Life (or Unlife) Goes On

A/N: Thanks to everyone who reads this, I can't beleive the response this has got. Please reveiw.
Warning: You might need a tissue, I cried while writing this but then I seem to cry at the drop of a hat
Reveiws:
Bubbysbub: Thankyou for all your support. Here's the memorial and don't worry there is lots of smut coming. Glad you like the last chapter, hope you enjoy this one.
Bradon.Rekai: Glad your enjoying as for Andrew/Oz I'm planning after I've finished this to have a one-shot of their first time together that will be set within the Life (Or Unlife) Goes On verse. I can't put it in here cos I wasn't planning for the two of them to get together, it just happened and I have planned out exactly whats going to happen for the rest of this story and their isn't really room to put that in. Sorry. If you want to write something with them set within this story let me know.
Sir Magus: Glad to hear from you again, you were the first person who reveiwed and encouraged me to keep going when I started to think no one was reading. Thankyou so much for the compliment, its definitely appreciated and I'm happy that your enjoying, hope you continue to.


Chapter Thirty-Five

Spike’s POV

The hotel garden has been set up with rows of seats facing towards a lectern next to part of the garden which has a number of shapes in it covered in sheets, waiting for the unveiling. I don’t have to speak tonight and for that I’m grateful; it means that I can be here for both Angel and Xander who do need to speak. The new watchers council has a priest who is conducting the ceremony I overheard earlier, someone who knows all about the demon world and is aware that Angel and I are vampires. I hope he sticks around for a little while. I have a couple of soul-related questions I want to ask him. I follow Angel to some seats near the front and catching a look of his face I wish somehow I could take all that pain, guilt and sadness away for him. Dawn follows us and sits on the other side of Xander. The others all find seats and it seems weird that all these people, now in their mourning clothes were an hour ago covered in blood and fighting for their lives. The priest stands up and starts addressing us.

“We are here tonight to remember all those we have personally lost in the fight against evil. To unveil a memorial to them as most of their resting places have been unfortunately lost and to finally lay the ashes of our brother Wesley Whyndam-Pryce to rest. This service will not be especially religious as there are some within this congregation who are… allergic to Christian symbols. Instead I will be asking a couple of people to come and share with us their memories of those now passed on. So first we will have Xander Harris who will be talking about Jesse Michael Powel.” Xander besides me rises and I can see him slightly shaking, his hands are wrapped around a piece of paper that he is twisting and untwisting. I give his hand a squeeze and then a push towards the front. He walks jerkily, like he isn’t really there. This is going to be hard for him and I’m kind of glad that Buffy isn’t here. The only one here that might of met Jesse is Giles but then I spot the camera recording the whole thing. Oh that’s right Red wants a copy sent to her straight away so that she can watch it and then she’ll know. I notice a brown haired girl with bright red stripes slip into the back, I wonder who she is. I quickly turn around and refocus on Xander who has reached the front.

“Um hi for those who don’t know me I’m Xander Harris. I’ve been helping Buffy Summers, the oldest living slayer since we were fifteen and I realise that almost nobody here actually met Jesse but he is the reason I started to fight against the forces of evil and why I kept going for so long. I met Jessie at the same time I met Willow, in Kindergarten. I forgot lunch and he shared his with me and since then we were best of friends. From then until high school the three of us were inseparable. We didn’t fight vampires because we didn’t know about them, we grew up in Sunnydale so the weird things weren’t weird to us, we didn’t know any different, didn’t know that it wasn’t normal for people to disappear or to die from blood loss from a couple of neck punctures. Jesse was kind, helpful and most of all fun. The two of us got into so many scrapes together, we were always in mischief. Then one day everything changed, one day I woke up and realised I liked him more than a friend.” Xander chokes at this point and when he raises his head I can see the tears in his good eye. He looks straight at the camera and continues talking, its like he has forgotten the rest of us are still here.

“I’m sorry Wills, we knew you liked me and we didn’t want to hurt you. We kept it a secret from everyone else because we were scared our parents would stop us from seeing each other. Jesse and I were together, we were happy and then Buffy came to town and he got turned into a vampire. Worse than that I staked vampire Jessie, I killed my lover.” Now tears are streaming down his face and all I want to do is go up there and pull him into my arms but I restrain myself knowing that he needs to get this out in the open.

“After, everyone just seemed to forget about Jesse and I was so upset blaming myself for what happened, blaming myself for not being able to tell him or anyone else what he truly meant to me. I started to fight because I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I went through, what he went through. I knew he would of fought if he was still alive, that’s the sort of person he was and so I did it for him. I couldn’t tell you afterwards Wills, I couldn’t tell anyone ‘cos I was scared. I couldn’t face the am-I-gay question on my own.” Xander stops and just breathes trying to get his emotions under control. He walks over to one of the pillars holding up the gate. He removes a cloth from the wall revealing a plaque that I can’t read from here.

