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Notes, Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five (final part)

Failure to Communicate, Part Four

It was Xander’s suggestion that they went to Giles’s place. “The Initiative may know you’re cosy with Buffy, but I doubt Giles is on their radar. Unless you’re really jonesing to get back to that crispy fried Mayor meat…?”

As they pulled up outside Giles’ place they saw the car - a long, black, stylish convertible. Xander frowned. “Dark, conflicted, pretentious. Either there’s a rockstar in the neighborhood or Angel is gracing us with his presence.”

Riley was out of the car so fast, he nearly broke his ankle on a flowerpot. He made to knock on the door, and then stepped back into the shadows and looked through the window. It felt odd to be the one in the darkness, the one who had to lurk and hide, the fugitive who dwelt in shadows. Riley could see Buffy, looking beautiful and brittle and like someone about to snap, and there was that impossibly handsome stranger, wearing those layers of black. He looked a little pale in the lamplight, but apart from that he looked human, except he really did have the razzle dazzle. Maybe it was the soul giving him that movie star glamor, but Riley suspected it was the demon within him that provided that. Willow was sitting on the couch, clearly wishing she was somewhere else, while Giles was handing out cups of tea with an expression on his face that suggested he too would have given a lot to be almost anywhere but here.

“Oh yes.” Xander stood next to him and also gazed into the window. “I can feel the angst from here. How I miss the fun days of constant emotional torment with that occasional segue to bloodbathy goodness.”

Riley could see a gash on Buffy’s forehead and a bruise blossoming out from it. She looked exhausted; her hair falling in soft waves of gold against a white polo neck sweater so thickly-knitted that it looked like chainmail. He wondered if that was how she felt right now - in need of armour. She and Angel looked so different, Buffy dressed in white and with hair of gold, and the vampire swathed in those layers of black, dark hair spiking in a way that asked the universal question - how did anyone get his hair to do that without access to a reflection? And yet they looked so damned good together, too.

“Buffy told me a lot about this guy, but I don’t remember her mentioning that he looked like…that.”

Xander wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, people talk about the face and the bone structure and the muscles and the lithe, panther-like grace, but me - I don’t see it.”

“A blind man could see it.” Riley realized that Angel looking like that was in no way lessening his desire to punch him on the nose.

“Hey, you’re not so bad yourself.” Xander held out expressive hands. “You’ve got the whole tall, strong, yet boyishly handsome thing going for you, not to mention the mysterious military demon killer by night and affable TA by day double life for extra cool points, and that time with the evil plants when Anya and I interrupted - I couldn’t help noticing that you look great naked.”

The truly sad part about this conversation was that it was making him feel better. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean that in a gay way.”

Riley nodded. “Understood.”

“Although, the list of things I would do to get my hands on one of those laser blaster things is quite long.”

“Not something I needed to know.”

“And we’re done with the male bonding.”

Riley took another look, mentally comparing the stylish, black-clad vampire, not with himself, but with those two pale, exhausted, bruised human beings they had left behind in LA. The anger flared up again, a nice bright constant, because the guy had no business looking like that when, if it hadn’t been for him and Xander, those two would be dead. He exchanged another glance with Xander and read the same feelings in his brown eyes. Even as he headed for the door behind him, it occurred to him that if he and Buffy could communicate this effortlessly, half of his insecurities about their relationship would disappear overnight.

Xander went in first. Willow looked up with a smile of welcome and relief that reinforcements had arrived - which quickly turned to trepidation when she caught sight of Riley behind Xander, gaze flickering between Buffy’s past and current boyfriend. Riley just wished he knew for sure which of them was which. Buffy caught sight of Xander and started glaring, evidently having heard why they had gone to LA, and deeply resenting the interference. Anya had presumably let it slip. There was a dark stain on the edge of Riley’s vision in the shape of an Angel. Everything else in the room was bright, and light-edged and full of warmth, and then there was the black shadow in the corner that was the vampire with a soul.

