~Part: 1~
"This isn't right."
Angel could hear his own words echo hollowly in the great hall of the museum. He could hear the quick, shallow breathing of Cordelia, Fred and Gunn, all standing appalled by his side. Beyond the museum's walls, he could still hear the screams.
"Boy howdy, it's not right!" Cordelia pressed her palms against the door, as though she were willing the outside to change into the world they'd left. "Oh, my God, what happened? Where are we? I mean -- when are we?"
"We must have overshot," Gunn said. His voice was toneless, dead with shock. "We've landed in the middle of World War III."
"We didn't change any of the settings on the time machine," Fred said. She was twisting her hair nervously, bouncing slightly on her heels. "Logically, it should have taken us back to when we left. Unless -- unless this is another dimension. A hell dimension, like that place where --" She looked at Angel and stopped.
Quartoth, Angel thought, and for an instant felt an insane kind of hope. He'd welcome a return to hell, if there was any chance he could find his son there. But even that flickering dream was swiftly crushed when he realized he'd recognized the one of the structures outside. "No. This isn't another dimension."
"Angel, I'm sorry, but that is NOT Los Angeles," Cordelia said.
"Not our neighborhood," Gunn said. "Compton, maybe."
"No," Angel said. "It's Rome."
By way of demonstration, he opened the door again. For a few moments, they all stared at the ruined city. In some places fires raged in the hollow shells of buildings, while in others flames dripped from low, sulfurous clouds. Everywhere he looked, Angel saw a devastation so total nothing had escaped it. But the city, although dead, wasn't deserted. The debris teemed with creatures that slithered and scuttled, pouncing on each other with cannibalistic glee. In the streets and on the corners lay the bodies of those who had tried to flee and failed. In the far distance was the unmistakable silhouette of the Colosseum.
Angel shut the door again. Fred said weakly, "Now, see, I was wondering when they built a football stadium downtown."
Cordelia whispered, "Angel -- we screwed it up." Her face was pale as she stepped closer to him. "Didn't we? When we were in the past, we did something wrong and -- and we -- oh, God. We did this."
"That servant girl!" Gunn's eyes were wide. "The one I kept from going into y'all's vamp hideout. She must've been supposed to die. Instead, I saved her, so she could live and give birth to the Antichrist."
"We don't know that," Fred said. She was trembling now, and her voice was slightly higher-pitched as she continued, "The ripple effect means that it could have been anything we did that was different to what was supposed to happen -- some tiny change we caused had unforeseen effects, which in turn had unforeseen effects, growing more and more cataclysmic as time went on, eventually rendering the reality we once knew null and void --" Suddenly she slapped herself across the face. As Angel and the others stared at her, Fred took a deep breath and said, "It could have been anything. I doubt we could ever figure out what we did wrong."
Angel considered what she'd said for a moment, then felt himself tense as the implications sank in. "If we don't know what we did wrong -- then we can't return to the past and fix it."
Fred nodded slowly. "We might even make it worse."
"Worse?" Cordelia gestured in the general direction of the door, and by extension, at the wrecked world beyond it. "How, exactly, could it get worse?"
"Nuclear fallout," Gunn said. "That's just off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more where that came from."
"We still have to try," Angel said.
"Yeah, I know," Fred said. "I'm just saying -- we can't go back blind. First we have to find out what happened here and what led up to it. That's our only hope of undoing this."
Cordelia tried to smile. "So, I guess that's ixnay on just going back to 1960 to discover the Beatles."
It wasn't much of a joke, but Angel was grateful for it all the same. He quickly squeezed Cordelia's hand, borrowing courage as much as giving it. "All right. We have to figure out what happened. We might as well start here."
"Right," Fred said, brightening marginally. "Museums are usually about history, after all."
Angel breathed in deeply and concentrated, searching for the scent of smoke in the air. After a moment, he said, "This building's not on fire yet. We've got a little while, I think."
"This building is stone, right?" Cordelia said. "Looks like it, mostly. I mean, sure, lots of flammable stuff on the inside, but those stone walls ought to buy us some time."
Angel thought about what she'd said and felt his body tensing up yet again. "You're right. Trouble is, you're not going to be the only one to think of it."
"Meaning --" Cordelia's jaw dropped. "Something else could try and get in."
Fred hurriedly said, "Why don't we see if this museum has a weapons and armaments section?"
A rack of pamphlets and museum guides yielded a version in English, which informed them that they'd left the time machine in a sculpture hall ("I wasn't the only one who thought it was a statue," Cordelia said pointedly). Better yet, the guide pointed the way to an extensive exhibit of medieval weaponry, both European and Asian. They made their way there quickly, and Angel smashed through the cases without any thought to the alarm system. He doubted anyone remained to hear it.
He said nothing, and his friends said little. Fred was too busy studying the various museum guides for clues about the time they'd found and the history they'd changed; he, Gunn and Cordelia were testing their weapons. Cordelia seemed briefly interested in a scimitar, but Angel was relieved to see her choose a classic sword. No time for experimenting, he thought, casting an appraising glance at a mace. We need to carry what we're best at, no more.
Angel found he needed to concentrate on only the most immediate, pragmatic aspects of their situation. Sharpen Cordelia's sword. Check the grip on Gunn's axe. Lead everyone back toward the time machine; best to figure out their next move while simultaneously protecting their means of transport.
If he let himself think of anything else at all, then Angel found himself thinking about the history that hadn't happened in this world. He still didn't know exactly when they were or what had changed, but he knew this much -- thousands, maybe millions, of people had suffered horribly because they'd made a mistake. The further damage they'd wrought, they might not ever know.
And worst of all -- Angel was pretty sure that in this reality, Connor had never been born.
As they made their way through the darkened museum, headed toward the sculpture hall, Cordelia said, "That pamphlet telling you anything yet, Fred?"
Fred shook her head. "So far, it doesn't look like anything is different. I mean, this museum has a lot of antiquities -- things we wouldn't have changed anyway -- but they have some modern things too. Warhol still painted some soup cans. Picasso still had a blue period."
Gunn said, "Yeah, I'd hate to think we stopped some paintings from getting made on our way to destroying the world."
"Charles, it's as good a way as any to know a lot of things were still the same, at least until very recently."
"Then what happened?" Cordelia asked, directing the question at no one and everyone. "We changed God-knows-what in 1898, the whole twentieth century happened just fine and then -- kablooey! It all goes wrong a century later? It just doesn't tie up."
Angel stopped walking. The others froze immediately; when he half-turned around, they were staring back at him. Slowly, Angel lifted his finger to his mouth, warning them to silence. Fred clutched the pamphlet to her chest, and Cordelia adjusted her grip on her sword, bringing it to the ready.
The footsteps were ordinary -- human weight, regular walking speed, no special caution about noise. How many people? Angel thought. Maybe four -- no, five. He held out his hand and unfolded his fingers deliberately, silently counting them off for the others.
Cordelia nodded. Gunn mouthed the word, "Where?"
Angel listened to them for another few moments. They were one level up, a few feet over -- he concentrated, then murmured, "Sculpture hall."
"The time machine!" Fred whispered.
Angel ran toward the hall, moving as quickly and quietly as he could, leaving his friends falling behind. That didn't matter. If someone or something -- maybe the thing that was more directly responsible for the mayhem outside -- was trying to get the time machine, then Angel had to stop them immediately or die trying.
He leapt up the stairs to the next level, where he could hear their voices -- men, mostly, but one woman -- and charged through the doors. Amid the statues, Angel could see five people standing there. They looked like ordinary people in ordinary clothes, yet each was armed with a sword. A few of the intruders were in the shadows, but on the face of the man closest to him, Angel saw shock, recognition and disgust. "Angelus," he said, in a cool, clipped English accent. "We ought to have known."
"Known what?" Angel said, stalling for time. He was pretty sure he could defeat five humans, but with the stakes so high, "pretty sure" wasn't good enough. The others were on their way to improve the odds. "My name?"
"The entire world knows your name now," said the woman, stepping forward. She was sick with fear, so acute Angel could smell its intoxicating fragrance wafting from across the room. Yet she stood her ground. "As you intended they should."
The full meaning of her words hit Angel hard, making him weak, almost nauseated, in an instant. He rasped, "You mean -- the carnage outside -- what's happening -- I did that."
"You've come here to brag?" said another of the men. He was the tallest, and probably the strongest of the group. There was a militaristic stiffness to his bearing. "No. We know what you're here for."
