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*Cleveland Contingent HQ, Cleveland, USA*
Looking out toward the rising sun, Angel picked up the receiver and prepared to dial the number he’d been afraid to for more than a month. Well, more like three years, if he had to be honest with himself. Why he picked that particular moment to make the call, he would never know, but it just felt right. Maybe it was the fact that Julie was pregnant with his grandson; maybe it was the fact that he had figured out he was in love with Kasumi; maybe it was the three years spent in Spike’s company, the last two in the alternate dimension forcing the two vampires to really talk and get everything out in the open—including a complete account of what had actually been going on in Sunnydale without him; maybe it was that he admitted to himself that he and Buffy weren’t going to get the fairy-tale happy ending they had once dreamed about. Whatever it was, it had gotten him out of his Slayer-filled bed and into Faith’s office with a phone to his ear, waiting for the call to connect. After a few moments to get cleared, he stayed quiet as he heard breathing on the other end.
“Go for Buffy!” She sounded tired, apprehensive, and maybe just a bit hostile, making Angel think for a split second that maybe he should just hang up and leave the discussion for another time.
He shook the thought off and gathered his courage. “Hi, Buffy. It’s me.” He paused a second before deciding that maybe he shouldn’t presume so much. “Angel.”
“Yeah, I know; they told me.” She didn’t sound any friendlier or any more at ease.
“Uh, how are you?” He was trying hard, but failing to get over just how wrong the discussion felt.
“I’m busy.”
That sounded very much like a brush-off, and Angel took a second to think that maybe this was the reason why they hadn’t really kept in touch while he was in L.A. Maybe they were just unable to pick up the phone and carry a civilized conversation with one another. In some weird way, the thought brought him some peace, absolving him somehow of his part of the fault, while at the same time making his soul hurt for the ever-widening gap between them. And maybe he should have thought about all of that and about what he actually wanted to say before picking up the bloody phone. Great, now he was even channeling Spike. “Yeah, sorry. Look, if you want, I could maybe call at another time-”
A deep sigh could be heard from the other end. “No, that’s okay, really. I just—There’s a lot piling up with the whole Dracula thing, on top of the Wolfram and Hart thing, on top of the usual running an army of slayers, and now apparently the old hellmouths are being taken over by, we think, Dracula still and—It’s just a bit crazy.” At least her voice had softened some. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” And how exactly was he going to explain what ‘good’ meant these days? Maybe he should have written talking points on some post-its. He shunned that thought away as pathetic. He would just have to man-up and get on with it. “I know you know by now that I’m back. That I have been back for a while now, but I couldn’t really call you because, well, there was the whole alternate dimension bit going on for a while.” He waited for just a split second and, before she could say anything, finally took the proverbial bull by its horns. “I’m sorry.” That left them both speechless for a few seconds.
“What exactly are you sorry for?” There was the hostility and coolness back in her voice.
It hurt him to hear her addressing him like that, but he admitted to himself that he did have it coming. “For not helping you more back in Sunnydale, for not telling you about my plans involving Wolfram and Hart, for not really keeping in touch…for many things.” With each word, he felt his heart lighten and a weird sense of euphoria took hold of him, so before he could second-guess himself, he blurted out his main regret. “And most of all, I’m sorry about Spike.” He was a bit stunned and proud of saying it, late as it was.
“Is that all?”
“Well, I’m also human, but I guessed you found that out already. I know that’s what we wanted at some point, me to become human so that we could be together again, but-“
“But you took the day back.”
The words and the flat tone in which she said them made his blood run cold and his stomach clench. “You know about that, huh?”
“After Sunnydale, there was this thing, and I couldn’t get out of it unless I remembered. And so I remembered everything. Wanna guess what actually surprised me more?”
He almost kept quiet, but as the saying goes, in for a penny—in for a pound. “What?”
“That even after that, it came as news that you’d had a son…with Darla.”
