He set his milk down on the coffee table and sat on the couch. Buffy curled up on the opposite ends, her legs tucked under her. She'd changed in so many ways since he'd last seen her, but she still looked like the eighteen year-old who'd given him hell. Not that he could blame her for her truculence in those days. He'd changed quite a lot himself, in ways both physical and emotional.
"How's Angel?" she said, fingers pulling apart a cookie and extracting the chips.
"He's well, all things considered."
"His son?"
"They'll probably never be close, but neither one of them's trying to kill the other at the moment, which is a vast improvement over the status quo."
She looked up at him. "I'm sorry about Cordy. I know you guys were friends."
There were several possible responses, most of which involved blood and regrets, but he simply said, "Yes, we were," and left it at that. He broke a cookie in half and dunked it in his milk, marveling at the way that the two went so well together. A simple pleasure, but he'd learned that simple pleasures were really all one could depend on.
Buffy's laugh surprised him. "What?" he mumbled, mouth still full of cookie.
"I never thought I'd see you sitting on my couch, shoveling cookies into your mouth."
He swallowed. "I beg your pardon, I am not shoveling. Besides, the cookies were your idea."
"Cookies make everything better. We've gone through about a million chips this year."
"I wish I'd known that. We could have used some cookies ourselves."
"Dueling apocalypses. Not much fun."
"No," he agreed, and closed off that avenue of conversation. Soon enough they'd run out of things to discuss, but he thought he'd prefer sitting in silence to discussing how he'd spent the past year any further.
He looked around the living room. It bore no signs of the recent battle he knew had taken place, no indication that a man, a vampire, and five young girls had died within its walls.
He realized that he didn't particularly want to discuss that topic either. "Why did you call?" He'd gotten a message on his answering machine with no warning and few details.
"It's about the girls. The potentials. I want to set up a school."
He blinked, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and considered the idea for a moment. Buffy sat silently while he thought, still playing with her cookie and exuding a quiet confidence. She certainly had changed.
"Because the Council is gone?" he asked.
She nodded. "We hear that someone's trying to rebuild it, but that'll take years, and the potentials still need to be trained and protected."
"And how do you plan to fund this school?"
"I got a call from a lawyer a few weeks ago. Except he called himself a 'solicitor'. Giles left everything he had to me." She tried to smile, and he remembered the days when he might have reached out to comfort her, however ineffectually.
"Anyway, the house next door is for sale. I guess my neighbors finally decided that living next to me wasn't such a good idea. If I buy it, we should have enough space to house and train everyone."
It was an audacious idea. "Who else would participate?"
"Willow can teach some basic magic -- nothing big, but some protection spells, stuff like that. Maybe more for the girls who don't get chosen and decide they want to become Watchers."
"Combat?"
"You're pretty much looking at her. Xander wants to help, but he's still adjusting to the whole one-eyed thing. It's been five months, and he hasn't stopped making Borg jokes." At his puzzled look, she added, "Don't ask."