Ha! Like I said in the "Finding Joy" author's note, my writing notebook for my Advanced Fiction class is really giving me tons of opportunities to get my fanfiction written, and it actually counts for a grade! So yeah, I had time to crank out another chapter of this one over the weekend. I won't always be following the events of canon so closely, but it's up to the characters when the story will diverge enough that things don't match up with the real episodes anymore. That being said, here's the first half of "The Witch", if Angel had been the Slayer and Buffy had been the vampire with a soul.

The vampire's head slammed against the rough granite of the mausoleum and his yellow eyes went unfocused until Liam's fist collided with his left cheek. He growled and tried to retaliate, but Liam blocked the punch and rammed a stake into his chest. The vampire roared with pain, but quickly realized that he wasn't turning to dust. He looked down at the stake, which was about two inches too far to the right to be fatal to him, then leered triumphantly up at Liam. "You missed."

Liam's eyes were icy, but his lips twitched up in a smile. He leaned slightly closer. "I know," he said. He seized the end of the stake and gave it a sudden, vicious twist. The vampire screamed in agony and tried to fight Liam off, but to little effect. Within seconds, Liam had him on the ground, one arm dislocated and the other twisted to the breaking point behind his back.

"Okay, now you're going to tell me everything you know about the murders of Julia and Faith Gallagher. The faster you talk, the faster I put you out of your misery."

"Who the hell are Julia and Faith Gallagher?" snarled the vampire.

Liam felt the rage that had consumed him when he fought the Vessel begin to well up in him again. He took the hand of the arm he was coiling behind the vampire's back and squeezed it so tightly that the bones in the palm snapped like twigs beneath his fingers. The vampire screamed again. "They were my mother and sister," he spat. "Before I killed the Vessel, he said that my family was destroyed for the glory of the Master. What did he mean?"

"I don't know, okay? The Master has a lot of people killed. I've never bothered to keep track!"

"Then I guess you're all out of bargaining chips," said Liam, pulling out another stake and stabbing him through the back with it. This time, it did pierce the heart, and with one last roar, the vampire turned to dust, leaving Liam alone and seething with anger.

Or, at least, he thought he was alone. He didn't register that hair-raising feeling on the back of his neck until he heard Buffy speak. "Wow. Didn't think torture was your style," she said lightly as she walked around the side of the mausoleum.

Liam didn't take his eyes off the spot where the vampire had been. "I found one of the vampires who killed Mum and Faith," he said. "But the other one is still out there somewhere. I'm going to find her, too, and I'm going to rip her head off with my bare hands." He looked defiantly at Buffy when she didn't say anything in response to this. "Aren't you going to tell me I shouldn't talk like that? Or lecture me about how torturing vampires for information makes me no better than them?"

"No, I'm not," she said, her face impassive. "You're a human being. You have a soul, you have free will, and even your very worst nature could never come close to the kind of evil every vampire has at the core of its being. No matter what methods you sink to, you will always be better than them."

Liam was struck, not only by a squirming guilty feeling in the pit of his stomach (which he ignored), but also by the profoundly forlorn look that grew in Buffy's eyes as she spoke. "Did vampires kill someone you care about too?" he asked quietly.

A flicker of something he couldn't identify clouded her expression before it was obscured by pain. "Yes," she said. "My parents and my little sister."

"I'm sorry," he said, taking a step towards her.

She nodded, and for a moment, neither of them spoke. Then she said, "I won't stop you from doing whatever it takes to find the vampire who killed your mom and sister, because I know I'd be doing the exact same thing if it were me." She chuckled bitterly. "I actually envy you, in a way. The one who killed my family is long gone. Revenge isn't even an option for me." She fixed him with a rather piercing look all of a sudden. "But even though I won't stop you, I will remind you that you have other responsibilities."

He turned abruptly away from her and began to storm off in the direction of the cemetery's gates, mouth shut tight and jaw muscles working hard. He didn't want to hear any of this. She was undeterred, however, and continued in a slightly raised voice. "You can't chase revenge full time, Angel. You're the Slayer. The second you set foot in this town, you became its first, best line of defense against the Hellmouth, and vampires aren't the only type of evil it attracts. Don't lose sight of what you were chosen to do."

