In This World

by Felicity

Disclamer: I don't own them. Not even the ones in the alternate universe. I don't think so anyway...? I wish I did...
Spoilers: "IWRY" "The Gift" probably all of fourth and fifth seasons BtVS
Feedback: PLEASE! I need it! I crave it! I live off it!

"If it has happened it was meant to be."-The Oracles, "I Will Remember You"

Part One

The sun was shining. Birds were singing. And even though a moment before - an eternity before? - I had been dead, suddenly I wasn't. Or this was Heaven. When I opened my eyes to find Angel's face filling my view, I thought for a brief, crazy second that my last guess was right. Only, if I was dead, why did I hurt so much? I felt like every part of my body had been hit by a sledgehammer. Many, many times.

"Buffy," he breathed, his voice choked and strange. Hands cradled my head, pulled me up gently off the ground. "Are you all right?"

"Angel?" I murmured, confused. I was dead. Why wasn't I dead? I could recall quite clearly jumping into the portal. I remembered my last glimpse of Dawn's pale, desperate face. I remembered being dead.

It was sunny, there was sun on my face and Angel...Angel was right there...

"Oh God, Buffy," he moaned and his arms closed around me, pulling me to an upright position as he crushed my against his chest. His chest, where I could detect the faintest sounds of an agitated heartrate. Thump-THUMP. Thump-THUMP. Angel. Heartbeat. Alive. I was alive, he was alive . . . I was . . . definitely dead. "I thought you were gone. I thought you were . . ." His voice was ragged and hoarse as he trailed off, seemingly unable to go on. I wrapped my arms around his neck - ow, why did that hurt? I was dead - and relaxed into the embrace, welcoming the comforting, warm feeling, even if it wasn't real.

After a long moment I opened my eyes reluctantly, to see what else was in this place, what other fantasies were coming true around me. The first thing I saw was Giles, watching with his heart in his eyes. Giles? He couldn't be dead. No . . . he was fine, he was safe . . . He turned his head and said something and my eyes moved to Willow and Tara, clinging to each other. Tara was better. A little sigh rose up in me at that. Tara was better. Even if she wasn't really there . . . where was there? They both looked dirty, dead-tired, bruised. If this was Heaven, why were they hurt? I pulled away a little, reluctantly, and looked into Angel's face. He had a scar on the side of his cheek. When had he got that? Since I saw him last . . . only a month ago . . . My fingers traced it gently. Vampires didn't scar. But then, he wasn't a vampire here.

"Are you all right?" Angel asked gently, and I raised my eyes to his. They were the same as always-dark, bright, melting with concern and love. I melted too, beneath their gaze.

"I-I don't know," I admitted. "Am I dead?"

Angel started, his arms tightening around me and he looked to Giles, who also appeared alarmed. "What happened?" my Watcher asked. I swallowed.

"I jumped into the portal and . . . and I thought I was dead. I was . . . elsewhere. And then I woke up here." They looked relieved to hear that. Like it made everything else make sense. Hello? Angel . . . human?

"Well you aren't," Xander promised. He was holding Anya, as if she was injured. Her head was cradled against his shoulder, and her eyes were open, watching me. I pulled away from Angel a little more and turned, searching for those that were left - there was Spike, hiding in a shadow, watching me with terror and hope and that thing I always hope not to find there. Love, if you can call it that. And there. Dawn. She was sitting on the steps, crying, tears flowing unheeded down her face, her dress torn, her hair tangled. In a moment I was off the ground, away from Angel entirely, across the pavement - we were beneath the scaffold. Why were we here? Why would my death be here? - wrapping Dawn in my arms.

"You died for me," she sobbed, burying her face in my shoulder. "I'm so sorry. So sorry."

"Shh," I murmured, rocking her, amazed at her solidity. Real. She felt . . . real. But how could any of this be real? "I'm okay. It doesn't matter." She kept crying but it was . . . it was healing, I thought. Eventually we pulled apart; I was almost reluctant to let her go. I was afraid that she'd disappear at any moment, that this was a dream, a fantasy. I wanted Dawn back.

"H-how did you come back?" Dawn asked, sniffling.

"Did I?" I looked at my surroundings. Everything *seemed* the same as the world I'd left. Everything stationary anyway. I looked back at Angel, who was watching me with concern.

"Of course you did," he said gently. "Let's . . . let's get you two home." Dawn nodded, weariness aching through every line of her body. Knew how she felt. Only I was dead. Dawn took my arm and pulled me to my feet, and Angel took the other side.

"A-are you guys okay?" I asked, unsure of what to say. No one seemed surprised that Angel was there. Was . . . human. No one had an explanation to offer.

"Anya's hurt," Xander volunteered.

"I'm fine," the ex-demon said grouchily, but her boyfriend shook his head.

"I'm gonna take her to the hospital. Anyone else need to go?"

Everyone took stock of themselves and finally demurred, but Willow and Tara offered to go anyway, to accompany Xander and Anya. Spike indicated he could get home by himself and he and Angel exchanged a long look that left me blinking. Like they had an understanding. Hadn't Angel just come? Spike watched us go with dark eyes; happy, I supposed, to be alive, and bitter that it was Angel walking me home. Giles took Dawn in hand (someone had bound up her cuts while I was . . . gone . . .) and Angel took me and we started home. I kept my eyes on my friends until they disappeared down the street and wondered if that was the last time I would see them, if I had just seen them at all. Everything felt real; the pavement, the sunshine, Angel's arm around my shoulders. There was nothing dreamlike about it, nothing heavenly. It was life. Only . . . it wasn't. Not mine anyway.

I kept thinking Angel would have an explanation; Giles had called him and not told me, he'd found a spell to turn him human and only just came to give me the news. He didn't say a word, not about that. He asked how I felt, what hurt, what it was like in the portal. He didn't ask me why I jumped in. Had Dawn told them what I told her?

When we got home Giles took off Dawn's makeshift bandages and put on real ones while I watched, unable to let her out of my sight. My head was thick with exhaustion, but I remember clearly stopping at the bottom of the stairs, and thinking: I didn't expect to ever climb these stairs again. Angel appeared at my elbow and put an arm around my back and we climbed them together. I didn't want Dawn to be alone, or maybe I didn't want to be alone - death had been so alone, so solitary, was that really death? - so we lay in my bed, curled together.

"Can we get you anything?" Giles asked, but I shook my head and so did she.

"I just want to sleep," Dawn said, so Giles and Angel tucked us in. Angel kissed my forehead and drew the blinds over the window to make it dark, pausing a moment as he did, the sunlight on his face. Sunlight on Angel's face. I was too tired to demand an explanation, I could feel consciousness slipping away, and as the dark closed over us, I was gone. They say sleep is a form of death, but to me it seemed like life, pure life.

*

I dreamt of my friends finding my body, of how still and cold it was. I dreamt of them crying and holding each other - of Spike unable to stop his tears. I didn't even know that vampires could cry. I dreamt of an ambulance that could do nothing, and a morgue and Dawn's despairing cries. I dreamt of Willow insisting they tell him in person, driving to LA that very night, crying the whole way. I dreamt of Angel - a vampire still - turning and walking away, outside, where he began to scream and scream and wait for the sunrise. I didn't dream the dawn - I don't know if it reached him or not. I woke to find Dawn's side of the bed still warm, and Angel sitting a few feet away, watching me. Breathing.

"She's eating," he said, seeing my hand go to the empty spot my sister had occupied. I relaxed, thankful that he knew what I needed to hear. Thankful that he was there. How was he there? I extended a hand to him, sitting up, and the space between us fell away. His arms closed around me, warm, comforting, *there*.

"I almost lost you today," he murmured, echoing my own words...god, from so long ago. It felt like a different life. Maybe it was. Maybe I did die, it'd happened before.

"I'm not so sure you didn't," I breathed, a tiny, incredulous laugh escaping. He pulled away enough to see my face, one hand tracing my cheek lightly.

"Hey. You're here now. That's the important thing." I nodded, not entirely sure that it was, but unable to argue.

"And you're here," I added, drinking in the sight of him. Even though I've 'moved on' from Angel - I don't spend all my time thinking about him, and I think I can honestly say that I can go the rest of my life without him - his presence, everything about him, is enormously comforting. He reminds me that I'm loved, absolutely, forever, no matter what else happens. "Thank you so much for being here."

His face creased in a teasing, slightly confused smile. "Where else would I be?"

"Um . . . in LA?" I hazarded. One of my hands slid down to his chest, to where I could still feel a steady heartbeat. "Angel, is this real?"

"Real?" he demanded, the teasing look disappearing and true confusion setting in to his expression. "Of course it's real. And why would I be in LA? Buffy, are you okay?"

I blinked, the warmth of waking to find him there fading as I began to realize something was wrong. "I don't know, you tell me," I replied sharply. "What do you mean 'of course' - when did you become human? How? And you *live* in LA! What's going on, Angel?"

Confusion was gone: now his eyes were disturbed. "Buffy, I live here. I moved back to Sunnydale a year and a half ago! When I became human again. Is this a joke? It's not funny."

"No," I murmured, my hand dropping away from his heartbeat, "it's not." A year and a half? That was . . . that was just before Riley . . . No, I *knew* Angel lived in LA. I knew he was a vampire. I'd seen him a month before! There was a panic-y feeling in the pit of my stomach. This wasn't Heaven. If it was, my limbs wouldn't ache and my head wouldn't hurt. I wasn't dead. Which meant . . . which meant what? I had amnesia? But I remembered the last year and a half! Just not Angel in it. I raised my eyes to his, frightened, feeling alone again, isolated. "Angel?"

One of his hands found one of mine; clasped it strongly, warm and sure. Warm. He was human. Just the thought of that was overwhelming. "I promise we'll figure this out," he murmured, brushing back a piece of my hair gently. "I promise we'll make it better."

I believed him. I'd never really believed when anyone else told me that, not even Giles. But with Angel, I believed it. Or maybe I just wanted to.

Part Two

We might have sat there staring all day, our minds racing over the revelation, but Giles and Dawn walked in. I started and beckoned Dawn over, making her sit by me. She'd changed into her favorite old pajamas - the ones Mom had five million stories about and wanted to cut up to put in a quilt, but Dawn wouldn't let her. The legs and arms were too short, but Dawn loved them.

"How are you?" I asked intently. She looked tired, still, a little battered, but mostly okay. Still my Dawnie.

"I think . . . I think I'm going to be okay," she replied slowly, her eyes rising to meet mine. "I'm so glad you're alright!"

My arms snaked around her involuntarily, pressing her to me. I never wanted to let her go. I remember when I was little and my parents brought her home, holding her for the first time. I looked into her eyes and saw myself there, and something more, something supremely precious. I remember rocking her to sleep, knowing that she trusted me enough to fall asleep in my arms. She was so helpless, and perfect, and *mine*.

"It's a miracle that you're here," Giles murmured. "I don't quite understand how the portal healed you."

I stilled at the words, and pulled away from Dawn though I kept hold of one of her hands. "Healed me?" I asked, not quite sure I wanted to hear the answer. Not another thing I didn't know. Had the portal taken away my memory? But why of Angel . . . and I *had* memories of Angel, just not the ones, apparently, that he had . . .

"I thought you were going to die," Dawn whispered. "Even when you came out, I thought at first that you were still injured, that I would still lose you."

"I wasn't injured," I protested quietly. What were they talking about?

"Buffy, Glory hurt you," Angel informed me. "I thought she killed you."

"Well obviously not," I replied, sharper than I meant to. They were all watching me with the most awful expressions. I shook my head, running my free hand through my hair, trying to straighten things out. A thousand possibilities ran through my mind, but none of them meant anything, really. "Let me get this straight: I was dying when I jumped in the portal?"

"That's why I let you go," Angel said, his voice aching with memory.

"You weren't there!" I appealed, beginning to get desperate. Dawn's hand tightened around mine.

"Buffy, are you okay?" she asked. I shook my head, and then realized I must be frightening her and nodded.

"I'm fine. I'm fine . . . it's just, everything's a little muddled. I-I don't remember what happened exactly . . ." But I did. That was the thing. I *did* remember what happened. I remembered it exactly, in perfect detail. I remembered the way Dawn smelled, and the feel of her skin and her hair, and the pulsing of the portal below us, the blood dripping. I remember every thought that passed through my mind, every move I made. Everything.

I wasn't dying. And Angel wasn't there.

"I think she needs a little more rest," Angel suggested, and Dawn nodded, freeing her hand from mine - I reluctantly let it go, clenching my fingers around the blankets instead - and letting Giles take her out. They shut the door behind themselves and I looked around the room for the first time. My room. It was the same as I remembered it, except that on the bedside table there was a picture frame with a picture of Angel and I in it. We were sitting in a park, on a picnic blanket, Angel's arms wrapped around my torso. We were smiling, in the sunlight. On the dresser were more pictures of us, pictures I didn't remember taking. Pictures I didn't remember living.

"There's something very wrong here," I said steadily. "I don't just need a little rest."

"I know," Angel admitted. "I just didn't think you wanted Dawn . . ."

"No. No." I took a deep breath and threw off my covers, sliding out of bed. My muscles protested but I gritted my teeth and stood anyway, walking over to my bureau in search of clothes. Clothes I recognized. Something normal.

"You don't remember the portal," Angel probed. I leaned against the dresser, trying to take some pressure off my battered body.

"I do remember it," I countered. "I remember it very well. But you weren't there. And you weren't there the day before. Or the day before that. Or the day before that. Angel, the last time I saw you was the night of my mother's funeral. Before that . . . last May."

"You hit your head when you fell," Angel suggested. "You have amnesia."

"No!" I cried, spinning back. I immediately regretted the action. "Well, maybe the head part. But I don't have amnesia. I remember everything. Just not . . . you." He gave me a telling look and I glared back, frustrated and confused. "I remember my life Angel. There aren't any blanks."

He looked a little ill at the thought and I realized what I'd just said. If he really remembered being human for a year and a half . . . really thought that we'd been together all that time...What would it feel like to have me declared that there were no blanks - like all the time we'd spent together meant nothing to me? But that wasn't what I meant. I just didn't think we'd *spent* time together.

"Angel," I tried again, creeping back towards him. "Are you *sure* you've been here for a year?"

"I don't think I'm likely to forget," he snapped. "Everything we did, everything we . . ." He stopped, almost too desperate for words. Damn. He really did believe it. And judging by the lack of surprise at Angel's presence, so did everyone else. Which meant it was me that was screwed up, not him. Me.

"Okay, let's think about this," I said, taking a deep, slow breath. "There has to be an explanation." Not going to panic. Not going to be panic. I'd just dealt with a god. A little memory . . . alteration . . . was nothing. This would be okay. There wasn't any immediate danger. No one was going to die; the world was not going to end.

But seeing Angel sitting there, looking at me, and knowing he remembered a life - our life - that I didn't have . . .

"When Glory . . ."

"What *did* Glory do to me?" I demanded. "According to you, I mean?"

"Similar to what she did to Tara, only your were lucid, you still knew yourself. Instead of your sanity she took your . . . your life force, I suppose. You were getting weaker and weaker. I could . . . I could feel you fading . . ."

"So maybe it warped my mind," I suggested, only I didn't really believe it. It was one thing if I just didn't remember - remembering different was something else. Why would Glory killing me change my memory? I must have thought aloud, because Angel shook his head and drew me down to sit on the edge of the bed, opposite him.

"I don't know. You say you have memories. Of what?"

"Of everything!" What was I supposed to do, give a day by day account?

"Tell me what you remember of the fight with Glory," Angel suggested. I nodded, and began with arriving at the ritual. I told him how Willow sapped Glory's strength - Angel agreed on that part - how Glory knocked off the robot's head - also the same - how I beat Glory into a pulp until she turned into Ben, and then I left her there, on the ground, and went after Dawn.

"That's different," Angel broke in. "She followed you." I wondered where he'd been this whole time, but didn't want to ask.

"I got up to the top, and there was this guy - some minion of Glory's, I guess-"

"Doc," Angel filled in. "Sorcerer."

"That's who Spike and Xander got the book from, right?" I asked. Angel became yet stiller, if possible.

"Spike and I went."

"Oh." I took a deep breath, avoided his eyes, and kept going. "I tried to take Dawn but the portal was open. She...she said she was going to jump in, that I had to let her go. I couldn't let her go. She's...she all I have. She's part of me. I could never live with myself if I..."

"I understand."

"She said that it needed her blood, and I remembered that our blood was the same. I didn't know if it would work, but I had to try. I said goodbye to Dawn, and then I jumped in. I felt myself...I don't know, not die. Change. I was in this other place, this nothing. I don't know how long I was there, but then, all of a sudden, I wasn't anymore. I was here."

"You don't remember me being there at all?" Angel asked, worried, a little forlorn. I raised my eyes to his reluctantly.

"Angel, I don't remember you being human at all," I repeated. How many times had I said it? He still looked so hurt at the words... "I don't remember you living in Sunnydale. The last time I saw you was after my mother's funeral - you came and kept me company that night, so I wouldn't have to be alone. Before that, the last time I saw you was...oh, May or something. You came to town and beat up my boyfr-" I cut off abruptly. Angel looked stricken enough. I didn't think telling him about Riley was really going to help the situation.

"Let's try further back," Angel suggested. "How did we meet?"

"Well first you spied on me when I got my Calling, then when I came to Sunnydale, you followed me down an alley and were extremely cryptic. I didn't like you." I smiled a little, wistfully, up at him and he smiled back, gently.

"So not everything has changed," he said, and then realized what that could be taken to mean. I laughed and the corner of his mouth inched up a little.

"No, not everything," I teased, then sobered up. "Okay, how about...when the Master killed me?"

"I showed Xander the way to the church. He gave you CPR and you woke up, and then you went after the Master. He was on the roof of the library. You killed him and we went to the prom and danced until two in the morning."

