Disclaimer: If I owned all of these fabulous characters, 1) One or more of them would be my personal slaves and B) Certain plot points would never have occurred. As it is, I do not own anything Buffy: the Vampire Slayer or Angel: the Series related. That privilege is reserved for Joss “(Usually) God” Whedon, Marti Noxon, David Greenwalt, UPN, and the WB. I do, however, own this story!
Distribution: Pretty much anywhere. Just ask first, so I know who and where to thank!
Pairing: Willow/Angel…eventually. Mention of all past and present canon-ships.
Rating: We’ll say PG-13, although if I ever get up the courage to try anything more explicit (language, sex, violence, etc.) I’ll warn you first.
Spoilers: Up through Buffy S6 and my adaptations of S7/Angel S3 and my adaptations of S4
Feedback: Yes, yes, YES! It’s my first fic, so I need all the help I can get.
Author’s note: I know that my timing between the Buffy season 6 finale
and the Angel season 4 premiere is not quite right, but just imagine that
more time elapsed between Connor’s dumping Angel into the sea and Wesley
locating Angel again.
Author’s Note: Wow, thanks everyone for the feedback! I feel so special!
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~Prologue~
She smiled. The expression felt forced, like her face was being stretched too tight, but she did not have the inclination or the energy to waste on constructing a more natural look. He must have noticed, because the honest-yet-well-meaning expression on his face faltered.
“Look, if you don’t want to, then, hey, that’s cool.” He spread his hands wide in the universal gesture of “I’m too cool to care about you” and shrugged. “Jus’ tryin’ to help.”
She laughed at that. The sound, too, was sharp and taught, painfully jutting into the night. She did not speak.
“Well…” he hedged, now clearly uneasy. “I’ll be going then. But, ah, here.” He took two hesitant steps forward and held out a business card at arms’ length as though she might jump for his throat any minute. “If you change your mind…” He waved the card in her direction, but she did not respond. “Fine,” he shrugged, dropping the card to the dirty asphalt. “Psycho,” he muttered as he turned and walked away.
She stared after him for a minute, held tilted slightly to one side, as though deep in thought. She looked down at the card on the ground and held out her hand, palm down. The card floated gently up through the air and stopped in between her thumb and index finger. She grasped the card from the air and flipped it over.
Her eyes glazed over and her pupils swallowed up her green irises as she clutched the card tightly, her thumb moving gently over the raised lettering.
-Flash-
A circle of black robed individuals chanting in a guttural demon language over a shipment of boxes filled with thousands of business cards.
-Flash-
A woman and a man, both meticulously groomed and well-dressed, seated in front of an imposing wooden desk.
-Flash-
A group of homeless men, women and teens scattered around the cold concrete floor of a small warehouse, their eyes entirely black and their bodies barely alive, connected by strands of golden light feeding into a large wooden crate.
-Flash-
She shook her head, either in disbelief or to erase the images. She let the business card fall from her hand back to the ground. She stared at it briefly and it immediately consumed itself in orange flames and thick black smoke.
A small, almost pleasant smile began to form at the corners of her mouth, but her lips twisted the expression into one of disdain and bitterness.
“Clumsy,” she murmured as she walked away from the smoldering ashes. “There is a right way to do things,” she continued almost petulantly. “But I guess you’re too busy trying to get a promotion to take pride in your work. No wonder people hate lawyers,” she giggled to herself.
As she turned left out of the side street back on to the main road, she cast one look over her shoulder at the charred remains of the card. The ashes were already drifting through the air as a cross-breeze caught them and tugged them along.
“Evil now,” she reminded herself softly. And Big Bad’s don’t go around sav—Well, that’s not something they do!
~Part: 1~
“Hang on!” cried Gunn, his pickup truck swerving crazily, trying to dislodge the vampire clinging to its side. In the passenger seat next to him was Fred, trying her hardest not to fly through the windshield as Gunn slammed to a halt, a red convertible pulling up beside him.
“Now your ass better be insured!” Gunn shot at the handful of vampires jumping out of the convertible as he and Fred moved to stand in front of the pickup. He crossed his arms and glared at the offending demons as Fred tried to mimic his assertive pose.
