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Xander looked at the people standing next to him, mentally noting that their sick expressions mirrored his own, though for probably different reasons. He was right. He felt sick because, somehow, he knew that Willow was hurting over something. The knowledge that she was in pain, coupled with the weird sensation of feeling what she was, was kind of irking him.
Oz was looking at Willow and Giles through the office window, and he could also tell that she was hurting, and it hurt him to see her like that. She looked almost in despair as she seemed to explain something patiently to the Watcher. Oz wondered why she was so sad, knowing instinctively that, though it was concerning her lost best friend, there was something else going on, too.
Cordelia wore a similar look on her face as she observed what was going on. Xander was looking at Willow. Tears were in his eyes. This wasn't good. He looked half love sick, and half.....just sick. This was bothering her more than she wanted to admit. She tried unsuccessfully to push it out of her mind.
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Giles looked at me in bewilderment. "What could Xander have to do with this?"
I sighed. "Well, let me start by saying that we have everything we need to perform the ceremony." He wrinkled his brow and nodded at me to go on. "When I was unconscious, I wasn't really. It's hard to explain." I stopped and looked up, silently asking the ceiling to help me out or something.
"It's okay. Take your time, Willow." He nodded at me again, encouragingly. I took a deep breath.
"I went to this sort of waiting room. I had to decide whether or not I was staying or moving on. I met someone I knew there." I fixed my eyes on Giles's, and his widened.
"Angel." It was a statement.
"Yes. But it was the real Angel. Even, well, the human Angel. I know this sounds weird." I started to blush, knowing I sounded nuts, but Giles simply shook his head. Hellmouth, right. "Anyway, he helped me go back for a minute to decide if I wanted to stay or not. Through a series of events, I decided that I would be better off here." This time I did blush, thinking about the wonderful things I had learned. I shook my head to clear it before moving back to the subject at hand.
"Um, when I went back to tell him what my decision was, he confessed something to me. Has Buffy ever showed you the ring he gave her that, uhh, that night?" He shook his head. "Well, he gave her this ring the night he lost his soul, but before he got a chance to explain some things to her, they were attacked by those vampires. Everything after that happened so quickly, including, um, later, that he didn't *get* a chance to tell her all of it. The ring was called the Claddaugh." I concluded that part of my story and looked at Giles. A look of dawning understanding swept over his face.
"The Irish wedding ring?" I nodded.
"When they were too poor for a wedding in Ireland..." I trailed off.
Giles finished for me in a whisper. "They exchanged the ring as a sign of life long devotion." He glanced up, and expression of compassion filling his face for his Slayer. "Okay. We have that part. *If* we can find her. But that still doesn't explain why we would need Xander for the ritual."
I felt my eyes fill with tears again, for the betrayal of my love, but mostly for the betrayal of theirs. Giles handed me a tissue.
"Thanks. Well, I should start by telling you that ever since I woke up, I've had this feeling of heightened awareness. Like I was in a consciousness above my own. It's weird, and more than a little unsettling, " I confessed. I went on. "Like, um, when we were outside, I could have sworn Buffy was near. And with me knowing that you were keeping something from the group. Well, I saw something like that in Xander. Something flash in his eyes, only I couldn't really figure it out until just a minute ago, when you said 'someone who had betrayed him in the fullest sense.' " I started to breath deeply, but figured that soon I would hyperventilate and stopped. I settled for sighing instead. "It just came to me. Xander had done that. I have no doubt in my mind... or heart. He betrayed both Buffy and Angel." I looked at Giles sadly, and I think he understood.
He nodded sympathetically to me for a moment. Then his eyes filled with blinding anger and understanding. "You mean to tell me that Xander knew that you were doing the curse again and he didn't tell Buffy." He didn't need me to speak for him to have the thought confirmed. "Why that selfish, manipulating little a..."
"Giles! Now's not the time. And he feels guilty, honest. Though that *will not* excuse his behavior. With any of us, " I added harshly. "But what we need to do right now is make sure that we can do the ritual. And if you go off at him, I can assure you he won't be part of it!" He slowly turned around from heading hastily to the door.
"Okay, Willow. You seem to have had the right instincts so far. But we have to hurry and find Buffy." I nodded, knowing in my heart that Buffy was getting farther and farther away every minute.