Liam whirled back around, an angry retort on his lips, but she was nowhere to be found.

†

Xander and Willow stood together next to a creek that ran through the woods on the edge of Sunnydale, a place where they had spent many hours playing as children. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The weather was warmer than it had been in months, and there was a definite feeling of spring in the air. Xander held a lighter in one hand and Willow was carefully taping a photograph of Jesse to an origami boat.

"How about that time when we were nine or ten, and his parents took us all to go see the Redwood forest?" said Xander.

"Yeah," said Willow. "We pretended to be woodland elves, because I'd just finished reading The Hobbit." She fell silent for a moment, thinking. "Oh, and the time in eighth grade when we were all in a group and we were supposed to be working on our science project, but you and Jesse just kept having lightsaber duels with the yardsticks while I did all the work by myself."

"And when we got an A+ on that project, Jesse and I made it up to you with all of our Halloween candy."

Willow's reminiscent smile was very brittle. "And what about when…when—" But she couldn't go on. Her lip quivered for a few seconds while she tried to stay in control, but then her face crumpled and tears streaked her cheeks. "I ca-an't believe he's go-one, Xander. I miss him so much. A-and we can't even te-ell his family what ha-happened to him. They'll report him m-missing, a-and they might keep looking for him for ye-ears and years."

Xander drew her into a hug, feeling his own eyes burning. "I know, Wil. I can't remember a time when I didn't know him. This is the best we can do for him, and it sucks."

Willow pulled away, wiping her eyes. She held up the boat. "R-ready?" she asked.

Xander nodded. They crouched down at the edge of the creek, and Willow held the boat out over the water. Xander flicked the lighter and set the flame to the boat's prow. Once it caught, Willow released it. The flames spread rapidly as the current carried it away, and they reached the picture by the time the boat floated around a bend and was lost to view.

"I'm going to help Liam fight those things, Willow," said Xander after a long moment of silence. "Nobody else should have to go through what Jesse's family is going through. Nobody else should have to put a stake through his best friend's heart. I want to do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen."

"I'll help too," said Willow, her resolve making her voice much stronger than before. "Liam shouldn't have to face all of them alone."

†

"No," said Liam flatly.

"Why not?" said Willow as she and Xander pursued him through the bookstacks.

"We want to help you kill vampires," said Xander. "What's wrong with that?"

Having located the book he was looking for, Liam pulled it from the shelf and kept walking, still not looking at either of them. "You'll get yourselves killed," he said. "That's what's wrong with that."

"I just had to kill a demon wearing my best friend's face!" said Xander angrily. "Nothing I do to help you will ever be that hard."

This made Liam pause, and Willow pressed their advantage. "We know what's out there now," she said. "We can't do nothing while more people get killed. We won't."

Liam turned around to face them both. "This life chose me," he began.

"And we're choosing it," said Xander before he could get any further. "Are you telling me that if you had found out the truth about your mom and sister, and you weren't the Slayer, you wouldn't have wanted to do something about it?"

Liam glared at him for a long moment. "Of course I would, and then I would have gotten myself killed. You're not helping me." And with that, he stalked away, gripping his book tightly enough to damage the spine, leaving the pair of them staring after him in silent frustration.

†

As they hadn't troubled to keep their voices down, Mr. Giles had overheard bits and pieces of Willow and Xander's efforts to persuade Liam to let them help him. Musing dryly that it was lucky nobody else had come into the library before school that morning, he picked up his mug of tea and emerged from his office in time to see Willow and Xander leaving, both looking very upset. A few seconds later, Liam came out of the stacks, nose buried in a book he couldn't possibly want for pleasure reading or school work.

"You've been in here quite often since the Harvest," he observed. Liam had spent large portions of both Saturday and Sunday in the library searching these books, but he had been in an even less approachable mood then than he was now, so Mr. Giles had let him carry on without saying anything to him.

