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Riley drove Joyce’s SUV with a nervous intensity. He had claimed the responsibility of driving by rights of being the only one emotionally stable enough to be behind the wheel.
Giles sat in the passenger seat shoot coldly threatening glances at Riley. Giles had made clear that he felt he should be the driver and that Riley wasn’t driving fast enough. At the moment Giles seemed to see Riley’s driving as the main obstacle in getting to Angelus. Riley feared that the ex-Watcher would get them in a wreck in his haste to confront the formerly souled vampire.
Buffy had taken the seat behind Riley. He could see her in the rear view mirror, huddled against the window, a polished staked she’d referred to as Mr. Pointy clenched in her white knuckled hands. Her face was a blank mask but her eyes already grieved for the one they intended to kill.
Spike sat beside her, practically twitching with repressed impatience. For the first time Riley felt intimidated by the hyperactive blond vampire. This wasn’t Hostile 17, an escaped lab rat, or the Scoobies’ pet neutered vampire. This was a master vampire who had killed two slayers. Riley didn’t understand it but Spike was almost as eager to confront Angelus as Giles was. The blond was filled with a gleefully violent energy that was barely containable.
Willow curled in Tara’s embrace in the back seat, radiating a fear that even Adam had failed to generate in the slight witch.
Riley had to admit to a certain degree of tension himself. Last spring, while his metabolism had still been altered to make him stronger and more impervious to pain, he’d fought the good version of Angel. Using all the skill and quite a bit of the equipment that the Initiative had given him, he’d taken on the souled vampire and he’d lost. Now he was going to face the evil version of the vampire, the one that had shaken the Scoobies to they’re core and vary nearly sent the world to Hell. It wasn’t a comforting scenario.
Anya sat beside the two Wiccas, the only one in the car whose thoughts weren’t focused on Angelus. Xander had been calling on a daily basis from LA but Anya didn’t like him being alone there with his ex-girlfriend.
______________________________________________________________
Twenty minutes after sunset the Slayer and her friends invaded the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel.
“Where is he?” Giles demanded. He carried his crossbow with a frightening eagerness.
“We’ve been attempting to ascertain that,” Wesley said. “However we aren’t even sure that Angel has actually lost his soul. Don’t you think that you’re over-reacting somewhat?”
Wesley pointedly looked over the arms they carried; Riley, Giles and Willow all carried crossbows, Buffy had her stake and Spike was already in game face.
In contrast Wesley and Cordelia had tranquilizer guns and crosses. Gunn had elected to stick with his sword, but had promised not to kill Angel out of hand. Xander clung grimly to a large cross, looking torn.
“That Angel risked his soul tells me everything I need to know,” Giles said coldly. “He doesn’t deserve to exist.”
“Giles wait, you need to know the whole story,” Xander protested.
“I can’t believe that you, of all people, would take his side,” Giles snapped.
At that moment Angel walked through the door whistling cheerfully, only to find himself the focus of eleven hostile glares and almost as many weapons. “What the Hell?” he exclaimed. Scanning the group arrayed against him, his eyes filled with hurt betrayal as they settled on Cordelia and the gun she held pointed at him. “Kathy? Why are you doing this?” he asked.
Cordelia lowered her gun, sighing with relief. “It’s okay, he’s still Liam,” she said.
Wesley, Gunn and Xander relaxed at her pronouncement. Buffy and Willow turned to stare at the former May Queen in confusion. Giles, Riley and Spike remained focused on Angel to the exclusion of everything else.
“How dare you?” Giles spat.
“Who the hell are you?” Angel demanded, then turned to address Cordelia, Wesley and Xander. “Look, I’m sorry I ditched you guys last night. Jenny took me to her parent’s vacation home on the beach, by the time I remembered the whole implode in sunlight thing it was already morning. I explained that I had a skin condition to Jenny, so she decided to keep me entertained till I could go out. What is going on?”
“You have no right to behave like this,” Giles said. “Your existence is only tolerated for Buffy’s sake and to give you an opportunity to make reparations for your past. You aren’t to live as human, you don’t deserve that privilege.”
