Alianne woke up long before I did. And as hard as she tried to be quiet, that is something it's quite impossible to keep up for too long when you're twelve. I know. I remember. When I finally managed to force my eyes open and actually keep them open I found her sitting on her bed, fully dressed, watching me.

"Well, at least you don't snore," she said by way of greeting.

It hadn't been _that_ long since I'd been pushing thirteen and I knew better than to let that pass. "Thank you," I said gravely. "I've been practising not breathing when I sleep. It's a good cure for the snoring."

She blinked, then she smiled shyly. "Are you really a ballerina?" she asked curiously and I realised I'd passed the test. She was willing to give me a chance to be her friend, and I found myself delighted beyond measure at the honour.

"No." I pulled myself into a sitting position and shook my head. "But I am a ballet dancer. I don't perform, I just dance because I love it."

"Mommy and Daddy are taking me to see _Sleeping Beauty_ in Los Angeles for my birthday. We're going to stay with Uncle Wesley and go shopping and go out to tea and _everything_." She sighed suddenly. "I want to learn ballet, but Mommy says I'm too scatterbrained. And she says I have the power to be a witch like her and if I don't learn how to use it properly I'll do things without meaning to and that would be bad."

"Well, you do need to be dedicated to be a dancer," I said gravely, deciding not to mention my own scatterbrained phase or the fact that generally, _witch_ would probably be a long way down most parents' list of possible careers for their daughter. Ironically, this revelation that Willow was a witch didn't surprise me at all. In the last couple of days I'd helped kill a demon, met a vampire (with a soul no less), a Vampire Slayer and two ex-Watchers - why not add a witch or two to my collection of unusual new acquaintances?

"Do you practise every day?"

"I try to," I told her. "Sometimes I don't get the chance, but I do try."

"Like Aunty Buffy," Alianne said thoughtfully. "Only she does fighting stuff. She lets me watch sometimes. Can I watch you?"

I looked at her more closely. She was finely boned like her mother, with an underlying strength she probably got from her father. She was fit and slim and the way she was sitting on her bed, with her feet unconsciously tucked into a basic yoga position suggested she was pretty flexible too. Assuming Giles and Willow had a back yard with some suitable soft grass, it wouldn't hurt to teach her a few basic positions and stretches. "How would you like to have a first, unofficial lesson?" I asked. "And after _Sleeping Beauty_, if you really want to try, you could talk to your mom again."

"That's two whole _months_ away," she said with another sigh, then her face brightened. "But you could talk to Mommy for me now."

"Let's just start with the lesson," I suggested quickly, knowing better than to get involved in family disputes I didn't know anything about.

She looked a little disappointed, but she soon grinned at me. "Okay, what do I wear?"

After a few false starts, Alianne proved to be an apt pupil. Which was a good thing, because I wasn't confident I was an apt teacher. Sure, the basics were the basics, but they had been drilled into me so long ago that I no longer thought about them consciously. Where to put my feet, how to hold my arms - I didn't think about it, I just did it. Trying to explain it all to Aly, I found I suddenly couldn't remember anything at all.

But we persevered, and after a few stumbles and tumbles Aly got the hang of the first position, heels together with her toes pointing outwards. She managed it with a bit of arm waving to keep herself upright, and slowly found her balance enough for me to work her through the basic arm positions too. She certainly had enough natural talent to make taking some classes worthwhile, but that was something for her and her parents to decide, not me, and I didn't say anything about it, just congratulated her on each new position she mastered.

With her in her bare feet, I didn't really want to do much more than the basic positions, but I knew she would probably find that kind of boring, so we compromised and I finished off by teaching her a curtsey and how to walk with her toes pointed, placing her toes on the ground before her heels. We each curtseyed gravely to the other and then she grinned and went walking around the garden, careful to keep her steps light, the way I had shown her.

Beside me, I heard a low chuckle, and turned to see Willow watching us. "You do realise we're never going to hear the end of this now, don't you?"

"Oh," I said apologetically. "Oh, I'm sorry. I only..."

She shook her head. "It's all right. Rupert and I had already decided to let her take classes. Just don't tell her. It's part of her birthday present."

"Along with _Sleeping Beauty_ and shopping in LA," I said.

"You heard all about that?" Willow asked with a laugh.

I nodded. "In great detail."

She smiled again, before calling out to her daughter. "Aly! Come on. It's time to come in and pack or you won't be ready when Dara gets here."

