There. I missed my usual bus home, but it's worth it.
Angel was still trying to feel some sort of jealousy, maybe just so he'd have something recognizable to feel. All he had, though, was wistfulness. He couldn't even come up with the usual annoyance at having Xander around. Maybe he'd grown up. And why did Angel hear Cordy's voice in his head saying, "Yeah, one of you grew up. I wonder which one?"
"Did you want to see the others?" he asked.
"What?" Xander glanced towards the doorway, as if expecting to see people returning. "Wesley and them? No, no need. I've got nothing to say to them. Say Hi if you think they'll care."
"Harmony will be disappointed. She gets a kick out of seeing people she used to know."
Xander smiled. "Harmony. What is my world coming to when I think of unsouled vampires and I don't automatically look for a stake?"
"Well, it is Harmony."
"Yeah." He studied the floor for several moments. "No. I don't want to see them. I won't be coming back here, no reason to talk to them."
"Not coming back? At all?"
Xander raised his head and stared at the casket. "Nothing here I care about anymore. My hometown is a smoking hole. Cordy . . . It's all gone now."
"So what will you do now?"
Xander glanced at Angel curiously. "Back to Africa, like I said. We've kind of split up the world between us, and I'm driving around the Dark Continent looking for Slayers and trouble. Which is a whole lot less in the way of wacky roadtrip hijinks than I was expecting." He shook his head. "But that's the job. At least I'm getting paid."
Angel tried to ignore the suggestion that was poking him in the soul like a well-manicured finger. He got the feeling that if he did ignore it, the urging might take on the force of a Prada-shod kick.
He cleared his throat. "You, um, don't have to go just yet, if you don't want to. I can get you back where you need to be quicker than an airline could. If you, you know, wanted to spend some time in civilization."
Xander turned completely to face him. "Angel, why the hell do you want me to hang around? Me? Xander Harris, never a member of the Angel fan club, you know."
"I know. I just thought--we could talk."
Xander blinked several times. "About what?"
Angel glanced at the casket in its tomb. The suspicion faded from Xander's face to be replaced by a rueful smile.
"I don't think so," he said with something close to friendliness. "What good would it do?"
"It's something people do when they say good-bye to a friend." Angel grimaced. "You're the only one around here who remembers her as well as I do. When you leave, when I walk out of here, she'll really be gone."
Xander's face went blank. "No use holding on. She is gone. First her, then all our memories of her when everyone who remembers is gone."
Angel nodded slightly. "Then she'll last a long, long time."
The smile he got from Xander held a bit of the old mockery. "So vampires are like elephants?"
"Yes. We never forget."
The smile went away, leaving pain. "That's too bad. Letting the memories go is the only to make the hurt stop."
Angel knew that look. It told of a man who had endured too much, who had decided that the only way to cope was not to care anymore. A man like that had lived in the Hyperion in the early 50s, and it was nearly fifty years before he larned otherwise. Xander Harris probably didn't have fifty years to get better.
"Something she told me, before--before she finally left. She asked me why I ran Wolfram and Hart, why I kept doing what I do. I said it was to help people." He very carefully didn't look anywhere other than a plain slab of marble, not wanting to see either the man with the distrustful gaze or the metal box containing his hopes. "She had to remind me that I was people, too, and that I need help sometimes, too."
"So?" The voice was a lot closer to the sullen, resentful tones of that young man who was having a hard enough time dealing with his life without having vampires messing with it.
Angel hesitated, then shrugged. "If you're too stupid to get the point, then never mind. Go back to Africa, lose yourself in the wilderness, forget everything that ever hurt and everything that ever made you you. At least you probably won't be driven to eating rats to survive." He gave Xander a straight look. "But even with everything else, I never thought you were stupid."
Xander started to speak, then shook his head and walked towards the door. After a few steps, though, he stopped. "She told me not to take it out on you. I suppose that means I should at least listen to you when you start making speeches. At least yours are shorter than Buffy's."
The name sparked uncomfortable silence, but that evened out after a couple of moments.
"How is she?" Angel asked.
Xander shrugged. "Fine the last time I talked to her, which was a couple of months ago."
"You should call her."
"Yes, mom. But there aren't a lot of cellular towers in the bush."
"Thousands of them in L.A."
"I've got a plane to catch."
"The offer of a ride back still holds."
Xander shook his head. "You have a private plane."
"I've got three. I've even got a helicopter." He managed not to smirk at Xander's look of disgruntled amusement. "I also have business cards, with my email address and my phone numbers."
"Numbers, plural."
Angel shrugged. "Harmony answers them. I can work my own email, though, finally." More memories hit, of Cordelia throwing up her hands and declaring him incapable of working any technology past the Steam Age. He shook himself, pulled a business card out of his pocket and held it out. "Go on, take it. There's a garbage can right outside you can drop it in if you like."
After a moment, Xander ste