The Road Home Series:
Old Debts
by Gem

Part Two

Spike burst through the door of Angel Investigations just a few minutes before dawn, Angel reported wearily as he clasped Buffy's hand in his own.

"Oh great, break out the holy water," Cordelia wailed from the front office. "Angel, if you don't get your butt up here this instant I'm going to eat garlic bagels for breakfast every day for a month." She backed away from the door, trying to reach the filing cabinets labeled "S" (for stakes) before Spike realized what she was doing.

When Angel bolted up the stairs a moment later, Spike had Cordelia literally up against the wall. He hovered over her, blocking escape with an arm on either side of her.

"Aren't you happy to see me, pet? Your little pal Harmony seems to find me irresistible."

Angel shoved Spike away from Cordelia and swiftly inserted himself between them. Spike tried reaching around him to grab her arm, more to see what she'd do than to actually scare her. Evil intentions just gave him a headache these days, mores the pity.

"Back off, Spike," Angel snarled as he thrust Spike's arm down and away. He glanced back at Cordelia, who was using his body as a shield while she searched more thoroughly for a good stake. Filing never had been her specialty, he reflected grimly.

"I can’t believe I actually came in early to check on you and now look..." Cordelia grumbled, tossing files and assorted weaponry on the floor in her haste.

"Now, now mate, I'm not here for breakfast." Spike tried to sound reassuring, but he was much more familiar with menacing, and old habits are hard to break. "I need your help, actually. That's your gig these days, right?" He gestured to the sign on the door. "You help people."

"You're not a people," Cordelia snapped. "Great! Found it!" She waved the long-lost stake over Angel's shoulder, prompting Angel to grab her wrist before she accidentally skewered him in her zeal to intimidate Spike.

"She's right. What made you think I'd help you anyway? We didn't exactly part on good terms, if you recall." Angel forced himself to remain calm and not give in to the memories of his torture at Spike's hands. It was in the past, and he would never let himself, or anyone he cared about, be at Spike's mercy again.

"What's a few chains and red hot pokers between mates?" Spike laughed, hoping to cajole Angel into Sir Galahad mode before his sire threw him out into the ripening dawn. Time was of the essence, in more ways than one.

"Get to the point, Spike, and then get gone." Angel sat down on the edge of Cordelia's desk, but he remained poised to strike if necessary. Cordelia edged her way behind the desk and began to polish the stake with a tissue. It felt vaguely like something Buffy would do, and she seemed to be a good role model. For the current situation, at least.

Spike began to pace, trying to avoid the potential patches of sunlight while achieving maximum sound effects from the flapping of his leather duster. Any good vampire knows presentation is half the battle.

"Dru came back to Sunnydale looking for me a few days ago. I was...indisposed, and she didn't find me. I've heard from some reliable sources that someone else found her. A very nasty group of someones. They're going to hurt her." He looked at Angel, all pretense of detachment gone. "They've already gotten to me, but I can take it. She can't."

"What are you talking about? Who got to you?" Angel was very confused now, and unwillingly concerned. Spike and Dru were walking reminders of his past sins, but as such, he felt responsible for them. He owed not only a debt to those he had killed as Angelus, but also those he brought over.

"I don't know what they call themselves, but they dress like Rambo rejects. They're hanging around your girl's school nabbing demons. They take you to this big white laboratory and they...do things to you." Spike couldn't look at Angel his shame was too great.

"What kind of things?" Angel growled through clenched teeth. Spike was enough to test the patience of a saint, and Angel wasn't even close.

"I can't...I can't bite," Spike replied at last. He spoke so softly Cordelia could scarcely hear him, but he knew Angel was getting the message loud and clear. "If I try, I get these great flaming headaches." He held his head in his hands, wincing at the very memory of the pain.

"Aversion therapy?"

If Spike was talking about who Angel thought he was, a lot of little mysteries were suddenly much less mysterious. Unfortunately, they were also a lot more dangerous, particularly for Buffy. She already knew one of the commandos a little too well.

