//You never thought you'd be alone
This far down the line
But maybe someday you will find
That it wasn't really wasted time//
"Wasted Time" by the Eagles
November 1, 2017
Angel's Apartment
"What about you? What have you been doing and what brings you here now?"
Angel's question hung in the air as Buffy got up from the couch and began to investigate the room. "What have I been doing for the past twenty years? Keeping the world safe from vampires and other things that go bump in the night. No, really I stayed in Sunnydale for my senior year. When the time came to go to college I attended Sunnydale Community for two years. But by that point things had slowed down tremendously at the Hellmouth. The slayer that had been called when Kendra died seemed to be handling most of the vampire problems in the world."
"So if you were no longer needed to handle vamp problems what did you do?" Angel asked.
"I said things had slowed down, not that they stopped completely. I was alternating my time between Sunnydale and L.A. There were still a few of Lothos's boys running around down here and they needed stopping. Then Willow started training to be a Watcher. I spent time with her, learning all the things I should have learned when I was younger." Buffy smiled as she thought of how she had first approached slaying. "Looking back at everything I didn't know it's a wonder I survived. If it hadn't been for you, Willow and Xander helping Giles and I out, my reign as the Slayer would have been a very short one." Running out of things to investigate Buffy returned to couch and sat down next to Angel.
"Buffy, you came into your role as the Slayer in the worst possible way. You did the best you could with the resources around you. Letting Willow and Xander help you was the best decision you ever made." Angel's voice was solemn as he spoke.
"Hey, you helped too!" Buffy exclaimed.
"I caused more problems..."
"Angel, we've talked about this before. That wasn't you! I wouldn't trade any of the time we had together for anything. Now before you put on the sad face, let me tell you the rest of my story. As I started getting older I noticed that my Slayer abilities seemed to be slowly diminishing. I wasn't as strong or as fast. By the time I was twenty-six I was pretty much a normal person. Or as normal as a person could be when they could still sense a vamp at two hundred paces. Giles didn't know what to do. The Watcher Diaries were useless. Did you know I was the first Slayer to live past twenty-two?" Without waiting for an answer she continued to speak. "Giles finally decided that the Hellmouth was slow enough that I shouldn't patrol any longer. Of course he decided this only after he saved my butt from a knife-wielding vamp. I was shocked that I couldn't fight them off any longer without being a danger to myself." A flurry of emotions crossed her face, disbelief, humor, frustration and shock appearing and disappearing as she wrinkled her nose. "My mom was certainly glad when I stopped. She came to understand my being the Slayer, but she was never happy when I went out on patrol. It was such a great time for us. We became so close once I no longer had to hide anything from her."
Angel's eyes narrowed as he listened to her story. "I'm glad things worked out with your mom. I still feel like I should have been there with you though."
"No Angel, it was probably for the best that you weren't there. Giles was still hurting pretty badly. It wasn't till later that he started to move on. But I'll tell you about that in a bit. Where did I leave off? Oh, so what's a newly retired Slayer to do? I took my two years of credits from Sunnydale Community College and put them towards a degree in phys. ed. I think Principal Snyder spun in his grave the day I applied for a job a Sunnydale High. But I did get a job teaching gym. Things seemed to working out reasonably well. I almost had the normal life I always wanted. It was a little after this that the love bug struck. Can you imagine how I felt when after all that time my mom and Giles started spending quality together? I was amazed. But I figured it was good for her. And for him. He had shut a big part of himself off. It was really nice to see him smiling again. And then mom died..."
She stopped for a second as the loss struck her like a physical blow. Angel pulled her to him and gently kissed her hair. "You don't have to go on if you don't want to," he whispered.
"It's ok." Pulling away she continued, "There's not much more after that. Giles was terribly broken-hearted, for both of us. But he felt he had to get away. Sunnydale held entirely too many memories for him. I certainly understood. I wanted to get away too. I was no longer needed; Willow was working with the other Slayer, the one before Claire, the newest Slayer. I took a job up in Capeside, a little town up the coast north of Sunnydale. Giles took a job in the Watcher Archives back in England."
"So you've been all alone for the last six years?"
"Well there was this marriage proposal" she smiled trying to lift the sad mood.
"What? Never mind, as long as you're happy. Do I get to meet your husband or do you keep all your ex-boyfriend vampires hidden away?" Angel's voice was joking but Buffy could hear the hurt hiding behind the words.
"I said proposal! Not marriage! When I first got to Capeside I was alone. I met Greg at the local gym. We started to date. We had dated for almost two years when he proposed. I thought I could do it. I thought it was what I wanted. But when I went to take off my ring I couldn't." Looking down at her hands Buffy softly touched the Claddagh ring on her left hand. She continued to stare at the ring as she spoke again. "I realized that even though you and I weren't together, hadn't been together for over fifteen years; I still couldn't love somebody the way I loved you. I turned him down. He was very understanding. He told me he always knew that a big piece of my heart was locked away for somebody else."
Angel tenderly reached over and lifted her chin with a gentle finger. Looking into her eyes he saw all the love he had been missing for so long. Reaching out for her he pulled her into his lap. He kissed her softly and felt his kiss returned with rising passion as twenty years of longing caught them up in its grasp. Until it no longer mattered that they had ever been apart, only that they were once again together.