Birth RightBy Alecca
Bloody Mary with a dash of flameLos Angeles
The Underground of Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc
Static Time - no precise date"Au!" Harmony let out when they hit the hard cement floor of a long hallway. She unclenched her hand from around Wes 2's and began walking down the corridor occasionally yelling a: "Hello?" to which only the echoes replied. Wes 2 limped behind her, trying his best to not be left behind.
"Do you recognize this place?" Wes 2 asked when Harmony stopped and frowned looking around as if searching for something.
"No," she let out an unnecessary sigh. "But I think it's Wolfram & Hart."
"How can you tell?" he asked while arranging his glasses on his nose.
"The logo, duh," she pointed towards a symbol high up on the wall.
"Hmm, I wouldn't have spotted it," he admitted as Harmony began walking again.
"Of course not, you have lame human eyesight," she said as she distanced herself further away from him. The hallway came to a dead end not far away. When she reached it, Harmony let out a small scream.
"What is it?" Wes 2 caught up with her. She was staring at a small window in an iron door where two horrifyingly cruel eyes were staring out.
"I know where we are," Harmony suddenly said. "This is the place...the one no one's suppose to be talking about, but of course everyone talks about it. The unmentionables department. This is where Wolfram & Hart hides all its dirty little secrets."
"Dirty little secrets?" he asked confused. "Like documents? Powerful books?"
"Like employees gone psycho," Harmony explained.
"Who's that?" he asked looking at the small window in the iron door.
"That's the jerk that wanted to send Spike to hell," she stuck out her tongue at Mathias Pavayne. "C'mon, you can do whatever you want. He can't do a thing about it. Angel said so."
"Why is he smiling?" Wes 2 asked staring at Pavayne.
"That's weird. He probably got stuck that way," Harmony lifted her shoulders. A horrible hysterical laughter suddenly echoed in the hallway and Wes 2 looked around terrified. Harmony took a few steps closer to him. From his cell, Pavayne continued to smile and if he had had a voice to speak he would have taunted them: "She's gonna get you..."
Los Angeles
Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc
2051"I'd offer you a seat, but I'm short on chairs," Angel apologized gesturing around his almost destroyed office.
"Have mine, I was just leaving," Kalee offered her chair giving Angel a look that seemed sad - almost begging - to Fred 2.
"Don't," Angel said in an attempt to stop her, but obviously he was at a loss for words, something the girl seemed to be disappointed by. "You can't leave before we discuss this further. What you're planning to do it irresponsible."
"What is? The fact that I'm leaving? Or that I'm leaving with Spike?" Kalee asked with a mocking smile. "So far everything you've told me are lousy excuses over even lousier excuses. Give me one reason to stay."
"Tell me one of your reasons to leave," Angel replied calmly. Fred 2 stood aside and watched them with a combination of stupefaction and confusion. Since when did Angel have a niece? Was Kalee some sort of descendent of Angel from his days as a mortal? Or did it have something to do with the strange story she had heard about a certain Connor, son of Angel?
"Since you actually bothered to wonder, let's just say I feel like I can no longer evolve here. That my evolution has come to a screeching halt," she stared at Angel as if her words had more than one meaning.
"I can't offer you more than I already have, Kalee," he said firmly, holding her gaze.
"Fine," she seemed very disappointed and obviously saddened. "Then there is no other reason for me to stay," she headed for the office doors. "Nice meeting you," she told Fred 2 distracted when she passed her by. Angel sighed heavily - like a person who had a heavy burden on his heart and then turning towards Fred 2 he forced a smile.
"How was your trip?" he asked and Fred 2 smiled weakly.
The Hollow Crossroads
Absolutely nowhen"How could you let this happen?" Willow looked at the Hur'dha that paced in front of her looking slightly guilty.
"I have a lot of things on my mind, I can't think of everything. How was I suppose to guess those children would start running off instead of staying put like they were told?" he asked looking up at her. The witch shook her head.
"As many years as you've been here with nothing better to do but watch people's lives, have you really learnt nothing about human nature?" she asked and then sighed: "I only agreed with your idea to bring them here because I thought you were somehow going to prohibit them from using the crossroads."
"The crossroads cannot be closed to anyone. If a person enters here, it has free access into the past. I thought you knew that much," the Hur'dha explained. "As for understanding human nature... why should I? I am not human," he smiled.
"Do you know where they went?" she asked looking around at the many crossroads in the horizon.
"Of course," he said rising his eyes from the ground. "You shouldn't worry about them. The boy is very close to finding the way back. With numbers, who would've thought? As for the other two, the vampire slayer has a plan that will take her and the little one home. Though it will upset time a great deal. But I think I've solved that problem quite easily."
