All the freaks that lived in the shadows of the Hellmouth were out in force that night, and all gathered in a single room for a horrifying ritual.

It was called Amateur Night at the Bronze.

Buffy Summers, the Chosen One, peered into the darkness, made somehow more dreary by the spotlights illuminating one band after another, each more hopeful and hopeless than the last. She had never seen the Bronze more packed. Each band had its own following, some well deserved and some merely fanatical. All of them crowded into the relatively small club.

The place was rocking. Buffy and her friends were fortunate to have found a table at all. The music wasn't all that bad, she was forced to admit. The sights were fascinating, to say the least, and the company was, as always, the best anyone could hope for.

It should have been a perfect evening. From the looks on her friends' faces, it was exactly that. For them. Oz, decked out in one of his nostalgic bowling shirts, held tightly to Willow's hand and babbled on earnestly about the fretless Rickenbacker the current band's bassist was playing.

Willow nodded brightly in response. They were still at that stage where everything they told each other was engaging. Buffy remembered that stage. Missed it. And wondered, briefly, if she would ever be in a relationship that lasted long enough to get past it. Perverse as it seemed to her, she liked the idea of being in love with a guy so long that she could start taking him for granted.

She missed it all, though. Missed getting dressed up for someone besides herself, and living in that delicious limbo of anticipation that having a real boyfriend was all about, not knowing what might happen next, and thrilled by the uncertainty of it all.

To the rear of the table, Cordelia and Xander sat close to each other -- closer than Cordy would usually allow in public -- and sipped their coffees. They just listened, sometimes to Oz and sometimes to the band on stage. Relaxed. Enjoying being together. Cordelia's cell phone was on the table, and every few minutes she glanced down at it. Finally she turned to Xander and said something, then flicked it shut and put it in her shoulder bag.

All four of them, the two couples, glanced around the club from time to time. Rumor had it that there was a major label A and R rep present for the monthly event, and they were all trying to figure out who it might be. Oz, after all, had his band to think of. The rest of these guys were competition for Dingoes Ate My Baby. No much, but competition nevertheless.

They were having a great time. They were seniors, after all. For the moment, the world belonged to them. Why shouldn't they enjoy it?

Perhaps, Buffy thought as she watched her friends, it really was a perfect evening. It was possible, however painful, that she simply didn't know how to enjoy just... being, anymore. Despite the fact that she'd been to the Bronze more often than math class, she felt oddly out of place, almost as if it were her first day in town all over again. It made her a little dizzy and more than a bit confused.

They're all so innocent, she thought. They're all so young.

Then she smiled grimly at herself. Maybe she'd passed innocent on the road of life a long time ago, but young she could still lay claim to. Sometimes it just didn't feel that way. Life was just starting for the rest of them. Who knew what fate had in store for them?

Buffy, on the other hand? Her fate was sealed.

Xander looked up at Buffy, saw her watching them, and smiled even as he knitted his eyebrows in concern.

"Okay, Miss Summers," Xander said, "penny." His hair was long again, more the way he'd worn it when she'd first met him almost three years ago. Still, his face was older. He'd lost his baby fat, that was for sure. If not his floppy sleeves and baggy pants. Cordelia, for all her sleek fashion sense -- tonight it was a black Chinese dress embroidered with dark purple butterflies, sticks in her hair -- had not yet been able to redeem him.

Buffy shrugged. "Put away your hard-earned cash, Xand. These aren't thoughts anyone should pay for."

He gave her a look. Slowly nodded. "Yeah," he drawled, "the band is bringing me down, too. Their only redeeming social value is that they're all girls." He snapped his head toward Cordelia. "And there'll be no physical violence from you. I saw you drooling at that drummer with the red hair two bands ago."

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Oh, please."

"Was she not?" Xander flung at Willow, who glanced toward him and lifted her brows. Obviously, she had not been listening. It was a fairly common occurrence these days. One he was dealing with fairly well -- accent on fairly.

Huffing, he squinted his eyes at Buffy. "Drooling, right?"

