Buffy and Melissa finished their Christmas shopping in record time, taking
the time to have
all of the gifts wrapped. People looked at them strangely for
buying all of their Christmas
presents on Christmas Eve, but they didn't care. They carried
their bags full of presents back
to the hospital, singing Christmas carols along the way. They
both felt as though a huge
weight had been lifted off their shoulders and they were happy.
They knew that they would
have to face Angelus soon and that there were all sorts of problems
just waiting around the
bend, but they were determined to stop them from spoiling their Christmas.
Whatever
problems there were could wait until after tomorrow.
Walking into Willow's hospital room, they found
Xander and Willow talking quietly. "Hey
Xander! Hey Willow!" they both said, depositing their bags on
the floor. "Did you explain all
that stuff to Willow, Xander?" Melissa asked as she hugged Willow.
"Yup," Xander replied. "I might have missed
a few parts though. I'm not entirely sure
Willow understands everything yet. Of course, I'm not entirely
sure I understand everything
yet, so that might have something to do with it."
"Okay," Melissa laughed. "Any questions?"
she asked Willow.
"Umm, yeah, a few actually. Okay, Xander told
me that you know Spike. He did his best
to tell me how you guys act around each other, but he's not very observant.
So, I'll just ask
you. Do you love him?"
Xander glanced from Melissa to Willow and then back
to Melissa again. This question had
never occurred to him. Of course she didn't love him. He
was a vampire! How could she
love him?
"Of course I love him. He's one of the dearest
friends I've ever had," Melissa attempted to
evade the question.
"Not like that. You know what I mean, Melissa.
Do you love love him?"
"No," Xander's mind predicted her answer.
"Yes," Melissa answered, smiling. "I suppose
I do."
"What?" Xander asked. He must have heard wrong,
because he thought he just heard
Melissa say she was in love with a vampire. A non-souled one
at that! I mean trusting
somebody and looking up to somebody were not the same thing as being
in love with
somebody. Melissa was obviously confused.
"Don't be so shocked, Xander. He's a good
person and he has always been there for me.
At first, of course, it wasn't that kind of love, but over time it
evolved. By the time I was thirteen
I was hopelessly in love with him. When Merrick found out, he
was furious and he packed
me off to Sunnydale, California to be in the care of a brand-new Watcher.
Luckily for me,
Giles turned out to be pretty good," Melissa recalled, smiling.
"You know, no offense but the words 'good person'
aren't exactly the words I would use to
describe Spike," Buffy interjected hesitantly. She didn't want
to offend Melissa. She felt a
kinship to her, probably because of the similarities in their lives.
She wasn't entirely sure that
Melissa knew who she was involved with, though.
"Umm, well that's my fault actually," Melissa admitted.
"You see, while I was living in
Sunnydale, William and Drusilla were living in Los Angeles. Right
after you became the
Slayer I went to L.A. to check you out and make sure you'd be okay.
If I didn't think you could
cut it, I was going to go to the Watcher Council and ask to be reinstated.
While I was there, I
needed to ask William and Dru to help me watch out for Willow and Xander.
I had a feeling
that this job was going to take a lot more effort than I could produce
alone. I was right, by the
way," Melissa laughed. "Anyway, I watched you kill a couple of
vamps and then I watched
you go home. Content that you would be able to handle yourself
just fine, I went and saw
William and Drusilla. I asked them for help with Willow and Xander,
then I asked William to do
me a favor. You see, when I saw you I got kinda jealous.
I mean, you're beautiful and strong
and perfectly capable of killing vampires to protect the world.
I was afraid that if William met
you he would fall in love with you. So, I asked him to pretend
to be evil. I know that it doesn't
make any sense now, but at the time it seemed like a good plan.
I figured that you would
never fall for somebody who was evil, so you wouldn't fall for William
and he wouldn't fall for
you. He was only supposed to be pretending though," she added
loudly, so that Spike could
hear her through the open door. "I'm not really sure why he kept
trying to kill you. He
admitted that he tried to kill you a few times."
