Title: Tea and Sympathy

Author: Maeve Bran

Rating: T

Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not. I claim nothing but the plot.

Summary: Buffy has a heart-to-heart with Angel immediately after the collapse of the Hellmouth. AU.

Notes: SPOILERS for all of Buffy and Angel through season 4. Set in the same universe as "From the Angel File". Much love to Jedi Buttercup, my tireless beta and co-writer.

Buffy Summers was stunned. The events of the day were just starting to catch up with her. Saving the world and getting stabbed in the process, as bad as that was, was not the problem. The events that had her stunned were Spike sacrificing himself, and the fact that she'd had to take refuge here. With Angel. Seeing her ex again was always painful, but now it was doubly confusing. Buffy was unsure of her feelings about anything at this point, and Angel was being... nice.

The Angel Investigations team had gone home. Faith had stayed at the hospital with Robin and the injured Slayerettes. Giles and the others had found rooms in the Hyperion for themselves. And Buffy? Angel had loaned her the shower and some clothes; she was now up in his suite sitting on the bed, drinking the tea he had made her. Angel himself was pacing back and forth across the room, waiting for Buffy to speak.

After a few moments, a thought bubbled to the surface of her chaotic mind. "You sired Spike, right?" Buffy asked in a quiet voice.

Angel seemed startled at the line of questioning, but answered anyway. "Technically, Drusilla bit him. But she was... well..." He trailed off.

"Bug-shagging crazy?" Buffy suggested.

"Yeah. So I ended up teaching him everything." He seemed a little embarrased at the admission.

She sighed, going over Spike's last actions again in her mind. "That explains it."

"Explains what, exactly?" Angel asked, brow wrinkled in a puzzled frown.

"It explains that too-noble, have-to-save-the-world complex of his," Buffy replied, in a flat, ironic voice.

Angel stopped in his tracks and stared at her. "Huh?"

"You... Spike," Buffy said, gesturing vaguely between Angel and the direction of the former Hellmouth. She was feeling a little punchy by this point, aware that she wasn't making all that much sense, but all this had been building up for awhile now and she felt like she had to get it out. "Have to be the big damn heroes who save the world. Can't let anyone else do it." Her lower lip wobbled a little. "Damn him," she cursed.

Angel sat down cautiously in the chair opposite her, studying her closely. "You really did love him," he said flatly, a little disbelievingly.

"Love? I don't know." Buffy shook her head. "I don't know. Cared for? Yes. Liked-- sometimes. But before I could figure it all out, he had to go and die," she complained.

"Just like every other guy in my life," she added, working up a full head of steam. "Just as I figure out that I love you, you turn evil. Then you get restored, just in time for me to have to send you to Hell. When you came back, I had barely had time to figure out how I felt-- again-- and you left again! This time, for good."

Angel looked away and sighed, looking a little uncomfortable with her accusations but obviously unable to counter them.

"Then there was Parker and the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, one night only special," she continued, bitterly. "And Riley! Everything seemed so perfect; I was in college, I was doing well in class, and I had this sweet, normal, loving boyfriend. I had a life apart from Slaying for once! Until I found him giving suck-jobs to vamp whores, and all of a sudden he was saying I didn't love him enough, and he was giving me until midnight to prove he was wrong!" Buffy laughed wryly. "Of course, I got there two minutes too late to stop him from leaving."

"I knew I didn't like that guy," Angel muttered.

Buffy half-smiled him, and took another sip of tea before taking up the litany again. "He came back a year later, led me all over town-- flirting with me even!-- and then suddenly introduced me to his wife! Of four months!" The incident in Spike's crypt was on the tip of her tongue, too, before she abruptly remembered-- she hadn't even mentioned that relationship at all yet. She winced a little at the thought.

"Ouch," Angel said, apparently taking the pause as an invitation to comment.

She sighed. "Yeah. And now for the crowning achievement of my love life. Spike."

"Spike?" Angel asked, raising his eyebrows.

Buffy frowned blearily at him. She had a vague memory of talking to him about Spike just-- was it only a day ago? Something about smelling him, and boyfriends, and cookies, she wasn't really clear on the exact details, but she knew she'd said something about Spike being in her heart.

"Spike?" Angel repeated, sounding a little incredulous. "The crowning achievement of your love life?"

She bit her lip, thinking about whether or not she ought to keep going-- but really, it was too late now to back out. And if she couldn't tell him this, it didn't bode well for the recipient of her cookies in the future. "You remember when I came back, when Willow, well, when I wasn't dead anymore, and I drove down and met you? You were trying to be so comforting, but I just couldn't-- I couldn't accept it. And I couldn't explain. But Spike-- somehow he saw through me, he knew I hadn't been in Hell. Of everyone, he was the only one to guess that I'd been in Heaven-- not one of my friends, but my mortal enemy." She looked down, twisting her fingers around the edges of her cup.

There was silence for a moment from Angel, and then an explosion of motion; Angel was up out of his chair. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, making as if to reach for her; but then his natural reserve took over and he walked away, taking up his restless pacing again. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, sounding very hurt.

Buffy swallowed and looked up again, following his progress with her eyes. "I didn't tell you because I was still sorting it all out for myself. Everything hurt, it was all so chaotic and confusing-- I could barely admit to myself what had happened, and I couldn't bear to hurt anyone else with the knowledge. Besides which, what could you have done?" She shrugged.

He stopped by the French doors that led out onto the balcony, staring out into the city, and sighed. "I would hope I could have been there for you," he said. "But... nevermind."