"The same thing you're here for!" Cordelia came striding through the door, Gunn and Fred close behind. Angel didn't turn to face them, but he could see the surprise on the English people's faces as, one by one, his friends flanked him. Cordelia continued, "You want to hijack our time machine? It's so not happening. Sorry about the sucky week you guys are having, but I'm afraid you're stuck with it."
"Until we change it!" Fred added helpfully.
Gunn brought his axe into position. "Until then, we suggest you step outside. Make yourselves comfortable in the rest of the museum. I understand there's a snack bar."
The fourth of the invaders, almost the furthest back, came forward into the dim emergency lighting. He was older than the others, with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. "We know what's at stake here," he began. "So do you. That's why you know we won't be stepping aside."
"They're human," whispered the woman to the white-haired man. "Basil, the three with Angelus -- they're not vampires. They're human beings."
The white-haired man hesitated for a moment, but then he stepped closer to Angel. "It doesn't matter what they are," he said. "It only matters what they want to do."
"How did they know about the time machine?" said the tall man. "That is among our most guarded secrets --"
"Hey, we're not DEAF," Cordelia said. "If you guys want a battle, you can have one." Her bravado was half bluster, Angel knew; Cordelia had become a fighter in the past year, but she wasn't yet hardened enough to easily face the prospect of hurting or killing human beings. "But we don't want to hurt you."
They all stared. Then they all started to laugh -- harsh, bitter laughter that Angel could tell unnerved the others. To Angel, the sound of it was like razor cuts; he knew the intruders were laughing because of the pure absurdity of the idea that Angelus didn't want to hurt anyone.
The gypsies cursed me, Angel thought. I remember it, and this time, I saw it, too. It happened. We stopped Dru. Cordy staked Dru. What went wrong?
As the intruders stopped laughing, the fifth and final member of the group stepped from the very back of the room into the light. "On behalf of the Council of Watchers," he said, "we decline your demand for surrender."
Angel stared at him, knew his friends were doing the same. As one, they each whispered, "Wesley?"
Wesley Wyndham-Pryce -- suit-clad, sword-wielding and somehow looking younger than Angel remembered -- stared back at them in shock, his earlier cool forgotten. "I beg your pardon?" he said, clearly astonished.
The other Watchers were staring at Wesley, who looked both bewildered and desperate to deny knowing Angelus or anyone who would consort with him.
Cordelia choked out, "Angel, they're people -- it's Wesley -- "
"They're not real," Angel said. He could only see Wesley, his white-linen suit seeming to glow in the dark. He looked like a boy. He looked the way he had the day Angel had offered him a job. "None of this is real. Tomorrow it won't exist. This reality doesn't matter." The sword was heavy in his hand, and he could anticipate the power of his blows. Angel's human mind, confused and overwhelmed, suddenly seemed to shut down; his vampiric mind took over, sizing up the situation and seizing the instant. "Nothing we do here matters."
Angel slammed the broad side of his sword into the head of the white-haired Watcher closest to him. The man fell, and the female Watcher screamed. Cordelia silenced her by leaping forward and punching her hard across the jaw.
"Take them!" yelled the tall man.
Angel could see the battle going on around him -- he knew that Basil was getting up from the floor, that Gunn was tackling another of the men, that Cordelia was wrestling with still another in earnest. He could smell the blood trickling from the woman's mouth, staining Fred's hand as she punched the female Watcher back down.
But only one figure in the room mattered. His prey.
Wesley was fumbling with a crossbow, trying to get it loaded. The Wesley that Angel remembered was good with a crossbow, but he'd only become so after he'd begun working with them in L.A. He'd needed so little practice to become good -- practice he hadn't gotten with the Watchers -- practice he didn't have in this reality.
Nothing we do here matters, Angel thought. His face shifted, and his fangs slid into his mouth, sharp and strong and familiar. He knocked one of the other Watchers into a Renaissance bronze, saw the man slump down, semiconscious. We can do anything here. Anything at all.
"Stop him!" It was Basil's voice. Angel whirled around, swinging his sword toward Basil's head with all his might. Something made him turn his wrist, made him use the broad side once again. Angel could do whatever he wanted. He didn't want to kill at random. That didn't mean he didn't want to kill.
Basil fell. The female Watcher moaned as she toppled to her knees. One of the men fell on the floor in front of Gunn, stunned or dead or unconscious. Wesley had the crossbow ready. He pointed it at Angel and fired --
("Sleep tight," Angel had said, and he kissed his son's face. Connor was cradled in Wesley's arms. It tore Angel's heart to think of Connor being gone for one whole night.)
Angel turned to the side, preternaturally fast, and the arrow whooshed by him to thud into the far wall. He leapt forward, relishing in the panic on Wesley's face as he scrambled to reload. Angel's sword swung upwards, its tip catching the crossbow and sending it flying.
"Angel!" Cordelia's voice. Not afraid. Not needing help. He could ignore it. Angel tackled Wesley; he felt the human's chest buckle, his balance shifting and falling. They tumbled to the ground, hard marble beneath them. Angel caught a glimpse of Wesley's ashen face and sent his fist smashing into it.
"Angel!" Not just Cordy now. Fred too. And Gunn. Still not important.
Wesley put his hands up, less in an attempt to attack than in a futile attempt to shield himself from the blows. Angel punched him, again and again and again, and every time his fist made contact with flesh, he said his son's name. Out loud, he realized, hearing the gasped words more consciously than he spoke them: "Connor -- Connor -- Connor --"
"Angel, please! Please stop! Just look at me, please -- Angel --" Cordelia was crying. Why was she crying? The danger was past. The other Watchers were all unconscious; Angel could tell without even looking.
Wesley shoved himself away from Angel, gaining no more than a few inches of space. Angel grabbed the sword he'd dropped and swung it toward Wesley's neck --
And froze.
The point of the sword was at Wesley's throat. Wesley lay there, bleeding and terrified and helpless. The cries of the others seemed to be very far away. Nothing he did here mattered.
Wesley's face looked so young. The white-linen suit was just like the one Wesley had been wearing when Angel offered him a job.
Angel dropped the sword. He stared down at Wesley, who stared up at him.
"Why did you do it?" Angel said, knowing this Wesley couldn't answer. "Why couldn't you just tell me? I would have listened to you." His throat grew thick, but Angel kept on, the words spilling out of him, slurred by his fangs. "I trusted you. I trusted you more than you trusted me."
"Angel." Cordelia's voice was closer now, and when her hands touched his shoulder, the world shifted again. Angel felt his forehead smooth, and his fangs retracted. The haze of killer instinct faded from him, leaving only the smell of blood.
Wesley shook, apparently in a shock that was half terror and half relief. Angel said again, "I trusted you." He let his head fall backwards so that he could see Cordelia's face; she was looking at him through her own tears. "If he had told me --"
"I know," she whispered. "Come on. Let's step back for a minute, okay? We can -- we can check out the paintings in the hallway, huh?"
Gunn and Fred walked up, each with weapons at the ready. Angel knew they would watch Wesley. He got to his feet, but his body seemed too heavy for his muscles to support. He slumped against Cordelia, who slid her arm around his waist. "We'll be right back," she whispered. Fred nodded.
Wesley took a deep breath. "BytheauthorityoftheCouncilofWatchersIcommandyou --"
"Shut UP," Gunn said, poking his sword in Wesley's general vicinity. Wesley shut up.
Angel let Cordelia walk him to the hallway, but once the door swung shut behind them, he slid back onto the ground. Cordelia didn't slide with him, but she stroked his hair, guided him until he let his head rest against the side of her leg. "You stopped," she said quietly. "You didn't have to stop, and you did."
"I would have listened to him," Angel said. "If he had told me."
"It's all right," Cordelia said. "It's over. It's all over."
Angel thought of Connor, drowsy and small, cradled in Wesley's arms as they went out the door. "It's all over," he echoed.
"Are you gonna be okay?"
"Yeah," he said. He wrapped his arms around Cordelia's legs, not hugging her tightly, just leaning against her. "Give me a couple of minutes."
Cordelia laughed weakly, her voice hoarse from unshed tears. "Angel, for once it's true -- we have all the time in the world."
***
According to Cordelia's watch, the date was April 26, 2002, and the time was just after seven in the evening. She stared at the numbers, trying to make them mean something, but no matter how hard she tried, the winking display was irrelevant nonsense. She took the watch off and put it in her pocket.
