Pairings: Angel(us)/Fred, Spike/Drusilla, and any mix of them as well.
Summary: Angel wants something he lost.
Spoilers: Lots!
Rating: FRAO, but not just yet.
Thanks to jennillu and Kat for the beta!
lilbreck has voiced some mightily important concerns regarding some truly disturbing things on LJ right now. She was bold and truthful and I adore her for it!
Feedback would be lovely.
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~Part: 1~
Fred walked backwards in a circle, half bent at the waist as she poured a red, dusty substance from a cloth sack, carefully following the pattern drawn out on the floor, afraid to make a mistake. She was somewhat uncomfortable with the magical aspects of her new life, but slowly coming to grips with the fact that science was rooted in something dark and powerful and the two were not always easily separated.
Angel stood to the side, re-reading the incantation. He wanted to get the pronunciation right. Everything was riding on this. His son’s life was in the balance.
Straightening to her full height when the circle was complete, she stepped inside and waited, a little nervous. Angel joined her with the book and together they sat facing each other, lighting the candles that set at each point of the pentagram.
“Are you sure you wanna do this, Angelcakes?” Lorne asked. He loomed over them, tall and what should have been menacing inside that purple suit, except he was only green.
Dark, determined eyes flicked up at him before falling back to the book. “I’m sure.”
“Maybe we should call Wes, man.” The glare and eyeroll from the vampire did nothing to deter Gunn. “Look, he fucked up. But we know why he did it … what he thought. Hate him all you want , but don’t do this.”
Angel stared back at his comrade, saying nothing and everything with the blankness in his eyes.
The dark-skinned man tossed his arms up in resignation and got ready to do his part. “Fine, but when the shit goes bad, I’m saying I told you so.”
Gunn’s loyalty and honesty cracked Angel’s hard veneer and he smiled. “I’ll consider myself warned,” he replied, then looked to Fred. “Ready?”
Swallowing hard she nodded, her eyes big and a bit scared behind those glasses. But she would do anything for Angel. He saved her, helped her, changed her life from one of misery to one of hope and purpose. In short, she owed him and wanted to be of use.
The vampire took her hand in his, the other holding the book open. Together they poured a mixture of his blood and hers into a small wooden bow that already contained the other ingredients for the spell as he began to say the spell.
“Vicis, Ego precor vos. Patefacio vestri porta. Reverto mihi ut ut meus parvulus eram captus me.”
Nothing happened. Fred glanced around, a sad smile on her face and was about to console her friend when a bolt of light shot up from the bowl and knocked them both back just as the circle that enclosed them grew vertically, silvery strands of brilliant light making a curtain like a shimmering waterfall around them, keeping them inside.
“Angel?” Fred reached out for him blindly, in a mild or perhaps the beginning stages of major panic. He found her hand and squeezed tightly.
“It’s okay, Fred. I’m right here.” His calm voice belied the anxiety inside.
With a loud bang, the wall dropped away and the bright light was gone. Angel glanced around, seeing no one else and grinned at Fred.
“It worked.” He stood, a little unsteadily and helped her to her feet.
“Where are we?” she asked, peeking at her surroundings, as she held on to him and waited for things to stop spinning.
“My bedroom ...” He stopped, the words dying on his lips. This was not his room in the Hyperion or the lobby where Wesley stole away with Connor, nor was it the area under the 6th street bridge where Holtz leaped into Quor-Toth. He glanced around him, really seeing things now that his excitement had faded into something more like dread. The furniture looked familiar as did the box of cheroots on the bedtable.
“Crap, oh, crap.” He mumbled, forgetting about Fred for a moment as the reality of where they were sunk in, not that he wanted to understand, he wanted to hide, but their scents, alluring and sweet, hung heavy in the air, just as he remembered them.
“Angel, what happened? Where are we?” This time she was more insistent and shaking as she spoke.
He was growling and scaring her. “Sorry … not just where are, but when are we?”
Down the hall, he heard talking and wondered why he had not heard them before. He turned and grabbed Fred by the shoulders.
“I can’t explain it now, but you have to trust me. Do you?” She nodded frantically and he noticed their clothes. “Good. Take off your clothes and climb in that bed. And no matter what happens do not let on that we don’t belong.”
“What? Angel, I don’t …” She was confused and he was being more taciturn than usual.
“Just do it, Fred. I’ll explain later. Undress … now! And remember that I won’t hurt you. I’m pretending.” He stuffed his clothes and shoes under the bed and snatched Fred’s from her, doing the same with them. “I’m pretending, but they aren’t.”