Liam's only response was a noncommittal grunt, and he kept reading without looking up.

"If there's something in particular you're looking for, I am rather familiar with these books. I could help you find it."

"This is something I have to do on my own," said Liam tersely, taking a seat at the study table.

"Yes, I noticed you seem to have taken that stance."

"You mean Xander and Willow? I won't let them risk their lives when they don't have to."

"To be honest, I feel more comfortable without getting them involved, as well," Mr. Giles admitted. "But there are plenty of perfectly safe ways for them to be useful, you know. If helping could bring them solace after the death of their friend, are you really going to deny them that?"

"There's nothing safe about a couple of normal high school kids trying to help the Slayer on the Hellmouth. Jesse knew me all of a day before they turned him as a way to get to me. If Willow and Xander knew what was good for them, they'd avoid me like the plague and grieve in the safety of their own homes."

"Don't you think you're being a bit melodramatic?" said Mr. Giles. "You're the Slayer, not a walking death omen."

Liam put the book down and rubbed a hand over his face. "Is there really a difference?" he muttered.

Mr. Giles felt a rush of sympathy for the boy. It was admirable how seriously he took his calling, but he put so much on himself. "I should think there's all the difference in the world to the people you've saved," he said. "All of Sunnydale already owes you their lives, and you haven't even been here a week. I'd wager the same can probably be said of the citizens of Los Angeles."

Liam closed his eyes. Mr. Giles couldn't know what memories his words had brought to the forefront of his thoughts. He could see Mr. Merrick's face in his mind, the angry red flush blotching his cheeks and forehead and the bristling of his walrus mustache as he shouted at Liam for his recklessness in hunting every night, as Liam flatly refused to obey his orders to be more cautious time and again, and then, the grayish-white pallor of that same face as the life drained out of it on the floor of the Hemery High School gym.

"Liam, is everything all right?"

"Huh?" said Liam blankly. It took a second or two of staring at Mr. Giles's face before he really saw it. He shook himself. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you certain you haven't been overtaxing yourself lately? You look exhausted."

"I'm fine," Liam said again, a little more forcefully. "I've just spent more time hunting than usual the past few nights."

"Perhaps you should give yourself a bit of a break. If something really nasty turns up, you'll want to be in top form."

Liam didn't know whether to chuckle or roll his eyes. First Buffy, now Mr. Giles. Who would be the next one to tell him he was doing this wrong? Didn't they understand how important this was? Why should it matter to anyone how much time he devoted to it if every vampire dusted potentially meant hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of lives spared in the future? His own sleep schedule meant little next to that.

The five-minute bell rang then, and Liam quickly gathered his things and left for his first class.

†

Willow and Xander seemed to have agreed not to bring up that morning's argument until they could regroup and attack from a different angle. Willow pretended nothing had happened when they were in English together, and Xander said nothing about it at lunch—though, about ten minutes into the hour-long lunch period, he unceremoniously dumped the remainder of his cafeteria food into the trash and dragged both of the other two with their partially finished brown bag lunches to the gym. Willow took a seat in the bleachers next to him willingly enough, but when Liam realized that he was about to become a spectator to cheerleader tryouts, he wished he'd put up more of a fight. Still, just because he was physically here didn't mean he had to watch any of it. He sat next to Willow, pulled out the book he'd been reading in the library earlier, and buried his nose in it while he finished his tuna fish sandwich and drank the rest of his apple juice.

When Willow suddenly jumped down from their bench a moment and left him there with Xander, he looked up to see where she was going, but she had only walked a short distance away talk to a girl with dirty blonde hair who was in the line to try out. "Who's that?" he asked.

"Oh, that's Amber," said Xander. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone bend like that."

Liam looked around at Xander and realized that he was staring in a rather slack-jawed fashion at a girl at the front of the line, who was currently doing some warm-up stretches. Liam scowled. "Not her," he said, "the one Willow's talking to."

"Oh," said Xander, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from Amber just long enough to see who Liam meant. "That's Amy. She's Willow's friend. Haven't seen her in a while, though. Kinda surprised that she's in line to try out."