A bald vampire reached down to pull up the one who had fallen off Gunn’s truck. “Now you ought to be worried about your own ass, mister! Couple of warm bloods rolling down my street, hustling my hermaños? Ain't gonna fly, homey!” He, too, assumed an aggressive pose, taking a few baby steps towards Gunn and Fred.
Fred held her crossbow a little tighter. “We're just looking for the girl,” she tried to keep her voice even. I don’t exactly like these odds…
Gunn’s stony demeanor never faltered. “Tell us where she is and we're gone.”
The bald vampire seemed to be the spokesman for the group, as he answered, “Who? Morgan? I thought you guys were supposed to be a couple of detectives. Or was that before your buddy Angel went bye-bye?” he sneered and his cronies laughed derisively.
His tone lighter, as though he was about to join in the vampires’ laugher, Gunn said, “We found you, didn't we?”
Fred stepped forward, crossbow at the ready, trained on the bald leader’s unbeating heart. “We just want to talk to her, that's all.”
Seemingly cowed by Fred’s weapon, the bald leader looked around furtively, as though someone was listening, before stating, “Condemned building on Macarthur, top floor, and tell her I want my CDs back, yeah?”
Gunn nodded once, pleased to have received the information without damage to Fred, who recently insisted on taking a more active role in their hunts. “We’ll pass it along.”
“Nah,” the bald one said suddenly. “You know what? Better yet, I think I'll tell her myself!”
Fred immediately loosed her bolt, but the leader was too fast and ducked. Gunn immediately leaped into the fray, staking one vampire as Fred jumped back quickly to pick up a loaded crossbow. Not quickly enough, however, for the bald one lunged forward and grabbed her by the throat before she could touch the weapon.
“I see Angel left you a little toy toy, huh?” he growled in her ear, sharp, elongated canines inches from her neck.
“More than one,” Fred grunted as she staked him with the wrist-bound stake-launcher Angel had designed. Moving quickly, she picked up the loaded crossbow. “Charles!”
Understanding her implicit command, Gunn immediately twisted to side and Fred shot the vampire he had been fighting. Faster than the blink of Fred’s eye, Gunn grabbed the bolt before it fell to the ground and staked the vampire closest to him.
The remaining pair of vampires took one look at Fred and Gunn, and the ashes of their former companions, quickly deciding to choose the better part of valor and run.
Gunn let out his breath in a rush. “Damn, Fred, you jus’ about gamme a heart attack when Baldie grabbed you.”
“But I did have this,” Fred protested, waving her wrist toward Gunn, who flinched because he was never quite sure than Angel’s constructions were foolproof and he liked his head where it was.
“Just…watch y’self, ‘k?” He flashed a quick grin and nodded at the truck. “Let’s say we go find ourselves this know-it-all witch, huh?”
~Part: 2~
The tingling began the moment they set foot inside the dusty abandoned building. Gunn looked quickly over at Fred, just to make sure he was not imagining the feeling of ice-cold fingers tracing a pattern up and down his back.
“Magic, I think,” Fred said quietly. She shifted uneasily as the eerie sensation intensified.
“Why are you here?” a tinny voice spoke from the rusty pipe protruding from the wall near Gunn. Fred thought the bodiless voice sounded almost familiar, but it was so distorted by the vibrations of the metal that she was unsure.
“We wanna see Morgan,” Gunn said in his best stake-and-ask-questions-later manner.
“And if she doesn’t want to see you?”
“Tough.”
“We just want to ask her some questions,” Fred tried to placate the voice.
“You can ask.” The voice’s tone implied that the answers might not be so forthcoming.
The tingling sensation ceased abruptly, leaving goose bumps in their wake. Fred took a tiny step to the left so that her shoulder just brushed against Gunn’s. She smiled uneasily at Gunn’s questioning look as they made their way through the ground level to the stairs.
Through some unspoken command, Gunn and Fred stepped purposefully up to the roof of the building. A woman stood on the crumbling edge, looking over the star-studded city of Angels. She stood in shadow, so that Fred and Gunn could make out her gender and age—young—but nothing else.