Giles opened the door and wheeled me out, to where the others were anxiously awaiting, wanting to hear what had been going on. He addressed Oz and Cordelia. "You two should be getting to class. Now." Oz leaned down and kissed my cheek before heading out with Cordelia on his heels. He knew I would explain later.
Giles pinned Xander with a dangerous look. "You stay here. Sit down." Xander looked back and forth between us, but I kept my eyes firmly focused on my hands. I couldn't look at him right then. Giles saw his hesitation and nearly went off. "Now! You don't want to be hesitating in following my orders right now. Do it." Xander sat.
I rolled myself over to the laptop and turned it on. While it was warming up, Giles stalked into the stacks to look for any information that would help us in the ceremony. I looked up, startled, when I felt a warm hand cover my own. "What's going on, Wills?" I pulled my hand away. It almost seemed painful, like I was the one most betrayed by his lie, though I knew that could not be true.
"What did you think, Xander? Did you think that you would just lie to her and that no one would ever know?" His eyes widened, partly at the words I spoke, but mostly at the cold tone of my voice. "You betrayed us all. You said that you want us to be happy. You claim to love her. But love means wanting the other to be happy. Love means giving, and sharing, and honesty and trust!" I spit the words out like a poison. "How dare you claim you know what love is! With any of us..." I turned away.
He spoke, his voice sounding hollow and sad. "How did you... Nevermind. You'll always know, won't you?" His hands started trembling as he stared down at them. "Willow, I'm so sorry. If I could do it over again, I would. I just didn't think about what I was doing. It was so selfish of me..." I was immediately sorry I had been so harsh, and after I had told Giles not to be, too. But I had instinctively known that Xander would take more from me than he would from anyone else, because he knew how seriously I had to feel things like that before I spoke them.
The computer beeped, signaling that it was good to go. I looked at Xander and tried to hide the tears that slipped down my face, but I'm sure I didn't do very well. I kept my voice hard, though, when I replied. "Let's not talk about this now. We can talk about it later. We need to focus on getting Buffy back right now. And it's good that you feel remorse. You'd better keep feeling that way, because I have a feeling you're a major part in the ceremony to get Angel back."
"Where is Angel?" His voice sounded smaller than I had ever heard from him.
"Hell." Xander drew back instantly at the word, almost as if to fend it off. I continued, a little more gently this time. He needed to know. "Buffy saved the world by sending her true love to Hell, Xander." His eyes got moist, and it made me glad to know that he was genuinely sorry.
"We're gonna get him back, Wills. I promise I'll do all I can." I nodded and allowed him to take my hand across the table. Giles entered the room. He looked at me understandingly, silently telling me that he had heard the conversation. I smiled, allowing myself hope. He smiled back.
"Find anything?" He gestured to the "blasted contraption". I pulled my hand away from Xander's and started typing furiously.
"Not yet. But I'm typing in her description, um, in LA. I feel like that's where she would've gone. It would have helped a lot, though, if we had an idea about what outfit she was wearing." I was stopped by a voice.
"None of her cute outfits. No dresses. As far as I can tell, she only took her jeans, a pair of overalls and some dark colored tops. The rest she threw in the trash." We all turned and our mouths hung open simultaneously at the speaker.
It was Joyce Summers.
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Giles was the first to recover and snapped his mouth shut with a click. Xander and I followed in suit. We all looked at her, none of us sure what we could say. Or what should be said.
Mrs. Summers spoke softly, but the tears were evident in her voice. "Tell me about Slayers." She looked directly at Giles, who seemed thrown.
"Uh, um, what have you been told?" He asked cautiously.
"Just that she is a Slayer, vampires are real, and what she does is fight them to save the world. I would like to know the rest." She examined some ragged nails and picked one to chew. I was surprised at that, her, biting her nails. Adults never seemed to do things like that. I realized that I was just trying to find an out to the conversation coming, and shook my head. No outs.
"I may sound completely crazy to you, Mr. Giles. You kids, too. But I have a feeling that I'm not, and that you are more than just a librarian. And, Willow, Xander. You two are the best friends she ever had. I might even think the only real friends. She must have told you." She appealed to us with large, tear-filled eyes.
