All The Difference

TITLE: All the Difference (1/1)

AUTHOR: Nynaeve

RATING: PG

KEYWORDS: angst, romance; Spuffy fic

TYPE: post-ep

SUMMARY: alternate scene right after conclusion of "End of Days"/beginning of "The Chosen."

DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere. Just drop me a line please so I can visit. Also all my work is
archived at my soap site: www.dnafan.com. Click on link for Nynaeve's fan fiction.

DEDICATION: Alyssa, Wen and Kris.

NOTE: Honest to God, this was written four days before the finale aired and I just didn't have time
to post it until now. I've changed nothing of what I wrote.

All the Difference

Angel's arms tightened around Buffy as he kissed her with a half-forgotten fervor. She
was slender and pliant against him as all the passion between them flared into life
once more.

Then she pulled away, turned, stumbled.

He reached for her, to steady her, but missed. Her steps, uncertain as they were, had taken
her from him. "Buffy? What is it? Is something wrong?"

She bent her head for a moment. When she spoke again her voice rang with a false
brightness. "I'm fine. W- um - not fine really. Apocalypse coming and all and..."
She swung around. "And - uh - I'm - How's Cordelia?"

Angel gave her a strange look. There was something in her expression. He tried to
keep his tone noncommittal. "Comatose. Why?"

"Comatose? I don't understand. Willow and Faith said-"

"It's a long story."

Buffy nodded. "When isn't it?"

Angel looked at her, studied her guarded face. Only she couldn't hide her eyes, couldn't
keep from him their pain and fear and doubt... and glimmer of hope. The last time he'd
seen her look like that she'd run a sword through him and sent him to hell. "If she wakes-
*When* she wakes up, you can come for visit. She'd like that."

Buffy snorted - softly. "I doubt that."

"Of course she would."

The blond shook her head. Her voice grew softer in the torch-lit crypt. "You love her."

"No! Why would you ask that-?"

"It wasn't a question, Angel. You love her."

The vampire was silent for a few moments. "It's different. With her." He paused. "How did
you know?"

Buffy shrugged. "Willow... and Faith. They didn't tell me anything, but it got kinda obvious from
what they wouldn't say."

"Buffy, I'm sorry. You're still my-"

"Don't. Angel, don't." She turned away again.

"Don't what? Don't say you're still my girl?"

She winced. And nodded. "And don't apologize."

"But-" Angel covered the distance between them and grabbed her arm, making her face him once more.
"Buffy, you are. You'll always be. Yeah, I've - Cordy - She changed." His brow furrowed. "And
then she changed some more and the first time was good; the second time not so much. That's not
the point. Yeah, I - I have feelings for her, but you - and me - Buffy, if the world ends tonight, I want
it to end with you."

She smiled at him, a frozen aching look. "Do you remember what you said to me in the sewer? When you
told me you were leaving Sunnydale. Leaving me."

Angel bowed his head.

"You said, 'I don't.'" Her voice thickened with tears. "I told you I wanted my life to be with you and
you said, 'I don't.' That's what you told me, Angel."

"I - I didn't mean it. Not the way you thought."

She wrenched free. "I know. I figured that out. It took me a while, but I figured it out. You *let* me
think you didn't want to be with you so I would go on with my life. And see, the thing is, I did."

He reached for her, but she stepped back. "But, Buffy, we're -"

"No, we're not. It's never going to work, Angel, not the way you want it to. Not in the way I wanted -
somewhere deep down still want and will always - it to. But that doesn't matter. We can't ever
have - it won't work. You told me that."

"You didn't want to believe me."

She shook her head. "No, I didn't. But I know that you were right."

"I was stupid."

"No. Right. You were right. Just maybe not for the reasons you think."

"Why don't you enlighten me?" He hadn't meant the edge of sarcasm he heard in his voice.

"I love you, Angel. I always will. Probably more than I can ever love anyone else in this world."

"Then why-?"

"But we've made different choices - different roads or something."

"Robert Frost." Angel's voice sounded tired.

"Who?"

He shook his head. "There's a poem. He wrote... this poem. About roads."

"Oh." Buffy grimaced. "I probably missed English that day."

"Buffy, we - we went down different paths, but that doesn't mean we can't be together-"

"It does mean that, Angel. It means exactly that. You were right." She smiled again, the same
frozen, aching curve of her lips. "You *were* right. Maybe not for the reasons you thought,
but that doesn't matter. I've learned a lot - about life - and death - my friends. Most of all
about who I am." She took a breath. "I'm not always proud of who I've been. Or am. I
haven't always liked myself. I've done things - things I don't want to talk about. But I've also
made a lot of choices, a lot of hard choices. And I've screwed up sometimes, but I think,
in the end, I've made the right choices when I had to, when it really mattered."

"Dawn." Angel wanted to hold her again, to smoothe her hair, but he kept his hands balled into
fists at his side lest she push him away again. "When you sacrificed yourself to save her."