Alianne looked up, a frown of concentration still on her face, and walked carefully back to us. She had a good natural posture and would probably do quite well if she decided she did want to take up ballet. "Did you see me, Mommy? Annie's teaching me."

"So I see," Willow agreed. "Now go on, upstairs with you and get packing while Annalise and I make lunch. If you're not ready, you don't go camping."

That was a serious threat. She abandoned being a dancer and turned back into the whirlwind I had first met the night before, bounding up the stairs with enthusiasm.

"She makes me feel old and tired sometimes," Willow said with a motherly smile as I followed her into the kitchen. "I've never quite dared ask Rupert if she has the same effect on him. But I suspect she does."

"Where is everyone?" I asked as she handed me a loaf of bread and a wicked looking knife and instructed me to start slicing.

"Angel's sleeping. He got back early this morning after seeing Buffy home. He was covered in gore, but they killed the demon." She laughed as she pulled a variety of packets and bags out of the refrigerator. "It was rather like old times in a way. Angel occasionally came and stayed at the old place, so when we moved we made sure the spare room could be blacked out in case he visited us here. We just never expected him under circumstances like these. Especially since he and Buffy usually avoid each other."

"Why?" I said, asking the question I hadn't dared to ask of anyone else. "When she came in it was like they both caught on fire, then they started arguing."

Willow dumped her armful on the counter and looked at me. "Buffy and Angel is an epic tragedy that it would take several years to explain, if it was even my place to explain it, which it isn't. The very, very short version is that they were a couple when we were in high school. But some bad things happened, they found they couldn't be together and now they try to stay away from each other." Her eyes went distant for a moment. "Although Angel just proved he still loves her and I think she still loves him. She just won't ever admit it."

"Oh," I said quietly, surprised at how much I could hurt for two people I had only just met.

"Yeah," Willow agreed. "Oh." She went to one of the cupboards and started pulling out plates. "As for everyone else, Rupert and Wesley went to the Museum to look at some very musty old book that has had Rupert in raptures for weeks. I don't quite know how Wes is going to get back because Rupert is going to go by Buffy's place and pick her up. He said he didn't want anyone else along and I think he wants the two of them to have a strategy discussion before they face the rest of us."

"You know something," I said suspiciously.

Willow put down the plates and faced me, her expression serious. "Annalise, I know _some_thing. After last night I'm beginning to wonder if the thing I know is true or not. I don't know what the _real_ thing is and I'm not going to confuse you with my suspicions. So I'm sorry Annie, but we're both just going to have to wait until they all get back and decide to tell us."

I sighed and held out a hand for whatever needed slicing next. "Yeah," I agreed. "We wait." And if I was totally honest with myself, a part of me was glad for the reprieve. I wanted my answers, but I was afraid of them too. What if I didn't like them?

Lunch had been eaten and Aly had been driven away by her friend Dara's father amid a flurry of hugs and goodbye waves in which I had found myself automatically included.

Now we were all sitting in the Giles' living room, waiting for a storm to break.

Angel - among his friends who knew him that way I found I was thinking of him more as Angel than as Liam now - was sitting in an armchair carefully out of the sunlight. Willow had pulled the curtains too, as an extra safety precaution. Buffy who was sitting beside Giles on the sofa, as if his presence gave her an extra dose of strength she felt she was going to need. Wesley, Willow and I were scattered on chairs around the rest of the room and Markie was sitting on the coffee table, the _Angel Investigations_ card at his well-patched feet.

The silence grew, becoming increasingly more uncomfortable by the moment. Finally, Giles turned to Buffy. "Do you want me to begin?" His voice was indescribably gentle and it made my throat tighten and my pulse race.

"No." Buffy's voice was tight. "No, I have to. So I might as well just start." As if it was an instinctive reaction, a child's source of comfort, she picked Markie up and started turning him over in her hands. "His name's Mr Gordo," she said almost absently. "Or at least, that's what I called him when I was three." She looked at me and took a deep breath. "I'm the one who gave him to you." Another, even deeper breath. "You see Annalise, I'm your mother."

I stared at her in silence, my heart thudding in my chest and my stomach doing flip-flops. I'm not stupid, so yes, I had been half-expecting this, but to hear it actually said was something else altogether.

"I know," she said bitterly. "Big disappointment, huh?"

I tried to shake my head, still feeling like I was in shock. I had come to America for this, and now I was hearing it, I couldn't believe it was happening. "I... No... Um..." I finally looked up at her. "How?"