Angel was halfway through a sentence: “…and then I got jumped by these GI Joe wannabes. I’m telling you, downtown Sunnydale has really gone downhill since I left.”

“They’re actually good guys.” Xander looked Angel up and down. “So, I hope you didn’t kill any of them.”

“I don’t kill humans, even when they’re trying to kill me.” Angel gave Xander a look that wasn’t exactly overflowing with warm fuzzies. “Anya said you were looking for me?”

“Which I don’t appreciate.” Buffy jumped into the fray without even noticing that Riley had walked into the room behind Xander - that probably wasn’t a good sign. “You have no right to start interfering in my private life and to go haring off like knights on white horses to fight my battles for me.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Xander told her. As she looked, unsurprisingly shocked, at what must seem like a bare-faced lie to her, Xander amended: “Well, maybe in the beginning it did, but it’s turned into something else.”

“How can you say that it isn’t about me?” she demanded. “This was nothing to do with you and….”

“It’s not about you.” There was a snap in Xander’s voice that Riley had never heard before and he wasn’t surprised when Buffy took a step back, looking as if the boy had slapped her. Xander turned to where that dark shadow was just getting to his feet. “It’s about him.”

Angel had a ‘here we go again’ look on his face that was mostly dismissive, and that personally made Riley want to break his nose. It seemed to have pretty much the same effect on Xander, who got into the guy’s face with commendable courage.

“How could you just leave them there?” Xander spat furiously.

That seemed to shock everyone and did at least take the wind out of the vampire’s sails. “What?”

Buffy also looked bewildered. “Who are we talking about here?”

Xander kept glaring at Angel. “You left Cordy and Wesley in LA by themselves.”

Angel blinked in confusion. “This is about…? Faith was in prison. They weren’t in any danger. Why do you even care?”

“Because they’re people I know and you left them alone and scared.”

“I told them to stay in Cordy’s apartment if they wanted to. Come back to work in a couple of days.”

The guy was looking way too unruffled and Riley stepped forward, fists clenched. “The apartment where Faith was waiting for them last time they went there? The one where she concussed Cordelia? Kidnapped Wesley? I’m sure that made them feel really safe.”

Xander poked Angel in the chest with his finger. “Don’t you get it, Mr Super Strength? You’re their safe place, and you took that to Sunnydale and left them unprotected. After what they’d just been through, don’t you think that was the act of a - oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? - total bastard?”

“That’s actually two words,” Buffy said, eyes wide with surprise. “And I left them, too.”

“Yeah, because Angel was there to take care of them. He left them with no one.” Xander turned away in disgust, throwing words at the vampire like rocks: “What is it with you anyway? Do you have some kind of spell you put on people that means even if you treat them like crap, they’re just bound to think you can walk on water anyway? All the excuses I’ve had to listen to about you over the years, I wonder I’m still even surprised when they just keep coming. But at least Buffy was in love with you. I guess Wes and Cordy are just desperate.”

“We tried to get them to come with us.” Riley felt the full force of their defeat as he addressed Buffy, Willow, and Giles equally. They had given up too easily, let themselves be faced down by a teenage girl and the walking wounded that was Wesley. “But they wouldn’t. Maybe we should give it a week and then try again…” He sank wearily onto the couch.

That seemed to get to the vampire like nothing else; he spun around to glare at Riley, voice dangerous: “They’re my people, and they don’t want or need to come back to Sunnydale to be treated like crap by the rest of you.”

“Hey, why would they, when you can treat them like crap in LA without them needing to pack a suitcase first?” Xander sat down next to Riley, weariness washing over his face.

