Buffy blinked at yet another subject change. "There's no crisis, midlife or otherwise. There's just Giles...the real Giles, not the one stuck behind the glasses and the baggy sweaters. If anything, the old Giles was midlife crisis guy. You didn't see the real Giles take out six thugs in Bath...without me lifting a finger."

"Oh, I know how tough he is-" Angel stopped as abruptly as he'd spoken.

It only took Buffy a moment to realise why. "H-he was tough?"

Angel stared at her. Never before had she even wanted to be reminded that it happened, much less...

"He was amazing. He was making m-Angelus crazy, because he wouldn't-didn't break. In the end Drusilla had to trick him into giving her the information. Poor bastard."

Buffy grew very still. "What did she do?"

"She made him think she was Jenny."

All colour drained from her face. "After what he'd been through...you let her do that to him?"

Angel spread his hands helplessly. "It wasn't me, remember? When the demon's back, I'm gone."

Her eyes flashed. "I spent enough time with Spike, both souled and unsouled, to know that's not entirely true."

"It is for me," he insisted brusquely. "The psychotic persona is way too strong for any remnant of me to control. I'm sorry for what happened. I'll never stop being sorry, but I can't change it."

"I read about Angelus, and what he did to people," she said quietly. "I was actually snooping on Spike at the time, but you guys seem to have a pretty tight history, so there was a lot of stuff about you...actually way more than I ever wanted to know." Her expression grew dark. "If I'd found out you did even half of those things to Giles...and I'd known about it back then, I would have killed you myself, curse or no curse. Maybe that's why I didn't want to know. I didn't want anything to spoil the perfect romance. You coming back from hell, all redeemed after...everything...it made it all right. I didn't want anything to change that. *God*, I was such a child."

Angel's face became a mask. "Buffy, this stuff is all old history. Giles is past it, and so am I. Let it go."

Painfully aware of how much Spike's attempt to assault her, trivial compared to what Giles must have gone through, had affected her life and still did, Buffy's temper flared. "Yeah? Just exactly how do you get past it, Angel? How do you banish it from your nightmares? Make your hands stop shaking every time he comes near you or something reminds you...?"

Angel's eyes narrowed, but he couldn't find a way to frame the question he wanted to ask. "You just do. Enough time goes by, and you learn to deal. Giles did, probably for you, more than me. I still can't believe you asked him to go back to the mansion to take care of me, of all people, so soon after...I mean, that must have..."

She shrank visibly. "I didn't mean to...I couldn't think about anything except...you were dying, Angel. Nothing was more important than that. I had to find a way to save you...I didn't..."

"You didn't know..." He filled in. "You never wanted to know, Buffy. What's changed? Why so interested now? What's going on in that tiny mind of yours that makes Giles' feelings so important all of a sudden after all these years of not caring?"

"Y'know, I really don't need you, of all people, to point out my flaws. I am now painfully aware of each and every one. After a mutiny, screw-ups resulting in deaths, not to mention Xander losing an eye, and more recently evil show and tell with Giles, I am fully aware that I am sadly lacking in all and any admirable qualities except brute strength and a weirdly masochistic desire to keep going out there night after night..." She paused for a moment and frowned. "Except possibly not even that any more, since I'm not actually *the* Slayer these days. Weirdly enough you're about the only person I haven't actually hurt...beat me to it, there, kiddo, and what's even weirder is that I've hurt most of them pretty much because of you, one way or the other. Wow, scary: two epiphanies in one day. You think my head will explode?"

Angel's fixed expression faltered. "Xander's eye was not my fault," he said quietly, only too aware that his impact on her very young life had been unforgivable and tragic. She was 'damaged goods', and he was well aware that a very big part of that was directly attributable to him.

Buffy shrugged. "I'll give you that. Caleb was all mine. Put that one down to my sad lack of tactical skills and general stupidity."

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

"You're sorry? Angel, you pretty much destroyed my life and a lot of others. I know the soul thing isn't exactly your fault, but it is. Don't you get it? If you hadn't let Darla turn you in the first place, you wouldn't have become that bastard. You wouldn't have been so evil a bunch of Gypsies had to invent a whole new curse just for you."