"If you don't know that at your age, sex education in New Zealand can't be up to much." It was an instinctive reaction, a snappy, smart mouth remark that let her avoid answering the real question, and a moment later she shut her eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for." For someone who spent her nights out slaying evil, she looked almost unbearably vulnerable.

Somehow, I managed to smile and get some words out around the lump in my throat. "It's okay. That sounds like something my dad would say. I'm think I'm immune."

I got a very small, wry smile in return and I was startled to recognise it as one I saw occasionally in the mirror. My stomach did another somersault and I could only stare at her, totally unaware that that same smile was on my own face.

Angel's voice broke the silence, confused and hurt. "Buffy? You had a baby?" The hurt turned into a lost kind of pain. "And you never told me?"

Buffy sighed. "At the time I would have been quite happy if I could have gotten away with not telling anyone at all."

Wesley, who had been doing a particularly good imitation of a stranded fish, turned accusing looks on Giles and Willow. "You don't look particularly surprised, either of you."

Giles just shrugged, while Willow looked down at her hands. "I knew there was a baby," she admitted. She glanced up at her friend, who very carefully wasn't looking at her, or at anyone else in the room. "But I'm beginning to wonder if what I know is the real story."

Buffy had the grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry, Wills. There were reasons we didn't tell you all of it."

"We being you and Rupert?"

"Yeah," Buffy agreed quietly.

"Things were different then, love," Giles said softly, giving his wife an apologetic look.

She waved that away as if he was being particularly dense. "I know that. It was you and Buffy back then. Watcher and Slayer."

"Ex-Watcher and ex-Slayer," Giles pointed out mildly.

"Almost totally ex," Buffy said , her voice full of self-derision. "I was doing a very good job of ignoring you until I got into trouble and needed your help."

Giles shrugged again without answering and Buffy gave him a grateful smile that spoke volumes I knew I would never be able to understand.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Angel asked into the silence. "You know that's what I wanted for you - to be able to have a normal relationship, the chance for a future and a family. It's why I left." His tone turned bitter. "You could at least have told me my sacrifice was worth it."

"I didn't ask you to leave me," Buffy pointed out tightly. "And do the math. It was in my freshman year, when I still had this broken-into-a-million-pieces-by-Angel heart. I was too hurt and too embarrassed to tell you."

Angel stared at her. "Why would you be embarrassed? You know I wanted you to be happy. Even if it _was_ with that Finn person."

"Parker the Poophead," Willow muttered softly - clearly without thinking because a moment later she turned scarlet and shut her mouth very abruptly.

"His name was Riley," Buffy said sharply at the same moment. She grimaced. "And no, we never..." She trailed off. "Well, we just never."

Wesley looked from Buffy to Willow, a puzzled expression on his face. "Who's Parker?"

Willow pulled a rude face and Buffy sighed again.

"Someone I met on the rebound," she said in that same I-was-so-stupid voice she had used before. "He came on really nice, he made me feel special again." She raised her hands and let them fall again. "I slept with him, I got pregnant. A not uncommon story, even if it doesn't say much for my taste and good judgement."

Suddenly, words spilled out of me, as if they had been backed up behind the seemingly permanent lump in my throat and had finally, inexorably broken free. "Is that why you gave me away? Because you didn't like him and he'd made you look stupid? Why didn't you just have an abortion and be done with it?" I asked bitterly.

Buffy looked like I'd slapped her in the face - with a large tree trunk - but I didn't care.

"Well?" I demanded harshly.

She opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out at first. "No..." she managed finally, her voice barely audible. "No, it wasn't like that."

"It was the Council," Willow broke in, clearly trying to ease the tension in the room. She gave her husband a sharp look. "It was the Council, wasn't it? That's what you told us at the time."

"It was the Council," Giles agreed.

"The who?" I asked.

"The Council of Watchers," Giles said, his voice suddenly sounding tired. "The organisation Wesley and I used to work for. Theoretically, it's their job to support and assist the Slayer. Somewhere along the way, they got the idea it was the other way around."

"You thought the Council would want to study the baby?" Wesley asked in a horrified tone.

Buffy looked up at him, her gaze suddenly direct and piercing. "No," she said flatly. "We thought they'd try to take her away from me. The Council of Watchers was _not_ having my baby. I was prepared to send her away before letting them get their grubby little hands on her."