Angel’s eyes sparkled with a hurt, sulky anger, as his posture took on a studied insolence that was totally foreign to the person they knew.
“I’d like to hear one single reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” Giles demanded trigging his crossbow.
The bolt embedded itself high in Angel’s shoulder, the dark haired vampire gasped in pain. The others stared at the bolt then Giles in pure shock.
Giles reloaded his crossbow with a smooth, practiced movement and leveled it at Angel’s chest. “That is after I’ve tied you to a chair, broken every one of your finger and we’ve seen how creative I can be when it comes to torture,” he said angrily.
Angel prodded at the bolt in his shoulder with curious fingers. “As you wish Father,” he replied by route, disrespect filling his voice more out of habit that intention.
Furious Giles fired a second bolt just as Xander’s hand closed on the crossbow, jerking it upwards. The bolt embedded itself harmlessly in the doorframe over Angel’s head.
“Enough,” Xander said. “Angel doesn’t remember loosing his soul the first time, let alone the time in school. So just stand down. We failed to explain the curse to him, but he still has his soul, so no harm no foul okay?”
Gunn crossed the room to Angel. “ So I’m guessing last night wasn’t the thing fairy tales are made of, huh Soulful?” he said ripping Angel’s shirt open around the bolt. He notched it with a pocketknife just behind the fletching. “Gotta say I’m glad perfect happiness wasn’t on the menu.”
“Perfect happiness doesn’t exist,” Angel replied, gasping as Gunn broke the end of the bolt off. “Just distractions.”
“Glad to hear you say it,” Gunn replied. “But cause another panic like today and I’ll stake you just for aggravating me.”
With that Gunn shoved the remaining section of the bolt through Angel’s shoulder and out of his back. Angel’s eyes rolled up in his head as he passed out.
“More changes,” Gunn commented. “Soulful usually has a higher tolerance for pain.”
“You could have been gentler,” Cordelia reprimanded him, bandaging the injury. “Oh damn, little Miss Model messed up his other bandages. Help me get him upstairs.”
“Why me?” Gunn asked.
“Cause you made him pass out, that’s why. I wonder what she thought of the autopsy scars.
Once Angel was out of the room the tension level decreased markedly.
Anya pulled Xander to one corner and said. “Angel isn’t missing anymore so you’re coming back to Sunnydale right?”
“We still need to talk,” Xander replied.
“Well go talk, or better yet wait till Cordelia comes down here, then talk, then we go home,” Anya instructed.
“Anya, Angel’s got amnesia, it wouldn’t do me much good to try to have this talk now. Somehow the two of us are never on the same page. In Chicago he only knew part of the story, in Sunnydale I’m the one in the dark and making a complete jackass out of myself. Now he doesn’t have a clue again. I gotta say it’s starting to get a little frustrating,” Xander said.
“So forget it or call him once he’s caught up,” Anya suggested.
“You could stay in LA with me,” Xander said. “With Angel hurt they’re a little short handed here, and it’s not like I’m needed in Sunnydale. LA’s a much bigger place, lots of jobs here I haven’t been fired from yet.”
“Or you could work here,” Wesley suggested. “I don’t really have the authority to offer you a permanent position, but until Angel recovers enough to make that decision I’d welcome your presence. You were an asset on that last case.”
“Thanks Wes, I think I’ll take you up on that. What do you say Anya?” Xander asked.
“If you stay I stay, but if you’re ex even thinks about trying to take you back I’ll show what sort of vengeance I can manage as a human,” Anya threatened.
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“Kathleen, why were you going to shoot me?” Angel asked Cordelia as she re-bandaged his chest. “Remember, you and me against the world. We swore we’d always take care of each other even if Father didn’t want us.”
“I was trying to take care of you,” Cordelia replied. “The gun was just a tranquilizer, it would have knocked you out, nothing more.”
“Why?”
“Do you remember me saying you weren’t like a normal vampire because of your soul? Well your soul is the result of this curse, which has this little clause that we didn’t think to explain to you.”