“Yo, Morgan?” Gunn took a step toward the woman, only to be stopped by an invisible barrier. “Hey!”
“Come no closer,” the woman said quietly. Fred recognized the voice from the pipe downstairs, but she also knew it from somewhere else. But where?
“Please woulda been good enough,” Gunn grumbled.
“We just want to ask you a couple questions and then we’ll leave you alone.” Fred was proud that she kept her voice even.
The woman did not answer. Fred shifted her weigh from left to right before blurting out, “We want you to help us find someone.”
“And who might that be?”
“Name’s Angel. Used t’be Angelus, the Scourge of Europe. Maybe you’ve heard of him?” Gunn’s question was tinged with sarcasm.
To both Gunn and Fred’s surprise, the woman laughed. “You want to find Angel? Surprise, surprise,” she said, even more sardonic than Gunn. “Who doesn’t want to find Angel, Vampire with a Soul, Warrior for the Powers That Be and All-Around Great Guy? The Slayer wanted him, the Gypsies wanted him, Wolfram and Hart want him and now Charles Gunn and Winifred Burkle want him.”
“How d’you know who we are?” Gunn demanded, disturbed by the woman’s knowledge.
“I didn’t get to be where I am now by being stupid,” she shot at him. “I was too smart to play sidekick anymore and I’m too smart for this town. You came to me for answers—well, I’ve got plenty of ‘em!
“Angel was betrayed by those closest to him—again. You people should just learn to leave each other alone. It’s these attachments that are our downfall.” She sighed and paused, as though in thought. “You could just spare yourselves the existential angst fest and leave him to rot," she laughed, the sound derisive and sharp. "Of course, you won’t because Gunn, you’re too damn noble for your own good, just like the rest of ‘em, and Fred, you’re running around all single of purpose, that you won’t stop and think. You two lovebirds could see what’s going on if you’d only just open up your eyes. You’re part of the PTB’s almighty plan, but you’d think They’d have chosen people with a little more street sense. But then, I suppose if They did, then I wouldn’t be here and you wouldn’t be there,” she snickered.
“I can’t tell you where Angel is.” Gunn made a monosyllabic noise of outrage and Fred looked hurt, but the woman continued before the pair could say anything further. “I can tell you who you need to find him.” A smile flickered across her face, white teeth glinting in the city lights. “Should be pretty ease to find him, too, although you might not like the company he’s keeping. Or maybe you will,” she added slyly, looking at Gunn. “Most men do think with the wrong head, after all.”
“Stop it already!” Fred cried, embarrassed and unsettled by the witch’s words. “Just tell us who!”
“Oh, he’ll like it if you find him, sweet thing,” the woman purred. “He’s had his eyes on you since the day he fell into that hell-hole, Pylea.”
Gunn’s sharp intake of breath made her laugh again. “Jealous? And I haven’t even told you that you need the Watcher to, well, ah, watch,” she mimicked a proper British accent. “Better practice your begging, ‘cause ole Wes ain’t gonna be in such a good mood when you turn up at his door.”
“Let’s go,” Gunn said tightly, tugging on Fred’s elbow. “We’re done.”
“Aww,” the woman pouted. “Leaving so soon? And I was so looking forward to reminiscing about the good old days back when you still had Cordy. Wouldn’t you like to know where she is?”
“No.” Gunn clenched his jaw and deliberately turned his back on the witch, leaving Fred by the arm. “Don’t listen t’her,” he advised Fred in a quiet tone. “She’s—“
“—Lying, untrustworthy and a bitch?” Gunn knew the woman was smirking even without turning around. “I am a bitch and you shouldn’t trust me, but I’m telling you the truth. You cannot find Angel on your own.”
“Thank you,” Fred called over her shoulder as she and Gunn made for the stairs, Southern manners winning out.
“My pleasure,” the woman murmured, moving out of the darkness. Her green eyes were troubled as she watched the pair go, an emotion akin to wistfulness shadowing her eyes. “Good luck.”
~Part: 3~
She stood still and unmoving for another minute or so, the night sounds of the city swirling around her. With a quiet sigh, she walked across the roof and down the rickety stairs that her visitors had traipsed down just moments ago.