"So you just dumped me," I said bitterly.

"No!" Buffy declared vehemently, looking at me with hurt in her eyes. "No, never. That wasn't the plan at all, it was just..."

"Buffy," Giles interrupted gently. "You're getting ahead of yourself."

She swallowed convulsively and looked pleadingly at the man beside her. "Do I have to?" she asked in a voice that made her sound more like Alianne's age than her own. "Can't you do it?"

He shook his head. "No, you have to do it. Go on. Now's the time to tell the truth."

For a moment she looked mutinous, then she rubbed her hands across her face, took a deep breath and nodded. "Maybe half way through the pregnancy I started having dreams," she said. "Ones that felt like prophecy dreams." I must have looked totally confused, because she actually managed to smile. "It's a Slayer thing," she explained. "Sometimes I dream real things. Things that are going to happen." She paused. "Or things that have already happened."

Angel suddenly went completely, totally still. "What did you dream?" he asked in a voice that was much, much too level.

Buffy smiled ruefully and glanced at Giles. "He's quick, isn't he? That probably deserves some kind of prize."

She looked back at Angel and her smile turned brittle and hard. "Why didn't you tell me, you bastard? I said I wouldn't forget, and you let me. How could you do that to me?" Just as suddenly, her face softened again. "How did you carry that all alone for all this time?"

"Is anyone else completely lost, or is it just me?" Willow asked tentatively into the silence that followed. Wesley put a hand in the air. Neither Angel nor Giles even moved.

Buffy turned to face her friend. "Do you remember how I went to LA, Thanksgiving our freshman year?"

Willow frowned, sifting through twenty-odd years of memories, and finally she nodded. "You went to see Angel, didn't you? But..." She trailed off, a look of dawning realisation on her face. "But you said you only saw him for _five minutes_. And besides, he's a vampire."

"I thought I only saw him for five minutes," Buffy said. "But I was wrong. It happened differently the first time."

"The first time?" Wesley queried sounding a little put-out, and I realised there were some things he didn't know about his friend and former employer. Something it was clear he had just discovered himself.

"It's complicated," Angel said quietly. "Buffy and I fought a Mohra demon. When I killed it some of its blood mixed with mine." He looked down at his hands as if he was seeing them for the very first time. "It made me human."

"Oh," Willow said softly. "Oh, wow." Which pretty much summed up how I was feeling.

A look of immense pain crossed his face. "But being human made me vulnerable. Because I was vulnerable, Buffy was vulnerable. And the demon said the end times were coming and Buffy would die."

"So he did the heroic sacrifice thing again and asked the Oracles to turn him back," Buffy finished, and her voice was half angry, half proud.

"They said they couldn't do that," Angel added, carefully not looking at her. "They told me the only way to undo things was to roll the day back and to make it as though it had never been. They said I would be the only one who would ever remember it, so I could make sure it didn't happen again. I wasn't supposed to ever tell you, and I didn't."

"Well, your Oracles messed it up," Buffy said ironically. 'I got pregnant. And because I didn't remember, I figured the baby," she looked up at me and smiled without realising she was doing it, "had to be Parker's. The dates weren't perfect, but they were close enough and it wasn't as if there were any other options."

"Until you started dreaming," Wesley said quietly.

"Not Parker's," Willow whispered. "Never Parker's."

"No," Buffy said with that same soft smile. "When I remembered, I realised I wasn't carrying Parker's baby, I was carrying Angel's." She looked at me, then at Angel, as if we were both some kind of mirage that would disappear if she blinked. "I was thrilled. I was furious. I was terrified. My first reaction was to go straight to LA and chew Angel out for not telling me about the day."

"I'm surprised you didn't," he said ironically.

She actually laughed. "Me too. But I started thinking. I did a lot of thinking. And I realised that if the Council might want the Slayer's baby - what about the Slayer's baby with a vampire who was human when she was conceived on a day that had never happened?"

"When you put it like that," Wesley commented, "it makes me remember what a bizarre world we live in."

"That's me," Buffy agreed, sounding vaguely amused. "Queen of Bizarre." But now she was finally telling the story, she wasn't going to be deterred or side-tracked. "As well as the Council, there were also my ordinary, everyday enemies and I knew Angel had his share of those too. And they'd all be more than ready to attack us through our child. So then I was _really_ terrified."

"And that's when you went to Rupert," Willow said matter-of-factly.

