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When the night of the prophecy’s fulfillment came at last, Angel took the Jeep and drove it down a leafy road that only he knew, hours earlier than was necessary. He was struggling forlornly with the psychosomatic echoes of fear symptoms that his body could not produce: the false sensation of a pounding heart, the memory of a dry mouth, the mimicry of a churning stomach. He told himself, pointlessly and repeatedly, to calm down. Nothing had gone wrong. Nothing would go wrong.
Until the sun went down he had lingered in the bedroom he’d prepared, checking and re-checking for dust or imperfections in the decor, carefully folding each article of clothing that the Slayers had chosen and purchased with all the taste and care that he knew they would give the errand. They waited downstairs, as excited as he was nervous and far more susceptible to showing it. He told them all that he would be back with their visitor long past midnight, and that he expected them to be asleep. There was no chance that they would obey, but it had to be made clear that he would not welcome disturbances.
He parked the Jeep in a flat, forested area and went the last little bit of the journey on foot. Once, this spot had been the middle of nowhere, just a carousel-sized ring of stones they placed on the ground to mark the parameters of Willow’s spell. Now the circle was outlined instead with tall, slender white birch trees, planted with mathematical precision so that a person could pass easily between any two. A wrought iron bench sat nearby outside the circle, and two old-fashioned gas lamps had been erected to shed their light through the trees. Angel lit them now, examining the way they interacted with the light of the full moon to make criss-cross patterns on the ground, hoping it was bright enough to be comfortable to human eyes.
There were no other preparations to make. He had visited the site at regular intervals to tend the trees and make sure nothing had fallen into the circle, and everything else was designed to happen on its own, not needing the spellcaster’s presence or even, strictly speaking, Angel’s presence. He sat down on the bench to wait.
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As the world she had known faded from reality to a scene of farewell, Buffy found the hope that had failed her for so long, swift and unexpected, when Angel gathered her in his arms and kissed her goodbye.
Giles and Willow had been there, watching, but when Willow said it was time, Angel paid them no mind at all. He simply stepped up to Buffy at the center of the ring of stones and kissed her, long and hard, letting her stretch her hands up to hold his head like she used to so long ago. Then he whispered fiercely into her ear, “I’ll be here, Buffy, I swear,” but it was the kiss, not the words, that convinced her.
The prophecy had been clear: Buffy, and Buffy alone, could defeat the monster that lurked in the future. To do it she would have to be in the right place at the right time, and being there wasn’t enough; the fight would push her to her limit. She couldn’t afford to age, let alone risk being killed or maimed before the time came. Everyone knew that this was the only way, but Buffy had been the first to say it, so convincing the team had fallen on her. Some part of her still resented that.
Tears streamed down Willow’s face as she spoke the incantation, and the spectators stood apart from each other solemnly and faced Buffy, solitary in her circle beneath the glow of the full moon. She wanted to interrupt, to think of one more person she needed to see again, to step back over the rocks and get a few more hugs. And if her discipline wouldn’t allow her that, she thought, she wanted to at least close her eyes and crouch on the ground and rail at the unfairness of it all. She didn’t, because it might be the last time she ever saw these three people she had loved so much, and she couldn’t waste her final sight of their faces.
She was glad she had limited it to three. If she could have, she might have made the journey alone with her dignity, allowing herself no temptation to abandon it. A crowd would have been unbearable, and including everyone that she was loath to leave behind would indeed make a crowd. Even Dawn had eventually understood and admitted that she would also have a hard time being present at the sending.
But Willow had to be there to cast the spell, of course, and Giles had spoken quietly to Buffy with an eloquently worded request that first broke her heart and then appealed to her logic. He posed no danger of emotional excess; if anything, he could calm Willow if she found her role too much to take. If there were complications, he was the one most likely to puzzle the way out of them. He had guided Buffy through her youth as a Slayer and stood by her through all the years since; if her path wasn’t at its end, his was, and he deserved to be there to see it through.
And Angel...
Angel had returned to her life as a shadow of his former self, sick with grief for friends she had never known and wounded beyond his body’s accelerated healing abilities. As he recovered and she led her troops to eliminate the last few demon stragglers that his one-night war had called forth, communication opened again and he had been welcomed back as an ally to the Scoobies and Slayers. Even when the action had died down, though, he had avoided Buffy and worked by himself as much as possible, and when she finally confronted him, all he had to say about it was, “Nothing has changed.”