"At least you've solved something," she mumbled. "What about Rupert?"
"Oh, I'm afraid he's still a threat and by solving one problem, I've worsened another," he explained.
"How exactly did you solve Lonny's problem?" Willow asked frowning.
Los Angeles
Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc
2051She stared at the wall with a look of frustration in her eyes. Here she was, 32 years into the past, trying to do what a certain trouble making slayer had done just two days ago in her time. Except, she told herself smiling, that certain slayer hadn't been the daughter of Charles Gunn, one of the few people besides Angel who knew all the secrets of his private apartment vault.
She touched the wall with her hand, tracing a peculiar pattern across it while saying:
"Una era, dome et, jackame juia tois - danna me! danna me!" The illusion of the wall disappeared and the huge metallic vault appeared before her. She searched the wall, a bit uncertain of where exactly the panel she was looking for was situated. She had been 12 when her father had explained it all to her. Finally finding the spot, she knocked on the metal and said, in a clear voice: "Angel Investigations. We help the helpless."
A metallic panel slid open and a white square appeared behind it.
"Full name please," a computerized female voice asked.
"Alonna Charlene Gunn," she said pressing her palm onto the white square. She felt a small sting in various parts of her hand as the computer retrieved blood samples.
"Accessing Wolfram & Hart database. Searching... searching...Gunn family tree found. Alonna Charlene Gunn. Type 2 vampire," the computer said and then made a screeching noise as the computerized female voice was replaced by that of a very familiar man: "Welcome to the big man's safe, honey. Don't make any trouble and don't forget, daddy loves you."
"Love you too, dad," Lonny placed a small kiss on the top of her fingers and then pressed them on the white square. The giant metal door opened and she found herself staring into a gigantic chamber with tall walls covered in metallic drawers, all of them, as she soon found out, locked. Various other safes were grouped in the middle of the room. If she remembered correctly the walls of safes were merely a fake front which only Angel could open easily, everyone else would have to pick the locks of each and every one of them before being allowed to pass beyond it. She sighed. She had no idea where to start and exactly how much time she had on her hands. Angel could have returned any moment and he would surely wonder what she was doing there without his permission.
As she walked among the safes, something caught her eye. A lone object had been left carelessly on top of a safe. As she neared it, she looked at it surprised:
"Well I'll be damned, what are the odds...," she said smiling as she picked up a ring with feathers hanging from it, labeled 'the ring of Batt-Hura". This was her lucky day. As she exited the vault and made sure everything was closed properly, she told herself there was only one thing she had to do now: find Fred 2. What she didn't know was that in fact the ring she was clutching in her hand was not the original one - that was still tucked away safely in Angel's private vault awaiting the day when Mina Parker would steal it - but a second one manufactured by the Hur'dha who had anticipated her plan. If Lonny had stolen the original ring, then Mina wouldn't have found it in the future and it would have canceled her intervention in their lives and that of the Hur'dha and the Hollow Crossroads. Which in turn would have negated Lonny's presence in the past and thusly create a time knot. An unexplainable situation that only created trouble especially for the blue keeper of the Hollow Crossroads.
Los Angeles
Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc
2051She thought her name was very strange. Fred 2. She sounded like someone's cheap copy. Pretending all day to be her mother had eventually made her wonder why she had named her that? Annie was a much more prettier name... Or why hadn't they simply called her Winnie or Win, why Fred 2? Sure, she looked like her great-grandmother, but still. She was at least relieved that only her family called her that. During the years, in their family's inner circle, their names had deviated and hers had become from Fred 2, Fretoo and Wes 2 had become Westo - a name she knew her brother, a lover of British formality, hated with all his heart.
She sighed and looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was 1 AM and she still couldn't sleep. She didn't understand why, she usually had no trouble falling asleep. The time travel, she supposed, had gotten to her. She got up from the bed. She was in a room in Angel's penthouse apartment. One that seemed to have never been lived in. She had been surprised at how different the apartment seemed from the one she had visited 32 years into the future. This apartment actually looked lived in, not only used to occasionally sleep in. There was an actual TV in sight, fashion magazines, CDs, food, used dishes, sticky notes on the fridge, pictures...It was obvious that Angel didn't live alone, but with his niece, this mysterious Kalee Fred 2 had never heard about. She supposed it was because she appeared at a time when her great-grandparents had already retired.
She decided that maybe a glass of milk would help her sleep better, so she wanted to head for the kitchen, but as soon as she opened the door she froze in the spot. With the door barely cracked she could see the couch in the living room, but that hadn't been what had surprised her. Standing behind the couch, in the dark, Angel, with his chest bare was holding Kalee in his arms, kissing her tenderly. The girl seemed fully lost in his arms with her hands laying limp around his waist.