“Bored now,” she said aloud. Solitary living for the last few weeks led her to develop the habit of talking aloud to herself and sometimes she wondered if it wasn’t a sign that she was going insane.
“But then, crazy people never do know if they’re crazy,” she giggled to herself, aware that she wasn’t doing much to preserve her sanity by acting this way. “Dru Lite, here I come!”
She came to the main door of the abandoned building and paused. Where to go? She had yet to learn the layout of this sprawling urban jungle and it wasn’t as though she had people to give her advice about where to go on a late night adventure.
She shrugged. She’d been fine wandering before; she’d do fine now.
At the corner, she took a left down a jarringly bright street filled with neon signs and the occasionally cluster of pedestrians. She ambled along the dirty sidewalk studying the people and place around her.
Once, she and… She had liked to people watch. She found a twisted triumph in her new ability to accurately define and describe the lives of her fellow late night ramblers. Connected as she was now, she could focus her talent to see through their petty flesh shells into the spirit within, where all life stories waited to be read by her.
It proved minimally entertaining, watching that man’s guilt as he walked with his girlfriend (he had just cheated on her) or that woman’s internal debate as she hurried down the street (she was sick of living with her boss but was afraid she’d loose her job).
But it was entertaining enough that it took her sometime to realize she was being followed.
Once she caught on, however, it was easy enough to duck into the nearest alley and wait for her stalker to come to her.
She stood in plain view under a dying streetlight, a resigned expression on her face as the person rounded the corner and abruptly stopped.
“Ya know,” she said companionably. “I’m getting a little tired of having people hunting me down. I might be connected, but that’s no excuse for everyone to turn all stalker.” She crooked her index finger at the figure standing in the dark mouth of the alley. “Come here.”
Pulled forward by her will, the person had no choice but to join her in the circle of dim florescent light. She saw that it was a girl this time, high school aged, with long light brown hair and nervous brown eyes. The girl’s clothing had probably been cool about a month ago, before the jeans were stained and the shirt hung loosely on thin limbs.
“What’s your name, li’l bit?” She winced inwardly. Just because the girl reminded her of… Moving on!
“Uh…Amber. Look,” Amber held up her hands and bounced nervously in place. “I, uh, don’t wanna hurt you or anything. I just wanna give you a message.”
She smiled slowly, leaning forward until her nose touched Amber’s. “You could not hurt me if you tried, Mary.”
Amber, or Mary, jumped back in shock, eyes wide. “Please, don’t tell anyone that!” she begged, trying to step backwards but caught in the snares of an invisible force.
She rolled her eyes and again motioned for Mary to come closer. “You can’t run away from me and then expect me to do you a favor, Amber.”
Reassured that she would keep her knowledge to herself, Mary skittered closer to the light. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to hear this message of yours and then I want you to tell me why they send a girl to do their work for them.”
“The Lady sent me, because she’d noticed your presence in town. She would like to offer you companionship and a chance to,” Mary made a face, trying to remember the exact words. “Fully utilize your talent. Oh, and she also says that she knows why everyone keeps coming to you for information.” Mary looked hopefully at her, puppy eyes pleading not to be unhappy with the messenger.
“The Lady, huh?” she snorted. “What are you, some kind of third-rate wanna-be wicca bad asses? ‘Cause let me tell you, it takes a whole lot more than trying to come up with a cool name. There’s the right look,” she eyed Mary up and down shaking her head. “There’s the right style, presentation, technical merit…” She laughed. “Well, and a lot of it has to do with pure talent.” She mimed throwing something in the air and suddenly there was a fireball spinning in midair, falling back down to burn cheerily in her palm.
“You tell your Lady,” she continued, entirely back eyes meeting frightened chocolate brown, “That if she has anything to tell me, she can tell me herself. If it’s that important, then she probably should waste time with messengers, anyway.” She negligently tossed the fire ground where it extinguished itself. “Get out of here.” She gave Mary and invisible push, which was all the girl need to bolt for the streets.
She sighed. “Kids these days,” she shook her head. “Well, that was a waste of time.” She clamped down in her curiosity at “the Lady’s” offer; she didn’t need some sorry-ass wanna-be telling her why she suddenly knew the answers to people’s most important questions. She’d been Research Girl before—she could do it again.