"No, it's something they put in my head. They put some bleeding buzzer or something in my head and now I have to buy blood like a crip again instead of hunting for myself. It's humiliating." He looked to Angel for some fellow feeling, not realizing he'd offered insults to his would-be savior.

"And this would be a problem because...?" Cordelia said brightly. She suddenly realized she was cleaning for no reason. The stake hit the desktop with a clatter.

"Cordelia."

She glanced at Angel in surprise. "What? Are we supposed to go on a treasure hunt for the mystical Viagara for vampires just because someone can't get his fangs up?"

"Cordelia, enough." Angel held her eyes for a moment, silently signaling caution. He turned back to Spike. "You're breaking my heart, Spike. What’s this supposed to mean for me?" He could feel Cordelia relaxing behind him, now that she believed the danger was past. Angel was fairly certain it was just beginning.

"Look, I can handle it." Spike gave up his bid for pity and came to the point. "Dru, she could never live like this. You know she lives for the hunt, you taught her the game. And it's all she has, since someone dumped all her marbles on the floor before he drank her dry." He glared at Angel, daring him to deny his responsibility.

Angel could not.

"So he actually expects us to risk our necks to save the psycho bitch, I mean Drusilla?"

Buffy's raw incredulity wrenched Angel back to the present. He met Buffy's hazel eyes squarely, willing her to see his side of the

story."I don't have a choice, Buffy. He's right, I'm responsible for her." Responsible for her life, and her death, he thought. Responsible for her remaining sanity, and the cause of there being so little left to protect.

"That is so not fair!" Buffy couldn't sit still any more. She walked rapidly back and forth, punching her fist into the opposite palm. "It wasn't you, it was never you. How long do you have to pay for what the demon did?"

"We've been over this before, Buffy." He wanted so badly to take her in his arms, and magically make it all go away. He wanted it to be two days ago, when nothing and no one existed except for themselves. Lacking both fairy dust and a temporal fold, however, he had no choice but to talk things through calmly. "We agreed we can't escape the past, and Dru is a part of that past. I can't leave her for the commandos to experiment on."

"She tried to kill you." Buffy couldn't believe her ears. "She tortured you, and tried to kill me and she killed Kendra. She deserves to die and I say let the commandos have the fun. I don't want you risking yourself for her anymore." Deep in her heart was the unasked question of why he would still be willing to.

"Are you sure your reluctance to help doesn't have a little something to do with who we'd be fighting?" Angel had his own jealousy to contend with, and even Angelus was not so difficult a demon to master. Where Buffy was concerned, he feared he would never completely subdue it.

"Okay, that would be our cue to leave," Xander said hastily, jumping to his feet. He pulled Anya up off Willow's bed as well and dragged her to the door.

"But it was just getting interesting," she protested, digging in her heels. She stared in rapt fascination at Buffy, who stood deathly silent in the center of the room.

"With these two, interesting is usually very shortly followed by bloody and life-threatening," Xander explained hurriedly. He was watching Buffy as well, and he knew the signs of an imminent explosion. He wouldn't have admitted it to another soul, but it actually made him feel better about Angel's return. She hadn't cared enough about Riley to really fight with him, and that passive attitude had permeated her existence since Angel left. It was kind of good to see the old kick-ass Buffy back, so long as his own ass was at a safe distance.

"There won't be any bloodshed, Xander," Buffy said evenly. "Angel is so very mistaken, and he will realize how stupid he sounds in just a moment." She stood rigidly still and waited for her lover to apologize, preferably on bended knee.

Angel didn't want to hurt her, but he wasn't ready to back down just yet. For all that he knew how much she loved him, a small part of him still wondered about the life she was giving up for him, and if she would regret it. Finn had been her last shot at a quasi-normal existence.

"I'm not questioning your feelings for me, Buffy. But are you so sure you're ready to go up against Finn?"

"The only thing I’m not sure about is why Spike thinks we should go to battle against my ex-boyfriend over your ex-girlfriend." Buffy didn’t even pause to think about how it would feel to fight Riley now that she knew she was fighting him. He was the least of her concerns right now. All that mattered to her was why Angel would risk all that they had for Drusilla.