"So, wait," Xander said. "Is this what you
thought we'd hate you for? Did you think we
would shun you because you're in love with Spike?"
"Well, yeah," Melissa responded. "I mean,
he is a vampire. So far, any time I become
even remotely associated with vampires, everyone has a fit and makes
me move. I figured
you guys would just hate me.
"We're not like everyone else, Melissa," Willow
pointed out quietly. "If you love Spike, then
he must be a good person. Although, why did you try to kill us?"
she asked Spike, who had
entered the room.
"I was certainly not trying to kill you Willow,"
he laughed. "I was only trying to kill Buffy.
When we tried to contact Melissa and got no response, Drusilla and
I became concerned.
We came to Sunnydale to find her, but when we got here Melissa was
gone and there was a
new Slayer. We thought that Buffy had killed Melissa, so we set
out to kill Buffy. Now that I
think about it, we really did jump the gun a bit," Spike conceded.
"But at the time, it seemed
the best thing to do."
"Okay then," Willow said, accepting his response.
"We need to figure out what to do about
Angelus. I have a plan," she said happily, clapping her hands.
"What does this plan involve?" Melissa asked warily.
She had a sneaking suspicion that it
involved putting Willow or Xander, or both of them, in danger and she
would have to veto it.
"It involves me performing the curse again," Willow
began.
"Absolutely not! Wait a minute," Melissa said.
"What curse? And what do you mean,
'again'? When have you performed the curse before?"
Willow laughed at her friend's obvious confusion.
"The curse to give Angel back his soul.
And I tried it twice about seven months ago. I didn't get to
finish the first time, but the second
time it didn't work. I'm not sure why."
"How did you find the curse?" Melissa asked.
She had never taken Willow for a student of
the Black Arts. Of course, she had never pictured Willow punching
a vampire either.
"Our last computer teacher was a Gypsy," Willow
explained. "She saved the curse on a
floppy disk, but Angelus killed her before she could perform it," she
added sadly.
"Do you have a copy of it?" Melissa asked.
She had seen a curse or two in her time.
Perhaps she could figure out what had gone wrong.
"Yeah, it's in my backpack. So is the Orb
of Thesela," she responded shyly.
"Huh, Willow carrying around curses and orbs. Who
would've guessed?" Melissa thought
to herself as she retrieved them from Willow's backpack. She
quickly read through the curse
and pondered it for a moment. Everything seemed to be in order.
Unless it could only be
performed in Romanian. "Willow, did you feel any kind of force
move through you?" she
asked thoughtfully.
"Yeah, something definitely took control of me.
Cordelia and Oz both said I started acting
really weird."
"Then I can only think of one explanation for why
it didn't work," Melissa stated.
"What's that?" Willow asked hopefully.
"It did."
"What?" she asked, not sure of what Melissa meant.
"I think the curse did work. I think Angelus
has a soul."
"Then why did he kidnap me? Why did he throw
me against a wall? He isn't acting like
Angel," Willow stammered. That couldn't be possible. Angel
would never act the way
Angelus had been acting the past few months.
"I know. I don't think the soul has control.
I think that this curse puts the soul back in the
body, but doesn't necessarily give it the power to fight the demon.
I think it worked when the
Gypsies did it because the soul was angry for being pushed out of the
body so rudely and
then not having anywhere to go. When it got the chance to go
back in, it took control of the
demon. This time, though, the soul was confused. It didn't
know what had happened. It's still
not sure why it got pushed out. It got put back in the body,
but it doesn't know how to fight the
demon."
"So, what do we do?" Willow asked. Melissa's
explanation made sense, in a way.
"We don't do anything. I try to communicate
with Angel and get him angry enough to fight
the demon. I think the best way to do that is to fill in all
the blanks that the demon hasn't shown
the soul. Like what he did to that teacher and how he hurt Buffy.
Actually, I think that's the
key. If Angel loves Buffy half as much as William told me he
does, he'll do anything to protect
her, including getting that demon in line."
"How are you going to do that?" Xander spoke up.
He didn't like the sound of this plan. It
sounded to him like this involved putting Melissa in danger.
