(continued)
She hadn't even noticed they'd arrived; Buffy Sixteen-Going-On-Seventeen had been so lost in her beatific dream of Non-Slayerhood that she'd followed Angel down into his crypt. He'd already taken his shirt off - Jesus wept, he had the most amazing chest ever and she was cold, no, she was hot -
It happened naturally, Sixteen-Going-On-Seventeen the same endearing mixture of shy and eager as anyone else. The cold wet clothes slipped down her skin - he warmed her despite his own perpetual chill, lips finding the rosy gold of her skin, touching breast and belly. Happy birthday me and I don't give a shit about tomorrow, I don't, nothing can come close to this, the entire universe can pop like a zit and I don't care, I don't, oh God oh Angel....
Afterward, they lay spooned, his lips rhythmically brushing her bright tangled hair as she slept. Eventually, curled to protect her against what might come, he slept as well.
- * *
Outside in the churchyard, Jenny Calendar held an orb in her hands. She had been whispering a spell since moments after slipping into the deep shadow of the stairs to Angel's crypt.
Defying her uncle had not been a small thing. Yes, the honour of the tribe was important to her - how not? After hundreds of years of persecution, after near-decimation by Hitler and centuries of being belittled, used, abused, chased from town to town, honour was the tribe's currency, their memory. Jenny Calendar - the Janna of her tribe, the witch, the girl with the knowledge and power of the phurai dai, the wise woman of the Romanies - did not take that lightly. And debts were debts.
But she owed more recent debts, and in the end, those had overshadowed the debt to the girl Angelus had raped to death, as he drained her. She owed, not Angelus, but Angel; she owed Buffy. Certainly, she owed Rupert, in the best way.
So she stood in a dark space and whispered the spell, over and over, the spell that would undo the curse that poor murdered child's family had laid upon Angelus the destroyer, two centuries past. She held the orb, the soul catcher, breathing her spell, hoping its use would not be necessary.
She stayed there until daybreak. As the sun broke the planes of the eastern horizon, she slipped away, leaving Buffy slumbering peacefully, with the still-ensouled Angel pressed against her.
- * *