"Why?"

"She's always been pretty firmly in the lack-of-school-spirit camp. Big part of why she and Willow get along so well."

"Oh." Liam left Xander to his ogling and went back to reading. If he had paid attention for a few more seconds, he would have seen Cordelia closing in on him.

"It's sweet of you to come and support me during tryouts, Liam," she said.

Liam gritted his teeth. Just as he had feared, all the work he'd done last week to get rid of her had indeed been undone when he saved her life at the Bronze. He'd had enough trouble avoiding her in History when she tried to be his partner for a group assignment. It didn't even seem to bother her that nearly everyone but Willow and Xander was still giving him such a wide berth everywhere he went that it was as if they thought he was radioactive.

Oblivious as ever to Liam's unwillingness to interact with her, Cordelia shot a scathing glance over at Amy and Willow. "Of course, some people are doomed to fail no matter how much support they have, while others have actual talent." Amy happened to glance around then and catch sight of the daggers Cordelia was shooting at her with her eyes. She jumped a little and hastily turned back to face Willow again.

Liam refused to dignify Cordelia's words with a verbal response. He merely scowled at her and went back to reading. "You know," said Xander once she had walked out of earshot and rejoined the line, "some girls are actually turned on by the aloof approach. Nice job."

Liam turned his scowl on Xander, who was now watching one of the other girls warming up with great interest.

"I'm pretty sure he's trying to get rid of her, Xander," said Willow as she reclaimed her spot between them.

"And that's obviously working," Xander snorted. "Ooh! Amber's up!"

Once again, Liam returned to his book. The passage he was in now actually had the potential to be relevant, for a change. The book contained a record of the Master and the lore surrounding him, but most of it was just about the distant past. This passage, however, mentioned a prophecy about the end of the Master's time. He read on eagerly, but there didn't seem to be anything else about this prophecy in the following paragraphs.

He had just turned the page when many of the people in the gym started screaming. He looked up and saw that Amber's hands had somehow caught fire while she was in the middle of her routine. In an instant, Liam was out of the bleachers and sprinting towards her. Both of her hands were fully engulfed in fire by the time he reached her. He whipped off his jacket and used it to smother the flames.

After he was sure the fire was completely put out, he stuck around until the paramedics arrived, then headed straight to the library. To his chagrin, Xander and Willow followed.

"What could have made that happen?" asked Willow.

"I dunno," said Xander. "I bet Giles could get us a few leads, though."

"I already told you guys I don't want your help," said Liam.

"You said you don't want us fighting vampires," said Xander. "And since it's broad daylight and vampires can't make people burst into flames, we're free to help if we want to."

Liam glared at them both, but it had no effect. Willow looked very nervous, but just as determined as Xander. "Fine!" he said through clenched teeth. "But leave anything dangerous to me."

†

As unwilling as Liam had been to let Willow and Xander help him discover the cause of Amber's mishap, he had to admit to himself while watching them toss theories around with Mr. Giles that there were benefits to this that he hadn't considered. Mr. Giles already seemed far less concerned with his methods than he had been that morning, and maybe they could get to the bottom of this faster so that he could go back to concentrating everything on finding that vampire. The longer their discussion went on, the more his attention waned. He barely listened when Willow volunteered to hack into the school's records and find out if Amber had any history of rage that could point to spontaneous combustion and Xander offered to talk to her friends.

†

That night, once Kathy was asleep, Liam sneaked out of the house to go hunting as usual. He did a brief sweep of the cemetery, but the vampires were starting to avoid the mausoleum tunnel entrance now that they knew he was likely to be lying in wait nearby, so he decided to patrol elsewhere until they dropped their guard again. Unfortunately, that meant there was no guarantee that he'd find vampires from the Master's nest, because he wasn't about to give them an opportunity to corner him in the sewers as they had tried to do when he was down there with Xander. This was only a problem because vampires affiliated with the Master were the only ones who might have some of the information he needed about why his mother and sister were killed. Sure enough, though he found and dusted four vampires in Sunnydale's back alleys and the warehouse district, none of them knew anything.