"That was a nice night," I commented, half-sarcastic and half-truthful. The dancing part *had* been nice. The first part...not as much.

"Christmas of '98?" Angel asked, skipping over some of the more painful parts of our history. I took that to mean he remembered them the same way I did.

"You were haunted by the First Evil. I found you on the hilltop by the mansion. You were...you were waiting for dawn. I told you that you had to be strong, and fight, and that I loved you. And it snowed."

"Last winter vacation I took you to Colorado for three days," Angel said softly, one memory triggering another. "We went to this tiny cabin up in the mountains, surrounded by snow. You taught me how to make snow angels and we spent hours curled in front of the fireplace."

I could almost picture it. I could imagine just how Angel's arms - warm, now - would feel around me, how we'd keep each other warm. I could see our snowfights. But I didn't remember it.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry Angel, I don't...Last winter vacation I stayed in town. Mom was supposed to be better but Dawn was still, and...and I was kind of having a hard time." Riley had just left, I recalled. I'd cried through most of Christmas.

"So somewhere in those two years," Angel sighed.

"If there's one specific split. If it's not just...random..." I took a deep breath. Okay. This was going to be okay. "When did you turn human? I...I don't remember that."

"The day after Thanksgiving, 1999. I came here after Doyle had a vision, and then you came to see me the next day, while visiting your father. You were angry."

"I remember." He looked up, startled. "I remember going to see you. But I...I was only there a minute."

"Well I suppose. We were attacked by a demon, and we went to hunt it."

"A...mori demon? Something like that?" I asked, dredging up the name from distant memory.

"Mohra."

"You killed it. It leapt in the window and you hit something on its forehead and it just...disintegrated." Angel frowned.

"That is how you kill them but we didn't know that yet. We injured it, but didn't kill it, and then followed it down to the sewers."

"So that's where the memories diverge," I muttered. But why that moment? And how? And what did it have to do with Angel becoming human? I prompted him to go on and he did, finally. He explained how we chased the demon and how we split up. He told me about finding the demon, the fight, the mixing of blood, and finally becoming human.

"Since you killed the demon, the way I remember it, you didn't get the blood," I said finally. "Why the difference?"

"More importantly: how? What happened to you that would alter that one moment?"

"And therefore, all the moments that followed..."

I had no answer. I didn't even know if there was one. I sat there, leaning on my knees, watching the man I gave up two years before - the man that was now human and therefore completely available - waiting for a stroke of inspiration. I felt heavy, too tired. My head was thick, like someone had set a weight on my brain. We should tell Giles, I knew. Maybe he'd have an explanation...I still wanted to believe that Giles knew everything, even though I knew how patently false that was. It was nice to believe sometimes. I didn't want to worry Dawn though. Not now, not when there was nothing she could do. And no reason to worry, really. My memories were different, but at least I *had* some. It wasn't like I had brain damage, right? I quailed at the thought. If I had brain damage, I wouldn't remember anything, or at least not as clearly as I did. I could recall specific conversations, given moments, the temperature on a certain day of the previous summer, the dress Willow wore when we went to the Bronze one night...I knew things. Real things, about my life.

There was nothing wrong with me. But there was definitely something wrong.

Part Three

We were interrupted once again, this time by the arrival of the gang at my bedroom door.

"Are you two decent?" Xander called playfully. I gave Angel a startled look, and found a half-smile on his face. Apparently, we often weren't.

"Come in," I called hastily, not sure whether to find the thought appealing or...or what. My head hurt.

"Hey!" Willow exclaimed, bursting through the door and throwing her arms around me. I hugged her tightly back. This was Willow, *my* Willow. She was the same person, she knew me, I knew her...I remembered her.

But she remembered Angel...

"Hi," I murmured, smiling back at her when she finally pulled away. She examined me carefully, looking a little worried, then turned me over to Xander for similar treatment.

I looked at them and knew I should tell them, but I couldn't. Not right at that moment. Not when they were so happy and glad to have me. I couldn't tell them that I wasn't right, or they weren't right, or *something* wasn't right. They seemed so happy.

We'd just defeated a god, and it wasn't enough to make things okay. It wasn't over. I wanted it to be over.

"What's the matter?" Willow demanded when the hugging was over. I looked awkwardly at Angel, and then back to Willow and Xander, and opened my mouth to tell them. Before sound emerged though, Anya entered, and Tara, and then Dawn and Giles behind them. My confession was lost in the uproar as Anya presented her diamond ring to the gang. Someone got champagne and somehow we ended up toasting and all I could think was, "This isn't right. They all know something that I don't know. They all remember something I don't remember." Angel's eyes held the same thoughts, and if everyone hadn't been so tired, so relieved, I'm sure someone would have noticed. As it was, we toasted, we hugged more, and then everyone went home. I tucked Dawn into bed and sat beside her until she fell asleep. When I crept out, Angel was in the kitchen, making me food.

I didn't feel hungry, but I knew I was. In times of stress, I...I kind of shut off my hunger. If I have food before me, I can eat it; if I don't, I don't need it. My body becomes almost self-contained. I was still in that crisis-mode, even though supposedly it was over.

How could it be over? I'd lost a year of memories and gained a different one...

He set an omelet in front of me and I ate it, because it was there and Angel was watching me with worry. He sat across from me and watched, not touching his own food. At first it seemed normal - he only ate to be social, after all - until I remembered that he was human.

"You should eat," I urged, taking a bite. He was a good cook. He didn't protest that he wasn't hungry; he must be. Obediently, he took a bite, and then set his fork down again and continued to watch me. What was he looking for? Some difference? Some explanation in the way my hair fell or the bruise on my cheek?

I finished and stood, took my dish to the sink, numbly rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. Normal. This was my kitchen, the same as it had always been. Only there'd never been a human Angel sitting in it before. Or had there?

"I'm too tired to think about this right now," I said, still facing the sink. "I...I think we better have a meeting tomorrow."

"Okay." I almost flinched at the sound. He was trying so hard to be calm, to be okay with all of this, only sometime in the year and a half he'd been human he must have lost his ability to hide all his emotions because they were leaking through into his voice; confusion, worry, pain... "I'll call Giles in the morning."

I nodded, and didn't move, not knowing what to do, what to say that could be at all comforting. I hated to see him hurt, but I was frightened too; after all, if there was something wrong, it was with me, not him. Lost in my reverie I did not realize he'd stood up until his hands touched my arms; warm, real. He was human. With everything that had happened, I hadn't even had time to think of what that meant. Angel was human. And if this was the reality and my memories were the lie, what did that *mean*?

I leaned back into his solid warmth, and turned my head so my ear rested against his chest. If I was very quiet, I could hear his heartbeat, solid, reassuring. And frightening. There was no denying that Angel was human now. I couldn't pretend this was a dream. I could feel him. I could hear that thumping. This was real.

"Come on," Angel murmured, slipping an arm around me and herding my toward the stairs, carefully, as if was afraid I would break. I felt broken already; like something had put me together wrong and suddenly I didn't fit in my own life. I went without protest, let him tuck me into bed. I thought I'd never be able to sleep, that too much was in my mind; but I did sleep, quickly and deeply, slipping into darkness.

*

I woke in the morning to find Angel asleep in a chair, sunlight falling over his face. It was a sight I'd never expected to see as long as I lived; and since I had been prepared to die the day before, it was doubly significant. He looked older, but...but not through care or worry. Through life. He'd been living for a year and a half, and I didn't remember any of it.

My muscles were still protesting loudly as I sat up and got out of bed. I left Angel where he was, though I winced at the angle of his neck. Poor thing, he was going to have a cramp when he woke...He should have gone home. I would have made it through the night. Though... what if he had no home? What if he lived with me? The thought gave me pause and I checked my closet - sure enough, there were male clothes there. Whether that meant he actually lived with me or he just stayed over sometimes, I didn't know but it was still...Wow. Even Riley brought clothes with him when he slept over.

Except Riley probably hadn't ever slept over...

I grabbed my bathrobe - blessedly familiar - and went to take a shower. The mirror had a scratch in the right place, and the shower spigot was still stuck. I wasn't entirely sure whether that was a good thing or not. Should I be happy that most things were exactly as I knew them to be, or would it be better if I was wrong about everything?

I emerged from the shower refreshed in body if not in mind. Angel was still sleeping when I got back into my room so I dressed in complete silence, half-hiding in my closet in case he woke up. Sure he's seen me naked before, but for me it'd been about three and a half years. Maybe for him it was only two days, I didn't know, but I wasn't quite ready for that yet. I never stopped loving him, but the abstract love of someone in another city was different from the quite concrete physicality of having a human Angel right there.

I'd dreamed of Angel turning human a thousand times. Most of the dreams weren't suitable for public consumption. Part of me wanted to celebrate - we'd defeated Glory, Angel was human, everything was amazing - and jump his bones right then and there. But everything wasn't amazing, not really. Something was wrong. Maybe several somethings.

Downstairs for a bowl of cereal. Dawn emerged about twenty minutes later, still in her pajamas. "Why's Angel sleeping in a chair?" she demanded. I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Uh-oh. She watched me with crossed arms.

"He, uh, he was having trouble sleeping..." I stuttered. She arched her eyebrows at me, unbelieving, and then demanded to know if I'd used up all the milk.

I love my little sister.

"How you doing?" I asked seriously when she said down opposite me with her own bowl of cereal. She stirred the corn flakes with her spoon and then looked up at me and smiled faintly.

"It's so weird. I guess...I guess I kind of thought I wouldn't make it. I mean, I knew that Glory was pretty much invincible, and I thought that if anyone was going to die, it would be me. I'm still...I'm still a little stunned that it's over."

"Me too." But was it? Was this a residual effect from Glory? From the portal? What was going on?

Dawn's smile brightened. "But I'm glad you're okay. I thought you were going to die...I didn't know how I was going to make it without you."

"You would have," I promised her, slipping a hand over and taking one of hers. "Us Summers women, we're strong." She squeezed it.

"I know."

We ate in companionable silence until Angel came down and gave me a searching look. I turned to Dawn. "We're going to go out for a little bit, okay? Are you alright here? Do you want me to get someone to come over?"

Dawn shook her head. "No, actually, I'd...It'd be kinda nice to be alone. Just to prove that I can be. No more mortal danger."

"Better not be," I agreed, hugging her quickly, then glanced at Angel. "Why don't you get some food? I'll go get my stuff." And call everyone, I added silently. He nodded, understanding, and I departed up the stairs.

Giles was surprised to hear from me, but no more so than Willow and Xander. "Is everything okay?" Willow asked sleepily.

"I...I don't know," I answered truthfully. "I'm sorry to wake you up."

"Don't worry about it," she assured me, much more awake. "Is it Dawnie...?"

"No, it's...well, I'll explain when we get there."

They all agreed to meet Angel and I at the Magic Box. We took Angel's car, a beautiful classic convertible. I must have stood in the garage for a good five minutes staring at it. He watched me with a mixture of amusement and growing alarm, as if every little thing that I didn't remember just drove the point home.

What was the point? What was going on?

Giles was already at the Magic Box when we reached it. He greeted us with a worried look. "Whatever is the matter?" he demanded. "I thought everything was..."

"Almost everything," I sighed. "I'll tell you when everyone else gets here." Angel and Giles exchanged identical worried looks and I drifted away, floating around the magic shop, looking for some kind of physical difference. There wasn't one, not that I could see. I walked into my training room and noted some antique weapons hung up on the wall that I didn't remember; Angel's, probably. I turned and walked back into the front as the bell on the door tinkled and the rest of the Scoobies walked in.

They looked the same. Exactly the same. I didn't understand; I couldn't comprehend what made one set of memories different from another. What made Angel human.

"What's this all about?" Anya demanded. "We had a very special day planned." Willow rolled her eyes and my mouth quirked. Not a hard thing to guess what that day was going to entail...

I took a deep breath and looked over at Angel, who was watching me intently. I looked back to my friends, a strange mix of giddiness and worry in their eyes. "I don't remember...that is, I remember things differently than they are. As I know it, Angel lives in LA and is still a vampire. I remember Glory and Dawn and...and everything that's happened in the last year and a half. The Initiative, Adam, Dracula...everything...Tara, I remember you, I just don't...I remember Angel, but as a vampire. I have memories, only they're different ones."

They were all staring at me like I was crazy, which was how I felt. Completely insane. There was total silence and then finally Giles asked, "You don't remember Angel becoming human?" I shook my head.

"I remember going to LA and visiting him, but as I remember it, he killed the Mohra demon right away and I left. Went to my dad's. In my...in my memory, he never moved to Sunnydale. I've only seen him a couple times since then. And yesterday...and yesterday I stopped Glory. She didn't hurt me, not really. I wasn't dying when I jumped into the portal. Those are really the only difference we can figured out. I remember the last year and a half, just not the parts with Angel."

"But those were all the parts," Willow murmured, amazed.

"Not as I remember them," I admitted, trying to avoid looking at my...whatever he was. Boyfriend, in this life. Ex in mine. I didn't want to see him looking hurt. Xander was doing that well enough for him; he looked positively ill. Funny, I never would have thought Xander would be the one sympathizing with Angel, but maybe they'd matured. Or maybe it was something else.

"That...that's..." Xander trailed off.

"I don't...I don't believe I understand," Giles managed. "When did this happen?"

"It didn't 'happen' Giles. I mean, I guess it did, but...but to me, that's the way it is. I guess...well, before I jumped into the portal it was normal, to me. And when I woke up, afterwards, Angel was here, and things were different. Or...or I was different, I guess."

"And you were healed," Tara reminded me. I thought of my aching muscles and the nodded. That was nothing compared to being dead.

"I...I guess."

"Well, there is such a thing as selective amnesia," Giles suggested. I shook my head.

"I thought about that. But it's not like there's a blank in my life where Angel should be. He was just...in LA. But I saw him. And...and there are other things I remember that I shouldn't if Angel was human..." Namely, Riley. More awkward silence.

"A spell?" Willow suggested. "Maybe Glory put some kind of spell on you."

"But why?" Angel asked, shaking his head. "How could it help her?"

"Maybe the portal did it," Tara put in, watching me intently. "You were normal before you went in. It was...it was when you came out things were different, right?" I nodded.

"The portal..." Giles murmured, turning to go after a book. "It seems as if it should have taken your blood, but what if it took something else?"

"My memories?" I hazarded, glancing at Angel, who was wearing the same concerned frown. "It doesn't make sense. What *is* the portal? I mean, what would it do to me?"

"The world without shrimp!" Anya blurted out. We all blinked and turned to look at her. She was seated at Xander's side, looking like she'd just had an epiphany. I sighed.

"There were shrimp in my wo-" And then I got it. I understood exactly what she was trying to say. My world. I stood silent, stunned by the revelation. My memory; my world.

"Buffy?" Angel asked hesitantly.

"She...Anya's right..." I murmured.

"About what?" Willow asked. Anya gave her a glare through narrowed eyes, then turned to the larger group and explained.

"There's all these alternate universes, almost like this one, but a little different. Like there could be a world without shrimp. The portal was a giant doorway between all the different dimensions. Maybe when Buffy jumped into the portal, she came out in the wrong one."

"Which means you're from another of these dimensions," Giles finished, comprehension dawning.

"A dimension in which Angel never became human," I agreed.

Silence settled again, suddenly. If I was here, then where was the Buffy from this world? The one that Angel had loved for the last year and a half? The one that had been dying?

"It makes sense," Willow said in a small voice, brave enough to admit what none of us wanted to. It *did* make sense though; it was the only explanation that did. Like Anya said, the portal was a gate between dimensions. Why couldn't I have come out in a different place than where I entered? But similar enough that it was almost indistinguishable (in the cosmic sense anyway, though for me, personally, it was very different). That explained why almost everything was the same. Things that weren't integrally tied to Angel becoming human were the same as in my world.

"So the portal didn't heal you," Tara said, almost-voicing the question, but not quite daring to.

"Just spit me out on the other side, a little worse for the wear," I sighed, rubbing at my arm.

"So if you...then she..." Xander said, and stopped. We all were thinking the same thing, but none of us could say it. I could see it in Angel's eyes; in all their faces. I wasn't their Buffy. I didn't live in their world. And all their relief at finding me safe, healed, was lost, abruptly, because wherever she was, their Buffy might be dead.

Part Four

The afternoon is a bit of a blur; no one knew what to do, what to say. What did I remember? What didn't I? If the other Buffy was alive, did she know she was in an alternate dimension? *Was* she? Or was she stuck in the portal? Was she in my dimension, or some entirely different one? Were we the only two that had switched or had every Buffy, in every of an infinite number of universes changed places, suddenly?

What could we say to each other, since I wasn't who they thought I was? Only I was, I was exactly who they thought I was. But they weren't who I thought they were. Or Angel wasn't. Or I wasn't?

We debated about telling Dawn and decided against it. We went over in detail the morning I visited Angel in LA; everything we said, everything we did. Anything that could possibly have made a difference. There was no explanation. In my world, Angel knew what the Mohra was, and knew how to kill it, and did, without hesitation. In their world, he didn't. And where had that difference begun? We would need to ask my Angel, but he wasn't around to answer our questions. No answer there.

More for curiosity than any real need to know, they asked me about my life. I answered them truthfully, and usually the answers were familiar to them. I downplayed Riley's role, which seemed to make sense to them.

"What...what was Riley here? To me? To...to us, I mean?" I asked after I'd avoided talking of the Initiative.

"Riley Finn?" Willow asked, her brow creasing a little.

"Yes..." They exchanged curious, slightly confused glances.

"Well, he was a soldier, and our Psych TA, and he found out you were the Slayer. He took you into the Initiative. That was about it...?" There was a question in her voice, and Xander nodded, agreeing with her telling of it.