Buffy shrugged.

"Women." He sighed. "You stick together like peanut butter and fluff." Xander's eyes flashed with mischief. "Which, come to think of it, makes a sandwich."

"That's sick," Cordelia said. "You are disgusting."

"In your eyes, not necessarily a bad thing." He gave her a wink.

Cordelia looked up toward the ceiling as if her patience had flown toward the light fixtures like a moth. "Ooh."

Buffy smiled weakly, feeling sad and frumpy in jeans and a black spaghetti-strap top.

And the band played on.

Fly away, let's run away
Let's start all over.
Let's kill time.
Let's unwind the threads of destiny...

Oz shrugged and said, "They're not so bad."

"Yeah, for a band that sucks," Cordelia said. "And where did they get those clothes? That whole retro seventies thing is so over." She glanced at Buffy. "No offense."

Buffy tilted her head. She wanted to take offense. She wanted to rise to the challenge and lob something back at Cordy. But she couldn't seem to muster up the energy. She half smiled and took a sip from her iced latte. Where it had sat, there was a light condensation ring on the table. Iced latte. Nonfat milk. Her mother said she was getting awfully thin.

"Whoa." Cordelia frowned. "Are you sick or something?"

Buffy looked at her questioningly.

"Well, I didn't mean that as an insult, but you're usually so... defensive, y'know?"

Let's kill time.

"Heard from Giles?" Willow asked Buffy.

Buffy shook her head. "I told him to call only if there's an emergency." Finally she smiled. "You know, like if someone tries to spike the punch with extra ginger ale."

They all chuckled. Giles was at the annual meeting of the American Library Association, sure to be a wild rave loaded with massive potential for Buffy's Watcher to get all crazy.

"I miss him," Willow said simply. "I was thinking this morning about graduation and... y'know, after. It'll be weird not to walk into the library every morning to find out what the monsters are up to."

"We'll still hang with the G-man," Xander said quickly. Too quickly. Buffy watched Xander's face as he followed that thought through to its natural conclusion. After graduation, it seemed likely they would all go their own ways. Friendship or no, they had lives to lead. It would be hard to reconnoiter once they scattered to the four winds.

"I'll still see him," Buffy said quietly. "Every morning."

"No, because, you'll be... oh," Willow said. She looked pityingly at Buffy. "I guess you will."

"So, it's not like you graduate and get your Slayer's diploma?" Oz asked Buffy. "You just keep doing it?"

"You just keep doing it." Buffy made another ring on the varnished wood. "The Energizer Buffy, that's me."

"Drag." Oz nodded. "Sometimes Dingoes get tired of playing the same old songs."

"Name that tune," Buffy said. " 'In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.' "

"And speaking of demons," Xander drawled, "hiya, soul man."

Buffy looked over her shoulder. Despite her mood -- and her life -- her heart skipped a beat. Angel stood behind her, dressed in his signature black jeans, dark silk shirt, and duster. The dim lights in the Bronze underscored the paleness of his skin, which served to accentuate his dark eyes and high cheekbones. So handsome. Distant, now, where once upon a time he would have put his hands on Buffy's shoulders, leaned down to kiss the top of her head, perhaps her cheek, even her lips, in greeting.

Distant now. Careful. And unsure of his place among them.

Tonight, Buffy thought she knew that feeling quite well indeed.

"Angel," she breathed. "What's up? Is something bad about to happen?"

"Only if that band gives an encore," he said dryly, straight-faced, and nodded toward the stage.

Buffy brightened a little. Her life was strange, and filled with danger, but it had its compensations. She would rather have Angel in her life in some way, any way, than to lose him to darkness again. In a few months, her friends might very well leave Sunnydale -- leave her. Why would anyone want to stay? Someday, even Angel might leave. But for now, they were all here, together.

"Dance with me?" she asked Angel, sliding off her stool in anticipation.

She went to him and held out her hand. He took it, his fingers cold, and she led him to the dance floor. He gathered her in his arms; she lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

Copyright © 1999 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation