Angel put down the phone and rubbed his eyes. It had taken him almost four hours-and if he wasn't beyond such concerns he would have shuddered to think of what his phone bill was going to be-but he had managed to get almost everything organized.

There was a room waiting for him in LA's Hilton hotel, where he would spend the day before his flight, an hour after sunset. He'd found an airline that would get him from LA to Dublin in one night, and booked a hotel room in Dublin for the day, before he took his hire car to a small village that would now be about two hours drive from Dublin. Five minutes walk would bring him to the lands that had once been his.

He needed to do some form of penance-product of an Irish Catholic upbringing, he guessed-but he didn't think that anyone in Sunnydale was ready to accept it. But there were some people that he had owed penance to for a very long time, and it was time he gave it.

Some of what he needed was already in place-he'd started on this path the long, empty summer after Buffy had killed the Master but had put it aside, when the dream of a relationship with Buffy had, against all odds, become a reality.

It was time he went back to the beginning, time he came full circle. Angel opened the drawer of his desk and took out the expensive ivory stationery that he hardly ever used. There was just one thing left to do. Even if she never wanted to see him again, there were some things Buffy deserved to know. Truth be told, he needed to tell them to her. He picked up a pen and started to write, not stopping to reread or correct. If he did, he'd lose his nerve and not write any of this at all.

Buffy walked through the falling dusk to Angel's apartment, feeling almost at peace for the first time since the night of her seventeenth birthday, when she had fallen asleep beside her lover and woken to find him gone.

When she tried the door, it was unlocked, which faintly surprised her. As she walked in the main room as quietly as possible, she smiled to herself in bittersweet satisfaction. An almost-packed suitcase lay open on the bed, with fresh clothing laid out beside it.

She could hear the shower running; she should take advantage of the opportunity to leave the diary and her note and leave while he didn't know that she was there. But she just stood there for a few seconds listening to the running water, knowing that it was Angel who stood under it, knowing that Angelus was gone.

Angel's head snapped up as he sensed someone else nearby. The tingle along his nerve endings told him it was Buffy

He slumped against the shower wall and closed his eyes. The urge to see her safe and whole was almost overwhelming; the need to see her smile at him with love in her eyes tore at his soul, but he knew that it would be long time, if ever, before Buffy smiled at him that way again.

If she stayed out there for more than a minute he would go out to face her. No matter how much he dreaded what he might say.

Buffy lifted the topmost shirt and placed the book under it. After she replaced the shirt she ran her fingertips over it. Midnight blue silk that almost whispered under her touch. She'd never told Angel, but she liked touching his clothes almost as much as she liked touching him. Then her gaze strayed to the pillow and she saw the ivory envelope resting there, with her name on it.

"Great minds think alike, huh Angel?" she whispered

Buffy picked up the envelope from the pillow, the Claddagh ring on her left hand-crown facing inward-catching the light. With a last lingering look around, she walked out, gently closing the door behind her

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