"He...he stayed with the Initiative?" I asked.

"I think he made it?" Willow questioned, looking to Angel for confirmation.

"I'm pretty sure."

"We didn't really see him after the big blowout," Xander explained. "I think he shipped out with the rest of 'em. Good riddance."

"Yeah," I sighed, not entirely sure what emotions were going through my head. "Good riddance." Riley...I did love him, if not the way I loved Angel, and it was disconcerting to think that in this world we'd never been anything. He was my first...well, not serious boyfriend, because Angel was certainly that...but my first adult relationship. With Angel, there was always a limit, because we couldn't get too close, and we couldn't do normal things like go on picnics or go swimming. At the time, I didn't care, and if he'd stayed, I don't think I would have minded; being with Angel was enough compensation for those things. But it was different, having them.

The thing was, in this world, I *did* have them. With Angel. Angel had been my first serious relationship *and* my first adult one.

The thought was nice. The fact that I didn't remember it was chilling.

"Why?" Willow asked. "What was he to you?"

It took me a minute to realize she meant Riley. We'd been talking about Riley. What was he to me? "Nothing," I lied, looking over at Angel, who didn't need to hear the things inside my head. By the look in his eyes, I could tell that he guessed some of it. Too much, maybe. "I was just wondering."

We lapsed back into not knowing what to say. Every once in a while someone would come up with something they thought might be different, and ask. Or just something they thought would be amusing if it was different. Xander wanted to know if Belgium existed in my world. I rolled my eyes at him. Silly boy.

People drifted in and out of the of the store; it was the first time in days it had been open. Anya left our table and went to take care of customers, showing each and every one her ring. Angel drifted into the training room and eventually I followed, unable to just sit there anymore. My body protested movement, but I stretched gingerly and watched Angel do Tai Chi. He'd stripped to a wife beater and black pants; I nearly drooled at the sight.

And what was wrong with that? Nothing. He was human now. But it wasn't all okay. It wasn't just...I couldn't just slip into this new life. I couldn't just be that Buffy. I didn't know who she was.

After a few minutes I joined him, the routines, un-done for so long, sliding over my body as if I'd just learned them. My eyes closed, but I could sense him, near me and still so far away. I could feel the warmth of his body...such a strange thought. So incongruous with the Angel I know. I wondered if the Buffy of this world was used to it yet. If she still felt delight every time she touched him and found him warm. If she still smiled every time she heard his heart beat. If every breath he took brought her joy.

We moved in sync, dancing without touching, limbs flowing in ancient patterns of soothing, of balance. I didn't feel very balanced, though it helped a little. I doubted anything could make me feel right, like I belonged. I did not belong. This was my room, and yet it was not. This was my life, and yet it was not; it didn't quite fit, like a size 8 shoe when you wear an 8 and a half.

Time fled and found us again when Giles walked in with a phone call from Dawn. She demanded plaintively if I was going to go grocery shopping, because we had nothing to eat. Reality intruded. This might not be my life, but it still held my responsibilities. Angel pulled on his shirt and shoes and we went to bid goodbye everyone.

"Are you alright?" Giles asked, pulling me aside a little.

"Not really. I...I feel lost. You're *you* but...but it's confusing..."

"Do you know what you want to do?" he asked.

"What I want to do?" I hadn't thought of it; I'd only just learned the question, I had no idea of the answer.

"If you want to try and go back," Giles answer, his voice a little rough. I blinked. Was it possible? I hadn't let myself ask, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to know the answer. If I left here, would another Buffy, the right Buffy, return? Or would they be left with nothing, no one? Did I want to return to my life, where I was alone, and leave this one, where the love of my life could truly be the love of my life?

"I don't know," I whispered, a thousand questions racing through my mind, and more answers, all the answers, all contradicting each other.

"If you want to try, I...I will help you," he promised, and I put my arms around his neck, because I couldn't help it. Whatever else was different, this was still Giles, my Giles.

"Thank you," I murmured, and kissed his cheek, and slipped away to where everyone else was waiting. I said goodbye, and promised to call them if anything else odd happened, and Angel and I walked out of the magic shop, into the sunlight, to his car.

Angel in the sunlight. Could I give that up? Did I even have the choice?

*

It was almost surreal grocery shopping with Angel. Not that everything else had been normal but...But this *was* normal. Really, scarily normal. Besides the very weirdness of *grocery shopping* with *Angel* there was the fact that he knew everything I planned to buy. He knew what cereal Dawn liked. He knew what brand of milk we always bought, and that I liked sharp cheddar and that Dawn would only eat a certain kind of bread with her sandwiches.

As we were checking out, I got up the courage to ask if he lived with us.

"I, um..." He gave me a blank look, almost as if the normalcy of the shopping trip had made him forget how very un-normal things were. For me, it had only emphasized it. "Not exactly. I have my own apartment. I've, uh, been staying at the house though, since..."

"Mom got sick?" I guessed. He nodded and I offered him a small, grateful smile, even though I remembered nothing to be grateful for. In my world, I'd been alone when Mom got sick, alone, frightened...Riley had been there for me, but I hadn't been there for him, or something. When Mom was sick I needed to be strong, all the time, for everyone except myself. Even for Riley. Because if for one moment I wasn't strong, I wasn't together...it was all over. It was only alone I could cry.

Had I cried with Angel? I wondered, and realized I'd left my wallet at home. Angel paid for the groceries with a credit card. He had a credit card. An...identity. A life.

"If you'd rather I didn't stay...I can move my things back to the apartment..." Angel offered awkwardly as we walked to the car. There was that tone again, pained, worried. He wanted to make me comfortable, make me happy but...but how could I be comfortable here? It wasn't my life. It wasn't even my goddamned *world*!

Could I go back? Was it an option? Was it my only option?

"I...I don't know," I stammered. "It's...strange. I don't want you sleeping in a chair anymore." Angel's free hand - his other was holding a grocery bag - strayed to his neck, massaging it involuntarily. He offered me a half-grin.

"I'd have to second that motion."

"You could...well, we still have an extra bed," I offered. We'd packed up most of Mom's stuff, so her room was pretty bare, but we hadn't taken the bed out. At least, in my world we hadn't. "It might be nice to have you nearby."

"Sure," he agreed quietly, and I had no idea what it cost him to say that, no idea what he was feeling at that moment. Did he wish I hadn't come at all? Would it have been easier had I - she - just been gone, dead? It would have been over then...none of this uncertainty...

I set down my bag in the back seat of Angel's convertible, and looked up to meet his eyes. He was watching me with such...such brilliance in his eyes. Such love.

It wouldn't have been better. Perhaps it would not have been worse, but it wouldn't have been better.

*

When we arrived back at my house Angel put away the groceries, with Dawn's help, while I watched from the counter.

"After all," I claimed, "I did just risk life and limb to save the world."

Dawn rolled her eyes at me. "She always says that when she wants to get out of chores."

After the perishables were properly stored, Angel made dinner. I watched with amazement as he turned out a lovely *and* delicious chicken stir-fry in a half hour. My life sure was tastier in this world anyway...

I tried not to think about anything. If I just thought about the moment, lived in the moment, I wouldn't have to remember that I didn't belong there. I wouldn't have to consider what was happening in *my* world at that moment. Wouldn't have to think about the thousands of other nights Angel must have cooked for us, judging by Dawn's teasing.

After dinner I escaped to my room, that wasn't quite my room, and turned it upside down. That's not quite true; I kept things relatively ordered. But I looked at everything. I examined every picture, every piece of clothing - and dear god, I had some interesting lingerie, not to mention unfamiliar shoes and a new dress - I dug out my diary and was too frightened to read it. It looked the same on the outside. Opening it to find different words written there, thoughts that I had never had...it was too much. I hid it again, and promised I would read it someday if...if it came to that.

If I stayed here.

I catalogued it all in my mind: this was the same, this was different. My life had been affected in these ways. It didn't help. At the end, when I had a mental list of every single thing in my room that was different than it had been before, there was still the rest of the world to go. There was still Angel.

Dawn came up and informed me they were going to watch a movie, and I better get my butt downstairs if I wanted any popcorn. I didn't, but I also didn't want her to worry, so I went down and sat in a chair - Angel was on the couch, I didn't want Dawn to see us being awkward - and ate all the popcorn I could stuff into my mouth, and watched the movie. It was distracting, for a moment here or there. I watched Dawn and Angel out of the corner of my eye; they were affectionate, teasing, different than I'd ever seen Angel act before.

If I left, and there was no other Buffy to take my place, would he take care of her for me? Could I leave Dawn alone?

Was Dawn - my Dawn - alone?

Was there an answer out there to any of my questions? Was there a right thing for me to do? Was there a reason for any of this? Was this just another test, and if so, of what? What decision was I supposed to make? Who was I supposed to hurt? Angel? Dawn? Myself?

Was someone crying for me, in any of the untold number of worlds out there? Was anyone crying?

Part Five

In the end, Angel went back to his apartment. "Dawn'll be curious if I sleep in...in the spare room," he said, avoiding calling it my mother's room. We were in the kitchen, murmuring in hushed voices, while Dawn channel surfed in the living room. I nodded, wondering if he was making excuses because he needed to be away from me, from this...whatever it was...or if he was really worried Dawn would notice. Either excuse was valid.

"I don't want to alarm her," I agreed. He nodded again, as if we were still agreeing, as if his mind hadn't already been made up. Perhaps we were reassuring each other, just needing to say again and again that it was alright. It was okay. Everything was okay.

It wasn't okay. If Angel had been staying here for months...well, this had to be like his home now, even if he still kept a separate place. How must he feel, not quite welcome at his own home? But it wasn't his, it was *mine*...and his, and...

"Okay," Angel agreed, and took my hand, lightly, as if afraid it would bother me. It did, a little, but not because it felt wrong - because it felt right. I let him draw me out into the living room. We stopped behind the couch and he rested a hand on Dawn's head.

"I'm gonna go home for the night. Try and get some actual sleep," he said, his voice light, teasing, as if he was merely a normal boyfriend trying to get away from his sex-craved girlfriend. Dawn laughed and turned to look up at us.

"God, Buffy, give the poor boy a rest!"

"That's what I'm doing!" I protested, then pulled him toward the door before we could get into a real discussion about it, through which I was entirely sure I could not last.

Dawn was still watching us, so Angel wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close. I slipped my arms around his neck, trying to look natural. I think it worked - I felt natural, like this was exactly where I was meant to, and completely wrong at the same time, because in Angel's memory I had been there a thousand times. How many times had he bent his head in just this way, his lips close to my ear, his breath stirring my hair?

"Sorry," he murmured, and my throat went dry. I couldn't even tell him that there was no need to be sorry. I couldn't offer him comfort, or solace; this was his life, and I was not a part of it. I merely turned my face toward him, because it seemed like the normal thing to do and our lips connected for a second, the merest brush. Even that left me tingling, breathless.

Did his kisses still leave the other me breathless?

He pulled away, smiling for Dawn's benefit. His eyes were dying, doubtless for mine. I handed him his coat and watched him walk out into the night, alone. Did he cry now that he was human? I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

I summoned a smile of my own and closed the door behind him, turning back to Dawn. She was watching me with an odd look. "Is Angel going to start packing up his stuff tomorrow?"

"What?" I asked, unable to control myself in my surprise. Was he leaving? Because of me, because I wasn't...Dawn gave me a "duh" look.

"So he can move it in?"

Breath left me again, but differently this time. I fumbled for a smile, an expression, anything to stop her from looking at me like that. "I-I don't know. We haven't really discussed, um, particulars yet."

She seemed vaguely satisfied with that and slumped back on the couch, continuing her clicking through the channels.

Angel was supposed to be moving in? Permanently? What if he'd already given notice on his apartment? What was I going to do, tell him he couldn't come? Would he still want to? It was so...so strange between us, I didn't know if he'd be comfortable in the house anymore. What were we going to tell Dawn? We'd broken up? But what if I did want a relationship with Angel? I still loved him, I'd never stopped loving him...but every time I was near him, I could only imagine the thousand more times he'd been near me...

I jerked my mind back to Dawn, to the moment. Exist in the moment. Don't think about it.

"I'll call the school tomorrow. There's another week left of regular school, isn't there?"

"Yeah..." Dawn admitted grudgingly. I sighed and perched on the back of the couch, one hand reaching down to stroke her hair.

"I'll see if you can just do make-up work, but you might need to...well, summer school's an option."

"Ooh. Fun."

"Dawn..."

"I know, I know." She turned the TV off and gazed up at me. "It's okay, Buffy. I'll do whatever I need to. I don't want them to...They won't bother us, will they? Just cause I missed more school?"

God, I hoped not.

"I'm going to talk to the school therapist. If they'll say you were depressed and incapable of going to classes, they might let us be. And if you start doing your work again."

"I will, I promise. It's almost..." Dawn's mouth quirked into a smile. "It'll almost be nice to have work to do again. Like...normal stuff. Human stuff."

"Yeah," I sighed in agreement, remembering how good it felt to go back to school my senior year, after my summer away, after Angel and Mom and Principal Snyder...There was a thought, maybe I could take some summer classes, if Dawn was in summer school. Just one or two, do a little catching up...

Of course, that was assuming I was staying here. I shivered, my hand leaving Dawn's hair and my arms wrapping around my torso. Staying here. Where I wasn't...wasn't theirs. But if 'theirs' was dead, I was all they had...And what about mine? My Dawn? My Willow and Giles? Did they have anyone?

Could I go? Should I stay?

"Let's go to bed," I said suddenly. "It's late."

"Not *that* late," Dawn replied, but got up anyway, grudgingly, and let me push her up the stairs, turning out lights as we went. She complained that she wasn't tired, that she'd never be able to sleep, but she did, within moments, and it was I that was left lying awake, wondering where Angel was, what memories he was reliving that I would never live at all...

*

The phone woke me up the next morning. I threw a quick glance at the clock as I fumbled for the receiver - 10:24, I'd slept in. Probably due to the fact that I'd only actually *slept* since three or four in the morning. "Hello?"

"Did I wake you up?" Willow asked.

"Uh-uh," I lied, laying back on my pillows. "What's up?"

"I was just...um, wondering how things were going. How you're doing."

"Oh." I considered the question and answered truthfully after a moment. "Not great."

"Is it...is it really strange?"

"It's pretty freaksome," I sighed. Were there differences in Willow? None that I had seen but...but there must be some. Angel being human had to have affected her in some way. Had to have affected all of them...

"I bet. Is Angel there?"

"No, he went home." There was a slight pause on the other side of the phone, and then Willow made a registering noise.

"Oh, his apartment."

"Right. His apartment."

"Did he seem...how did he seem?" Willow asked timidly. I shook my head, remembered she couldn't see it, and searched for words.

"I think it's pretty hard on him. He's the thing that I really don't...that's mostly different."

"Yeah, and you guys had so much...it must be..." Willow trailed off, apparently afraid of disturbing me or hurting my feelings or something. They must be wondering who I was, even more than I wondered about them. Well, maybe not more. At least as much. They had to wonder how different things were in my world: if we'd had more fights, if we'd done this thing, or that. And the truth was, I had no idea. I didn't know how different they were. How different I was.

"I have to take Dawn in to school, and talk to the principal but, um, after that, do you think maybe we could do something?" I asked. "Just the two of us? I'd really like to just...just see you." To know. I had to know.

"Of course!" Willow exclaimed. "I don't have any more classes today. Why don't you call when you're done and we'll meet at the Espresso Pump for mochas?" Thank god, not everything had changed.

"That sounds perfect," I replied sincerely. "I'll see you there."

"Yeah..." Willow sounded worried, like she wasn't quite sure she should hang up, but she did finally, after saying goodbye. I hung up too and slid out of bed. Dawn was downstairs in her pajamas and robe, eating cereal.

"If Angel was here he'd make me eggs," she accused teasingly. I managed a vague smile and pretended I had something in my eye.

*

The meeting with the principal was fairly promising, and I dropped Dawn off at the Magic Box afterwards while I went to meet Willow. Angel hadn't called. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Probably both.

Willow was waiting with mochas in hand when I arrived. I took mine happily and sat opposite her, studying her face closely. I guess I was looking for differences; there weren't any that I could see. She watched me the same way. Would she say the same, if asked?

"So, how'd the meeting go?" she asked.

"Pretty good. They're going to give Dawn some tests. If she passes, no summer school. She's going to be a study maniac for the next two days, lemme tell you." Willow's mouth curved upwards.

"Poor Dawnie."

"And no Will to tutor her either!" I reminded Willow. She grinned back at me. At least those memories were safe...Right? It seemed like everything fit until Angel became human but...but what if it didn't? There could be other things, little things...I was becoming paranoid. Not without reason, but still...paranoid.

"What are you going to do, now that...now that things have calmed down?" Willow asked. I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. Trying not to address the fact that however close it was, this was not my life to resume as normal.

"I was thinking maybe I could take some summer classes. I never thought I'd say this, but...thank *god* for the Watcher's Council. Without their salary, I don't know what I'd do..."

Willow gave me an odd look, and the covered it a moment later. Too late. "What?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know.

"Nothing..."

"Willow, tell me!"

"Well it's just that...well, Angel...You know he's running the gallery, right?"

"Yes..."

"Well he's kinda been...supporting you guys...not that you couldn't get money from the Council. They're scared of you now! But...well, you didn't see the need..." There was an appealing tone to her voice, almost as if I really tried, I could remember the things she remembered. I couldn't.

"So I'm dependent on Angel?" I asked, trying not to sound freaked out.

"Well, not exactly...you have all your mom's savings...and you *could* get money from the Council, I'm sure you could. Plus the gallery...well Angel doesn't own it, he just runs it, so the money is really yours and Dawn's..."

I silenced her with a wave of my hand. "It's okay Will. No need to babble. Just...just an adjustment..."