"Don't leave me," Fred 2 heard his whisper breaking the silence. She closed the door slowly with her heart pounding in her ears and her face red. It occurred to her that Angel could probably hear her heart if it was beating so fast so she tried to calm herself down as she headed back to bed. She couldn't figure out what was happening anymore. She couldn't have guessed that Kalee's origins were far away from Angel's, but that they were close to his heart.
Sunnydale
2003Dinner had been noisy, a gathering of overzealous teenage girls, anxious, a little frightened of what the next day could bring. Angel had observed the scene from his chair next to Buffy, only half-listening to the slayer's words. He was too busy watching Mina's every gesture. He was just looking for an excuse to accuse her of plotting something behind Buffy's back, but she seemed to be aware of Angel's expectations and just to annoy him more acted as natural and as innocently naiv as a teenager could be.
"Are you trying to make me jealous?" Buffy's voice echoed in his ears and he turned to look at her surprised. "You've been staring at her since she walked into the living room. You could at least be less obvious."
"Oh...," he chuckled. "It's not what you think. She just reminds me very much of someone I used to know. The resemblance is astonishing."
"And who was this someone to you?" Mina asked betraying the fact that she had been following their conversation. Everyone at the table was suddenly quiet. None of the potentials had dared to speak to Angel since his appearance at the Summers' Home. Kennedy gave Mina an annoyed look, bothered by the fact that she had broken this circle of silence.
"Someone I killed a long time ago," he returned the cold daring stare Mina had given him. "In a rather horrible, excruciating way."
"A kill out of pleasure?" Mina asked, a small smile playing on her lips.
"Oh, no," Angel didn't break eye contact with her. "She stole something from me."
"How could she have stolen something from you? Weren't you the worst vampire of them all? What did they call you? The scourge of Europe?" she asked leaning back in her chair.
"She was a slayer," he explained smiling.
"Well no one likes a thief," she replied and looking away from him returned to the conversation she was having with Amanda. The silence was broken again and it was suddenly as loud as it had been before.
"What was that all about?" Buffy asked frowning.
"I told you...," he began, but the slayer interrupted him:
"Don't act like I don't know you. You were this close to throwing the table out of the way and beating her senseless. A memory doesn't do that to you. Unless you're slightly psychotic, which as far as I know you're not."
"I just don't like her," Angel said in a low voice.
"Fine," she said implying that she wasn't going to insist if he didn't want to tell her the reason he hated Mina. "Just don't start throwing knifes at her, okay? At least wait another day till this whole thing blows over or we're dead. We need all the help we can get."
"I know," Angel said looking into her eyes - her green wonderful eyes - and smiling. It was beginning to get to him. Now, more than ever, he thought that keeping Spike at a distance had been a wise decision. If he was beginning to be affected by her presence, he could only imagine how the blond vampire would have reacted.
Los Angeles
The Underground of Wolfram & Hart Demon Hunting Inc
Static Time - no precise dateBehind one hallway, there was another, then another, then another. It didn't take Wes 2 long to realize the entire floor was shaped like a maze. The crazy laughter of a foreign presence - a woman or at least a female of some sort Wes 2 supposed - could still be heard on occasions echoing in the empty corridors. Other than that, there was only silence. Not one sound came from the locked cells and it all made Wes 2 wonder if they were even occupied.
"You're sure you don't know what year we're in?" he asked Harmony.
"This place doesn't really change. Ever. Angel told me there's something wrong with time here cause some of these things are more dangerous dead than alive," she hadn't really paid much attention to the vampire when he had told her the details.
"So we're in a place where time is being manipulated. Wonderful, of all the places we could've landed in, we wind up here," he sighed frustrated. Unfortunately his calculus and equations could do him no good in this place. They needed to somehow return to the Hollow Crossroads. But first they needed to get out of this underground labyrinth.
"I think it's only inside the cells," Harmony said unsure.
"That's a plus, at least we can't say we're walking down the same hallway over and over again," Wes 2 said as they reached a place where the corridor split in two again. He noticed something on the wall, but thought it was only his imagination until they came closer to it. The wall was covered in 7s written in what he suspected was blood.
"Oh, crap," Harmony let out when she saw it.
"Does it ring a bell?" he asked looking back at her.
"Yeah..." she said staring down the hallway suddenly feeling very uneasy. "It happened like 2 or 3 years ago. This lunatic from accounting winded up down here one day and totally fell for one of them," she gestured towards the doors.
"He fell in love with someone locked down here?" Wes 2 asked surprised. "He actually entered one of the chambers?"
"Nah, it had one of those little windows. So anyway, he was soooo crazy about her that he actually opened the door and then...," she trailed off.
"What?" Wes 2 didn't understand what she wanted to suggested.
"She turned him into shishkebab," Harmony explained. "Before they put her away she was up to 6."
"Huh?" he still didn't understand and Harmony rolled her eyes frustrated.
"She was Mary 7, the psycho slayer bitch from hell?" she acted like he was suppose to recognize this girl instantly, which he did not. He couldn't have known that Mary 7 was a slayer whose file the SA had hidden deep within their archives. Sighing, Harmony began explaining: "Mary 7. Half-demon, half-human. The human side got the slayer package, the demon side turned her all psycho. Acted like a totally normal person. She got up every morning, the 7th person she met anywhere she turned into little bits and pieces. And then she started from 1 again. Real sicko."
"Why didn't they just kill her?" Wes 2 asked curious.
"They tried, but the SA was breathing down our necks. They wanted to rehabi...uhm..." she couldn't remember the word.
"Rehabilitate her?" he guessed.
"Yeah. But that didn't work out," she chuckled. "She butchered like a dozen watchers and twice as many slayers. So eventually, they brought her back here. Angel, the big softy, couldn't kill her so he put her down here."
"And then she was freed," he realized.
"Bingo. And everyone was a seven after that. Blaze said she actually counted everyone she saw while she was locked up. Freak," she shivered. "Started making up for all the 7s she didn't kill. She never made it out of here though. She took out half the ops until Angel managed to kill her."
"And let me guess that's where we landed. I hope Fred's having more luck than me," he said looking around nervously.
Sunnydale
2003She was alone in the kitchen, having offered to clean the dishes by herself. Angel watched her from the doorway for a moment before approaching her. She sensed him immediately, not that he was trying to be discreet.
"Something wrong?" she asked a small smile playing on her lips. He looked serious. Deadly serious and it only amused her even more.
"Get out while you still can," he said in a calm voice.
"Is that a threat?" Mina asked turning towards him, the smile never leaving her face.
"I'm not here to make threats...," he began, but she rudely interrupted him:
"Oh, no, of course not. Horrible, excruciating death. I believe those were your words," she pointed out.
"I don't understand why you're doing this. I saw your file. You're among the best of the best, any slayer would kill to be like you and you just want to throw that out the window? For what? For your overgrown ego? I think you could find better things to do with your time," he said in a serious tone.
"How I spend my free time is none of your business. Like it's none of my business what you do with yours, though I did hear a couple of awful things about your off-program activities," she said smiling.
"It's all lies and you know it," he said frowning.
"Disadvantage of a public life. Wouldn't you just love it if you didn't have to stand for any of it? Wouldn't you just love it if you could walk the streets like you used to?" she asked turning back towards the sink. There was a moment of silence. "I know you would," she answered for him: "Sure, you're doing a lot more good as CEO of Wolfram & Hart, but the feeling, it's not quite the same, is it? Not what you felt in the streets, saving a damsel in distress, getting to know the people. It's like comparing homemade chocolate with the one that's made in factories. It might taste the same, but the one you get from your aunt's, grandmother's, mother's hands can't be compared to the one you buy with 2.95$ in any store. Me," she looked up at him. "I'm an old fashioned girl. I want my chocolate homemade. Do you think I like having my picture up on all those stupid sites? And care anything for all those idiotic girls who just wished they were like me? Do you think that makes me... I don't know, a star? Some stupid popstar that everyone wants to know who she's sleeping with? No, it makes an idol. A piece of shit up on the walls of teenagers that can't think for themselves. Am I that wrong in wanting to simply do my job right?"
"No one told you to step into the lights," Angel said leaning on the table. "No one forced you to join the SA. You could've done your job in the streets like you wanted to."
"You think?" she smirked. "The SA practically hunts us down. Have you ever seen a slayer that's not in the SA?"
"No, but...," he began, but she once again interrupted him.
"Even your precious Buffy was in the SA, remember? Back in the day," she started the water as she continued to wash the dishes. "This is the only way."
"What you're trying to do, it'll make more damage than good," he warned her.
"I'll tell you when I'll start caring," she said coldly.
"I will take you down if I have to," he said.
"Uh the big bad vampire's gonna get me, excuse me while I pee in my pants," she said mockingly. Angel watched her for a moment before exiting the kitchen. Standing outside, in the backyard, Spike had heard most of their conversation and wondered if Mina was so wrong in wanting to be the one and only slayer.