The sound of footsteps approaching made her look up. Gunn and Fred were returning, their shoes echoing noisily on the stone floor. "All done?" she asked.
Gunn held up a large bunch of iron keys, and jangled them. "Locked 'em up separately in the Egyptian rooms. But it's gonna be a while before they start hollerin' to get out -- the other four are still out cold. They're sleeping like babies --"
He broke off, and visibly winced as he realized what he'd said. Cordelia cast an anxious glance in Angel's direction -- in the wake of their arrival in this apocalyptic future and the encounter with Wesley, her concern about his emotional state had ratcheted back up to DefCon Four. But Angel didn't seem to have heard; he was sitting by the small fire they'd started using Gunn's lighter and a collection of guidebooks, watching the fire's smoke twirl up to the high roof. He seemed calm, at least for the moment, and Cordelia was grateful for that much. The fire cast the shadows of both the time machine and Angel on to the wall, elongating and distorting them into monstrous shapes.
Suddenly, a noise that was half-howl and half-shriek pierced the silence. Cordelia didn't recognize it, but she was pretty sure it wasn't the kind of sound made by a fluffy, gentle-natured creature that just wanted to be friends.
Angel looked up. "That came from outside. They're not in the building yet."
"Ya had to go and finish with 'yet'," Gunn muttered.
"We're not going to be safe here for much longer," Fred said. "We have to figure out what's going on." She looked over at the obelisk in the far corner. "All of us."
"If you think -- for one instant -- that I would ever help you, you are mistaken," Wesley gasped, his voice thickened by his broken nose. His hands were tied around the back of the obelisk with Gunn's belt, immobilizing him. It also prevented him from wiping away the blood from a deep gash on his forehead, which was hardening in a sticky trail on his cheek.
The last time Cordelia had seen Wesley this badly beaten up had been after Faith had tortured him. Then, she'd wanted to scratch Faith's eyes out, to show her what happened to people who messed with Cordelia Chase's friends. But Angel had done this. Angel's grief and rage were written on Wesley's face, in blood and bruises, and was Wesley still her friend?
"My name is Wesley Wyndham-Pryce," he said. "I am here in the service of the Council of Watchers and the greater good. And that's all you're getting out of me."
Angel began, "We're not trying to --" He seemed to catch himself, and broke off abruptly. "Someone else had better talk to him." He got up and walked to the other end of the hall, his back to Wesley.
Cordelia realized instantly that, as untrustworthy as she and the others might appear in Wesley's eyes right now, they were probably going to stand a better chance of dealing with him than the Scourge of Europe, a.k.a. the guy who had just broken Wesley's nose. She glanced back at Wesley; he was trying to mask his fear, and with some success. Only someone who knew him as well as Cordelia did could have guessed at the depth of terror he was trying to hide. She walked over to the obelisk where Wesley was tied up. "We're not going to kill you."
Wesley looked -- justifiably, Cordelia had to admit -- skeptical. "Aha. And I suppose you've given my colleagues tea and crumpets and sent them on their merry way."
God, she'd forgotten how annoying he could be when he chose. "They're all tied up in the next room -- which is a pretty good deal for them, since it's a LOT safer in here than outside," Cordelia told him, putting her hands on her hips.
"You'll also notice that we haven't killed you yet, which is kind of a point in our favor," Fred said from where she stood beside Gunn. "Also, remember how we were yelling for Angel to stop hitting you? That's all non-murdery, right?" Cordelia shot her a look, and she shrugged apologetically. "Just tryin' to help. I'll hush up now."
Wesley tried to raise an eyebrow, before pain from his swollen, battered face prevented him. "You've undoubtedly kept me alive only so that I could -- enjoy the pleasure of Angelus' company." At the other end of the hall, Angel glanced over his shoulder slightly, not quite enough for Cordelia to read the look in his eyes. Wesley looked at Cordelia curiously, then Fred and Gunn in turn. "None of you are vampires. What kind of deal have you made with him?"
"Things ain't the way they look to you," Gunn said. "And I know this is gonna sound crazy, but we're trying to fix whatever went wrong here."
The look on Wesley's bruised and swelling face in response to that was easy to read. He was clearly incredulous. "FIX it? Angelus -- trying to FIX this?"
"This isn't Angelus!" Cordelia said, increasingly disconcerted by Wesley's presence and the unnerving sounds from outside. "Wesley, that time machine -- we came out of it. We know how it works because we used it. We're from --" She hesitated, unwilling to tell Wesley the whole story at once, "-- another time. A time when Angel has a soul."
"A soul?" Wesley repeated. Cordelia nodded and folded her arms across her chest. That would change things, make Wesley understand this was different.
Then Wesley started to laugh.
The sound of it echoed off the marble floors, the high ceilings, the statues that framed them. It wasn't a cruel sound; he wasn't mocking them. Cordelia almost wished he was. Wesley was laughing from sheer surprise and disbelief. She glanced over to see that the others were equally unsettled by his reaction. Gunn muttered, "I'm getting the feeling this is gonna be a hard sell."
"That's rich," Wesley said at last. "And, I must hand it to you, an ingenious attempt. You've obviously got sources deep within the Council. The level of betrayal --" He trailed off for a moment, then regained himself. "Honestly. You're all standing there in blue jeans and T-shirts, using modern slang, as American as Mickey Mouse. Did you really believe I'd think you'd come forward in time from 19th-century Romania?"
Cordelia's mouth fell open. "How did you know that?" Wesley looked away, unwilling to continue the conversation and obviously regretting his indiscretion. "How could you possibly know that?"
At the other end of the hall, Angel turned around and came back to join them, all reticence to speak to Wesley overcome by something more urgent. "I didn't have a soul in 19th-century Romania," he said as he came to stand beside Cordelia. "Not until the end --"
"Wait a second," Fred said. "What Wesley's saying is, in this reality, there was a time when Angel had a soul, but -- but he doesn't anymore, and hasn't for a while. Not since Romania? Wesley?" He shifted slightly; Cordelia realized that he looked uncomfortable, even aside from all the swelling and bleeding. The angle of his arms had to hurt, at least a little.
She went to the obelisk and loosened the belt the tiniest fraction. Wesley lunged forward, but the bonds didn't break; he could, however, stand a little more upright. As she'd hoped, the gesture got Wesley to make eye contact with her as she came around. "Just tell us about Angel having a soul," Cordelia said. "And how he lost it. That's all we want to know. That can't do any harm, can it? The world's ending. It's not like it's going to get any worse than that."
For a moment, Wesley hesitated, but then he said, "There's not much more to know. What your source told you is really all the information there is. Watcher legend has it that, in late 19th-century Romania, Angelus murdered a young gypsy girl. As revenge, the gypsies cursed him with a soul, so that he might know the horrors he had wrought. But Darla -- and don't pretend you don't know who she is --"
Wish I didn't, Cordelia thought.
"Darla somehow forced the gypsies to remove the curse and restore him to his former amorality. They did so -- and were promptly slaughtered for their pains." Wesley was clearly exhausted and, quite possibly, concussed; he leaned his head back against the obelisk. He glared unevenly at Angel, who stared back in mute horror. "The Watchers' records said that Angelus' memories of his conscience only spurred him to greater viciousness and brutality afterward. He began hunting down family members of his past victims. He'd apologize -- and then kill them, too."
"Darla did try to reverse the curse," Angel said. He closed his eyes for a moment, deep in thought. "Dammit, what did she say?"
"Angel?" Gunn said. "You know what he's talking about?
"My memory right at first -- right after the curse -- it's confused," Angel said. He began pacing, nervous energy evident in every step he took, every line of his body. "For a long time after it happened -- years -- I was barely sane. But once, when I was with her in China, Darla told me something... she told me she found the one who performed the curse. She was going to threaten to kill his family unless he reversed it."
"True love," Gunn noted dryly. "Why didn't it work?"
"Spike missed the 'threaten' part," Angel said. "He ate them."
"Something we did must have changed that," Fred said. "We have to think of everything we did in 1898 that could have changed that."
There was a silence as they all considered this. Cordelia guessed the others were thinking the same thing she was -- no matter how hard they had tried not to interfere with the past, once you started making a list, it was clear they'd changed a lot of things. She glanced over at Wesley to see how he was taking it, but he'd either passed out or gotten close to it.