~~~*~~~
The door opened, revealing a tall, thin girl in a long sleeved green velvet dress with a small train and white pearls adorning the fabric. The material clung to her until it fell away at the hips where the dress spread out just a little more in gathers and pleats. Her dark hair was swept up into a hat made of the same material with tendrils escaping down her neck. She regarded them with bright eyes, too bright for the dim lighting in the room and Fred could not tell their color from where she lay under the blankets, but she was compelled to look in them.
“Angel, you’ve overslept and we’ll be late for the party.” She said calmly, taking in Fred’s presence with quiet curiosity.
Angel was struggling to remember this day and what party, but nothing was coming to mind.
“Dru, where’s William and Darla?”
Her head tilted as she favored him with a quizzical stare that made him want to hide. “Silly, Grandmother’s gone to Paris and my William left to fetch us snack,” she replied as she rubbed her tummy. She stepped further into the room and smiled at the strange girl in her sire’s bed, but spoke to Angel. “You’ve already been out and found your dinner?”
He did not know how to answer that, the sun had only about an hour ago, that much he knew from his body’s own clock. “Make me a scotch, Precious. I’ll be down.”
She stared at him a while longer, waiting until he got out of the bed before leaving to do as he told her.
“Angel …” Fred started, but Angel put his finger to his lips while he listened. When he was sure she was downstairs and would not pick up on the whispers, he leaned over the bed and into the thin girl’s ear.
“You know what’s happened?”
She nodded, fairly certain that they had somehow gone too far back in time. “Yes.”
“Okay, I need you to pretend to be someone I’ve kidnapped and I’m keeping you against your will.”
“What? Why? Who is she?”
“My childe, Drusilla, I made her into a vampire. You have to watch out for her, she can … see things and will know something is off.”
Panic was plan on her face and her body exhibited all the symptoms as well. “What about, who was it, William?”
“He is a vampire too, Drusilla turned him, but I teach him.” Wracking his brain as he tried to remember what year it was, he added, “He’s young, but strong and nowhere as stupid as he acts.”
“Why don’t we just leave?” she whispered, close to panicking.
He did not have the answer, and would leave if her life was threatened, but for now he needed to know why the spell to take him back to the day when he lost his son had brought him here, to 1886, instead.
~Part: 2~
Here was Berlin, Germany.
It was a dangerous time in the lives of the vampires. Another powerful clan, Herdadions had been making sport of childer of the order of Aurelius in an attempt to kill off the line or at least weaken it severely. The Masters of both orders were true Masters, holding onto territories with a vicious savagery that ensure safe of their kind within its borders. As a result everyone had a job. Angelus was stationed to rule over Berlin and all its outlying territories and he did so with ruthless glee.
Penn, Angelus’ first childe, roamed the continent, choosing to take the fight to the Herdadions, playing assassin in between his favorite pastime: ritualistic killings of humans. He was quite successful in his campaign and looked upon favorably by those high up in the Order.
Others envied him his childe Drusilla because of her ability to tell the future which had been advantageous in his rise to power over others seen as more qualified within their clan and in keeping his region free of rival vampire clans.
The youngest creation, a crafty, seemingly inconsequential William the Bloody was also a point of contention within and outside the Order. His unpredictable nature was a liability to be sure, but he was a natural killer and wasted no time with the flourish of ritual killing. He was the right hand of Angelus, both to be feared and respected throughout the region.
As a result Angelus was able to run the area assigned to him by Heinrich Nest, the ruler of the Order of Aurelius, with few problems. His was a simple method. He granted passage as he saw fit and killed those deemed a threat without prejudice.
Everything was sinking in as Angel remembered just what his little band of evil had been doing in Germany. He personally never liked the country, it was too cold, but he did as the Master requested in order to please Darla. It did not, however, stop her from running to her sire more times than he cared to recall.
He took a shaky breath as he descended the stairs, smelling Drusilla,
William, and fear.
Fred was tied, albeit, not tightly and not without a few stakes within
reach and the ability to wiggled free if she had need. There was no way
he wanted to take her to the party as a plaything to show off. The less
she encountered of this world, his depravity, the better. She would be
safe enough here as not one minion was crazy enough to touch anything that
belonged to the Master of Berlin.
To grant her that protection Angel needed to bite her. Not to feed, but to mark as his property. Fred had been very nice about it all, considering what she had recently gone through in Pylea, which fed his guilt. But she allowed it, easily falling into the rapture such a bite, if done right, can cause. This also fed his guilt as he left her glassy-eyed and giddy and smelling of desire.