Angel carefully studied his hands. "He didn’t ask for our help, he asked for mine." He looked up, holding her fast with his eyes. "I came to you, because we’re a team now. Or did something change since yesterday?"

"We so need to be going." Xander pulled on Anya’s hand with all his might, almost knocking her off her feet in his haste to leave.

"All right," Anya grumbled. She turned to Buffy as Xander pulled open the door. "We’ll be at Xander’s. Don’t wait too long to call for the meeting at Giles’, because we might be having sex."

Xander and Buffy both blushed, though they were slowly becoming accustomed to Anya’s uninhibited manner of speech. After two hundred-odd years on earth, Angel had seen, and heard, pretty much everything. At this point, only Buffy could have made him blush, if such a thing were possible for the circulation-challenged.

Buffy waited until she had recovered a little of her composure before responding. Carefully avoiding both Angel and Xander’s faces, she said, "What makes you so sure we’ll be meeting at Giles’ house?"

"Come on, Buff." Xander put aside his own embarrassment for the moment in favor of honesty. "This is Dead Boy here, not the Farm Fresh Egghead. Much as it pains me to admit it, we both know that sooner or later he’ll go all noble on us, even if it kills him. And you’ll be right there beside him to make sure it doesn’t."

Buffy smiled wearily. "When did you get so cool with the whole reconciliation idea?"

Xander shrugged, then cast a surprisingly affectionate glance at Anya beside him. "Guess I’ve learned a few things about separating the demon from the host. Plus Dead Boy lets me pick on him way more than Riley does."

"Would you please stop calling me that!"

After they left, Buffy turned slowly to Angel, who was still seated on her bed.

"The sad thing is, he’s right about us," she said quietly. "No matter what I say, you’ll go after her, and I’ll go after you. And we may both die so they don’t kill her."

"We're not talking about them killing her." He averted his eyes and stared out the window. "I wouldn’t have gotten involved if that’s all they were going to do. They will take away her ability to hunt and to feed, but they won't kill her. She'll either spend eternity locked up in a little cell, or she'll escape and starve to death. They will torture her just as surely as she tortured me, and they're supposed to be the ones with the souls." He tried to suppress the bitterness in his voice, but he couldn't quite manage it.

Buffy hurried over to rejoin him on the bed, her tender heart aching for his pain. She took one of his hands in hers and stroked his thick dark hair with her other hand. "Baby, I'm sorry," she said softly. "I know you feel responsible for what Angelus did to Drusilla, and even if you didn't you're too big of a marshmallow to let anyone suffer like that. That's part of why I love you so much."

He forced himself to smile at her words. "Marshmallow, huh? Not a whole lot of sex appeal in marshmallows." He kissed the inside of her wrist with gentle affection.

She leaned over and returned his kiss, but chose his mouth as her target. She had more than absentminded caresses on her mind. "Well, I think marshmallow topping can be kind of sexy...if you use it the right way." She pressed her body to his and gratefully followed him as he sank back on the bed.

Angel was only too happy to join her escape from grim reality for a few precious moments. "You wouldn’t happen to have any of that topping handy, would you?" He tangled his hands in her hair and cradled her head as he teased her with light kisses down her throat. "You know, just so you could show me exactly what you mean," he whispered, rolling them both over on the bed.

Buffy was prevented from replying by the untimely arrival of her roommate, and (former) best friend, Willow.

"Oh God, I’m sorry," Willow stammered, stopping in the doorway. Her boyfriend, Oz, unfortunately stopped an instant too late. He plowed into her, knocking her into the room and almost onto Buffy’s bed.

Angel rolled off of Buffy and got to his feet, pulling her up as well. While she was rearranging her clothes and putting on her boots, he tried to dispel Willow's embarrassment. It wasn't easy to do when they were both wishing they could crawl under rocks and never come out.

"It’s okay, Willow. We really don’t have time...I mean we can wait...it’s okay." He glanced over at Buffy, who was now openly laughing at his attempts to be tactful. He was tempted to challenge her to do better, but settled for grabbing her hand and kissing it.