She didn't relax, though she did stop talking. "Have you talked to Angel?" I shook my head. Her mouth formed a silent "O" and I formed a guess.

"You have?" She nodded reluctantly. "How is he?"

"He's not doing great either. He's, um...over at Xander's I think."

Over at *Xander's*? My mind boggled. "They're friends?"

"Now they are...they, well, there was animosity. But Angel takes care of you, and Xander appreciates that...Appreciated..." Willow floundered some more and I cut her off again, offering a small smile.

"Well, that's good to know. I wasn't looking forward to them being at each other's throats."

"Not much."

So Angel was with Xander. Supposedly *my* next best friend. If I'd asked Xander to come meet me instead of Willow, would he have? Were he and Angel now closer than me and him? Had they guy-bonded or something? And Angel had spoken to Willow, that meant they were pretty good friends too. So they were different. Dawn, too. And my life. My income.

Angel wasn't just my boyfriend in this world. He was my *life*. Every part of my life here seemed tied up in him. It was a frightening thought; and an amazing one. I'd never had a relationship like that, because I'd always been afraid to. Afraid of getting hurt, or of waking up one morning to find that I didn't want that person to be in every part of my life, and having to go through the painful process of extricating them from it, or it from them. But I'd obviously been willing and happy to have Angel around; I hadn't been afraid of getting hurt, and I hadn't worried about wanting out. I had *wanted* this. And I didn't remember it. Not any of it.

In my world, I was the single constant in my life; myself, my own strength, holding things together. Here, it was a partnership with a man I loved and hardly knew anymore. A man that knew and loved a different version of me.

How could I stay here, knowing all this? How could I go back to a place where I was alone?

Part Six

The Magic Box was full when Willow and I arrived. Xander and Angel had too, and Xander was chatting easily with Dawn while Angel and Giles had a more serious conversation in a corner. By the abrupt halt the conversation came to when I entered, I figured it had been about me.

"Hi guys," I greeted them cheerfully, for Dawn's benefit, then fixed an eye on my little sister. "Ready to hit the books?"

"Tie me back," she muttered.

"Now, now, sarcasm is unbecoming." She rolled her eyes at me but gathered her stuff from the table and headed toward the door.

"Mind if I tag along?" Angel asked. I gave him a startled look, then hid it quickly.

"Like we could keep you away," Dawn sighed. I gave her a significant look and she started marching while I gestured Angel onward. It wasn't like I could turn him away, not with Dawn there watching. Expecting us to act the way we usually acted. Usually. In this dimension.

"Training?" I asked Giles as I headed back towards the door.

"Why don't we take a bit of a break?" he suggested. "I believe we could all use it."

"Not gonna argue with that one," I said, though a little bit of me wanted to get right back to work. Give me something to take my mind off...off everything else. Something normal, that I knew how to do, that was almost sure to be the same in any dimension. Almost.

Angel took Dawn's books as we walked off, and invited her to ride in his convertible, instead of Mom's jeep. I still thought of it as that, even though she hadn't driven it in forever. Even though she'd never drive it again. Dawn smirked at me, as if we were part of some contest over who Angel liked better. At the moment, I wondered. His Buffy would win, hands down...but me? Did he even know me?

I shrugged and climbed into my car, while they climbed into his. We (sort of) raced back to the house, and I won. I think maybe Angel let me. I couldn't help smiling at that thought; he caught the look and grinned back. I liked Angel's grin, I hadn't seen it for a very long time.

I ordered Dawn to her books the minute we entered the house. She started whining. I pointed. "Dawn. Upstairs. Now." She went. There were some good points to authority after all...Like getting Angel all to myself...

Had I just thought that? I had. I just thought that. I tried to hide my sudden confusion, walking into the kitchen. "You hungry?" I asked as he followed.

"I ate at Xander's."

"Oh. How is Xander?"

"He's fine."

I decided not to mention the fact I'd expected him and Xander to be at each other's throats. No need to emphasize the differences. Unless there was a need? But if I was stuck there...But what if I wasn't?

"I'm, uh, I'm sorry Angel," I said faintly, turning to look at him finally. "I'm not exactly closer to an answer."

"Me neither," he admitted, watching me with those dark eyes... "I just didn't want to keep not talking. I was afraid if I stayed away too long, I wouldn't be able to come back."

I shook my head at him. Silly man. He was now, wasn't he? Not a vampire. A man. "Angel, in my world you've been gone a lot longer than that. And you can always come back."

He didn't quite know how to take that; be glad that I'd as much as said I still loved him, or depressed at the reminder of our differences? I wasn't quite sure how to take it myself.

"I don't know how to fix this," Angel said softly.

"I don't know if we can," I replied. "I mean...if I stay, we'll just have to get used to the fact that I'm not...that I don't have...Can you get used to that? Can I? But what other options do we have, really? What else can we do...?"

"That's the question."

I was being honest, and since I was on a roll with it, I decided to keep being honest, no matter how stupid of an idea it was. "What if I try and find a way to get back to my dimension? What if I do? Is your Buffy there? Can I just send her home and everything will be okay? But what if I go back and something else happened there...Dawn died, or someone else I love? And you're not there, not alive, and I'd have to live every day of my life knowing I had the chance to be with you and I didn't take it..."

"What if I let you leave, and she isn't there? You aren't there?" he asked, a little hoarsely. "Can I live with you gone, altogether?"

"Can you live with pieces of me gone, chunks of memory you have that I don't?" I countered.

"It's still you."

I didn't know what to say to that. Was it still me? Was I the same person he loved? I had been once...He had loved me then, and he still loved me now, the person he was in my dimension, but that was different from the one in this dimension. This one had become human, had grown and evolved. That one had stayed the same, loved the same me. Were we really the same person, still? Could he love us both? Did he? But there was no *both*...it wasn't like we were twins, an accident where a man fell in love with one sister and thought that meant he loved the other one too. We were Buffy Summers. In different lives. What did that mean?

Who was I?

I faltered slightly, my grip on the counter - and reality - thinning a little as questions spun through my mind. He was there in a moment, grabbing me, holding me up. The warmth of his arm around my waist melted into my insides, and I could feel the heat of his body just behind me, supportive and solid. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I am Buffy Summers. I am Buffy Summers. I am Buffy Summers.

And it still didn't answer any of my questions.

*

Angel and I became intellectual partners. We talked philosophy and psychology into the night. We got books out of the library psychoanalyzing the effects of outside factors on a person's mental development, their personality, the elusive *self*. We locked ourselves in my room and pored over these tomes for hours, giving Dawn excuses to moan and call us nymphos.

We found nothing that helped. For all the good it did us, we found nothing at all. At least it got us over the first awkward hump...a little. We were so busy trying to figure out who the hell I was that we forgot to question every movement, every touch...When I got dizzy, my mind going in circles around the question of my own identity, he was always there to catch me before I fell. I tried not to wonder if the other me had ever had dizzy spells, or if he had ever had to catch her.

Dawn took her tests and got back into school. I didn't enroll in any summer classes; I wasn't sure if I was going to stay. I wasn't sure where I would go if I didn't. Angel took time from our studying to run the gallery. I ran the household, and started training again, and hunted increasingly scarce vampires.

Cordelia and Angel's friend Doyle, I found out, had started their own private investigation firm in LA. Wesley had joined them, and a young man named Gunn. Things had a way of working out the way they were supposed to, I remarked when I heard, and then glanced at Angel. He looked the other way.

The thing was, this wasn't how it was supposed to be. To them it was. They thought this was the normal way, the way the world worked. But to me, it wasn't. Even though I hated it, I suppose I'd always believed in fate, or destiny or...or something. If a thing was meant to be, it would happen. And as much as I craved Angel's humanity, as much as I loved to watch him in the sun, and as much as I fantasized about what it would be like to touch his skin and feel it warm...it wasn't *right*. My destiny was something different from this. How could I just accept this reality? It wasn't my reality.

And yet it seemed like my dimension. The differences were basically picked out within the first three or four days. Angel, obviously. The little things with my friends. My income (or lack thereof). The quality of our meals. The clothes in my closet. Most of my life was the same. Most of the people in it were unaffected by Angel's presence there. I wondered, sometimes, how Riley had turned out, and finally decided he was probably better off without me anyway. I don't think I drove him to those vampires, but he'd still gone in my dimension, and in this world he probably hadn't. He was doubtless happier, with fewer memories to banish to a closet.

Spike...now there was an interesting change. Or...not change. Spike was still in love with me, but he was rarely to be found outside my house anymore, lurking in the shadows. I went looking for him, finally, to see if there were differences and to thank him for his help. He looked me up and down and announced, "You're different."

"I am," I agreed.

"Angel treating you well?" There was an undercurrent of menace in his tone, a quality of threat I hadn't heard from anyone in a long time.

"Very."

"Let me know, then love, if he...isn't." Spike's eyes shot up and caught mine for a moment, all bright blue, and then he looked away.

"I will," I promised, and paused. "Thank you. Not for that. I can...I can take care of myself. For...everything else."

His eyes lifted again, brighter this time. "Welcome." I nodded at him, and turned to leave. I thought I saw a shadow as I passed through the graveyard. Angel, watching me? I didn't call out to him. Let him watch.

We rarely touched, Angel and I. I think we were both afraid of what would happen if we did. We wouldn't be able to stop. I think he knew that from experience, I from intuition, but it was an unspoken truth between us. Also there was a question; if there was another me, would it be cheating for him to touch the me that was there? It made my head spin just to think about it. We never attempted to answer it. We never even said it out loud.

I became accustomed to the differences. He stopped asking me what I remembered; I stopped asking him what I didn't. We talked about the present, not the past. Nor the future. He slept on the floor, so Dawn wouldn't know what was going on. I hated doing that to him, but I told myself it was temporary. Until I figured out what was going on. Who I was. Where I was going. Until we could talk in the future tense.

Temporary. But a month passed by. And then another. And summer, which had just begun, was already beginning its end. Fall was coming, with classes to catch up on, a life to begin anew. A life that wasn't mine, and was. Dawn was beginning to notice something was wrong. Everyone was beginning to notice something was wrong.

And then, one morning when I went in for training, Giles looked me in the eye and said, "I found you a way home," and I knew he didn't mean a new car or a new route to walk. What I didn't know was what I was going to do with it.

Part Seven

"It's largely an exercise in visualization, really," Giles explained, once the group had gathered. I wasn't entirely sure it was a good idea to tell everyone about it...but what else was I going to do? Sneak off to another dimension in the middle of the night? They had as much right to know as anyone. Angel sat near me, by force of habit, and because Willow and Tara and Xander and Anya were so very couple-y.

"What does that mean?" I asked, a little desperately. He'd been trying to explain the whole thing, but I was lost.

"The spell opens a portal between dimensions, but it requires a ke-" Giles cut off abruptly, as my spine stiffened. He'd been about to say 'key.' I was about to get very upset at him. He amended his statement, "It needs something to work of off. A...a map rather. In the mind of the spellcaster."

"A map," I repeated warily.

"You would visualize your dimension...The differences, obviously, from this one, but also the things that are the same. The entire dimension. If you miss a detail, you may end up somewhere...somewhere more similar, but still different. There are, as Anya has pointed out to us, an infinite number of possibilities." Anya looked smug. I thought about the world without shrimp. "To complete the spell, you must be absolutely sure of where you wish to go."

"And if I miss a detail?" Giles shook his head.

"I don't know. The book doesn't include any examples of it actually being used."

"They never do," Angel put in, sharing a long look with my Watcher. He'd reverted...In the past two months, he'd become open, less guarded, not watching out for every little difference between me and...and me, I suppose. Her. It still came up, sometimes, but both of us had stopped looking for it, every moment. Now he was back in that mode, searching every word out of his mouth, with that heavy look in his eyes. Like he was going to lose me. Like he already had.

"So it's dangerous," I clarified. Con #1. And what was my Pro #1? Going home...back to a place where I didn't have to wonder if every memory I had was a memory my friends didn't have...going back to a place where Angel was still a vampire with a soul. Pro #1 and Con #2 then. I should start writing those down, I thought vaguely.

"Possibly," Giles agreed.

"What do you think?" Willow ventured, watching me closely. They all were. Oh, this was a Scooby Gang meeting. We would discuss, probably, weigh the influencing factors, the possible consequences...but it was my decision, and everyone there knew it. Ultimately, it was my life, no matter how many others I might screw up.

"I...I don't know," I said truthfully, looking around at all of them. They looked like my Scoobies. "I have to think about it."

"This is not a decision to be made in haste," Giles affirmed. Everyone made assenting noises, and looked away, as if released from their watch. Like they'd expected me to disappear right then and there.

"How does...how does the ritual work?" I asked, to make someone else talk. Giles began outlining the procedure, and I half-listened while I watched Angel, who was carefully not looking back at me. Angel. The one person who didn't look the same. Not at all. Oh, he was still *Angel*...and not that much older looking, years wise, but...but different. Human. *Living.* The difference couldn't really be expressed in words; it was in the way he moved, the tiny, fidgety movements when he was trying to sit still, the way his muscles jumped on their own volition, the way he drew in breath when he was startled, because he needed it, not out of reflex. The fact that he smiled more. Not at that moment, but...more.

I loved watching him. Seeing him smile. And if I left, I might never have that again. But my other self could...

*

My room was a quiet refuge and I locked myself in there as soon as I could get away. Angel was downstairs cooking dinner with Dawn. In the past months we'd fallen into a routine; I'd make lunch, since sandwiches were something I could do very well, and Angel would make dinner, usually with help from Dawn. I did the dishes, or Angel and I did, or if I'd had any particularly grueling fights lately, Dawn would grudgingly do them. Breakfast was every man for themselves, except when Angel felt the urge to make us pancakes or waffles or scrambled eggs.

That was different here too. We ate a lot better with Angel around. He'd explained it to me once, how he'd stayed with this older woman for a while in the 1960s and learned how to cook from/for her. How he kept at it, afterwards, because it amused him sometimes and made him feel more human. Because it made him part of life.

I turned the lock on my door and closed my eyes until I heard it click. I just needed...needed to be alone for a little while. To think. How could I make this decision? So many people's emotions - even lives - depended on it, but only I could make it. Was that fair? No. Right? Maybe not...But that was the way it was. And I didn't know how to do it.

The pictures of me and Angel still littered the room, but I'd gotten used to them. The room wasn't alien to me anymore; it was mine. But it wasn't, really, was it? That was the question, and I really didn't have the answer...*was* it mine?

Restless, I prowled the room, picking up a shirt I'd left of the floor, a towel from that morning...I hung up the shirt, put the towel over the doorknob so I'd remember to take it to the bathroom when I...when I was finished? Whenever I got so sick of the room I couldn't stay there anymore, most likely. As on the night I'd first explored my room, looking for differences, my hands touched everything. Only now, even the differences were familiar. I couldn't remember the pictures being taken, but I knew what they looked like now...

At the top of my closest I kept all those little things I refused to throw away, but didn't want just sitting around...in my dimension, one of those boxes was devoted exclusively to Angel-reminders. The box I'd kept my claddagh ring in (the actual ring was lost...I'd never got it back after leaving it at the mansion two and a half years before. Was it still there? I wondered. Had Angel found it?); a dried rose he'd left on my windowsill once; the book of love sonnets he'd given me for my eighteenth birthday; the ticket stub to that semi-pornographic movie we went to; a drawing he'd done of me once (when he was himself. The ones Angelus did I burnt). These very same things could be seen around the room I stood in at that moment. The box was in my jewelry drawer. The rose, the drawing and the ticket stub were tacked on my cork board. The book was on my bookshelf.

So what was up there now? The same boxes sat there, but obviously they were filled with different things...I'd looked there before, I remembered, when doing my inventory, but I didn't remember what I'd found, exactly. I reached up and pulled them down, almost on top of my head, barely catching them as they fell. One turned out to have things from Hemery, and I put that aside quickly. One contained other high school mementos. One was things my father had given me. And the last one held my diaries.

I'd been too afraid to read them before. Afraid of...of what? That I wouldn't recognize what was contained in the pages? Of course I wouldn't...That it was private, not for my eyes? But it was my diary. My handwriting. Just not my memories...

I picked one up, a familiar journal. I'd started it the spring of my freshman year in college. Had she? I didn't mean to read it - I didn't want to read it - but somehow my fingers found the edge of a page and opened it anyway, to the middle. My eyes moved over the words without seeing them, taking in the pen - my favorite one that year - the unique handwriting - *mine*. My fingers flipped through the pages and paused finally, as a word caught my eyes. Angel.

~~Since Angel turned human, everything's changed. I look at the world with different eyes now. I used to think that I was independent, that all I needed was myself...and that's still true, in a way. It's not like I'm suddenly some mewling infant that needs to be spoonfed or something...But I *do* need more. I need him.

Oh, it sounds so stupid to write it out like that. I guess I'm still testing how it sounds. It's just...when I go to sleep at night, with Angel right beside me, holding me, all warm and real, it doesn't matter that there's bad things in the world. It doesn't matter that Willow's being distant (not to say I'm not worried...I am, but...oh, I am not going to argue with myself anymore. I'm trying to explain something. To myself. It occurs to me this whole journal-writing business is very weird. Oh well). Anyway...I can forget that there's this screwy army thing and a big monster I don't know how to fight...Because he's there with me. It's not like I expect Angel to protect me, or make it all okay (though he thinks he should, which is stupid)...but it's like it doesn't matter if it isn't okay, because *I* am. I'm okay.

Ugh. I can't explain, even to myself. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I don't think I could live without Angel. I mean...I wouldn't want to. What I've found with him is...it's better than all those romance novels (though some of them were pretty in-ter-est- ing...). It's not like I can't function without him, but he just makes my life so much more than just functioning. I feel like I'm really living every minute I'm with him. Like I'm...complete. I can't imagine going back to the way I was before, without him.