He had just almost lost one of his
best friends. He didn't want to lose the other one.
"I'm going to set a trap and I'm going to need some
bait," Melissa answered thoughtfully.
"Does anyone want to volunteer?" she joked.
"I will," Buffy volunteered, standing up.
"But I think we should wait until tomorrow night.
Right after sundown we'll lure him to the library at school.
Then you'll have all night to get
through to him."
Melissa smiled. She had been joking about
the bait, but Buffy's plan sounded good.
Besides, she could use somebody like Buffy along for the ride.
Impulsively she gave her new
friend a hug and thanked her. Buffy hugged her back, smiling.
"No wonder everyone loves
her," she thought. "She's just such a nice person."
"Okay, then," Melissa startled Buffy out of her
reverie. "Tomorrow night we set the trap.
But right now, it's Christmas Eve so everyone gets to open one present,"
she said handing
boxes to Xander, Willow, and Buffy and accepting the box Buffy handed
her. They each took
their time unwrapping the boxes, enjoying the comforting comraderie.
Xander was the first to
finish and smiled when he opened the box.
"Thanks Mel," he laughed, holding up a book entitled
"How to Find Ms. Right".
"Well, Willow told me about some of your misadventures
with the women in this town. I
figured you might need some help. Yes I know that you already
found her," she continued,
answering the thought she found in his mind. "And, geez, Xander.
Get your mind out of the
gutter! She's in a hospital bed for God's sake!"
At this Xander turned a deeper shade of red than
Melissa had ever seen and Buffy laughed
hysterically. Willow raised an eyebrow at Melissa and then looked
at Xander. "Is he thinking
about me?" she asked mischievously. "Ooh, what's he thinking?"
"Let's just say it involves you and Xander, but
it does not involve your clothes," Melissa
laughed. She supposed she should feel guilty, but Xander needed
some help telling Willow
how he felt about her. She figured this would be a step in the
right direction.
"Hmm, sounds interesting," Willow said thoughtfully.
"We should probably wait until I get
out of the hospital, though," she added smiling, while everyone in
the room turned to look at
her in shock. "What? Do you guys think I don't think about it,
too?" she asked, sending them
all into gales of laughter.
"Okay, okay," Xander stammered through his laughter.
"Let's change the subject.
Somebody else open a present now."
Willow had finished tearing off the wrapping paper
and now opened the box. "Oh," she
exclaimed. "It's beautiful!" She held up a silver charm
bracelet for her friends to see, then she
put it on.
"I didn't have time to get your name put on it,"
Melissa explained, "so I found one with a tree
on it. Get it, a willow?"
"I get it," Willow laughed and gave her friend a
hug.
"Okay, me next," Buffy exclaimed. She was
excited. She loved presents. She opened her
box and started laughing. Only a fellow Slayer or a Watcher would
have ever given her a
present like this. She pulled out a wooden stake and a bottle
of holy water. "Thank you," she
said smiling. She never thought she would enjoy getting a gift
that reminded her of her
slaying duties, but coming from Melissa it was nice. It was like
she was saying that she
trusted Buffy to take care of them or something.
"Don't worry. That's not the only thing I
got you," Melissa said. "You just don't get the big
gift until tomorrow."
"It's all right," Buffy smiled. "Open yours
now."
Melissa opened her box and stared down at the gift
inside. A tear slipped from her eye as
she picked up the necklace with half a heart with the word "Best" on
it.
"I bought two sets and I thought we could each wear
a half. Then the four of us could sort of
belong to each other," Buffy explained, handing a necklace to Xander
and one to Willow.
Then she put hers on, Xander and Willow following suit. Melissa
put hers on and then
hugged Buffy, tears openly spilling down her cheeks. Then she
pulled back and smiled.
"So mine says 'Best' because I'm the best, right?"
she asked, her eyes shining.
"Because you think you're the best," Xander answered,
laughing. Then they all laughed
together, happy to not have to worry about demons or anything else
for a while. And where
once there were two separate trios of friends, there was now a quartet.