In the moment of laden silence, Giles felt as if everyone had just come into focus for him. Riley and Xander both looked exhausted, the young soldier for the first time seeming to be more than Buffy’s latest romantic appendage, but someone with opinions and problems of his own. Giles had been thinking of him as the rebound boyfriend, the uncomplicated human being to help Buffy get over the emotional upheaval of Angel, but there was apparently more to him than met the eye, not just a young man who did as he was told and looked good in a uniforn. He had risked everything to try to save Oz, and lost his job in the process. When Giles had been fired as Buffy’s Watcher, he had at least put everything on the line for someone he knew and loved like a daughter. Oz was someone with whom Riley had barely exchanged a few sentences, yet he had done it anyway, just because it was the right thing to do. That suggested a strength and depth of character that made Giles wonder if Buffy had chosen better than perhaps even she knew when she picked this young man.

Personally, he had not exactly been thrilled to see Angel again, the vampire leaving his car outside his house while he went off to bring more joy and happiness to Buffy’s crowded life, and frankly wished that Buffy had not insisted on Angel coming in so that he could ‘catch up’ with Willow and Giles. Given the way Willow had been fidgeting, she had found the situation uncomfortable as well. No doubt, leaving her had been the right decision, but it had certainly not been an easy one for Buffy, and it had been taken unilaterally by Angel alone. Giles was not in any way excusing Xander and Riley’s decision to drive to LA to confront the vampire, but he could certainly understand where their impulse had come from. But this latest conversation had taken him by surprise.

He stepped forward, holding up a hand for a pause in which everyone could collect themselves. “I’m not sure I really understand exactly what the problem is here. Are Cordelia and Wesley hurt?”

“Faith knocked out Cordelia and tortured Wesley.” Xander looked up at Buffy. “Angel didn’t tell you?”

Buffy flinched at that ‘tortured’, as did Giles, at least internally. She said: “No. But Wesley was all over bruises. I should have asked…. We were just a little busy trying to stop the Council from carrying out their little assassination plan. There wasn’t much time for chit-chat. I didn’t realize she’d….”

“Tied him to a chair and cut him open with broken glass? Making it a little tough for him to go up against the Netraxan demons who featured in Cordelia’s brain-splittingly painful vision.”

Finally, Angel lost his poise and looked more upset than angry. “Cordy had a vision? I told her to call me if she did. I told them absolutely not to…”

“Cordelia had a vision of a horde of evil ritual sacrificing demons with half a dozen screaming babies in their claws, and an hour to go until supper time. What did you expect them to do? Shrug and let the little people die? Of course, they went after the demons. If we hadn’t been there….”

Giles noticed that Xander was trembling, suggesting this was more than just anger, but shock too, the ‘what if’ still haunting him. Netraxan demons. He seriously doubted that a Cordelia and Wesley in perfect health could go up against those and live. Feeling a little faint at the thought of the carnage that could have ensued if Riley and Xander had not followed their illogical impulse to go to LA, he rested a hand on the younger man’s shoulder as Xander wrestled to get that tremor out of his voice.

Angel had already snatched up the phone. As he stabbed at the numbers his voice was also ragged with anxiety: “Are they okay? What happened?” He had evidently misdialled, the sing-song voice of the automatic operator telling him that number was not recognized. “What happened?”

Xander just kept glowering; it was Riley who said: “They’re okay. A few more bruises.”

“They would have been dead without us,” Xander said brutally. “And it was only chance that we were there. If you’re going to start having ‘people’, instead of just brooding by your lonesome, you need to take better care of them or at least tell them that you don’t really give a crap, so at least they know where they stand.”

“You have no idea what they mean to me!” Angel spat so savagely, that Buffy stepped in front of Xander and held up her hand.

“Let’s all take a deep breath and not say anything we might regret.” She darted a look at Giles suggesting he could dive in any time.

“Yes, let’s just take a moment to…” Giles trailed off, thinking ‘Take a moment to…what? Undo the last four years of our lives so that we’re not at this point right now…?’ He was still thinking about Wesley and Cordelia running into a place where there were Netraxan demons intent on their annual ritual sacrifice. The death for such an intrusion was a particularly grisly one, and Wesley would know that, so what on earth had the idiot been thinking, taking himself and Cordelia into that situation? Then he thought about just standing aside and letting babies die when there was a chance - however slight - that one’s intervention might be enough to save them, and realized that was what the idiot had been thinking - that he didn’t have the moral option to sit this one out.