"We went to the gypsies," Angel said at last. "They knew we were from the future."
"We talked to those English people on the road," Gunn added.
"I staked Drusilla," Cordy said.
"No, that one doesn't count," Fred said. "You staked our Drusilla, the one from the present."
Angel stopped pacing, froze and turned around. He stared at Fred, then Cordelia. "How do we know?"
Cordy looked at him. "Know what?"
"How do we know that the Drusilla you staked was the one from 2002?"
"Well --" Cordelia frowned. "She was wearing the same dress she had when we found her in the museum in L.A. You know, the red floaty one from Saks, with the layer hem and the little straps --"
Angel held up a hand, cutting Cordelia off in mid-flow. "But are you SURE it was the Dru from our time?"
"Of COURSE I'm sure," Cordelia said tartly. But, almost immediately, doubt crept into her mind. "I told you, she had on the dress from before, and it's not like they could have swapped dresses -- I mean, I guess they could have, but we don't know that." Then she hesitated. "And -- and -- well, she didn't recognize me. But that's hardly weird by Drusilla standards, right? It's not like we've spent a lot of quality time together, so she might not know my name --"
"She knows your name," Angel said. "Back in Sunnydale, when Xander did that spell, the one that made all the women in town fall for him --"
Oh, God, Cordelia thought. Xander's mojo spell, the one that made Willow run after us with an axe and Buffy's mom come on to him. It seemed like a memory from another life.
"-- Drusilla was infatuated with him, and she was furious at you for being the one he wanted." Angel hesitated. "I, uh, may have told her your name. And where you lived. And when cheerleader practice let out."
"Angel!" Cordelia smacked him hard on the arm. "You could have gotten me killed!"
"That was the idea." Angel looked thoroughly miserable. "Cordy, I'm sorry. Believe me, I've thought about it, and it makes me --" He stopped, looked away and, after a second, continued, "Her anger wore off with the spell. But Drusilla knew who you were. She wouldn't forget."
Fred said urgently, "Was there something, anything else she said that would identify her as our Dru? Or as not-our Dru? Anything at all?"
"She was really confused, no surprise there, and she didn't seem to realize I would know what she was or how to stop her..." Cordelia trailed off and swallowed. "She didn't know me. She asked me who I was. Uh, guys? I think I might have staked the wrong Dru."
Gunn swore under his breath. Then he said, "We left her there. We thought we'd won, so we came back home and left 2002 Dru in 1898."
It was all so obvious, now, that Cordelia couldn't believe they hadn't worked it out sooner. Angel said, "Drusilla never intended to stop the original curse. Her plan was to change what happened afterward. To make sure it was reversed. That was just as good for her purposes, and easier for her to pull off, because she knew exactly what had gone wrong. And we just came home and let her do it."
They remained silent for a few moments, taking that in. Gunn raised his hand like a student asking a difficult question in class. "Not to look inside the dark cloud and find an even darker lining, but -- are we sure that's all that changed?"
Cordelia wheeled around and smacked Wesley gently on the cheek with her palm. "Wakey-wakey, Wes. We gotta talk."
He half-opened his eyes and looked woozily at her. "Ah. You're not all dead yet. Shame."
Cordelia ignored that. "Would you mind clarifying, for those of us just tuning in, just how it is Angelus destroyed the world?"
"Not Angelus," Wesley said. He was slurring his words a little. "Not technically, I mean. The majority of the murdering and incineration is the work of the Judge. But Angelus helped Drusilla and Spike put the damned thing together, and he's the only one pure enough in his evil to command the Judge's allegiance." He laughed brokenly. "But why do you ask me things you already know?"
"The Judge," Cordelia's thoughts were spinning now. "Angel, that was that loser from the mall that time, wasn't it? The one Buffy took out with a rocket-launcher?"
Wesley's jaw dropped. "A rocket-launcher! Of COURSE! Not forged by the hand of man --"
Angel nodded. "That's the one. And what we saw outside -- he could do that. But the clues to finding the pieces of the Judge were discovered years ago -- wait. Wesley, what year is this?"
Cordelia could see Wesley's hesitation, his reluctance to answer Angelus. But perhaps the sheer triviality of the question made him shrug and say, "It's 1998, of course."
"This is four years ago!" Cordelia said, indignantly. "Fred, I thought we were going to go back to where we came from! Or when!"
"We should have," Fred said. "I don't know exactly how the time machine works, but it doesn't make any sense for it to choose a new exit date at random --"
"No," Angel said suddenly. "Not at random." The others all looked at him. He said, "Don't you see? It brought us as far forward as it could. It couldn't go any farther than this."
Fred put her hand to her mouth, then nodded. "Because -- 1998 is where this reality ends."
Wesley's left eyelid -- the one that wasn't swollen out of recognition -- was fluttering open and closed. Cordelia shook him back to wakefulness. "Why didn't you use the time machine sooner? Why'd you let it go this far?"
"Too risky," Wesley mumbled. "Last resort. We knew about it for a long time... let it stay hidden, just another museum piece... For the best. Too tempting, too easy to change things..."
The killer part, Cordelia thought bleakly, was that he was right. Between Drusilla's interference and theirs, history had somehow been well and truly screwed.
"What were you going to do in the past?"
"The simplest, most obvious thing... We were going back to drive a stake through Angelus' heart. Stop him... before he had a chance to awaken the Judge to murder the world. But you've put paid to that, and I've failed. I've failed again." He looked up at Cordelia, and she saw a peculiar, desperate pleading in his face. "Kill him. If you have any shred of decency, of humanity, kill him. If the world can't be saved, at least let it be avenged."
His one open eye stared up at her, a bloodshot rim of white visible all around it. Cordelia could see her revulsion reflected in the dark circle of the pupil. Yet more vengeance.
Then Wesley's eye fluttered shut, and his head slumped sideways on to his shoulder.
Another memory popped into her head, one that was so vivid and real it made her eyes prick with tears. She remembered eating breakfast with Angel and Wesley, the three of them sitting around the table in the kitchen of Angel's apartment underneath the old office. Angel had made eggs, and Wesley had devoured them as if he hadn't had a proper meal in days. Cordelia had teased Wesley that someone so scrawny shouldn't be able to eat so much, and Angel had smiled for the first time since Doyle had died, and Cordelia had thought that maybe everything was going to work out okay, after all.
She looked again at the marks of fury Angel's fists had left on this Wesley's face, and she tried to feel some measure of sympathy for him. But all she could think of was Connor, tiny and helpless and gone for good.
This isn't the only future that got wrecked, she thought.
>From somewhere else in the museum, there was a crash, followed by a pounding, drumming sound that swiftly became deafeningly loud. "They're in the building," Angel said.
Cordelia leapt up. "What are? No, wait, on second thoughts, I really don't want to know."
"The time machine," Angel said. They ran to it, the pounding, screeching sounds growing closer all the time. Beneath her feet, Cordelia could feel the ground shaking, as if something massive were trying to push its way up from below. "Fred, can you take us back to 1898? Right after we left?"
"I think so --"
At that moment, the museum floor split open, a jagged crack splitting the exhibition hall in two. Gunn and Fred were on one side, with the time machine; Cordelia and Angel were on the other. From deep below, the crevasse glowed red-hot, and Gunn and Fred appeared to waver through the heat-haze.
Angel looked at the widening gap, then at Cordelia. "We have to jump."
"I was SO hoping you weren't gonna say that," Cordelia said. Angel's face looked strange, and for a second she thought it was purely the effect of the ghastly red glow coming from the crevasse. Then she realized it was something else. He's scared, she thought. He's scared we're not gonna make it.
Angel took her hand, and together they backed up as far as they could. As they ran toward the gaping crack, Cordelia could feel the floor growing hotter with every step until, as she put her foot down at the edge of the chasm, she felt the soles of her shoes squelch slightly as they melted. She gripped Angel's hand as tightly as she could -- and they jumped.
For an instant, they were suspended in a blast of heat so intense it felt as if the air itself were on fire. Cordelia looked down and saw beneath them a shaft that seemed to sink endlessly, plunging through layers of red and white heat to a source that was blacker than any night. And she saw that the walls of the shaft were crawling with hordes of screaming, grasping demons, every one of them climbing toward the world above, ready to claim it as their own.
Then she landed on the far side of the chasm, losing her balance and tumbling awkwardly. Hands grabbed her and hauled her to safety. When she opened her eyes, she saw Gunn. "Angel --"
"It's okay. You made it. You both made it."