Those words had stayed with her, and gradually she had found a kind of peace in them. If nothing had changed, then it was still the circumstances keeping them apart, and not Angel’s feelings for her. He confirmed as much when the prophecy was deciphered and the plan was formed - the responsibility for Buffy’s future could have just as easily fallen to Spike, but Angel vehemently insisted that he would be the one. He started on his own arrangements immediately, thinking generations ahead in a way that Spike could never have done, and with such stoic dedication that Buffy could have easily been led to believe that it was only about saving the world one more time, and not about her after all.
But then he kissed her goodbye.
She didn’t remember closing her eyes. Surely she had done no more than blink. There was no blackout, no swirling vortex around her, just a changed landscape in the darkness around her, so disorienting she felt dizzy, so static she didn’t know if she was still waiting.
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With just a few long minutes left to wait, Angel got up and stood just outside the circle, peering between the trees in vain. He had stopped checking his watch; it was close enough now that he could count down in his head with fair accuracy. The leaves rustled softly. He swallowed, blinked hard, and kept watching. Each second was harder to bear than the last, and soon he began to wonder if his count was off after all, and something should have happened by now. He would have taken the slightest shimmer in the air or tingle in his spine as a good sign. Anything but this blank, silent, ordinary night.
Seconds before his watch made its single chime, he choked out her name, and, unable to endure any more, closed his eyes. The air shimmered.
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Buffy sucked in a deep breath. Angel was standing exactly where he had been, but Giles and Willow were nowhere in sight. She rubbed her eyes, noting first that there was more light than there had been a moment ago, and then that the source of the light was a pair of lanterns which had definitely not been there a moment ago. “Angel?” she said.
His eyes snapped open and an unidentifiable expression washed over his face. “Buffy.”
“Your clothes are different,” she blurted out. It wasn’t the majestic opening line that she had been planning, but looking at him with his unchanged face and his distinctly unfamiliar dark outfit felt too strange to not remark upon.
He laughed, a quiet sound but one full of wonder and delight as much as amusement. “Yeah,” he stammered in response. “Yeah, I’ve had time to change.”
“Then it worked,” she stated, stunned by her own words in spite of everything. Seeing, as the old adage said, was believing.
Angel nodded. “Step out of the circle,” he urged her.
“Oh, right.” She looked up and around herself. “Whoa, trees.”
“They’re paper birches. We planted them the day after we sent you. Please step out of the circle.”
She smiled at his pleading tone and took three steps forward, the trees like palace buttresses on either side of her, and he opened his arms without hesitation and folded them around her. She leaned into him, suddenly feeling unsteady and grateful for the support, and simultaneously comforted and overwhelmed by the new evidence that this was truly him: his subtle scent, his firm chest with no heartbeat resounding in it.
What he was feeling, she didn’t know, but after a few moments of holding her tightly, he stepped back, hands still on her shoulders, and beamed down at her with such a wide, easy smile that she immediately began to wonder about how much he had changed. Then he pulled her back into a hug, which she gladly returned, and then he moved back again to look her over, still grinning, a second time. She let him repeat the maneuver once more, and then, fearing it could go on all night, laid a hand on his arm and said, “Okay, Angel, you’re happy to see me, I get it.”
“Sorry.” He let go. “It’s just...I was so afraid. I can’t believe you’re really here. I know this is hard for you, but I can’t help it, I’m so glad...”
“That’s okay,” she said mechanically, wishing he hadn’t reminded her that it was going to be hard. She looked around at the mysteriously altered foliage once more, and then back at him. The grace period was over. “Okay. I want the bad news first, and I want all of it at once. Who’s dead?”
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Many were dead. Giles, of course. Oz, Anya, Andrew. Poor lonesome Spike, in spite of his immortality. Some of the Slayers that Buffy had loved, and some that she had never had the chance to really know, and some that she had never met and now never would.
The tragedies didn’t end there, but Buffy had come into this with clear eyes, prepared to have her heart broken again and again for the sake of a world in peril. There was work to be done, and she knew that her duty would keep her going for as long as she needed. Sacrificing everything only got easier each time.
The good news, though — that was harder. Much of what she had learned so far made her feel like this could be a world worth living in. Slayers were supposedly thriving all over the world, while vampires were dying out. Buffy had nieces and nephews, some of them older than she was, and she wanted to meet them. Some of her friends were still around and had been waiting, all these years, to see her again.
Most immediately on her mind was the introspective warrior who had met her in the woods and given her a room in his farmhouse. Angel seemed more at peace with himself than she had seen him since he was her secret high school boyfriend, and she wanted to stay in his presence and learn his secrets, the old ones and the new ones and the ones that he himself didn’t know. She wanted him to make it harder for her to focus on her duty.
