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“He just seemed off, Wills. It wouldn’t be any huge deal for you to check up on him right?” Buffy asked.
“Buffy, isn’t this a bit beyond the Protective-older-sister thing?” Willow asked.
“You checked into Ford’s background when Angel asked you to,” Xander said.
“And that was a good thing,” Willow agreed. “What did you say his name was?”
“Cole O’Neill,” Buffy replied with a grateful look that included both Xander and Willow.
“I think you’re just freaked because he lives in Angel’s old apartment building,” Anya volunteered. “Anything to do with Angel makes you all fidgety. I think you should go down to LA and deal with whatever. I mean, break-up with him or drag him back here, I don’t care. Just stop messing up my Saturdays with your issues.”
Xander looked apologetic as he nudged Anya with his elbow.
“What?” Anya demanded. “Everyone thinks she needs to, you were all saying that last night.”
“I’m sorry, Buffy,” Willow said contritely. “It’s just, we don’t understand why you won’t go. When something is wrong with Angel we expect you to set new speed records getting to him, but you won’t even talk to Cordy when she calls anymore.”
“He didn’t actually kill anyone,” Buffy protested. “And firing Cordy and Wes? You guys know how annoying they can be, maybe Angel was just having a bad day.”
“Not to be argumentative or anything, but Angel left a bunch of people to Darla and Drucillia’s mercy, which they don’t actually have, being soulless and all” Willow pointed out. “I think that goes beyond having a bad day.”
“They were all evil,” Buffy exclaimed. “They were the whole reason Darla and Dru were in LA in the first place. Doesn’t that make them getting eaten ironic justice or kismet or karma or something like that? Angel didn’t really do anything bad.”
“Even if they did deserve it, it was a little on the extreme side don’t you think?” Xander asked. “Which would make it a good idea for you to go to LA and asked him what’s on his mind.”
“Angel doesn’t want to talk to me,” Buffy protested. “Why don’t you go if you’re so sure it needs to be done?”
“Angel and I made peace, that’s all,” Xander said. “And yeah I can see us being friends at some point in the future, assuming his current insanity doesn’t end with him dusted, but Cordy and Wes can’t get through to him right now. Annoying or not they are his friends. I wouldn’t stand a chance. You; on the other hand, he loves. You can make him listen Buffy. Plus, if you have to whap him upside the head, your Slayerness means you can do it hard enough to actually get his attention.”
“I can’t!” Buffy exclaimed. “Not with Glory running around and Mom just back from the hospital and this new guy hanging around Dawn, and college. I’m juggling three lives already, I don’t have time to go running off to LA.”
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“I recognize that look,” Joyce said, catching Dawn staring dreamily off into the distance. “New romantic interest?”
“Mom!” Dawn protested.
“I promise not to embarrass you,” Joyce offered. “Just tell me one thing; is he human?”
“Mom! Angel’s nicer than a lot of the human guys Buffy has dated. You remember Eric, I think he was three guys before we moved to Sunnydale,” Dawn exclaimed, outraged on Buffy’s behalf.
“Eric,” Joyce said distastefully.
“Right, Mr.-I’m-so-slimy, it was a great day when Buffy dumped him.”
“Okay, I know Angel’s a good person, especially for a vampire,” Joyce sighed. “But he really is too old for Buffy… or her grandmother for that matter.”
“Come on mom, a human would have to be a corpse to be as old as Angel and he really doesn’t act old,” Dawn argued.
“Couldn’t he find a nice vampire girl to be in love with?” Joyce wondered out loud.
“Right, cause there’s so many of them wandering around,” Dawn said, rolling her eyes. “Anyways, Buffy would still be in love with him.”
“Weren’t we talking about the guy you were day dreaming about?” Joyce asked.
“Cole, just moved to Sunnydale, he’s really cute and sweet,” Dawn reported consicly, then the dreamy smile re-emerged. “He walked me home from school today and he carried my books.”
“So you saw him in the daylight,” Joyce sighed. “That’s good.”
“Well, he could be some other type of demon,” Dawn said sarcastically. “Not all of them combust in sunlight. I mean I didn’t ask him. I can just imagine that conversation: ‘Hi Cole, nice to see you. Oh, by the way are you some kind of demon from Hell out to destroy the world?’ Geese Mom.”
“Maybe we could have Willow do a spell on him,” Joyce suggested.
“Or Spike could punch him in the nose like he did to Tara,” Dawn added faceously.
“Would that work?” Joyce asked.
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Cole wandered around the small apartment curiously looking through drawers and cub-boards. When he first moved in a thick layer of dust had covered everything.
He didn’t think anyone had lived here for quite a while, but everything was exactly as it had been left when the former tenant just walked out one night. Artwork was carefully displayed in formerly lit cases in which the light bulbs had burned out. Bags filled with blood rotted in the refrigerator. The bed stood unmade in one corner behind a decorative screen. A family of mice had made a home in the cushion of the leather chair. A desk stood in one corner. A few items of clothing had been left in the dresser.
Cole’s bedroll occupied one side of the room. He’d dusted, evicted the mice and replaced the old blood with a wide variety of junk food, but other than that he’d tried to leave the little apartment as he’d found it. Cole didn’t want to disturb the atmosphere, living here was almost like meeting his father, or at least a preparatory step for that event.
His mother, not to mention everyone else at home would be furious with him if they realized what he was up to.