She could almost sense the hurt he was feeling, but she didn't know what she could say-- or even if it were possible-- to take it away. And really, he deserved the rest of the story; she'd started this whole thing to talk to him about Spike in the first place, and she hadn't even gotten to the worst of it yet. "So-- then that musical demon came to town, and suddenly there was singing, and dancing, and kissing, and confessing-- everything came out, and they all reacted about as badly as I thought they would, and Spike was still the only one there for me, who understood what I was feeling. And I just-- I just wanted him to take away the pain."

Angel looked back over his shoulder at that comment, and there was a surprising amount of sympathy in his eyes. "Darla," he said softly, nodding.

"What?" she blinked, jolted out of her story by the non sequitur.

"Nevermind," he said, shaking his head with a sad smile. "I'll-- I have some things to tell you, too. Let's just say I understand. So, you went to him?"

She nodded, glad he was taking this so much better than she had feared. "The first time, well, a building fell down around us," she said, blushing a little at the memory. "And even as I hated myself for it, I couldn't stop. The pain was so-- the only time it stopped was when he was blotting it out. It was months before I started feeling more than that for him, when I started realizing he deserved better than I was giving him. But then Riley found us, and I felt so ashamed; I knew I had to stop using Spike, but he was so hurt by it, he... well, he didn't react very well. I should have disinvited him after, but I just couldn't..."

Buffy shook her head, still baffled by her behavior that summer. "I don't know why I didn't. I mean, I did it for you, and I loved you with all my heart; I barely liked Spike, then, and after everything..." She trailed off.

"What did he do?" Angel said, growling a little. "Did he attack you? He did, didn't he. And still you let him in the house? Around Dawn?"

"I know, I know," she said, flinching a little at the anger in his tone, but also a little pleased, deep inside, that he was still so defensive of her after all this time. "It's not like he had a soul when it happened, and he'd never lifted a finger against Dawn. I just... I don't know why I still trusted him, but I did. And then he showed up three months later with a soul, and proved me right. Of course, he was so far out of his head he almost made Drusilla look sane..." Buffy laughed a little, trying to lighten the mood.

Angel snorted. "Quite the accomplishment."

"Yeah. Living in the school basement and everything, babbling nonsense for weeks. I followed him into a church at one point after he'd accidentally stabbed someone-- long story, but anyway-- I didn't understand what he was talking about until he said something about you."

"Me?"

She nodded, and quoted Spike's words. "'Angel. He should've warned me. He makes a good show of forgetting but it's here in me all the time. The spark.'"

"Spark." Angel rolled his eyes a little. "Still trying to be a poet."

Buffy frowned, a little annoyed that Angel was avoiding the point in favor of continuing a pissing contest with a guy who was already dead twice over. "Anyway," she said, raising her voice a little, "He loved me enough to seek out that soul for me. For me, Angel." She set her tea down on the night stand and stood, locking eyes with him to make her point clear. "He went to the end of the underworld and back, whatever that means-- but it couldn't have been easy. And he did it for me. Why? What have I done to deserve that?"

She hadn't really known what to make of it at the time-- she'd been so shocked, and so distracted-- but after the others had thrown her out of the house, when he came to her and comforted her without asking anything in return, just holding her safe through the night, she'd come to realize just how significant it really was. She couldn't belittle his feelings anymore, even what he had done and said when he was soulless, if it had led him to do something so impossible. And what was she, to inspire that kind of devotion?

Buffy's face crumpled a little at her train of thought, as it crashed down on her all over again that he was gone and not coming back. She sat back down on the bed, putting her face in her hands.

She felt the bed dip beside her, and Angel's arm went unexpectedly around her. "I, uh. I don't know what was going through his mind when he did it, but... you're a hell of a woman, Buffy," he said comfortingly.

Tears slipped out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. "Spike said that to me," she said, remembering. "That I was a 'hell of a woman.' Right. I'm such a catch I couldn't even tell him I loved him while he was dying! I mean-- I said it, but he knew it was a lie. He was standing there, with the sunlight pouring through him, holding my hand-- and he just looked at me, and said 'No you don't, but thanks for saying it.' How could I be so... I mean, he got his soul for me!" she repeated herself, rambling a little, turning her face in towards his shirt. "I had no problems loving you, even after you were soulless; and not only did you not try to get your soul back for me, you actively went after Miss Calendar to stop her from doing anything about it."

Angel fliched. "You don't pull any punches, do you? I remember everything I did, thank you very much," he said bitterly. "I don't need any reminders."

"I didn't mean it like that," Buffy said wearily. "I'm accusing myself here, not you."

"You don't need to feel guilty over it, though, Buffy. Spike was always like that, even as William, the hopeless romantic with the grand gestures. You don't need to feel like it obligated you to do, or feel anything in return."

"Grand gesture?" Buffy protested, weakly. "Angel, his soul is a little more important than just a gesture."

"I know," Angel said placatingly. "I know it was a big deal. But he still did it to get you back, didn't he?"

"It doesn't matter," she answered him sadly, aware of the point he was trying to make but not really accepting it. "I still couldn't give him the one thing he wanted, the one thing he deserved. He'd given me so much, and I couln't return the favor." She sobbed.

Angel gathered her in his arms and held her as the tears kept coming. After the sobs finally eased up, she pulled away and reached for her tea again, draining the now-cold beverage. It gave her a few seconds to pull herself together again; it was the first time she'd ever vented the whole mess to anybody, and it left her feeling a little hollow and vulnerable. She appreciated that Angel had reacted by comforting her rather than throwing her out of the hotel, but she still felt the need for a little distance now.

"So," she said brightly, smiling wryly at him through the remains of her tears. "How's your unlife been treating you?"

(end chapter one)