It had been just a few days, and the farmhouse was dark when Buffy left her room and padded down the hall. She should knock, she knew, but instead she turned Angel’s doorknob as quietly as she could and squeezed in through the barely opened door. If he was at all awake, he would hear her close the door behind her as surely as if she had alerted him with a knock, and if he wasn’t — but he would be. She knew he would be.
“Buffy?” came his voice through the blackness before her, and her breath hitched before she could even try to speak. What could she say? She had no script, no plan at all aside from the need to be in here with him, even in this alien world and this foreign room.
“Buffy,” he said again. “What is it? Talk to me.”
“I don’t know how,” she replied without leaving herself room to consider it. Maybe she could coax him into an argument; that would be easier territory to navigate. “I kept telling myself, these are the rules, hands off Angel and whatever he’s been up to is his own business, but now I’m here and you, you’re also here, and we’re here, and do you remember how I could never figure out what you were thinking even when I saw you every day?” She paused. “Do you? I don’t even know that. I don’t know anything about you. It’s not fair.”
“No,” he said. “None of this is fair.”
Buffy kept waiting for her eyes to adjust so she could see at least his outline, but the room was too well protected from light. “See there you go again,” she retorted at the disembodied voice of Angel. “Stop feeling sorry for me. Three days ago we were something. What are we today?”
“We’ll talk about it. But please, if you want to talk now, don’t just stand at the door like that. Come over here. Sit with me.”
She scrubbed a hand through her hair, analyzing the invitation rather than concentrating on her response to it. “Do you even remember that you kissed me goodbye?”
“Please, Buffy. Come here.”
“Well I...I can’t see.”
He didn’t chuckle or sigh, but simply directed, “Just walk forward. There’s nothing in your way. Just a few steps...one more...there you are.” A big, invisible hand touched hers, and she held onto it as he pulled her gently toward the bed and she found its edge to sit down on.
For a long moment, the silence was all that Buffy wanted. Her fingertips were just barely touching his, and of course there was no heat coming from his body and no movement of breath, but his presence was real. “So,” she said at last. “You did it. You got me here. Mission accomplished, on your end.”
“You know it’s never been all about the mission,” Angel replied in a low voice.
“Then tell me what it’s about.”
He shifted under his blanket, making her wonder if he was nude beneath it, but he didn’t stumble before informing her, “I knew what I was doing when I kissed you goodbye. Being here for you isn’t a task I took on for the greater good. It’s what I wanted.”
She had never really doubted that he remembered, but it was still a relief to hear it. “What do you want now?” she ventured.
This time, his response came reluctantly. “It’s not that simple for us, is it?” His fingers brushed lightly against hers before retreating. “I knew what I was doing when I stopped myself from kissing you hello, too.”
“Right.” Buffy swallowed a lump in her throat. “We can’t just jump right back into…us.”
“If you want to know what I’ve been up to while you’re gone, I’ll tell you. I won’t hold anything back. But that’s all just words. I can’t give you everything you’ve missed, I can’t bring us to equal footing. We have to build up from here, and…”
“...And we’ve got an apocalypse looming.” She sighed and rubbed her face. She wasn’t crying, but it felt like some tears would do her good if only they would come. “Mind if I ask about the number one obstacle from the good old days?”
He gave a dry laugh. “The curse? Nothing’s changed as far as I know.”
The opening to talk about his sex life was there. He had said he wouldn’t hold anything back. Even that, though, took a backseat now to the answers she really wanted, although Angel might not have them any more than she did. “The prophecy doesn’t say whether I’ll survive this,” she said.
“No. But you will.”
“Then I’m going to need you. More than I did when we started this. More than I do now.”
Her eyes had still barely adjusted to the darkness; Angel’s room was a complete blackout. It didn’t matter. He found her hand easily, folded it into his, pressed it gently. “Sounds like I’d better survive too, then.”
Buffy smiled, and then, almost immediately, yawned. Weariness had crashed over her the exact moment she registered a sense of relief, as if her body was finally allowing her to take care of it. She returned a squeeze to Angel’s hand. “So goodbye kisses are okay but hello kisses aren’t,” she noted. “What about goodnight kisses?”
It had only been a few days since their last kiss. For him it had been a lifetime, but he didn’t hesitate before taking her head in his hands and meeting his lips to hers.
And he sure as hell hadn’t forgotten how it was done.