The way she spat out the name made Angel flinch on the other end, but what shook him more was the resignation in her voice. Like she wasn’t that surprised he’d kept those things from her. Like she was expecting him to fail her in some way. And maybe she was, and rightly so. He wondered how it all got so fucked up. “I did what I thought was right at the time, but…I’m sorry, Buffy. I’ve had some time to think things through on the other side, and I’m really, truly sorry about everything.” He sounded weak and pathetic even to his own ears. He didn’t much care.
“I know. I’m sorry too.” All traces of venom were gone from her voice, though the tired resignation was still there. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think we ever really had a chance.” In her voice, he could hear the rueful smile that mirrored his own.
“I guess you’re right.” He felt like laughing and crying at the same time, but just settled on being slightly numb. “I promise that I’ll always be there if you need me, though. Even without any vampire powers, I’m stronger than a normal human. I can still hold my own in a fight, not to mention that I’ve learned a trick or three over the centuries.”
“Thanks. By the way, I really hope you and Kasumi are happy together. And congratulations on becoming a grandfather soon, for real, not just in the vampire grand-sire kind of way. Let me know when the baptism is and, barring any apocalypse…”
There was warmth in her voice for the first time then, and it filled him with a sense of peace as well. “Of course. I think the girls talked, and we’re going to have it in common with Faith’s kid.”
“That’s nice. Say hi to everyone there from me and the gang, and we’ll talk…” She was getting ready to end the call, the nervous trepidation back in her voice.
“Yeah, we will. Bye, Buffy.”
“Bye, Angel.”
“You know I’ll always love you, right?” He held his breath, waiting for her to reply something.
“Yeah, me too.”
And then she hung up, and all he could hear was the dial tone. He stood there, still holding the receiver to his ear for a few moments, until he sensed another presence entering the room from behind him. He felt warmth engulf him, and a bright smile blossomed on his lips as he turned around to look at a still slightly sleep-addled Kasumi. “Hey, lover, what are you doing up so early?”
She crossed the room and snuggled in his waiting arms. “Missed you.”
“Let’s get you back to bed then.”
~~~***~~~
*Later that night, Buffy’s study, Slayer Castle, Scotland, UK*
After a short knock, Spike opened the door and poked his head in, without waiting for permission from inside. “Hey, Slayer, where can a not-so-vamp looking for a good brawl go around here?”
Buffy seemed to be startled by his words out of a good old-fashioned brood session, but then again he’d gotten used to such happenings with the Great Poof, Master of the Worldwide Brood Association. He made a mental note to call him that the next time they talked and he wanted to rile him up.
“What? Oh, right. Patrol.” She shuffled some papers on her desk willy-nilly, trying to buy some time to think about whatever it was that was bothering her. “I’ll call to see if the chopper is ready to take a team out.”
Spike walked in with an ‘are you kidding me?’ look on his face. “So let me get this straight. I can’t go out hunting unless I take a gaggle of super-charged teenagers with me in a bloody helicopter which I bet scares away everything in a five mile radius? How big is your kill-rate lately? And by your, I mean the whole bloody castle’s, ’cause I now know a thing or two about the slayers down by the hell-hole in Cleveland, and they sure as rain didn’t have air-lifts.” Seeing her narrow her eyes at him brought back memories of countless broken noses at her hands for just such comments. He briefly wondered why exactly he always managed to put his foot in his mouth when it came to her. All that was missing was him mentioning dimpled knees.
“The chopper is one of the super-silent models that you need a hearing aid on a vampire to detect when it’s on top of you, and as for the ‘gaggle,’ the default Slayer Team is made up of five girls that cover an area of about the size of Sunnydale every night, while keeping in touch via walkie-talkies and other such things that some relics from the time of the dinosaurs maybe haven’t heard about.” The glare she was pinning him with would have withered weaker men to the ground. “Our kill-rate is really good, considering we pretty much cleared out most of Scotland’s harmful demons. That is another reason we need a helicopter to reach our hunting grounds: you can’t catch any demons within walking, or even driving distance anymore.”
Properly chastised, Spike lowered his head and put on his most innocent face. “I didn’t mean any harm by it, luv; it’s just that I’m not really used to having so many slayers running around, and it’s making me a mite testy.” Seeing her face lose some of its hardness, he decided to go for broke. “Also, I was actually hoping you’d accompany me. Make it sort of a ‘for old time’s sake’ outing with yours truly.” That managed to get a small smile out of her.