Down the stairs and to the right was a long hall. The first doorway was a doorless arch and he went through this, into the study, finding his childer unerringly.
Drusilla was just finishing her dinner, and looked up at him while sucking the last drops of blood from her meal. “Sorry, Angel. I meant to save you a bit, but you’ve had some of your little treat already. I can smell her.”
“It’s alright, Precious. William neglected to fetch enough for us all.” He easily fell back into this role and found blaming Spike for everything oddly comforting.
The shorter vampire only scoffed, letting the criticism roll off his back. He knew Angelus did not want him hunting for him and chose not to rise to the bait. There were other things on his mind.
“So you’ve a tart up there while Darla’s away. Fast work, Angelus. I never even heard you slip out.”
Angel felt those blue eyes regarding him carefully and unlike Angelus who was prone to underestimate William, Angel was determined to keep in mind just how perceptive the boy actually was. Later in his life he would seriously wonder if some of Drusilla’s cognitive powers were passed along to him in the blood, making William’s instincts and intuition more finely honed than anything he had seen in his 150 years.
“What Darla doesn’t know, doesn’t hurt her,” he replied, skillfully skipping over the rest of his statement, which had been his granchilde’s actual point. “Yet what you tell her, will, most assuredly, hurt you, Will.”
William lit a cheroot and handed it to Angel, letting the matter drop for the moment. “Are we ready then?”
~~~*~~~
The party was a gathering of artists, something Darla would have enjoyed and apparently had been invited to attend. They of course apologized for her absence, telling the host that her father had taken ill only the prior day and she had left for Paris immediately.
William, despite his fierce nature, also enjoyed the gathering, holding an intimate conversation with the evening’s guest of honor, the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Angel saw William and the man talking and remembered this happening the first time he lived it as well, which was odd and left him with a feeling of things spiraling endlessly out of control. It was all very civilized and proper.
Drusilla was feeling a bit retro and ate an up and coming poet. The night was a success.
As they entered the house, Drusilla handed her coat to the footman, Karl, and called for one of the female minions, Magdalena, to prepare her bath. William watched her ascend the stairs with dark blue eyes, her ass swaying nicely for his benefit.
Anxious to get back to Fred, Angel moved to follow, but William’s voice stopped him.
“Did you even read the man’s book?” he asked while pouring two scotches in thick crystal glasses. Angel came into the study after a longing glance up the stairs and accepted the proffered drink.
“Actually, no.” This was true; he hadn’t and had lied to William about it before. He remembered an attempt to bluff his way through a conversation with the young vampire about Nietzsche’s theories. It failed then and he was not in the mood for not-so-playful banter with his grandchilde.
A little stunned and disappointed by the easy admission to what William knew to be true, he swallowed a gulp of his drink to cover, his ears and demon tuning in to the lone heartbeat in the house.
“What are you going to do with her?” William had not seen her yet, but Drusilla him she was a pretty thing and he was curious.
Angel shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. I like the way she trembles,” he replied non-committal. “Speaking of which, I think I’ll go up and see what I can do to set those skinny legs of her to shaking.”
Not needing or waiting for William’s reply or approval, he took his glass and slipped out of the room, leaving a watchful blue-eyed demon behind.
~~~*~~~
“Oh my God, Angel,” Fred whispered as she hugged the vampire with one arm. He untied the other and she locked onto him. “What took you so long?”
Fred appeared to be fine, just worried, and Angel was relieved. The entire time he was with his family he had been rethinking his decision to stay here. He could not risk Fred being hurt and William and Drusilla were too unpredictable to keep her under the same roof.
“Did anyone bother you?” he asked pulling out of her thin arms. She shook her head.
“No. That girl, the one that you told to make sure none of the others came in…” Her sentence ended like a question and she waiting.
“Magdalena?”
“Right, her, well she came in, but she was pretty nice and asked me if I wanted food, but I didn’t ‘cus my stomach’s all tied up in knots since we got here.”
He felt bad for this. It was his fault they were here. His anger and pride kept him from doing the smart thing; calling Wesley for help.
She was sitting on the bed, she linens wrapped around her, but nude. Her frail appearance, waiflike and smelling of tension, was a bad combination, enticing more primal urges to surface. “I need to see about some clothes for you.” He thought one of Dru’s dresses might fit well enough until he could get her to the dressmaker’s.
“That’d be great. I feel kinda ooky. Maybe time travel does that to a person.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He smiled, grateful that she was taking this so well. An image of Cordelia in that bed ranting at him came zooming painfully through his mind and he pushed it away with a shudder.
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