Buffy nodded. "That's when I told Giles the entire story and we decided never to tell anyone the whole truth, in the hope the lie about Parker would help keep the baby safe."

"We came up with a plan," Giles said, taking up the tale. "It even seemed like a good plan at the time. We agreed to let everyone believe the baby was Parker's and that Buffy, being young and unmarried and not wanting anything to do with the father, had decided to give the child up for adoption." He looked at me, and shrugged kind of apologetically. "But you were never meant to be _really_ adopted."

I was beginning to believe them. I _had_ been wanted, but perhaps they had been right and I had needed to be protected even more than I had been wanted. "What went wrong?" I asked.

Giles sighed and spoke directly to me. "We gave you to a friend of mine, another ex-Watcher. There were beginning to be a few of those as people started realising how corrupt the Council had become. The idea was that he and his wife would keep you for a few years and then bring you back to Buffy. We'd see how the wind blew with regard to the Council and Buffy would use the time to make sure she was in a position where she could protect you properly."

"When William came I didn't want to give you to him," Buffy said in a voice that shook. "You were so tiny and so beautiful. You had your father's eyes. You were a little bit of him, the only bit I had left. And you were mine and wanted to hold you and never let you go. Or run away with you and never come back." She swallowed convulsively. "But William said the Council was already on his heels and I had to let you go. I gave you Mr Gordo, because I wanted you to have _something_ that was mine, and it was Giles' idea to give William card, so that he could go to Angel for help if he needed to. And at the very last minute, I gave William my ring, just in case something happened and I never got to give it to you myself." She was crying now, silently, tears running down her cheeks, and Giles pulled her against his side, putting a comforting arm around her shoulders before finishing the story.

"Two weeks later we heard William had been found in a ditch with his throat cut. There was no sign of you. I called in every contact and favour I had, trying to find out if the Council had you, but it didn't appear that they did. They were as frantic as we were and you'd just vanished off the face of the Earth."

I shook my head, feeling rather like crying myself. "Not really. Just to the other side of it. Mom and Dad moved about two months after they adopted me and they never came back."

"I'm sorry," Buffy said suddenly, her voice muffled by the fact she was talking into Giles' sweater. He disentangled her gently, forcing her to sit up and face us. "I'm sorry," she said again, the tears still streaming down her face. "I did what I thought was right at the time. I was nineteen and I was afraid they were going to hurt my baby and I would have done anything to keep her safe. But I did the wrong thing and I'm sorry and I love you both so much." The words tumbled out, mixing with her tears, and I knew, in one of those moments of perfect clarity, that everything she had said was true. This was my mother and she loved me, had always loved me and missed me and wished things had been different.

Angel looked like he was torn between going over and comforting her and going into total shock. In the end, he didn't do either. He got half way across the room and stopped, turning to me instead. Some unspoken understanding passed between the pair of them and Buffy stood, walking to join him, and they both came to stand together in front of me. Angel crouched down beside my chair and reached out one hand, his fingers softly brushing my cheek, the touch as gentle as if I was made of glass.

"Iníon," he said softly.

I was too stunned by the emotion in his voice to reply, but from behind him Buffy asked quietly, "What?"

"My mother called my sister Kathleen that. It means..." He paused, a look of wonder crossing his face. "...It means daughter." He looked at me again, his expression unchanged. "Iníon. I have a daughter." He finally tore his gaze away from me to look at Buffy. "No," he said softly. "_We_ have a daughter."

"We have a daughter," she agreed brokenly. She looked at me and I was stunned by the look in her eyes, full of love and regret and fear. "The most beautiful daughter in the world. Who, if she has any sense, probably doesn't want anything to do with either of us."

I looked at them both in turn - at my father and my mother. There was so much between them that it was almost scary; fire and passion, heartache and pain, and a love so deep neither would ever recover from it. Normal, everyday people like me don't ever feel a love like that, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I would want to. But to see it in two others, in my parents, to see the love and the emotion that had made me... There was something awe-inspiring in that.

I slipped the claddah ring off my finger and held it out to Buffy, surprised to see my hand was shaking. "I think you should have this back," I said softly.

She looked at it for a long moment, the circle of gold lying in my palm, then she reached out and took it, and her fingers shook too.

"You wear it with the heart facing towards you," I said, fully aware she didn't need me to tell her that.

