A/N This chapter takes place near the end of Damaged, after Dana has been captured, and as they are wheeling Spike off in an Ambulance.

"You know this is you fault, don't you?"

Angel looked at her in confusion.

"Huh?"

"You know, back when you guys were evil. You were the big alpha male vampire, big daddy undead. Wasn't it your job to teach him to stay away from Slayers?"

It was unfair Buffy knew and she was really only teasing Angel. She knew she sounded angry. And she was. Although mostly at Spike. What had he been thinking? A vampire trying to kill a Slayer was one thing. Especially an untrained one like Dana. If he'd been trying to kill her, Spike would have had a better than even chance she figured. After all, before tonight he'd fought three Slayers and killed two of them fairly easily.

But trying to incapacitate a Slayer all by himself was another thing entirely. He was lucky he hadn't been killed. He nearly had been. Did he have some kind of death wish? No one had bothered to explain to her yet how he'd come back in the first place. Was he going through something like she had when she had returned from the dead. She didn't know and that made her angry. No one had told her he was back and that made her really angry.

The fact was she was trying to work up her anger. As long as she was angry she couldn't be sick. And she was very queasy. She'd seen a lot of awful things since she became the Slayer, including Spike horribly tortured on more than one occasion. Once he looked so awful that Xander had even felt sorry for him. But this was different. Seeing him down in that basement chained and armless. . . It was wrong. It didn't fit somehow. It couldn't be real and yet was, horribly so.

She focused back on Angel.

"I'm just kidding you know. Major case of the wiggins you know?" she did her best to smile at him.

"Yeah I understand. Well, okay it's Spike, so I don't really understand but . . . Don't worry, we can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again."

"Good. Well, any way, I'll just take Dana and. . . "

"What? Buffy wait. We'll take care of her don't worry."

"Angel, she's a Slayer. It's. . ."

"No Buffy, really. We can handle her."

"-my responsibility. Angel. I did this to her. I made her this. Besides, I'm not all that comfortable leaving a crazy slayer in the hands of an evil law firm." Angel started to protest but this time Buffy cut him off. "An evil law-firm that's been known to hire rouge slayers and use them as assassins I might add."

"Buffy, we won't do that, we can help her."

"Yeah, look maybe you can, but she belongs with us. You know, the good guys."

The look on Angel's face was like he'd been slapped. She almost regretted saying it. She could feel it coming. The same argument they'd had post-Sunnydale when she found out that he'd decided to take over Wolfram & Hart. She wanted desperately to believe that Angel was better than this place, that he could do good, but she couldn't take that chance. And he'd never given her a very good explanation of why he would join up with his old archenemies. She knew he was hiding something from her probably to protect her. She almost wanted to laugh. She had once told Spike that she couldn't love him because she could never trust him but the fact was Angel was the big love of her life and she didn't trust him. Wasn't sure she could ever trust him again.

"Buffy, it's not like you have a choice here." He was angry, she could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he stood up a little straighter.

"No Angel, it's you that doesn't have a choice. LADIES." She could hear behind her the van, as twelve other girls appeared. "Thirteen slayers. I'm not thinking that's your lucky number Angel."

As her girls loaded Dana's stretcher in their van, Buffy wanted to apologize to Angel. To try and make it better somehow. But she knew she couldn't. There was no way she could leave Dana with him, and she suspected that anything she might say would only make it worse.