"Angel --"
Gunn twisted Cordelia's head to one side. "It's okay. Look. You never even let go of each other."
Cordelia looked and saw her hand was still wrapped around Angel's. He was lying beside her, smiling unevenly. She tried to grin back. "I think we just won the Olympic gold for Hellmouth Leaping," she said hoarsely.
Fred was looking past all of them, to the silhouette of Wesley's body tied, unconscious and helpless, to the obelisk as the demons swarmed nearer. "You know what you're doing, leaving him there," she said, blinking hard. "You're killing him."
"No, I'm not," Angel said. Some of the shadow that had haunted his eyes since his attack on Wesley seemed to fall away from him. "I'm saving him."
He pulled the others to the time machine, leaving the dying world to burn behind them.
~Part: 2~
The servant girl had a black eye, Darla noticed. It was a minor detail, of no consequence, certainly not compared with what the girl was saying. "Yes, Lord Dalton's been very concerned. He very much wishes to see you."
Darla hesitated on the step. Not enough. "Are we invited in, then?" Despite her raging fury and grief, she forced herself to simper convincingly. "I -- I never thought to be invited in by a member of the nobility." Behind her, Spike gave a short cough intended to signal both his amusement and irritation at her game.
"Certainly, ma'am," the servant girl said. "You're very welcome to Lord Dalton's home."
She extended her arm and smiled encouragingly, no doubt expecting Darla and her companions to remain timid and unsure. Darla had no more patience for play-acting and swept inside, not even bothering to look back at Spike and Dru.
Play-acting, she thought, with a pang of something that might have been heartache in a mortal woman. If you hadn't had such a weakness for theatre, my darling boy, then you wouldn't be --
Darla closed her eyes tightly for a moment. She couldn't think of it now. First things first.
She pushed the manservant aside and threw open the doors. Seated at a small reading table was a man whose slight stature, bald head and tiny, wire-rimmed glasses made him look more like an academic than a nobleman. His dressing gown was silk -- Darla could always tell -- and so perfectly pleated and tucked that he might have been lounging about in the afternoon, rather than roused from his bed in the hours before dawn. He rose to his feet instantly, manners and practice overcoming his surprise. "Madam! I had expected you to be announced --"
"What did you do to my husband?" She used the title as a tactic; it would give her rights in this foolish man's eyes, make him speak. Yet the feel of the word on her tongue made her shiver for no reason she could name.
"You are -- Mr. Angelus' wife? I had no idea --" Lord Dalton looked embarrassed, then covered for his friend's lapse. "He was, of course, a very private man. I should not have presumed that he would introduce me to his family so soon."
"I know his habits far better than you, sir." Darla snapped.
"He eats up light," Drusilla sing-songed as she stepped up behind Darla. "He drinks tears."
Lord Dalton's gaze flickered over to Darla's companions, and she took a moment to despise the necessity of dragging them along with her. But how could she cast them aside now? Though she was loath to admit it, if she didn't have Spike and Drusilla, she would now have nothing. "Tell me what you did to my husband," she said. "The gypsies got to him. Did you tell them where he was? Lead them to him?"
"The gypsies!" Lord Dalton looked shocked -- and yet, Darla thought, not as astonished as he might have. "But of course! When my servant girl was on her way to your house last night, they waylaid her and treated her most brutally. Come, girl, show them your face."
The servant girl came into the room, her black eye now explained. So, Darla thought, the gypsies found us on their own. This foolish creature just got in the way. No answers to be found here. At least it serves my other purpose.
"Is Mr. Angelus hurt?" Lord Dalton said. "Is he missing?"
"Yes," Darla said. "As are you."
"I beg your pardon?"
She smiled, a tight, sarcastic little smile. "You came to Romania to find vampires, Lord Percy." Darla let her face shift into its demonic visage and reveled for a moment in his surprise and terror. "Well done, sir."
Darla grabbed his shoulders and bit into his neck savagely, with no thought for finesse or even for the stains on her gown. Lord Dalton's hands pawed weakly at her, scrambling to push himself away, to no avail. In the corner of her eye, she could see Spike making short work of the servant girl; behind her was some thumping and gurgling that probably signaled the manservant's death and Drusilla's lunch. Darla kept gulping down Lord Dalton's blood, needing the strength more than she could ever remember before.
As his heart began to flutter and fail, she let him flop back. His eyes were glassy, his skin waxen. Angelus' voice, so loud and distinct that it startled her, echoed, "I forbid you to turn him."
He had been speaking of a paramour that never existed, not this ludicrous creature, and yet Darla felt the old defiance blaze up inside her again. She brought her wrist to her mouth and bit in deeply; the pain seemed to belong to someone else. "Drink," she said. "Drink, and you'll know the truth to all the stories."
Lord Dalton drank. Then he died. His body collapsed to the floor, and Darla stared down at him until Spike and Dru came to her side.
"You turned THAT git?" Spike said. "Mark my words, he's not going to be any fun. Worse than that dolt Penn, more than likely."
"He won't be up for a while," Darla said. "A day, maybe two. I drank too much."
"Not like you, getting careless," Spike said. "Vamping some idiot who can't be of any use for a day or so, dragging us off from our perfectly good villa, running off from our perfectly good hotel rooms that were waiting later on --"
"He can't find us," Darla said quickly. "He mustn't find us."
"Who? Angelus?" Spike looked at her in disbelief, then cackled in glee. "Oh, this is brilliant. You're pretending to run off from Angelus again, just so he can chase you --"
Against her will -- against every instinct she had, vampiric and otherwise -- Darla felt her eyes filling with tears. "Be silent," she hissed. "It's not yours to question what I do."
Drusilla's fingers stroked through Darla's hair, as slender and cool as the teeth of an ivory comb. "Drink up your tears, little baby grandmother," Dru said. "Spike doesn't mean to be unkind."
"Yes, I do," Spike said.
"They won't beat us," Darla said. She knew she was making less sense even than Dru; she didn't care. "I won't let them win."
Drusilla smiled. "Not this time."
***
Fred tried very hard to remember the last time she'd looked around to see where she was and been happy about the answer. It had been a disturbingly long time ago, and, to judge by where she thought Angel was leading them, it wasn't going to happen again anytime soon.
"Uh, Angel?" Cordelia said, breaking the shell-shocked silence that had lasted since they'd left the cave in the Romanian woods. Now they were winding their way through the pre-dawn streets of Sighisoara, and there was no longer any doubt about where they were going. "Is it my imagination, or are we headed in exactly the wrong direction?"
"We're going to the villa," Angel said. "Where Darla, Dru, Spike and I lived."
"Hence my use of the phrase, 'exactly the wrong direction,'" Cordelia said. "Angel, I know the whole apocalypse-timeshift-Wesley thing was stressful -- it was for all of us --"
Charles cut in. "What she's asking is, are you insane?" Fred winced. After what she'd seen before -- the second crazed attack Angel had made on Wesley, or a version of Wesley, anyway, in two weeks -- that question seemed far too close to the bone.
But when Angel answered, he sounded calm. "Not yet," he said. "Believe me, I don't like this any better than you do. If there were anywhere else -- but there isn't. Darla will be trying to avoid me. That means she's going to be anywhere but the villa."
"She thinks you -- as in, past you -- might be coming back here?" Fred said. When Angel nodded, she said, "How do you know you won't?"
"I didn't before," Angel said. "I know that's no guarantee, but it's got to be a good sign. We can stay there today, bide our time, rest, get some supplies. Maybe some money."
"She won't have taken it all with her?" Cordelia said. "Shame to leave good money lying around."
"We took possessions we particularly liked," Angel said. They were getting close to the villa now, and Fred found herself thinking gratefully of whatever brief rest they might get. She'd had only one afternoon's nap since their first trip back in time yesterday -- two days ago? How long was it? She couldn't think of how to calculate it anymore. "But only our favorites. What we could carry easily, no more. You could always steal something newer or better the next day."
"So we can get clothes," Charles said. "Which would be good, seeing as how the gypsies aren't going to be loaning us new outfits again." Fred nodded; she felt ridiculous in her 21st-century gear, even though the streets were utterly deserted at this hour.
Cordelia said, "We SO do not need to visit the gypsies again. I mean, I see where they're coming from, but there are some serious hostility issues at work with those guys."