"I didn't let..."

Buffy stared him in the eye. "Been there, know the deal. You have to want it, or it doesn't work...or maybe that's how you make yet another stupid minion for the Slayer to kill..." she speculated dryly.

He looked away. "Still doesn't mean that I chose to be what I became," he said softly. "Any more than Darla did...or Dru...or even your precious Spike."

Buffy bit her lip. "Leave him out of this. He was no different to you. Just as evil. Same spark of good in him. Except it took a curse to make you good."

Lost, Angel lowered his head. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because I didn't do it back then."

"I love you, Buffy."

"I love you, too," she replied sadly. "And I loved him. I really did. But it's not who I am...I was never yours, and I was never going to be his. I tried to tell you... me and my dumb cookie metaphors. Loving you was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me...and the most terrible."

"And loving him wasn't?" Angel snapped.

"Spike? He came with the terms all spelled out, which is more than you did, and some of it was...wonderful...and terrible...but in the end it was all about pain again... It always is."

"It doesn't have to be," he said softly and crossed to her, put his hands on her shoulders. "I love you, Buffy. That's never going to change..."

She dropped her gaze. "You know, I didn't know. Not until right this minute...but it's over," she said sadly. "It's really over. I'm sorry, Angel."

"Who is it?"

"Who is who?"

"Don't play games with me, Buffy. A few weeks ago you were basking, remember. Now it's over? So who is it?"

"Why does there have to be anyone? I'm not the same person who started the fight against the First. Hell, I'm not even the same person who got on that plane three weeks ago."

Angel's eyes narrowed dangerously, but his voice remained even. "So...have a nice time in Merry old England?"

"I...did some...moulding," she said carefully.

He spread his hands. "I was kinda hoping were going to do some of that together, some day."

"So was I," she reminded him. "I remember being sixteen and big with the moulding and the dreams of us moulding together...and then a big old stompie-wompie vampire came and squished all my cookie dough...and then he went away. He came back, and I still kept dreaming about...moulding...about you and me. I lied to my friends, made choices that only made sense if you thought about cookie dough...hurt good people... and for what? So Mister Stompie-wompie could just walk away again...and leave all that cookie dough to go all mouldy and nasty?"

Angel's shoulders squared. "I don't know. It didn't seem to take you all that long to find someone else to knead your dough for you..."

Buffy didn't flinch. "Riley didn't knead. I wouldn't let him. I wouldn't let anyone. You...you did that to me. I was a child, Angel. Did you ever once think of that? I was dumb, yeah. As dumb as everyone says I was, but I was just a kid...and you broke me...smashed me up into little pieces...pieces I'm *still* trying to put back together."

The vampire shook his head. "I'm not Angelus. This...this is crap. We...we're forever, remember? What happened to that? What happened to that 'one perfect love' you always talked about?"

"It's still where it's always been: in my dreams. I'm sorry. I wish I could be the person you want me to be, but I can't."

"Why the hell not?" Angel demanded, his gaze flicking across her shoulder to the doorway as he spoke.

Buffy looked him in the eye. "Because I'm not a child any more, and daydreams and fairy dust just aren't enough. Because my baker was there all along and I just didn't know who he was..."

She turned slowly. "And this stupid cookie metaphor is starting to make my head hurt." She looked up at the figure in the doorway, her face lit at the sight of him, her eyes asking his tender ones the question.

He looked past her to the vampire for a long moment, nodded stiffly, then let his gaze slide back to hers, a slow smile lighting his face. When she smiled back, even more radiantly, he nodded the slightest of nods and extended his hand.

Angel watched the two hands join in what seemed like the slowest of slow motion, that hand...the slightly bent fingers being joined by her slender, perfect ones, entwining, before the two figures merged and walked away.

He wanted to scream, he wanted to rage against the poetry of justice, and most of all he wanted to stop her...wanted to kill him.

*One perfect love...*

He let them go.

The End