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Since she had saved the day, Buffy felt like she was due a reward in the form of an extended vacation. Thanks to her college fund, money wasn’t a problem as long as she didn’t splurge all that often and since she had never been anywhere but LA and Sunnydale, there was a whole wide world full of things she had once thought she never live long enough to see. She knew she’d eventually have to settle down somewhere, atleast for awhile but she wasn’t ready to take that step yet.
How could she when her heart was still in Sunnydale, but as the weeks became months, the pain eased a little more each day. It helped that everywhere she had been in Europe was amazingly beautiful.
Her first stop had been Ireland, to lay her love to rest in the land of his birth and there in the city of his death she had found her own peace. It had taken four months but she had managed to cherish the love they had experienced and could now look back on it without bitterness. It hurt, it probably always would because he was a big part of her life but it was no longer a raw wound; more like an old battle injury that would throb every once in a while as a reminder of what you had survived.
That wasn’t the most romantic of thoughts, relegating their star-crossed love to a battle scar but that’s exactly what loving Angel had always been...a battle they were destined to lose. They both had made mistakes and while she would always love him, she wasn’t in love with him anymore. Even though they had both lost in the small battles, in the end by being able to save atleast the memories of what they shared, she liked to believe they had both won the war.
Angel might not see it that way yet but someday she hoped he could look back on what they shared with fondness and that would be enough to make all the pain they endured worthwhile.
From Galway she had headed to Rome, losing herself in the grand magnificence of the empire that had fallen but would never be forgotten. Everywhere you looked, you could see the ruins that had managed to remain standing through the ages and it gave her hope for her own future.
Then it was off to the land of tweed, which wasn’t as tweedy as she had always imagined but it had it’s own charm. It was a place that didn’t just hold onto the ancient traditions of the past it clung to them with dignity and grace while still managing to move forward. Everything changes there but enough remained the same to give it a sense of consistency the states just didn’t have. Here the old buildings weren’t destroyed in the name of progress, they were lovingly restored until they simply appeared fresh and new.
So within a year she’d shopped on Portobello Road, had drunk a pint in a real Irish pub and traveled the waterways of Italy under a night sky filled with stars. Making new memories as she continued on in her journey of self-discovery but also bringing pieces of the places she visited along with her. She had never thought of herself as bright, her grades in High School were proof of that, but seeing something first hand, experiencing it for herself had caused her to learn more than she ever though possible.
In Ireland she had been adopted by the kindly old widow who ran the inn she was staying at. She had been stunned to learn a woman her age couldn’t cook so much as an egg, so she took it upon herself to teach her how to make soda bread and several other traditional dishes, as well as the rapidly fading language of her people. In that lovely lilting voice of hers, Brenna had told her she may have been born a yank but her heart was as Irish as the faeries themselves, so it was only fitting that she learned the language of the fey.
In return for all her kindness Buffy had helped her around the inn, weeding the gardens and even getting down on her hands and knees to polish the well tended hardwood floor with beeswax and lemon so Brenna wouldn’t have to do it herself. When it was time to move on again, it had hurt to leave another friendship behind but since Brenna was part of her new life, she still sent her letters and postcards from her travels.
In Italy she had saved a lovely young couple on their honeymoon from vampires, only to discover they were part of the same clan that had vowed to punish Angelus for his crimes. That had been more than a little awkward, especially since she had only learned that fact when she had been invited to attend a clan bonfire so that their people could show her their gratitude for saving the young lovers.
But since they were storytellers themselves, she had shared with them her own past life, ending the tragic tale with a plea for true forgiveness on Angel’s behalf. The Elders had listened, weighing each word and decided that their vengeance would be better served if the demon was forever banished never to be free to roam the lands again. They promised to contact Giles to tell him how to remove the happiness clause and anchor Angel’s soul permanently but since their own shortsightedness had punished an innocent man it was necessary to make amends to him, for all that he had suffered at their hands. So by making his soul permanent they were erasing the debt they owed Angel but they still wanted to thank her from saving their children.
In the end they taught her how to tap into her powers as the Slayer so that she could cast magicks that would aid her in her quest to help others. She spent three months learning their ways as well as learning to respect the magicks they had showed her how to harness. She wasn’t super witch and probably never would be, because the source of her powers wasn’t meant to be used as a mystical outlet, but she had definitely picked up a few useful spells.
Her favorite being the clocking spell that not only hid her from people looking for her by mystical means, like Joyce suspected her friends were, but also hiding her presence from the vampires and demons looking to take on a Slayer. Even though she was technically freed from being the Slayer, she still gave vampires the tingles because they hadn’t gotten the memo and it was nice to be able to hide from all the beings who wanted her dead. It would be wrong of her to use the ability to hunt, so when she did patrol she only altered the spell so that the vamps could still feel her. True, vamps and other nasties weren’t known for their sense of honor or fair play but magick was a gift and to use it in such a way would be against all she had been taught.
When the plane skidded to a stop on the tarmac Buffy pulled herself out of her thoughts and looked at the window. She had always wanted to see Paris in the winter and now she had her chance.