"But we have to see them!" Fred said, so surprised she stopped walking. The others halted as she said, "Spike and Darla are going to kill them. We know that."
Everyone was quiet for a moment. It was Charles who answered her, "Fred, we ain't here to see that they don't die. We're here to make sure they do."
Fred took a moment to consider it. "It's like the servant girl, isn't it?" she finally said. "Except this time we know. They have to die."
"Yeah," Angel said. "They do."
Cordelia quickly said, "Let's just get to this villa, okay? It's freezing out here, and if I'm going to have to fight for my life, I'd like to do it before I'm completely numb."
They came to the villa; Angel motioned for them to stand back, then went and tried the door. It was unlocked, apparently, as it swung open at his touch. For a few moments, she and Charles and Cordelia stood there, breathless and waiting. At last, a lamp came on inside, warming the windowpanes with its glow. Fred breathed a sigh of relief. "See?" Cordelia said. "Completely safe."
Charles rolled his eyes at Fred as they went inside, and she smiled. Then she got a look at the place, and froze on the spot. "Oh, my God."
The room had been ransacked. Everything breakable was broken; trunks lay in the hallway, open and obviously rifled-through. A few scraps of cloth -- clothing or linens -- hung on chairs and banisters. Fred wondered if the dark stains in front of the fireplace were blood, then decided she didn't want to know.
Even Angel looked surprised. "It wasn't like this when I left," he said. "Darla must have -- she would have been angry. I mean, she was angry."
"When you left that night to meet Lord Dunstan or Dalton or whatever it was?" Cordelia said. "Not this time. You guys were way too cozy, and now you've reminded me." She began to peer into the trunks and sift through their contents, scowling all the while.
"No, not then," Angel said. "When she came back and found me later -- a few hours ago, I guess. When she realized I had a soul."
Cordelia's face brightened. "A-hah!" She held up a roll of something that was obviously money, even if Fred didn't recognize the currency. "Angel, is this a lot of money? Please say this is a lot of money. If we're gonna be stranded back in time, I would prefer to be stranded and rich." Something about what Cordelia said sent a shiver down Fred's back, and she gripped the side of the trunk.
Charles said, "How did you find that?"
"She can smell it," Angel said. He smiled at Cordelia then, a gentle, familiar smile that was more relaxed, more human, than any expression Fred had seen on Angel's face in weeks. "Remember when I used to hide a couple twenties around the old office?"
"My surprise bonuses," Cordy said, squeezing his arm. "So, have we won the nineteenth-century lotto? Or is this like Italian lira, where you need something like eighty thousand to buy a Coke?"
"It's substantial," Angel said. "We can't buy a house with it, but we can live well for a month or two. Buy what we don't find here."
"First off, we need clothes," Fred said. She was still cold; the house was almost chillier than outside. Maybe that was why she was shaking. She pulled a dove-gray dress from the trunk. "Angel, was this Darla's or Drusilla's? I think I could maybe wear something of Drusilla's --"
He looked at the dress, puzzled. "It's possible that I just don't remember, but I don't think that belonged to either of them. In fact, I don't remember these trunks at all."
Fred shrugged. "I guess we can check the closets, too."
"Try the trunks first," Angel said quickly. "It's just -- I just might not remember."
"Nothing to do but try some stuff on," Cordelia said. "I hope none of this is Darla's. I don't want anything that belonged to that skank."
Angel started to say something, then evidently changed his mind. "I'm going upstairs. Darla wouldn't have taken my things with her. So my own clothes should still be up there." He started to climb the stairs.
"Any guy clothes in that trunk?" Charles said.
"Wait," Fred said. She wasn't aware of having said it especially loudly or abruptly, but everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her. They sensed it too, Fred realized; the same fear that was making her shiver was there inside all of them, but it had fallen to her to speak about it first. "Guys -- if we don't succeed -- not that we won't! But if we don't stop Dru from undoing Angel's curse, what are we gonna do?"
Quietly, Angel said, "Then we have to kill him."
"Angel, no!" Cordelia whirled around to face him. "Are you out of your undead mind? If we stake that Angel, then there's not gonna be this Angel -- you know, the YOU Angel." She turned back around to Fred. "Am I right? That's the way it works, right?"
"I don't know," Fred confessed. "The field of temporal dynamics is completely theoretical, or it WAS, before today, when we proved Delaney's hypothesis about -- oh, never mind." She sighed. "If we hadn't changed reality so dramatically, then yes, Angel would cease to exist after we staked -- well, let's keep calling him Angelus just to stay clear here. That might be instantaneous, or it might not happen until Angel attempted to leave this time for the restored future."
"See?" Cordelia said, folding her arms in front of her. "No staking."
"Wait," Charles said. "Cordy staked the Drusilla from 1898 -- but that didn't make 2002 Dru pop out like a light bulb. We know she stayed around and changed history and screwed up the future we saw in Rome. The same thing would have to apply to Angel, right? So we could stake Angelus, save the future and go home in time to get pizza." He was trying very hard to look hopeful, so hard it made Fred's eyes almost tear up. For all his anger, all his jaded posturing, Charles could work so hard at hope.
"Maybe," Fred said. "Nobody knows for certain. When the timeline diverges irrevocably, if we're still here, then Angel might no longer be the future version of this Angelus. Instead, we'd all be artifacts from an entirely separate reality, almost like another dimension. Changes we made here wouldn't affect us at all. The disconnect could be complete. In that case, Angel would survive our staking Angelus -- but none of us could ever go home again."
Charles groaned. "My head hurts. This is what I get for dropping outta tenth-grade physics to take shop."
"Maybe doesn't cut it," Cordelia said. "We can't stake Angelus and 'maybe' kill Angel too. We can't 'maybe' get stranded in ye olden days forever."
Angel said, "Cordelia, we have to." Before Cordelia could protest, he continued, "The alternative is letting reality become what we saw in Rome. We can't let that happen. Not if it kills me. Not if it kills all of us."
Everyone was quiet for a few moments. Cordelia ducked her head so that Fred couldn't see her face. Angel came down a couple of steps toward her, but she shook her head quickly. Charles rubbed Fred's back, a quick motion that somehow comforted her far more than it should have done.
"Okay," Cordelia finally said. "Okay, then. Let's just all -- get some sleep. We can think about this after we get some sleep."
***
Someone knocked hard on the door. Everyone jumped. Fred clapped her hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Cordelia looked back over at Angel and whispered, "You said they wouldn't come back!"
"They wouldn't," Angel said. "They also wouldn't knock." He came back down the steps. As the heavy hand knocked on the door again, he called, "One moment!" then added a phrase that Fred suspected meant the same in Romanian.
"We gotta hide," Charles said, gesturing at their clothes. Angel pulled something from one of the trunks; Fred realized it was a cape. She went with Charles and Cordelia into the next room, where they flattened themselves against the wall behind the door, next to one of the abandoned trunks. They all tensed as they heard the door open.
A voice said, in heavily accented English, "Sir, here to move you into Hotel Lebada, yes?"
"The Hotel Lebada," Angel said. Fred thought his voice sounded as though he were remembering something. He was more certain as he answered, "Yes, of course."
"This is the hour requested," the caller's voice said. He did not sound very happy about this hour -- still well before dawn -- being the one requested. "All to be ready to move at this hour, it is said."
"I'm sorry for the confusion," Angel said. "As you can see, we were robbed. We're all very shocked."
As the caller, apparently an employee of a local hotel, expressed his horror and sympathy, Cordelia muttered, "As soon as Angel gets rid of this guy, we can crash. Well, bolt the doors shut, then crash."
"I need sleep worse than I ever have in my whole life," Fred said. "But I almost don't see how I can sleep until this is over. If we have to stake --"
"Don't say it," Cordelia said. When Charles looked at her, long and hard, she said, "If I have to do it, I'll do it. But don't expect me to deal with that idea one single second before I have to."
In the following silence, Fred heard Angel say, "We'll be ready to move in just a few minutes. Hold the carriage."
"Move?" Charles said. "Who said anything about moving?"
"Apparently," Fred said, "Angel just did." Cordelia looked indignant.
Angel poked his head into their room. "Change of plan."
"Yeah, thanks for consulting us," Cordelia said. "I thought this was the one place Darla and co weren't gonna be today. So why are we leaving?"
"We're going to the other place they won't be," Angel said. "There was somewhere else I could possibly have found Darla in the past. We'd arranged to move from this villa into some hotel rooms, in preparation for a ball that was being held -- I guess it's tonight."