Angel had a destiny, it was important, couldn’t be interfered with. The Sidhe had what amounted to a big hands off sign posted on anything dealing with the souled vampire.
They’d made such a mess of interpreting the Galorian Prophecies that in the end they’d decided the safest thing to do was just stay out of the central figure’s life. Hopefully, that way the prophecy would simply unfold as it was written.
Only once in almost three centuries had their involvement in the prophecy accomplished anything desirable and that involvement had been fiercely debated and carefully planned.
The Council had been forced to move the debate to another dimension to garner more time to discuss their involvement. Even so they’d barely acted in time to save Angel. And when they did become involved, it was a very limited thing. Only Kelvar was allowed to actually interact with the souled vampire.
Cole had pled to be allowed to speak with his father while Angel was Underhill, but had been refused. Kelvar, Cole’s much, much more than Great Grandfather, had tried to soften the refusal by explaining that Angel was badly hurt in body and mind and that any uncontrolled sensory data could do him permanent harm. Buffy Summers was what his mind associated with happiness and security, she was what he reached for. Buffy was a part of Angel’s destiny, Cole and his mother weren’t.
“Destiny,” Cole thought with a snort. For almost a decade he’d been raised to take up the weight of destiny. Then circumstances lead someone to re-examine a bunch of musty old scrolls. That led the Council to conclude that the man they’d written off as dead was actually their prophesized warrior.
“Prophecies were nothing but trouble,” that was what Cole had concluded. In the mid-1600’s it was foretold that a descendant of Gabriel Elan, the half-mortal child of Kelvar of the Emerald Elfhame would be a Warrior of the Powers that Be in the second Millennium. Thus started the tragedy.
If there was one thing Cole knew it was his family’s history, especially the seventy-five years following the prophecy of Galorian.
The Bane-Sidhe learned of the prophecy and they set out to hunt down every mortal who carried even a drop of Kelvar’s blood. For three quarters of a century the knights of Emerald Elfhame and the Bane-Sidhe fought. In the end the few remaining descendants were gathered together and brought to the entrance of the Emerald Elfhame where the Sidhe community’s entire strength could be thrown into protecting them.
The Emerald Elfhame was almost depopulated in the war that followed and in the end, every descendent of Gabriel Elan was slain… Except for one girl, an eighteen year-old named Anabella who followed her heart despite her parents’ wishes to the contrary. They’d all written her off, forgotten her, everyone forgot she had ever existed. Until the portents indicated the Warrior would soon be born. Then they remembered Anabella.
The Sidhe searched for the run away, but they were most cautious in their searching; they didn’t want to risk the Bane-Sidhe learning that the prophecy hadn’t been defeated yet. Of course there are times when a person can be too cautious. It took them years to trace Anabella and all they found was her grave and a town full of rotting bodies.
“That discovery certainly kicked them into high gear,” Cole thought. They summoned the most powerful magics at their disposal and found that Anabella had two descendants; a young vampire who seemed bent on proving himself the most cruel and viscous member of a species known only for their evil and an unborn child. The Sidhe pick the more likely candidate and brought Anna and the yet-to-be-born Cole Underhill.
Kelvar and the others reasoned that if the second millennial warrior was a mortal infant in the 1750’s it seemed that the child was destined to grow-up in the slower time frame of Underhill.
Cole spent the first eight years of his life being honed to assume his duties as a Warrior. He was proficient in both martial arts and elven magics. It never once occurred to anyone that a mistake might have been made.
In the meanwhile Anna had been quietly using the magic she’d learned to watch over her former lover. When Angel’s soul was restored she demanded that he be taken Underhill as well where he could be cared for at least until he’d learned to deal with his past as a vampire. Anna’s request was refused; the Sidhe had no interest in bringing a demon into their safe hold, or in interfering in the Rom’s vengeance scheme. However a few members of the community, either out of curiosity or a sense of duty began monitoring the tortured vampire as he falteringly began to seek redemption.
As they watched Angel adapt to his new circumstances it occurred to them that things might not be as they’d always assumed. They re-read the old Galorian Prophecy, and then they sought out other prophecies of the End of Days. Gradually the Sidhe became convinced that Angel was actually their Warrior.
Anna immediately sought permission to bring Angel under the elve’s protection and was once again refused. This time because the Sidhe had realized it was Angel’s gory past and his subsequent guilt that were forging him into the Powers that Be’s Warrior. “To assist him in anyway,” they declared. “Could prevent his destiny from coming to pass.”
Not knowing what else to do with himself, Cole continued training as a Warrior. And in his spare time he began wondering about the man who would actually fulfill that roll and who was his father.
Angel’s brief trip through the Underhill after being rescued from Hell cemented Cole’s determination that he should meet his father. In just over a week, Cole had completed his preparations and left for Sunnydale, only to find that over two years had passed in the mortal plane and Angel had moved to a different city.
“Things never go according to plan,” Cole thought as he settled in with a book of his father’s drawings to examine. “But maybe this was better, Sunnydale gave him a chance to meet people who knew his father. A chance to get to know him second hand before walking up to Angel and introducing himself.”
And besides, Dawn was the greatest. Even if he couldn’t figure out why everyone here, including Dawn herself, seemed think she was Buffy’s sister. Buffy didn’t have a sister, Cole knew that for certain.
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