“Jesse man, I love you and I always will, I’m sorry.” He says it so softly that I can only hear it because of my enhanced hearing. He then slowly walks back to his seat with his head down, looking at his feet. Giles tries to catch his eye but he doesn’t look up. Once he is sitting back next to me I squeeze his hand. The priest takes the lectern again but I don’t hear what he says, instead I wrap my arms around Xander and just hold him.

*****

Angel’s POV

The memorial has been going on for a while now, after Xander, Giles got up and talked about Jenny Calendar, about how she helped to fight a couple of demons with her techno pagan knowledge and how she died trying to rescue someone else, me. I wanted to walk away but a greater part wanted to stay, torture myself by listening to the pain in Giles voice, in knowing I put it there. After Giles another man comes up, he introduces himself as Sam Zabuto watcher to Kendra the vampire slayer, I feel Spike flinch beside me at remembrance of what Drusilla did. It wasn’t his fault, he was in a wheelchair at the time, and I was the one who sent her to the library while I distracted Buffy. Next Oz goes up to talk about a couple of people who died during Graduation. By this stage Xander is sitting in Spike’s lap and I hear him mutter.

“Its my fault, I was the one in charge, I should have had them better prepared, its all my fault.” I gently cup his chin and get him to look at me.

“Shh.” I place my finger on his lips. “You did a great job, without you more people would have died that day”. Then I hear my name being called and I realise its my turn to talk about the AI team. Okay, I can do this, just tell them about my friends, who might not of thought it but were all champions and all died saving the world.

“Okay most of you know me at least by reputation, I’m Angel and for the past five years I have been working here in LA helping the hopeless and making it safer from demons and vampires. I want to tell you about the people who have made it possible, about the people who were my work mates, my friends and my family. My life is better to have known them and many of you knew them too and I’m sure your lives were better for it as well. First I want to talk about Doyle, Allen Francis Doyle. The time I knew him was brief but I learnt much from that time. Doyle had visions from the Powers That Be, splitting migraine-giving visions of people in danger that I then went to save. Doyle had been a schoolteacher, just an ordinary person, who got married early in life but then something changed all that. He never knew his father so it was a huge surprise when he suddenly discovered that he could change into a blue-green spiny thing at will. You see Doyle was a half-Bracchen demon, a peaceful type of demon but he couldn’t deal with it and started drinking and betting. He separated from his wife and quit his job, just drifting from one place to another. He once told me that I could fight the good fight and he would just keep score, that he didn’t have it in him. Well the saying about you never know until you’ve been tested was right this time. We went on another case and ended up being stuck in the cargo hold of a ship with a contraption that when activated would burn up anything with human blood and we had a couple of dozen innocents in there with us. I went to jump onto this thing to stop it before it killed everybody else even though I knew it was a suicide mission. Doyle punched me so hard that I fell down to the next platform, kissed Cordy and then jumped. He stopped the machine by sacrificing himself. Doyle died a true hero.” Now that I’m talking it is easy to keep going, I don’t think anyone has heard me say so much. I then talk about Cordelia about what she was like when I first met her. The snobby, daddy’s little girl, filthy rich valley princess. How after her parents lost all their money and she moved to LA she changed into such a beautiful woman who still spoke her mind but was caring, considerate and wasn’t selfish anymore. About everything she went through with the visions just so that I could use them to save people who needed it. How Cordelia turned into a true hero and how she managed to come back one last time to help me bring down the black thorn. I don’t talk about Wesley, Gunn and Giles will do that together but I do talk about Fred. How when I met her she was a crazy fugitive on Pylea but even back then she had strength in the way she tamed me when the demon was to the fore. How she might not of had physical strength but was good with a crossbow or flamethrower and how she was the smartest person I have met with the possible exclusion of Wes. Finally I finish talking and go sit with the others feeling worn out and emotionally drained. The priest tells us there is a fifteen-minute break before we continue. I just sit where I am. Spike’s hand moves across my cheek and then his finger goes to his mouth where he licks something off, my tears. I didn’t even realise I was crying.

“You did good Sire, they needed to hear about the others, what they did.” I just pull him closer to me and rub Xander’s arm when it snakes around me.

“Xander can I talk to you for a moment please.” I look up to see Giles in front of us looking contrite.

“What is it G-man?” asks Xander.

“It would be better if I said this in private.”

“No Giles, whatever you need to say, you can say here. I don’t want to leave.” Giles sighs,

“I want to say I’m sorry I didn’t know, when I told you to dust him.”

“And if you did know it would have changed what you would say to me? You mean you wouldn’t have told me to dust him, that he was just a shell infected by the demon that he wasn’t my friend anymore.” Xander asks icingly. Oh shit