"Anyplace the vampires aren't is okay by me," Fred said. "And you know I mean evil vampires, right? But still, Angel, why move? Seems like we could be more secure here -- you know, we can nail boards across the doors and windows without a bellhop asking us to quit. That kind of thing."
Angel shook his head quickly. "We want to get closer to that ball," he said. "We're going. Because I'd bet anything Darla's going."
"Usually I seize the few chances I get to combine our mission and formalwear," Cordelia said. "But get real, Angel. Look at this place. Darla's freaking out. Her whole world just got turned upside down. Why would she still go to a party?"
"You have to understand -- that's exactly why she WOULD go." He spoke quickly, clearly trying to organize complicated memories as he talked. "Darla -- she doesn't -- I mean, she didn't ever admit anything was wrong unless she had to. She never even explained my curse to Drusilla and Spike; they didn't know for sure what had happened to me until they got to Sunnydale. She always tried to pretend that things were the way she wanted them to be, until she could either make them that way or destroy them. As a philosophy, it worked pretty well for her. And she knows I might try to go to her at the hotel, but there's no way I could have pulled myself together enough to go to the ball."
Fred's memory of Darla was of a desperate pregnant woman who had said ugly things to them all, suffered terribly, then died at her own hand, all in the space of a few days. None of those experiences fitted with what Angel was saying. But she could see both Charles and Cordelia nodding slowly; their greater knowledge of Darla apparently matched up. It was Charles who said, "If Darla's coming to this throwdown, chances are she's gonna have Dru in tow, right?"
"Chances are," Angel said. "I don't know for certain. I don't know anything for certain. But it's a safe place to stay for the day, and it sets us up to have a chance at finding them tonight. Plus you guys can get something to eat."
Fred's stomach grumbled hopefully. Cordelia still looked skeptical. "We could just go to this ball tonight anyway, right?"
"I remember the Hotel Lebada was very luxurious, for this era," Angel said. "It might even have flush toilets."
"We're packin'," Cordelia said quickly. "Clothes. We need clothes!"
Angel smiled. "I'm going upstairs for my things. Get ready."
He went back out to the hallway as the others began rummaging quickly in the trunk. Fred tugged out a bonnet and put it over her head, then drew one of the capes around her. Cordelia found a hooded cape and draped it around her jeans. Charles, unfortunately, wasn't having much luck. "This is all girl stuff!" he said. "The guy stuff is all the trunks out front."
"You could get by the hotel staff in drag," Cordelia suggested. "It worked for Tom Hanks."
Charles shot her a dark look as he kept searching the trunk, increasingly desperate. Fred said soothingly, "It's all right, Charles. We'll come up with some story -- maybe sing the Gilligan's Island song again --"
"No, no and NO," Charles said, giving up on the trunk and beginning to search the rest of the room. "First of all, I ain't ever singing that song again in public, and probably not in private neither. Second --" He hesitated. Fred could hear the catch in his voice that meant he didn't want to say any more. She stepped closer to him, but he shook off the hesitation, kept looking under furniture, in an empty closet. "I don't want to be some kind of freak here. It didn't mean much when I thought it was just for a couple of days -- but if it's forever -- let's face it, the only way I even get into this hotel is pretending to be your servant or something. And I can't do that. Even pretending. Even for a day."
Cordelia didn't look too sympathetic; then again, Fred thought, Cordelia seemed to enjoy pretending to be people she wasn't. It didn't affect her pride, because that was something that was as much a part of her as her blood. Charles' pride, on the other hand, was a fragile, difficult thing at times. Fred knew how it felt, the combination of panic and degradation that clawed and hurt. She'd known that feeling ever since the first time a Pylean called her "cow."
Respect, Fred thought. Her mind zigzagged from one possibility to another. Pretending to be someone else, she thought. Like in a play. Like the theatre -- that comedy last night, with the man in the vest and the turban --
Quickly, she tore down the curtains and draped a length of blue velvet over Charles, who for a second was too surprised to do anything except let her. He looked, Fred thought, like a statue about to be unveiled. "Very Siegfried and Roy," Cordelia commented. "And so not helping."
Fred tugged at the curtains, pulling them into a shape that bore a slight resemblance to a set of flowing robes. "Haven't either of you seen 'Gone With The Wind'? Curtains can be clothes! Work with me here!"
The door opened, and the hotel servants took two whole steps in before gaping at Charles. Angel, slightly behind them, gave them a glare that clearly meant, "You were supposed to be ready." Cordelia shrugged. Charles looked somewhere between frightened and angry.
Fred gave the fabric one last tug -- a mistake, as it caused one side of the curtain to slip off Charles' shoulder, revealing the T-shirt underneath. Too late to do anything about it now. Fred stepped back, presenting Charles with a flourish. "Where are your manners?" she cried, not knowing if the servants knew sufficient English to understand her. Her tone of voice should be enough. "You are supposed to bow when you enter the presence of the -- of the -- of the Caliph of Madagascar!"
One of the servants quickly bowed, towing the others down with him. Angel and Cordelia both looked too surprised to say anything. Charles stared at them for a moment, then swung the velvet curtain over his shoulder grandly. In a deep voice, he said, "You may rise."
"Begging pardon," said one of the servants. "This is not told to us."
"What?" Angel said, picking up Fred's outraged tone with a barely suppressed smile. "My instructions were specific."
"Please to forgive," the servant said. "We beg the pardon of the Caliph --?" His voice rose, making it a question.
Charles' expression flickered for only a moment. "My name is --" He smiled broadly and stood up even straighter. "Muhammad Ali."
Fred wanted desperately to see the looks on Angel and Cordelia's faces, but she didn't dare meet their eyes. Forcing herself to remain serious, she said, "You may carry out the Caliph's belongings. We're ready to leave now. Aren't we?"
"Yes," Angel said. "We are."
The servants stepped aside expectantly; Charles stared at them for a moment before catching the hint and walking imperiously out the door. Angel took Cordelia's arm to lead her behind him, and Fred took up the rear, followed only by the servants struggling with the trunk. As they went through the hallway, she noticed a half-open closet door. Huh, she thought. Somebody left a shoe in there.
Then she realized the shoe was actually still attached to the foot, and possibly more, of a person who was undoubtedly dead. And only then did Fred realize the last and unspoken reason Angel had wanted them to leave the villa for the hotel. She was glad he'd insisted.
***
There were three pairs of feet sticking out of the pantry door -- the maidservant's, the manservant's, and Lord Dalton's. The door wouldn't close, and when Spike tried to force it shut, there was an unpleasant crunching sound. "They won't all fit," he said.
"Crack, crack, crack of bones, music like a xylophone!" Drusilla sang to no particular tune. "Do it again!" She cupped her hands to her ears and started to dance around the kitchen, her elbows knocking pots and serving ladles off their hooks as she twirled manically. The sound of metal pans and cooking implements crashing on to the kitchen's stone floor brought Darla's already stretched patience to breaking point.
"Drusilla, stop it. Stop that NOW." Drusilla ignored her, and so the next time she danced within arm's length, Darla seized her arm and threw her down on to the floor. Dru fell heavily and sat for a second, her face as blank and stunned as a child's. Then, slowly, her lip began to tremble and a series of low sobs started to shake her frail body. Instantly, Darla regretted her actions -- not because she had made Drusilla cry, but because the sound of it was more grating than the crashing of a moment earlier.
"Oh, don't take on so, you're not hurt," she said roughly, but Drusilla only sobbed more loudly. Spike dropped to his knees beside her, comforting Dru while glaring up at Darla with greater defiance than he would have dared show in Angelus' presence. Dru wept on, her sobs all the more ugly to Darla because she knew a word from Angelus would have quieted her.
But Angelus was gone. The gypsies had taken away her magnificent creation, her darling boy, and replaced him with the sniveling, odious creature who'd whined about guilt and reeked with the fetid stench of a soul when he'd crawled back to her. His presence, his very existence, had been unbearable to her, and she'd thrown him into the street. He'd been crying -- actually crying -- as she slammed the door on him. Angelus had wept, and the noise had filled Darla with such a depth of loathing she'd almost reached for a stake to finish the gypsies' work for them.
She hadn't, and until now Darla hadn't known what had made her pause. But as she watched Spike cradle Dru on the kitchen's stone floor, she felt the beginnings of understanding.