He was just about to concede defeat and head home when he felt that telltale tingle up the back of his neck. "Okay," he said with a wry smirk, "at the cemetery, it made sense, but how did you find me this time?"

"Call it intuition," said Buffy, stepping out of the shadows.

"The same intuition that made you warn me about other kinds of evil than vampires on the Hellmouth?"

She looked intrigued. "I wasn't expecting that to pan out so quickly. What happened?"

"A girl caught fire in the middle of cheerleader tryouts." He spoke casually, but it was a front he was barely managing to hold onto. The back-of-the-neck prickle that announced Buffy's presence was starting to be accompanied by unsettling lurches of his insides. The girls trying out for the cheerleading squad had all been very pretty, and they may have held Xander spellbound, but in Liam's book, none of them could hold a candle to this mysterious, beautiful girl who knew so much about Slayers and refused to call him by his actual name. And it was more than that. She'd lost her family to vampires, too. They were kindred spirits, she and he. "Any idea what could cause something like that?" he said.

"Oh, could be anything," she said, shrugging. "Pyrokinesis, witchcraft, spontaneous combustion. I'm guessing you've ruled out the possibility that someone just set her on fire without using supernatural methods."

"She was dancing alone in the middle of the gym floor with about a hundred pairs of eyes on her," he said. "Would have been pretty difficult to manage that without anyone noticing."

"And there hasn't been anything else like this?"

"Not so far."

"It'll be hard to know for sure what happened, then."

†

Xander and Willow met Liam in the library the next day at lunchtime to compare notes about Amber, but none of them had learned anything useful. All of Amber's friends had told Xander various versions the same thing: Amber was a nice girl who dedicated herself to sports and even had dreams of the Olympics. The records Willow had accessed made no mention of her having a history of rage. In fact, the only thing marring them at all was the time she had been written up for smoking cigarettes.

The bell to signal the end of lunch rang, and the three of them left the library. Liam headed for his locker, his mind already back on vampires. There had to be some way he could get one of them to talk. When he passed the trophy case, he hesitated. Amy was standing there staring at something inside it, and she looked like she was crying. The recluse in Liam wanted to pretend he hadn't noticed and keep going, but he couldn't just see a girl crying and not try to do something about it.

Feeling very awkward, he approached her, hands fidgeting with the strap of his bag. "Hey, you okay?" he asked.

Amy started and looked around at him, then recoiled a little, reminding him forcefully of the first time he had approached Willow in the courtyard the week before.

"What?" he said, perplexed.

"Well, uh, aren't you going out with Cordelia?" she said.

"No!" It came out rather more loudly than he intended. How was it that Cordelia could manage to ruin his social life when he didn't even want one in the first place? "Uh, no," he tried again at a more normal decibel level. He felt extremely sheepish. "She kind of won't leave me alone. She hasn't been telling people we're going out, has she?"

"No, you just seemed pretty close in History and yesterday in the gym," said Amy, now much more relaxed. She even offered a weak smile.

Liam looked at her shrewdly. "Has she been giving you a hard time, or something?"

"No worse than usual," she said, finally wiping her eyes.

"Then why were you crying?"

Amy looked down. "Just got out of the rescheduled tryouts."

"How were they?" said Liam, realizing a second too late that it was the wrong question to ask.

"I was a disaster," she said miserably. She glanced over at the trophy case. Liam followed her gaze to a cheerleading trophy and a picture of a squad of cheerleaders hoisting a girl with auburn hair on their shoulders. "That's my mom," said Amy before he could ask. "Her nickname was 'Catherine the Great'. That was the only year Sunnydale ever took state in cheerleading."

"That's…great," said Liam with a rather feeble attempt at enthusiasm. "You want to be a cheerleader like her?"

"Yeah," said Amy, "but it's just so hard! I've gotten in shape and I practice six hours a day, but I still can't get my body to move like hers!" She gestured at the photo of her mom. "I choked in there so bad. They'll never let me on the squad. My mom was the best, and I'm just…nothing." Before Liam could say anything else, she had burst into tears again and fled down the hall.

