"Stop it," Buffy whispered harshly. She was in no shape to deal with Xander's usual ‘vampire bad' blustering. Her whole world felt like it was falling apart. She needed to think. She had been jumping from one horrible discovery to the next for almost twenty four hours, and she had not been given any opportunity to really face all that had happened or what she had learned.

"No! Dammit! We let you get away with this crap last time and Jenny died because of it. You're not putting us through that again, Buffy. We shouldn't have to suffer because you have crappy taste in men. If you had dated me when I offered none of this would be happening. Either you take him out, or I will," the incensed brunette declared hotly.

Buffy stared at the friend she had thought she'd known, her expression flitting between horror and fury. For a moment she just stared at him, and then her slayer side kicked into over drive.

"Here's what's gonna happen, Xander. You're going to shut up and back off. You should be VERY happy that your girlfriend isn't here to hear what you just said. You need to do what ever little mental aerobics you do in order to once and for all get it through your think head that I. Will. NEVER. Date you. Seriously, Xander, if you were the last man on earth, I would swear off men! You also have to work on the whole telling me how to do my job thing. I'm telling you right now, these are your choices; either you accept things the way I do them, or you leave the scoobies. Be absolutely sure about this, Xander. It's my way or the highway."

With an abrupt dismissal of the shocked young man, Buffy turned to her watcher. "I know it will be hard for you, luckily we have time to deal with the whole Angel sitch, but I need time, Giles. I have to process what I've learned. All I ask is that you give me tonight to think it all through, ‘kay?" she asked him hopefully.

Giles smiled benignly as his slayer. "Of course, dear. I told you, Buffy; I trust you."

Buffy hugged him gently before turning to leave the shop. She had some thinking to do.

Xander watched her go, wondering silently when everything had started to go so wrong for him.

~*~*~

The tiny blonde shivered as she continued to walk. Her thoughts were chaotic, so she closed her eyes and took a calming breath. ‘No more denial,' she thought resolutely. So much had been happening that it was hard to focus. Mentally, she ticked off the events and the subjects she needed to face. Riley had been given his marching orders so she felt she had time to deal with that later. She wasn't ignoring it, she just realised that if she was going to achieve anything, she needed to get the subjects into some sort of order, and quite frankly, with Riley gone, he slipped in the order of importance. ‘Way to go, Buff, he accuses you of treating him like he's not important and you put him last on your internal priority list,' the little voice that often chastised her spoke up. Stupid voice. Buffy hated it when it was right.

She thought about Spike briefly. Her apology to him was important to her, but really he had all those others with him at the moment, including her best friend and her mother, so maybe the urgency of apology mode wasn't quite as important as dealing with the uber bad Angel situation. She realised that thinking about Angel and badness was usually the point where she donned her pretty rose coloured glasses and started sunbathing by that river in Egypt. ‘Well, not this time,' she decided firmly. This time she was taking the bull by the horns and dealing with it. She owed it to Giles. Hell! She owed it to herself.

Focusing on the information she had been given, she attempted to keep her emotions out of it. She needed to break it down and look at the big picture. It served no purpose to follow her usual modus operendi. She couldn't just rush in with stakes at the ready. This was, after all, Angel she was dealing with.

Thinking about the situation and trying, as best she could to look at it from Angel's point of view, Buffy managed to put it in perspective. In his grief over Darla's murder-because those lawyer guys had brought Dru there for the specific purpose of turning the blonde, so what else could you call it but murder?-Angel had retaliated. Yes, he had gone all vengeance mode on the one's he held responsible, but really, had his reaction been very much different from Giles' after he'd found Jenny? Yes, in her mind at least, there was a huge difference between Angelus and a group of human lawyers, but grief made you do things you normally wouldn't consider. To a grieving person, would that difference really matter? ‘I'm thinking, not so much!' Buffy had to admit to herself.

When it came down to it, the facts were pretty simple; Angel had acted out of grief. Would Buffy do the same thing in his place? She didn't know, although she liked to think she wouldn't. Did Buffy approve of what he'd done? Hell, No! Did Buffy understand why he had acted like he did? Yes. Did she condone his actions? Um, No! Much as she hated to admit it, she was firmly in Wesley's camp on that matter. Would she dust him because of it? No, not this time. She really did understand why he had acted as he had, but, in all honesty, she would never again trust him blindly. Angel had well and truly used his last get out of jail card this time.