She nodded all the same. "I know," she agreed in a choked voice as she slid it on her finger, her wedding finger, a place I had never had reason to wear it myself. She brushed the fingers of her other hand across the gold, softly, as if she couldn't really believe it was there. When she looked up again she didn't even see me, she only saw Angel. "I know," she repeated in a whisper. "I know."

I was lost, caught in the look in my parents' eyes, included in something so perfect I should have felt I was intruding but I didn't. Angel lifted his hand to cup my cheek again and with the other he brushed his fingers across Buffy's lips, his brown eyes dark with emotion.

Behind us, I heard Willow suddenly whisper in horror, "The curse. Perfect happiness."

Angel heard her. His hands dropped and he spun around to face her, his expression full of terror. "No," he breathed, the word a desperate plea. "No. Oh, please, no."

"Angel..." Buffy reached out towards him and froze, her hand still in mid-air as Angel staggered and crashed to his knees, clawing at the carpet with his fingers as if having something to hold onto could protect him from whatever was happening.

His head jerked back, a totally involuntary movement, and the expression of pain and terror on his face cut right across my soul. His whole body shook and he gasped desperately for breath he didn't need, like a fish tossed suddenly into an element where it didn't belong.

Then it was over as unexpectedly as it had begun and he collapsed to the carpet in a crumpled heap, curled in a shuddering, foetal ball. Around the room everyone stood frozen, matching expressions of horror and fear on their faces. And I saw that Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, was suddenly holding a stake, sharp and pointed, in her hand.

"What...?" I began and Willow shook her head at me, her expression tight. I shut up, terrified all of a sudden even though I didn't know why.

Finally, slowly, Angel raised his head, a confused look on his face. Automatically, instinctively, his eyes sought out Buffy, and when he found her he just looked at her for a long, long time, as if he was witnessing a miracle.

He lifted an arm, holding his hand out to her. After a moment she took it, letting him draw her down to join him. Still holding her small hand trapped in his larger one, he raised it again, setting her palm against his chest.

For an eternal moment she simply knelt there, tears welling up in her eyes. "I can feel your heart beating," she whispered softly. The stake dropped from her fingers and she raised her other hand to touch his cheek, his lips. "You're warm. You're breathing."

"I'm alive," Angel said quietly, his tone disbelieving, his expression once again full of stunned, awed wonder. "Buffy, I'm human."

Across the room, I saw Wesley smile suddenly, the expression one of mixed amazement and delight. "To shanshu..." he breathed softly and Giles turned his head to stare at the younger man. "To shanshu."

So here I am, sitting on Rupert and Willow Giles' porch steps, watching my parents kissing in the sun. They're standing underneath a tree, the leaves throwing dappled shadows on their faces. The light is shining on them as if in benediction, creating a soft halo around Angel's head that can't have been seen for 250 years, turning Buffy's blonde hair into molten gold. Their kiss is tender and passionate, both at the same time, and they fit together with a rightness that is all the stronger from being denied for so long.

I'll have to ring my parents, I realise. Admit what I've been up to, tell them I've found my parents, who have to be the two most unique people on the planet. I... I stop that train of thought, discovering that I have just walked into a quagmire of inadequate terminology.

I have two sets of parents.

Whatever am I supposed to call them all? My new parents and my old parents? That makes it sound like one lot is better than the other, and that isn't true. My birth parents and my adopted parents? Those are the official terms I guess, but they are so clinical. They don't allow for the love and passion and emotion of any real, human relationship.

My real parents?

But who are my real parents?

Mom and Dad brought me up and loved me, kissed my scratched knees better, watched over me when I was sick and worried about me the first time I took the car out by myself. They were there when I learned to walk, their names were the first things I learned to say. We have the history of my lifetime behind us and I love them and they love me.

Buffy and Angel, they created me out of a love that belongs in books and ballads more than in real life. A love they only now have a true chance to express. We have a beginning ahead of us, the three of us. A chance to make ourselves a family, and it's a chance I want to take. A chance I know they too want to take a risk on.

Maybe, if it's real parents I want, I just have to accept that I have four instead of the usual two? That makes me lucky I guess, but I'm still trying to get used to the idea. The breeze brushes across my face as I realise I have a sudden urge to talk to my mom. She has an amazing knack for helping me put things into perspective. If I reverse the charges, hopefully Giles will let me use his phone to call New Zealand.

I look back at the couple on the lawn and find myself smiling. Life is going to be a lot more complicated and confusing from here on - but it is going to be good.

END.

On to Homecoming