I spoke. It scared me how trembly my voice sounded. "She didn't exactly tell us, we just sort of found out. The Slayer's identity is supposed to be secret. It's dangerous for her family and friends to know. I think Buffy was the first Slayer with friends who knew. We called ourselves her Slayerettes." A grin appeared on my face at the word I made up, so often used since. I looked up and sobered immediately.
"Yes, um, ah, the Slayer." Giles was having trouble looking at Buffy's mom. "Well, um, let's see. For each generation, there is a girl. She alone will stop the demons, the vampires, and the um, forces of darkness. She is the Slayer. One girl in all the world born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires. She will stop the spread of their evil, and save humanity from extinction." His well rehearsed speech seemed foreign to him, as he appeared to struggle with the words. "Um, Buffy is she."
"Wait, one Slayer? I thought that the other girl killed was a Slayer." Mrs. Summer's looked at me for help.
"Well, the thing is, one Slayer dies, and the next one gets called. There are really hundreds of Slayer's in the world at this very moment, but only Buffy was activated until, um, prom night last spring." I looked at her, trying to judge whether or not she could handle hearing the rest. She looked remarkably composed so far. I went on.
"Well, it had been in a Prophesy book called the Codex, that the Slayer would die on that night." Mrs. Summers recoiled in shock, but stayed silent, waiting for me to go on. "At first, Buffy didn't want to participate, she even said that she quit, but after finding out about what happened to me, I mean how I found the boy--" I shuddered, and Xander took my hand across the table again. I smiled gratefully at him. "She changed her mind. So, she went to kill the Master." She looked at me questioningly. "Vampire King," I elaborated. "The oldest vampire on record. And he won, or so it seemed." I was having trouble not crying. It always hurt me to think about everything Buffy had had to give up. This last one was apparently the cruelest of all Fate's tricks on her.
Xander saw my welling eyes and plunged into the story, already part told. "Angel led me to the Master's lair, where we found Buffy. She was lying face down in a small pond of water. I had hoped that it wasn't the Master's bite that had, um, killed her, but drowning. That's how Kendra was, uh, turned on. So I gave her mouth to mouth, and after a minute, she woke up. She was stronger than before, we've never been able to figure out why. But what happened that night was, she killed him. She managed to kill the most dreaded and powerful vampires heard of. " Xander stopped speaking and looked at Giles, who was looking at Mrs. Summers with a pride shining in his eyes. A pride over his Slayer, the strongest in history.
"But isn't this all very dangerous? Couldn't she die?" She looked at us, pleading silently for an answer we couldn't give.
"Well, yes," Giles said hesitantly. "In fact, there hasn't been a Slayer who has lived past twenty. But I was sure Buffy would be the first." The pride in his eyes shone bright for a minute.
Buffy's mom spoke, denying him of that. "And who are you to her?" She questioned sharply.
"I am her Watcher. To each Slayer is given a man. One who will guide her and train her, prepare her for all that comes. I didn't do my job very well." He looked down. My eyes filled with tears again, and even Buffy's mom seemed moved by the sadness Giles was giving out in waves.
She nodded a few times before speaking again. "Okay. Two questions then. What are the events of these past few days, and what part does Buffy's boyfriend play in this?" All eyes turned to me. I think they all guessed that I would know the most about Buffy's love life.
"Well, um, Angel's a vampire." It sounded like the best place to start until I heard Buffy's mom gasp. "But a good one!" I rushed to tell her that before she passed out. "Kind of." This was all very hard to explain! "When Buffy met Angel, he had a soul. She didn't know he was a vampire then, but she knew that she liked him. Every time he would pop up to give her some sort of cryptic message, she liked him more and more. She really felt a connection with him, she told me once. This was before she knew what he was, but she said that she felt a loneliness in him. The same kind she carried with her all the time, no matter what friends she had, she was really, in the end, all alone." I sighed, and watched Mrs. Summers brush back a few stray tears as I did the same.
"The night you met him, last year, they had just run into your house. He saved her life that night. There were these three, really strong vampires who attacked her. Angel helped her, and she invited him into your house, still not knowing that he was a vampire. Since he had been injured, she invited him to stay. He slept in her room that night. Um, on the floor. Anyway, when she got home from school the next day, she took some food up to him and went into her room where he waited. After a long, embarrassing, confusing mistake that he had read her diary, they kissed." I stopped for a moment, savoring the uniqueness of their romance. The others were staring at me, waiting for me to go on, obviously all engrossed in the story.