"Six hours?!" he muttered incredulously. He couldn't fathom spending even half as much time on something as pointless as cheerleading, especially when it only seemed to be making Amy miserable anyway. He shook his head and walked away from the trophy case.

†

When school ended, Liam quickly picked up Kathy and dropped her off at home before returning for his first training session with Mr. Giles. He didn't have any homework tonight and had hit a dead end in his vampire research, so he wanted to take the opportunity to keep his new Watcher thinking everything was fine.

"How much weapons training have you done so far?" asked Mr. Giles as he rummaged around in the weapons cabinet inside the book cage.

"Not much," said Liam. "I pretty much just stick with stakes and hand-to-hand." While this was true, the real reason he hadn't done more training was that he had avoided Mr. Merrick whenever possible, feeling that he was competent enough with just stakes that any additional training from him wouldn't be worth the accompanying lectures.

"Well, then, it's probably time for you to master some new weapons. Would you mind if we started with the quarterstaff?"

"No," said Liam.

Mr. Giles then proceeded to don a full set of bulky sparring pads. "There's a set for you as well," he said while he strapped on the last piece, which was a foam helmet.

"No thanks." What was the point of protective gear when this wasn't going to be a real fight anyway? And even when it was a real fight, the demons would be much more difficult opponents than a middle-aged Englishman, and they certainly wouldn't let him call a time-out so he could put on pads.

"Very well," said Mr. Giles, tossing a rough wooden quarterstaff to Liam. "Though you may come to regret that. I've quite a lot of experience with these."

Experience, it turned out, was no match for Slayer strength and reflexes, but Liam was still interested in learning the proper forms (which soothed Mr. Giles's bruised pride a bit, if not his bruised tailbone from when Liam had knocked him flat on his back within the first twenty seconds of sparring), so they kept at it. About half an hour in, Willow and Xander turned up.

"Anything new about the incident with Miss Grove?" said Mr. Giles, lowering his staff. Liam did likewise.

"Well, we have a new suspect, if that counts," said Xander, looking at all their equipment. "What's going on in here?"

"Quarterstaff training," said Mr. Giles.

"Who's the suspect?" Liam pressed.

"Cordelia," said Willow.

"Really?" said Liam skeptically. Cordelia was a bully, certainly, but she really didn't strike him as a supernatural one. If she was, then she wouldn't have needed to use Larry to try to make him join the football team. She could have just done something herself. The thought made him shudder.

"Yeah," said Willow. "You should have seen her when the names of the new cheerleaders were posted. She made the team, but before that, she was threatening Amy and stuff because of what happened in the tryouts today."

"So you think Cordelia might have done something to put Amber out of the running in order to guarantee her spot on the squad?" said Mr. Giles, beginning to take off his pads. From his expression, he didn't understand how anyone could be that dedicated to cheerleading any more than Liam did. Maybe it was an American thing.

"It wouldn't surprise me," said Xander. "She's always been really competitive, and she was definitely feeling the heat from Amber yesterday." He snickered. "Before she was literally on fire, I mean."

"But if it is her, and she made the squad, then she's not likely to do anything else about it, is she?" said Mr. Giles.

"We should still keep an eye on her," Willow suggested. "Just in case?"

"I'll do it," said Liam with a grimace.

"You're kidding," said Xander.

"Well," said Willow, who for some reason seemed to be holding in a fit of giggles, "he did say to let him do all the dangerous stuff."

Liam glared at both of them. "Of the three of us, which one does she actually want to spend time with?" he said.

Xander clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, Van Helsing, you're a braver man than I."

My favorite scene in this one is probably Willow and Xander's little memorial for Jesse. One thing that really fascinates me about writing a story like this is how, unlike Buffy, Liam doesn't seem to gather friends so much as allies. Willow and Xander are interested in helping him more because they want to be part of his cause than because they want to be his friends. Anyway, there's a chance that the next chapter will be mostly flashbacks, and you guys will finally find out the details of what happened to Mr. Merrick.