With an overly-dramatic sigh, Buffy picked up the receiver from the landline on her desk and dialed an internal number. “Buffy here. I need to know when the next possible outgoing flight is. I’ll be taking Spike with, so I don’t really need to wait for a team to accompany me.” She listened a bit without looking at Spike, holding the phone between her ear and shoulder, while she kept herself busy tidying up her desk. “Okay, we’ll be there.” She looked up at him, a slight twinkle in her eyes. “They can take off in five minutes, so that the pilot is back in time to pick up the regular patrol.” She got up and walked toward him. “We have weapons in the hangar, but if you need anything else…”
He smirked, letting his features turn to his vampire face. “Got this and you alongside me. What more could I possibly need, Slayer?”
She laughed lightly and walked around him and through the door, seemingly confident that he would follow. So follow he did.
*
The area they had been dropped off in was desolate, and Spike wondered what self-respecting demon would possibly roam this type of terrain. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but jagged rocks piled together to make up what obviously passed for hills around here, with grass stubbornly growing along the rounded tops, making the whole area a strange mix between savage and tame. He was loath to ask what they were doing there, since the Slayer had kept quiet on the entire ride over, and was currently busying herself with making sure all the straps were tight and all the weapons she had on her were in place.
After Buffy checked with some GPS monitoring device, they took off northwards. Everything she did was a far cry from the simpler days of patrolling the Hellmouth, even with its thirteen cemeteries, darkened alleys, and abandoned warehouses. Spike shook off the thoughts of what was, in essence, a past life for both of them. Instead he half-focused on searching out any demon activity, while the rest of his attention was directed at taking in the sight of Buffy on the hunt.
She was still magnificent. Despite the gadgets and Kevlar and other such things that had been added, the main part of her, the Slayer part, was still as graceful and as breathtaking as ever. She moved with confidence, her body silent as a shadow’s, but prepared to strike at a moment’s notice. In the end, he couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “You’re not as vocal as you used to be.” His mind shouted a warning at him about possible misunderstandings, so he decided to explain. “I mean on patrol. You used to always make some sort of noise while you were patrolling, especially running that mouth of yours.”
“Are you saying I was some sort of elephant that stomped around?” The quirked lips let him know she wasn’t really offended.
“Not at all, just more ‘Here I am; come and get me.’ Why the change?”
“Now there’s an army of us, so it’s only the dumbest demons on the planet that willingly attack Slayers anymore. They got the message that where one of us is, another is not that far, ready to take out anything that just one Slayer might not be able to handle.” She frowned a bit, her mouth pursing slightly in annoyance. “Of course, that just makes it harder for us to hunt the bad ones down, but on the upside, it also means that they’re less likely to actually do evil in the first place. I guess it’s a bit of a compromise.”
They walked in silence for a while, lost in their own thoughts. After a few more minutes, they could finally sense a demon nearby. When they got closer, they could see it was a huge thing, with what looked like thick, scaly skin covering its massive body, and sharp spikes jutting out from its collar bone and shoulders. This should be a bloody blast!
Despite Spike’s earlier bravado, they’d taken their swords with them. They drew them, grinning at each other, and charged forward. Working together came easy, even surprisingly so. Despite not having fought together for more than three years, they managed to move like a well oiled machine, their muscle memory allowing them to fall back into what both had thought were long forgotten patterns. Spike went high, while she went low, left and right, then switch and repeat, and then again, for good measure. Swipe, punch, parry, and kick, then roll and do it again. In the end, the demon lay dead, two of its spikes broken in the fight, and a number of holes oozing dark blood from where the swords had made contact.
The slayer and vampire stopped moving, their gazes locked, their bodies trying to recover from the exertion by panting. He could feel the high from the adrenaline, his demon roaring in delight from the fight, and even his soul was elated at being alive. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, seemingly frozen in time, smelling the way the rush was also affecting Buffy, until he took one step toward her. She responded by jumping in his arms, and then his mind short-circuited as their lips finally met.





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