~Part: 4~
“A week!” she screeched, hurling a leather-bound first edition of yet another useless supernatural encyclopedia. The book bounced harmlessly off a bookshelf on the opposite the room and landed flat on its spine. “A week here and nothing!” she raged.
Pulling herself under control with great effort, she levitated the inoffensive book back to its rightful place on the shelf. Although her searches had so far been fruitless, she had discovered that her branch of the Los Angeles Public Library had a decent collection of occult literature tucked away in its lower levels. With her combined computer and magical skills, creating a new identity for herself as a frequent patron of the library was ridiculously easy. And a basic warding spell caused any visitors to her corner of the library to suddenly forget what they wanted in that section of the library.
It was a clever operation, if she said so herself; her mental list of all she did have going for her cheering her slightly. Of course, she still had no idea why she was suddenly Miss Information for everyone in Los Angeles. It was not as though her brain was filled with this knowledge all the time, but that the answer to her supplicants’ questions suddenly appeared in her mind the moment they dropped by her “home”. And, if she focused hard enough, she could peek into the souls of the people all around her. She could see their petty fears, deepest loves and tragic mistakes. It was entertaining enough, she supposed, but it was getting rather tiring not knowing why all this had happened to her.
When she was disturbingly honest with herself, which happened only in the misty moments before slipping into sleep when she felt her isolation the keenest, she did not like it. She did not trust herself with all that power or her continued ease in magic. She did not trust anyone else to provide the answers she needed. She did not trust the Powers That Be to do things right. She had seen and experienced too many mistakes—her own, other’s and the Power’s—to have the same optimistic blind faith she had once placed in herself and others.
When she was frustrated, which happened after each useless research session in the library, she felt the temptation to seek out that insufferable little snot Mary, or Amber as she was calling herself, and make her arrogant “Lady” ‘fess up to all she knew.
“I could have that stupid slut babbling everything she knew in five minutes,” she huffed, gathering her sparse notes and folding them inside one of the more aged tomes so that she did not have to worry about carrying anything.
She took a left turn out of the library and walked down the hazy street into LA dusk. Yesterday, she had passed time by club-hopping, a simple glamour making it disgustingly simple for her to meander in and out of Los Angeles’ top night spots. But this evening, she was feeling a little more out of sorts than usual and decided drastic measure were in order.
With the steady stream of visitors bothering her since her arrival, she knew exactly where LA’s less human types chose to frequent. And when she’d first heard this place, she’d laughed in the young Avo-Monic demon’s red face.
“No, no,” he had insisted. “It’s a really cool thing to do. I mean, like all the guys I know are really into it.”
“But Mo-om,” she mock whined in response. “All the other demons are doing it!”
She snickered aloud at the memory. Demons singing karaoke: this she had to see.
~Part: 5~
It was simply called “Joe’s.” The utter lack of originality earned a disgusted eye-roll as she entered the warmly lit karaoke bar. Although it was only a few hours after dusk, the place already buzzed with activity. A spiked Bracken demon served drinks of all kinds to the varied patrons of Joe’s, some obviously demons and others more human in appearance.
Slipping unobtrusively to a vacant seat in the back, she watched in half disgusted, half entertained silence as demons, witches, vampires and all other manner of otherworldly creatures sang their hearts out to the duly appreciative audience. A Mohra demon scratched out “I Will Remember You,” a female werewolf droned “Wild Things,” and a vampire with an eternal receding hairline crooned a decent “Lady’s a Tramp,” among other performances.
As she watched the vampire take his seat among a burst of applause, she could not help but reflect that this place would be torture for her. She could barely handle Willy’s without a hand twitching toward a hidden stake, a look of ancient violence submerged behind young hazel eyes.
She decided she liked Joe’s.
She came back the next day, the day after and the day after that. The Bracken bartender and owner, Joe, came to know her by sight, as did a number of the regulars. She never drank, never sang and never talked. She sat in the same back chair every night and she sat alone.