I closed the book, abruptly, unable to read anymore, though I was fascinated, in an awful sort of way. The writing sounded like me. Her words, her thoughts, the thing about the romance novels (a longstanding joke with Willow) were all me. But the rest was not.

How was I going to tell Dawn that I was leaving?

And there it was, just like that. My mind was made up. I hadn't even been conscious of it. There was no moment when I had laid out the options in my mind and chosen one over the other. But I had. I was leaving. Going back to my dimension.

My mind supplied the logic behind the decision; my unconscious filling in my conscious brain belatedly. I didn't need Angel. The thought of him human had filled my fantasies for a long, long time, and there was no question that if it had happened in any normal way, in my own dimension, I would have taken advantage of it...but it hadn't, and I hadn't. What it came down to was I didn't know what I was missing. She did. I did. The other me...the one that was not in this world, that was (perhaps?) in my world, knew what she was missing. And was, in fact, missing it. If she was alive, she could be depressed, even suicidal...I could go home, back to my dimension, and regret the chances lost. But not mourn. There was a difference. She would be mourning...

And if she wasn't alive? That made things even clearer. If she wasn't alive, my Dawn was all alone. Oh, she had Giles and Willow and Xander, and maybe even Dad...but no *family*. This Dawn had Angel. Technically, they weren't related, but I knew if I opened my bedroom door and walked down the stairs I would find them in the kitchen, laughing, teasing, a brother and sister or a father and daughter...Family, of some kind or another. Angel would take care of this Dawn the way no one in my dimension, if there was no other me there, would take care of my Dawn.

So I was leaving.

It took me awhile to move. I stood up, stacking the diaries neatly in chronological order. I put them back in the box, but I didn't put the box back up in the closet. I left it on the floor and went downstairs.

Angel was putting lasagna in the oven. I stood just outside the kitchen, watching he and Dawn talk about nothing, until he closed the oven and turned and saw me. Our eyes caught and his turned very, very dark for a moment. I ducked out of the way and listened to him excuse himself to Dawn. He appeared beside me and I led him to the back yard, closing the door behind us so Dawn wouldn't hear whatever it was we were about to say.

"You've decided," he stated baldly. I couldn't even flinch at the tone.

"I'm going," I admitted. He deserved the truth, plainly. Nothing I could say could make it anything but what it was. Nothing showed on his face; he'd gotten better at hiding again, turned back to that self he had been for so long, that never showed any pain.

He didn't ask for an explanation, or argue, or...or anything. I almost wished he would. Part of me wanted him to deny my decision, to convince me that I should stay. But then, I'm sure he wanted the other Buffy back ...why wouldn't he want me to leave? This was the best way for everyone.

"When?"

"I'm not sure. I...I have to talk to Giles, about what's needed. I'd like to try and go before school starts. It'd be...um, less disruptive I guess." And easier to start over in my own world.

"Do you want me to tell Dawn?" he offered. Yes! I wanted to scream. Yes, of course I did. I shook my head.

"No, it's my decision. My...my responsibility. I have to tell her."

"Are you sure?" he asked, looking human again for a moment, concerned. For me or for Dawn, I wasn't sure. I nodded.

"I'm sure. But...thanks, for the offer." I looked around, everywhere but at him. "Um, if you don't mind, I think I might go see Giles now, and figure out what's going on, and then tell Dawn. I don't want to lie to her anymore, but I want to have a...a timeline, before I tell her."

"Aren't you hungry?" Angel asked gently.

"Not really." It wasn't a lie either; I felt a little ill. "Thanks, though, for cooking..." He shrugged. I made myself say it.

"You'll take care of her, won't you? If the other me doesn't come back...You'll take care of Dawn?"

"Of course." I relaxed infinitesimally and nodded, more to myself than to him.

"Okay. I'll go...go tell Giles then."

"Yeah."

We both hesitated, and then moved as one, neither looking at the other. We walked back inside and I went to grab my purse and keys. Dawn was giving me the weirdest look when I walked into the kitchen.

"I'm really sorry Dawnie, there's some slaying stuff I have to take care of. I'll be back later," I said...not exactly a lie, really. Dawn looked suspiciously from me to Angel, and then back again, but finally shrugged.

"Fine. But I don't see why you won't tell me about stuff now. I mean, it's not like I'm some innocent little kid."

I managed a smile, though I don't think it was very convincing. "I'll tell you about it later," I promised, and escaped while I still had control of my limbs.

Part Eight

Giles took it well, or if he didn't he never let me see. Maybe he closed the door behind me and screamed for hours. Maybe he got really, really drunk after I left. Whatever he did alone, while I was there he nodded calmly and agreed that was probably best for all concerned.

This Dawn, losing me, would still have Angel. But this Giles would only have what the other Giles had - nothing. Why should there have to be a choice? Why did one have to lose? Maybe neither did, maybe there was another me, one that belonged there . . . maybe not. I tried not to think about it too much.

Giles and I made a timeline - two weeks, to prepare for the ritual and get all my affairs in order, just in case . . . I didn't want to go home, but I did finally, taking a detour to the graveyard, to see if there were any vampires around. There was one, but I couldn't kill him.

"You don't look so good," Spike said frankly. My lips twisted.

"Don't you think compliments would help you more?" I asked. He didn't let himself be distracted.

"What's the matter?"

I swallowed and looked everywhere but at him. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. What, now I was worried about hurting *Spike*? "I'm leaving."

His brow furrowed. "Where the hell are you going?"

"Home. It's . . . it's complicated. Ask someone else sometime, after I go. And don't . . . don't revert just 'cause I'm not here to know the difference, okay? You're actually doing pretty well, for a monster. Almost . . . almost human." My voice quavered a little, at which point I knew I was *way* too tired and emotional, and I needed to get out, stat. I waved him off. "See ya 'round Spike." After all, *I* would see *him*. There was a Spike in my dimension too.

I went home, finally, and peeked in the window. Dawn was asleep on the couch, her head on Angel's lap. He looked . . . he looked like he was crying. I sat down on the steps and waited until I heard him carrying her up the stairs to go inside. I heated up leftover lasagna and sat quietly. He didn't come back down. When I went upstairs, I found him

sitting by Dawn's bed, dry-eyed, watching her sleep.

"I'll find her," I promised in a whisper from the doorway. He started, turning to look at me. "I promise I'll send her back to you." He nodded, and crept out of Dawn's room and we stood staring at each other until our mutual nerve broke and we went to bed. I didn't sleep though. Couldn't sleep. Angel did, a little, on the floor beside the bed, and each breath, steady, reassuring, echoed inside my head. All I could think was that in two weeks that sound would be lost, and I would never hear to him breathe again . . .

*

At four thirty I finally fell asleep, restlessly, and dreamt of a world where everyone I knew was undead, cold, emotionless, never looking right at me . . . I woke myself at nine and stumbled into the shower, unable to think or feel. I pressed my forehead against the wall and gripped my hair at the roots, fingernails digging into my scalp as if demanding to know what exactly I thought I was doing.

I emerged from the shower a little less groggy and dressed, blow dried my hair and applied make-up like any other day. Dawn was still asleep, and Angel had already left for the gallery. I made waffles and when Dawn came downstairs in her pajamas I presented them to her with strawberries and whipped cream, like it would somehow make what I was about to say alright.

"What'd you do?" she demanded warily around a bite. I sat down across from her and folded my hands on the table and tried very hard to open my mouth. She watched me for a minute and then shrugged and turned her attention to the food. I watched her for any differences I might have missed, but she was exactly the same as I remembered. When she finished eating she pushed the plate aside, folded her hands on the table, mimicking me and said, "Well?"

"I have to tell you something," I sighed. Her eyebrows arched.

"Come on. It can't be that bad. I already know I'm not human. You told me when Mom...well, just spit it out."

If she only knew...but she would, soon enough and I hated that thought. I didn't want her to know. I wanted to keep her safe inside a protective cocoon and never tell her...only I was leaving, and I had to tell her. I had to.

I started at the beginning, with the speech I'd been rehearsing in my mind since I found myself in this alternate dimension. For all the time I'd spent composing it, it was an awful speech. There really wasn't a good way to say this. "When Doc opened the portal with your blood, it created a pathway between this dimension and every other one. That's...that's not just Hell, Glory's dimension and a couple other ones. There are an infinite number of dimensions, all right...right next to each other, you might say. Sometimes they overlap, there are doorways between them...Some of them are completely different than ours, like Hell, but some are very, very similar. Almost identical. You could, for instance, have a world exactly like this one, except in that dimension there are no shrimp." Yes, I used the shrimp reference. So shoot me. "Do you understand?"

"Infinite numbers. Some like ours," Dawn repeated in a 'what does this have to do with me?' tone. I nodded. Now the bad part.

"Well, when I jumped into the portal I...I came out in a different dimension than the one I left. I came out in this one. Dawn, I'm not...I'm not exactly the Buffy you knew. I'm not from here. The other me, the one that is from here, went somewhere else, probably to where I left..."

She was staring at me like I was crazy. I probably was. "This is some kind of sick joke, right? What, do they not have shrimp in *your* world?"

"It's not a joke Dawn," I assured her, and saw the words penetrate. She shook them off like stray rain drops. "And they don't have...I don't have...Angel. I mean, Angel is there, but he's not...he never turned human in my world. He still lives in LA. That's why he slept in a chair that night, and why he went to his apartment the night after that, and why he's been sleeping on the floor ever since. Because Angel and I are just...are just friends in my world." That was a lie, in a way, but I couldn't open my heart to her now, pour out all the bitter pain of leaving what was, perhaps, my one chance for happiness. She had enough pain of her own coming.

"It's not a joke," she whispered. I shook my head.

"I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't want to disturb you. But I have to now because...because I'm leaving." I looked down, unable to watch her take the words in. "I'm going to try to go back to my own dimension. I don't fit here and...and I want to find the Buffy that does belong here, your Buffy, and send her back. This is where she should be. You should have her back."

Dawn was smart, too smart maybe. "You weren't dying when you jumped into the portal, were you?" she asked, her voice cry and cold and utterly without emotion. I shook my head, throat too tight for words. "So she might not be in your world. She might not be alive."

I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge the truth of her words. I just stared, my eyes acknowledgement enough. "I'm sorry Dawnie, but I have to..." I whispered finally, reaching for her hands across the table. She started, pulling back and stared at me.

"How can you not be you?" she whispered. "You are! I know you, you're her, you're my sister!"

"You're mine," I admitted, "I don't know if I'm yours. If I'm the same."

"You are to me," she murmured, but it was more of an accusation than anything else. How can you leave me...?

"Dawnie..."

"No!" she shouted, and after all the whispering, the words rang through the house, inside my head, like a cannon. "That's what she called me! You can't be her! She would never leave me! She wouldn't leave me alone!"

You'll have Angel, I said inside my head, repeating it over and over, like a mantra, the only thing that kept me from crumbling to the floor. You'll have Angel, he'll take care of you. You'll have Angel. You'll have Angel.

And a tiny, selfish part of me was jealous of that.

*

I didn't say goodbye to everyone, because saying it would be an acknowledgement they were losing me. I told myself they weren't. I told myself they were getting me back, the real me, the me they knew. I told myself I didn't need to see goodbye.

The ritual was fairly elaborate, and required finding a place where the barrier between the worlds was already weak. Not surprisingly, it turned out the Hellmouth was one of these places. Though the door that existed there only opened to one dimension, the very existence of that door meant there was a possibility to open others.

We didn't talk about it beforehand. Angel, Dawn and I ate breakfast in silence, and then the Scooby Gang arrived, one by one. Anya and Xander were supposed to have a meeting with the wedding planner that day, but they canceled it. Not postponed. Canceled.

"We want to wait," Xander mumbled when I asked him why. "Till we know..." I nodded understanding and he stopped gratefully. Till they knew if I was coming back, if I was going to be there.

Angel cooked us a huge lunch. It gave him something to do, I think. I helped a little, but he kept giving me these looks when my back was turned and I couldn't take it. Willow took my place and left me to try and talk to the people I was leaving.

The ritual took all afternoon, and required lots of chanting and herb- waving and all those things spells normally require. I was supposed to sit in the middle of a circle and think about my world. The actual spell stuff was left to Willow, Tara and Giles...my job was to find the world we wanted to open a portal to.

Angel and Dawn held hands like the world was about to end all around them. Anya stood in the circle of Xander's arms and for once didn't say a word. Every time I closed my eyes I saw them all, standing there. Where I was going, they would still be there, except for Angel. But for them, I would be gone. Forever? For a day, a week, a month? They were losing me and I couldn't say goodbye to them, couldn't tell them everything they meant to me, because it would mean I wasn't coming back. *I* wasn't. But maybe she was...maybe...

"Buffy, you have to concentrate," Giles said slightly reproachfully. I nodded, muttered, "Sorry," and closed my eyes, picturing my life. I started with the differences; with my room, as it had been, without the pictures of Angel and I, or the presents he'd gotten me. Then the rest of my house. The street I lived on. The block. The city. LA, with Angel in it, just the way he had always been; brooding, taciturn, cold to the touch. Not the Angel that stood in that cavern with me, warm, alive, praying. I didn't let the ache settle into my stomach, but turned back to my task, stretching out my perceptions to include the feel of the dimension I'd left, all the thousand details I would never know.

And then the chanting stopped and Willow whispered, "Now," and I opened my eyes to see the world I'd known.

It was barely perceptible, but there; a slight shimmer in the air in front of me. If you looked straight at it, there was no difference between it and the room around it, but it caught at the side of your eyes, teasing, testing.

I stood up and turned, knowing there were a million things I needed to say before I stepped through. My eyes found Giles first and I stepped into his arms, closing my eyes and pressing my head into the crook of his shoulder. What would I want Giles to tell me if I was never going to see him again? What words would possibly make it okay? "Thank you," I murmured, pulling away. For everything. Thank you for everything. I turned to Willow and kissed her cheek and tried to pretend there weren't tears on it.

"I love you," she told me fiercely. I tried to picture the Willow I'd first met being fierce, and hugged her tighter at the thought. My funny, sweet, fierce Willow...

"I love you too," I replied. "Don't give up on me, promise?"

"I won't."

Xander was crying openly and I kissed his tears and his mouth and promised myself I would not, *not* cry. It wasn't as if I was losing anything...I would still have Xander, I wasn't losing his grin or his jokes or his absolute, complete love, a loyalty and devotion that I have never told him how much I depended on.

"Be strong," I told Dawn, and hated myself as I said it. How could I tell her that, expect that of her, when I had hated hearing it so much myself? Be strong. But what else was there to say? I'm sorry I need to be with another Dawn, that you aren't as important to me as she is? It was untrue, I loved this one just the same...she was my sister, and I would kill for her, or die for her, but I had to leave, because, because...

Angel. The one that wasn't going to be where I was going. The one that I wouldn't be able to embrace and laugh with and love after I went through that portal.

"I'll send her back, if I can," I promised, my voice breaking despite all my efforts. If she was there, she was luckier than I. If she was there, she would get to come back to this, to him, and I would be left with nothing...No, I told myself firmly, not nothing. My life. But compared to the reality of a human Angel, it seemed like very little.

What was I doing? What I had to do. I always did what I had to do...

"I know," Angel managed, his eyes devouring me. I drew closer, unable to help myself.

"I want you to know, if I...if I don't come back...that I...I love you," I whispered, unable to look away from his eyes. One of my hands drifted up and touched his chest. I could feel his body heat, and the faint thump-thump of his heart. "In this world, in the other one...I love you."

"Buffy..." his voice was strained, harsh, low, "I know you think it's better this way, and it probably is but...but I love you, just you. Whatever dimension you're from. Whatever your memories. You're still you and I...well, if you ever wanted to come back..."

My mouth and mind crumbled, and the tears came in a rush, and I was lost in that declaration...I had to go, I *had* to, it was better this way...I didn't belong in this world, I belonged in mine, this wasn't my destiny, wasn't the way it was supposed to be, only the way I wished it was...

My face tilted up to meet his without conscious thought and I found his lips, warm, gentle, so very, very sweet...A thousand possibilities flashed through my mind, of what life could have been...but it was time to go, I had to go, and I broke away before he could taste my tears.

"Goodbye," I cried and grabbed my bag and ran home, to the world I wasn't sure I belonged in anymore.

Part Nine

I'm not sure why I brought the diaries with me. An impulse, I guess, or some need to hold on to that dimension, to any part of it. Anyway, I was sitting in my bedroom that morning, trying to think if there was anything I wanted to take with me, and my eye fell on the box with the diaries in it. I'd never put it back in the closet. I took the last few, the ones since the dimensions had split, and packed them up with some clothes I'd bought over the summer, just in case something had happened in this dimension and my clothes were gone, some money, a picture of me and Dawn and Angel at the fair that summer.

I sat in the big, empty cavern where moments ago I had stood surrounded by friends, and wondered what the diaries said, and if Angel was still standing right in that spot, and if Dawn was crying. And if I'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

After I'd steadied myself and stopped crying I stood up and picked up my bag again, heading toward the most easily accessible tunnel out. This was the right thing to do, I knew it was...in a few minutes I would see Dawn again and Willow, Xander, Tara, Giles...and probably have the really strange experience of meeting myself, face to face. This was where I belonged, my world...I emerged to it, marveling that it looked exactly the same as the other. Such huge differences to me, and so little to the world...

I tried to walk sedately home, but halfway there I started to run, unable to help myself. I had to see for myself that was home, to walk into my room and find everything the way I had left it. No strange pictures. And an Angel box in the closet, not scattered around my room...It hurt a little, to acknowledge that, but it was better this way...I would find the other me, and tell her how to go back, and I would at least know they were happy. I would at least have that.

That was what I told myself on the way home, and I dismissed the horrified looks I got from random people as disapproval that I was running on a busy sidewalk. There were no cars in the driveway, and the house looked different somehow, though I couldn't place it. I tried not to think about, and unlocked the door with my key that still worked and walked into my home...

Only it wasn't my home. The living room was bare, empty of furniture. The carpet was new. Pictures were gone from the walls; everything was gone. The hall was empty too, and the kitchen. All the dishes, the silverware, the pots and pans were missing...My heart stopped. I ran up the stairs, and found the same there, of course. The rooms were completely empty. Dawn's room had been re-wallpapered, and the shower was fixed. I checked.

I didn't want to think about what it meant. Of course they'd moved out, sold the house...why wouldn't they? After all, a college student and her little sister didn't need a whole big house, and without Angel's support maybe they couldn't afford it...or maybe it had bad memories, they wanted to leave...I just had to find Dawn. Had to find Dawn. Where Dawn was, I would be, the other me...

I tripped down the stairs, refusing to consider any other possibilities. The emotional strain of leaving everyone was taking its toll on my state of mind just then, leaving me semi-incapable of thought and drained, physically and emotionally.

But I would find Dawn. Dawn was fine, she had to be fine...what could have happened to her?

A thousand possibilities, each worse than the last, presented themselves to me immediately. I ran.

*

The Magic Box looked different. It wasn't anything I could pick up; maybe the trim was a different color, or the writing...It frightened me, the feeling that this was not the place it had been when I left. If this was different, what else?

I opened the door and found it. A soft bell chimed my arrival, and the woman at the counter looked up. Not Anya. A strange woman, I'd never seen her before. Well, maybe Giles had needed more employees. I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders and walked up to the counter.

"Can I help you?" she asked kindly, her brow furrowing a little. "You look familiar, have you been in before?"

If I was still alive, the other me, she should recognize me...My stomach dropped, but I managed a smile.

"Do you know where I could find the owner?" The woman frowned.

"I am the owner, can I help you?" I blinked. Nothing could have happened to Giles...

"I mean, Rupert Giles. He...he used to own this place..."

"Oh, yes, I bought it from him a few weeks ago. Are you family?"

"I'm his niece," I lied.

"I wonder why he didn't tell you he sold it? Oh well, um, I believe I have his phone number around somewhere..."

"No, no, that's fine," I assured her. "I know where he lives." At least, I used to. I exchanged a few more unfelt pleasantries and then hurried away.

Giles' townhouse had no for sale sign outside I was happy to note (I had noticed, on the way out, that mine had...I'd been too excited on the way in to see it). I was too nervous to knock on the door and wait for an answer. The door was unlocked so I opened it and stepped inside, my throat too tight to call out. Was he there? Was he expecting me . . . the other me? Or was I . . . gone? Dead?

It took my eyes a moment to adjust, and then it took me another moment to recover my breath once they had. The furniture was the same at it had been, but the floor was covered with boxes and every personal touch, every thing that was *Giles's* was gone.

"Wh'is it?" a blurry British voice called and I took two steps forward, enough to see Giles sitting beside his couch, packing. He was holding an almost empty glass and an almost empty bottle of scotch sat beside him.

Giles was drunk. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Giles was drunk. And leaving. There may not be a sign but he was definitely moving . . . he'd sold his store, he was packing his things . . . Even my mind couldn't deny it anymore. Things were not as they should be.

She had to be dead. Me. I was dead.

"Giles," I called softly, working past the lump in my throat. "It's me. Buffy."

He seemed to be having trouble focusing, but he turned his head in my general direction and his face twisted unrecognizably. "No," he said, not exactly to me, "No more."

I took another step, my hands somehow twisting together. "Please, Giles, it's really me, I promise. See, I didn't die. There was another Buffy, from another dimension, she died but I'm all right, I'm here, see, I'm re-"

"Go away!" he shouted suddenly, cutting through my desperate explanation. I jumped at the harshness of his voice, and the pure horror of the situation. Giles didn't think I was real . . . "You're not her, you're not . . . leave me alone . . ."

The pain in his voice was horrific, sprawling as it was through loose sentences. Tears sprung to my eyes and I covered my mouth with one hand, unsure what to do. How could he not recognize me as real? He was drunk, that was how, I'd just have to talk to him when he was sober . . . he'd have to know then that I was alive, he'd be able to tell . . . But I wanted him to be able to tell then. I wanted him to look at me and say, "Buffy, thank god you're home. You did the right thing to come back. We need you. We love you." I wanted it to be *over*. I wanted to resume my life, some life. But Giles didn't believe it was me, and my house was gone, my family, everything was different.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm the sudden hysteria that was threatening to rise up in my throat. Not everything was different. Giles was just drunk. I'd seen him so before. Once he sobered up he'd figure out what had happened, he'd be himself again. He'd tell me where Dawn was. We could get the house back, I could get my stuff, life would start over where I'd left it. It would be all right. This was still my world. I'd done the right thing to come back.

"I can't leave Giles," I said firmly. "I'm not leaving until you look at me and admit that I'm real, I'm alive. I'm not a ghost, or a hallucination. I'm Buffy."

He did look at me then; he looked for a long time, his eyes boring into me, and then, helplessly, filling with tears which spilled down his face unrestrained. "Leave me alone," he whispered, begging, and I closed my eyes and told myself I just had to wait, it would be okay if I just made it through until he was sober again. "Please." I didn't move. His voice broke on the next request, and in a moment he was screaming, "Get the hell out! You're not real!"

When he threw his glass at me and shattered it against the wall behind me, I broke and fled. It wasn't going to be all right.

*

I went to the cemetery, because I had to know for sure. It was there, sure enough, right beside my mother's: my grave. Beneath my name the tombstone said "She Saved the World/A Lot." It would have made me laugh if it hadn't made me cry. I didn't really feel like someone that saved the world. Mostly I was scared, like a little girl that needed a parent to tell her what to do. Over the last three months, if I'd pictured going home it had always been nice, simple. I'd shown up. In the good imaginings another me had been there, had been wanting to get home. I gave her the spell, she returned to happiness and love and I settled back into my life with Dawn. In the not-quite-as-good ones, she'd been dead, but everything else had still been the same. Dawn had lived at home, or maybe with Giles. The Magic Box had still been Giles-owned. They had all been ecstatic to see me, and everyone had cried with joy and then everything had gone back to normal.

It was unrealistic, I'll grant you that. Stupid, even. If I'd thought about it, I would have known that things would have changed without me around, but I really tried not to. I focused so much on how my dimension had been different from the one I'd been in that I never stopped to consider how it *was* different. I think I was always afraid to.

Anyway, I was there at that point, so I needed to find Dawn, and Willow was the next logical place to look. I figured just showing up hadn't been working too well, so I'd call. Unfortunately, I didn't have a house and pay phones are impossible to find now. I was walking down the street looking for one when I passed the one wedding/formal wear shop in town. Anya and Xander were sitting inside on a big couch, pictures spread before them, talking happily. Their wedding. They were planning their wedding. No Buffy to wait for here.

Should I go in? How would they react? Would they believe it was me? I hovered outside, half hiding myself behind the corner of the window, watching them. There was an air about Xander that I'd never seen before; if I had to name it, I would say he looked older. But he also looked happy, at that moment. Content.

Tempting fate I tapped the window lightly and Xander looked up, immediately aware. Our eyes met for a long moment, and then, without expression, he looked away. My eyes closed and I turned away, pressing myself against the wall, hidden from the inside of the building.

"What is it?" I heard Anya ask through the glass.

Despite myself, I peeked back inside. It didn't matter, because Xander was carefully avoiding looking at my corner of the window. He gave a tiny shake of his head and said softly, "Nothing. I like those ones."

I turned and walked down the street, not quite straight, not quite sane, not quite real.

*

Willow's mother was never able to remember the name. It's not surprising she couldn't recognize my voice. "Hi," I said, "is Willow there?"

"I'm sorry, she's in Europe for the summer, who's this?"

Europe? I blinked and recovered myself quickly enough to say, "I go to UCS with her. I was just in town and I thought I'd give her a call . . . she, uh, didn't tell me she was traveling this summer."

"It was kind of spur-of-the-moment. She's always wanted to go and her father and I encouraged her to when she graduated, and again last summer, but she always said she was too busy and she had things to do here. Teenagers, you know, can't detach from their friends. Anyway, one of her good friends died around the end of school-um, Bunny or something, did you know her?"

"Buffy," I corrected, "we'd met. It's really sad . . ."

"The whole thing is so tragic. She'd just lost her mother and she was the only person taking care of her younger sister. I just feel so awful for that girl!" I stiffened at mention of Dawn and gripped the receiver harder, needing to say something but completely frozen. "Anyway, Willow was just devastated. She needed to get away, so we raised some money and sent her with that friend of hers, sweet girl, Tara something-or-other. I think they're somewhere in Italy now, but who knows."

"That's great," I managed. "Do you . . . do you by any chance know what happened to Buffy's little sister? I know Willow was really worried about her..."

"I think she went to live in LA with her father. Yes, yes I'm sure of it. Willow wanted to keep her here, but I think it's better this way. The girl belongs with her family."

"Of course," I echoed hollowly. "Well, thanks."

"Do you want me to tell Willow you called? She's sure to call sometime in the next week or two . . ."

"Oh, no, that's fine. I'll just see her when school starts. Thanks."

"Of course. Bye then!"

"Bye." I hung up the pay phone and slipped out of the booth, starting aimlessly down the street again. Dawn was living with Dad in LA. At least he'd shown up. Did he make it in time for the funeral? I wondered with a morbid bitterness. Well, that wasn't the important thing. The important thing was that he'd taken Dawn in when she needed it, and now I was back and I could go get her and take . . . and take better care of her.

To LA. I turned and started toward the bus station, glad I'd brought some money. I tried not to think what it meant that Willow had finally gotten to go to Europe, or that Xander was going ahead planning his wedding, or Giles was (presumably) going back to England finally. I tried not to think about how much they didn't need me. I tried but . . . but it was a long trip to LA, and it didn't really work.

Part Ten

It amazed me, in a way, that I could still remember my father's phone number. It had been a long time since I'd dialed it; longer since I'd expected an answer. I stood in an LA phone booth with my finger's crossed and prayed he hadn't moved. It rang three times and then someone picked the phone up. "Hello?" Dawn said, normal, even cheerful. I opened my mouth and then shut it again, my throat too dry and tight to force words past. What if she thought this was a prank phone call? What if she didn't believe it was me? How could I tell her what had happened?

"Hello?" Dawn repeated. "Eric, if that's you, I'm gonna kick your ass."

I closed my eyes and tried to find words. I'd been thinking about what to say since I left Sunnydale, but I still hadn't come up with anything appropriate. A voice, far away, asked Dawn who it was, and I recognized vaguely that it was my father. "Dunno," Dawn replied, and hung up the phone. The dial tone rang in my ears even after I hung up too.

The man waiting for the phone glared at me as I walked past, not really watching where I was going. LA. I could get lost there. For one insane moment I wanted to do so, to walk into a place with a Help Wanted sign and get a job, to find an apartment, to go buy new clothes and make new friends and start a new life, a whole new, different life. It was only a second, and I hated the thought after I had it. But I did have it. After all, I'd done so before, it wouldn't be new, or that difficult.

Instead I hailed a taxi and gave them my father's address. I didn't know what I was going to say, but if I showed up at the door I probably had a better chance of being believed than over the phone. Then again, there were both Giles and Xander showing me just how much no one wanted to believe I was alive. But I had to try, didn't I?

My father's name was still on the mailbox. I pressed the bell and hoped they'd let me in. There was no answer, not even a "who is it?" I pressed the bell again. A middle-aged woman in a suit with the collar loosened walked up, giving me a glance as she took out her key. Desperately, I pressed the bell again. She looked over and her gaze fixed on the buzzer I was pushing.

"They always go out Tuesday nights," she offered, "for dinner. They should be back around nine."

"Oh."

She seemed to take pity on me. "Are you a friend of Dawn's?" I heard the unspoken words . . . I seemed a little old for that.

"Her, um . . . her older sister. She died in May." The woman seemed to know this, nodding understanding.

"It sounds like such a tragedy, I'm sorry. I know it hit Hank hard."

It had? I tried to picture my father's reaction, and couldn't, at all. I nodded a little and said, "I was just going to drop off something of Buffy's I thought Dawn might like to have. But, I can send it in the mail . . ." I trailed off and turned away, and then back, as if I'd just thought of something else to say. "Do you know if Dawn's . . . how she's doing? I don't know Mr. Summers, but Buffy used to worry, after her mom died, about Dawn having to go live with him and I just . . . I just wanted to make sure she's okay. Happy, and all . . ."

The woman cocked her head, seeming to seriously consider my question. Her eyes, I noticed, were pale brown, almost golden, the most attractive feature in her tired face. "I think she's doing really well, considering," she said after a moment. "His older daughter's death really hit Hank hard. We've been friends over the years, and I've disapproved of a lot of things he's done, but lately . . . he's changed. For the better. He's determined not to let anything happen to Dawn, I know that much. He's cut down on his hours at work, he's stopped traveling, he's really trying to give her a good life. He's trying very hard, and I think . . . I think Dawn appreciates that. They seem very close, when I see them together. I think all the death was so hard on both of them, they had no choice but to . . . bond, I guess. Dawn's starting school next week, and she's made some friends here. I couldn't say for certain, but yes, I think Dawn's happy. As happy as possible, anyway."

As happy as possible. And how happy would she be if I walked back into her life, uprooted it again, took her away from the father she'd never really known before? How, I wondered, could I even ask myself such a thing? Of course she'd be happy to have me back. Of course I had to tell her.

But I wondered. As happy as possible. How was the other Dawn, in the other world, with only Angel left?

"Do you want to leave a message for them?" the woman was asking. I shook my head, startled, and then found myself more startled that I'd said no. What was I doing?

"Thanks, but I'll just send that thing . . ." I murmured, managing a smile for her. The sun had already long past set but darkness, real darkness was just beginning to take over the city. I stumbled into it, but she didn't wait to watch me go.

*

I love the white pages. Angel was the next person I thought of, but I knew that he'd moved out of his old apartment/office, and I didn't know where he'd moved to. Giles had the address. For one insane second I considered calling him up and asking for it. Instead I found another pay phone, opened the phone book to A and scrolled down. I didn't think I'd really find it, but there it was, neatly printed. Angel Investigations. How many could there really be in one city? I tore off a corner of the page and scrawled the address on it, then found another cab. I really needed to find a less expensive way to get around, I decided, and then wondered how much longer I'd be needing to do so.

Moving through LA's stop and go traffic gave me time to think, which was not necessarily a good thing. I was tired, and hurt for no reason, and yet for a million reasons. My friends and family had all moved on. Oh, I had no doubt they still mourned for me. It wasn't like I was accusing them of not caring. I knew they cared. But they still had lives. They were doing things - going to Europe, father-daughter bonding - that they would never have done if I was still alive. That is, if they knew I was still alive. I knew Dawn had always missed Dad, wanted him to be a bigger part of her life. And now he was. Willow had always, *always* wanted to travel, but we were best friends, and she refused to go without me. Even Xander and Anya...in the world I'd been in, they'd postponed planning their wedding. Even Giles, poor, hurt Giles was going to England, to the home I knew he'd been missing all these years.

Maybe they were all better off without me. But where was I without them? Could I go back to the other dimension? It didn't seem possible, it still felt...felt wrong. That wasn't my world. That wasn't the way things were supposed to be. Not my fate. Not my destiny. But was all this? The world I was in now, was this anymore mine?

Luckily, I arrived at Angel's office before I had to answer that question. It was, I was surprised to find, a hotel. I rechecked the address and found it correct, paid the driver, shouldered my bag and walked inside.

Cordelia was standing at the front desk of what looked to be an abandoned hotel that was no longer abandoned, but wasn't exactly a hotel either. She looked up hopefully when I entered, but when her gaze settled on me the huge smile left her face immediately. Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched upward. I took a few unsteady steps inside.

"It's really me," I said, regaining my voice. "It's a long story, but I'm not . . . not a ghost, or a figment of your imagination or anything." Cordelia snorted, animation returning to her startled features.

"Of course not. Why would I imagine *you*?"

I smiled, despite myself, feeling some kind of inexpressible relief swelling up beneath my ribs. She smiled back and I realized that her words were more from a sense of tradition than any animosity. She was glad to see me, glad that I was alive. It was a nice feeling, considering everyone else's reaction . . . even if it was Cordelia.

She knew why I was there. "He's upstairs. Third door on the left. It took you long enough, I've been putting up with his brooding for months."

"Thanks," I whispered. She shrugged and I started for the stairs.

"Buffy," she called as I put my foot on the first step. I half turned back. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," I repeated, with a smile this time. She returned it and I took the rest of the stairs quickly, ready to meet . . . whatever was waiting for me at the top. What would Angel say? Would he believe me? Would he cry? Rejoice? Would he throw a glass at my head or pretend I wasn't there?

So maybe I wasn't entirely ready.

The door was already open when I reached it, just a crack, but enough to let the sound of my footfalls through. Would he think I was Cordelia, come to check up on him? I spread one of my hands on the door, stared at my hand for a moment - *my* hand - and pushed.

He was hidden from me, in a large chair near the window, but I could feel his presence. He didn't move when I entered, at least not that I could see. "You can't fool me," he said quietly. "I know you're dead."

I flinched a little, and then made myself walk towards the chair. It was huge, I thought suddenly, big enough to hold two people normally. It enveloped Angel completely. "Then why can you hear my heartbeat?" I asked. "How can you feel my warmth?"

"The mind is a powerful thing," Angel replied. "I want to hear a heartbeat, so I do."

I had the sudden, intense urge to throw something. Would *no one* just believe me? Okay, Cordelia but . . . but no one that actually *cared*? I braced my hands on the back of the chair, and then walked around the side of it, finally catching sight of him. The first thing I noticed was that his hair was messy, spiking up because of the lack of gel rather than the overuse of it. He was wearing a wife beater and black pants. No shoes. Guess he wasn't planning to go out . . . His eyes followed me as I moved into sight, and I had the distinct feeling he was pulling me into himself.

I put my bag down beside the wall and walked over to him. "Could you imagine this?" I asked, and touched his cheek lightly. His flesh was cold, and for the first time, it was a shock. I hated that. I tried not to let it show, and I have no idea if I succeeded. "I'm real Angel. Flesh and blood."

His expression did not change at all, and I turned away, finally, with a sigh and went to sit in the alcove of the window, facing him. "All right, I understand it's hard to believe. I probably wouldn't either. And God knows you're not the first person to think I'm a ghost or a hallucination or something. Giles thought so too, and Xander . . . If I explain, will you at least listen?"

"You're so beautiful," he murmured and I closed my eyes against the look in his. God damn him. A day before, he could have said that and I could have smiled at him and touched him and he would have been warm . . .

"Listen to me Angel. I never died. Not me. I don't know how much you know about what happened, but basically there was this portal, between all the dimensions. I jumped in, because my blood was needed to close it. And I came out, in pretty much the same shape as I went in. Only I came out in the wrong dimension. Do you understand what I'm saying? I came out in a world almost exactly like this one, but . . . but not. Not this world. And there was a Buffy in that dimension too, and she jumped into the portal too, but when she jumped in, she was *already* dying. So when she came out here, she was dead. *That's* the woman who was buried in Sunnydale. Not me. I never died."

His eyes were a bit sharper now, more focused on my face and my words than on merely my presence. But he still showed no sign of belief. No real change of expression. And I couldn't read him at all anymore. I'd gotten used to an Angel that smiled when he was happy, or looked troubled when he was . . . troubled.

What could I possibly say to make him believe? Maybe nothing. But maybe he would answer one of my questions, help *me* understand . . .

"Angel, the difference in the worlds . . . in the other place, the other dimension that I went to, was you. You were human there. Remember when I came to visit after Thanksgiving . . . what was it, the year before last? In that dimension, when that demon jumped in the window, right when I was about to leave, you didn't know how to kill it. We tracked it down, and you eventually fought it, and some of its blood mixed with yours . . . Angel, I didn't know, I'm so sorry, I wish I had, but that demon's blood is regenerative, it made you human. We got back together and eventually you moved to Sunnydale, and I - Angel?" I stopped, because he had moved finally, and bent his head to bury his face in his hands. It looked like he was crying.

I waited, with my heart in my throat, unsure of what to do, or say. Did he believe? Was he afraid to? Was he mourning my death, when I'd never really died? Or I had, but not *me* . . . her . . . me . . .

He looked up, after a moment, and then stood, taking an awkward step toward me. There were tear stains on his face, and I tried to recall if I'd ever seen him cry before. "You're alive," he said, and then I started crying too, because I was, and someone believed, someone finally believed, and I had, after all, come home.

In a moment I was folded into his arms, and I could not help but notice, as comforting as they were, that they were also cold, and no heart beat in his chest. Still, Angel knew me, and he believed me, and this was, I told myself, where I was meant to be. This was my Angel. My fate, to always find him cold, to be close but never close enough. This was the way it was meant to be.

His hands touched my hair and slid down my back, caressed my face like he was rememorizing every curve of me. "You're alive," he whispered, wonder clear in his voice.

"I'm alive," I assured him. "Told you."

He gave a strangled sort of laugh and drew me close again, kissing my forehead gently. The coolness of the kiss burned. After a moment he released me, and retreated backward a few steps. "You still don't know," he said softly, watching me.

"Know what?" I asked, confused. There was something else I should know? Was it about what had happened after I left? About Dawn? What?

"You came back here. Why?"

I blinked. That was not the question I expected. "B-because it seemed . . . better. I didn't belong there. And I didn't know if the other Buffy was dead, I thought if she wasn't, she had to be there, I had to be here . . ." I faltered, and shook my head suddenly. "Why did that make you believe me? Angel, how did you know to kill the mohra demon? What made this dimension different?"

"I did." I shook my head again, not understanding.

"What did you do?"

Angel looked away, pacing a few steps before turning back. "Buffy, I know you're telling the truth because . . . because it happened here. Everything you described with the mohra happened here too. The difference in the dimensions lays not in if I knew how to kill the mohra or not. It lays in what happened after I didn't. What happened the next day."

"What do you mean?" I asked quietly, a terrible feeling blossoming inside my stomach, like I was about to find out something I really, really didn't want to know. My voice gained an edge. "What happened?"

"I was hurt, weak . . . I tried to fight the mohra, but I couldn't. You came to save me and almost got killed too. It couldn't . . . it couldn't work. I went to the Oracles and asked what would happen if I stayed human. They said that you would die. So I asked them to take it back. Make me a vampire again. What they did was take back the last twenty four hours, as if they'd never happened. I'm the only person that remembers them. When the mohra came, the same way it had before, I knew how to kill it and I did so quickly, without shedding any blood. Without becoming human."

I sat down on the windowsill again, because I knew if I tried to stand I would fall over. My vision turned strange, and I felt, for a second, like throwing up. It was all a lie . . . Angel *had* been human in this world, and he'd given it up, and never told me, I never knew . . . How could he never have told me? And what did it mean, that this had happened? What did it change? My mind felt like it had been turned over and shaken, and now nothing belonged anywhere anymore. What did this *mean*?

I took a deep breath and reason began to return. It meant Angel had given up his life for mine. He had a chance to be human, and in the other dimension he had taken it, and in that dimension I had died (though not, as it turned out *in* that dimension . . .) In this world, he had given up his life, and I had kept mine. That was . . . that was all it meant, wasn't it? It didn't change the fact that this was my world and that was not . . . did it?

"You were right," I said softly, "to do that. I would have died if you hadn't . . ."

He nodded. "I couldn't let that happen," he said quietly, that fierce, sure tone in his voice.

"Did you ask me?" I inquired, my voice a little shaky. "Did you ask me what I thought?"

Reluctantly, he shook his head and I closed my eyes. More memories I did not. So it was not just in the other dimension I was missing something . . .

"Buffy, why did you come back?" Angel asked again, sitting down heavily in the huge chair. I turned my eyes to him and searched his face. He didn't want me to be there. He seemed . . . regretful that I'd come. That was more painful than Willow being in Europe, or finding Dawn happy with Dad. He didn't want me to be there.

"I thought I'd be missed," I said softly, a hint of accusation creeping into my voice. He gave me one of those 'are you insane' looks?

"Do you think I didn't miss you?" he demanded. "Think I didn't agonize over your loss every second of every day? Do you know how hard it has been to even keep *living* thinking you'd died?!" He subsided into his chair, but the pain in his eyes was real, immediate, terrible.

I didn't know. And even though I hated thinking of him hurt, it was nice to know he cared. "I'm sorry," I murmured. "It's just . . . you keep asking me why I came, like you wish I hadn't."

"I do."

My eyes flashed upward to his face. He was watching me intently, sadly. "Maybe that sounds terrible. But given the choice between having you here, never able to touch you, or be with you, and having you in a world where you're loved and taken care of, I would rather have you there. Happy."

"Oh." His meaning washed over me, sinking into my flesh and bones. "Oh."

He smiled a little, bittersweetly. "Too late now, I guess. When'd you get back? I'm surprised they let you out of their sight to come here."

"Well, they don't . . ." I paused and recollected my thoughts, the long, long day. "Giles was drunk. He thought I was a hallucination or something, and threw a glass at me. He's moving, did you know? Willow and Tara are in Europe. Xander saw me, but he pretended I wasn't there. Dawn and Dad were out to dinner, but their neighbor said they were . . . happy. So you see, no one here really needs me."

He must have heard the pain I was trying so hard not to feel or let in to my voice. He stood up again, and took my hands and pulled me back with him, settling me into his lap. "Buffy, we all need you. Desperately. But we've all, in our own ways, been doing our best to get on with our lives, because we knew that's what you'd want. Willow called me before she left, crying because she still felt guilty for leaving. Dawn comes over at least once a week and tells me how hard it is to go on without you, and how much she misses you. And then she tells me about all the good things that have happened to her that week, the things that make it possible to keep going. Wouldn't it be worse if everything was exactly the same? If three months had passed by and none of us had been changed by losing you?"

Damn him. He made too much sense. I leaned my head against his shoulder and hated that I didn't get the same satisfaction just from sitting in his arms as I once had. Now I expected them to be warm.

"No, I just wish . . ." I trailed off, remembering the night after Mom's funeral, when we'd sat in the graveyard and I'd confessed I had no idea what to do next. In the other dimension, what had we done? Had our conversation been the same? "I just wish I knew what to do. How to convince everyone that I'm really here and if I . . . if I should. There's a Dawn in the other dimension too, and a Willow and Giles and Xander. They haven't had time to get on with their lives yet. They're still waiting to see if they have to. Should I make them go through the same thing the ones here already have, the same things they're going through right now . . . But how can I go back? It's not my world. I believe in fate, and . . . and this dimension is my fate. Not that one."

"How do you know that?" he asked, and I wondered exactly how I did. "Buffy, I was *supposed* to turn human. My own meddling changed that, but that was the way it was meant to be . . . And even if it wasn't, why do you think you ended up in that dimension? There are an infinite number of places you could have ended up. Why that one? Maybe it's the Powers' way of . . . I don't know . . . making things right. So you can live and still find joy. I don't know what's right anymore than you. I do know that if you leave again I will miss you every day for the rest of my life . . . and I will be happy that you went, because I'll know you're better off where you are."

His words made sense, but I didn't know if I could follow their advice. There were still a million things that I didn't know, that I didn't remember. Could Angel - the other Angel - and I ever have a real, healthy relationship, knowing that I was missing a big chunk of it? I could still hear his voice . . .

"I don't know what to do," I whispered and felt Angel's arms close around me.

"It's okay," he assured me. "You don't have to know."

I closed my eyes and snuggled into him, wondering if I would ever stop missing Angel's humanity, or if I didn't need to start.

Part Eleven

I left Angel with a kiss and an exacted promise not to talk to anyone (or let Cordelia talk to anyone) about my return unless I gave him the OK. He watched me go with terrible eyes, like the ones the other Angel had watched me with, in the other world. He told me he hoped, for my sake, that he never saw me again, but his voice hurt when he said the words. The train back to Sunnydale was almost empty, fitting for the middle of the night. I stopped at a 24-hour store once I got in and picked up some little scented candles and matches, and then I walked to the graveyard.

The grave was easy to find, since I'd been there before. "Hi," I whispered as I sat down, cross-legged in front of the tombstone. I set up the candles in a circle around myself, then placed a few extra in front to give me light to read by. I took off my rings and my watch, anything that I might have that she would not. She'd been wearing her claddagh ring when she died; Willow had thought it odd, because she thought I'd lost it (I had) and told Angel, in hope it might be comforting. He'd hid his surprise from Willow, but not from me, and while I was there he walked over to his bureau, opened the top drawer and took out a little jewelry box. My claddagh ring, which he'd found in the mansion and never dared to offer back to me. He thought I'd bought another, or been given it, and that was the one they buried me (her) with. He gave me mine back, and I left it on my finger, since she had a matching one.

When I sat there in only beige slacks and a white shirt and the ring, I pulled out the first diary and opened it to the date everything had changed. November 25, 1999.

She hadn't written on the 25th itself, since she'd been in LA, but the night of the 27th she'd returned home and filled pages with joy. My joy. It was like reading one of my own daydreams: the things she and Angel did were the things I had always wanted to do with him. Her description of turning to see Angel walking toward her in the sunlight was exactly how I'd always dreamed it would be; I could almost see it happening before my eyes. The pain of seeing him hurt, the frustration with Angel, that was all mine too. And finally, I found what made things different: in that world, the Oracles told Angel there was nothing they could do to change him back. So it wasn't me that was different. It wasn't even Angel. It was just . . . fate.

Things became more familiar after that first entry. She went back to school, and half the things written in that diary were things I had written in my diary. I could recall choosing a specific word, or switching pens because the ink was running out exactly at the place she switched pens. This was my journal, my life, and yet it wasn't. When I'd been flirting with Riley, she was putting him down gently (poor Riley . . . when the whole Spike/me getting married debacle happened, she blithely explained to him that Spike was the childe of the guy she'd just told him she'd been reunited with).

Angel moved to Sunnydale, and apartment hunting, dates, reintegrating him with my friends, joint workout sessions and sneaking off to make love wove in with fighting the Gentlemen, the end of the world (again), turning nineteen, getting involved with the Initiative and finding out about Adam. It amazed me how much of the diary was familiar to me . . . probably three fourths of it were things I'd written in this world. Whole pages could have been transferred, word for word, spelling mistake for spelling mistake, from my diary. Most of the changes were subtle, and almost all of them good. Most of the things relating to Riley were gone, of course, but they were replaced with Angel. All the lonely, confusing times I remember from that year had not been lonely, and many less confusing in the other world. Where I remembered being happy with Riley, she'd been blissful with Angel.

The next diary yielded similar results. Faith had stolen her body as she'd stolen mine, but Angel never slept with her. When Oz was kidnapped by the Initiative, Riley still helped get him out, but stayed with the Initiative to be punished as they saw fit. Everything with Willow and Tara and Oz was the same, her confusion and surprise were expressed in the same words mine had been. There was, of course, no fight between Angel and Riley, though she and Angel argued over his long absence, helping Faith, who still turned herself in to the police. The fight with my friends was almost identical, though in that world I was accused of neglecting them in favor of Angel.

I was accused. Those were the actual words that went through my head, sitting there on that grave. I was accused. I'd stopped identifying us as separate people. Her, me. Or just me?

Summer flew by, still the same, still different. Every interaction I could not remember appeared in my mind, as if I could remember, as if the words were my words after all. They sounded like me, like things I would think and say. Only I'd never really been that happy. That summer was the most different of any of the diaries I read. Without school, or any big bads to fight, she and Angel (Angel and I, I thought, and changed it quickly) had time to get to know each other, to do all those human things I'd never been able to do with him in my world. She described nights of candlelit exploration, trips to the beach, to Disneyland with Dawn, hours in a park reading poetry, graveyard patrols (and makeout sessions . . . for old time's sake, of course), Tai Chi every evening for an hour, talks about good and evil, what it is to be a Slayer, to be human, to be weak or strong, talks about the future, the past and soap operas.

It was not my life. These things I was reading had never happened to me. Angel, the Angel in that world, knew things about me that even I didn't know. But it wasn't like reading a book either. It wasn't like peeking into someone else' diary. What it was . . . it was like hearing your parents tell a story about you as a little kid, about something you did that you forgot, but it *sounds* familiar, it finds . . . an echo, almost, in your head, because it fits there, it fits into your life. That's what it was like reading those diaries. It was, simply, like remembering things I'd forgotten I knew. Only I never had known them in the first place.

I made myself read all of them, right up to when they stopped, just before Glory discovered who Dawn was. It hurt to read them, because so much of it was my own life, and every word did bring back a memory, a real memory, of how much it hurt to see my mother sick and not to be able to save her, of how painful it was to find out my sister was not really my sister, but to love her anyway. The entry about my mother's death was exactly the same, and I remember how dead I felt writing it, so cold and dry because I felt like I had to write something, but if I hurt at all, if I expressed any emotion I would fall apart, and I couldn't afford that.

The bad parts were all exactly as bad. It was just that the rest of it was a little better. I didn't have to deal with Riley leaving; Angel never made me feel like I was too strong, or too good or that I didn't need him enough. I let myself cry with Angel. I let myself be taken care of, once in a while. I took comfort from him, and I'm not sure why that was possible when it never was with Riley, but there it is.

Reading the last diary, I started thinking of us as the same person again. I started thinking of the things Angel and I had done, instead of what she and Angel had. I started thinking that we were one and the same. Only I was sitting on the grave, breathing, reading, and she was laying beneath it, dead and gone.

The decision came by itself, just like it had before, leaving reason to fill in the gaps behind. It was almost dawn, and soon people would be up and about, and it would look very strange for a young woman to be sitting on her own grave. I blew out the candles, left some flowers I had picked, packed away the diaries, and walked away.

*

I've never been very good at writing. I mean, expressing myself in words has never been a strong point, or grammar for that matter, so I try and avoid telling people stuff through writing. My only exception is my diary, since it's only for me. Half the stuff in there probably wouldn't even make sense to other people, but every word conjures up memories and feelings for me, which is why I keep writing them.

I really didn't have a lot of other options though, at that point, so I took a nap on a bench, bought some pretty stationary at the paper store on Main and took myself off to a secluded area in Weatherly where no one who recognized me would happen by. And then I wrote.

The letters, I think, were all jumbled, just kind of streams of consciousness where I thought of another thing I needed to say, and then another, but they did get my point across. Things I'd been meaning to say forever but never had the time to, or the need.

To Willow: I still remember the first time I sat down next to you, like it was yesterday. You wanted to know if I was hanging out with Cordelia, and said you didn't think it was legal for me to hang with you too. I didn't realize it for a long time, but when you said that I made a choice and I have never, ever regretted it. I can't tell you how glad I am I chose you, or you chose me or whatever. In a lot of ways, I've never been closer to anyone than I am to you Wills. When I came up to you I was hoping for something new, someone that wasn't obsessed with clothes and being mean to those that weren't as cool as them. And I found that, but I found so much more too. I'd never known, before that, what it was like to have someone love you, no matter what, and to love them back, without qualification. I'd never had someone I could tell everything to, absolutely everything. You changed my life, and the way I look at people. I don't know if I would have made it through the last five years without you.

