. Angel sits up, staring around the room as if he expects to see Darla there, but it’s empty, of course. He turns over to go back to sleep, and finds that he’s picked up his phone instead.
He and Buffy have been talking nearly every night. It feels like habit now. He’s calling her before he even realizes it.
She sounds out of breath as she picks up the phone.
“Did you just get in?” he asks.
“Went for a second sweep.” He can’t hear much in the background, but in the pause, he imagines her moving around her room, taking off rings, brushing out her hair. He knows she’s alone; she and Riley are allegedly “taking some time apart.” Angel’s been around a long time, but even he knows what that means.
He settles back into his pillows. “See anything good out there?”
“Maybe…” The sly smile in her voice makes him smile into the darkness. “Hey, why are you up?”
The smile slips a little. “Strange dream.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Tell me about hunting first.”
“We’ll do dreams later?”
He considers saying something conciliatory, even as the silence grows pointed. “I’ll go second tonight,” he says finally. “I promise.”
“Okay.” Her voice picks up immediately. “Have you ever seen a Porpri? Way more horns than necessary.”
He smiles and holds the phone closer.