"Using her words, the kiss was 'unbelievable.' She had kissed boys before, as I'm sure you know, but this time she really felt like she was where she belonged. Until he pulled away a moment later. She told me that her mind just couldn't process why he would pull away from something so obviously right. That's what she said. 'Obviously right.' " I sniffed, trying unsuccessfully to hold back my tears.
"So, she pulled him back to her. But when he turned to her, he had a game face on." Mrs. Summers looked confused. "A vampire face," I explained. She nodded. "Buffy could only scream, she was so terrified and shocked. Angel jumped out the window."
"But why didn't he just kill her?" She questioned me.
I smiled wryly. "Angel's not your normal vampire. He never has been. After Darla bit you, that girl you invited in that night you went to the hospital a few days later, she set it up to look like he had done it. She was Angel's sire, the vampire who made him, and lover for many years." I blushed at my abrupt choice of words. "Anyway, Buffy went off to kill him, he explained to her of the curse. About a hundred years ago, Angel fed on a beautiful young girl from the clan of Romani. They were gypsies. In punishment, they restored his soul." She looked about ready to speak, but I cut her off.
"When one becomes a vampire, they demon gets your body, but not your soul. That leaves you, giving the demon total freedom with no guilt. Well, suddenly, Angel had guilt over everything he had done in the hundred years before. He's 241, or 242, I'm not really sure. So, as a vampire, that's a lot of guilt. Buffy is really the first person that's given him human contact since that day. And they eventually fell in love." I steadied myself for the worst part.
"Then, on the night she turned seventeen, something happened that would have had Angel go away for a long time. As a symbol of his love and devotion, he gave her a wedding ring before he left." Buffy's mom's eyes widened at the exact time Xander's did. "He didn't get a chance to tell her, though, because they were attacked by vampires. They got to his apartment after going through some things and there, he told her he loved her for the first time." Giles wiped his eyes. I suspected that he had never really dared to contemplate the tragedy or wonder of Buffy and Angel's love before. The pure love it must have taken for a vampire and a Slayer to be together. "Then, they made love...." I looked down, wiping away more tears for the pain Buffy must have felt when she woke up alone.
"They made love, " I repeated. "And being so, um, intimate with her, having her trust him so much, gave Angel a moment of true happiness, of true contentment. The first since his soul was restored. But there was a clause to the curse. If he experienced one minute, one second of true happiness, he would loose his soul. And so, that night, he became evil again." I looked at Joyce Summers who was crying.
Strangely enough, I wasn't really moved by her tears. Though I knew it was unfair of me, I felt that she had done something wrong with Buffy recently. Less and less I was able to tolerate someone wronging her. This was Buffy's *mom*! I shook my head to clear it of the uncharitable feelings I was having towards her and went on.
"He left her in the middle of the night. She assumes it was Angel's last fight to save her from harm. I think she's right. So, after she woke up in his bed, all alone, she was freaked. She was worried about him because he didn't even tell her where he was going. We all just thought she was worried because she had been having weird dreams about one of the vampires killing him. But then she went back to his apartment, and they talked..... He was really mean to her."
I stopped for a moment to breath and couldn't control the tears as the unfairness of Buffy's life occurred to me again. Xander got up and sat down next to me, pulling me close. They let me cry for a few minutes, undisturbed. I think none of them disturbed me because they were all too busy crying themselves. Giles for his courageous Slayer, Mrs. Summers for her daughter's hard life, and Xander for the loss of a friend. I was crying for all of the people who loved her. For all the people whose lives she touched and made better when her life only got worse. I finally pulled away.
"I'm sorry." I rubbed my eyes with my fists. I sniffed a couple more times before continuing. "Okay. When she saw him that day, he was so mean to her. He said stuff that implied that she really wasn't... good. That she didn't please him and that she was just a child. That's all she told me, I think it really just hurt her to think about it. So, after a lot of things happened, we realized that Angel had turned bad again." I looked at Xander and he understood my meaning-- Not just about Ms. Calendar and the gypsy thing, but also about our little blowup that night. "So he had been trying to freak her out ever since. Like that little thing he pulled with you, telling you about what they did."
"Is that about it?" Joyce looked at us hopefully and let out a long, trembly sigh.
"No," Giles said firmly. "There's more you need to know."