To Xander: When I first met you I thought you were a goof, and that's what you wanted me to think. That's what you wanted everyone to think. But you know what Xander? The wool is gone from my eyes. You're the oldest of all of us. Besides the job and the serious LTR (Anya! Who woulda thunk it?) you know more about yourself than I've ever known about me. And you're more willing to give yourself away. Since I met you you've been completely supportive, loyal and trustworthy. I love you more than any other guy I know. And you know what else? You've saved my life more times than any of the rest of 'em. Without you I would have died a long time ago, so every minute I'm here I know that I owe it to you, and if when you're reading this, I'm not around anymore, don't you dare feel guilty, because you gave me four years. No one else has ever given me a gift like that.

To Giles: I asked you once when I'd ever let you down and you asked if I wanted you to answer or if you should just glare. It was a good line. I know, even though it was a joke, that at times it must have felt true too, because I did let you down, more than I should have. I'm really sorry. I'm sorry about Ms. Calendar. I'm sorry about...a lot of things. I'm *not* sorry that you were my Watcher. It's probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Because you let me grow up. You gave me the freedom that made it possible to let you down, and I'm sorry if I abused that privilege. I hope the long-term outcome was worth it. I told you this before, but I want to tell you again to make sure you know: I love you. And whatever has happened to me, whatever is necessitating you reading this letter, it's not your fault. You did the best you could. I was just a little hard to work with.

To Dawn: I don't know now what's going to happen, but I know that if you're reading this it probably means something happened to me. It probably means I'm dead. But it also means that you're alive, and that's the important thing. Dawn, I love you so much. If anything happened to you, I would never be able to live with myself, so I know that nothing is going to happen. This letter is my insurance policy. I guess I think if I write this you'll have to have a chance to read it. Dawn, if you feel guilty, if you think I'm dead because of you...don't. I'm not. I was supposed to die four years ago, and for a long time I've wondered why I didn't. Now I know. It's because you were coming, and I was meant to protect you and love you. Hopefully, I've done that. If you're alive and well, that means my job is done, and I'm sure that wherever I am, I'm doing just fine. So don't you dare feel guilty, or ever, *ever* think you're not real, because you are. You're my sister, and I love you. Don't ever forget that. And live.

It took me a long time to think of what to write to Angel. No matter how many times he told me he wanted me to be happy, to be somewhere I was happy, it had to be incredibly painful. He gave up his life for mine, and then to give up my life too...? I didn't know if I could have done it, if I was in his place. Could I give up the sunlight, food, love, joy...for someone else's happiness? Even his?

It is hard to express what I feel for Angel. How the sight of him makes my stomach warm up. How the sound of his voice makes my mouth dry. How his presence fills up my mind and my heart, barely leaving any room for me. How I feel like a whole person when I'm with him; not the Slayer, not a normal college student, just *Buffy*. How I'm drawn to touch him. How I can tell when he's in the same building as me, because suddenly I realize I'm not whole, I can sense the other half of my being just a little ways away. How his smile makes my heart flip- flop, and his injury makes my breath stop.

There are very few things I wouldn't give up for his life: the world, Dawn's life, or my mother's (while she lived), Giles' or Willow's or Xander's. But mine? Would I give my life for his? The answer was probably yes. If I was the only one at stake, then...yes. I would have done it before graduation. I didn't think I was going to die that night, I didn't think he would kill me. But he could have. I was prepared for that.

I could give my life for his. And then tell him to leave, to go somewhere else and be happy? I suppose I did, in a way. He left me the night after I offered him my life. Only he was leaving for me, and not for his own happiness.

I thought a long time about what I wanted to say to Angel, and finally I just wrote I love you. Forever.

*

Giles had warned me that once a portal was opened in one place, it needed time to, like, recharge. Since I wasn't up to staying around for a few weeks, I performed the spell in a different place: at the spot I'd died, only months before. The tower was gone, the place empty, unrecognizable. I stamped the letters at sunset and put them in a mailbox on the way to the Magic Box, where I bought the supplies I needed. The woman asked me how Giles was, and what kind of spell I was doing, and I lied with a smile.

I started the spell at midnight, when the streets were quiet. Willow had altered it slightly so it only took one person, just in case I ended up in the wrong place (or, as it turned out, in the right place, alone). The words were unfamiliar, but I sounded them out and waved the incense and all that, and then sat down and envisioned the world I was going to, the world I'd just left.

I began, as before, with my room. The way Angel looked, sprawled across my bed, or standing by my window with the sun on his face, smiling slightly. The pictures of us, each of them a memory. The memories I took in too: those I had and those I'd only read, but all of him, of us . . . The house, with subtle reminders of his presence everywhere, his books, his favorite foods, his sketches lying in odd places. The rest of the house too, of course, and Dawn, the same in both realities. The street we lived on. The rest of the city. The Magic Box, the university. LA, where Cordelia and Wesley fought evil with their friends (who woulda thunk it?). The world.

I held all of this in my mind as firmly as I could, said the final words and opened my eyes. My breath whooshed out before I knew I'd been holding it. A few feet in front of me, the night was shifting, a little strange, and I knew I'd done it. I'd succeeded. I was filled, suddenly, with an overwhelming urgency, choking the breath out of me. I felt that if I waited another moment I would lose all, both the world I was in and the other, I would never be happy, never see Angel again . . . And yet, if I left, I knew I couldn't come back. This was my last chance, my only chance.

"Goodbye," I whispered to the world, my reality, my home, the place that had given me hurt after hurt, but offered no solace at the end. It was also, against all odds, the place that had given me my life when another world would have taken it. "Goodbye."

Part Twelve

The feeling of urgency didn't leave after I was through. I tried to walk home. Instead, I ran. Only this time when I got there, there was no For Sale sign to miss, and there was a light on in the kitchen. I could breathe again. In fact, any sense of urgency disappeared altogether, leaving me weak as a kitten, barely able to make it through the door. I tried the knob, but it was locked and I fumbled with my key and finally dropped it to the porch, nervous suddenly. What if he didn't want me back? What if he found out I was the wrong one and was disappointed? I could see the look in his eyes already, and just the thought of it killed me. What if he didn't, couldn't, love me the way he loved her?

The lock on the door clicked and the door opened as I was bending to pick up my key. I looked up, frozen. He was standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hall light, and I couldn't see the expression on his face. I left the key where it was, and straightened, drawn into his arms before I was even standing up.

I realized I was crying, and so was he.

"I thought I'd never see you again," he whispered, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, his lips moving blindly, desperately, as if rememorizing my face.

"I'm sorry," I gasped, wanting to pretend that everything was all right but unable to lie. "It's only me, I'm sorry. I came back, I couldn't - I had to come back, but I'm not from here, I'm the other one, I'm so sorry, so sorry . . ."

His lips found mine and quieted my sobs; I found that there was nothing I wanted more than to kiss him back, that the kiss consumed my senses and took over my entire body. I found that either he hadn't heard me or he didn't care. I found that I cared very much which one it was, and that I didn't want him to pull away far enough to tell me.

He did finally, but only a few inches. One of his hands moved up to cup my face, the other settling against my hip. I turned my face to kiss his palm, unable to help myself; it was warm, alive, real. "You came back," he said wonderingly.

"I came back," I agreed, searching his face desperately for a sign, any sign of disappointment, or anger. "I'm sorry Angel, she . . . she didn't make it. Everyone there thought I was dead, and . . . and you said I could come back . . ." My voice faltered at the grief and horror on his face.

"Did you think I wouldn't want to?" he whispered. "Buffy, I love you. You. If anyone should be sorry, it's me. It's my fault she died, it has to be. I'm the difference. I shouldn't . . . I don't deserve you, but good God, I can't . . ."

"No, no, don't say that, it wasn't your fault," I told him quickly, putting a hand over his mouth. "I talked to you, to the other Angel. Everything here happened there too, he turned human too, only the Powers let him take it back. They didn't give you the same option. It's not your fault, it's just . . . fate. And something brought me here, when I jumped through the portal, something brought me to this world. I've never had the chance to be happy, and I don't know if you can live with me, knowing that I'll never be her, I'll never remember any of the things we've done together, but I had to try, I didn't want to live without you, Angel."

"I didn't think I could," he admitted and I drew his mouth down again, to mine, because I wanted to touch him, whatever part of him I could, to make it real.

Angel's hand on my hip slipped upwards, beneath my shirt, tracing the curve of my lower back. One of my arms hooked around his neck, my hand sliding beneath his undone collar, gripping the heated silk of his neck. All thought flew from my mind, replaced by the need to touch more of his skin, to feel his heartbeat, kiss his veins, running with warm, live blood. His hand on my back urged me closer and was joined by another, lifting me against him as we pressed against the doorframe, hungry after months of fasting, denying ourselves one another.

There was a large thump and we pulled apart, glancing wildly around before I realized I'd dropped my bag. I began giggling and Angel laughed, wildly, gathering my bag and me and ushering us inside. We turned off the lights, and tiptoed up the stairs. It was after three in the morning (Angel admitted he had barely slept since I left, and I admitted to the same thing) so we left Dawn asleep, creeping into my room, whispering and touching where we could, half lust-mad adolescents and half bone-tired, weary adults.

Alone in my room, in the dark, we stopped laughing and undressed each other slowly, silently, with great care. We did not apologize anymore, or talk about the other dimension. I tried, at the beginning, to tell him how sorry I was that I was nervous, uncertain, when he had done this a thousand times.

"No more talk about the past," he told me gently. "Starting right now, all that matters is the future. The one we're making together."

So we began, sweet and slow at first, with growing need, ever-consuming hunger for each other, and for that future. Afterwards, we gave in to fatigue and slept, skin to skin and though all my dreams were good, none of them were as sweet as my waking.

*

The sun woke me, creeping into my eyes and turning my eyelids scarlet until I blinked myself awake. Angel was still sleeping, his lips against my hair and one of his arms curled around me. I studied the way the light touched him, the way he breathed, the way his lashes lay on his cheek, peaceful, still. Unable to help myself I kissed my way down his face, making him smile in his sleep. An odd feeling had settled into my stomach, reaching from there to fill my entire body - I thought perhaps it was joy. I felt rather like I was floating.

Only there was more to the world than this room, more to my life-that- wasn't-mine than Angel.

The thought didn't banish the warm glow of contentment, but it did lessen it slightly, and I found the will to move, untangling our limbs gently and slipping out of the bed. I found my robe hanging in the closet and wrapped it around myself, tying it in the middle and tiptoeing out the room.

I hadn't looked at the clock, but by the brightness of the sun it had to be late morning. I could hear cartoons from the living room so I started down the stairs, my heart moving towards my throat as I went.

"About time you got up," Dawn called as my feet found the bottom floor. I walked into the living room, and found her facing the other way with a bowl of Fruit Loops and the TV controller. "I thought you weren't-"

"Dawn," I said, and heard the bowl drop. Damn, I thought, I'm going to have to clean that up. And then Dawn was plowing into me, throwing her arms around my neck in an unprecedented display of sisterly affection. A startled, happy laugh burst out of me, though I'd basically expected this kind of welcome. After all, she probably thought I was the other me . . . she didn't know . . .

I hugged her back anyway, clinging to her as if I was the one that had almost lost her, instead of the other way around.

"When did you come back?" she demanded, "why didn't you wake me up?"

"In the middle of the night, I was so tired, I could barely stand up, I'm sorry . . . oh Dawn, I have to-"

"Oh god Buffy, I was so freaked out! I thought you weren't coming!"

"Dawn, I'm not-"

"Did she find you? I mean, you, did you-"

"Dawn!" I pulled away just forcefully enough to quiet her. She watched me with suddenly concerned, confused eyes. I took a deep breath. "I didn't find the other Buffy. Your Buffy. I'm . . . I'm the one from this summer, from the other dimension."

She looked like she was shrinking suddenly, out of my grasp. Oh God. She didn't want me. "Does that mean you're leaving again?" she whispered and the air whooshed out of me.

"No! No, no, I'm staying, I'm here to stay. She - I did find her, just not . . . she died, I'm sorry . . ."

"But you came back."

"For good," I promised. "I'm really sorry I'm not he-" Before I could finish my sentence I was nearly knocked over again by Dawn's exuberance. When she let me go again and stepped back, trying to regain her cool, I asked carefully, "So you don't mind?"

"Of course not! You're still *you*. I mean, hello, I didn't even know you were different, after like three months." Her face fell a little. "I'm sorry though. I mean, you died . . . one of you did, and it's my fault really . . ."

"Shh!" I hushed her immediately. "Don't say that! It's not your fault. I'm glad I'm alive, but I jumped into that portal fully prepared to give my life, and I'm sure she did too. I wouldn't want to live without you Dawn, and I know that any me, in any world, would feel the same. Anyway, I'm here now, and I'm never leaving again, I promise."

"Not even for a weekend or something?" Dawn asked, suddenly mischievous. I eyed her suspiciously.

"Why?"

"Well, you know, I think I'm old enough to be on my own for a while . . . I'm responsible . . . almost adult really . . ."

"Nice try kid," I told her and tugged on one of her braids. She made a face at me. "Clean up your cereal."

*

Angel offered to go with me to the Magic Box, but I told him it was something I needed to do myself. I needed Giles' honest reaction, without any urging from Angel to accept me. The gang was supposed to have a meeting that afternoon to plan patrols, just in case I didn't come back, so I went about a half hour before the meeting was supposed to start.

Giles was at the cash register when I walked in and he looked up at the chime of the door. My hands were clasped in an attempt not to fidget, and I squeezed them together and looked at him, hopefully.

"B-Buffy!" he stammered and scrambled out from behind the counter, hurrying over to me. I smiled involuntarily and unclenched my hands to return his hug, a little knot of worry inside me relaxing. Part of me had expected to find him as he had been in the other world - not believing I was real, throwing harsh words and sharp objects my way. He pulled away a few feet and eyed me, as if trying to figure out which one I was. He was the only one that had expected I might not be their Buffy.

"I'm the one that left," I told him, letting the smile drop. "The other one - yours - died. I'm sorry Giles."

His smile faded. "Did you just come to bring the news?"

"No, I came to . . . to stay. I thought they'd need me there, but they didn't really. They'd already grieved. I didn't want both dimensions to go through that when there was still one me left. So . . . if you can deal with me, I'm here."

"Deal with you?" Giles murmured, his eyes lighting again. "Buffy, I never . . . I can't say I ever really saw a difference. Your relationship with Angel of course, but . . . but you're really the same person."

"Thank you," I whispered, because I knew he loved the person he saw me as. I hugged him again and then he began questioning me about what had happened. I told him parts of it, and left other things out. I explained the differences in the two dimensions, and then Willow, Tara, Xander and Anya came in the door.

It took me ten minutes to tell them that I wasn't the one they were expecting, because Willow started crying and Xander kept whooping, picking me up and spinning me around the room. I finally made them understand, after which they made *me* understand that they didn't care a bit.

I didn't quite believe it was all real. For the first time in months - almost a year - there was nothing wrong. Sure, the normal vamp problems still existed, but nothing I couldn't handle. Dawn was still not normal, and never would be, but for the moment she was a high school sophomore, my little sister, and nothing more. I still missed my mother, every day, in a thousand ways, but I could get through each day without her. I was not in the world I'd been born in, but it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. Perhaps I was in the world I was meant to be in. Perhaps I was just in the world where I could be happy.

Willow and Xander refused to let me out of their sight, and arriving a little later, so did Dawn and Angel. Accordingly, we all made dinner together, and then played Trivial Pursuit well into the night. I got to be on Angel's team, which was great because he knew everything and I knew nothing. Also, we got to cuddle. After we won (barely beating Giles and Dawn), we kicked everyone out and sent Dawn to bed. "Nymphos," she muttered, then yawned as she stomped up the stairs.

We didn't, as it happened, go to bed. We went outside instead, to sit on the back porch and watch the stars.

"It seems like I should be doing something," I admitted, "fighting someone, or figuring out some problem. I've forgotten how to just . . . live."

"Me too, in a way. We've been in Danger mode. But there's no more danger."

"But is everything normal again?" I asked, not quite meaning to say it out loud. He slipped an arm around my shoulder and I absently leaned against him.

"Buffy, everything doesn't have to be 'normal,' " Angel replied gently. "It should be as good as we can make it."

"We?"

"We."

My head was tucked under his, our arms curled together. He was warm, large, comforting, solid. My eyes drifted upwards, to the stars.

"They're the same," I murmured wonderingly.

"Hmm?"

"The stars, they're exactly the same. I never really thought about it before."

His arms tightened around me. "I feel like I lost you."

I pulled away just enough to turn my head and look at him. "I'm right here."

There were parts of our past we would never share; but there were also parts we both had etched on our hearts. Moments of love, of perfection, that we both held dear. Enough of a past, I hoped, to be foundation to a future. No, not hoped. As he kept going, playing out the words of that night so long ago, I knew. It would be enough.

His eyes were infinitely calmer this time, wiser, deeper, but no less passionate. "I love you. I promise I will never stop."

"Me too. I'll never stop either."

"See?" he whispered, "you're still my girl. I've loved you the same in every world." But only in this world was I allowed to love you back . . . I thought silently. "We'll make it work, Buffy. There's no reason to be worried now. Bad things happen, they always have they always will. But we're okay right now."

"This coming from Cryptic Guy? You're supposed to be warning me, not making me put my guard down," I teased, smiling despite myself.

"Hey, give me a break. I'm cold. If you'll recall, I gave away my coat."

"Oh, now we're complaining. Come on, Human Guy. Let's go warm your frail self up," I laughed, pushing myself to my feet and pulling him after me. He didn't lodge a protest.

The End

Better Buffy Fiction Archive Entry

In This World