Angel dialled again, although his hand was visibly shaking as he stabbed at the buttons. Cordelia’s voice sounded so clearly down the line that it was obvious Angel had inadvertently hit speaker phone: “Xander Harris, if that’s you, you’re a dead man the next time we meet.”

“It’s me, Cordy.” Angel closed his eyes in relief and Giles realized that the girl must indeed mean a great deal to him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Are you?” There was a tentative note in her voice that Giles had only heard a few times before. He felt abruptly like an intruder, knowing the girl would not want them to be hearing her sounding like this. Angel seemed to have the same idea. He stabbed ineffectually at the keypad, trying to switch off the speaker phone but only succeeding in cranking up the volume.

“I’m fine. Is Wesley with you?”

“Yeah, he’s researching something icky on the couch. Not that I have anything icky on my couch, he’s just researching… Anyway…you want to talk to him?” She seemed to be walking as she talked. “Is Buffy okay?” There was that tentative concerned note in her voice again.

“She’s fine.”

“Wes, it’s Angel, and…ewww! Why don’t you research some nice demons for a change? Pretty ones with nice fashion sense.”

Wesley’s reply was inaudible but then he came on the phone, saying: “Angel, is everything okay?”

“Are you all right?” Angel asked abruptly.

“Yes. Why?” The tremor in Wesley’s voice was one he was apparently trying manfully to suppress. “Did Faith…? Is she still in prison?”

“Yes. God, yes. I just…wanted to know you were both okay.”

“We’re fine.” A momentary hesitation before Wesley added: “If you need more time to ensure that Buffy is entirely recovered, then we’d understand.” He sounded so much like someone trying to be brave despite being afraid there was a monster in his closet, that Giles felt an entirely unexpected twinge of sympathy for him. Wesley seemed to be forcing himself to add: “That must have been a very unpleasant experience she went through.”

They heard Cordelia say darkly: “Yeah, because what you went through was just a day at the funfair.”

“Cordelia, please…” Wesley murmured in what he clearly hoped was sotto voce, but which the speaker phone still transmitted through the whole room. “How would you like to have someone steal your body and run off with it?”

“Not much. But it’s still my first choice on my ‘fun nights out’ list if the other option is someone taking my body while I’m still using it, tying it to a chair, and slicing it up with broken glass,.”

“Cordy, don’t…” Wesley sounded as if any sympathy was just another unbearable wound to him.

“I’m coming home,” Angel said. “I’m leaving in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere. Just stay where you are.”

“Is something wrong?” Wesley asked in obvious confusion.

Angel was gripping the phone so hard, Giles was worried he was going to break it. “I just can’t lose anyone else.”

Buffy looked stricken, evidently realizing that she was one of the things the vampire had lost; while Willow looked nothing but sorry for him. Even Giles felt a twinge of pity.

“We’re not going anywhere.” Wesley sounded different from the way Giles remembered, tone sympathetic, accent softened. “We’ll be here when you get back.” He heard Wesley murmur something to Cordelia which was almost inaudible except for the word ‘Doyle’.

“Promise me,” Angel said.

There was a pause before Wesley said softly: “I promise.”

Angel’s hand was still shaking a little as he put down the phone, even though Giles was almost certain that adrenaline and endorphins did not work the same way on vampires that they did on human beings. Perhaps it was a demon twitch that had set off those tremors; that darkness in him unleashed by the frustration of Netraxans having attacked his ‘people’ while he was not there to protect them, or else something darker and deeper set off by the prospect of Riley and Xander having tried to lure Cordelia and Wesley away from his protection. He had already had to face the reality that Buffy was with another man now; perhaps this was too much on top of that realization.

“They’re always going to forgive you, aren’t they?” Xander was slumped back in the couch, looking more resigned than angry now. “Just like Buffy, just like Willow. I thought better of Cordelia, I really did. She used to know how to hold onto a grudge.”