Buffy cringed when she realised her decision meant that she would now have to explain to her watcher exactly why she wasn't going to allow Angel to be dusted. She didn't want to go though it all again so quickly on the heels of her first foray into facing life without her handy glasses that pretty everything up. She went back to her mental list of things-to-do and decided that she'd rather face Spike than Giles at this point in time. Decision made, she headed off to Wesley's.

‘Oh crap! This means I'm gonna have to apologize to the weenie, too.'

~*~*~

Cordelia Chase slammed through the door of the Magic Box. "Oh damn! He's not here," she snapped out her frustration to her companion.

"Cordelia?" Giles asked, not completely convinced that he wasn't seeing things.

"Oh, hey Giles," she greeted absently, her mind focused on finding her missing boss. She had been so sure that he would come here. Belatedly remembering that she wasn't alone, she introduced her colleague. "This is Gunn; he works with me."

Xander made his presence known. He really hated being ignored. "So, why has Queen C graced us with her presence?" he asked snidely.

Bristling at the tone of the unknown brunette, Gunn turned to his friend and asked, "Who's the idiot?"

Cordelia waved her hand in dismissal of the petulant carpenter. "Ignore him. He suffers from permanent foot-in-mouth disease."

"Hey!" Xander responded indignantly.

Following her own advice, Cordelia showed Xander exactly how much she respected him by turning to face Giles. "His Brood-y-ness found out that Buffy knows about his little dance on the dark side and headed this way. I thought he'd come here."

"He is lucky he didn't," Giles said coldly. "He should be more concerned with my reaction than Buffy's. In regards to Angel, I am far more compunctive than my slayer."

"You don't know the whole story, Giles," Cordelia responded softly, her new maturity shining clearly in her eyes beside her compassion. "Grief makes us all act differently."

Giles narrowed his eyes and considered the woman in front of him. He was a little surprised at the changes he saw. Apparently the self-centred girl that he remembered had finally grown up. Nodding his head in accedence he offered the only thing he was willing to for the moment. "It will be Buffy's decision."

~*~*~

Buffy took a deep breath and knocked on the door, her heart racing with nervousness. She hated feeling like this. She liked being in control. Nervous Buffy got flustered; she babbled, or worse, she got tongue tied and couldn't find the words she wanted, and then looked like an idiot. She had a defining moment of realisation as she stood waiting for an answer to her knock - Buffy the girl needed Buffy the slayer. Buffy mentally rolled her eyes in disgust. Buhbye, normal!

The door opened and Wesley stood calmly watching her. He waited for her to speak.

"I seriously hate admitting I'm wrong. I get why Angel did it, but I have to agree with you on the whole lets-not-just-accept-it train. You were also right when you said I don't see too clearly where he's concerned. I hate it, but I took the blinders off."

As apologies go, it wasn't much, but the ex-watcher accepted her words gracefully with a nod and the beginnings of a smile.

Taking a deep breath, Buffy continued, "That being said, will you let me come in and talk to Spike?"

Wesley gave a little grin and snicker that Buffy didn't understand.

"Well, he did want to sleep, but I think he would be most aggrieved to learn he had slept through a visit from you. Come in, Miss Summers."

"You know, you CAN call me Buffy," she teased as she entered.

Wesley chuckled and bowed gallantly. "I would never presume to take such liberties without permission."

"Consider yourself all permission having, Mr Wyndam-Pryce," Buffy replied with giggle.

"Please," he requested with a smile. "Wesley, or Wes if you'd prefer?"

Buffy lifted a delicate eyebrow. ‘Okay, seriously liking the new and improved version; whoda thunk Wes the Wonder Wuss could be so smooth?'

~*~*~

Angel raced back to his car. There had been nobody home at Revello Drive and he was becoming more frantic by the minute. He had to find Buffy. He had to explain. He once again cursed Wolfram and Hart and their employees. If those bastards had left him alone none of this would have happened. Wasn't it bad enough that even though he had gone through the trial and had been willing to die for Darla, she hadn't been eligible? Apparently not! When he had finally resigned himself to the fact that regardless of anything he tried, she was fated to die, those bastards had taken her from him and turned her. He had finally convinced her to allow herself to die so that she wouldn't be damned and they went and screwed with his plan. He may not have been able to save her physically, but he had been winning in the battle to save her soul, dammit!