______________________________________________________________
“I can’t believe him,” Buffy said to Willow and Tara.
“Yeah Giles was really Ripper-like for a moment there. I thought he’d pretty much forgiven Angel,” Willow replied.
“No, Angel. From what they said he just picked-up some girl at a party and spent the night,” Buffy said. “It’s sort of, well, a Parker thing to do. God, I don’t know if I should be more angry for him sleeping with some one and risking the curse breaking or for having sex that was so meaningless that the curse wasn’t even an issue.”
“Try neither,” Cordelia said joining the other three girls at the base of the stairs. “He didn’t know about the curse or that he’s supposed to be hopelessly in love with you, even if you’re dating the solider-boy now. As for poor, badly used, Miss Model, well she got exactly what she was looking for out of last night. I don’t like Angel acting like that either so I had a few things to say to him about it, and it turns out the she didn’t bother to tell him her last name or to leave a number. Buffy, you’re throwing stones from a glass house if you’re just mad cause he did the casual sex thing. Or didn’t you think we knew about that? Spike told us during the whole gem of Amara mess you put us through.”
“Liam isn’t Angel, I’m not going to make the mistake of assuming that he is again. He isn’t as mature, and he doesn’t have anything to feel guilty about. He doesn’t think about saving the world, just getting his father’s approval. I think Liam’s kind of shallow, but we know he has potential. I want our Angel back, I like him better, but I don’t want to tell him all that stuff about the demon. There’s got to be a way to get him to grow-up without putting him through all the self-loathing and guilt, it’s not his fault Darla took his soul away,” Cordelia said. “But Buffy, it’s not your business anymore. Wesley and I can take care of Angel. I trust us not to fly off the handle and stake him without even considering alternatives.”
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“Mr. Giles, may I speak with you,” Wesley said guiding the older Watcher into the old manager’s office adjoining the Hyperion lobby.
“What is it?”
“There’s no clause on the curse is there?” Wesley asked quietly.
“Of course there is, even you must have studied the events in the spring of ’98 before being sent to the Hellmouth,” Giles said.
“Yes, the gypsies’ original curse had a clause, but when I called you it never occurred to you that the curse might have actually broken. When you were screaming at Angel earlier, you never brought up the potential danger of his actions, just that he didn’t deserve happiness,” Wesley argued. “You were incensed by his lack of guilt, but you never even mentioned the clause.”
Giles glared at the other man, “Jenny removed the clause from the curse, made it a gift instead, and he killed her. Angel doesn’t deserve to benefit from that.”
“But you were in favor of casting the spell?” Wesley said, confused.
“As much as I hate Angel, I love Buffy more. I couldn’t force her to kill her lover if there were another way,” Giles replied.
“But you could leave them believing that a relationship between the two of them was impossible,” Wesley said.
“He doesn’t deserve her. In the long run she’ll be better off without him,” Giles explained. “It’s all a moot point now isn’t it, the Angel Buffy loved is gone now isn’t he. Buffy has better sense than to love the imbecile he was two and a half centuries ago.”
______________________________________________________________
“And just when I was expecting a vary satisfying blood letting,” Spike sighed, lighting a cigarette.
“Smoking’s bad for your health,” Riley commented absently.
“I’m dead, mate, my health isn’t an issue,” Spike replied.
“Well I’m not, second hand smoke is bad too, put it out.”
Spike smiled and blew a lungful of smoke directly into Riley’s face. “And it didn’t even set off your bloody chip. Personally, I’d rather deck the halls with your entrails, but I’ll settle for having you die of cancer. Well, until I find a more satisfying way of killing you anyway, or I’ll just deface your grave when some demon manages to off you because the Slayer was too busy angsting about the Poof to save you.”
“Shut up” Riley said.
“You know he’s the one she loves,” Spike said. “You’ll never be better than second place. The only reason you’re even in the running is because he hates himself too much to bother competing. How does it feel knowing that any day Angel could decide to come take what’s his and the Slayer would walk right over your heart to get to him and she’d never even notice?”
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