Giles thought of how small Sunnydale was by comparison with LA. Dangerous, certainly, but that had been a constant for everyone who lived here, the deaths acknowledged even when people were in denial about their cause. Cordelia had been one of the richest and prettiest and most confident young women in this small town, but in LA she must have felt diminished. So many people, all chasing the same things that she was, and no one who knew her name, or her past, or thought her of importance. No one except Angel. And Wesley had probably felt small enough in Sunnydale. In LA, he must have felt invisible. Perhaps neither one of them felt confident enough to hold a grudge in LA, not against one of the very few people who knew them and cared whether or not they lived or died. Perhaps they clung to Angel, the way Buffy and Willow in the past had sometimes clung to Giles. The person whose name they called when danger threatened.

“You don’t know anything about our lives there,” Angel told Xander.

“If anyone did to Willow what Faith did to Wesley, I would hunt them down and kill them. And if you really gave a crap about him, the last thing you would have done is help her after what she did to him.”

“She did some terrible things to Buffy as well. Do you really think I don’t give a crap about her either? Do you think that Buffy didn’t care about what Faith did to her mother, to you, to me? Faith tortured Wesley to make me kill her, because she hated herself and she wanted to die. Wesley is one of the people who helped to save her, because she was capable of redemption. He understands why we do what we do. Better than you do.”

Riley glanced up and met Angel’s gaze and Giles watched that current of dislike pass between them. If they had met in less constrained circumstances they would have been punching each other in the head by now. Quietly, Riley said: “You’re going to get them killed.”

Angel’s tone was murderous as he took a step towards Riley: “Just stay away from them.”

Willow whispered to Giles: “There’s a lot of transference going on here.”

Giles whispered back: “To borrow an objectionable Americanism ‘you think?’”

“Can everyone please calm down?” Buffy looked as frayed around the edges as everyone else.

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving.” Angel strode towards the door, coat billowing behind him, but the glare he fixed on Riley and Xander was chilling. His face looked human, but the expression in his eyes was all vampire. “I mean it - stay away from them.”

Riley rose to his feet and glared right back and Giles didn’t know whether to applaud his courage as he eyeballed Angel, or deplore his stupidity. With his face a few inches from the vampire’s he said, “If it wasn’t for us, they’d be dead. You’re the one who should stay away from them.”

That was almost a growl from Angel. “You don’t know anything about who they are or what are our lives are like in LA. You got Buffy - good for you and if you’re her choice there’s not a lot I can do about it except seriously question her taste - but back the hell away from Cordy and Wes.” His glower turned onto Xander. “And that goes for you too.”

Angel turned on his heel, and slammed out with all the grace and power of something that habitually snapped the neck of its prey. Watching him go, Giles wondered what it was exactly they had just witnessed. Angel had given Buffy up unwillingly, but seemed to have exchanged being the lover of the girl that Giles had no doubt he still loved, to be the patriarch of a family of adopted misfits. Perhaps it was good for Angel’s mental health to have other people to hold him to humanity and prevent him from going off the rails - and good for society as well - but Giles wondered how good it could be for those members of what seemed to be his new family. His first two attempts at being a family member had not exactly gone swimmingly, after all.

“Well, that was…awkward,” he murmured.

Buffy got up and went after the vampire, while Riley watched her go, an expression of resignation and pain on his face that suggested he thought she would not be coming back.

“We should get them out of there,” Xander insisted to no one in particular.

“I don’t really see that working,” Willow offered tentatively. “What with them being free agents and over eighteen and everything.”

“Were you proposing to kidnap them?” Giles suggested.

“Yeah, but Riley wimped out on tying up Cordelia.”

It took him a moment to realize that Xander wasn’t joking. “Xander, Cordelia is a grown woman now, and entitled to make her own mistakes. Even those that include choosing to work for a vampire.” Seeing the boy open his mouth, he added quickly: “And that goes twice for Wesley. They’re not your responsibility and you can’t force them to leave Angel against their will.”