Buffy nodded. "That's one of them. Those choices have made me strong, Angel."

"You've always been strong."

She shook her head. "Not like this. And the thing is - I didn't believe, didn't see maybe until
last night even, how much I can handle."

Angel gazed at her.

"You love me. I know that. But you've always protected me - tried to. To keep my heart
warm and safe - you told me that once, too."

"I didn't know that was a problem."

She came to him and took his hands. "Angel, you tried to keep me safe from myself."

"Because I love you."

"I know. And because you didn't believe in me."

"Buffy! That's not true!"

She dropped his hands. "Isn't it?"

"No!" Angel glared at her now.

"Then why didn't you tell me about the day you were human and we were together?"

His face gave the sensation of paling, even though given his vampiric complexion that was nearly
impossible. "How did you...?"

"When I was dead. I remembered it."

"You didn't say anything."

The Slayer shrugged. "I couldn't. At first I could barely deal with being alive again. Trying to deal
with - other things - that came later."

"That doesn't mean I don't believe in you, in your strength."

"But it does. In some way, it does."

"Buffy, I've always told you how strong I think you-"

"Told me, yeah. Meant it? I don't know anymore, Angel. Deep down. After you left -
the first time you came back it was because that friend of yours had some vision of me
being in danger."

"And you were."

She brushed aside his interruption. "The next time was after we had that - in L.A., when Faith -
you came to apologize. In person."

"There's something wrong with that?"

"You came back when my mom died."

"Because I wanted to be there for you!"

Her eyes dimmed with tears. "Because *I* needed you, Angel? Or because *you* needed
to prove something?"

"That's not fair."

She shrugged. "The thing is - those were big moments. Events with a capital "E," I guess.
You came back, made sure Buffy could go on without you for a little bit longer-"

"It wasn't like that!"

A tear escaped her eye. "Are you sure?"

"Buffy... how can you say this?"

She hesitated. "Because, Angel, my life has never been about "events," with a capital "E," or anything
else. My life has been a battle almost every day since I became the Slayer-"

Angel's eyes blazed. "I know that! I saw you called, remember?"

She nodded, weeping. "And yet you left."

"Because I knew you could handle it."

She shook her head. "Because you couldn't."

His face was perplexed.

"I know being here, being with me - loving me - isn't easy." He reached for her again, but she
threw off his effort. "No, let me finish. I know that, Angel. I've been self-involved, superior,
bossy - according to Dawn, and I've made some stupid choices. And I think that when it got
difficult... I think you left." She brushed away a tear. "I needed someone, Angel. Someone to take
away the darkness - or someone who understood it, understood me."

Angel's eyes grew flinty. "Riley-"

"Not Riley. And I hurt him."

"I don't...."

"Spike."

"Spike? Spike?" Angel gaped at her, unable to find anything else to say. "He came back here to kill you!"

The blond Slayer shrugged again. "Doesn't matter why he came back. He stayed and - things
happened. A lot of it wasn't good. But - this last year... this has been-" she snorted. "It's been
hell and Spike's been here. It hasn't been easy for him. He went and got his soul back - for me.
He chose that, Angel. Spike chose *me.*"

Angel said nothing - what could he say?

Buffy walked away from him, a few steps. "When things got tough, he stayed. And-" she smiled for
the first time. "And he believes in me."

"He says he does."

The girl shook her head. "I know he does. He resisted the First because he believed in me."

A moment flashed through Angel's mind - his own weakness, the night he fell prey to the First's
manipulations.

From behind the pillar where Spike listened and watched, he flicked up his eyebrows at the Buffy-apparition
in front of him. It disappeared. The blond vampire smiled.

Angel stared at Buffy's back. "Can we talk about this after you save the world?"

She looked over her shoulder. "There won't be anything to talk about then. I told you - I'll
always love you, Angel. More than I thought possible, but some things aren't meant to be.
We both need to move on."

He shook his head. "I don't want to."

She kept her voice very soft. "I do." She looked at him for a long moment. "Will you stay?
We need every fighter we can get."

Angel nodded. He pointed to Caleb's corpse. "You should make sure he's not coming back."

One blow from the scythe removed the preacher's head from his torso. Gruesome though it was,
Angel grasped the head by its hair and left the mausoleum. He and Buffy had agreed they'd better not
take any chances - the body and head would be kept separate. Willow might even be able to perform
a spell on - it was too grim to think about. Angel focused instead on how he would convince Buffy -
once this was over - that she was wrong.

Buffy stood in the center of the stone room once Angel had gone. She waited a moment, then took a
breath. "You can come out, Spike."

He came toward her, his face chagrined, but his eyes alight. She met him halfway. As she slid into
his arms she whispered, "I meant every word."

He brushed her golden hair. "I know." He looked down into her eyes. "And it made all the difference."

END