And then the murdering sons of bitches had just let her go, hadn't even tried to control her or Drusilla. And how sick was that, bringing Dru into play? They knew he'd never be able to take out his poor insane childe; his own shameful responsibility. The weight of his soulless crimes weighed heavily on his conscience. He had tried to take out Darla when she'd risen, which was a hell of a lot more than Holland Manners and his toadying little sycophants had tried.

He knew that he had been wrong in locking Darla and Dru in with that bunch of parasites, but he'd been so angry. He'd asked for them to stop the girls on their little rampage. Manners had just egged him on with his whole ‘I can't seem to care' bullshit and really, it's not like he took the girls there in the first place. He knew he should have been stronger. He had gone there to stop them, but it had been so easy to answer the call for vengeance.

Giving a heavy sigh, Angel started the car to make the short trip to the Magic Box. He only hoped that he could straighten out his thoughts before he faced his soul mate. He needed her to understand and forgive him. However, the Magic Box might mean Giles. Maybe he would try the Bronze first.

When the Bronze also held no Buffy, Angel was forced to go to the only other place he could think of her being. He grimaced as he parked the car. He hadn't really felt comfortable in the watcher's presence since the whole Angelus debacle. This was NOT going to be fun.

As Angel stepped through the door of the shop, several things happened at once.

Xander noticed him first. Every single cell in the boy's body seemed to seethe with hatred. The plethora of negative emotions that had bubbled to the surface with Buffy's earlier words seemed to erupt as he found focus. All he could see was the vampire he had longed to stake for years, the vampire that had finally acted in a manner that he could use as justification for his own actions. He totally dismissed anything Buffy had said to him. Pulling out the ever present stake that he always kept with him, Xander lunged at his target.

"NO!" Giles bellowed as the boy made his move. The ex-watcher may want the bastard dusted, but it was more important to him that Buffy want it, too.

Gunn whipped around, his speed belying his size. He clothes-lined the slightly smaller male with his left arm as he reached for the stake with his right, disarming the boy before he had a chance to think. Gunn grabbed Xander, two fists gripping tightly to the front of his shirt, and slammed him into the wall, holding him there firmly. "You better have a damn good reason for that!"

"He's a vampire, what more reason do I need?" Xander snarled, incensed that his attempt had been stymied.

Gunn effortlessly held the struggling boy in place. "Sounds an awful lot like hate there, Little Man?" he commented mildly.

Xander looked at him like he was crazy. "That would be because I hate him. You do realise that he's a vamp, right?"

"Dude, if you hate him because he's a vampire, you're a racist. Now, take a good look at the colour of my skin and tell me how I feel about racists!" Gunn said coldly.

Xander spluttered indignantly. "They don't have a race! They're vampires!"

"I have news for you, pal, if you hate vamps because of what they are rather than what they do, or you put them all in the same category...you need to realise that that's just what Hitler did and the Klan still do. A violent action because you hate is a hate crime." He stepping back from the boy, throwing his hands wide as if to say that even touching the belligerent teen disgusted him. "Me? Now if you get in my face and attack, or attack someone where I can see it, I'm gonna put you down, but not out of hate...that's the difference between a champion and a bigot. Anything you do is motivated by your intolerance. Good or bad, evil or not evil...those are human conceptions. If a vamp can understand the concept then he can make the choice, but if he can't understand then...is a lion evil? No, that gazelle is lunch, but I can't see his brothers and sisters inviting Leo to spend some quality time with them, can you?"

"You don't understand! A vamp turned my best friend and I had to dust him. I see what they do in this town. I've lost too many people because of them. I earned the right to hate them," Xander whined in return, really not happy to be treating like HE was the bad guy. Hello! Vamp in the house!

"Dude, I've lost nearly my whole neighbourhood to vamps. A vamp turned my sister and I had to dust her. I'm not saying that we should let them feed on the family, you take each case on the facts of that case, but when you start dreaming of genocide, you may as well buy your white robe and hood, skippy, 'cause you just joined the Klan."

Xander stared at Gunn, a look of horrified understanding dawning on his face.