“If they’d been sucked in by some evil demonic cult we’d interfere, right?”

Giles sighed. “Angel is not an evil demonic cult.”

Riley said: “But how do we know he’s not using some kind of vampire mind control on them?”

Giles felt his patience begin to wear a little thin. “Riley, I expect stupidity from Xander, I don’t expect it from you.”

“I’m serious. I think he’s worked some kind of…”

“Evil mind whammy,” Xander put in.

Riley nodded. “Yes. And he left them by themselves.”

“There is no law against leaving adults by themselves.” Giles had always thought Riley was such a sensible young man too.

Xander said heatedly: “Well, there should be when they’ve just both had the crap kicked out of them by a rogue Slayer and Cordelia has a hotline to these mystical powers that send her brain-aching visions of nastiness going down that Angel isn’t around to stop.”

Giles wondered how he had been put into the position of being perceived as on Angel’s side. “I’m not defending Angel, I’m just pointing out that you don’t have the right to kidnap Cordelia or Wesley. It’s their choice to work for Angel, and they have a right to have that decision respected.”

“It’s the wrong decision,” Riley said passionately. Buffy still had not come back in, and Giles wondered which decision exactly he was talking about here.

“And we all have the right to make wrong decisions too, just as we then have to live with the consequences.”

In the rather laden silence that followed, Willow said brightly: “Why don’t I put the kettle on?”

The door opened to reveal Buffy standing half in the darkness of the outside world and half in the spilled light from Giles’ sitting room. Seeing the pained expression on her face, Giles felt his heart twist for her, wondering if it was always going to be like this for her, this bright, vibrant creature doomed to spend half of her life in darkness. She must feel like Canute on occasion, one Slayer trying to tame a sea of evil with a single stake. No doubt this was why some Watchers advocated bringing up their Slayers like Kendra, away from the distractions of family, friends and - above all - boyfriends. Yet it was hard to imagine Buffy being…Buffy without those very distractions. He had no desire to see her turn into some automaton who did nothing but her duty while her heart and soul chilled from lack of human warmth. It was certainly the case, however, that Kendra, had she lived, would have been spared moments like this, as Buffy gazed at Riley like that. She clearly had something to tell him that was going to hurt both of them.

Riley seemed to understand it too. He just nodded, a little sadly, and then turned to Xander. “We did what we could.”

Xander nodded. “Yeah. And that’s really going to help us both sleep tonight.”

“Maybe they’ll be okay.” Riley offered it, not as if he believed it, but in the hope that Xander might.

Xander looked past Riley to Buffy’s pained face. “Maybe they will.” He could hardly have sounded less convinced.

“Riley, can I talk to you?” Buffy said tentatively. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Riley nodded and went with her, the two of them stepping out into the shadows. Xander barely waited for the door to close before he said: “Is she out of her mind?”

Willow said: “She isn’t leaving Riley for Angel, Xander.”

Xander blinked in confusion. “She’s not?”

“No. She wouldn’t dream of it.”

“So, why is she all guilty-looking and avoidy with the eye contact? She and Angel didn’t…?”

“Of course not. Not everything is about Angel, you know. She’s feeling guilty because there was a fight and Adam killed Forrest. She’s been dreading having to tell Riley that his friend is dead.” Willow put a cup of tea in the boy’s hand. “Now, tell me about Cordelia and Wesley. What exactly did Faith do to them…?”

Curious to hear Xander’s answer himself, Giles still glanced out of the window. Buffy and Riley were walking under a streetlight, her hair a blaze of gold, gazing up at Riley anxiously. As he watched, she reached out and took his hand in hers. No doubt the news she was giving him would hit him hard, but perhaps when he had more time to reflect, after the first intensity of grief had worn off, there would be that moment when he realized that he was the one she had chosen, after all. He turned back in time to hear Xander describing the dingy offices from which Angel was now apparently helping the helpless with the assistance of - of all people - Cordelia Chase and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce….

***