Buffy moved closer to Angel and slid her hand through the crook of his arm. "We’re on our way out anyway, Will. We’re headed over to Giles’ for a pow-wow." She smiled at Angel in graceful surrender to the inevitable before returning her attention to Willow and Oz. "Believe it or not, the Scooby Gang needs to rescue Drusilla from somebody meaner than she is."

Willow’s jaw dropped. She tried to say something, but no intelligible words could make it past the part of her brain that froze when Buffy dropped her bombshell. She finally settled for a variety of choked gurgles.

Oz blinked.

Giles didn’t take the news nearly as well as Willow and Oz.

"You seriously want to rescue her from these commandos when they may have the means to neutralize her?" He was in full pace mode, which worried Buffy. He usually confined himself to slow strolls while reading from his beloved books. Flat out, energetic pacing signaled a serious disturbance in the Force.

Buffy glanced at Angel, silently questioning his commitment to this course. Unfortunately, the resolve in his eyes was painfully clear. She sighed and answered Giles. "We have to, Giles. She’s already bonkers, so I can’t really say it will drive her over the edge. But it’s kind of like pulling the wings off of...well, a hornet, I guess.

"Giles stopped pacing and glared at them both. "This is no joking matter, Buffy." He looked sharply at Angel. "I find it hard to believe you, of all people, would compromise Buffy’s safety for something so rash."

"Where he goes, I go," Buffy said, before Angel could reply. "He feels responsible for Dru, and I’m not going to let him get himself killed now that we’ve finally worked things out. Mi casa is his casa, or something like that."

"And we’re sure Riley is a part of this?" Willow asked hesitantly. "That’s the part I can’t believe." She blushed when she realized how that might be interpreted. "Not that I think you’re lying, or anything, Angel. And not that Cordelia would lie, well actually she might, but I mean I trust her research...well, not really, but...are we sure?" She ground to a miserable halt and stared at her shoes, too embarrassed to face her friends. Oz draped a consoling arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

"Cordelia has actually gotten pretty good with the computer, Willow you’d be proud." Angel didn't tell her of some of Cordelia's spectacular early failures he still wasn't sure that accountant wouldn't sue. "I’m sure Finn's part of a para-military group on campus, Buffy is sure the commandos have been taking the demons before she can kill them, and Spike is sure of what they will do to Dru if they have her. It all adds up." He met Giles' eyes squarely. "I wish I didn’t have to involve Buffy, but I made a promise and I’m going to honor my word this time. We’re partners, through thick and thin."

Buffy wanted to be fair. She loved Angel, and she loved her friends, but that didn’t mean they all had to love each other. She'd settle for them not trying to kill each other.

"The rest of you don’t have to do this if you don’t want. This is kind of above and beyond the call."

"She’s right," Angel added, glancing around the room. "This is my fight, not yours. That’s why I left Cordelia and Doyle back in LA."

"Oh please, like they would let you go without back-up." Anya had no use for what she perceived to be empty conventions. "We all know where Angel goes, Buffy will follow, and so will the Slayerettes. It's ludicrous to pretend anyone is going to think this through rationally."

"Thanks for the pep talk, sweetie." Xander lay what appeared to be a casual arm around her shoulders, but Anya could feel his nails digging into her arm. "Now why don't we let the planners plan and then we can get on to the dying horribly part that much sooner."

"Guys..." Buffy protested, but to no avail.

"We're going, Buffy," Willow said sternly. "Whatever help you need, you know we'll give you. Both of you. Right, Giles?" Willow shot Giles a warning look, which he missed entirely.

"This is still Drusilla we're talking about." Their casual acceptance of this mission's goal was frustrating Giles. "You were not born to save vampires, Buffy, you were born to slay them. Present company excepted, of course." He nodded courteously in Angel's direction. "You simply can't invade this laboratory, on Spike's say so, of all things, and rescue a vampire as...demonic as Drusilla. It's irresponsible."