"There's a knife in his chest," Drusilla whispered. "Metal, not wood, so the pain goes on and on and on. He feels it. He feels everything, now."
Darla stiffened. It was always a mistake to become too reflective around Drusilla -- her words had an unnerving habit of echoing other people's thoughts. If Drusilla knew about the curse the gypsies had put on Angelus -- if her broken mind had somehow intuited the truth -- how long would it be before she told Spike? And when they both knew, the façade of normality Darla was straining to maintain would crumble away, and she would have to admit to herself that Angelus really was gone.
He was not gone. He could not be.
"Spike," Darla said sharply, "Go and check the rest of the house. I want to be certain no one else is here."
Spike was still holding Drusilla in his arms and didn't appear keen about ending that arrangement. "If there was anyone upstairs, the screaming will have chased them."
Furiously, Darla said, "I am TELLING you what you are to do --"
"Oh, you're telling me?" Spike repeated. "Then why don't you tell me some other things, while you're at it? Such as, what's happened to Angelus and why you're as ready to explode as a bitch in heat --"
"Spike," Drusilla crooned. She had stopped crying and was as calm as she had been inconsolable a few moments earlier. She lifted her hand and drew one fingernail along the side of his neck. "Spike, there's a chambermaid hiding in the bedrooms. Her heart beats, thumpetty thump. Make it stop, for me?"
Spike smiled, and leaned forward, so his forehead touched hers. "Anything you want, sweet."
He left the kitchen; Darla watched him go, the looked down at Drusilla, feeling a strange and completely novel sense of complicity with her. Slowly, she hunkered down on the cold kitchen floor next to her. "Drusilla," she said, "what do you know?"
Drusilla giggled. "Oh, many, many things!" She reached out one skeletal finger and prodded Darla in the stomach. "You're going to grow a little person."
That, Darla thought, was about as probable as Angelus taking vows and becoming a monk. Ignoring Dru's ramblings, she struggled to keep her temper. "What do you know about Angelus, Drusilla? What do you know about what's happened to him?"
Dru's expression became sad. "The knife. The knife in his chest hurts and hurts. I hear his screams echoing down the years. But he will come to love the blade that twists inside him." She glared at Darla. "He will love it as he never loved you."
Darla slapped her, hard. Drusilla wasn't fast enough to turn her head away, and the jewels in Darla's rings tore her cheek. Darla stared at her hand. She'd never professed love for Angelus, or expected to hear similar sentiments from him. All she'd asked was that he amuse her and indulge her, satisfy her whims and desires whenever they arose. Love was for humans; like them, it was weak and easily consumed.
But, a small voice in the back of her head reminded Darla, both she and Angelus had been human, once.
"What are we going to do?" Darla asked. She wasn't talking to Drusilla. She wasn't sure who she was talking to.
Drusilla got up and walked with serene calm to the rack where the kitchen knives hung. There were a dozen or more of them, hung in order of size, from an inch-long blade for paring vegetables to a meat cleaver. Drusilla chose a shining carving knife and held it up under the flickering light of a lamp.
Then she plunged it into her own chest.
She didn't stop until the blade was no longer visible, the knife's handle nestling in the hollow between her breasts. Drusilla gasped and tipped her head back, her face alight with a grotesque mixture of agony and pleasure. Tottering a little, she walked back across the kitchen.
Once they were facing each other, Drusilla lifted Darla's hands and placed them on the carving knife's ivory handle. "Take it out," Drusilla rasped. Her voice was rough, and there was an unpleasant bubbling sound somewhere at the back of her throat. "You have to take it out, before the flesh closes up around the wound. Quickly, now!"
Darla tightened her grip on the knife and pulled. Drusilla gasped as the blade slid out between her ribs, leaving a blotch of deep crimson on the bodice of her dress.
Take out the knife, before the wound seals up around it.
Of course.
"We'll find them," she whispered. "We'll find the vermin Kalderash and make them undo it. We'll show them such terror as they've never known, and when Angelus is restored to us, he will finish our revenge. It will be perfect."
Drusilla laughed, a ghastly sound filled with gurgling from deep in her chest. Blood sprayed from her lips as she giggled, "Yes, yes, yes! That's how it should have been!" She seized Darla by the wrists and pulled her around the kitchen in a mad, spinning waltz; for once, Darla let her. They must look like two lunatics, not one, she thought, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
They didn't stop until Darla grew dizzy and Drusilla began coughing blood from her new wound. But as Darla put a hand to her head to steady herself, she felt a bony hand grip her wrist. Drusilla was staring intently at the strange but beautiful bracelet Angelus had given her. She twisted her head, looking at it from different angles, as fascinated by the shifting colors and shapes as Darla had been.
"They came back," Drusilla said. There was a strange look -- strange even for Drusilla -- on her face as she spoke. "They're here again, and they want to tell the bad story. Can they, when the pattern shifts and moves all the time? It looks solid but you can't touch it. You're just like me, pretty little hologram."
"Pretty little -- what?" Darla looked down at her bracelet. "It's not hollow." Drusilla laughed and laughed; Darla was not accustomed to being laughed at. "Why is that funny?"
"Hologram, hollow gram," Drusilla said, shuffling over to tap the blades of the hanging knives as though they were bells to ring.
Darla stared at Drusilla, sensing for the first time something awry. Drusilla was given to singing tuneless songs and making up nursery rhymes which invariably ended with throat-slitting, but Darla had never known her to invent nonsense words. And Drusilla had examined the bracelet with a kind of intensity that was almost lucid. Darla had the distinct impression that, while she had been preoccupied with keeping the truth about what had happened to Angelus from Drusilla and Spike, somehow she had failed to see that something was being kept from her. Right now, she couldn't begin to guess what it was -- but she was certain she could find out.
"Bloody hell!"
Darla looked around and saw Spike, standing in the kitchen door. There were flecks of blood around his mouth and his face was flushed from a recent feed. But Spike's attention was focused on the knife that lay on the floor between Darla and Drusilla's feet, the blade streaked with blood. He stared at Darla with open hostility. "If you've hurt her --"
"Lovely hurt," Drusilla interrupted. She lifted her hands, and showed him her fingers, the nails black with already-crusting blood. "I did it all myself, Spike."
"If I wanted either of you gone, I wouldn't choose a toy like this to do it," Darla said, nudging the carving knife with her toe. "I'd use a real weapon."
Spike sneered knowingly. "Is that what's happened to Angelus, then? Did one of your tiffs get out of hand and you dusted him?"
Darla didn't answer; instead she exchanged a look with Drusilla, one Spike was meant to see. Their shared secret was safe and, however curious he was, while Darla and Drusilla were in collusion, there was nothing he could do about it.
There was a hook behind the kitchen door, and a selection of servants' capes and cloaks hung on it. Darla selected the largest and threw it at Spike. He caught it, and looked at both the cape and Darla curiously. "What's this for?"
"You'll need it to keep the sun off you," Darla told him. "You're going out."
"What's so urgent it can't wait until dusk?"
"There are gypsies camped somewhere near the city. I want you to find them before they move on." Spike still looked doubtful, and something told Darla this was an occasion to use persuasion rather than brute force to make him do her bidding. Lowering her voice, she said, "I'm in the mood for slaughter. I'm tired of delicate killing, choosing society victims with care. Think of it -- fifty or a hundred mongrel gypsies who no one will miss."
Drusilla brought her hands to her lips and closed her eyes, her face alight with anticipation. "A bloodbath, a lovely bloodbath."
Spike grinned. "Now THIS is more like it. We ought to ditch Angelus more often, if this is the effect it has on you." He picked up the cape and turned to go.
"Spike," Drusilla called.
Spike stopped and looked back.
"Don't kill anyone without me," Dru said. "It's no fun unless we all do it together. No killing yet."
Spike shrugged. "No killing yet. Fine."
"No killing!" Drusilla repeated, more urgently.
"All right!" Spike said, pulling on the cape. Darla watched him walk away along the passage that led up to the main entrance hall, muttering all the time about people who didn't credit him with any self-control.
"It's all going to be different," Drusilla whispered. "Different and wonderful."
Darla laughed and took Drusilla by the arm. "For once, you're making perfect sense," she said. "Come upstairs. You and I have a ball to prepare for."
Drusilla spun around in a circle, letting the knife-blades tear at her fingertips as she whirled. "Second verse," she chanted. "Not the same as the first."