Everyone knew who she was, of course. Her Knowledge, however she came by it, was too highly prized for them to be unaware of her identity. But no one made any effort to approach her in her quiet, solitary corner. They had too much fear, or respect, for the witch to bother her. And if she didn’t want to sing or drink or talk, that was fine. After all, there were a few species present that couldn’t sing or drink or talk, either.
That is, none of the regulars approached her.
Since she became something of a regular herself, it was only a matter of time before the usual assorted hopeless and clueless found her at Joe’s to find out her Knowledge about them. The timid took only an enraged ebony-eyed glare to disburse, while the braver ones had to be strongly convinced that their lives were worth more than the Knowledge they sought.
It was a Wednesday night when things finally came to a head.
The Mohra with a penchant for Sarah Mclaughlan had just finished “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” when a teenaged vampire wormed his way through to her corner.
“Ah, Morgan?” He struggled for control of his pitch in an effort to sound less like a barely post-pubescent fledgling and more a strong, cunning Master.
It had not been a pleasant Wednesday for her. Not only had she again failed to find anything of significance at the library, but also a clumsy forgetfulness spell had resulted in an unpleasant scene at a more upscale clothing store. She disliked having to do such awkward, large-scale enchantments like wiping the minds of the store attendants, the police and a few other shoppers to clean up after her own mindless mistakes. She was above that now. Or at least, she would have been if she had not been distracted by a young man with an eerily almost-familiar face sprinting at inhuman speed past the outside of the store.
Black immediately swallowed her emerald eyes as she scowled at him “Go away,” barely turning her head to the left to look at him.
“Please, Morgan, I just have one quick question for you. I promise that it won’t take—”
She cut off his entreaty mid-sentence, roughly grabbing the hand that dared to place itself on the armrest of her chair. “What part of “go away” didn’t you understand, vampire?” Her recently repainted burgundy nails dug into his undead skin as he tried to squirm away.
“Look, I didn’t mean to… I’ll just, ah…” He attempted to tug his hand
away from her clawed hand and weasel back the way he came.
“Of course you didn’t mean to,” she hissed, voice low and dangerously composed. “No one ever means to get themselves harmed or killed or Chosen or almost end the world. It just happens. And there is nothing that we can do about it. We just have to have the balls to take what’s coming to us.” She dug her nails in deeper; small drops of crimson liquid oozed down the back of his hand to drip onto the scuffed floor. She met his frightened, deathless blue eyes and almost smiled.
Abruptly, she dropped his hand and jumped from her chair to stand in front of him. He made an inarticulate sound of terror and backed up against the wall, their actions drawing the attention of Joe’s patrons.
“I just want to be left alone. In peace. By. My. Self. I don’t want you coming up to me with your petty questions about your future or your past or your present or you boss or your daughter or your lover. I want out of this!” She screamed the last sentence, weeks of pent-up anger finally reaching boiling point.
She was too far-gone to hear the warnings cried out around her or the vampire’s plea for mercy. She reached deep inside herself, pulling up strength from reserves she’d forgotten she had, the words of the spell spilling rapidly from her mouth. At the last word, she released all her anger, frustration and strength at the vampire.
For a brief, heart-stopping moment of frozen time, nothing happened.
She shrieked the last word again, pouring everything she possessed into the spell.
The vampire howled in agony as a deceptively slow, crawling fire ate him from the inside. In a few minutes, he was fully aflame, her will alone keeping him frozen in place so as not to spread the blaze to the building.
She turned from the conflagration, which would continue as long as she allowed, facing the crowd that had gathered around her.
“Do you finally get it?” she spat. “I don’t want to help you! I don’t care anymore, I just want you to leave me alone!”
A sudden hush fell in the karaoke bar.
Joe stepped forward and seemed about to say something when the door slammed open and a woman strode angrily into the room. She was tall, tan and her long black hair hung in a braid down the back of her well-cut crème pantsuit.
“What is going on here?” she demanded.
“Well, ya see, Lady,” Joe hedged, trying to find the best way to phrase the events of the past few minutes. “He, uh… She, um…”
“Quiet,” she snapped. “I did not ask for your spluttering explanation. I want her to tell me what just transpired.” Steely gray orbs met black abyss.
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