"Giles, I never said we were going to save her." Angel's voice was quiet and steady. Only Buffy, who knew him so well, could hear the depths of his pain. "She won't survive what they would do to her, and you're right about how dangerous she is if we free her." He glanced down at his hands, tightly intertwined with Buffy's. "Whether or not we get to her before they give her the implants...we're going there to kill her. It's time." He lifted his head to meet Buffy's eyes, and saw she'd already realized his true goal.

The rest of his audience was not quite so sanguine. "You mean we're doing all this just to kill her?" Xander couldn't believe his ears. "If you had let Buffy do this a couple of years ago, we could be eating popcorn and watching ‘Old Yeller’ tonight."

"Buffy won't have to kill her, I will. I just need help getting in and out." Angel couldn't blame Xander for his anger. He had resisted killing Dru time and again out of guilt, and they had all paid a price for his weakness. Now that he had finally acknowledged his responsibility, they were still at risk.

"No." Buffy was calm, but firm. She had known Angel's motivation all along she just hadn't wanted to risk losing him over an ancient sin. Now that the die was cast, she had to find a way to make it bearable for him. "I will be the one to kill her."

"Buffy..."

She pulled one hand free of his and laid her fingers gently over his lips. "Angel, if you do it, you'll just have one more guilt trip to add to the scrapbook. I just need you to keep Spike away while I take care of things. No one should have the watch the person they love die." She didn’t elaborate but the specter of Angel’s poisoning last spring, and her own drowning sophomore year, still hung over them. She stood up and reached for the knapsack of weapons at her feet. "Let's get this done. Time it right and we could still make the last showing at the Cineplex."

Spike had arranged to meet Angel at a nearby park, where he said a storm drain led to the laboratory. Buffy had been uneasy about the plan all along, fearing a set up. The closer they got to the meeting place, the more her so-called "Spidey Sense" prickled in the back of her brain.

"I don’t know why you couldn’t have just brought Spike down from LA with you," she muttered under her breath as she scanned the eerily quiet streets. "Keeping him on a leash would have been an even better idea."

Angel was battling his own premonitions of doom. As natural as it felt to be by Buffy’s side in a fight, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was putting her in unnecessary danger. Ultimately, this was his responsibility, and he felt guilty relying so heavily on his girlfriend to bail him out.

"I needed time," he explained at last. "I wanted to come up with some sort of plan before I came to you with the problem. You know as well as I do that quiet thought and Spike do not mix."

"I’ll have to give you that one. But why did we go to Giles if you already had a plan in mind?" She looked curiously at Angel, whose face was partially obscured by the fickle moonlight.

"I was hoping he had a better one. I thought maybe he could figure out a one-man operation that might work, so I wouldn’t have to ask you to help me." He couldn’t bear to meet her eyes. She was entrusting her life to him, for the settlement of a debt that never should have touched her.

"Hey!" Her voice was sharp, and he snapped his head around at the sound. "We made some major progress when you came to me, so don’t backslide now. You accept Cordelia’s help, and Doyle’s. Would you feel better if you put me on the books as a part-time employee?" She stopped walking and waited, quite seriously, for his answer.

"That’s not fair and you know it." Even in this light, the hurt on his face was apparent. "I have never minded you helping me, or me acting as your second. But this time...it’s different. He didn’"t want to spell out what made this case so special, but he knew he didn’t need to anyway. She knew him as he knew himself.

"It’s because it’s Dru, isn’t it? You don’t want to risk my life for hers." She shifted her crossbow to one side, so she could reach up to touch his cheek. "Angel, I’m not here for her, and neither are you, really. We’re here to settle the past, and she just happens to be a part of it. We can’t move on until we deal with the old ghosts, like Dru."

"And Riley?" He watched her carefully as he asked the question. "Is he another old ghost we'll be putting to rest tonight?" Without thinking, his hand rose to lightly stroke the scar on her throat. So many ghosts lay between them already.

"Yeah, him too." Buffy smiled ruefully, acknowledging her own past mistakes. She caught his hand in hers and held it to her heart. "We both have the ex's from hell...oooh, sorry." She winced at her gaffe, but Angel didn’t seem to have made the same connection. "I wish we could just let them have a go at each other while we went to the movies.

"It does seem only fair."

"Unfortunately," she sighed, "we can't let her kill him, or let him play doctor on her. So we're forced to waste another perfectly good evening preserving the balance of power in the universe instead of supporting independent filmmaking."

"Sucks to be us." Angel smiled wryly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. He leaned down to brush a gentle kiss across her lips. When he tried to straighten up, she held his neck fast with her free hand and returned the compliment.

"Umm, guys, can we save the PDAs for a less potentially deadly situation?" Xander whined from behind them. He awkwardly shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying not to let his anxiety show too clearly. "The G-man and I would like to survive to see that movie too. You know, if Angel will spring for the popcorn and malted milk balls." He looked to Giles for affirmation.

"Quite." This was not how Giles had envisioned spending his evening either, and he was not in the mood for gratuitous sex, violence or humor. He wanted a good book, a dry sherry and a night off from demonic skullduggery. "I would have tried harder to come up with a one-man plan if I'd know this was how a group effort would evolve."

"Sorry." Buffy released Angel and tried to look as though she meant her apology. "We're still kind of new at this back-together thing. We’ve been apart for so long, and even before that we couldn’t...well, when the mood strikes it packs quite a wallop." She smiled up at Angel, silently sharing some very precious, very private, memories of that mood.

"If you could please just keep your mind on the business at hand for another hour or so?" Giles was rapidly losing patience with young love's dream. "We're only a few blocks away from the park, and once we meet Spike I should imagine things will progress fairly quickly. You can get back to your mood later, if we survive."

"He's right." Angel moved back a pace from Buffy. "We're being irresponsible. Work first, play later." He looked suitably abject when he faced Giles and Xander, but Buffy could see a glint of mischief in his eyes when he mentioned later amusements.

"I'd forgotten how you often you two mixed them up," Xander grumbled, moving his tranquilizer gun from one shoulder to the other. "Since some us forgot to bring dates, I say we get on with this. Willow and Oz have probably already staked out their end of the park and they’re wondering where the heck we are."

"All right, hi ho, hi ho." Buffy took firm hold of her crossbow as she continued under her breath, "to get the ho we go." She glanced sidelong at Angel as he strode beside her, but if he had heard her, he was ignoring it.

The rest of the journey was made in silence. It wasn’t until they reached the entrance to the park that Buffy’s prickling brain forced her to speak once more.

"I’m getting a really bad feeling here."

Angel glanced sharply at her, but Buffy shook her head. He wanted specifics, and she had none yet to give. She studied her surroundings with fierce concentration, trying to find the source of her distress. "It’s kind of fuzzy, like a dream or something, but...oh God" S...he whirled around to focus on a cluster of trees in the distance. A moment later, they all heard the scream.

Buffy signaled to Angel to approach from one side of the trees then took off at a run without waiting to see if he understood. She knew he would be there they had hunted together often enough for words to become superfluous.

Xander and Giles followed them an instant later, but the battle was in full swing by the time they arrived in the clearing beyond the trees. There were five or six vampires Xander couldn’t get a clear head count. The target was apparently a young couple out for a romantic stroll, which had turned into hide-and-seek under a park bench. There were a lot of bodies and crossbow bolts flying around, but Buffy and Angel appeared to be in full control of the situation...until the commandos burst through a break in the tree line.

Angel knew without being told that these were the men Spike had sent them to find. With their sudden presence on the scene, he lost the element of surprise, and the best part of their plan. He snarled at the young vampire trying to escape his wrath, and plunged a stake into his heart an instant later. As he turned to help Buffy, he didn’t notice he had slipped into game face.

A few minutes later it was all over. The ground was sprinkled with ashes of slow-moving vampires, the commandos had vanished and the young couple whose presence precipitated the attack was stumbling back to their parked car. Buffy finally paused for a breath and took a long look around the moonlit park.

"Angel? Angel, where are you?"

Part Three

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